Xaxis and Disqus Introduce First Global Programmatic Platform for Native Advertising

“Our relationship with Xaxis accelerates and expands our capability to deliver advertising that connects our audiences to brands with relevant and compelling content.”

The new platform is the first advertising offering capable of delivering native advertising with the scale, safety and efficiency advertisers have come to expect from their premium digital advertising campaigns. With first look access to Disqus inventory and the 1.6 billion unique monthly visitors exposed to it, Xaxis advertisers will be able to run their native campaigns through the Xaxis programmatic platform in full coordination with the rest of their digital spend.

The Disqus Sponsored Comments ad units appear above discussion threads on websites using the company’s commenting platform and participating in its advertising. Creative possibilities for brands include text, images and embedded video, tailored to specific audiences, topics under discussion, or both. The platform will continually scan the words and expressions used on sites and in comments to ensure ads are only placed in brand safe environments. The same technology will also be used to perform enhanced targeting, enabling brands to target over 1,000 discussion topics, breaking news and trending memes.

“For native advertising to make sense for major brands, it needs to be scalable and precisely aligned with the rest of their digital marketing strategies,” said Brian Lesser, global CEO of Xaxis. “With the Disqus partnership, advertisers can now apply the same audience-based lens to the delivery, tracking and measurement of native ads that they apply to their existing display, social, mobile and online video campaigns.”

Reaching audiences at scale with native advertising has challenged the industry due to the ever-changing and heterogeneous nature of professional and user-generated content. At the same time, readers are spending more time reading comments and engaging in discussions. According to publisher analytics company Chartbeat, the majority of engaged time on websites is now spent below the fold, typically where a blog post or article ends and a comments section begins.¹

“People use Disqus to add commentary to content on websites covering every topic imaginable. So our advertising business is based on a basic idea that we know what people are interested in because they’re talking about it on Disqus,” said Daniel Ha, CEO and cofounder, Disqus. “Our relationship with Xaxis accelerates and expands our capability to deliver advertising that connects our audiences to brands with relevant and compelling content.”

At launch, the new product will be available in the US and UK with a rollout planned for additional markets.

About Xaxis

Xaxis is a global digital media platform that programmatically connects advertisers and publishers to audiences across all addressable channels. Xaxis combines proprietary technology, unique data assets and exclusive media relationships with the brightest team of audience analysts, data scientists and software engineers. Advertisers working with Xaxis achieve higher ROI from digital marketing campaigns. Xaxis works with over 2,700 clients across 34 markets in North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America. For more information, visit www.xaxis.com.

About Disqus

Disqus is the web’s most popular discussion platform used by 3 million websites around the world. Visitors to these sites use Disqus to add color to content by commenting, favoriting and following. Whether it’s commenting on a local news article or debating the meaning of life, Disqus makes it possible for great discussions to happen between anyone, about anything, at any time. Visit www.disqus.biz to learn more.

¹ http://blog.chartbeat.com/2013/03/18/were-in-ad-age-chartbeat-brings-engaged-time-to-advertising/