ADZINE vs The Next Web

Publishers Demand Measurable Impact Beyond 'Premium' Claims

In an interview, Maik Rogge argues that citing "journalistic quality" alone is no longer sufficient for premium publishers: advertisers require measurable impact. He outlines a combined approach using quantitative KPIs (viewability, visibility) and qualitative metrics (attention metrics, brand-lift studies) and describes involvement signals such as active reading time, scroll depth, and time on page. Rogge says his organisation uses behavior-based first-party segments and a semantic targeting infrastructure, collected via an Adobe stack that processes over one billion server calls daily. He defends news environments against blanket brand-safety exclusions and sees semantic AI enabling finer contextual targeting. Programmatic sales should incorporate quality signals through PMPs and guaranteed deals, and AI should assist campaign delivery while keeping humans in the loop.

• The interviewee states that attention metrics and brand-lift studies are used to prove advertising effect in premium editorial environments.
• The publisher measures involvement signals such as dwell time, scroll depth, and active reading time to infer user involvement.
• They use a semantic targeting infrastructure that combines content-level analysis and user behavior for targeting.