programmatic direct

Enjoy this weekly comic from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem … 

Freestar adopted a new approach to curation developed by Audigent that gives buyers a priority lane to publisher inventory with higher viewability and attention scores than most open-auction inventory.

Publishers aren’t just off-setting losses with direct-sold programmatic; they’re unlocking the 70% of consumers brands can’t reach in the open marketplace.  

Recurrent Ventures is ramping up its focus on programmatic direct and PMPs to make up for flagging open auction revenue. Marketers now have access to Recurrent’s 28 publisher brands through Audigent’s private marketplaces.

The Financial Times has long avoided chasing open web programmatic ad revenue. Now, with signal loss prompting a renaissance for contextual targeting and direct deals – and with momentum behind attention metrics, of which the FT was an early proponent going back to 2015 – the publisher’s longtime strategy seems prescient. Brendan Spain, the FT’s VP of advertising for the Americas, spoke with AdExchanger.

Why wouldn’t DSPs want to secure the best possible access to OTT inventory through programmatic while accessing the impression commitments and set pricing provided by direct deals? If DSPs want to compete with more traditional advertising platforms, they will need to do just that, writes Doug Huntington, CEO of FatTail.

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community.  Today’s column is written by Clayton Tarics, VP of product management at FatTail. Increasing privacy regulations and anti-tracking measures are making it harder, riskier and more expensive for advertisers to reach target audiences. It’s also getting harder for publishers […]

TextNow, a free text, voice and video calling app, is on track to hit $100 million in revenue this year, up from $62 million in 2020. The company is profitable. Fun fact, most of that revenue comes from advertising, says Ken Willner, the company’s chief growth officer.

Adobe has placed a new exec in charge of its advertising cloud. TubeMogul’s longtime CMO and head of strategy, Keith Eadie, now oversees product, engineering and overall go-to-market for Adobe’s media and advertising business. His title is VP and GM of Adobe Advertising Cloud. Meanwhile his predecessor, TubeMogul CEO and founder Brett Wilson, is now […]

Facebook is ramping up its publisher-centric strategy by testing a self-serve product powering programmatic direct deals called Audience Direct. In its first iteration, Audience Direct helps publishers sell their video inventory, giving them more control over how they structure direct deals and, eventually, how they guarantee delivery against them. “This enables them to create direct […]

Since launching “programmatic guaranteed” at the 2015 DoubleClick Leadership summit, Google says demand for programmatic execution of direct deals has skyrocketed. In the last 10 months alone it has quadrupled the number of video impressions served on a programmatic guaranteed basis. More recently, it opened this mode of buying to a wider set of customers, […]

Scripps-owned video news site Newsy is boosting its programmatic operation. One tactic is rewiring its yield management provisions to help prioritize programmatic direct vs. open auction deals. It is using a new real-time reporting tool in Tremor Video’s supply-side platform to do so. Although Newsy is six to seven years old, it’s relatively new to […]

Ad tech observers tend to assume it’s early innings in the “programmatic-direct” game, but that may not be the case. Newly reported revenues from one early startup suggest the game hasn’t started yet. iSocket, a programmatic-direct platform company acquired by Rubicon Project in November, posted full-year revenues of just $207,000 in 2013, according to a filing with the […]

Although programmatic direct solutions – which automate direct relationships between sellers and buyers – started cropping up around six years ago, growth has been slow. But that’s likely to change. eMarketer predicts automated direct deals will grow from $800 million this year to more than $8 billion in 2017, which would make programmatic direct 42% […]

Programmatic direct will go from 8% to 42% of all programmatic spending by 2016, according to eMarketer research. BuySellAds, founded in 2008 and which has 18 employees, followed a different path from iSocket and Shiny Ads, both of which were recently acquired by Rubicon Project. It focused on connecting smaller publishers with large brands like […]

It’s been a busy week for Rubicon Project. It acquired programmatic direct players iSocket and Shiny Ads on Monday, adding guaranteed capabilities to its platform. It partnered with Apple’s iAd, ramping up its mobile supply. And last Friday, it hired Adam Chandler as SVP of revenue as the company builds out its buy side. Rubicon’s […]

When Undertone released its programmatic platform Virtuoso in September, the goal, according to co-founder Eric Franchi, was for it to eventually become the primary console of brands and agencies that want to purchase high-impact ad units, or ads that use unique formats designed to snag the audience’s attention. The onetime ad network has hired George […]

As of Friday, Hearst Corporation will offer so-called premium ad units across its digital media network (which includes Cosmopolitan.com, Esquire.com and GoodHousekeeping.com) through a programmatic direct partnership with Varick Media Management. Hearst premium units involve high-impact placements that expand or include rich media, like the “lightbox,” “billboard” and cross-device “pushdown” unit that fills the page. […]

Cookies are notoriously useless on mobile, but they’re the bread and butter of the Internet. If you go to diapers.com and then hit up Buy Buy Baby’s site, it’s likely you have a new baby in the house. If you use your phone in an airport in Miami and then check in to a restaurant […]

Hulu, Condé Nast Entertainment and other members of the digital video and television industry laid out their measurement and monetization challenges on Wednesday at VideoNuze’s Online Video Advertising Summit. Brands and publishers are well aware of the growing popularity of applying programmatic to direct buys. Hulu for instance has reportedly beta-tested a programmatic exchange for more […]

Following its glitzy, star-studded digital NewFront in April, AOL got down to business. It closed in on marketing attribution vendor Convertro the same day Google grabbed pure-play competitor Adometry in early May. Then it went shopping again, snapping up TV audience-targeting platform PrecisionDemand. AOL’s acquisitive behavior is not entirely surprising. The company is constructing an […]

Independent media agency Harmelin Media, whose clients include BET and Blue Diamond Almonds, is constructing its own in-house trading desk. Working with TubeMogul, Harmelin, which used to work with a dozen vendors, will commit programmatic video buys to a single platform. Harmelin is doing this so it can be a better steward of client campaigns. […]

Premium publishers have needed some convincing to open up their more valuable inventory to programmatic buying technologies. But interest in tools that streamline the often unwieldy direct sales process has heated up. It’s one of the reasons Yieldex, a company best known for producing forecasting and analytics tools for premium inventory, introduced a new line […]

Rovio, the creator of the “Angry Birds” mobile game franchise, was one of the first companies to explode in the mobile gaming space. Mobile gamers are fickle, though, and the company has expanded into a multimedia enterprise in addition to growing its advertising business. AdExchanger spoke with Michele Tobin, VP of global brand partnerships and […]

What’s up with The New York Times Co. and programmatic? We’ve pondered that question before, but the publishing giant declined to speak at the time. Since then, Times SVP of Ad Products and R&D Michael Zimbalist has revealed to AdExchanger that the company intends to release more inventory cautiously into the RTB space. It also is planning an […]

Microsoft and Yahoo are loosening their stranglehold on their premium display inventory. MediaMath has set up a buying program that includes guaranteed direct buys in a programmatic environment. The program is enabled through partnerships with publishers Yahoo and Microsoft, along with technology partners Shiny Ads, iSocket and Yieldex. The partnership represents the latest industry attempt […]

Google’s publisher business is on a tear. Last week it struck two private exchange deals with Time Inc. and the 42-member Local Media Consortium. Google will support programmatic direct sales for these sellers and provide wider access to their quality inventory for global media traders such as trading desks at Publicis Groupe’s Vivaki AOD or […]

Supply-side platform AdSlot’s pitch to help sell publishers’ guaranteed inventory via programmatic methods begins with avoiding anything that acts like a private marketplace. The company, which acquired ad agency workflow provider Facilitate Digital more than a month ago, has launched its Guaranteed Marketplace for direct online display sales this week. And, as AdSlot CEO Ian Lowe […]

Microsoft is hoping to gain more traction with higher priced, direct sales inventory on its network by striking an agreement with its fellow portals, AOL and Yahoo, to support technical specifications for automating the buying process around reserved ad sales. In other words, Microsoft is joining the push toward “premium programmatic” that AOL trumpeted Monday […]

Though associating display advertising with a popular character from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of The Rings makes for an entertaining visual, Legolas Media and its new CEO Jonathan Shaevitz have decided it’s time to call a spade a spade and purposefully engage the guaranteed media marketplace; they’ve re-branded the company Upfront Digital Media effective immediately. The […]