"A lot of people are kind of freaked out about it," says one source in this post, referring to how "traditional" publishers like Hearst, Conde Nast and the New York Times are reacting to the onslaught of programmatic ad buying. "In fact, Times executives blamed a 3% decline in third-quarter digital-ad revenue partly on programmatic buying," writes Michael Sebastian.

Comcast plans to compete with Netflix by offering movies for download and streaming through its set-top boxes and Xfinity TV website, an offer that could start by year's end, according to anonymous sources cited by Reuters. "The initial offering will include a range of titles from several Hollywood studios that include new releases, older movies and some TV shows, one of the sources said."

Forbes Media is working with Deutsche Bank AG to sell the company, and "expects at least $400 million in the sale, said a person familiar with the matter," according to Bloomberg reporters. "The company isn’t likely to fetch more than $200 million, another person said, asking not to be identified as the information is private."

InStyle magazine once again beat Vogue in the fashion pub ad-page contest, according to Media Industry Newsletter 2013 tallies reported by Keith Kelly. Kelly neglected to say exactly how many years InStyle has been besting  Conde Nast's Vogue,  but does note that "ad pages have grown each year since Ariel Foxman took over as the top editor of the Time Inc. title in 2008." This year's percentage change for Instyle is an upward 4.72%, while Vogue's is up 3.58%.

Mobile app Next Issue Media, known as the Netflix of magazine, is advertising on 21 cable networks, in paid search and in print, aiming to boost recognition and subscriber rates. Michael Sebastian takes a close look at how the company's doing since its 2012 launch, noting that its "business model got an endorsement of sorts this week when Next Issue Media got a new competitor: Sweden-based Readly, which also sells digital access to a collection of titles for $9.99 a month."

The Hollywood Reporter's new website,  Pret-a-Reporter,  "builds on existing coverage aimed at celebrity style trends, focusing on both stars and behind-the-scenes influencers," and will include an e-commerce component, writes Michael Rondon. "Readers can click on products referenced in the editorial content and be taken to a third-party vendor who will carry out a transaction."

Time Out's North American division laid off 10 staff members this week, with six of those affected from Time Out New York. Among the staffers let go, "according to a source with knowledge of the cuts, are film editor David Fear; assistant music editor Sophie Harris; [and] senior designer Bryan Mayes," writes Nicole Levy.

The New York Times' native ad platform, set for launch in the next few months, will include "a full content studio bringing in storytelling talent of our own that sits separate -- entirely separate -- from our newsroom," and "a real-time engine so marketers can understand what's going on on our site," Meredith Kopit Levien, the paper's executive vice president - advertising, explained during a Chicago conference.

Evan Chen, Lucky's editor in chief, received perhaps her first big dose of negative social juice when she Instagrammed the cover of the mag's December/January issue. The majority of the 140-plus comments she received blasted the cover photo for making Kerry Washington look less than wonderful. Chen has hefty Twitter (almost 59,000) and Instagram (nearly 93,000)  followings, and up till now has received mostly "glowingly positive," feedback, writes Alexandra Steigrad. Chen is under the media microscope because she has only been editor for four months, appointed as part of Conde Nast artistic director Anna Wintour's continuing revamp of …

YouTube personality Shane Dawson has an NBC comedy in development: "Losing' It," based on Dawson's experiences working at a weight-loss center.