CNN to lead Pangaea Alliance
The new phase will see CNN International Commercial (CNNIC) taking the leadership in line with the alliance’s successful transition from inception into a fully-fledged, working alliance. The Pangaea Alliance was launched in 2015, spearheaded by the Guardian, and joined together some of the world’s most prestigious news brands for programmatic collaboration. CNN has been involved in Pangaea since formation and will now take a more active role to bring its expertise in programmatic and data technologies to the initiative.
General manager Fiona McKinnon, sales director Martin Bojtos and the Pangaea Alliance team will be based at CNN’s London operation and work closely with Rob Bradley, CNNIC’s VP, digital commercial revenue and strategy, the CNNIC digital team and all Pangaea partners.
AppNexus selected as tech partner
Pangaea has also selected tech partner AppNexus to provide a managed and self-serve programmatic solution that enables brands and agencies to reach Pangaea’s highly targeted upscale audience through a single buying point. Clients will benefit from enhanced targeting and audience insights across the Pangaea inventory made possible by new tech integrations such as server and header bidding solutions by all Alliance members.
Looking forward, Pangaea is developing a new digital advertising trading platform as part of the Dennis Publishing-led Project Arete, which earlier this year received funding from the Google Digital News Initiative.
The Pangaea Alliance delivers a combined audience of 200m unique users across CNN International, the Guardian, Reuters, Mansueto Ventures and Dennis Publishing sites The Week, Alphr and IT Pro. This audience profile is upscale – with almost 40% of the audience earning over £250,000 per annum – and is reached in brand safe, premium environments. To date, Pangaea Alliance has delivered campaigns for over 30,000 advertisers globally with above industry standard rates of over 65% viewability.
New, efficient ways to connect
“We are delighted to take the lead role in this next phase of the Pangaea Alliance, working with our partners to develop enhanced digital and data solutions for advertisers to reach premium audiences at vast scale,” said Rani Raad, president, CNN International Commercial. “Pangaea is a proven example of collaboration between publishers to add to our existing digital advertising offering and give advertisers new, efficient ways to connect with audiences. CNN’s increased involvement with Pangaea aligns directly with our digital commercial strategy to combine data-driven solutions with premium content. We look forward to working with the Guardian and all the partners to take the alliance from strength to strength.”
Daniel Spears, programmatic director, Guardian News & Media: “The Guardian is proud to be at the forefront of media collaboration and innovative partnerships. We spearheaded the launch of the alliance with the aim to create an easy way to access quality inventory at scale, and together with our alliance members have established a working model that benefits publisher and advertisers. We look forward to the next phase and collaborating further with CNN and all our Pangaea partners.”
“AppNexus exists to help publishers monetise their content by helping advertisers reach their audiences with relevant and engaging advertising,” said Nigel Gilbert, VP strategic development, AppNexus. “We are thrilled to work with Pangaea at this exciting new phase to help many of the web’s leading publishers monetise their world-renowned reporting while providing our advertiser partners access to quality, brand-safe environments.”
