Dive Brief:
- Publishers, such as Vox Media and Quartz, an Atlantic Media website, are taking display ads under their control.
- Around 75% of banner ad campaigns running on Vox Media are created by its in-house team.
- According to Vox, one benefit of the custom ads is higher level of personalization based on user interest.
Dive Insight:
Looking for ways to improve display advertising, such as banner ads, on their sites, publishers – such as Vox Media and Atlantic Media’s Quartz, are offering custom, in-house ads to marketers. A previous issue with custom display ads has been scalability, but Vox’s reach, 53 million unique monthly visitors across eight online properties, alleviates those concerns. Vox touts a higher level of personalization available to marketers because its ads are based on website visitor interests. Michael Hadgis, VP of global revenue and partnerships for Vox Media, said, “If we didn’t build around user experience, impact and performance, these would just be regular ad units”
Quartz takes a hands-on approach to its custom ad business with a client services team larger than its sales team, with 65% of ad partners allowing the Quartz team to design and engineer their ads. Quartz said 90% of its partner brands re-subscribed to the custom ad service.
