Flipboard to begin selling programmatic display and native ads for mobile devices next month via Rubicon Project
Flipboard is turning a new page and will begin selling programmatic display and native ads. — The mobile app known for offering users a sampling of stories from around …
Context & Ripple Effects
Flipboard has spent 2015 building the pieces this move connects: a custom Promoted Items native unit early in the year, then opening its interest graph so brands could target ads by topic rather than by placement. Selling programmatic display and native inventory through Rubicon Project is the logical third step — turning hand-sold, bespoke formats into auction-accessible inventory.
The timing matters because of Apple News: Re/code reported in mid-2015 that Apple would let publishers keep 100% of the advertising they sell inside its Flipboard-like app, putting direct price pressure on any aggregator that monetizes other people's content. Automating sales is how Flipboard defends volume against a rival that undercuts on revenue share.
First-order effects
- Brands gain self-serve access to Flipboard's mobile audience through Rubicon Project's exchange, buying display and native placements without negotiating directly with Flipboard's sales team.
- Flipboard's own ad operations shift from selling one-off native formats like Promoted Items to filling inventory automatically, changing what its sales force is paid to do.
Second-order effects
- Publishers whose stories fill Flipboard now face their content being monetized through an intermediary stack — Rubicon takes a cut before Flipboard does — sharpening the comparison with Apple News' keep-all-your-ad-revenue offer.
- Rubicon Project gains a marquee mobile-native publisher for its exchange, strengthening its pitch against other supply-side platforms courting app inventory.
Third-order effects
- If bespoke native products keep giving way to programmatic pipes, reader apps like Flipboard will compete less on ad creativity and more on the uniqueness of their targeting data — here, the interest graph it opened to brands in 2015.
- Aggregators distributing publisher content are converging on the same economics as exchanges, pushing the industry toward a structure where whoever controls the auction, not whoever curates the content, captures the margin.
The trend: Content aggregation apps are converting curated, hand-sold native ad products into programmatic exchange inventory, with proprietary interest-graph data as the remaining differentiator.