Pangaea Alliance names AppNexus as tech partner following Rubicon Project fallout
Publisher co-operative The Pangaea Alliance has chosen AppNexus as its technology partner after ending its relationship with Rubicon Project following a legal dispute earlier in the year.
AppNexus has been chosen as the Pangaea Alliance's technology partner
AppNexus will now act as a single buying point for advertisers looking to purchase display and native advertising across the alliance. The partnership will include new tech integrations such as traditional and server-to-server header bidding.
It comes after the alliance ended its relationship with Rubicon Project in March following its legal dispute with the Guardian.
The appointment of a new tech partner forms part of the alliance's transition into a new stage of growth that has seen CNN International Commercial (CNNIC) become the lead partner.
The new phase will see CNNIC taking the leadership in line with the alliance’s successful transition from inception into a fully-fledged, working alliance.
CNN has been involved in Pangaea since formation and will now take a more active role to bring its expertise in programmatic and data technologies to the initiative.
The Pangaea Alliance was launched as a programmatic sales house in the spring of 2015 and was spearheaded by the Guardian. Its partners include the Guardian, CNNIC, Reuters, Mansueto Ventures and Dennis Publishing’s Alphr, the Week and ITPro. It delivers a combined audience of 200 million unique users.
Looking forward, Pangaea will develop a new digital advertising trading platform as part of the Dennis Publishing-led Project Arete, which earlier this year received funding from the Google Digital News Initiative.
To date, Pangaea Alliance has delivered campaigns for over 30,000 advertisers globally with above industry standard rates of over 65% viewability.
The Pangaea Alliance team - which includes Fiona McKinnon, general manager and Martin Bojtos, sales director - will be based at CNN’s London operation and work closely with Rob Bradley, CNNIC’s vice-president of digital commercial revenue and strategy, the CNNIC digital team and all Pangaea partners.
Rani Raad, president of CNN International Commercial, said: "Pangaea is a proven example of collaboration between publishers to add to our existing digital advertising offering and give advertisers new, efficient ways to connect with audiences.
"CNN’s increased involvement with Pangaea aligns directly with our digital commercial strategy to combine data-driven solutions with premium content. We look forward to working with The Guardian and all the partners to take the alliance from strength to strength."
Nigel Gilbert, vice-president of strategic development at AppNexus, added: “We are thrilled to work with Pangaea at this exciting new phase to help many of the web’s leading publishers monetise their world-renowned reporting while providing our advertiser partners access to quality, brand-safe environments.”