Repent, sinners, because the digital media apocalypse is now upon us. Even outside the trades, the news is awash in talks of corrections; discourses on the failure of advertising and why subscriptions are the only option; and pre-emptive surrenders of souls to the Duopoly. I hear bunker sales are through the roof…
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Discovery's $40 Million Investment in Thrillist's Parent Company This week it was announced Discovery Communications would be investing $40 million in Group Nine Media, the company that owns Thrillist, NowThis, The Dodo and Seeker. That’s less major than their $100 million investment in Group Nine last year, but still very…
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You better believe I was bummed by the Digiday article suggesting that the time-based guarantee movement has stalled out. Those who regularly read my opuses know I’ve long been a huge advocate for this style of transaction because time (and really engaged time, which can be used as a proxy…
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The 43rd AdMonsters Publisher Forum has taken us to Nashville, where we'll be spending the next few days wrapping our heads around a particularly intense season in digital media. From what I could gauge from chatting with attendees and sponsors at last night's dinner, there are loads of questions in…
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When you're as focused on digital media as we are at AdMonsters, sometimes it's important to remember the offline world still exists, and it's generating serious money for a lot of publishers who are active in it. If you're coming from the point of view of a media company with…
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Last week a lot of my industry connections passed around the Buzzfeed story, “Attack of the Zombie Websites,” about a programmatic, bot-driven web of lies that may have shorted advertisers tens of millions of dollars. Although it was meticulously reported, I had a hard time reading the full article not…
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Sometimes, when you look behind the scenes at a big-name premium publisher, you find vitally important and complex tasks handled by a shockingly small group of people. Small ops teams aren't only the domain of fledgling young media companies--although they are certainly a hallmark of those businesses, too. Being part…
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This is the first article in the Native Chronicles series, brought to you with the support of TripleLift. Read the second article on flexibility and A/B testing and the third on the future of mobile. The first banner ad is both a thing of legend and of infamy. The latter because it launched a revolution of…
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Ads.txt is an initiative the IAB Tech Lab launched earlier this year to ensure greater transparency in the programmatic marketplace by creating a record of who is authorized to sell or re-sell ad inventory. The top aim of Ads.txt is to crack down on domain spoofing, a widespread, wily and…
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With all the hubbub about first-price auctions taking over the real-time bidding ecosystem, I don’t think there’s been enough talk about why the second-price auction is currently the standard bearer. That’s why I was exhilarated when Univision’s Eyal Ebel brought the point up at our recent Meetup on the current…
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