The Pangaea Alliance: An advertising network of premium publishers creating data-driven advertising success

By Joanne Kuai

While building a premium publisher advertising network has been challenging, the collective effort has been necessary for the news industry to respond to the threat posed by the tech giants who are generating most of the digital advertising revenues, says Fiona McKinnon, Managing Director of the Pangaea Alliance, November 1 in London at the 8^thData & AI for Media Conference.

Pangaea Alliance, a not-for-profit business managed by Turner, was originally created by the Guardian UK to answer key industry challenges in the UK market. Founded in 2015, its members now include the Guardian, CNN, Reuters, the Economist, the Week and other top UK publishing companies.

“At Pangaea Alliance, by working together we aim to be a catalyst for positive change in the digital media news industry. We have to combine forces to increase revenue and share resources to cut cost,” says McKinnon. “We have to share data, business strategies, audience insights and profiles, and come up with price points that make sense as a combined offering.”

Simplifying programmatic data 

The advertising network of premium publishers indicates shared challenges can create change. Pangaea Project Arete, funded by Google’s Digital News Innovation Fund, is launched to help the alliance to drive data efficiencies by simplifying programmatic data.

“As we all use an increasing number of SSP (supply-side platform) and demand tech tool, there are basic trading

inefficiencies and complexities that our teams face,” says Ms. McKinnon. “By simplifying programmatic data, it gives us a clear view of buying trends and CPMs (cost per mille) across all partners and clear tracking of daily and monthly revenue trends, as well as tracking key buyers and advertisers.”

Arete Prototype connects to SSPs and extracts daily reports on key revenue performance data, and the data is mapped and adjusted and normalised to allow for swift analysis. The mapped data stored in data cubes which then can be accessed by business intelligence tools and any partner can use their own visualization tool.

“It generates insight reporting. It almost acts like a whistleblower to inform the industry,” says McKinnon. She adds that the phase 2 vision of Project Arete is to further enhance features and extend to more publisher partners.

Trendy alliances 

McKinnon says that there is a growing trend of establishments of new regional alliances, formed based on media, data, industry and technology drivers, both with external partners but also built internally. She gives the example of T.1, which streamlines access to Turner’s portfolio of content and audience through a unified tech stack, operational team and sales solution.

The alliances can offer the advertisers simple, streamlined and new strategies to find hard-to-reach audiences and the niche market, viewable inventory, minimal price points that are easy to plan and buy, global reach through one channel and unique data set and insights, says McKinnon at the Data & AI for Media Conference.

The Data & AI for Media Conference is for media and data practitioners who are seeking to earn revenue and expand audiences by leveraging data and artificial intelligence. The 2-day event features a powerful format of general sessions with top-notch speakers, plus interactive, small-group breakout sessions called “huddles.”