COLOGNE — It has survived the Corn Laws and economic criticism of its own. Now The Economist says it is emerging from two of its latest challenges in fitter shape.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, the newspaper’s global digital revenue SVP Michael Mullaney says his title has found fear about the GDPR law and advertiser resistance toward news itself have both subsided.
“To a degree, I think a lot of that hype and fear has not necessarily come to pass, certainly for the mid to premium publisher marketplace,” Mullaney says about the new European consumer privacy law, which passed in May, placing new compulsions on how advertisers can track and profile audience members.
“Now that they’re starting to get some sort of regulation and agreement in terms of frameworks, consent, we see we’re back to normal really. We’re back to sort of how we operated in the past.”
A subscription title, The Economist, formed in 1843, nevertheless runs ads. It doesn’t break news, preferring to offer an analytical eye on big geo-political events of the day, and famously never bylines its articles.
So what part does Mullaney think the publication plays in ad-funded news?
Some advertisers became suspicious about buying ads in news publications this year, given the general outlook of much current affairs in 2018, with some buying platforms blacklisting news sites.
But Mullaney says: “When it’s an opinion on the news, we see a lot less advertisers who want to block their advertising campaigns against what would typically be blacklisted content.”
Within his programmatic mix, he has seen private-marketplace and programmatic-guaranteed ad buys just become the largest part of overall programmatic ad income.
Next up, the title is doubling its weekly podcast output to embrace the way in which audio content is being opened up by new programmatic ad sales capabilities.
This video is part of a series produced at DMEXCO 2018 in Cologne titled: “Finding Success in a Time of Transformation.” It is is presented by PubMatic. For segments from the series, please visit this page.
