Summary

The foreword, by Nick Tjaardstra, Director of Global Advisory, WAN-IFRA:

This report is for publishers and associations considering starting or joining an advertising alliance – or perhaps refining an existing alliance. It offers case studies and best practice, and asks the essential questions you need to make it work.

As we write this, we feel the seismic impact of GDPR on the programmatic ad business. It's never been more important to share learnings and act together. The big tech players can leverage the economies of scale that come with a global footprint, and take a strong negotiating position with national publishers.

So do we foresee a global ad alliance? No. But there will be several cross-border alliances, especially with cross-industry ventures like Verimi in Germany that bring together global banking and telecoms players to offer a single sign-on.

We have chosen five alliances to focus on in this report because they highlight the variety of different types of partnerships.

For example, 1XL is made up entirely of most of the UK's regional newspaper groups and operates nationally, whereas the Pangaea Alliance has only one traditional newspaper member, The Guardian, and operates internationally.

Buymedia comprises all the media in Belgium and has now created a similar venture in the Netherlands.

US-based TrustX is made up of members of the DCN trade association.

KPEX is made up of four of the largest publishers in New Zealand and includes companies that variously own print, digital, TV and radio media.

We hope these profiles will encourage more discussion and investigation of publisher alliances. Above all, at WAN-IFRA we want to start a conversation – among publishers, associations and alliances. How can we make it as easy as possible to buy premium brand-safe news media inventory at scale?

From the table of contents:

• Case study 1: 1XL – UK regional ad alliance even considers going national
• Case study 2: Buymedia.be in Belgium believes ad co-ops' future lies in licensing
• Case study 3: TrustX – Trade body-backed not-for-profit aims to raise industry standards
• Case study 4: KPEX – New Zealand media owners collaborate to compete on scale
• Case study 5: Pangaea Alliance – the global platform for premium publishers
• Alliances around the world
• Advice on starting a publisher advertising alliance
• 'This just in ...' – the initial impact of GDPR