• by Tony Silber , November 15, 2021

If digital media is a balance between UX and generating revenue, then ad tech is the oil that drives the machine, ensuring both objectives are in sync.

In that spirit, Hashtag Labs said Monday it is signing on with Markets Insider as an ad-tech services provider. Markets Insider is a 5-year-old partnership between Insider Inc. (formerly Business Insider) and Finanzen, the German financial-media brand. Insider Inc. and Finanzen are both subsidiaries of the German publishing giant Axel Springer.

Together, they launched Markets Insider in 2016 to combine the witty voice of Business Insider with Finanzen’s powerful data capabilities. In hiring Hashtag Labs, the upstart publisher sought a partner that could enable it to maximize ad revenue while maintaining rapid page-load times and keeping the site clutter-free. Hashtag Labs’ platform, HTL BID, enhanced the site’s pre-existing ad infrastructure to achieve these goals.  

HTL BID says it offers a flexible, modern ad-loading system that alleviates the burden of managing ad technology from the publisher’s engineering team and offers many advanced capabilities, including turnkey header-bidding management, video ad management, ad-slot level controls to optimize for metrics like viewability, and more.

“We wanted to launch as digital natives, and advertising technology should never impair the user experience,” said Sarah Malanoski, Markets Insider manager. “Which is why we are pleased to work with Hashtag Labs to help ensure that our ad stack operates as smoothly as possible. They offer sophisticated ad-tech solutions that help us greatly increase the efficiency and performance of our ad operations.”  

“Markets Insider has built a wonderfully loyal audience,” said Hashtag Labs founder-CEO John Shankman. “Its users check the pages at least every day, and often more. HTL BID keeps the ads loading efficiently and effectively. We’re glad to free up Sarah and her team to concentrate on the great data-driven business journalism that drew that audience in the first place.”