In an industry first, Skimlinks has launched a new programmatic audience targeting service for advertisers that will automatically share revenues with publisher partners.
With 55,000 digital publishers on board, including Time Inc., Mail Online and The Independent, ‘Audiences by Skimlinks’ will give brands and agencies access to more than 1.3 billion unique users.
Meanwhile, publishers will gain access to free audience insights about the shopping behaviour of their readers, which aims to help grow readership, attract new advertiser partnerships and optimise ad yields.
“We’ve been observing the increasing power that platforms such as Facebook and Google have due to their scale, and are concerned about what that means for independent content creators as they try to negotiate advertising terms or understand the broader shopping intent of their audience,” said Skimlinks CEO Alicia Navarro.
[advert position=”left”]
“Skimlinks has always been a publisher-driven company, and we are leveraging our scale now to empower our publishers. With Audiences by Skimlinks, individual publishers that are part of our co-operative will benefit both with data revenues and audience insights, in ways that they couldn’t achieve on their own.
“It’s about giving power to the publishers, so they stand a chance against the power of the platforms.”
Jo Holdaway, director of strategic commercial data at ESI Media, one of Skimlinks’ publisher partners, said that a shift towards rewarding publishers for the use of their data has been a “top priority” for years.
“Advertisers and publishers have needed to work closer to better understand how content drives and influences sales much further up the funnel. Now our audience data can reflect this,” Holdaway said.
“Also by working as part of Skimlinks’ collective of media owners – from large publishers like us to community forums and independent bloggers – we all benefit from a broader and deeper dataset, both in our own understanding of audience behaviours and our proposition to advertisers.”
