The partnership will help unlock advertising revenue for National World, while increasing access to brand-suitable inventory for advertisers.

National World, one of the largest and most respected news publishers in the UK, home to national titles, has announced a strategic partnership with Mantis, which uses natural language AI to deliver industry-leading brand safety and contextual advertising solutions. This partnership will strengthen brand safety for advertisers while enabling more precise targeting across National World’s diverse audience.

At a time when publishers are increasingly prioritising intelligent brand safety and contextual solutions, Mantis’s superior AI-driven technology enables National World to significantly expand the volume of brand-suitable inventory for advertisers. Unlike traditional blocklist-based approaches that often fail to meet the nuanced needs of audiences, Mantis uses advanced contextual intelligence to deliver more precise and reliable assessments of content safety.

“Advertisers keen to harness the huge reach opportunities our titles offer are looking for smarter ways to ensure maximum relevance and brand safety as the news cycle continually changes,” said Jade Power, Director of Digital Monetisation at National World. “Our partnership with Mantis enables us to facilitate  nimble delivery of contextual campaigns for effective and wide-ranging engagement while ensuring ads are seen beside appropriate stories for each brand. In essence, we can now provide the perfect blend of scale and suitability.” 

“This collaboration is part of a growing movement to introduce more nuance to digital ad placement,” said Ben Pheloung, General Manager at Mantis. “Forward-looking publishers such as National World are driving the industry shift away from blanket keyword blocking by embracing natural language solutions that use deep insight into the real meaning of content to inform refined ad serving. Leveraging our advanced AI-powered analysis, we allow brands to build greater awareness among key target audiences and provide vital revenue that supports the production of quality news.”

About National World

National World is a leading force in the UK's media landscape, renowned for its commitment to delivering high-quality, trustworthy content. As a premier newsbrand network, we are dedicated to providing cutting-edge advertising solutions that empower businesses of all sizes. Our focus on innovation and accessibility reshapes the way companies approach digital marketing, forging impactful connections with audiences across diverse platforms. At National World, we are not just about broadcasting the news; we are about transforming how stories are told and experienced in the digital age.

About Mantis

Mantis is a leading brand safety and contextual advertising solutions provider for publishers and advertisers. Launched by Reach in 2019, the Mantis suite of solutions create an efficient, more transparent advertising ecosystem for publishers, brands, and audiences. Mantis’ suite of AI-powered tools – including Brand Safety, Contextual Targeting, Recommender, and Natural Language AI – provide market-leading solutions in today’s complex digital landscape. Built by a publisher to help publishers, agencies, and advertisers, Mantis is the most powerful and precise solution for creating a better advertising experience for all.

Mantis, a leading brand safety, suitability and contextual advertising solutions provider for publishers and advertisers, has today released data highlighting brands that rely on outdated keyword blocklists will be blocking more than 41% of Halloween content and scary movie reviews this spooky season.

According to the findings gathered from Mantis’ network of publishers, words such as 'kill' 'blood' 'horror' 'scary' 'attack' 'death' 'terror' are amongst those on agency blocklists. While in theory, blocking ads from appearing next to articles containing these keywords avoids potentially unsafe brand environments, in reality it also cuts brands off from perfectly brand safe and suitable ad placements next to content that their target audience is actively seeking out.

For example, blocking the word “bloody” would inadvertently also block the London Dungeons Halloween “Bloody Mary” experience and all articles that have listed it as a must-see Halloween activity. Similarly, advertisers will fail to reach audiences looking to spook themselves by watching the latest Halloween blockbuster films.  With a quarter of UK shoppers considering Halloween their favourite holiday and spend projected to reach £776 million in 2024, marketers risk reducing their advertising reach during this tentpole event. As a knock-on impact, this over-blocking also severely reduces advertising income for publishers.

Mantis, which leverages advanced AI technology to understand the context in which these keywords are used, measured over 1100 articles to unveil these findings. In stark comparison to the standardised agency blocklists, only 12% of articles were categorised unsafe when using Mantis’ Natural Language Understanding (NLU) and Contextual Targeting categorisation.

Cath Waller, MD of Advertising at Immediate Media, has experience of the negative impacts that blanket keyword blocklists can have on Halloween content. Immediate Media publication goodFOOD has seen a number of its pages promoting novelty Halloween cakes blocked due to phrases such as “garish bakes that ooze fake blood”, or “For a spooky fake blood effect, use berry syrup”, and “Halloween slash cake”. 

“Our Halloween content is incredibly popular with readers at this time of year, with our publications working hard to create content that inspires and grabs readers of all ages,” comments Cath. “Our readers are always looking out for creative Halloween ideas, and that so many of these articles are blocked by advertisers is incredibly frustrating. By relying solely on out-dated tech, advertisers not only harm their own ability to reach a wide range of audiences, but also stop our readers from having the best possible on-page experience. It's time for more advertisers to step up and utilise AI-powered safety solutions that more accurately assess the suitability of web pages.

Fiona Salmon, Managing Director at Mantis also commented: “With thrill-seeking consumers on the lookout for content related to Halloween traditions, events, and deals, brands aren’t just sacrificing lucrative advertising opportunities, they’re directly harming publishers. The industry has been zombie-like in its reluctance to waver from keyword blocklists, despite their obvious negative impact. It’s time for advertisers to wake up and embrace brand safety solutions that prioritise suitability without impacting performance.

Methodology 

Mantis conducted the analysis of over 1,147 Halloween-themed articles from its publisher network on October 6th using BigQuery to compare standardised agency keyword blocklists with its own AI-powered Natural Language Understanding (NLU) and Contextual Targeting solutions. The study focused on keywords like 'kill' 'blood' 'horror' 'scary' 'attack' 'death' and 'terror', commonly flagged by blocklists. Articles were classified based on keyword detection and context: Green for safe content, Red for unsafe with high confidence, and Amber for potentially unsafe but below the blocking threshold.

About Mantis

Mantis is a leading brand safety and contextual advertising solutions provider for publishers and advertisers. Launched by Reach in 2019, the Mantis suite of solutions create an efficient, more transparent advertising ecosystem for publishers, brands, and audiences. Mantis’ suite of AI-powered tools – including Brand Safety, Contextual Targeting, Recommender, and Natural Language AI – provide market-leading solutions in today’s complex digital landscape. Built by a publisher to help publishers, agencies, and advertisers, Mantis is the most powerful and precise solution for creating a better advertising experience for all.

The partnership will help unlock advertising revenue for Netmums, while increasing access to brand-suitable inventory for advertisers.

London, 8th October 2024 – Netmums, the trusted parenting community that supports millions of families across the UK, has announced a strategic partnership with Mantis, a leading provider of AI-driven brand safety and contextual advertising solutions. This partnership will provide advertisers with enhanced brand safety measures while also unlocking new opportunities to reach its dedicated parenting audience with hyper-targeted precision.

By integrating Mantis’s contextual intelligence technology, Netmums can now offer a superior, AI-powered solution that is able to understand and categorise the sentiment and tone of specific web pages, in a human-like way, at scale. This will ensure that ads are placed within contextually relevant and brand suitable environments.

In addition to providing enhanced contextual targeting and brand suitability, advertisers on Netmums can now also access tailored audience segments. This precise and privacy-enabled audience targeting solution enables brands and marketers to reach audiences with specific interests or behaviours across the publisher’s portfolio without the need for third-party cookies. This means that even in a privacy-first world, Netmums can continue to deliver highly relevant and effective advertising solutions to brands.

“We are excited to be able to welcome Netmums to the growing number of publishers utilising our suite of solutions,” said Benjamin Pheloung, General Manager at Mantis “As more publishers are lining up to find ways to increase their yield while enhancing brand safety, it is also becoming increasingly clear to advertisers that blunt brand safety tools are no longer enough to navigate today’s digital media landscape We are proud to be able to offer a market leading AI-driven solution that helps publishers to enhance their advertising offering in a highly agile and effective way.”   

Rimi Atwal, Managing Director at Netmums, said. “Netmums is a truly 360 digital media publisher with multiple touchpoints to guide parents throughout their parenting life. Our content is constantly evolving to provide advice and expert guidance on the things that matter most to families, simultaneously offering a unique brand safe environment for advertisers to reach our highly engaged and diverse audience. We are delighted that our new partnership with Mantis will further enhance our offering and allow brands to reach our audience with even greater precision in terms of both context and brand suitability.”

About Netmums

Netmums is the parenting community you can trust to help you through the highs and lows of family life. Supportive, inclusive and always relevant, Netmums is a truly 360 digital media publisher, with multiple touchpoints to guide families throughout their parenting journey with a market-leading social audience of millions across Instagram, TikTok and Facebook and a long-running podcast and video series.

Netmums is committed to constantly evolving its content offer to provide advice and expert guidance on the things that matter most in modern family life with new strands for 2024 including Netmums Money Saving Hacks with Britain’s Coupon Kid and our new Netmums Unfiltered podcast. Netmums balances innovation with unwavering focus on offering a safe, moderated community, quality content you can trust and a profound commitment to supporting parents at every stage.

The commitment to accompanying parents through the highs and lows of parenting is underpinned by Netmums Parent Supporter Service and Drop In Clinic - the only completely free, dedicated 24/7 service, staffed by experts of its kind in the UK. For over 15 years the Parent Supporter Service has offered parents an inclusive and easily accessible way of seeking advice from qualified professionals on their biggest challenges, day and night, 365 days of the year. Netmums commitment to funding this service and the partnerships it has forged with partners like StepChange, GoodLaw and the Maternal Mental Health Alliance are integral to Netmums unique offering which sets it apart as a truly supportive parenting platform.

About Mantis

Mantis is a leading brand safety and contextual advertising solutions provider for publishers and advertisers. Launched by Reach in 2019, the Mantis suite of solutions create an efficient, more transparent advertising ecosystem for publishers, brands, and audiences. Mantis’ suite of AI-powered tools – including Brand Safety, Contextual Targeting, Recommender, and Natural Language AI – provide market-leading solutions in today’s complex digital landscape. Built by a publisher to help publishers, agencies, and advertisers, Mantis is the most powerful and precise solution for creating a better advertising experience for all.

The new partnership enables brands to access a highly curated marketplace of women’s sports content programmatically, at scale, across a huge network of premium publishers.

Mantis, the leading provider of brand safety and contextual advertising solutions, has announced a strategic partnership with LIBER8, a specialist digital women’s sports content and media company, to help power LIBER8 Curate, the UK’s first digital women’s sports content marketplace. Leveraging Mantis’ superior AI-driven contextual targeting technology, this collaboration will transform how brands engage with women’s sports audiences, offering precise targeting and premium content curation at scale.

Women’s sport is undeniably gaining momentum, with 39% of Gen-Z actively watching and 83% of brands planning to increase their investments. Additionally, positive sentiment towards brands supporting women’s sport is 1.4x times higher than for those investing in men’s sport.

Despite this growth, a critical gap currently exists in the digital media landscape. Coverage of women’s sports is highly fragmented across numerous digital publishers, and the lack of tagging complicates programmatic buying and targeting for brands.

LIBER8 Curate powered by Mantis addresses these challenges, by offering one point of access for brands to reach women’s sports fans at scale with granular precision. Mantis’ advanced AI technology better understands the nuances of content, enabling ads to be delivered in more contextually relevant locations. This helps to drive better results for brands in a privacy-focussed and cookie-less way.

Kim Parker, LIBER8 Founder commented: “As women’s sport continues to evolve, we are committed to looking at innovative ways in which we can help brands invest and accelerate the growth of this vertical. All the data points to women’s sport being a hugely influential platform for brands to connect with this new type of sports audience and in LIBER8 Curate we are pioneering a platform to connect with these audiences.” 

Benjamin Pheloung, Mantis General Manager commented: “Women’s sports represent a growing and passionate audience and brands are starting to take notice –  83% of Fortune 500 companies are planning to increase their spending in this area. Through our collaboration with Liber8, we’re providing brands with the tools they need to connect with this audience in a meaningful and brand-safe way. We are thrilled to be partnering with Liber8 on this first-of-its-kind initiative.” said Ben Pheloung, General Manager at Mantis.

About Liber8

Liber8 exists to grow women’s sport in media by providing intelligent, tech-driven content and commercial solutions. The platform empowers brands and agencies to support women’s sports at any stage of their journey, offering unparalleled access to curated women’s sports content and a new, highly engaged sports demographic.

About Mantis

Mantis is a leading brand safety and contextual advertising solutions provider for publishers and advertisers. Launched by Reach in 2019, the Mantis suite of solutions create an efficient, more transparent advertising ecosystem for publishers, brands, and audiences. Mantis’ suite of AI-powered tools – including Brand Safety, Contextual Targeting, Recommender, and Natural Language AI – provide market-leading solutions in today’s complex digital landscape. Built by a publisher to help publishers, agencies, and advertisers, Mantis is the most powerful and precise solution for creating a better advertising experience for all.

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.”