Monday 16th November: What the Ozone Project's expansion means for advertisers

November 16, 2020

Good morning! Welcome to your working week. Today's Media Roundup is brought to you by Peter.

The Ozone Project, the premium open programmatic marketplace, plans to triple its staff to 90 in the next year. Some of the UK's top publishers - The Guardian, Telegraph and ESI Media Groups, Reach, News UK, Stylist, DC Thomson, Bauer and TimeOut - are backing the expansion with further investment, office space, equipment and staff.

With advertisers pressuring for a more transparent and accountable digital advertising environment, the Ozone alliance is in a strong position to attract ad spend back into premium media. Chief Exec Damian Reeves told The Drum: “We are increasingly being told by advertisers that they see Ozone as offering a very different solution to the unknowns of open programmatic trading.”

In an online advertising environment dominated by rampant misinformation, brand safety concerns and staggering opacity, the flight to trusted media environments makes greater sense than ever for advertisers and this probably isn't the last time we'll here about Ozone expansion.

Hard as it is to imagine against the backdrop of US and European social media, fake news has failed to impact recent elections in Taiwan. The island's 'whole-of-society' approach to identifying, debunking and downranking viral conspiracy theories could provide a model for fighting misinformation in the West.

Turnover is up 8% at The Spectator despite COVID causing a 20% drop in newsstand sales and a 40% fall in ad sales. The growth has come from a 30% increase in subscriptions. The magazine remains in the black, despite a year on year drop in profits of 50%, put down to increased investment in digital, marketing and editorial.

The Orange one has allegedly told 'friends' that he wants to start a digital media company to 'wreck' Fox News, presumably because they didn't keep broadcasting his 'I WON' BS. Seeing him shift allegiance to the utterly batshit OANN, this doesn't seem inconceivable and leaves me asking, 'Why does God hate us?'

This week's podcast:

This week Gary Rayneau, co-founder of Project 23 tells us about about his time leading a diverse team at Dennis, the impact of Black Lives Matter in 2020, and how publishers can approach diversity and inclusion in the right way.

This special Conversations episode of Media Voices, sponsored by Lotame, discusses the importance of an open web to advertisers, the realities of our new cookie-less world and how identity solutions add value to the entire ecosystem.