A group of political news sites, both conservative and liberal, have joined together to form the Digital News Alliance, an advertising sales partnership designed to help the likes of Daily Caller and Raw Story compete with online ad giants Facebook and Google.
The alliance is made up of conservative-leaning sites like The Daily Caller and Washington Free Beacon, left-leaning outlets such as Alternet and Raw Story, as well as more middle-of-the-road places Dan Abrams’ Mediaite and its sister site Law&Crime. Together, the properties garner more than 145 million pageviews per month, 11 million Facebook followers and 1.1 million Twitter followers.
The Digital News Alliance will begin selling ad campaigns immediately and expects other publishers to join the initial launch group.
“We are very excited to begin this unprecedented partnership,” Andrew Eisbrouch, COO & General Counsel of Mediaite and Law&Crime said. “At a time when both parties in Washington can’t get along, we’ve found a way for sites of sometimes differing political ideologies to do important business together.”
The partnership launches ahead of the 2020 presidential campaign cycle, which is expected to generate nearly $10 billion in political ad spending, according to report this month by media buying agency GroupM. That would be about $3.6 billion more than the 2016 presidential campaign year.
Facebook and Google account for roughly 60% of all digital advertising dollars, according to eMarketer.