'It's on an island': Despite headwinds, Brandless is making a bet on going it alone

Brandless wants to win over customers on its own, drawing them into its marketplace as other consumer startup founders and VCs repeat a mantra around meeting the customer wherever they are.

For Digiday+ members: Unlike the crop of publishers that rode social distribution to easy scale several years ago, search-focused publishers rely on a much more stable and sustainable source of traffic.

Vice Media is focusing its growth efforts on building programmatic-guaranteed revenue, which rose 156% in the last year.

For Digiday+ members: In our latest pitch deck, see how Facebook is courting new agency partners.

The Washington Post's publishing platform, Arc, which now powers nearly 200 websites, wants its subscription tools to be "as self-serve as possible."

You'll have the chance to join product leaders from Refinery29, The Washington Post and Fatherly at the Digiday Publishing Product Leaders Retreat. Learn more and reserve your spot here.

If brands want to stay ahead, they'll have to rely on more than just gut feelings to make smart marketing decisions. Conclusions must be backed by data -- but it's up to brands to discover for themselves just which data sources to trust. Sponsored by Jumpshot.