Guardian and the Pangaea Alliance: Quality Programmatic at Global Scale

Photo above Jay Sears of Rubicon Project left and Tim Gentry of Guardian News ampamp Media at the Agency Leaders Symposium in Hunter Valley Australia during the fall of 2015YOUR NAME Tim GentryYOURamp160COMPANY Guardian News ampamp MediaYOURamp160TITLE Global Revenue DirectorSEARS What do you read to keep up with politics art and culture GENTRY The Guardian The Economist New York TimesSEARS What do you read to keep up with friends GENTRY Facebook StravaSEARS What do you read to keep up with our industry GENTRYamp160 AdAge Ad Week Campaign ExchangeWire etc as curated by TwitterSEARS What39s your favorite commercial of all time GENTRY Honda The CogSEARS With regards to advertising automation and programmatic what are the Guardian39s three biggest companywide initiatives for 2016 GENTRY1 Beyond Viewability We launched a viewability optimized responsive site last quarter We39ve seen very big lifts in overall viewability this coming quarter we will look at how we package and present our inventory amp160directly and automated amp160to help advertisers unlock the new value that is being created We39ve also just launched Guardian Response Assured in the UK amp160a new premium programmatic product which guarantees that 100 advertisers39 spend will be viewed by real people2 Data We39ve always been leaders in our use of data from our first behavioral partnerships with Audience Science in 2005 to the launch of GR in 2013 but the Guardian generates so much interesting data that the work is ongoing The next phase is all about joining up some of the new data sets that are being created with a focus on our unique in house insightsamp160and improving visibility of these data sets across the inventory stack3 Peopleamp160The team and expertise continues to grow we39ve now got experts in Australia and the US as well as in London working on the Guardian and Pangaea amp160commercial leaders sales people and analysts with product expertise with backgrounds from publishing to big five tech and trading desks Helping them be at their best continues to be our most important initiative from which everything else flowsSEARS What was the rationale for the Guardian joining the Pangaea cooperative What is the opportunity GENTRY We were looking at some fundamental trends across the industry amp160the globalization and growth of news the increasing demand for content and the growing audiences for a range of news brands like Guardian and The New York Times as well as for Buzzfeed and Vice We also looked at the continued growth of programmatic amp16047 of UK spend last year as well as the increasing importance of first party dataamp160and the consolidating environment on the supply side We looked at all these factors and thought long and hard about what this meant for the industry and what was missingThe Guardian led the formation of Pangaea because we firmly believe in the value proposition of quality audiences in trusted environments which can be delivered at scale We believe this is a huge step forwards in solving increasing advertiser concerns about trust and transparency of programmatic solutionsamp160Pangaea offers advertisers a targeted audience solution that draws from crosspublisher behavioral insights Put simply this enables us to combine the individual strengths of the alliance publishers to create unique segments that are delivered back across the Publisher sitesSEARS What is the current state or the near term plan to integrate Pangaea into the Guardian39s sales and operations GENTRY It has taken an education effort but we shouldn39t be surprised as we are working in brand new territory Pangaea39s small team is well integrated into the Guardian39s current operations and is comprised of seconds from the existing business led by new hires Fiona McKinnon and Cadi Jones Fiona joined us with a wealth of international digital and business experienceamp160and Cadi joined us from Yahoo having most recently led programmatic efforts across Northern Europeamp160The Guardian sales team also plays a key role in evangelizing the product to existing agencies and advertisersSEARS Media owner first party data is a key leverage point for the best known media brands How do you leverage your first party independently and how is media owner first party data leveraged with Pangaea GENTRY Independently Pangaea publishers offer a wide range of solutions based on their individual first party data The Pangaea audiences are comprisedamp160behavioral data from the founding membersamp160and have far greater scale than each individual publisher could achieve on its ownamp160 These data segments are comprised of crosspublisher content consumption and allow advertisers to find users across all sitesPangaea currently has targeted segments combined within key contextual channels in four regions UK USA APAC and Global amp160An example of these combined audiences would be Business Travellers and Personal FinanceThe Guardian itself has three core productsGuardian Response leveraging audience data at a log level to optimize to campaign KPIsAudiences not Platforms using 80 audience segments to plan branding campaigns across the Guardian39s cross platform audienceGuardian Labs amp160which uses audience data to inform our approach to telling brand storiesWe also have a range of PMPs available via platforms such as Rubicon OrdersSEARS Ad automationprogrammatic has been used smartly as the quottip of the spearquot for entry into global markets Have you pursued this strategy independently And does Pangaea contribute to this strategy GENTRY In both the US and Australiaamp160our business as we started was largely automated but as we39ve invested in those markets and seen the appetite that exists both for the Guardian39s unique style of journalism and opportunities for advertisers to engage with our growing audiencesamp160the teams and the complexity of commercial offerings haveamp160grown Here in Australia for example our fastest growing work is in helping advertisers tell brand stories with Guardian LabsWith Pangaea we now have the scale to feature in more markets in the way that we found ourselves unable to alone in the US andamp160Australia and to be relevant to a wider range of buyers for both local and panregional budgets So long as we see our early signs of encouragement play out this then gives us the platform to make better informed decisions about our investment in journalism and audience growth in other marketsSEARS Tell us the about the global advertising operations of the GuardianGENTRY We39ve seen our 194yearold business transform over the last few years from the 9th largest newspaper in the UK to become one of the world39s top sources of quality news We are still working hard to grow our operations and commercial footprint at the pace of the changing behavior of our audiences Today we have revenues of around 330m over half of which is digital and commercial teams centred in UK the USamp160and Australia In US and Australia audiences revenuesamp160and teams are growing very quickly we39re in startup mode whilst in the UK we have a mature business where the growth is more stable but the energy required to transform ahead of the pace of our audiences and the market is remarkableSEARS Tell us your view draw an analogy between the automation of television and a European football game Are we in the pregame Still driving to the stadium GENTRY In my view we are in the pregame Some significant moves have been made to make TV more addressable eg by Sky YouTube viewing on TV is increasing rapidly but the big money remains in linearSEARS Can linear TV be automated yes or no GENTRY I39m sure it can be technically We39ve found a way with most other media so the barriers are surely around economics and change management The question is does it make good sense to invest the time in leading the changeamp160and are we willing toSEARS What twothree events or happenings will accelerate the automation of television GENTRY 1amp160The growth of audience time spent with addressable videoamp1602 Once audience growth has happened marketer recognition of improved value in addressable media relative to linear For example in the UK because of the TV trading model in linear TV you get significantly less for the same investment today as you did a year ago But the power of the medium in reaching large audiences in one go and proven ROI models means it still makes senseSEARS Which of the following will accelerate the automation of site direct direct orders budget Pick all that applyA Dynamic access to all publisher inventory vs just quotremnantquot or quotauctionquotBamp160Ability to leverage publisher first party dataC Ability to leverage advertiser first party dataD Availability of rich media expandable units and larger IAB Rising Star formatsE Ability to more easily curate audiences for specific advertisers across the premium content of multiple publishersGENTRY A C D and E Not Bamp160because this is already available in a biddable environmentSEARS Tell us a bit more about youGENTRY Weekends for me consist of juggling time between my wife my sons aged 12 and 17 my bikes friends and church I39d happily devote the whole weekend to any one of themSEARS If you could go to the airport right now with friends or family and fly anywhere in the world for vacation who would you take and where would you go GENTRY Right now as I write this I would grab my immediate family and one family of friends and fly to Portland Jamaica eat amazingly and pass the time with dominoes reading and swimmingSEARS If you could create an endowment to fund any existing nonprofit you designated what lucky nonprofit organization would that be GENTRY It would have to be Oxfam an international confederation of 17 organizations working in approximately 94 countries worldwide to find solutions to poverty and what it considers injustice around the worldSEARS What is your favorite restaurant in the worldGENTRY Istrenn Passionamp160a great place in Trinite Sur Mer Brittany France It39s an oyster shed right by the sea run by two of the coolest Frenchmen you could ever meet who do it all get the food out of the sea prepare itamp160and serve it The menu is fruit de mer frites and two choices of wine sancerre or sancerreSEARS Thanks TimThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated bloggers

Click to Make Your 2025 Contribution to Support the MediaVillage Education Foundation

Guardian and the Pangaea Alliance: Quality Programmatic at Global Scale

Author

Publish date

Channel

Jay Sears

The Ad Council, Huntsman Mental Health Foundation and Amazon Announce “The Mind Set” to Support Mental Health - Ad Council InSites

More Videos:

Click to Make Your 2025 Contribution to Support the MediaVillage Education Foundation

Guardian and the Pangaea Alliance: Quality Programmatic at Global Scale

Enjoying This Commentary? There's More to Love

Jay Sears

The Ad Council, Huntsman Mental Health Foundation and Amazon Announce “The Mind Set” to Support Mental Health - Ad Council InSites

The payment was successful

Cookies