Bell Media and Magna are partnering to offer OOH advertising on Magna’s City Delivery autonomous vehicle pilot program in Toronto (pictured), with Astral serving as the exclusive sales agent for ad opportunities.
City Delivery, which operates under Ontario’s Automated Vehicle Pilot Program, is a test of small, autonomous delivery vehicles operating at low speeds on public roads in designated areas of Toronto. The program is designed to help reduce delivery costs, increase road safety and reduce CO2 emissions.
Bell says the partnership will provide advertisers with a new platform to reach audiences through Magna’s autonomous delivery vehicles in Toronto, allowing for innovative and visible brand engagement in key city areas.
In addition to the advertising component of the partnership with Astral, the City Delivery program will leverage a data partnership with Environics Analytics, a Bell Canada company. Magna’s electric autonomous delivery vehicles will be optimally routed on city streets in part by using Environics Analytics’ MobileScapes, a comprehensive anonymized mobile movement database.
Bell Media implements LiveRamp’ ATS
Bell Media is now using LiveRamp’s Authenticated Traffic Solution (ATS) to bring identity and addressability to the Canadian media ecosystem, joining a growing list of publishers who trust the solution. Environics Analytics (EA), the exclusive provider of LiveRamp technology in Canada, announced the move this week.
With the deal, Bell Media will roll out ATS on Connected TV, enabling precise ad targeting across its content on CTV, CTV2, Noovo and select specialty channels. ATS uses LiveRamp’s RampID durable identifier to support flexibility and scale in digital marketing. This allows advertisers to securely connect their own RampID-enabled first-party data to publishers’ authenticated inventory.
Bell Media can also integrate with various identity solutions like The Trade Desk’s Unified ID 2.0, Yahoo’s ConnectID, and Google’s Publisher Advertiser Identity Reconciliation.
Through LiveRamp’s partnership with EA (announced in 2024), customers can access LiveRamp’s data network and clean room tech to target RampID-enabled audiences across thousands of publishers and platforms globally that use ATS.
Former Glacier Media journalists unite to launch local newspaper
After Glacier Media shut down three digital community newspapers in April and May – which affected the jobs of Unifor local 2,000 members – journalists are forming a worker co-op to launch a new newspaper in B.C.
Four veteran reporters, with the support of Unifor and the Union Cooperative Initiative, are launching a fundraising campaign dubbed “Save Our Local News” to create a “trusted and reliable publication” for New Westminster, Burnaby and the Tri-Cities. Unifor is contributing $5,000 to the project, and the co-op is calling on the community to support their campaign and fundraising efforts.
The Glacier Media closures affected the communities of Burnaby, New Westminster, Port Moody, Anmore, Belcarra, Coquitlam and Port Coquitlam, contributing to the troubling news deserts in Metro Vancouver, according to Unifor. “Thousands of residents and organizations in the Tri-Cities, Burnaby and New Westminster communities have lost access to their longstanding local news publications with the recent closures of the New Westminster Record, Burnaby Now and Tri-City News,” said Unifor Western regional director Gavin McGarrigle.
Glacier Media announced the closure of the three Metro Vancouver community news websites in February, stating that they had “explored all possible options to maintain operations,” but the industry’s “ongoing financial challenges have made it unsustainable.” The company said that it will continue to print the non-union newspapers North Shore News and Delta Optimist.
Unifor is Canada’s largest union in the private sector, representing more than 10,000 media workers, including journalists in the broadcast and print news industry.
