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Monthly Archives: June 2014
Three quarters of mobile users see targeted adverts as invasion of privacy, says Razorfish…
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Native Advertising: Key Marketing Strategy for Overexposed Digital Consumers
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EatingWell at the Heart of New CDC Healthy Eating & Lifestyle Resource Center
Meredith has partnered with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to enhance its Million Hearts initiative with a new Healthy Eating & Lifestyle Resource Center. The CDC launched the initiative in 2011 with the goal of preventing 1 million heart attacks and strokes by 2017. Its primary objectives are to improve treatment and care and to empower Americans to make healthy choices such as avoiding tobacco and reducing sodium and trans fat consumption. EatingWell worked with the CDC to develop family-friendly meal plans that emphasis on managing sodium intake.
While the site already featured tools to help consumers assess their heart attack and stroke risk, much of the site has been targeted at healthcare providers. With the addition of the Healthy Eating & Lifestyle Resource Center, the site will be “more appealing and approachable for consumers,” said Larry Sommers, GM, Digital Media & Business Development, EatingWell Magazine. “Our mission is to inspire people to eat healthy every day, which we support through magazines, books and websites of course. But the credibility and reach of the CDC is amazing and we are in a position to help them with their mission. When it comes to food, we know something about delicious and easy, but also about health,” Sommers added.
Central to the offering is a collection of heart healthy recipes, complemented by meal plans and inspiring articles and slideshows—all “powered by EatingWell.” Particularly compelling is the Advanced Recipe Search tool, which allows users to search by course, type of dish, cooking time and more—with user-friendly parameters that include “quick,” “kid-friendly” and “vegetarian.”
“We wanted to create something that was fun, engaging, visual and that simplifies things. We tried to create a tool that makes healthy choices and recipes as fun as for shopping for shoes on Zappos.” In addition to providing 750 lower-sodium recipes to search from, the Resource Center also provides 28-day prescriptive meal plans to lose weight. All of the recipes featured in the Resource Center include nutritional facts, use everyday ingredients found at local supermarkets and have been tested by EatingWell. Recipes will be added over time, including seasonal options.
For Meredith, “this is a strong integrated play,” says Sommers. “It leverages our content assets to reach a wider audience, but one that aligns with our goals of supporting the health and wellness space.” He says that Meredith is “proud to partner with the CDC. They are the real deal. Partnering with them is a great validation of the quality of content we publish.”
Study Reveals Best Practices for Instagram Ads
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Q&A: Mark Howard, CRO Forbes Media, on Creating Native Advertising Content
This Q&A is part of OPA’s “Three on Three” series where we ask three industry executives the same three questions on a topic to uncover actionable insights… If you want to learn more, keep an eye out on our site for more interviews. Today’s Three on Three interview is with Mark Howard, CRO Forbes Media on Creating Native Advertising Content.
Q: Describe the importance of quality content in the Native Advertising value proposition:
A: As with editorial content, quality brand content is key for an advertiser to remain relevant and achieve credibility and impact. Some typical hallmarks of quality are, of course, accuracy, craftsmanship and usefulness to the audience. But it’s important to note that those characteristics can mean different things in different contexts. That’s why contextual relevance is also critical to a quality experience. What may work contextually in one environment, site, social media network or native ad placement may feel out of place−or not resonate as well−with the audience in another.
At Forbes, we review each potential partner’s content plan to determine whether that content would be relevant for the Forbes business journalism audience. We have guidelines for the nature of the content on our site. The content itself is not a place for marketers to promote products or services but rather a forum to provide domain expertise and insights and authentically engage with the Forbes.com audience. Members of our team work closely with our digital partners to share their years of expertise in the digital content landscape, and we share those lessons and collaborate with marketers to help them achieve success.
Q: Describe the way in which your organization handles the creation of Native Advertising content:
A: Forbes gives marketers a voice as experts in their fields to share their thought leadership and storytelling on Forbes.com and in Forbes magazine. Marketers have direct publishing access to Forbes.com. We first launched BrandVoice (then called AdVoice) in 2010, which emerged from a visionary philosophy that perceived the web and burgeoning social networks as great equalizer and merit-based information sharing systems. A variety of voices–whether it’s the voice of journalists, audience members or marketers–now has a chance to be heard. The audience “votes” through engagement.
In 2013, Forbes BrandVoice articles garnered more than 11 million page views. Partners have also seen benefits from their BrandVoice campaigns beyond article engagement. For example, a contributor from one of our partners received an invitation to advise government officials on her area of expertise–cloud computing−based on the exposure and credibility she earned via the Forbes BrandVoice platform.
Q: What types of marketing initiatives lend themselves best to leveraging Native Advertising and how can they be designed to better deliver on their objectives?
A: Brand content should serve the audience first. It should be useful to the audience in some way, it should be aligned with the marketer’s identity, and it should also make sense contextually within the environment where it’s being featured natively. Forbes readers expect authentic business thought leadership and storytelling aligned with a marketer’s expertise and ethos. On another site, the audience may expect, for example, entertainment or life science information.
Three pieces of advice for marketers for brand content programs:
- Commit to and resource brand content as a permanent initiative for your brand, with an ever-growing body of work. This is especially key as social and smartphone usage continues to rise. Content commands attention on the smaller screens and on social media.
- Think and act like a publisher, information provider, journalist, storyteller and/or entertainer. If you don’t know how, hire or work with people who do.
- Consider your brand content program one important piece of your overall brand marketing and advertising strategy that aims to broaden reach, drive awareness and trust, and increase exposure. A great brand content program works in concert with—but is itself different—than other types of advertising and marketing within your brand universe.
And some advice for publishers would be:
- First and foremost, be transparent and provide clear disclosure about the source of the content.
- Make your brand content programs truly native and contextually relevant to the spirit and goals of your environment, avoiding commoditized native advertising shortcuts that aren’t truly native, aren’t contextually relevant and aren’t useful to the audience.
- Teach your partners to become great publishers. Guide them strategically. Share metrics openly.
Mark Howard is Chief Revenue Officer at Forbes Media. In this role, he is responsible for the U.S. and European digital and print sales organization, marketing and advertising solutions. Previously, he was SVP of Digital Advertising Strategy. Howard also held the position of SVP and VP of Digital Advertising Sales for Forbes Media, overseeing the global sales team in its online sales efforts as well leading the Western Region team in its integrated sales efforts. Howard joined Forbes Media as a Regional Sales Manager in 2002. During his time at Forbes, he has also served as West Coast Digital Sales Director and Western Region Director of Integrated Sales. Prior to joining Forbes Media, Howard held sales positions at Inc. and Fast Company magazines, as well as E-Trade Financial. He began his career as a media planner at Anderson & Lembke.
Note: This Q&A is part of OPA’s “Three on Three” series where we ask three industry executives the same three questions on a topic to uncover actionable insights.
Also in this series:
Q&A: Mike Kisseberth, Chief Revenue Officer of Purch, on Creating Native Advertising Content
Q&A: Edward Menicheschi, VP & publisher of Vanity Fair, on Creating Native Advertising Content
Healthy Insights: WebMD Healthy Target App Combines Content and Data for Popular Fitness Wearables
WebMD is bringing insights to wearables with the launch of WebMD Healthy Target. Available within WebMD’s flagship mobile app for iPhone, Healthy Target is designed translate step, sleep, weight and blood glucose data from multiple well-known device manufacturers—including Entra, Fitbit, UP by Jawbone and Withings—into actionable insights.
WebMD director of mobile product development David Ziegler cites the increasing popularity of wearables as one factor in the decision to target this market. However he emphasizes that the move originated from a desire to better serve WebMD’s core audience “with a health improvement and behavior-change program.” While wearables are adept at tracking a range of user activities and behaviors, interpreting the data had been left to the users. With Healthy Target, WebMD helps users set achievable goals and pairs them with content-based insights the help them achieve those goals.
“We went into this knowing that a lot of activity trackers end up in users’ sock drawers. To date the devices only deliver the numbers; we believe that by providing contextual WebMD information and insights we can help users understand the data and learn new habits that will improve their health” says Ziegler. “And we are finding that device makers are also excited about this tool because it will keep people using their devices longer.”
The app starts off by letting users set one of six goals: 1) lose weight 2) eat healthier 3) be more active 4) control blood sugar 5) sleep better 6) feel better. Once goals are selected, Healthy Target recommends three habits that can help users reach them.
It then supports the formation of these new health habits not only by tracking and reporting on users’ progress, but also by suggesting content that helps them succeed. For example, if your goal is to sleep better, but your tracker finds you didn’t sleep well last night, the system will offer physician-reviewed suggestions to help and motivate you, or an article on what causes fatigue or a list of the effects of poor sleep.
One of Ziegler’s favorite features of WebMD Healthy Target is the way in which it provides weekly reviews that not only provide insights into users’ progress, but provides encouraging insights to help them improve and stay motivated. “For example, if you didn’t do your habit, we ask why: Were you stressed? Did you forget? Then Healthy Target generates a reading list to help you overcome those obstacles.”
For medical concerns such as diabetes, the tracker not only provides ongoing informational support, but calls-to-action if necessary. “Everything we do is physician- reviewed and for Healthy Target, we worked closely with doctors who are experts in diabetes to develop intelligence on the back end. If your levels are high or low, the tracker interrupts with a big alert on things you should do immediately.”
While the first wave of biometrics stores data in silos, WebMD wants to unify that information in one place so that users can easily gain usable insights from the behaviors they may be tracking on various devices including fitness trackers, wireless glucometers and scales. Now that the devices are beginning to mature and the data automatically updates, Ziegler believes that the time is right to combine personal, tracked data with trusted health content to help users live a healthier life.
“We want to be the central location for your personal data. People will have multiple biometric data points, but they trust WebMD to bring it to one central location.” This data, combined with physician-reviewed, contextually-relevant content and motivational tips, will support WebMD’s goal of supporting users’ in developing healthy habits that last.
Univision Ramps Up World Cup Across Digital and Social
The 2014 FIFA World Cup is well under way and it is proving to be the most digital and social event in the history of Univision Deportes. The first six days of the 2014 FIFA World Cup have been the most visited days for Univision Digital of all time. Moreover, the live stream of the Mexico vs. Brazil game on June 17 received 3.63 million views, making it Univision’s most watched live stream ever.
This does not come as a surprise. Compared to 2010, this World Cup compared shows far greater digital consumption across live streaming, page views and social media interaction and reflects the broader shifts taking place in the consumer media landscape, notably the dramatic shift to mobile.
Our World Cup digital experience is centered around our Univision Deportes app. We partnered with industry leader NeuLion to create the newly-enhanced app to deliver the best possible World Cup digital viewing experience, serving as the official home for all World Cup games and content. The app offers fans access to high-quality live streaming coverage of all the games with in-match, real time highlights and stats, multi-camera angle video highlights, schedules, individual club news, rosters and more. In expectation of the tremendous demand for live streaming that we expected, we worked hard to test and re-test with matches before the World Cup to make sure that the viewing experience was the very best possible.
Additionally, the app offers fans watching live sports on smartphones and tablets a one-of-a-kind interactive live soccer experience that can be personalized to the individual fan, connecting users to each other via their social networks using Twitter and Facebook. U.S. Hispanics over-index on digital video consumption. We took this into account with the creation of this app which has been optimized to work across mobile devices and platforms.
Our audience has most certainly embraced this app in a big way. It has already been downloaded more than 1 million times since June 1, and now 2 million times overall. In fact, since the launch of the World Cup, the Univision Deportes app has ranked among the top three free sports apps in the Apple App Store.
Our objective for this World Cup was to provide a new digital destination for soccer fans that gives them a chance to engage with content, watch games live on the go and receive up-to-the-minute, real time match highlights and updates like they never have before. We want to deliver the ultimate companion for the die-hard soccer fan—regardless of platform. Importantly, from a strategic perspective, we made the decision to not create a separate experience and app just for World Cup. We created the Univision Deportes experience as both the home of our World Cup experience and the home of all of our soccer coverage year-long.
As part of Univision’s FIFA World Cup Brazil 2014 all around digital experience, fans can also follow the action, online in the fully responsive World Cup homepage, or using the hashtag #UDMundial across their social platforms on Twitter via @UnivisionSports, as well as comment and follow all related content Facebook.com/UnivisionDeportes and Instagram/UnivisionDeportes.
The World Cup creates the space for one big conversation across social media. We have seen consistently high engagement on Twitter and Facebook, with viewers engaging with our programs in a big way. Our awards shows consistently have higher social engagement than the GRAMMYs and Oscars. For the World Cup, we have led on Nielsen Twitter TV ratings across some of the matches.
For this World Cup, we will deliver a few interesting new social plays:
First, Univision has created “Por El Futbol,” a documentary for fans around memorable World Cup moments as told by the fans, via Instagram and Vine
Second, Univision is kicking off the longest soccer kick in the world, offering fans to join by participating through Instagram and Vine, which will culminate with the ball landing in Brazil.
Then we want to break from pure sports posts and show more of what fans are experiencing throughout Brazil, fans can experience every moment as if they were there by following hashtag #CelebrandoEnBrasil via their favorite social network.
As for social TV integration, Univision and Facebook have teamed up to deliver the best possible social experience for fans who tune into World Cup coverage, with Facebook and Instagram content integrated into the broadcast. This allows us to continue to work with our viewers as they become partners in the content creation process.
The daily broadcast segments feature a mix of Facebook posts by athletes, teams and public figures, fan comments, various chatter data (such as which players are top talk on Facebook, etc.), along with Instagram photos by teams, players and fans. Univision has committed to running a significant number of social segments daily throughout the tournament.
We welcome one and all to watch fútbol en Español with us! 
Kevin Conroy serves as president of Univision Interactive Media and Enterprise Development for Univision Communications Inc.Conroy has more than 20 years of advertising and media experience and has managed a number of popular Web brands, including AOL, AIM, ICQ, Moviefone, Netscape, Truveo and Winamp. Conroy was recognized by Broadcasting & Cable as a 2010 Digital All-Star, and lauded as one of Digital Media Wire’s 25 Executives to Watch. He also serves on the boards of The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), Online Publishers Association (OPA), Newell Rubbermaid (NWL) and RecycleBank. He is a graduate of Bowdoin College.
Q&A: Edward Menicheschi, VP & Publisher of Vanity Fair, on Creating Native Advertising Content
This Q&A is part of OPA’s “Three on Three” series where we ask three industry executives the same three questions on a topic to uncover actionable insights… If you want to learn more, keep an eye out on our site for more interviews. Today’s Three on Three interview is with Edward Menicheschi, VP & publisher of Vanity Fair, on Creating a Native Advertising Content.
Q: Describe the importance of quality content in the Native Advertising value proposition:
A: Quality is everything in generating content for our audience and Native is no exception. Part of the filter that our in house agency, VF Agenda, applies is: does this have a rational reason to be within our brand? Will our audience find value in all of this? Does it propel the storytelling process around the subject matter?
Q: Describe the way in which your organization handles the creation of Native Advertising content:
A: We receive multiple requests on a monthly basis for Native Advertising content creation. As a company, we made a decision to enter this space last year. We pass on a fair number of requests if we feel we don’t have something great to offer the consumer or something that makes sense within our brand voice. An example of something that worked particularly well was the Hennessy Native content program we produced last December. The “Hennessy Original Film” about car racing felt like a natural fit for our readers.
Q: What types of marketing initiatives lend themselves best to leveraging Native Advertising and how can they be designed to better deliver on their objectives?
A: We always think of story line first in considering how Native Advertising can support a brand’s marketing initiative. Is there something new to discuss, is there context that works beyond a traditional ad message that leads to discovery? Is there relevant subject matter that will lead an audience to want to find out more? Those are the benchmarks that we think marketers should be asking themselves beyond the traditional KPI’s.
Don’t enter the space for the sake of saying you’re in it. Really think through the implications for your brand. Transparency is paramount in communicating that Native Advertising is sponsored content. The consumer is way too plugged in to assume that you can blur the lines and they won’t know. Be up front. Tell a great story. Set the bar high. And use great content creators who know how to land a message with the consumer.
Edward Menicheschi has been VP and publisher of Vanity Fair since August 2006. He previously was president of WWD Media Worldwide. He first joined Condé Nast in 1986, working at GQ. He also served as executive editor of Vogue for two years before being named associate publisher in 1994. Menicheschi also was the president of IAM.COM, a talent-search website.
Note: This Q&A is part of OPA’s “Three on Three” series where we ask three industry executives the same three questions on a topic to uncover actionable insights.
Also in this series:
Q&A: Mike Kisseberth, Chief Revenue Officer of Purch, on Creating Native Advertising Content
For World Cup 2014, ESPN’s Goal is to Give Fans a Winning Multiplatform Experience
The buzz around the 2014 World Cup is palpable. And this year, more people can watch it more places than ever before thanks, at least in part, to ESPN’s massive multiplatform push. According to Patrick Stiegman, VP and Editorial Director of ESPN Digital and Print Media, “Strategically, we don’t separate digital from print and broadcast. All parts must be moving together nicely as we produce this incredible event.”
ESPN has a team of 15 people on the ground in Brazil providing coverage that is being leveraged across all of its platforms. The work they do will be used for breaking news, analysis, digital features and shorts, and stories for broadcast and print. “All of our reporters are thinking multiplatform at all times,” says Stiegman. “At the World Cup, they are ESPN reporters, not specific to a delivery platform.” For example, Michael Davies and Roger Bennett, who are well known for their popular Men in Blazers podcasts on Grantland, are contributing daily blog posts to ESPN FC. In turn, segments of broadcast video commentary are available on the website and in ESPN’s apps.
To flesh out this multiplatform approach, ESPN has made significant investments in its digital delivery that will enable viewers to watch all 64 matches live online via an embedded WatchESPN video player on its responsive ESPN FC website, which it relaunched along with the ESPN FC app, earlier this month. Stiegman says that the updated ESPN FC app will be a “game changing service for fans. It will be a mobile home for anyone who wants to follow the ins and outs of the World Cup.”
A “huge step in ESPN’s digital strategy is personalization,” according to Stiegman. “Increasingly, we see the drive toward personalization. In more than a third of our visits, fans spend time in clubhouses and take a team-specific approach. They want the higher level stuff, but also want to follow their teams in depth.” To that end, the ESPN FC app starts with IP-based geolocation, and then prompts users to set which edition they want. Options include regional or specific team-centric coverage as well as language options that include Spanish and Portuguese. All matches will be available online in Portuguese via ESPN Deportes as well.
Another significant piece of the company’s strategy that has allowed ESPN to provide such extensive digital availability of this year’s World Cup is the company’s work over the past several years to improve authentication, particularly ease of use. “With WatchESPN, we’ve been working hard for some time to make it as easy as possible for fans to authenticate as cable subscribers.” ESPN currently has digital authentication deals with Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Dish.
“We really are focused on allowing viewers to access ESPN on the best screen available at any given moment. Maybe that’s mobile on a plane. Or maybe, like it is at my house, you’ll be watching on a tablet while your daughter watches Disney on your 60-inch TV.” While the goal with authentication has been to make signing in as easy as possible, increasing the breadth and depth of offerings via as wide a range of platforms as possible “is all about giving viewers a clear return on investment for taking the time to do so.”