Fiona Salmon and Ben Pheloung explain how Mantis delivered 39 per cent more audience reach, what other publishers can learn from the build vs buy decision, and why understanding your content mix matters more than ever
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When 56 per cent of your Euro 2024 sports coverage gets blocked from advertising because it contains the words "shoot", "shootout" and "shot", you know there's a problem with the system.
This was the reality facing Reach and other news publishers as brand safety technology began blocking vast swathes of quality journalism from monetisation.
The solution? Reach decided to build its own technology.
Fiona Salmon, managing director of Mantis Solutions, and Ben Pheloung, general manager, spoke to the Emerging Tech Network about why Reach chose to develop proprietary brand safety technology – and what other publishers can learn from their experience.
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Traditional brand safety tools like DoubleVerify and IAS use keyword-based blocking technology. While designed with good intentions, this approach lacks nuance and context, leading to absurd outcomes.
"BBC Good Food gets blocked for the keywords 'chicken breast' and 'knife'," Salmon explains. "Immediate Media is 99.9 per cent brand safe and suitable, yet so much content gets blocked."
The issue stems from the origin of these technologies. "There's tech that's built for agency buyers sitting on the buyer side, and it gets repurposed for publishers," says Pheloung. "Often that technology is less good, it's less managed, and it's harder to get anything done or changed as a publisher."
Publishers were spending money producing quality content only to have it deemed unsuitable for advertising.
When Reach identified this problem, the decision to build rather than buy came down to a simple realisation: existing technology wasn't fit for purpose from a publisher's perspective.
“There's ad tech that is built to make billions out of the publishers, not for publishers,” Salmon says. "It's almost like the publishers fighting back."
Mantis was built using IBM Watson's AI to understand what's actually happening on a page, rather than simply scanning for negative keywords. The technology can grasp nuance and context – understanding the difference between "shot" in a football match and "shot" in a violent crime story.
Crucially, the technology is bespoke for each publisher's tone and content style.
The impact has been measurable. In testing, Mantis delivered 39 per cent more audience reach than existing brand safety technology, meaning significantly more audience for advertisers.
One case study involved a Sky campaign that wasn't scaling because IAS blocking technology was preventing it from reaching more readeres. When Immediate Media switched to Mantis, "the campaign scaled 150 per cent overnight and delivered really safe content with really great CTRs," Salmon recalls.
An important insight emerged from working with advertisers: news publishers are often misunderstood. When Disney said they wouldn't invest because they don't advertise in news, Reach responded that 74 per cent of their impressions are entertainment.
The practical takeaway for publishers: audit your content mix and communicate it clearly to advertisers. You may not be as heavily weighted towards hard news as buyers assume.
Mantis is now exploring sentiment-based targeting as another way to unlock revenue. Analysis showed that around 60 per cent of Reach's news content was positive or neutral – potentially opening doors to brands like Coca-Cola and Disney that typically avoid news environments.
For publishers weighing whether to build or buy technology solutions, here are some practical considerations:
Assess whether existing technology serves your needs: If market solutions are built for buyers rather than publishers, they may not solve your problems.
Consider the service model: "You have to be operating at both levels to make it work," says Pheloung – both handling day-to-day campaign issues and working with agencies strategically. "If you're just saying, 'Here's the product, go with God,' it's not going to work."
Think about AI accessibility: The cost and accessibility of AI has dramatically improved in the last 6-12 months, making it more viable for publishers to build solutions.
Break down internal silos: For technology to work effectively, editorial and commercial teams need to collaborate. At Reach, this meant restructuring with the commercial director moving into a chief product and technology officer role overseeing both sides.
Start with your own problems, then scale: "When we speak to publishers about the problems that Reach had, you get so much nodding in the room," says Salmon. What works for one publisher often resonates across the industry.
While Mantis addresses monetisation challenges, both Salmon and Pheloung acknowledge publishers face broader challenges: declining page views and increased competition from YouTube, connected TV and retail media.
"Large-scale publishers like Reach will have to start thinking differently," Salmon says, pointing to the need for diversification into video, podcasts and subscriptions.
The key message for publishers: don't accept technology that works against your interests. Whether through building your own solutions or demanding better from vendors, there are alternatives to simply accepting the status quo of blocked content and lost revenue.
