The old and new worlds of online advertising are at odds. The old want to protect traditional, direct selling of premium content brands and the new want to move inventory via automated algorithms. This is making the traditional sellers nervous. Online ad networks aggregate inventory across thousands of smaller web sites and offer publishers an alternative to monetize their web sites. Sites like ESPN and others are starting to see networks as profiting on their brand investments, user data, threatening their relationships with marketers and think using networks devalues the power of content.

The sites like ESPN have cut ties with Specific Media and several other ad networks saying that ad selling that relies heavily on arbitrage and algorithms is not for them. “We’re heading down a path where it no longer suits our business needs to work with ad networks,” said Eric Johnson, Vice President, Multimedia Sales, ESPN.

Sources say that Turner’s digital ad sales wing is rumored to be considering a similar move. “Turner, like a lot of media companies, is currently reviewing all of its media practices, and ad networks are certainly a part of that process,” said Walker Jacobs, SVP of Turner Entertainment New Media Ad Sales.

“Not all inventory is created equal,” said Peter Naylor, SVP, Digital Media Sales, NBC Universal. He said, iVillage’s Horoscope section generates a lot of traffic but doesn’t attract many endemic advertisers and thus has to use ad networks to monetize the traffic. More>>