CNN has joined Ozone’s Audience Connection advertising platform and will also leverage Ozone’s suite of publisher tools to drive programmatic ad revenue growth.
The tie-up means advertisers will be able to access CNN’s UK audiences via Ozone, which aims to pool and package its member publishers’ audiences together to make them a more competitive sell for advertisers seeking scaled reach, inventory and data.
According to Comscore data, CNN is visited by 126m unique monthly users globally. In the UK, almost-two thirds of its digital readership are affluent ABC1 readers, according to Ipsos iris data.
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Ozone CEO Damon Reeve commented that the companies’ “shared values” are “key components of this new partnership”.
He added: “CNN is a journalistic powerhouse and global truth-seeking force and we’re absolutely delighted to be partnering with them. The globally recognised CNN brand, its smart, worldly audience and highly valued digital assets will bolster Ozone’s platform credentials”.
The move comes amid a wider effort by Ozone to expand its international footprint, including by adding more global and US-based publishers to its collective. To help drive growth, the company is growing its headcount by 20% this year.
In an interview with The Media Leader in July, Reeve revealed Ozone is currently in the contracting and onboarding stages of adding nearly 20 US publishers to its alliance. These publishers include those, like CNN, with substantial video inventory. The Media Leader is also aware Ozone has also held discussions with the The New York Times in Cannes this year during the Festival of Creativity.
Ozone eyes US expansion as it takes on Big Tech
Ozone moved into video at the beginning of this year to meet potential client demands as it seeks to onboard more news broadcasters and CTV players, which also operate websites with strong traffic. The company began monetising publishers’ content on YouTube in early 2025, and soon aims to expand into CTV to meet the demands of publishers like CNN.
Ozone members include founding shareholders News UK, Guardian News & Media, Telegraph Media Group and Reach, as well as Mail Metro Media, Our Media, BuzzFeed, HuffPost and Mumset.
Last April, Dow Jones publications The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s and MarketWatch integrated their UK audiences into the Ozone platform. This was followed by Mediahuis Ireland titles including the Irish Independent, Sunday Independent, Belfast Telegraph and Sunday World joining in November, which gave Ozone a foothold in the Irish market.
Reeve has argued that the collective audience footprint between its member publishers should place them on more equal footing when competing with social platforms for ad budgets.
“Our reach is in the ballpark of other platforms, which is why this should be our consideration set,” he said in July.
CNN International commercial SVP of digital revenue, strategy and operations Rob Bradley commented that Ozone is “authentic in their mission to help fund and support the world’s best journalism through its strategic positioning [and] cutting-edge ad tech that meet and exceed advertisers’ needs.”
Bradley continued: “This partnership further strengthens Ozone’s position in the market and enables brands to now access CNN’s highly engaged and powerful audience via a new route. We’re excited about the potential this new partnership offers, that perfectly complements our unrivalled branded and sponsored content-led direct business.”
This post has been edited after publication. An earlier version of the article reported that PinkNews and Asian Media Group were part of Ozone’s publisher collective. While this was once true, The Media Leader understands those contracts have expired.
