Newscorp plans to cut out third-party advertising networks with the launch of a ‘global programmatic advertising exchange’ covering its Australian, UK and US websites and its ballball app in Indonesia.

Group chief executive Robert Thomson says third parties are “no longer invited to the party”.

The exchange will give advertisers access to its online and mobile products and rich first-party data for programmatic buying and real-time bidding. The group is discontinuing any remaining arrangements with third-party ad networks.

News says the exchange will roll out “over the coming weeks”, to comprise more than 50 leading web sites and mobile products. These include theaustralian.com.au, news.com.au, wsj.com, thetimes.co.uk, nypost.com, marketwatch.com and thesun.co.uk. Also included is ballball, a recently-launched mobile app and website with European football highlights in Japan, Indonesia and Vietnam.

Says Thomson, “Content aggregators would like to commodify our content, while data scrapers would like to aggregate our audience – the only way to reach the world’s greatest content and the most prestigious and lucrative audiences is directly through our digital properties.

“Third parties are no longer invited to the party.”

News is working with digital advertising infrastructure company The Rubicon Project as its global ‘sell-side’ platform. It says the exchange will allow advertisers to target a number of audience segments on a global scale via premium quality inventory and unique data.

Each business unit will continue to maintain their existing dedicated advertising sales teams in conjunction with the new programmatic exchange.