News publishers are famously competitive. So why would they team up to sell advertising? Because, in a world of opportunity, sometimes you need to partner to grow, says Rubicon Project’s chief marketer.

“We’ve seen it primarily outside the United States but also inside the United States with local papers,” Mari Kim Novak tells Beet.TV.

Co-ops are alliances – local publishers coming together in specific countries and pull their inventory together to be able to sell much more competitively … to give brands much bigger audiences.”

Earlier this year, The Guardian, CNN International, the Financial Times and Reuters together formed the Pangea Alliance, a shared scheme to pool first-party ad data for ad buyers to target their combined 110 million users in an automated fashion.

Collaborations in the competitive news publisher space are rate, especially amongst the fierce rivalry of the British newspaper market. But last November three local UK newspaper publishers – Johnston Press, Newsquest and Local World – also teamed to launch 1XL, a joint advertising network.

The UK is not alone. French conglomerate La Place is another cooperative powered by Rubicon Project.

“We are the backend that allows that marketplace to happen,” Novak adds.

“We’ve seen it in Latin America, we’ve seen it all over Europe and we’re seeing it with global brands as well. It’s a new way for publishers to be able to compete.”

This segment is part of a Beet.TV series presented by Virool titled “Emotions and the Virality of Videos.” The series can be found here.