The agreement will bring The Australian national newspaper, the News.com.au news site, metropolitan titles – including The Daily Telegraph in New South Wales, Herald Sun in Victoria, and The Courier-Mail in Queensland – and regional and community publications to the Facebook News hub.

“The agreement with Facebook is a landmark in transforming the terms of trade for journalism, and will have a material and meaningful impact on our Australian news businesses. Mark Zuckerberg and his team deserve credit for their role in helping to fashion a future for journalism, which has been under extreme duress for more than a decade,” said Robert Thomson, News Corp Chief Executive.

The three-year deal also involves an extension to an existing agreement with Sky News Australia and adds to a similar agreement between News Corp and Facebook in the US.

News Corp also agreed to a partnership with Google last month.

The agreement with Facebook comes just weeks after Australia passed a law forcing tech platforms, like Facebook and Google, to pay for news content. Facebook had initially blocked all news content in Australia in response to the ‘News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code’, but lifted the ban following discussions with Australian Government and amendments made to the Code.

“Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch led a global debate while others in our industry were silent or supine as digital dysfunctionality threatened to turn journalism into a mendicant order,” said Thomson.

“We are grateful to the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission Chair Rod Sims and his team for taking a principled stand for publishers, small and large, rural and urban, and for Australia. This digital denouement has been more than a decade in the making.”

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The News Corp publications joining Google’s hub are The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, MarketWatch, and the New York Post; in the UK: The Times and The Sunday Times, and The Sun; and, in Australia, a range of news platforms including The Australian, News.com.au, Sky News, and multiple metropolitan and local titles.

Under multi-year partnership, there will also be a subscription platform developed, the sharing of ad revenue via Google’s ad technology services, the development of audio journalism, and investments into video journalism by YouTube.

Robert Thomson, Chief Executive of News Corp, said that the deal would have “a positive impact on journalism around the globe as we have firmly established that there should be a premium for premium journalism.

“I would like to thank Sundar Pichai and his team at Google who have shown a thoughtful commitment to journalism that will resonate in every country. This has been a passionate cause for our company for well over a decade and I am gratified that the terms of trade are changing, not just for News Corp, but for every publisher.

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News Corp is to offload video advertising platform Unruly to Tremor International for substantially less than the £58m it reportedly paid to acquire it in 2015, according to Sky News.

In its own announcement of the deal, Tremor said that in return for the business, News Corp will be issued with 6.91 per cent of Tremor International’s stock, subject to an 18-month lockup period. Tremor has also entered into a global partnership with News Corp that will give Tremor with the exclusive rights to sell outstream video on more than 50 News Corp titles in the UK, US and Australia. Under the terms of the Transaction, Tremor International has committed to an ad spend of £30 million with News Corp over a three-year period. News Corp has also agreed to contribute cash towards the cost of integrating Unruly with the company.

It also confirmed that Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News UK, the News Corp subsidiary which publishes The Times and The Sun, will join the board of Tremor as a non-executive director. Norman Johnston, CEO of Unruly, will also join Tremor’s board.

Tremor said the deal is directly in-line with the company’s three-pillared strategy to grow by leveraging video, data and Connected TV (CTV). It said the acquisition will significantly extend its international footprint, and present an opportunity to accelerate the global roll-out of Tremor’s recently acquired RhythmOne assets, while adding an additional 1.2bn unique monthly users through premium publisher partnerships across the US, Europe and APAC.

“This transaction is another important milestone in Tremor’s transformation into a leading video advertising business,” said Tremor CEO, Ofer Druker. “We are delighted to be acquiring a truly world class asset in Unruly, but equally important is the formation of our new strategic alliance with News Corp, which will provide Tremor access to globally recognised media brands, in a partnership we believe to be mutually beneficial for both companies.

“In addition, not only does this transaction deliver a number of commercial opportunities for the Company, but it is a significant endorsement of Tremor as a business, given the reputation of News Corp globally.

News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson said: “The sale of Unruly marks an important step in our strategy of simplification at News Corp, while we expect it to yield ongoing financial benefits. We look forward to partnering with Tremor and are grateful to Unruly and its truly talented team, who have helped our businesses in the UK, US and Australia advance their digital advertising expertise.”

Alex Rahaman, chairman of creative management platform Nexd, said the deal is not a major surprise. He said: “I think NewsUK were hoping to bring transferrable programmatic and digital video expertise into the business with the acquisition of Unruly. Unruly is a very successful ad network working on high margins in a very efficient way. But Unruly wasn’t built to consult with or transfer skills to much larger corporates and I think there was left the feeling that what they bought wasn’t quite what they hoped for. So it is no surprise they will spin it out to a much closer fit business in Tremor.”

Another ad tech industry veteran said the deal looks better for Tremor than for Unruly. He said: “This seems like a good deal for Tremor and not necessarily for Unruly. I suspect Unruly were trying to make the transition from an IO (insertion order)-based business to a programmatic exchange model and that needs quite a lot of investment. News were probably happy to take the cash and get a loss-making business off their hands.”

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Murdoch’s comments come just after Facebook announced it would be asking users which publishers they believe are trustworthy and, in turn, pushing these ‘trusted sources’ further up the new more social-focused news feed.

“The time has come to consider a different route,” said Murdoch in a statement. “If Facebook wants to recognise ‘trusted’ publishers then it should pay those publishers a carriage fee similar to the model adopted by cable companies. The publishers are obviously enhancing the value and integrity of Facebook through their news and content but are not being adequately rewarded for those services. Carriage payments would have a minor impact on Facebook’s profits but a major impact on the prospects for publishers and journalists.”

Meanwhile, Murdoch and 21^st Century Fox continue to tussle with the UK government over its proposed acquisition of Sky, with the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) saying the deal would not be in the public interest.

The CMA says this would be because the Murdoch’s would have too much control over the news agenda in the UK – funny when Murdoch also mentioned in his Facebook statement that the lack of transparency “should concern publishers and those wary of political bias at these powerful platforms”.  

Interestingly, however, even if Fox completes the acquisition of Sky, Murdoch may not ever be in-charge of the satellite and telecoms company. This is because Sky will likely transfer over into Disney’s hands once it completes the purchase of Fox.

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US mass media company News Corp has launched a new advertising platform which integrates all of its first-party data, media properties, and data science tools in one place to ensure brand safety.

News IQ, which boasts an audience of more than 140m in the US, has launched with partners including Fox Broadcasting Company, Dentsu Aegis Network, Douglas Elliman, Seabourn Cruise Line, and more. The platform will leverage first-party data from some of the launch partners to create marketing and advertising solutions.

“In a world of fake news and fraudulent metrics, News IQ offers advertisers a clear solution: quality audience, quality data, and quality environments,” said Jesse Angelo, chief of digital advertising solutions at News Corp. “And that translates into three layers of brand safety for every campaign, protection from fraud, and the ability to effectively reach premium audiences at scale with precision inside a trusted and transparent ecosystem.”

The advertising platform will offer insights from an audience made up of business leaders, entrepreneurs, home buyers, wealthy individuals, luxury shoppers, millennial cord-cutters, and more. It will also combine advertisers’ first-party data with News Corp’s data to help build segments, and complements News Corp’s video ad platform Unruly.

“Brands are becoming more sophisticated about digital advertising. They are tired of their ads showing up next to vile and vacuous content, and fed up with mad and manipulated metrics,” said Robert Thomson, chief executive at News Corp. “Now, we are offering News Corp’s suite of superior brands to advertisers, along with a wealth of reliable – not risible – data that will help them target the customers they cherish.”

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