Some Digital Publishers Say No to Ad Tech
The much-hyped cadre of venture-backed, Web-born, and millennially inclined publishers—such as Vox Media, Mic and Refinery29—love to preach about how their content is built to travel across the mobile and social Web. They also proudly talk up the fact they hardly work with any ad-tech companies.
That is considered blasphemous in certain sectors, where programmatic ad buying and selling is viewed with religious fervor, and it’s not uncommon for a Web publisher to work with a few dozen ad tech vendors. Yet many media pundits are calling out the preponderance of ad tech as doing damage to the overall Web surfing experience, leading people to install ad-blocking software while also funneling money away from Web publishers.