Brand safety solution provider Mantis expands its operations further into APAC, cementing its position as a leading partner for the news media

SYDNEY, September 4th 2024 – Nine, one of the largest and most respected news publishers in Australia, has announced a partnership with Mantis, which uses natural language AI to deliver industry-leading brand safety and contextual advertising solutions. The collaboration will enable Nine to better protect the reputations of advertisers using Mantis’ pioneering brand safety tools. 

The strategic partnership marks a significant milestone in Mantis’ continued expansion into the APAC region, part of its wider commitment to increase its global presence and deliver its leading brand safety solutions to major publishers in every market.

As one of Australia’s most trusted news providers, Nine needs a brand safety solution that can keep up with the fast-moving news agenda. While blocklist-based brand safety solutions present challenges to news publishers due to the limitations they put on their inventory for advertisers, Mantis’ AI-driven contextual intelligence semantically understands text and media content to more effectively assess its brand safety risk. This not only ensures that brands are able to deliver ads in a safe environment, but also opens up the availability of safe content that was previously blocked by imprecise blocklist-based tools.

The partnership will also enhance the precision of ad targeting, allowing brands to reach audiences based on the content they are consuming at any given moment, in turn driving improved engagement.

Angelo Sinibaldi, Data Commercialisation and Strategy Director at Nine: “As a national news broadcaster, our broad and highly engaged audience is a key attraction for advertisers, but at the same time, it is imperative that we deliver effective brand safety. We are pleased to be able to offer brands a solution that truly understands the context and sentiment of content, enhancing both safety and targeting, as well as creating a better on-page ad experience for our readers.”

Ben Pheloung, General Manager at Mantis: “The world over, publishers are challenged by treading the line between offering effective brand safety and gaining the maximum returns from their ad inventory. Our partnership with a publisher as established and trusted as Nine highlights the effectiveness of our solutions in delivering these goals. We are incredibly pleased to be expanding our APAC operations further and look forward to bringing our solutions to even more publishers globally.”

Mantis’s AI-driven contextual technology will significantly increase volume of inventory available to Immediate’s advertisers.

Immediate, home to trusted brands that people love, which reach more than a third of UK adults, has announced a technology partnership with Mantis, a leading brand safety and contextual advertising solutions provider. This partnership will provide Immediate’s customers with industry-standard brand safety measures and unlock content that was previously inaccessible to advertisers.

Whereas many blocklist-based brand safety solutions fall short of Immediate’s needs — particularly for its special interest brands — Mantis leverages AI-driven contextual intelligence to accurately and efficiently gauge brand safety through semantic understanding of text and media content.

By utilising Mantis’s technology, Immediate will also be able to provide bespoke contextual audiences which can be applied across the entirety of its properties and content, regardless of whether users are identifiable or third-party cookies are available. These audiences can be further refined thanks to the extensive customisability of Mantis’s solutions.

In addition to significantly increasing the volume of monetisable inventory for Immediate’s brands, Mantis’s technology is more performant than alternatives as most processing occurs at the point of page publication rather than user interaction. Reduced processing load also results in lower emissions, aligning with Immediate’s sustainability commitments.

“We partnered with Mantis because its technology is built by publishers for publishers, which gave us the confidence that they would understand both our needs and the needs of our customers,” said James Florence at Immediate. 

“Immediate has had an enormous amount of success with its first party data solution, having been an early adopter. By adding contextual and sentiment data from Mantis into the heart of the product offering, we hope to continue to lead the market, offering effective, innovative solutions to our customers. Allowing them to fairly support the publishing industry and solve addressability challenges at the same time,” said Matthew Rance at Immediate.

“Our partnership with Immediate Media demonstrates that AI-driven contextual technology can solve two of the biggest challenges facing digital publishers: brand safety and cookieless targeting,” said Benjamin Pheloung at Mantis. “With more brand-safe inventory and more targetable users, Immediate will be able to boost the scale and reach of its customers’ campaigns without harming the on-page experience, all while utilising our low carbon footprint products.”

About Immediate:

Immediate, home to trusted brands that people love, own and operate to some of the biggest and well-known consumer brands in the UK, including Radio Times, Good Food, Nutracheck, HistoryExtra and BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine.

Our trusted, quality content reaches 40 million people a month across digital, print, video, podcasts, apps, live events, tools and services.

 We are a purpose-driven business, to bring our audiences joy by helping everyone do what they love, creating content and experiences to inspire our audience’s passions in food, wellness, gardening, history entertainment, and beyond.

With over 1.4 million active subscribers across print and digital, we are the UK’s leading publisher by subscriptions. Immediate is the market leader in many of the sectors we operate in, including food, gardening and children’s publishing.

With offices in London, Bristol and Nottingham, Immediate was named Best Digital Consumer Publishing Company at the 2024 AOP (Association of Online Publishers) Awards, with Immediate’s commercial team picking up Sales Team of the Year. 

Mantis, a leading brand safety and contextual advertising solutions provider for publishers, advertisers, and agencies, has announced Fiona Salmon as its new Managing Director. Starting her role on the 17th of June, Fiona will take responsibility for accelerating growth across the UK and Europe, while overseeing streamlined business operations and prioritising sustainability at the core of Mantis activity.

This appointment marks the latest step in a rapid development journey for Mantis. As part of its mission to fuel greater value for all digital media players, the company is striving to achieve global expansion that will enhance access to its multi-service, context-based solutions. Using her extensive expertise in cultivating quality media networks, Fiona will play a key role in driving greater collaboration with premium publishers and extending product distribution. In addition, Fiona’s proven sustainability credentials will see her incorporating this into the Mantis business, bringing benefits to client and the wider industry

With over 20 years of media experience, Fiona holds an array of knowledge covering digital innovation, insight-driven advertising, and data monetisation. During her decade-long tenure at Vibrant Media, Fiona’s understanding of publisher priorities gained from past roles at Trinity Mirror, Bauer, and News International proved highly valuable in building a global publisher network of multi-format inventory. She joins Mantis after leading UK operations at ad tech firm 1plusX and serving as Global Vice President of Partnerships and Sustainability Lead for Captify.

Founded by Reach Plc, Mantis is a smart suite of solutions designed to make online advertising simple, secure, and more effective. Its intelligent portfolio of tools — including brand safety, contextual targeting, recommendations, and natural language AI — aims to support engaging campaigns that deliver better results for media owners, buyers, and audiences.

“Fiona’s diverse experience makes her the perfect fit for a company sitting at the intersection of media, technology, and advertising,” says Terry Hornsby, EVP and Founder of Mantis. “Her skills in fostering strategic partnerships will be a vital asset as she takes the helm of our UK operations, and we look forward to seeing her play an integral part in driving ongoing growth.”

“Joining the Mantis team offers a unique and exhilarating opportunity to shape the future of the open web and protect quality journalism through supporting publishers. “Mantis is already raising the bar on digital experiences, with publishers benefitting from an increase of over 20% more monetisable inventory, a 73% increase in accuracy of contextual identification and an average increase of 42% in ctr performance. I feel privileged to play an integral role in furthering the businesses scope and impact,” says Fiona. “Mantis’ focus on sustainability through driving efficiencies across the ad ecosystem and offering powerful products with a low carbon footprint is also impressive, and I’m going to keep this high on the agenda.”

Mantis, a leading brand safety and contextual advertising solutions provider for publishers, advertisers and agencies, has announced that Jean-Paul Wevers has joined as Publisher Sales Manager. In this role, Jean-Paul will look to introduce Mantis’ innovative suite of solutions to partners throughout the UK and European markets. 

His arrival comes at an exciting period of growth for Mantis, as the company continues to expand its team to deliver its multi-service offering to an ever-changing industry landscape. 

Jean-Paul is a multilingual media expert with over 25 years of experience in large matrix organisations and successful start-ups across multiple territories. As a cross-platform media specialist, he was previously Publisher Director at Smartclip UK, Head of International Publishing at AOL, and Co-Founder at global video advertising and content syndication company Videoflare. He joins from Seedtag, where he was Head of UK Supply.

Mantis provides publishers and advertisers with a full suite of brand safety tools that enable more precise and suitable campaigns. Built by Reach plc  , this AI-powered toolkit includes Brand Safety, Contextual Targeting, Recommender, and Natural Language AI solutions.

“Jean-Paul’s experience speaks for itself, and we are delighted to be bringing such a knowledgeable specialist into the Mantis team,” says Terry Hornsby, EVP and Founder of Mantis. “We look forward to leveraging his granular ad tech knowledge and wide array of skills to reach a greater number of publishers with our suite of solutions.”

“I’m seriously impressed by the AI-powered tools that Mantis has already developed,” says Jean-Paul. “At a time when digital environments are rapidly changing, brand safety and suitability are more important than ever. I look forward to helping drive innovation in this area and enable publishers to better monetise their advertising offerings.”