John Battelle, founder and chairman of Federated Media Publishing, talks about the outlook for the technology industry.

Despite what many companies think, brands don't just wake up one day with an army of net promoters or brand advocates as part of their community because they think they deserve them.

Written by Laney Whitcanack, Federated Media's EVP & GM Content Marketing

Native advertising has quickly become all things to all people. For some, it’s advertising that maximizes the attributes of the platform it occupies. For others, especially when it comes to publishing environments, it’s pretty much a new term for an advertorial.

Written by Mary Gail Pezzimenti, Federated Media's VP Content Strategy

If viewable impressions are absolutely what we need, yet they run the real possibility of hurting publishers' already tenuous revenue streams, what can we collectively do about it to bridge the gap? The solution is how we construct the holistic environment that welcomes better and more focused advertising in alignment with the content, context, and the reader. It also has to be scalable and programmatic for it to mean much in the scheme of things.

Written by Federated Media's EVP & GM Media Platform, Walter Knapp

Even with this growing shift to programmatic buying, the situation is not as dire as it seems. Online publishers still occupy a central role in the digital advertising ecosystem. Traditional media companies and nimble publishing upstarts alike have continued to produce high-quality content that attracts large audiences across a broad spectrum of sites. To stay ahead of the machines, publishers need to make sure that they are properly positioned for success in 2013 and beyond.

Ad viewability will be a big topic in 2013, particularly as the IAB, the ANA and the 4As have introduced the Making Measurement Make Sense initiative. The idea is to change the definition of standard measurement from a served impression to viewable one. This has all sorts of ramifications for buyers and sellers, as it will likely become a key currency for the buying and selling of digital advertising.

Is your digital publishing business curating content? The answer should be "yes" because it's an essential way to showcase your editorial expertise, set yourself apart from the competition, and garner new audiences. As Fast Company described this past April, in a given day "250 million photos were uploaded to Facebook, 864,000 hours of video were uploaded to YouTube, and 294 billion emails were sent." With this daily deluge of data overwhelming the masses, digital publishers are in a unique position to offer an oasis of calm and clarity by curating content into meaningful stories for their readers.

Written by Laney Whitcanack, Federated Media's EVP & GM, Content Marketing

Federated Media plans to refocus all its resources into the two areas of advertising it believes is growing. The first is its premium conversational & native advertising, which includes sponsored posts, special coverage sections, and ads/promotions that are more directly integrated with a publisher’s content. The second area is in less expensive, “programmatic” advertising, which automatically displays ads on websites at all times. The ad agency purchased startup Lijit in October 2011 as a response to the growing demand for programmatic ad buying.

The digital media landscape appears to be splitting. On the one side is a world of custom integrations and native advertising. Meanwhile, the packaged squares are increasingly traded in real time through programmatic buying. Both are important trends. Digiday reached out to top publishers for their take on whether native advertising systems or programmatic buying will leave a bigger imprint on the digital media landscape.

Publishers and broadcasters have long tried to offer advertisers the right audience for their products. Want to sell pick-ups to people who like sports? Buy ads at halftime during a football game. Selling luggage or airline tickets? Buy ads in the travel section of a newspaper or Web site. In digital advertising, that formula is being increasingly tested by fast-paced, algorithmic bidding systems that target individual consumers rather than the aggregate audience publishers serve up. In the world of “programmatic buying” technologies, context matters less than tracking those consumers wherever they go. And that kind of buying is the reason that shoe ad follows you whether you’re on Weather.com or on a local news blog.

You already know that the best way to drive traffic to your site, and keep it there, is to consistently create inspiring and original content. But for those of us who are still building a loyal following and building our traffic, it's essential to couple great content with audience development best practices. In an age where there are endless choices for consumers online, you need to be assertive and creative when convincing new traffic to come your way. By employing these essential audience development tips, you'll build a following in no time.

Written by Laney Whitcanack, Federated Media's EVP & GM Content Marketing

If you're an independent digital publisher then you're probably feeling excited to be working on your own as a content creator and maybe even took the leap by leaving your day job to pursue your passion full time. Taking this step, though exhilarating, can feel overwhelming and stressful when thinking about consistently growing your audience. Without a plan to ensure the sustainability of your site (and your creative energy), these feelings can intensify and lead to reactionary decisions, which may address the emergency on hand but don't lead to long-term success.

Written by Laney Whitcanack, Federated Media's EVP & GM Content Marketing

At least that’s what we all read in the mainstream adtech press.  And it’s no wonder. There are an estimated 20 – 30 billion ad “opportunities” for standard display impressions everyday and that’s in the U.S. alone.  Everyone bears some degree of culpability in this massive pool of inventory sloshing around.  Publishers slap too many ads on a page.  Sites are being custom built for more ads.  Ad networks trade media with each other.  And marketers just keep on spending at breakneck speed.

Written by Walter Knapp, Federated Media's EVP & GM Media Platform

Automation has arrived in the media world. Depending on who you talk to, this is going to make publishers rethink the wine-and-dine, press-the-flesh approach to ad sales. It’s not that the machines are replacing the people, although there’s undoubtedly some of that, but sales teams will inevitably grow more specialized and sophisticated. Liberal arts will meet computer science, or at least Statistics 201. To that end, Digiday asked several publishers the following question: “What will the modern, premium publisher’s sales force look like five years from now, and how will it be different from today?”

The promise of “brand safety” seems to be a big draw in exchange circles these days, so Federated Media’s supply side ad tech unit Lijit Networks has introduced new inventory packaging capabilities on the Lijit Exchange to capitalize on the trend. In a “if you can’t beat ‘em,” mode, Lijit is joining up with a number of partners who have already established themselves in the “brand safety” business. Lijit is working with semantic ad specialist Peer39 to provide page-level site categorization to media buyers as well as ad effectiveness providers AdSafe, Double Verify, Adometry, and MediaTrust. “Network hygiene is a top priority at Lijit and we are constantly looking for new, proactive measures to put in place on our exchange to ensure that we offer only the highest quality content on the independent web,” said Tom Hart, Lijit’s VP of advertising operations.