Us Weekly, with its 40+ million readers, stands as a pop cultural touchstone and trusted source for breaking entertainment news and celebrity-focused lifestyle content.

Us Weekly publisher, A360media (a360) understood that their content archive and real-time coverage of celebrity culture were a goldmine in terms of reader engagement, consistently driving high value traffic and social sharing.

But Paul Likins, a360's VP of Revenue Operations, recognized an untapped potential within their content. He knew that stories about celebrity workouts, vacation homes, and lifestyle choices contained countless opportunities to reach audiences interested in fitness, real estate, and consumer products; a360 just needed a way to find them.

The Solution: Retaxonomize to surface new programmatic categories

Traditional content tagging relies on editors manually categorizing stories. This approach is time-consuming and misses the deeper connections that could attract advertisers from untapped industries. 

Instead, a360 needed a scalable solution to accurately categorize vast amounts of content data in real-time, uncovering the full spectrum of topics beneath the surface of celebrity news.

To address this challenge, a360 partnered with Hum to build a new, dynamic taxonomy for Us Weekly's extensive and growing content library. Hum's Alchemist Taxonomy + Tagging Engine uses AI to read and analyze Us Weekly’s content in real-time, building a detailed taxonomy that aligns with IAB advertising standards while uncovering new targetable themes.

The Results: Increased inventory & streamlined programmatic activation

By combining Hum’s AI content tags with audience data, a360 created novel contextual audiences for its ad sales team and advertisers. For example, when Alchemist analyzed Us Weekly's archive, it found over 650 articles relevant to automotive advertisers – a category that traditionally might not have considered celebrity news as a viable channel.

The new system delivers three key benefits:

  • Deeper Insights: AI tagging provides up to 50x more detail than manual categorization
  • Instant Activation: New content is automatically categorized and made available for programmatic advertising
  • Expanded Reach: A360media can now compete for advertising dollars across previously untapped industries

By connecting Alchemist's tags directly to Google Ad Manager, a360media streamlined their programmatic advertising process. Advertisers can now automatically bid on highly relevant content the moment it's published.

Likins emphasized the impact of this new approach, stating, "Alchemist's advanced content tagging has significantly enhanced the depth and precision of our programmatic advertising strategy. This has enabled us to uncover and leverage highly relevant inventory that was previously underutilized, fostering mutually beneficial outcomes for both our platform and advertising partners."

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