International Business Times to begin sales push

The International Business Times is preparing a push to make advertisers more aware of its website, reports Lucia Moses of Digiday.

Moses writes, “Now, the site is turning its attention to the business side. It has just hired a chief marketing officer in Mitchell Caplan, formerly of McCann and Y&R. There are plans to hire as many as 50 people across sales, marketing, tech and analytics.

“‘We’ve made a lot of progress, and now it’s time to add that marketing varnish,’ said Etienne Uzac, who founded the company with Johnathan Davis. “We’re very editorial-heavy right now.’

“And varnish is wanting. The site has been working largely with ad networks, so most of the ads on the site are retargeted. The site makes ample use of that derided tactic, video ads that play continuously with the sound on. What sponsored content ads there are are programmatically powered by Nativo, a third-party native ad platform.

“But programmatic has its limits, which is why the company is turning its focus to more lucrative direct sales. Along with that, it’s trying to capture more user-registration data, to enable better ad targeting. It acquired Fashion Times LLC in May to diversify its ad base.”

Read more here.