Month: May 2018

When it comes to digital video, publishers are relying on their existing franchises, not unlike the way TV networks and movie studios reboot popular shows and movies like “Roseanne” and “Batman.”

Take The New York Times’ recent NewFronts presentation, where it featured a Netflix series based on its popular medical column, “Diagnosis,” while imagining other shows built around “Modern Love” and its crossword puzzle. Women’s publisher Meredith announced a programming slate that leaned on People and its lifestyle magazines. Condé Nast, meanwhile, announced streaming channels tied to its popular Wired, Bon Appétit and GQ monthlies.

These publishers are competing for a finite number of viewers at a time when people have more choices of things to watch than ever. That makes it an easy decision to lean on existing titles that already have a built-in audience.

“I do think it’s getting harder and harder to compete in the digital landscape because it has a young audience that’s accustomed to seeing their own version of things,” said Dawn Ostroff, president of Condé Nast Entertainment. “It’s very hard to start from scratch.”

When it comes to digital video, Condé Nast Entertainment has taken an approach known to Ostroff from her CW and Lifetime days. For Bon Appétit, for example, it’s come up with a mix of programs that have mass appeal, like “Kids Try,” where kids taste foods from over the decades, and ones for the committed Bon Appétit fan, like “Gourmet Makes,” where junk food gets a high-end makeover. Ultimately, the idea behind all of them is to reinforce the Bon App brand, though.

“We want to get the eyeballs, but building up the channels and the connection between the channel and subscriber is incredibly powerful,” Ostroff said.

David Grant, president of PopSugar Studios, said another reason publishers are leaning on their tried and true brands is that in digital, metrics for success are becoming more standardized, which means that programmers are under more pressure to deliver results for their companies. It’s why PopSugar is focusing on its fitness video, adapting “Class FitSugar” for different audiences, for example, and looking for ways to serialize its video to encourage habitual viewing. If he were to have a rule of thumb, Grant said, he would have some 80 percent of PopSugar’s video build off of existing franchises, with the rest for experimenting.

“When you have an existing brand, you understand that audience and you can create within those strategies. It’s much more likely to be successful with so much competition than putting your finger in the air and saying, ‘Let’s try something entirely new,’” he said.

“This is the pivot to brands,” said Bernard Gershon, president of GershonMedia, which consults to media companies on video. “If you already have brands that are an identity with audiences, why not build on those brands? That makes more sense than going to the Acne Animation Company and creating something brand new.”

For a video publisher, being able to show that they have a built-in audience makes it more compelling for ad buyers to consolidate their spending with the publisher. “In today’s climate, anything that publishers can do to illustrate that they know who their audience is and how they consume content is a plus,” said Frank Puma, digital investment lead for New York at Mindshare North America. “The main concern for buyers is the value of these programs or channels — not just the scale of the opportunities, but the ability to deliver the right audiences.”

To the extent video makers rely on their existing franchises because the business is maturing, it’s a good thing, buyers said. Assuming, of course, that the programming is good and offers something that’s not already being done. “The key is to have originality in the content as opposed to just placing a brand on top,” said Doug Rozen, chief digital and innovation officer at OMD. When the networks and movie studios have trotted out old franchises, it’s not always seen as a positive thing for the state of creativity.

“The healthy thing about it is, digital video has never had agreed-upon success metrics in the past, so you can’t tell if something was successful,” Grant said. “Now, success is more knowable, and you’ve got to get real. Probably the unhealthy thing is, there’s some stifling of innovation.”

There’s also always the risk that the publisher will screw up a good thing. The key is in having a brand that has enough appeal to speak to different audiences, as in the case of Bon Appétit, Ostroff said. “You have to have enough elasticity in the brand to bring in large audiences and enough to bring in content that’s specific to its core,” she said.

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Two years ago, Patrón launched a skill for Amazon’s Echo. The skill, called Ask Patrón, serves up cocktail recipes and facts about tequila.

In those two years, Patrón has accumulated 36,000 users and is seeing 6,000 to 7,000 sessions a month of people using the skill, according to the company.

The overall number of users in those two years doesn’t seem like a lot considering that, in October, Amazon said 20 million people own an Amazon Echo.

Still, for any nascent technology, the number of overall users comes almost secondary to the number of returning ones. While Adrian Parker, vp of marketing at Patrón, said the skill is gaining new users, the majority of monthly sessions are by people opening up the skill again, which shows that while overall adoption may be low, there’s a loyal following among users.

Parker said the skill has been so successful that Patrón adapted it to Amazon’s Echo Show in January, so people can see the cocktails they search for. As with its original Echo skill, when people say the prompt, “Alexa, ask Patrón for a cocktail recipe,” Alexa replies, “Would you like to search by cocktail type, flavor or occasion? You can also say, ‘Surprise me.’” With the skill, Patrón also tries to nudge people to use tequila beyond margaritas and tequila sunrises — instead of gin in a gin and tonic, for example.

According to a new report by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Juniper Research, more than 70 million U.S. households will have smart speakers by 2022. Patrón, which spirits company Bacardi acquired in January, is counting on that growth as it tries to connect these sessions with actual sales, and it has built purchase intent signals into all of its voice platforms the skill is available on, which, besides Amazon Echo, include Google Home and Sonos’ One.

The Echo Show directs people to an interactive purchase screen when they ask Alexa to buy Patrón, said Parker. Users confirm their ZIP code with Alexa for a list of Patrón sellers near them. The screen also gives information on how to send Patrón as a gift through the service ReserveBar as well as to their phones. Patrón would not say how many people show an intent to purchase, but it said 1 out of every 3 people who do buy purchase the tequila as a gift.

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Publishers are pivoting to paid, and ad tech is trying to get a piece of the action.

Over the past several months, large publishers including Hearst and Condé Nast have gotten pitched by ad tech and martech vendors hawking their ability to help publishers sell subscriptions, grow direct connections or drive more e-commerce.

The pitches come at a time of skepticism as some publishers are trying to subtract, not add to, the number of ad tech tools they use to improve user experience or get compliant with GDPR. These new pitches also mean the vendors have to compete with a separate group of vendors that are specifically pitching publishers subscriber revenue tools.

Not every pitch is finding its mark. Fred Santarpia, Condé Nast’s chief digital officer, said none of the pitches he’s heard recently would be “meaningful” to his company’s efforts. Others hear in these pitches the same notes that are struck every time a vendor notices a trend sweeping across the publishing landscape. “Certain vendors have pivoted their messaging,” said Meredith’s chief digital officer, Matt Minoff, who hasn’t seen any surge in new pitches. “It’s what they’ve always done.”

Opportunistic or not, the pitches come as many ad tech vendors face pressure. “The ad tech companies certainly need ways to keep their clients sticky,” said Rob Rasko, CEO of ad tech consulting company The 614 Group. “There’s a real lack of differentiation between the ad tech vendors right now. If you can help your client drive revenue, that’s a good thing.”

Publishers have applied vendors’ tools for advertising and brands to their own problems. Oath has been using Voxpopme, which advertisers typically use to gather consumer opinion, to do qualitative research in developing consumer revenue-focused products.

And the kinds of ad tech pitches out there, some newer than others, run the gamut. Sourcepoint, which helps publishers derive revenue from ad-blocking users, offers a way for publishers to market to subscribers. Yieldmo, which runs a mobile advertising marketplace, is testing a product called EMP that could help publishers see how readers respond to their subscription offers. Content recommendation widgets like Taboola, which are trying to recast themselves as quality traffic drivers, are hawking tools that purport to increase engagement.

Just as ad tech vendors have had to jockey in a crowded advertising ecosystem, they will have to face incumbent companies that already specialize in the subscription area.

“The one thing I hear when I visit with publishers is, ‘We need less tools,’” said Paul Herron, the North American lead for subscription management platform MPP Global.

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Netflix wants to have total ownership over its original programming, which can limit the amount of money producers can make in the long term from those projects. But some producers — especially digital publishers with TV ambitions — are using a deal with the streaming platform to create more interest or wrangle more favorable terms from other content buyers.

In recent months, digital publishers including BuzzFeed News, Fusion Media Group (which also owns a cable network) and Vox Media have announced shows with Netflix, following other digital publishers and studios, including Funny Or Die and Awesomeness.

Two digital sellers, speaking anonymously due to existing deals and ongoing negotiations with Netflix and TV networks, said their Netflix deals have opened more doors with TV networks, Hollywood producers and even on-camera talent. One seller said his company is in “meaningful conversations” with different TV networks on more than a dozen shows, crediting the Netflix deal as helping either start those conversations or move existing conversations forward in a significant way.

“We’re getting more proactive outreach from both broadcast and cable networks to talk about projects,” said the seller, who was heading into a meeting with a cable network prior to the call with Digiday.

Another way Netflix is having an impact is in negotiations with digital buyers such as YouTube Premium and Facebook Watch. Multiple sellers said they’ve recently been able to negotiate better terms — including bigger budgets — for shows they’ve sold to Facebook and YouTube, thanks in large part to their Netflix deals.

“Now we can say to them, ‘We’re doing a show on Netflix, so if you want us to make programming for you, you’re going to have to step up in a big way, too,’” said a seller.

Netflix’s plans to spend up to $8 billion and release as many as 700 original projects this year has created a new marketplace for digital publishers and studios with TV ambitions. (Netflix’s studio division produces about 75 percent of the company’s original programming, Netflix’s chief content officer Ted Sarandos has said.)

But Netflix’s terms can be very restrictive, as the streaming platform prefers to own the movies and TV shows it buys. This limits the amount of money producers can make on their Netflix original shows: They earn their production fee, but lose out on future revenues from international distribution and syndication that is paid to producers in the traditional TV model.

For major movie and TV studios ranging from Warner Bros. to Lionsgate, back-end revenue is an important revenue source and plays a huge role in the type of deals they cut with Netflix or any TV network or streaming platform.

It’s also certainly not a one-size-fits-all approach, as Netflix’s deals can vary from project to project, from studio to publisher. Netflix has been known to overpay producers to make up for the fact that there’s no international distribution and syndication revenue coming their way; it’s also been willing to let producers keep intellectual property rights tied to things such as gaming and merchandise, said two entertainment industry veterans with knowledge of Netflix’s deals. Content sellers that enter into co-production deals with Netflix (or TV networks) also have a better shot of keeping ownership of their IP, though that often comes with greater risk, as it requires putting more of their own money upfront with the hope of profiting down the road.

“There’s a healthy amount of respect for what they’ve done — and we want to continue doing business with them,” said an exec from a major U.S. TV studio, also speaking anonymously due to deals with Netflix. “And let’s be real, traditional TV is having a rough time right now.”

But if Netflix increasingly wants to own its original movies and shows, the question is: What’s the value in a Netflix deal, especially for digital publishers that are just getting into the entertainment business with the hopes of establishing new, lucrative revenue streams?

“A lot of the pure-play digital companies just getting into the TV side aren’t set up to license to games, merch, theme parks or even do international sales for that matter,” said one of the entertainment industry veterans. Which means they’re happy to take the Netflix deal because a Netflix deal can lead to a lot more.

“I’m sure there’s this sense [among digital publishers] that you’re in the winner’s circle if you’re chosen by Netflix,” said the U.S. TV studio exec. “Whether people continue to say that if [Netflix] is greenlighting 700 different projects a year, we’ll see.”

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Digital publishers rely on a lot of other companies’ technology, which can make it hard to comply with the impending General Data Protection Regulation. Google has been the highest-profile example of this dilemma. But WordPress offers another illustration.

WordPress claims to power 30 percent of the internet, but it’s not only WordPress parent company Automattic’s technology that supports those sites. Through the open source version of WordPress, sites can use more than 55,000 plug-ins created by other companies and developers to provide features that a site needs, like forms for soliciting people’s contact information. But these plug-ins may compromise a site’s ability to abide by GDPR when the law takes effect on May 25.

Automattic’s WordPress.org division and other contributors to the open source version of WordPress have been working on ways for sites to deal with the risk. On May 17, WordPress released an updated version of the software and added a section to its Plugin Handbook to standardize plug-ins’ privacy information, such as what data a plug-in collects and how that data is used, and make that information available to site owners in the WordPress content management system.

Sites using the updated software will be able to see this information, as well as privacy information related to the core WordPress software and themes a site may use, in a new “Privacy Policy Guide” that has been added to the CMS to help sites create or update their own privacy policies. When plug-ins, themes or the core WordPress software make any updates — or when sites activate or deactivate a plug-in, or switch themes — sites will be notified of the changes within the CMS.

“One of the great things about WordPress is that site owners have complete control of how they host and configure their own websites. The same goes for GDPR: Ultimately site owners will be responsible for what they decide to adopt, or what content to use in their privacy policies. Our goal is to provide the tools to make it easier,” Josepha Haden Chomphosy, WordPress.org division lead for Automattic, wrote in an email.

It’s unclear how easy things will actually be for site owners. A lot depends on to what extent plug-in makers add the privacy information that sites will refer to when creating or updating their own privacy policies. That’s further complicated by the fact that plug-in makers may not be able to adequately answer some of the questions about the personal data that their plug-ins collect and use. Many plug-in makers are individual developers or small companies that lack their own legal teams to advise them.

One of the most popular plug-ins, Contact Form 7, runs on more than 5 million sites but was built by a single developer, Takayuki Miyoshi. He had been receiving questions asking whether the plug-in was GDPR-compliant, and in a blog post published in April, he admitted that he’s unable to say.

Other plug-in makers have opted to disable their plug-ins from collecting data from people in Europe altogether. Ad tech firm Sovrn has developed several WordPress plug-ins that sites can use to do things like show related articles on their pages. To ensure those plug-ins don’t make sites vulnerable to violating GDPR and that the sites don’t disable its plug-ins for fear of violating GDPR, the firm is turning off data collection from users in Europe, said Jack Downey, who leads market development at Sovrn and is vp of its Sovrn Labs division.

If WordPress-powered sites are worried about whether their sites comply with GDPR, well, there is a plug-in for that. Of course, the plug-in’s developer has added the disclaimer, “Activating this plugin does not guarantee you fully comply with GDPR.”

Download the Digiday guide to GDPR for checklists, research and more you’ll need to know before May 25. 

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For some advertisers, the uncertainty around Europe’s looming data protection regulation is reason enough to halt programmatic ad buying that’s reliant on data.

Deutsche Telekom and e-commerce business Otto Group are among some of Europe’s biggest advertisers set to cut programmatic budgets after the General Data Protection Regulation takes effect on May 25. Advertisers are well aware of the challenges with programmatic, but the regulation has prompted discussion about audience targeting and the quality of the data underpinning it.

A week before GDPR’s arrival, there’s a growing sense among advertisers that programmatic could be too risky. They’re worried GDPR’s restrictions on data usage could make automated buys less effective and more expensive.

It’s safer — at least in the “very short term” — to minimize programmatic budgets, said Gerhard Louw, who leads international media management at Deutsche Telekom. The telecommunications firm will curb the amount it spends on programmatic ads during the first few weeks after the regulation is enforced, said Louw.

“Brands don’t want to be in the headlines,” said Louw. “If there’s a problem, then it’s not our partners that will be in the headlines — it will be the brand. Although we as a large advertiser feel well-prepared, the many gray areas of interpretation in the new law is making us somewhat nervous so close to the deadline. That seems to be the same for many advertisers, and even our agencies and technology partners. … I’d rather take the cautious route and wait to see if there are any big reactions. Performance might take a dive, but I’d rather that little blip than headlines saying we’re not compliant, or our advertising isn’t legal under GDPR.”

Other brands across Europe, like e-commerce business Otto Group, also plan to put programmatic budgets on ice in the immediate aftermath of the regulation’s arrival. “The big challenge from my perspective is what Google and Facebook are doing to make GDPR work for themselves because that is going to have a big impact on the work advertisers have to do to prepare for it. It’s a big topic for us at the moment,” said Kerstin Pape, head of online marketing at Otto Group, at the Programmatic Pioneers Summit in London this week. Google’s recent decision to stop marketers from pulling data from the DoubleClick ad server for cross-platform reporting and measurement is an example of how those sudden changes can ripple through to advertisers, said Pape.

The duopoly’s last-minute preparations for GDPR are causing marketers like Pape to scramble just when they thought they had everything worked out. Cooling on programmatic is therefore a way for those advertisers to see how the duopoly’s reactions to the regulation affect how ads are bought and tracked on those platforms.

“We’re seeing clients get ready to pull back on programmatic ad spend, said Attila Jakab, managing director at Infectious Media. “Advertisers thought they had it all sorted [for GDPR] three months ago, and now they’re like, ‘Oh, crap, we’ve not thought about that,’ which is natural. … The recent change from Google shows how the technology companies have left [GDPR preparations] until the last minute, and the problem with that is it has huge implications on everything that advertisers are trying to do, whether that’s with analytics or attribution. There’s a whole range of technologies and services that depend on this ecosystem working.”

A prominent high street retailer and an insurance firm in the U.K. have both decided to limit their programmatic activity, said a media director who spoke to Digiday on condition of anonymity. In both cases, programmatic spending on display has been limited to retargeting. This makes it less than 5 percent of overall budget, said the executive, which is a significant drop from what it was prior to the decision. Overall media budgets have remained the same for both advertisers, said the executive, as spending has been redirected into social, offline and alternative online inventory like audio.

The long tail of cheap programmatic ad inventory is likely be the first to go from post-GDPR media plans, said Karin von Abrams, principal analyst at eMarketer. The more expensive programmatic inventory will still see good sales, as much is sold directly, just via programmatic pipes, said von Abrams. Contextual targeting could replace some programmatic campaigns steeped in audience data, not all of which could be legally obtained under the regulation. Total spend might not be hit too sharply, either, von Abrams said. If, for example, brands elect to “spend on fewer, more expensive ads to ensure brand safety in relatively premium environments, spend could remain quite high.”

Publishers, provided they’re able to articulate programmatic’s value to advertisers post-GDPR, could be in prime position to benefit from the move to contextual ads. One potential scenario that agency executives have frequently discussed is an advertiser braced for a dip in performance after it reduces its programmatic spend, but conversions or acquisition costs remain relatively the same.

Sohel Modi, O2’s head of programmatic audience, wants to find a way to give more to publishers and less to third-party suppliers he feels “get a cut but aren’t doing the job.” Agencies are “talking to the client and the publisher,” he said, but “we need to do away with that model, and as brand owners get closer to the publisher. … If we’re spending £100 [$135], we have to expect the majority of that to go to that publisher because of the quality of their inventory. To do that, we have the right people; we need verification for everything to know what is out there.”

Download the Digiday guide to GDPR for checklists, research and more you’ll need to know before May 25. 

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The looming General Data Protection Regulation deadline means companies are overwhelming people’s inboxes with emails, with the goal to get as many people as possible to opt in. Some companies are using the opportunity to get crafty — sending offers and exclusive content in emails to incentivize people to choose to continue getting messages. While tactics like these might keep some customers from falling off of a company’s radar, it’s far more likely that by the time the deadline hits on May 25, companies will have already lost a good deal of their email subscribers.

But that might not be entirely a bad thing. Although email marketing is a top revenue driver, marketers say being drained of email subscribers who don’t really want to receive communications is a good thing in the long run. Higher open rates mean higher delivery rates, which should translate into better results. In its own way, GDPR is forcing marketers (and publishers, for that matter) to undertake a much-needed spring cleaning of their customer databases.

“Marketers may well find that response rates to email marketing efforts rise, as brands shift over to a customer base which is both engaged and interested in the content being shared,” said Nick McCarthy, evp of data solutions in Europe, the Middle East and Africa for Dentsu Aegis performance marketing agency Merkle.

Marketers can seize this opportunity to send more relevant messages to this cohort, which ideally will result in more sales, said Jason Goldberg, svp of commerce at SapientRazorfish. “The sales per send will be higher,” he said.

To be sure, the GDPR deadline is not opportune for marketers. It’s coming off the heels of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal, which cast concern around shady ad practices. Downloads of virtual private networks are up, and so are search terms such as “internet privacy.” With marketers giving consumers the option to opt out of data sharing straight to the inboxes of subscribers, many are likely to take it.

“The challenge for marketers is that consumers now have a heightened awareness of the value of their data to businesses,” said Russell March, managing director at consulting firm Accenture Digital in the U.K., pointing to Facebook’s recent Cambridge Analytica scandal as an external trigger to opt out.

This further changes the power dynamic between companies and businesses. The idea of losing any number of email subscribers isn’t an easy pill to swallow for many companies, especially those in the e-commerce or entertainment space that most aggressively rely on email marketing to get their services, deals and products in front of people, marketers say. They have a right to be concerned.

“It’s not sexy, but email marketing is very important,” said Goldberg. “It’s always the first or second driver of a company’s revenue.”

According to a June 2017 study from market research firm The Relevancy Group and tech vendor OneSpot, U.S. marketing executives said email accounted for 21 percent of total revenues at the end of the second quarter of 2017, up 17 percent year over year. “Email is a drug for brands, an IV drip where every blast leads to guaranteed sales of some number,” said Micah Donahue, head of brand engagement strategy at Mechanica.

The onslaught of permission emails is already having an effect on companies’ email lists. A new survey from Accenture found that more than half of consumers are choosing not to consent to companies’ last-minute pleas. Accenture surveyed 2,000 adults in the U.K., and 33 percent of those surveyed admitted to deleting most of these emails without re-subscribing, while 21 percent of respondents have not taken any action.

“Marketers are going to have to weigh when they should ask for permission,” said Goldberg. “It’s a new balancing act: If I ask upfront, I get to track you much faster, but I might ruin the relationship straightaway.”

On the other hand, some companies might find that consent pleas will help build trust, and a dip in email subscribers is worth it.

“Transparency increases trust,” said Donahue, “so those brands that go out of their way to explain what they’re doing could actually benefit from this upheaval.” Donahue points to how a company called Backblaze recently emailed their subscribers and linked to both old and new privacy policies, allowing people to compare the two.

At the end of the day, marketers say email marketing isn’t going anywhere.

Goldberg compares today’s GDPR panic to the reaction to the enactment of the CAN-SPAM Act in 2003. It was the first national standard around email marketing in the U.S. and required marketers to give people the option to opt out of emails from companies to protect against spam.

“Prior to that, marketers could buy email lists and tell a provider they wanted to send out emails to hundreds of thousands of people,” he said. Goldberg said back then, marketers were predicting the end of email marketing.

Plus, said Goldberg, it’s giant data platforms like Facebook being watched closely, not companies, because with so many, how can GDPR enforcement happen? Goldberg compares GDPR enforcement to jaywalking: “Everyone knows it’s illegal to jaywalk, but good luck hiring enough policemen to enforce it.”

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U.K. publishers continue to probe new ways of combining their ad inventory to rival the scale of the Facebook-Google duopoly. But now there is an additional motive: to mitigate risk of commercial ad revenue drop-offs caused by the General Data Protection Regulation.

News UK-owned sports brands Dream Team and Talksport and digital sports publisher GiveMeSport are pooling their video “outstream” inventory — the video ads that run on text articles — to offer advertisers a single point through which they can buy video outstream ads across the three sports brands, which claim a comScore-verified combined reach of 41 million monthly unique users. News UK-owned video platform Unruly will run the ads, which can be bought programmatically.

While publisher alliances have a checkered past, the timing of this particular alliance — a week before the enforcement date of GDPR — is key. With so much vagueness around what will happen after May 25, publishers are jittery about losing valuable audience data from people not giving consent to have their data used for advertising purposes.

For GiveMeSport, the security of aligning itself with the likes of Talksport and Dream Team helps it mitigate any commercial risk it could see as a result of programmatic revenues dropping after the law’s enforcement.

“This [partnership] gives us commercial security while the dust settles for GDPR,” said Ryan Skeggs, gm of GiveMeSport. “It mitigates against some GDPR risk, in case brands pause spend.”

Forms of advertising like retargeting, cookie matching and frequency capping will be tough under GDPR. For that reason, people are expecting contextual targeting to come back in a big way, and agencies have told publishers they plan to spend a lot more on contextual targeting, which can be done without opt-in from users, after May 25, according to Skeggs.

The publisher partners also hope to tap into media buyers’ interest in reaching casual sports supporters who tend to dip into sports coverage only for major tournaments like the World Cup, which starts in June. These casual supporters tend to search regularly for news and gossip related to football celebrities around sporting events like these, and they will be more easily accessible to buyers via this kind of marketplace, according to John Thomson, head of media for Dentsu Aegis-owned agency 360i Europe. “These properties have a great mobile footprint, so there will likely be good uptake from advertisers who want to reach a wide audience, not just dedicated football fans, in a contextual environment across a busy sporting summer.”

Agencies that want to ensure they’re buying quality inventory tend to work with publishers to set up private marketplaces, which sucks up time and operational resources. Being able to buy across all three properties via Unruly will operationally save agencies time, Thomson added.

The sports marketplace resembles the inventory-pooling alliance between newspaper rivals the Guardian, The Telegraph and News UK, which also run via Unruly’s platform. Since this marketplace launched last November, 189 campaigns from 110 advertisers have been booked, according to Unruly, though it wouldn’t reveal revenue uplifts.

That said, diverting buyers from spending with the duopoly remains tough. “Publishers have the right to go it alone, and this will be an interesting alliance to watch,” said Lewis Wiltshire, consulting partner of sports agency Seven League. “It is a duopoly for a reason. They both offer almost unbelievably targeted advertising propositions. But it’s not just about reaching the right audiences at the right time; brands also want to appear around content formats appropriate to their brands.”

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As expected, the CBS Corp. board of directors has voted to declare a dividend that could effectively reduce how much control National Amusements Inc. (NAI) has over the media network. The board vote late today was unanimous, but it came without the participation of vice chairman Shari Redstone, or other NAI members. NAI, which is…

Uber’s chief product officer, Jeff Holden, who helped develop Uber Pool and more recently oversaw the company’s flying-taxi initiative, has told colleagues his last day is Thursday.