Guardian, FT, CNN International, The Economist and Reuters pool 110m-strong global audience in programmatic Pangaea alliance
The Guardian, Financial Times, CNN International, The Economist and Reuters have come together to pool their 110 million-strong combined audiences letting advertisers buy inventory programmatically via a central exchange.
The Pangaea alliance will be launched in beta from April, and will offer advertisers the ability to access display and native advertising across the group via the Rubicon Project’s platform.
The initiative, which will open up inventory for buying across Europe, North America, the Middle East and Asia Pacific, was spearheaded by the Guardian, with CNN International, the Financial Times and Reuters as founding partners, while The Economist will provide access to advertising inventory.
It is understood the model emulates the existing French premium publisher exchange group La Place Media.
Pangaea has been formed to help allay advertisers’ concerns about the “black box” of programmatic spending, guaranteeing their creative will appear alongside trusted, quality content.
The move will mean advertisers can access the first-party data of all the publisher partners to deliver highly targeted campaigns, and will offer a range of advertising formats.
Tim Gentry, global revenue director at Guardian News & Media and Pangaea Alliance project lead, said: “As the world becomes more complex and networked, Pangaea will give advertisers one single programmatic solution for driving influence at scale, allowing them to get cut-through in an increasingly fragmented market using the latest ad serving technology.
"Pangaea’s uniqueness lies in the quality of its partners. 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, which are geared towards delivering cutting-edge creative campaigns in technically advanced formats.”
The publishers have been discussions with a number of advertisers and will announce campaigns over the course of the beta.
Dominic Good, advertising sales director at the Financial Times, described Pangaea as an “exciting” initiative, adding that it “strengthens premium publishers' proposition by guaranteeing a trusted advertising environment, building significant scale and sharing smart targeting abilities".
Rani Raad, chief commercial officer of CNN International, added: “In the fast-developing area of programmatic trading, it makes sense for us to collaborate with other leading news companies to gain first mover advantage through a powerful global alliance. This opportunity will extend to a wide range of agencies and brands that want to harness the power of the innovative platforms, rich content mix and large-scale premium audiences delivered through Pangaea.”
Meanwhile Rubicon Project's general manager, International, Jay Stevens said this marks the sixth publisher collective it has powered bringing together competitive publishers in France, Denmark and the Czech Republic.“As the industry consolidates with an increasing amount of advertising planned and bought by agency trading desks, publisher collectives such as Pangea, enable media brands to collaborate and compete for share of media plans against global digital competitors such as Google, Facebook and LinkedIn,” he added.
The beta phase of the Pangaea Alliance will be managed by a central team which includes commercial leadership and operational resource from all the member publishers. On full launch later this year, it will be managed by its own sales team, so advertisers can have one port of call their campaigns.