Save 50% on a 3-month Digiday+ membership. Ends Dec 5.
The move comes at an interesting time for Vibrant. It is in the midst of moving its business from being primarily about in-text advertising, denoted with double-green underlines, into one that’s pushing an array of contextual ad products. Vibrant is running in-line contextual ads on photos, expanding its banner business and rolling out toolbars for publishers to create more inventory. The idea is to turn its in-page targeting engine, which matches keywords with relevant ads for in-text placements, into a broader ad business.
That’s probably the only way for Vibrant to move from being a nice, reliably profitable but relatively small company into the big leagues of ad tech companies slated for a public offering or a huge acquisition. It will also bring it far greater competition, with a raft of companies looking to monetize publisher photos and companies like Meebo offering toolbars.
Irvine was CEO of About for three years, joining The New York Times Co subsidiary from Digitas, where she was chief administrative officer. She stepped down from About in May as the unit struggled dealing with the aftereffects of Google’s algorithm change, which downgraded many About pages from Google’s search results.
More in Media
What publishers are wishing for this holiday season: End AI scraping and determine AI-powered audience value
Publishers want a fair, structured, regulated AI environment and they also want to define what the next decade of audience metrics looks like.
Digiday+ Research Subscription Index 2025: Subscription strategies from Bloomberg, The New York Times, Vox and others
Digiday’s third annual Subscription Index examines and measures publishers’ subscription strategies to identify common approaches and key tactics among Bloomberg, The New York Times, Vox and others.
From lawsuits to lobbying: How publishers are fighting AI
We may be closing out 2025, but publishers aren’t retreating from the battle of AI search — some are escalating it, and they expect the fight to stretch deep into 2026.
Ad position: web_bfu