News Corp global ad exchange raises questions over publishers’ local joint effort
News Corp has announced a global programmatic ad exchange, in a move which raises questions about the future of a planned joint venture by Australia’s big online publishers to put their best inventory into a premium ad exchange.
The announcement of The News Corp Global Exchange will see the company allow advertisers to buy online advertising across its more than 50 online and mobile products, including mastheads such as The Wall Street Journal, The Times in London and The Australian.
However, the move has also raised questions about the Australian premium exchange, especially after News Corp’s global CEO Robert Thomson declared: “Third parties are no longer invited to the party.”
The announcement means following the launch of News’s advertising exchange third-party ad networks will be prevented from selling News’s advertising inventory.
“Content aggregators would like to commodify our content, while data scrapers would like to aggregate our audience – the only way to reach the world’s greatest content and the most prestigious and lucrative audiences is directly through our digital properties. Third parties are no longer invited to the party.” said Thomson in a statement.
Each News Corp business unit will continue to maintain their existing sales teams in conjunction with the new exchange.
Such a move could bring into question News Corp’s involvement a proposed ad exchange featuring premium inventory from Australia’s major pubpishers which was first expected to include News, Fairfax, Mi9 and Yahoo!&. Last month, Mumbrella revealed that Yahoo!7 had withdrawn from the exchange negotiations.
A News Corp Australia spokesman declined to comment on the Australian implications of the announcement. “More details will be announced in due course,” said the News spokesman, while declining to comment on the implications for the Australian publishers exchange. In Australia, the company does not sell to third party ad networks.
Other publishers, such as Mi9, have previously indicated that they would continue to run their own private exchanges while also joining the new publishers exchange. Both Fairfax and Mi9 declined to comment on the future of the publisher’s exchange in the wake of the News Corp announcement.
Nic Christensen
