Stagwell Is Buying Its Way Closer to the Audience

Stagwell acquired Freestar last month, a publisher advertising technology company that helps more than 1,000 digital publishers manage and monetize their advertising inventory. Freestar's network handles nearly one billion ad requests every day across publishers including Fortune, Boston Globe Media, and Enthusiast Gaming.

The acquisition gives Stagwell more direct access to the publisher side of advertising. Its agencies already help brands decide where media budgets should go, and Freestar puts the company closer to the publishers generating the audience activity behind those decisions.

Stagwell says it will integrate Freestar with its AI Media Machine, which helps automate parts of media planning and buying. The integration could help Stagwell use insights from publisher audiences to make more informed decisions about where clients spend their media budgets.

Why Stagwell Is Moving Closer to Publishers

Agencies traditionally sit on the buying side of advertising. They work with the advertiser, develop the media plan, and use outside platforms to reach audiences across publishers and other media properties.

Freestar operates closer to the supply itself. Its technology helps publishers manage advertising inventory and monetization, giving it a view into the media environments where people are actually reading, watching, and spending time.

Stagwell isn’t acquiring those publishers, but it's getting much closer to them. Owning technology on the publisher side gives its agencies another perspective before a media purchase happens, including more information about available inventory and the environments where audiences spend time.

What Publisher Data Can Tell Advertisers

A publisher knows things about its audience that can be difficult to capture through a broad advertising category. A sports site can see which teams, players, and stories repeatedly bring people back, while a gaming publisher can observe which games and communities hold attention over time.

Those patterns can reveal more about an audience than a single media impression. Someone appearing in a broad interest category tells a marketer something, but knowing what they repeatedly choose to read or watch can provide a much clearer picture of why a particular environment makes sense.

Freestar could give Stagwell a view into that kind of context across a large network of publishers. Ben Berentson, who leads Stagwell’s Owned Media business, told AdExchanger the deal lets the company build more detailed audiences across those properties than it could before, and Stagwell plans to carry that into its broader media buying.

If Stagwell can put that information to work across its agencies, advertisers could make media decisions with a better understanding of the environments they're buying into.

The Media Plan Should Start With the Audience

Media planning often begins after a target audience has been loosely defined. The team knows roughly who it wants, then looks across channels and platforms for the most efficient way to reach those people.

At RAD Intel, we think that order is backwards. Too many media plans choose channels first and learn about the audience along the way, spending budget to discover what people actually care about. Understanding the audience should come first, before a single dollar is allocated.

Stagwell’s decision to move closer to publishers suggests it sees value in information beyond what traditional ad platforms provide. Targeting options tell a marketer who can be reached, but they don’t necessarily explain why an audience shows up, what keeps it coming back, or which environments it trusts.

Media Infrastructure Is Becoming Valuable

Stagwell could have continued reaching Freestar’s publishers through the existing advertising supply chain. Buying the company instead gives Stagwell more control over the technology and information connecting those publishers with advertisers.

Stagwell’s agencies represent advertisers, and it now owns a business that helps publishers sell their inventory. While Stagwell says advertisers will still decide whether Freestar inventory goes into their campaigns, questions remain about how audience data will be shared and used across the two businesses.

Access to creative tools and automated media buying is becoming common, while direct knowledge about audiences and the environments they spend time in is much harder to recreate.

As media buying becomes more automated, the information feeding those decisions becomes a competitive advantage. Stagwell paid to get closer to where that information begins. Before their next media plan, marketers should consider whether they truly understand their audience or simply know how to reach it.