DEI Action Is In, and Diverse Media Needs More Budget Share

In the pantheon of tried and true attention-grabbing content, the “in and out” list has stood the test of time. Who among us can resist these curated compendiums of where we have been and where we are going? Sure, sometimes the balance between pithy and pragmatic, aspirational and actionable is a bit off, but occasionally…

Overtime Launches Boxing Vertical, Its Third Franchise, Citing Youth Demand

Sports media publisher Overtime launched its third franchise Tuesday morning. Overtime Boxing (OTX) centers on a series of four summertime match cards hosted in its exclusive venue, OTE Arena, featuring male and female boxers. The new vertical marks the latest offering from Overtime, whose unique business model entails creating standalone sports leagues featuring young athletes,…

Magna’s Equity Upfront Brings Communities Together. But Change Hinges On What Happens Next

In an upstairs room inside Manhattan’s New World Stages performing arts complex, marketers filed in to meet with Ice Cube. Seated next to his business partners, entertainment lawyer Jeff Kwatinetz and basketball player Nancy Lieberman, the rapper encouraged brand marketers to divert more investments into diverse-owned media properties–specifically into media opportunities with his three-on-three basketball…

The New Republic Names Michael Caruso as New CEO and Publisher

The privately held publisher The New Republic, a 109-year-old title that offers leftist political analysis and reporting, has hired Michael Caruso as its chief executive officer and publisher. Caruso begins the role Tuesday. The appointment fills a chief executive position left vacant since 2016, when owner Win McCormack purchased the title from Facebook cofounder Chris…

Inside Dentsu Media’s 5-Year Endeavor to Measure Attention 

Assume a consumer, watching TV, turns to Instagram during a commercial break and spots an interesting ad on their feed. In that moment, two advertisers paid to capture the consumer’s attention, but only one succeeded. “Turns out people are very good at ignoring advertising,” said Mike Follet, managing director at eye-tracking firm Lumen Research. “Just…

In Shuttering Gawker, BDG Has Now Eliminated Most of Its Culture and Innovation Portfolio

Last May, the media company Bustle Digital Group hired Jon Wilde, formerly the global digital director at GQ, to revamp its Culture & Innovation portfolio by infusing it with celebrity coverage and a slate of signature events and editorial packages. At the time, the C&I group included Mic, Gawker, Input and Inverse, two of which–Mic…

How Ad Blocking, Once a Preference, Found a Tailwind in Privacy

In the first decade of the open web, ad-blocking software gained in popular adoption by promising people a more pleasant experience on the internet, filtering publishers’ intrusive ads and gaining the enmity of the advertising industry in the process. But in the last three years, the controversial technology has benefited from a boost in adoption…

Canal+ Made Its Own Short Film With an Ending No One Saw Coming

In the world of entertainment, short films often get overlooked in favor of star-studded movies or bingeworthy TV shows. French broadcaster Canal+, the main partner of the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, decided to pay tribute to the medium by making a short film of its own. The Canal+ film, created by the brand’s longtime…

AI-Generated Content Is Here. Should Advertisers Buy It?

Recent breakthroughs in artificial intelligence have raised fresh questions over the impact the technology could have on content production for publishers (and such as BuzzFeed and CNET). In turn, this has triggered debate among marketers as to how the influx of this content impacts ad-buying decisions. Unlike journalists, marketers have so far expressed little anxiety…

Nonprofit Newsrooms, Eyeing Sustainability, Welcome Digital Advertising

Although historically funded primarily by a mix of philanthropy and foundational giving, nonprofit publishers, including Chalkbeat, Cityside, The Texas Tribune and others, have increasingly embraced digital advertising as a key part of their revenue mix, according to data from the Institute for Nonprofit News and interviews with nonprofit executives. The percentage of total revenue INN…

SiriusXM Appoints Ex-Wall Street Journal CMO as First Chief Growth Officer

Audio company SiriusXM has appointed Suzi Watford as the company’s first chief growth officer. Watford will lead SiriusXM’s growth strategy in subscription, marketing and analytics across its subsidiaries, including Pandora. At Dow Jones, Watford served as the company’s chief marketing and membership officer, overseeing marketing and subscription acquisition for The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s and…

More With the Same: How Future’s In-House Tech Boosts Ad Viewability and Revenue

Specialist media publisher Future plc., which houses more than 250 editorial titles including TechRadar and Marie Claire, has increased the viewability of digital ads on its recently acquired Kiplinger title after migrating the site to its proprietary backend platform, Vanilla. Ad viewability, a metric defined by the IAB that reflects whether an ad rendered and…

Literature Is Scary Good in Project Gutenberg’s ‘Classic Monsters’

With influential works like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis free of copyright as of 2023, it’s truer than ever that the wild world of the public domain can offer a bizarre and even thrilling jaunt through historical oddities and masterpieces alike. Hoping to inspire readers to tap into the classics…

The Arena Group Acquires Fexy Studios, Expanding Its Video Footprint

The sports, finance and lifestyle publisher The Arena Group, which houses editorial titles including Sports Illustrated, The Street and Parade, has acquired Fexy Studios, a digital video and content production studio with a focus on food media, in a stock-and-cash transaction. With the deal, the publisher will meet rising demand from marketers for premium video…

Brand Safety in 2023: Marketers, Publishers and Platforms Feel the Danger Rising

Maybe the fears started after that half-second cowboy twerk in an Applebee’s spot that ran on CNN’s split screen the morning of Feb. 24, 2022. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when the perennial problem of brand safety entered a new, more parlous phase. But one incident last year crystalized how difficult marketers and media buyers…

Time Hires Sadé Muhammad as CMO, Its First as an Independent Company

Publisher Time hired executive Sad? Muhammad as its chief marketing officer Monday, making Muhammad the first person to fill the role since the publisher was acquired from Meredith Corp. in 2018 by Salesforce founder Marc Benioff and his wife Lynne Benioff. In her new role, Muhammad will oversee the integrated marketing, customer success, branded content…

The Week Junior US Tops 100,000 Paying Subscribers

The U.S. edition of The Week Junior, an offshoot of the Future plc. The Week aimed at children ages 8 to 14, surpassed 100,000 paying subscribers last year after launching in March 2020, indicating there’s demand for media catering to younger audiences. The publisher is almost exclusively a print subscription product, with an annual cost…

How Marketers Are Rebalancing Ad-Spend Budgets in 2023

As early as summer 2022, forecasters began muting their ad spend growth projections for 2023. Now, as we shake the dust off last year, the outlook isn’t much different: Budgets will grow in the next 12 months, albeit at a slower pace than anticipated. Against a backdrop of economic and geopolitical crises, rising inflation, supply…

Retention Wars and Live Event Appetite: Media Executives Share 2023 Forecasts

As the media industry heads into yet another uncertain year, Adweek spoke with five publishing executives to see what they expect to come in 2023. After nearly three years of unpredictability, confident predictions are in short supply. There is general consensus that the first quarter will be difficult, but several expressed optimism about the back…

Adweek’s 22 Most Popular Stories of 2022

If you’re feeling slightly out of breath and confused that the year is almost over, you’re not alone–it felt like we packed 18 months into 2022. One reason is because the world looks so different from where we started in January. Crypto companies ruled the Super Bowl, but by November the entire industry was quaking…