• by Felicia Greiff , Staff Writer, February 1, 2016

C1X, a startup programmatic platform, is looking to empower publishers through transparency and tech.

C1X (or C1Exchange), partnered last November with the Newspaper National Network (NNN), a group comprised of 25 media companies that represent 9,000 papers in the U.S. Additionally, C1X announced it raised $5.1 million in Series A funding last year.

In media buying and selling, CPMs aren't the big issue for clients, said senior director of sales and business development Xavier Jenkins. "The issue is, they would like [the process] to be more articulate, more iterative and to have a lot more insight into campaigns as they go forward."

Below, Jenkins talks about Interactive Advertising Bureau CEO Randall Rothenberg's recent speech that made waves, publishers transitioning to digital and why transparency matters to buyers.

RTD: Did you go to the IAB leadership meeting in Palm Springs?
Jenkins: For me, it was hard with all the snow and cancellations... I actually missed all the content Sunday and Monday.

RTD: So you missed Randall Rothenberg’s speech [in which he said, "I hate ad-block profiteers"]?
Jenkins: I missed it, but I have heard him talk about this before... I can say that I understand his point of view, and I’m not a fan of ad blockers... From my standpoint, we need to get to a place where publishers are able to plead their case for how you consume their content if you refuse to be shown ads. They need to be able to make the case for a quality experience and not betray readers’ trust in a carnival environment. 

RTD: How does C1X distinguish itself from competitors?
Jenkins: Most have been around for a number of years, and they participated in the space when you didn’t have to open up the black box. They didn’t have to be completely transparent before… The SSP (supply-side platform) model is really just a black box, and we’re now coming to a point where everyone is wanting to know everything they possibly can.

For every dollar they spend, they want to know how much of that dollar is going to media as opposed to service fees and other markups. Historically, that number has been pretty big… The fees we publicly share mean a buyer can anticipate 90% of what they spend is actually media. That’s pretty compelling for them, on top of knowing where ads are actually running.

RTD: What is the company's role in publishers transitioning from print newspapers to digital?
Jenkins: It's twofold: enabling brands to actually be able to buy what they want to buy. As scary as that sounds, they’ve already been doing that. They just haven’t been doing it articulately enough. We want to enable brands to spend how they want to spend. Publishers might cringe because they think about that loss of control, but we want to view it as an opportunity to engage and do business.

The other thing is, I feel we are also in a role to empower... We want to empower them to be able to share the viability of their audience by data and to do that without having to retool their entire organization [by] hiring more people to do this behind the scenes. We want to empower them with a set of tools that allows them to be competitive in their space.

RTD: Can you talk about C1X's partnership with the NNN?
Jenkins: We’re just deepening that engagement right now, expanding the number of news sites we're working with on their behalf and making them more nimble over next quarter or two... We’re talking to an organization of smart people and giving them something you can't get no matter how many smart people you have: management of an ever-growing stack of data put on you as a prerequisite of doing business today and in the future. You can’t outsmart that. You have to have smart people empowered by tech.