Month: February 2019

Twitter just announced plans to keep a closer eye on political advertising throughout European Union member states, Australia and India.

The action follows criticism of the video-sharing platform for monetizing videos that exploit children. Starting on February 25, YouTube’s revised “strikes system” will give a one-time warning to
users who post content that crosses the line.

A massive mobile ad-fraud operation, involving hundreds of malware-laden Android apps that were downloaded more than 10 million times, has been uncovered by Oracle.

This article was produced in partnership with Prebid.org. 2018 wasn’t the year header bidding first began disrupting how exchanges and publishers thought about monetizing their inventory, but it may be remembered as the year it reached an inflection point. According to the ServerBid Header Bidding Industry Index, nearly 75% of the U.S.’s top 1,000 websites… Continue reading »

The post Why 2018 Was The Year Header Bidding Realized Its Potential appeared first on AdExchanger.

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Justin Scarborough, programmatic media director at PMG. At the start of the year I met with many partners, clients and industry leaders about the state of digital media. While many conversations centered… Continue reading »

The post Digital Media’s Troubling Cognitive Dissonance About Identity And Privacy appeared first on AdExchanger.

Well+Good took a grow-and-eat-your-own-vegetables approach to cultivating its media business, leading to its $10 million acquisition last June by Leaf Group, which will pay another $9 million if it hits performance targets through 2020. Bootstrapped, profitable and diversified, in terms of its revenue streams, the wellness publisher avoided the pitfalls of raising too much money,… Continue reading »

The post Healthy Growth: How Well+Good Bootstrapped Its Way To An Acquisition appeared first on AdExchanger.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Press Play Vox is extending its bet on podcast revenue. The digital news startup, which has 75 programs in its podcast stable, inked a multimillion-dollar deal with Stitcher on Tuesday to produce and monetize podcast series from Recode, Axios reports. Stitcher will handle ad… Continue reading »

The post Vox Doubles Down On Podcasts; Has Kraft-Heinz Merger Disappointed? appeared first on AdExchanger.

Facebook has a new funding program that matches publishers with top influencers for Facebook Watch shows. But Facebook is also being more candid about a future where it’s not subsidizing most Watch programming.

The key hits:

• A new Facebook Watch program is looking to fund shows made by publishers and starring top influencers.
• At $200,000 per show (according to one source), it’s not a lot of money for top publishers — but it’s still money.
• The challenge would be in keeping margins at a level where the publisher is seeing enough revenue after production costs and influencer fees.
• Facebook, meanwhile, is being more open about how it doesn’t expect its various publisher and creator subsidies to last forever. The long-term plan is that this content can be entirely funded by sharing ad revenue.
• Evidence is mounting that Facebook is spending less overall on shows made by publishers, with even some news shows getting renewed at a lower budget.
• Facebook’s shifts have prompted many publishers to not view Facebook as a meaningful source of production and licensing revenues.

Last week, we reported about a new Facebook Watch program under which Facebook would fund video shows produced by publishers and starring top influencers. It’s the latest initiative inside Facebook to get YouTubers and other influencers — and ideally, Facebook users — interested in Facebook Watch.

The post Video Briefing: Beware, Facebook Watch publishers, the subsidies will not last appeared first on Digiday.

Internet-enabled TV  — or connected TV, as it also goes by — is emerging as a valuable inventory source for TV networks to offset linear viewership declines and for digital publishers to push larger ad packages. However, publishers are treating their connected TV inventory so preciously that it is frustrating advertisers interested in programmatically purchasing ads streamed on households’ biggest screens.

Advertisers and ad tech firms continue to prime the programmatic pump for connected TV ad sellers, from TV networks and individual publishers to platforms like Amazon’s Fire TV and Roku. According to ad buyers interviewed for this article, clients are buying more connected TV inventory programmatically than they were a year ago. However, there continue to be constraints — such as pricing, inventory availability and targeting — that are capping advertisers’ ability to automate their connected TV ad buys.

“Underinvested is a good way to think about it,” said Paul Dolan, CEO of Varick Media Management. The programmatic consulting firm has never had more clients purchasing connected TV inventory programmatically than it does now; however “I haven’t had any reach maximum investment levels,” he said.

Advertisers are not necessarily incentivized today to buy publishers’ connected TV inventory programmatically. This inventory can typically be had for cheaper when buying it directly from a publisher as opposed to purchasing it programmatically through an aggregator like a connected TV platform, such as Roku or Samsung, or a supply-side platform, such as SpotX or Telaria. Connected TV ads usually cost between $20 and $30 for every thousand impressions when bought directly, but when bought programmatically, the CPMs can rise to range from $30 to $40, according to one ad buyer.

While the ad tech tax can partially account for the higher price, another explanation is that publishers incentivize advertisers to buy their connected TV inventory directly versus programmatically. Advertisers are able to lobby for lower prices when buying directly from a publisher because publishers are typically willing to lower their prices in exchange for securing a minimum spend commitment. Additionally, direct deals can bundle a publisher’s inventory across many platforms and include placements that can allow for a discounted overall CPM, said Nadalie Dias, senior director of digital activation at Hearts & Science.

For advertisers unable to afford the minimum spend requirement, buying connected TV inventory programmatically can work out to be less costly overall. “We can go in through programmatic with more focused budgets, i.e. smaller budgets than might be required on a direct buy, and that offsets the pricing efficiencies,” said Dolan.

“The opportunities are being throttled on the publisher side,” said Justin Scarborough, programmatic media director at PMG. As a result, Scarborough advises clients that, if they’re buying a lot of connected TV inventory programmatically, they’re likely to be receiving publishers’ remnant inventory, or whatever is left after the advertisers buying directly have been satisfied.

Further complicating inventory availability, ad buyers see the volume of programmatically available connected TV inventory fluctuate, especially among TV networks. Live events streamed through networks’ OTT apps can lead to inventory surges one week that can subside a week later. Since TV networks will usually use whatever available inventory they have to fulfill guarantees they made to direct advertisers, programmatic buyers can be effectively waitlisted. “There is a waterfall at play, and programmatic is not at the top of it,” said Jesse Math, vp of display and social and OTT lead at ForwardPMX.

There are opportunities for programmatic advertisers to ascend the connected TV inventory waterfall. Private marketplaces have emerged as a popular way for advertisers to address some of the pain points associated with purchasing connected TV inventory programmatically. PMP deals typically require advertisers to bid no lower than an agreed-upon rate in order to access the participating publishers’ inventory. In exchange for that pricing floor, the publishers make some of their more valuable inventory available that they might otherwise limit to direct buys.

Additionally, PMPs can help advertisers to overcome connected TV’s targeting limitations, which can be off-putting to those accustomed to buying online display and video ads programmatically. Traditional TV’s default method of targeting audiences based on age and gender is easily done for connected TV inventory purchased programmatically through aggregators. “But if you want to add additional layers of targeting, like interest or viewership behavior, then it makes it more difficult today to run that programmatically because, say for Hulu, they’d want you to run that as a direct deal,” said Dolan.

In the case of Hulu, the streaming video service recently rolled out a PMP that allows advertisers to buy its inventory programmatically and use the same targeting parameters available if purchased directly. Advertisers can target their ads based on Hulu’s own viewership data and also layer in first- and third-party data; Varick is testing Hulu’s PMP to see how the targeting compares but has yet to receive the results, Dolan said. Advertisers are similarly able to arrange for more sophisticated targeting by putting together PMP deals with other publishers and connected TV platforms, said Math.

However, there isn’t always enough connected TV inventory available to make pinpointing specific audiences worthwhile. “Clients always really want to go after really niche audiences, and that’s not always scalable, especially in the CTV space,” said Dias.

Advertisers and ad tech firms are working to connect the identifiers used to match audiences across various connected TV platforms and individual OTT apps as well as other platforms. However connected TV match rates can often come up short.

“[For] some providers, we might see a match rate of like 50 or 60 percent against inventory in other places, and maybe connected TV is like 20 [percent]. So we might find them; we just don’t find them at the rate that we want,” said Dias.

The post ‘The opportunities are being throttled’: Internet-enabled TV is missing out on programmatic ad buys appeared first on Digiday.

Yahoo Sports thinks it has the tools necessary to start its own league of digital subscription products. It plans to build them team by team, starting with the New York Mets.

On Wednesday, Feb. 20, the sports publisher will announce a paid, ad-free subscription site and app called Queens Baseball Club. Developed with the New York Mets, Queens Baseball Club members will get access to exclusive content including interviews with front office executives, as well as a host of community features such as message boards and chat tools. Over time it intends to add an experiential dimension, which may involve access to players, coaches and team alumni, according to Kyle McDaniel, who heads up Yahoo Sports’ direct to consumer products.

A number of key product details remain up in the air. For one, the parties have yet to settle on a price. Yahoo Sports intend to experiment with different price points and promotions throughout the year, though executives expect to land on a price point of around $5 per month, McDaniel said.

The product still needs to finish staffing up, too. McDaniel said Queens Baseball Club plans to hire three full-time reporters, plus additional contributors, to generate content, as well as multiple community managers to encourage and moderate conversation.

Several details of Yahoo’s business arrangement with the Mets remain unclear. Yahoo declined to offer details about how Yahoo was being compensated, or whether Yahoo or the Mets would own the customer relationship.

While the Mets are the first team to hop on board, Yahoo Sports feels it can replicate this product with other MLB teams, as well as across the major North American sports. It is busy negotiating deals with “several” franchises across multiple different sports leagues, according to Yahoo Sports gm Geoff Reiss. Yahoo expects to launch at least a dozen similar products for different sports franchises over the course of 2019.

And while Yahoo will own both the product and the content, Reiss said that the Mets have agreed to “enthusiastically” promote Queens Baseball Club across its channels, including promotions at Citi Field, the Mets home field; on SNY, the regional sports network that broadcasts Mets games; and through paid marketing campaigns.

Queens Baseball Club is not the only subscription-focused product focused on the Mets. The Athletic, which has raced out to a big lead in the hunt for sports fans willing to pay for coverage of their teams, celebrated its first full year covering the New York market in February. The site claims a subscription renewal rate of 90 percent.

But the Athletic, along with its numerous, smaller competitors, do not have business partnerships with any of the teams they cover. That could ultimately provide Yahoo with some advantages, though it puts Queens Baseball Club on the border of ethically murky territory.

“It would be short-sighted for teams to define their strategy here based on advancing the positive storyline,” said Eric Herd, the president and CEO of digital sports content consultancy The Post Game. “Your most passionate fan can sniff out inauthentic content a mile away.”

Yahoo Sports has offered different consumer products to its audience for years. In addition to its popular fantasy games, it has operated Rivals.com, a network of subscription communities focused on college sports, since 2007. Its sister vertical Yahoo Finance is reportedly launching a premium product in the first quarter of this year.

And as Yahoo rolls a version of this product out to more fanbases in more markets, Herd added, Yahoo’s willingness to change its offering will play a key role in its success. “Its success will depend on how adaptable they are,” he said. “They need to read the market.”

The post Yahoo Sports is building an editorial subscription product for the New York Mets appeared first on Digiday.