The test is still in early stages, and Hearst's svp of ad product and data Jen Dorre, offered only limited detail last week at the Digiday Publishing Summit in Miami. Still, the early signs are promising. When advertisers buy Hearst ad inventory through the Amazon DSP, Dorre's team is seeing noticeably stronger completion and click-through rates compared to other buys.
Such alliances may help as Madison Avenue grapples with a glut of broadband-TV inventory on the market, much of the supply growing due to the entrance of both Amazon and Netflix into ad-supported streaming. This partnership will deal primarily with so-called "programmatic" advertising, or digital inventory that gets bought based on algorithms that define qualities of the specific consumers being sought by a marketer.