Spearheaded by the Guardian, Pangaea brings together CNN International, the Financial Times and Reuters as founding partners, with The Economist also providing access to advertising inventory.
The alliance is being launched in beta from April 2015 and will offer advertisers the ability to access inventory across the group of premium publishers via the Rubicon Project technology platform. During the beta phase Pangaea will offer display solutions both as a standalone product and alongside existing publisher initiatives including native advertising programmes and publisher trading desks.
The combined heritage and influence of the partners ensures Pangaea is uniquely positioned, says the Guardian, to offer brands trusted and influential advertising environments, in tandem with the alliance’s innovative audience targeting. By working together to share data and formats, these traditionally competitive organisations are able to offer brands bespoke automated advertising solutions which complement the publishers’ existing digital commercial proposition.
According to the Guardian, Pangaea will deliver the following benefits to advertisers.
Global quality at scale: The 110 million user-strong audience reached by the alliance is made up of highly influential and affluent individuals - one in four people are in the top income segments and one fifth are C-suite/senior management executives. Pangaea’s global reach is incredibly strong, with readers spread across North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific, making it the perfect solution for pan-regional campaigns.
Trust and heritage: With hundreds of years of collective publishing experience, Pangaea gives brands access to respected media companies which bring innovative thinking and a deep understanding of the future of digital publishing. Pangaea also allays advertisers’ concerns about the ‘black box’ of programmatic spending - brands can be safe in the knowledge their creative is appearing next to quality content.
More effective targeting: With partners sharing their first-party data, Pangaea will also offer advertisers the unique ability to understand an audience like never before, delivering hyper-targeted campaigns and deeper connections with readers.
Unparalleled creativity and innovation: Pangaea will allow brands to advertise using the most creative, technically advanced and engaging advertising formats on the market. This gives them the ability to create a coherent story across their media partners, and more meaningful relationships with prospective customers.
Ease of use: Pangaea creates a uniform, media-rich experience across one simple programmatic buy. Ads will work seamlessly across all the publishers, and advertisers will be able to liaise with just one point of contact for all publishers within the alliance.
The beta phase of the Pangaea Alliance will be managed by a central team which includes commercial leadership and operational resource from all the member publishers. On full launch, later this year, Pangaea will be managed by its own sales team, meaning advertisers will have one port of call for all their Pangaea needs.
Tim Gentry, global revenue director at Guardian News & Media and Pangaea Alliance project lead, said: “As the world becomes more complex and networked, Pangaea will give advertisers one single programmatic solution for driving influence at scale, allowing them to get cut-through in an increasingly fragmented market using the latest ad serving technology. Pangaea’s uniqueness lies in the quality of its partners. We know that trust is the biggest driver of brand advocacy, so we have come together to scale the benefits of advertising within trusted media environments, which are geared towards delivering cutting-edge creative campaigns in technically advanced formats.”
