Vox Media

TV piracy of sports streams is siphoning away millions of viewers. Then: Vox Media and BuzzFeed found new owners this spring, punctuating the end of the pageview era.

Hollywood shifts away from Cannes; SpaceX prepares to go public; and publishers aren’t prioritizing pageviews anymore.

Big Tech seems overconfident their ad revenue growth isn’t tied to the economy; Microsoft AI launches a publisher licensing program; and the unique security vulnerabilities of Moltbook’s social media for AI bots.

Traffic is down, but publisher content is still driving purchases. Partnerize’s new attribution model lets publishers see what’s working and strike fair compensation deals.

A new storyline is emerging around curation, one in which publishers feel they’ve lost out to middlemen on yet another opportunity to monetize their audiences.

Helen Havlak, publisher at The Verge, chats with AdExchanger at CES about how publishers should pivot in response to the dropoff in traffic from Google search.

A web crime ring that sold Facebook account service tickets collapses in dramatic fashion; how US antitrust precedent could inform the DOJ/Google ad tech trial; and more publishers turn to paywalls as the open web shuts its gates.

Future believes its new monetization offering can succeed where other publishers have struggled with selling ad tech and consulting to third-parties.

G/O Media introduced a new contextual targeting solution that combines first-party contextual signals and data on audience browsing behavior to create cross-site contextual segments that can be activated programmatically.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Variation On A Theme Google launched a new Performance Max search feature called “search themes,” a rare opportunity to learn from the black box that is PMax campaigns. Search themes are broad terms that can inform targeting, even if the company doesn’t bid […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Begun, The Clone War Has The robots are taking over, and publishers are fighting back. A growing list of media outlets are attempting to stop AI bots from copying their content, CNN reports. Last week, The New York Times, Reuters and CNN led […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Pour One Out For Pub Tech During the heady days of gonzo social traffic and zero-dollar interest rates, publishers were launching their own software businesses. But that cottage industry has practically disappeared without so much as a whimper. Vox Media, one of the […]

The BOMESI Collective, which includes 50 Black-owned publishers, is now integrated with Concert, Vox Media’s supply-side platform.

While cookies are still in play, publishers are using first-party data products to draw business from advertisers eager to test cookie alternatives, even as ad spending retracts due to persistent fears of an upcoming recession. Here’s a snapshot of how Vox Media, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Trusted Media Brands evolved their first-party data strategy in 2022 and their plans for the coming year.

In Q2 of 2022, ad tech witnessed a slowdown in scaled deal activity (almost 60%). The reason? Global inflation, the Russia-Ukraine war, rising interest rates and the prospect of a recession are just a few factors. But what does this mean for publishers in particular, and how can they prepare? Kean Graham, CEO and founder, MonetizeMore, offers his perspective.

Foundry, formerly known as IDG Communications, wants to shed its old identity and build a new reputation not as a digital publisher but as a provider of data and marketing tech, according to Foundry President Kumaran Ramanathan. Ramanathan spoke to AdExchanger about why Foundry walked away from open-web programmatic, how it’s fusing its first-party data with a marketing and data tech stack and its M&A ambitions.

The market is not being kind to digital media companies. The nearly 40% drop in BuzzFeed’s stock price on Monday and the decline of its valuation from $1.5 billion when it went public in December to roughly $300 million now is no doubt causing other digital-native publishers to rethink their IPO plans. But any doom and gloom about the long-term viability of digital publishers in public markets is likely overblown.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Brick By Brick-And-Mortar The march of the retail media networks cannot be stopped.  Dollar General on Tuesday announced a rebrand of its advertising business, now DGMN (for Dollar General Media Network), to extend its data to ad-buying across the web. According to the […]

In order to gain access to performance advertising budgets (and prove out the power of publisher first-party data), Vox Media is relaunching Group Nine’s G9 Direct performance marketing solution under the new name VM Connect. The relaunch is also a milestone in Vox Media’s integration of Group Nine’s digital properties and tech stack following its […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Swiftly Goes The Retail Long Tail The retail media startup Swiftly raised $100 million, on top of $20 million raised since 2019. It’s an eye-popping number, despite no valuation, and will cheer other retail advertising startups that hope smaller chains can seize the […]

Mergers and acquisitions, the industry’s slow-motion pivot away from third-party data and the expansion of commerce-based business dominated the headlines for media and sell-side ad tech in 2021. What does the industry predict for 2022? More of the same as these trends continue to play out in the year ahead. First-party first In 2022 and […]

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…

Vox Media buying Group Nine Media is the latest media mega merger to watch. Plus, Criteo buys IPONWEB. Both acquisitions are part of a strategy to find space unoccupied by Big Tech (and impervious to the demise of third-party cookies).

The Vox Media/Group Nine deal is only the most recent example of the consolidation trend in digital media. Publishers have been turning to M&A as a method to grow their audiences and increase their ad revenue, in addition to boosting their valuation for further deals down the road.

The Last Place You Search ​​Mozilla, which reported its earnings on Monday, expects to generate more than $500M in revenue this year. That’s up from roughly $465 million last year and around the same the year before. Where’s the money coming from? Historically, Mozilla’s revenue has been very reliant on its Google search licensing deal […]

To make it easier for publishers to use its first-party data across a wide network of sites, Vox Media on Tuesday announced a new suite of tools for Concert, its publisher monetization tech, that come from the digital media company’s internal first-party data platform Forte. The new products address brand safety, targeting and optimization. Brands […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Socially Awkward When big tech critic Sen. Amy Klobuchar requests that you attend an antitrust hearing, it’s best that you listen. Apple stoked Klobuchar’s ire and that of Sen. Mike Lee when the company reportedly refused to make anyone available to testify at a […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Taking A Hit The ongoing pandemic is still throwing IPG for a loop as the holdco rethinks its structure for the year ahead. IPG reported net sales of $8 billion in 2020, a 6.5% decrease compared with the previous year, The Wall Street Journal […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. SPAC Bandwagon Content recommendation engine Taboola became the latest tech company to exist via SPAC when it announced plans to go public on Monday by merging with special purpose acquisition company ION Acquisition Corp, per Business Insider. The deal, which will value Taboola at […]

Vox Media is close to making more money from first-party audience targeting than from third-party targeting mechanisms. This year, Vox expects that the majority of its audience line items will be rooted in first party, said AJ Frucci, VP of Concert and programmatic at Vox Media. Last year, third-party targeting made up the vast majority, […]