Mail Metro Media is rewiring its commercial model around PMPs, first-party data, and a lighter ad load to build a more outcomes-driven business.The shift comes as publishers face ongoing volatility in open-market programmatic revenue and increasing pressure from buyers to prove performance.
On sheer scale alone, you’d assume Mail Metro Media — the commercial ad arm of DMG Media, which owns the Daily Mail and Metro titles — was a textbook high‑volume programmatic machine. And yet, for years, the publisher has been driven by direct digital deals, with a split tech stack and a small programmatic team largely focused on the open market, according to its new md of advertising, Pierce Cook-Anderson.
He wouldn’t share exact figures but stressed that the “overwhelming majority” of Mail Metro’s digital ad revenue, which was £148.3 million ($202.4 million) last year, still comes from direct deals rather than programmatic — a gap he now wants PMPs to start filling.
Cook-Anderson, who joined from curation platform Audigent two months ago, has a clear mandate: fix what he sees as years of under‑investment in PMPs and managed programmatic, and drive roughly 300% growth in that line over three years without blowing up the direct relationships that still underpin Mail Metro’s revenue.
