Nearly 30 magazine, TV, newspaper and native digital brands on board including ESPN, Hearst, CBS Interactive, Condé Nast and News Corp

New Orleans, LA—(January 19, 2017)—Digital Content Next (DCN), the only trade association exclusively dedicated to trusted, high-quality digital content brands, today announced additions to the TrustX leadership team and two new premium publishers to its cooperative digital advertising marketplace. TrustX, which is scheduled to launch later in Q1 2017, is designed to address the industry’s trust, transparency and accountability challenges in digital advertising. Guardian US and Viacom join 27 leading DCN members that signed on to the platform in September 2016. The announcement was made during DCN Next: Summit 2017 from New Orleans, LA, an annual members-only conference.

TrustX, a subsidiary of DCN, operates as a public benefit corporation (B Corp) for the sole purpose of building the sustainable future for trusted advertising. Participating members include: ABC, ABC Owned Television Stations, AccuWeather, A + E Networks, Atlantic Media, Business Insider, CBS Interactive, Condé Nast, Daily Caller, Edmunds, ESPN, The E.W. Scripps Company, Financial Times, Fox News.com, Guardian US, Hearst, IJR, Meredith, NBCUniversal, News Corp, Newsday, Purch, Slate, The Washington Post, The Weather Company, Time, Inc., Univision, Viacom and Vox Media.

The TrustX leadership team now includes John Vilade, a seasoned media industry veteran, who joins as Chief Revenue Officer and David Kohl, leader of TrustX’s design and launch team, who will assume the role of President and General Manager.

Vilade, a 20-year media industry sales and business development executive with experience in digital, broadcast television and national cable advertising, has led sales, strategy and revenue growth with leading media and entertainment organizations, such as NBC Universal, CBS, Discovery Communications and The Weather Channel, and was an early sales leader with Hulu where he scaled ad sales significantly. Vilade will also serve as Senior Vice President, Advertiser Relations for DCN.

Kohl, who has led the TrustX design and launch team with DCN since the project’s inception over a year ago, will transition to President and General Manager over the next six weeks. He brings more than 25 years of media and entertainment industry experience in business strategy and operations consulting, and a proven track record of driving quantifiable performance improvement with some of the largest cable and broadcast networks, global advertising agencies, media trade organizations and emerging-growth digital businesses. His consulting clients included The Walt Disney Company, ABC Television, NBCUniversal, Viacom, Time Warner Cable, WPP Group, IPG, Thomson Reuters and Hulu.

Additional TrustX hires include Paul Wyrembak, Technical Operations Manager.

“Fraud and a general lack of transparency have cast a cloud over the entire digital advertising space,” said Leo O’Connor, SVP Digital Platforms, Viacom. “Viacom is aligned with TrustX’s mission of high quality standards for the supply chain, which is really a return to a very simple value proposition: premium content attracts quality viewers, and remains the best place to advertise.”

“Programmatic offers a great opportunity if underpinned by the direct and transparent supply of quality publisher inventory, to the mutual benefit of buyer and seller,” said Daniel Spears, programmatic director, Guardian News & Media. “TrustX represents a move towards this by bringing the buyer and publisher closer together.  We, at the Guardian, are delighted to support the development and launch of this premium private marketplace.”

With no outside investors and no profit motives, TrustX is distinctive from other alliances in that it’s singularly focused on driving long-term benefits to marketers, publishers and consumers. TrustX is grounded in these trust-based principles:

• A guarantee to monetize only human and viewable advertising transactions;
• Total transparency about the cost of campaign delivery, thus dramatically reducing the mystery of lost media value so common in the complex digital supply chain;
• Cooperative development, testing and measurement of innovative ad monetization models and desktop and mobile ad units; and
• Advertising that improves the consumer experience and reduces the motivation to block ads.

In short, advertising traded through the TrustX marketplace will be certified to meet the highest standards for performance, quality, security and privacy.

This announcement marks the continued rise of DCN as the definitive market leader and voice for premium publishers. Since its relaunch as DCN in September 2014, the organization has seen a record 45% growth in its membership. Now 74 members strong and exclusively comprised of trusted, digital content companies, the organization shares industry intelligence through its InContext website, public events and research.  Follow DCN on Twitter @DCNorg.

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ABOUT DIGITAL CONTENT NEXT

Digital Content Next (DCN) is the only trade organization dedicated to serving the unique and diverse needs of high-quality digital content companies that manage trusted, direct relationships with consumers and marketers. The organization was founded in June 2001 as the Online Publishers Association (OPA). Comprised of some of the most trusted and well-respected media brands, DCN produces proprietary research for its members and the public, creates public and private forums to explore and advance key issues that impact digital content brands, offers an influential voice that speaks for digital content companies in the press, with advertisers and policy makers, and works to educate the public at large on the importance of quality content brands. Digital Content Next’s membership has an unduplicated audience of 223,098 million unique visitors or 100% reach of the U.S. online population. * More information about Digital Content Next is available at https://digitalcontentnext.org/.

*Source: comScore Media Metrix Multiplatform Custom Audience Duplication, June 2016, U.S. DCN Member Entities

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Press Contact: Kaitlyn Kurosky, HIGH10 MEDIA, 212 918 2040; [email protected]