CNN, FT, Guardian And Reuters Combine Ad Forces Against Google, Facebook

Leading publishers form programmatic ad network to offer premium audience targeting at scale.

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Four leading online publishers have forged a digital advertising deal in an effort to take back control over their programmatic ad sales and offer brands access to a network of premium inventory.

The Guardian, CNN, the Financial Times and Reuters have formed the Pangaea Alliance to pool their digital ad inventory that reaches a combined 110 million readers online globally.

“Pangaea’s uniqueness lies in the quality of its partners,” said Tim Gentry, global revenue director of Guardian News & Media, publisher of the Guardian, which is leading the initiative. “We know that trust is the biggest driver of brand advocacy, so we have come together to scale the benefits of advertising within trusted media environments.”

The alliance is set to launch in beta in April and will the ad technology will be powered by the Rubicon Project and managed by a central team that includes members from each publisher. The publishers will share first-party in a central data management platform to give advertisers a unique set of insights and targeting capabilities.

During the beta phase Pangaea will offer display solutions both as a standalone product and alongside existing publisher initiatives including native advertising programmes and publisher trading desks.

The publishers expects that by full launch later this year, the Pangaea Alliance will have its own sales team for advertisers to work through.

The hope is that by pooling their audiences together, these publishers can better compete with audience giants like Facebook and Google — giving advertisers reach, while maintaining a high level of inventory quality. That quality guarantee plus greater reach should help the alliance attract brands, and at higher CPMs across the network, which will likely expand beyond the four launch partners.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Ginny Marvin
Contributor
Ginny Marvin was formerly Third Door Media’s Editor-in-Chief, running the day-to-day editorial operations across all publications and overseeing paid media coverage. Ginny Marvin wrote about paid digital advertising and analytics news and trends for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.

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