Facebook wants to be a publisher platform, for real
The New York Times reports Facebook is in talks with several big publishers — the Times included — to host their content directly on its site. Allegedly, the social network wants to cut down on load times for users navigating to publisher content, and it wants publishers on board so badly that it’s offering sweet ad revenue deals and protections for their audience data.
It seems pretty far-fetched that publishers would give up control of their content — much less data ownership — to what’s likely their biggest competitor for online ad dollars. (See: the Next Web’s post on the subject and note URL: “Facebook-will-consume-us-all”) The three publishers in talks with Facebook — Buzzfeed, National Geographic and the Times — likely won’t agree to host all or even most of their massive archives of content on Facebook.
But exclusive social content is already a reality, as are social publishers like YouTube multichannel networks. Something similar for article content could become much more prevalent — if Facebook can convince publishers it really can be a neutral platform.
CNN, Reuters, FT found Europe’s biggest premium exchange
Everywhere except the U.S., private exchange co-ops are becoming the norm for premium publishers who want to get into programmatic without sacrificing CPMs. The latest edition is the Pangaea Alliance, a 110-million-unique-user strong European exchange founded by CNN, Reuters, The Guardian and the Financial Times and powered by the Rubicon Project.
Like the Canadian Premium Audience Exchange or France’s La Place Media, Pangaea’s exclusive marketplace offers advertisers the scale they can get with a Yahoo or a Twitter but with the consistent quality and first-party data expected from big-name publishers. According to Adexchanger, the four publishers (plus non-founding partner The Economist) plan to commit at least 10% of their inventory, including custom ad units, when the exchange launches in beta in April. Expect it to be pricey.
The announcement was followed up by news this week of another large-scale private co-op marketplace in the U.K., launched by The Daily Telegraph, Time Inc. and Dennis Publishing. That exchange will be powered by AppNexus.
AppNexus bolsters publisher-side offering with Yieldex buy
With its acquisition of Yieldex, AppNexus has added a new toolbox for publishers looking to manage and measure their advertising yield, set prices, forecast sales and improve viewability and traffic quality across their sites.
Since AppNexus is looking to strengthen its programmatic direct offering (as are competitors Rubicon and PubMatic), an advanced publisher-side ad server focused on the direct side of the market is an important puzzle piece.
There’s also Yieldex’s considerable existing business to think about. It handles direct sales for dozens of major publishers, like The New York Times, Expedia, Pandora or The Globe and Mail here at home — all major inventory sources that AppNexus would love to have on its exchange platform.
