The Modern Publisher’s Data Challenge

Over the next three weeks, Digiday will explore the challenges confronting “the modern publisher.” This video series will feature Gawker executive director of content Ray Wert on why content creation as central not just to the editorial process but also to the services it offers advertisers. In another installment, Vox Media CEO Jim Bankoff discusses why media companies, whether they like it or not, must become tech companies too.

To kick off the series, Digiday interviewed Mario Diez, CEO of local audience platform QuadrantOne, which is sponsoring the series. Diez discusses the need for publishers to create differentiation in order to build a premium media business. In addition, publishers now need to put in place a data strategy around their audiences. “Right now it’s a little unbalanced,” he said. “Some may argue that the brand side may know more about a publisher’s audience than the publisher.” The rise of programmatic buying presents an opportunity for a publisher to improve its overall sales strategy and relationships with advertisers. “The real key is to the learnings from that [programmatic] business and bring them over to the premium side,” Diez said.