Six major UK publishers have formed Atria, a collective to control and curate their own ad inventory. The move aims to offer advertisers high-quality, scalable options while addressing challenges from programmatic advertising and changing web standards.
Six leading UK publishers have joined forces to launch Atria, a new collective designed to give them more control over how their digital ad inventory is curated and sold. This initiative responds to ongoing challenges in monetization and programmatic advertising, as publishers seek to protect the value of their content and offer advertisers premium inventory at scale.
Atria, which launched in February through a partnership with Permutive, brings together Hearst UK, Bauer Media, Immediate, Future, HELLO!, and Time Out. These publishers, often direct competitors, have been exploring a collective approach for years. According to James Walmsley, advertising director at Immediate, the group acted in response to new industry practices such as social platforms limiting outbound links and AI-generated search summaries reducing site traffic.
The collective aims to safeguard the value of human-produced journalism as AI-generated content becomes more prevalent. Walmsley said Atria allows the group to present a unified voice in the advertising market. The six publishers together represent 105 digital media brands, reaching 33 million monthly unique visitors-over 60% of the UK online audience, according to Doug Green, digital strategy director at Hearst UK.
Atria curates both display and video inventory from its members, giving priority to curated deal IDs in their SSPs’ programmatic waterfalls. If inventory is not sold through an Atria private marketplace (PMP), it remains available via open auction. The group is also working to add high-impact ad units and attention metrics, with Adnami as its exclusive partner for these formats.
Walmsley noted that agency feedback confirmed demand for premium editorial environments, but agencies often lack the time to set up multiple direct or curated deals. Atria was created to simplify this process, allowing agencies to use a single PMP or deal ID to target audiences across all participating sites. Green added that Atria addresses buyer preferences for transparency and quality, offering a single, clear supply path to multiple trusted publishers.
Chris Kane, founder of Jounce Media, said curation helps reduce bid duplication and redundant supply paths in programmatic media. He explained that curators cannot create new bid requests or modify audience parameters, which helps prevent bidstream bloat and inflated inventory. Curation also requires buyers to target specific deal IDs, ensuring they purchase inventory from sites they actively choose, rather than risking low-quality or made-for-advertising content.
Pooling resources has become more attractive for publishers who lack the scale to build viable tech solutions independently. Permutive, already serving as a DMP for all Atria members, enables audience curation without exposing proprietary data. Permutive collects a curation fee, and publishers are compensated based on the share of their inventory sold through curated deals.
Due to UK competition laws, each publisher sets its own floor prices for PMPs. Atria offers always-on PMPs and custom deals for specific buyer needs or seasonal trends, such as dedicated fashion audiences and “avoidance” segments like a “World Cup avoiders” PMP. Green said this approach helps brands reach niche audiences, such as tennis fans during Wimbledon, without competing with broader sports marketing noise.
Between February and May, advertisers ran about a dozen campaigns through Atria’s PMPs. Only one, for Princess Cruises, had completed by late May, but Bauer’s Ali Reeves reported that it delivered 40% higher click-through rates than typical upper-funnel campaigns.
Joe Root, co-founder and CEO of Permutive, said publishers have always had the first-party data to curate effective segments, but signals often get lost in the programmatic ecosystem. Curated deal IDs help ensure high-quality inventory is recognized and measured by buyers. Root added that when advertisers cannot verify performance, ad spend tends to shift to social platforms that offer more robust reporting. He said Atria’s members now see themselves as competing with social media for ad budgets, not just with each other.
Walmsley reported that Atria is already attracting new demand from agencies that previously would not have considered direct deals with some of the individual publishers. He said the collective approach is resulting in greater advertiser commitment across both core and non-core publications.
As publishers continue to experiment with new ways to protect their ad revenue and editorial value, some are also exploring AI-powered formats and search experiences. For example, several major publishers have recently adopted new technologies to keep users engaged on their sites and offer advertisers more targeted opportunities, as discussed in this report on AI-powered Q&A search and ad formats.
