FT, CNN, Guardian and Reuters Create Programmatic Alliance

Republished from the SiteScout blog

A group of international publishing powerhouses have partnered to form the Pangaea Alliance, a new digital advertising offering that’s using programmatic to allow brands access to their combined ad inventory.

Spearheaded by The Guardian, the alliance also includes CNN International, The Financial Times, Thomson Reuters, The Economist, Hearst UK and Time Inc., and boasts a total audience of more than 110 million users. Launching in the next few months, Pangaea is also promising potential advertisers that their ads will be seen next to quality content in an attempt to assuage fears regarding ad fraud.

Pangaea, which is named after a supercontinent that existed approximately 300 million years ago, will launch in beta in April and will be managed by reps from all the member publishers while in that phase. It will then be managed by its own dedicated sales team. Tim Gentry, global revenue director at Guardian News & Media and Pangaea Alliance, said in a statement, “As the world becomes more complex and networked, Pangaea will give advertisers one single programmatic solution for driving influence at scale, allowing them to get cut-through in an increasingly fragmented market using the latest ad serving technology.”

The Rise of the Programmatic Agency

When programmatic media buying first started gaining traction in advertising around 2008, people underestimated the importance of transparency and self-service. At the time, better performance was enough. As a result, the assumption became that trading desks were the media agencies of the future. It was a faulty assumption.

In the future, programmatic will be put at the core of every media agency. That’s because, these days, the best insights come from data procured by programmatic groups, and technologies with the best insights always win.

With programmatic fully integrated into media agencies the resulting data will lead to better consumer insights, with benefits seen across channel selections and in messaging opportunities. As data-driven decision-making becomes more prevalent, expect knowledge about DSPs, DMPs and SSPs to become commonplace at media agencies.

IAB Releases First Mobile Programmatic ‘Playbook’

The Internet Advertising Bureau has released its first document to focus on mobile programmatic. Dubbed the “Mobile Programmatic Playbook,” it sticks mostly to demystifying the mobile programmatic ecosystem and defining key terms.

The playbook does indicate, however, that ad spend in mobile programmatic is becoming heftier compared to standard display units, citing mobile video as being one of the strongest drivers of traffic. The document adds that mobile video, given its projected growth, will make up a major piece of the mobile programmatic landscape.

Native ads are also called out in the document. The IAB notes that while those ads have limited volume, demand remains high and use of native ads is likely to grow. With regard to mobile ad viewability, the playbook also points out that research delving specifically into mobile ad viewability is lacking.

The Rise of the Programmatic Agency

IAB Releases First Mobile Programmatic ‘Playbook’

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