Tensions Rise at First Look Media Over Company’s Direction

Laura Poitras, a co-founder of the Intercept, signed a letter protesting recent company decisions. Photo: Andrew Toth/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Fe Employees are worried that one of the nation’s largest and most prominent left-of-center media companies, First Look Media, has lost its way. After the company shuttered two marquee outlets, dozens of employees signed…

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Behavioral Ad Targeting Not Paying Off for Publishers, Study Suggests – WSJ

A new study suggests suggest publishers only get about 4% more revenue for an ad impression that has a cookie enabled than for one that doesn’t. Photo: Damian Dovarganes/Associated Press May 29, 2019 5:59 p.m. ET Are creepy advertisements really necessary to support the free web? A new academic study suggests they aren’t. Behavioral advertising,…

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The Ad Performance and Safety Protocol: Cleaner, better, safer ad experiences on iOS – Developer Blog – The Washington Post

The Washington Post is taking a proactive approach to digital display advertising issues with a new project that is set to fix bad code, while saving brands from code errors and cross-platform bugs in ad code. The Ad Performance and Safety Protocol (APSP) focuses on accidentally harmful ad behaviors to ensure a better user experience…

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Want to see what one digital future for newspapers looks like? Look at The Guardian, which isn’t losing money anymore » Nieman Journalism Lab

The Guardian is a weird newspaper. Most newspapers don’t have nearly two-thirds of their readers coming from outside the country they’re based in. Most newspapers don’t start in one city and then move to another one. Most newspapers aren’t owned by a trust that mandates it promote “liberal journalism both in Britain and elsewhere.” And…

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“I felt like it was a betrayal, and we had raised funds on false pretense”: The Correspondent’s first U.S. employee speaks out » Nieman Journalism Lab

Last July, ahead of its planned launch in the United States, The Correspondent made its first U.S. hire: Zainab Shah, who’d previously been global lead for strategy and operations at BuzzFeed. Ernst Pfauth — CEO of De Correspondent, the Dutch site for which The Correspondent was to be a new sibling — wrote that, as…

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Great Hill Partners Agrees to Acquire Gizmodo Media Group – WSJ

Private-equity firm Great Hill Partners has agreed to acquire Gizmodo Media Group from Univision Communications Inc., the companies said, ending the Spanish-language broadcaster’s foray into English-language digital media. James Spanfeller, the former chief executive of Forbes.com and president of consumer magazines at digital publisher Ziff Davis, will become chief executive of G/O Media Inc., a…

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Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook may pay publishers to put their stuff in a dedicated news section – Recode

More than a year after announcing Facebook would feature less news, Mark Zuckerberg says he has a new idea: He wants to create a section of his social network that would be devoted to “high-quality news,” and may pay publishers that share their stuff there. Zuckerberg floated the idea in a conversation with Axel Springer…

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The Washington Post’s Aram Zucker-Scharff: You can’t solve transparency by adding more technology – Digiday

Subscribe: iTunes | Google Play | Stitcher | Anchor For many, digital media’s ills are down to broken ad tech and the system propping it up. Adam Zucker-Scharff, director of ad tech at the Washington Post, says it’s more complicated than simply fixing the plumbing: Advertisers are going to have to work at making ad…

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Google & Facebook fed ad dollars to child porn discovery apps | TechCrunch

Google  has scrambled to remove third-party apps that led users to child porn sharing groups on WhatsApp in the wake of TechCrunch’s report about the problem last week. We contacted Google with the name of one these apps and evidence that it and others offered links to WhatsApp groups for sharing child exploitation imagery. Following publication of our…

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