Guardian News and Media will allow advertisers to tap into trending topics in real-time with new programmatic offering
Guardian News and Media (GNM) will now let advertisers target its most engaged users at scale by identifying popular content on the site, and then offering brands the ability to message them, via its new programmatic offering Pulse.
The Guardian online
Pulse identifies surging stories using the Guardian’s own real-time data analytics tools. It then overlays audience segments to enable advertisers to reach audiences in line with their brand.
Advertisers can also contextually target across the Guardian’s verticals such as travel, finance and life and style for maximum impact.
It will mean advertisers on Guardian News and Media will for the first time be able to activate campaigns in real-time on surging content, ensuring they reach engaged audiences with ‘social media speed’.
Speaking with The Drum, Fabien Papini, head of programmatic sales, said that advertisers can bid on ad impressions using such technology via private marketplaces (PMPs), via way of the publication’s partnership with Rubicon Project.
It’s an offering akin to Mashable’s Velocity, a proprietary technology platform which uses data to identify trends and predict what is going viral next across topics. The publisher uses this to inform decisions about what content should be made and what content is shareable. Mashable then allows brands and agencies including 360i and MEC to licence the tool in order to create targeted campaigns tapping into viral content.
Guardian Pulse is available now through the GNM’s commercial teams. It is the latest in a string of announcements from the publisher this year following the launch of new native ad units in June and a review of its digital and direct business announced last month. Each of these are attempts by the publisher to bolster its digital ad offering in order to make up for losses in print advertising as the company hopes the break even at a operating level in three years.
Additional reporting by Ronan Shields