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Articles by: "Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN"

DCN-Research | Revenue

The power of focus: building a strong niche publishing business

The media industry is in a time of great transition, in part due to the proliferation of digital publications and the growth and popularity of social platforms. While industry consolidation might threaten the independence of some publications, there is also an unprecedented opportunity for publishers to communicate their unique perspective to underserved, targeted audiences.

With this in mind—and with the help of funding from the Knight Foundation—Digital Content Next worked with Ascolese Associates on the research report Niche Publishers: How to Create Sustainable Business Models in a Digital Marketplace, released January 18. This niche publisher research examines how 11 digital publications each capture a unique space, attract audiences, and monetize those audiences.

“I know firsthand that we’re much more nimble than larger news organizations. We can try things out quickly. You know, we can try things out and fail fast, or we can try things out and see some early wins and then build on them. I really appreciate our ability to be nimble and flexible and measure our results and make quick decisions.”
Mary Walter-Brown, Voice of San Diego

The research identified two core focus areas for niche publishers that are vital for their success: content strategy and business strategy. According to the report, these core focus areas are made up of seven tactical components, which are discussed in detail: content development, editorial brand, audience development/ delivery, data, KPI’s, revenue streams and operational efficiencies.

Publishers interviewed agreed that superior content is the core deliverable, but content alone can’t drive a publication to success; an integrated business strategy is necessary. While a quest for scale dominates many digital strategies, niche publishers focus on providing distinctive, even unique content that meets the needs of a very specific audience.

Almost universally, these niche publishers emphasized something that has become a common theme across digital media: the importance of revenue diversification. Additional revenue streams give non-profit publishers more independence from corporate and individual sponsorships and for-profit publishers some independence from advertising sales.

“The number one mistake that media companies make is that they have a journalistic idea, and it’s not done in tandem with a business idea that operates in synchronicity with the journalistic idea.”
Jim Vandehei, Axios

Many niche publishers interviewed cite repurposing content and digital or live events among their revenue streams. However, other avenues include outsourcing internal talent, a “data store,” and a marketing membership program. Notable among these publishers is a willingness to collaborate and create partnerships that allow them to fight above their weight class in terms of staffing and data resources.

Ultimately, the report finds that a niche publication’s smaller size translates into a flexible and nimble environment and, often, a more entrepreneurial approach to their business. Notable among these publishers is a willingness to collaborate and create partnerships that allow them to maximize their staffing and data resources but also to ensure the viability of this segment of the digital media industry.

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Advertising | Perspectives

The Big 10: Media executives call out the industry’s biggest challenges

While it is appealing to start off a New Year with rosy predictions, it is also important to take a clear-eyed look at the road (and roadblocks) ahead. We asked a few of our members what they see as the biggest challenges the digital media industry faces today.

Here’s what leaders at ten diverse media companies see as the biggest challenge in the year to come:

———-

Scott Bailey, President, TEN Automotive Division
@TENenthusiast

Monetizing scaled social audiences and the content made for these channels is a challenge. We see the benefit of being a first mover and building a large social audience. That said, the benefit today lies heavily in the marketing value it provides in driving traffic to our sites and leveraging it to convert fans into paying customers through subscription offerings like Motor Trend OnDemand. We are able to monetize through advertising, but the nature of the monetization on social is more challenging to do at scale, as it requires a more custom approach compared to more traditional, turnkey placements/buys.

Jordan Bitterman, Chief Marketing Officer, The Weather Company, an IBM Business
@JordanBitterman @weathercompany

Our industry must build a parallel world adjacent to the current one dominated by Google and Facebook. This new world must be scaled, intelligent and open. Currently, 85 cents of every new dollar are going to the two biggest players because they have been solving for scaled and intelligent – and have done a great job doing so. But, an open garden is increasingly becoming a requirement for sophisticated advertisers who want partners who are flexible on data and transparent on pricing and performance.

Jim Brady CEO & Founder, Spirited Media
@jimbrady @spiritedmediaco

It’s hard to pick a “biggest” challenge, as there as so many. But, to me, refining user experience remains a crucial one. There are still way too many sites alienating readers for a quick buck by hammering them with pop-ups, unnecessary slideshows, pagination, interstitials and more. Yes, we need to make money. But gouging readers to the point where we drive them away is an abysmal long-term audience strategy. Treat your audience like you don’t care about them, and they will surely return the favor.”

Steven Smith, President of Digital Media, AccuWeather
@accuweather

In 2017, we continue to hurtle toward a ubiquitous global user audience, accessing data from every imaginable kind of device with a greater focus on personalization, localization, service and mobility. Content providers are going to have to step up to meet the needs of an audience that wants fast, relevant, and localized—and provided consistently regardless of device, from smartphones to connected refrigerators. That makes strong partnerships with vendors a necessity, from Cloud storage providers for scaling data to meet demand demands to robust content management solutions to help port news from format to format and device to device. And of course, the audience will continue to demand content that is more timely and relevant than ever.

Joy Jones, Vice President, Global Products, Associated Press
@AssociatedPress

The biggest challenge we face is building diverse streams of revenue that support innovative storytelling. In 2017, digital media companies must bridge the current divide between creating compelling stories that attract interest and attention, and the opportunities for monetization that are increasingly concentrated on just a few of the largest platforms. The industry is not going to be successful if there’s too much focus on trendy stories that spin up on a one-off basis or so-called native ad content that lacks authenticity. We need immersive and captivating high-quality content that engages diverse audiences and creates a wide fan base across emerging media platforms. That diversification of revenue will be critical to building and maintaining a sustainable engine for digital media innovation.

John Kosner, EVP, Digital & Print Media, ESPN
@JKosner @ESPN

Establishing timely and trusted cross-media measurement is an enormous challenge — but a critically important one. People consume media on an ever-growing number of platforms and devices and we must establish accurate ways to measure the total audience we reach and their engagement with content. That means having clear, trusted standards and metrics — which measure across TV, apps, web, OTT and more — and do so both in- and out-of-home. The connection people have with digitally-delivered content and advertising continues to grow enormously. But so does fake content and ad fraud. Trusted and transparently-measured environments will become ever-more valuable.

Beth Lawrence, EVP of Digital Ad Sales, Scripps Networks Interactive
@ScrippsNet

A big challenge in digital in 2017 will be the ability for clients and consumers to separate the wheat from the chaff. We all know digital is here to stay and continues to be a more important revenue driver every year. But the quality of digital content has been under the radar, and in the final analysis, marketers care what brands they associate with. Period. Content matters; quality content rules. It will be a year of cleaning up, properly measuring and delivering great results in digital.

Matt Minoff, SVP, Digital Platforms and Strategy, Meredith Corporation
@mattminoff @MeredithCorp

The biggest challenge will continue to be capturing consumer attention as existing platforms grow and new platforms emerge.

Vikki Neil, SVP/GM of Scripps Lifestyle Studios
@ScrippsNet

In digital, you must stay open to all ideas that come your way, but disciplined enough to say no to many. You must move quickly and not wait for perfection, but perfect what you do daily. There’s not time to develop a long-range plan like a traditional media business offers. From my seat, the biggest challenge is a combination of making the right bets, and moving as fast as humanly possible to understand the space before your competitors, so that you can build the best offering for consumers and advertisers. It’s impossible to be everywhere across all opportunities, so choose wisely, go quickly and iterate daily.

Alex Skatell, Founder and President, Independent Journal Review
@AlexSkatell @TheIJR

The biggest challenge for media is building community. The strategies that have propelled many digital media companies into large audiences are largely commoditized, so you need to figure out how to connect your content and communities together in a deeper and unique way.

Brendan Spain, VP, Advertising – Americas, Financial Times
@spanishbrendan @FT

The biggest challenge for digital media in 2017 will be for quality publishers to cut through the noise – of ad fraud, fake news, and non-human traffic – to command fair market pricing for their trusted brands and influential audiences. Evaluating and leveraging these trusted environments will continue to be both important and difficult as the market weighs chasing scale and audience against quality and transparency.

Domenic Venuto, General Manager, Consumer Division, The Weather Company, an IBM Business
@dvenuto @weathercompany

As we look at the 2017 media landscape, there is potential for a massive upheaval on multiple fronts with the forecasted political uncertainty. The industry is resilient and adaptable, and we must remain focused on building great products for fans. And perhaps anxiety is unwarranted.

Industry-Research | Video

What you need to know about digital video advertising in 7 charts

Okay, let’s start off with an obvious—but critical—fact: Just about everybody’s watching digital video. According to comScore, almost every demographic watches some form of digital video each month.

comscoreaudience

12-1hThat said, it is clear from the comScore chart that there are segments that are consuming more than others. And, According to Defy Media, consumers aged 13-24 watch 12.1 hours of video per week on YouTube, social media and other free online sources, and another 8.8 hours weekly on Netflix and other subscription-video services. (That’s more than two and a half times the 8.2 hours weekly they spend watching television.)

While few of these younger viewers adore advertising, they are much more amenable to a brief sponsorship announcement or product integration is than the traditional preroll.

okads

In its 2016 Digital Ad Spend Study, the International Advertising Bureau (IAB) reported that Digital Video and Original Digital Video budget allocations resulting from the NewFronts event have steadily increased over the last 3 years. Their research finds that ad spending on original digital video programming has increased 114% since 2014 and, on average, marketers and advertisers are spending more than $10 million annually on Digital Video, representing an 85% increase from 2 years ago.

averagevideoadspenddoubling

According to Statista, there’s still plenty of room for growth, though. Statista analysts expect the digital ad market to grow at an average rate of 10.9% over the next five years, with social media and video advertising outpacing the overall market’s growth. And while search marketing is forecast to remain the largest share of digital advertising, it is predicted to rise about 57% whereas video is expected to experience an 80% increase.

digital_ad_market_growthstatista

While marketers find video to be among the most effective content type used in content marketing initiatives, they also rank creating it as among the most difficult, according to a report from Ascend2 and its Research Partners. Customer testimonials, explainer/tutorial videos and demonstration videos are ranked as the most effective types of video content marketing, per Ascend2’s research.

ascend2-most-effective-difficult-video-content-types-july2015

Time of viewing affects ad effectiveness. Online video advertising seems be most effective between the hours of 3 a.m. and 12 p.m., according to a study from cross-platform video advertising firm YuMe. They saw this trend across all age groups including millennials, Generation X, and baby boomers.

timedv

Mobile will be the biggest driver of digital-video ad spend over the next few years according to BI Intelligence. They found that US digital-video advertising revenue from PC- and mobile-based video ads will top nearly $5 billion this year, and grow at a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21.9%.

bimobiledrivegrowth

Advertising | Innovation | Perspectives | Revenue

Three key takeaways from the media leaders at Folio’s C-Summit

As part of its annual show October 31-November 2, Folio hosted a one day C-Summit. The invitation-only event focused on top strategic imperatives for magazine media organizations. Led by Hanley Wood CEO Peter Goldstone, the day provided an intimate conversation between panelists and attendees.

Here are three key takeaways from the discussion:

1. People matter (a lot): Many of the day’s speakers expressed that competitive recruiting and managing millennials to their fullest potential are significant challenges. Across the board, it was apparent that these leaders feel that having the right people to drive the organization from both strategic and tactical levels is a top priority.

“We need to teach all employees to think about the end game and how they can contribute Give them a voice, an opportunity to express ideas and concerns… We need to give them pride of ownership in solutions.”

—Bonnie Kintzer, CEO TMBI

“It used to be that the people in charge knew everything…Well, we’re in a learn-together mode now, particularly as we try to build new lines of business. Of the 46 people we have hired at AIM since January, 32 have job descriptions that didn’t exist before they were hired.”

—Andrew W. Clurman, President & CEO, Active Interest Media (AIM)

“The scariest thing is to have an opportunity but not have the capacity to deliver. For example, we find that companies want to connect with customers by feeding them, but staffing the event side has been a challenge… Creating the right culture is absolutely critical.”

—Catherine Neville, Publisher & Founder, Feast Magazine

“Running a media related company over the past 10 years has been a tough job. There are a lot of dead men walking. Employees are key to transforming business. You need to attract, retain, and develop people who will change your business or you will be one of those dead men walking.”

—Tom Kemp, Chairman CEO of Northstar Travel Group

2. Advertising is data and context driven: Digital advertising is increasingly driven by data—particularly in the B2B space, which is focused on lead-generation. However, context matters as does bigger-picture understanding of what the advertiser’s objectives are and how to creatively accomplish those goals.

“Advertisers are asking: What is the value you are going to give us, how are you going to bundle stuff? That said, they don’t always really know what they are asking. They want, and need you to know more about their biz than they do.”

—Jim Elliot, President James C. Elliot Co. Inc.

“We have to be sure we are producing products our customers want to buy, not just what we want to sell, so that we continue to have the relationship with them that supports the business. And yes, we need to be able to provide as much audience data as possible. We’re thinking less about selling advertising than selling all the assets we have.”

—Tom Kemp, Chairman CEO of Northstar Travel Group

“Programmatic is inevitable because it is a far more efficient for sellers and buyers. At Hanley Wood, we love programmatic because we have the data. What we’re seeing is a bifurcation in the value proposition between what publishers brought to the table—the value of our insight around the data and the audience—versus the value of the content and placing ads in context.”

—Peter Goldstone, CEO, Hanley Wood

“Thinking about some of the new players…yes, they are taking dollars away and disrupting things because they play by their own rules. But we must continue to behave in a way that is extremely responsible because of our brands’ reputations. We’ve been successful with our ad-sales guarantee. We’ve partnered with Nelsen to measure return on ad spend. We spend a lot of time on measurement and in our strategic partnerships. It is an area of emphasis and focus to demonstrate efficacy.”

—Mark Rothschild, SVP, Meredith Digital.

3. You’ve got to put your money where your progress is. Despite a seemingly endless desire to innovate, the reality is that resources are finite and making smart decisions about what to fuel and what to fold is critical.

“We have to focus on how to grow the business despite managing a mature print portfolio. There’s always a lot to do, but what do you choose not to do is just as important. As you think about your portfolio, resource allocation decisions are imperative.”

 —Peter Goldstone, CEO, Hanley Wood

“We looked at a lot of areas with underperforming assets, many outside the US, which we are in the process of selling. We are focused on being a strong US and Canadian content producer. The hardest parts are the print versus the digital pieces of the game.”

—Bonnie Kintzer, CEO TMBI

“There are lots of new shiny ideas that pop up in this industry. Yes, some are good…but others aren’t, and you have to be able to tell the difference, or figure it out fast.”

 —Jim Elliot, President James C. Elliot Co. Inc.

“As an industry, there’s a drag of products that need to close, that have served their purpose, but closing them creates an opportunity to start something new. And there’s always a new opportunity.”

—David Carey, President, Hearst Magazines

Innovation | Perspectives

The Weather Company’s JOURNEYfx location-based ads see the bigger picture

Geo-targeted advertising is not new, but The Weather Company has always taken its own unique path due to its ability to collect a raft of highly-specific, location-related information. Add into that a parent company, IBM, with a focus on cognitive computing and it comes as no surprise that Weather’s latest entrant into the digital ad market, JOURNEYfx, goes well beyond location to offer a smarter kind of targeting.

Think of it like this: Previously, location-based advertising was targeted based on where you’ve been—say at a coffee shop last week. Since you’d been at a coffee shop, it seems appropriate to send you ads for premium coffee spots when you are in the vicinity. However, Domenic Venuto, General Manager, Consumer Division at The Weather Company points out that “you might have just gone in once—for a sandwich.” Not only would this targeting prove ineffective for the advertiser, the ads would likely annoy the consumer, with whom The Weather Company has a particularly intimate and trust-dependent relationship.

Based upon its ability to capture, combine and analyze the vast amount of data from The Weather Company’s 87 million monthly mobile users, JOURNEYfx changes the usual targeting scenario because it is able to “understand rituals, consumers’ patterns of behavior, and the best time to market in order to influence that behavior.” Thus, those premium coffee ads are served to someone who hits the coffee shop every morning between the gym and the office. Factor in the weather and JOURNEYfx will know whether to make it an ad for an iced coffee or a pumpkin spiced latte.

In an even more compelling example, Venuto describes an automotive shopper (who research tells us has almost always decided which car they’ll by before they turn up at a showroom). Between the first party data collected (you’ve been to two car lots in the past two week) and weather-specific information (it’s going to be sunny this weekend), and the data analysis of IBM’s Watson, JOURNEYfx can predict with an 80% degree of certainty that this shopper is going to buy a car this weekend. So now’s the time to serve up ads that will influence that purchase decision.

Venuto says that “one of the many benefits of acquisition by IBM is they get our data and platform and we get the scale and capabilities of IBM.” In particular, he cites IBM’s commitment to research and its focus on cognitive computing.

The union is impacting many aspects of Weather’s business beyond advertising, which is likely to become more apparent as voice- and intelligent-assistants such as Amazon Echo become increasingly popular. Venuto says that the company is using Watson at the data level and the weather forecasting level. It is also impacting the consumer experience because Watson “allows consumers to engage with our products using natural language—which affects our consumer product strategy.”

First and foremost, Venuto says The Weather Company remains focused on providing a product that “adds value to our consumers’ lives.” It also takes a measured approach to personalization that, according to Venuto, has seen that the highest engagement for advertising across every category comes when its contextually relevant. And that, he points out, is not something every provider of location based advertising can say. “If a consumer is using your product and says ‘hey wait a minute, why do they want to know where I am?’ because it isn’t an organic fit with the app, you are going to have some problems.”

Venuto describes The Weather Company’s relationship with its consumers as being a deeply engrained part of their daily ritual: Millions of consumers grab their phones to check the weather before they even get out of bed and check in again several times a day—more if severe weather will affect them or their loved ones. A unique and highly personal category of information that allows JOURNEYfx to identify patterns in consumer behavior throughout a given day, week and year and then serve up ads that anticipate their needs.

Industry-Research

Media companies’ Facebook relationship status: It’s complicated

The relationship between Facebook and the news media industry is increasingly complex, requires context, and has room for improvement, according to a new report released today by the International News Media Association (INMA).  The 79-page report, “The Facebook-Media Relationship Status: It’s Complicated,” offers an executive-level overview of how the social media giant intersects with news publishers as of late 2016.

The report cites Mark Zuckerberg’s widely-reported remark that Facebook is not a media company, but rather a sort of Uber for the content industry. In other words, Zuckerberg believes that because his company doesn’t create content, it isn’t in the content business. However, as the report points out, from content aggregation to distribution and myriad “editorial” decisions (be they algorithmic or human), the distinction is blurry at best.

The report attempts to help better define Facebook’s role in the ecosystem as well as examine the market position of all of its platforms (Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp.) It provides an overview of major social media usage trends and patterns worldwide. And finally, the report takes a hard look at Facebook’s complicated relationship with the news industry (including a deep dive into the way in which its News Feed algorithms work), and analyzes different strategies that media companies use with regards to Facebook in an effort to help others do so strategically.

Among the takeaway’s from INMA’s report:

  • Software really is eating the world.
  • New technologies make traditional market-entry barriers disappear.
  • Value propositions are no longer defined by the industry but rather by customers and their changing needs. Thus, user experience becomes a competitive advantage.
  • New business realities blur distinctions between partners and rivals.
  • News media consumers no longer form a mass market but rather networks of individuals.
  • Users are flooded with content. News has become a commodity.
  • Data is becoming the new oil.

As Emily Bell pointed out in a recent Columbia Journalism Review article, “Facebook is being taken somewhere it never wanted to go.” Yet, while it may not have sought to be a pivotal media cog, the report points out that “clearly, Facebook needs to be a thoughtful partner to the news media industry — and vice versa. That is a partnership that should be based on transparency and mutual support.”

TypesofContentFB

Innovation

Experimentation explodes the boundaries of powerful storytelling

There’s a whole lot of talk about content these days, but the bottom line is that great storytelling is what elevates mere information into the stuff of conversation, inspiration and maybe even viral sensation. The newest addition to the roster of DCN’s member’s-only gatherings—Powerful Storytelling—offered a morning filled with examples of just that. And while it was our first event to focus squarely on the more creative aspects of the business of content, it bore the hallmark of all of our events: DCN members provided candid insights into the strategies and creative process behind the content that people love.

Though the content itself, and the insights proffered, were far-ranging, one major theme emerged: the importance of experimentation. While most storytelling fundamentals remain constant, distribution channels, devices, and consumer preferences are among the many factors in near-constant flux. Certainly, that poses challenges. It also offers opportunities and the creativity the speakers highlighted showed a universal spirit of experimentation—in organizational structure, partnerships, and use of emerging tools—to better connect with consumers.

NYT_DisplacedThe day started off with Jake Silverstein, New York Times Magazine Editor-in-Chief, presenting their early forays into virtual reality. Silverstein encourages experimentation with the medium because of its ability to enable viewers to feel empathy by literally seeing through the eyes of a child refugee, for example. And while one audience member noted that virtual reality (one of the most hyped storytelling mediums du jour) lacks some of the qualities that make text so evocative such as the sense of smell or setting a larger context for a story, Silverstein emphasized that VR offers a whole new way to experience a story.

CR_PaulsChoiceConsumer Reports Executive Director of Content Gwendolyn Bounds said that experimentation is an essential piece of the transformation the brand is currently undertaking (which begins to roll out next week with a new logo and aesthetic enhancements on both its website and in the November issue of the magazine.) She says they are trying a number of new story formats, including unique social and mobile content, and 360-degree video—one of which puts users into the driver’s seat of CR’s lauded automotive test process. Further innovations will emerge when the brand moves to a “membership” model in coming months.

In a crowded landscape, Bounds points out that content brands need to experiment in order to find the right way to make their storytelling distinct. She also said that it is important to continually test the types of content that their consumers will “give them permission to address.” In the case of Consumer Reports, an example was its “A Beautiful Death” package, which focused on the many aspects and issues surrounding consumers’ choices around end-of-life issues.

“Experimentation is critical” at Business insider, according to recently-promoted Editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell. In addition to testing out short synopsis-style recaps of long-form articles and captioning slideshows and videos on the images so they can be consumed without sound or accompanying text, she said they’ve also been playing with multiple headlines/versions of a single story. “If you have someone who says 12 different things that could be headlines, we break it out into short takes that may collectively get far more views.” And why not?  “Because a digital publication should have its own set of rules” not follow the path of television or print.

FT_FortunesKicking off his talk with images reflecting the Financial Times’ historic love of the text-dense page, Data Visualization Editor Alan Smith said he has found a great willingness from the FT and its staff to experiment with ways in which data can be transformed from mere line- and pie-charts into an in-depth storytelling medium all its own. To do so, you need to truly understand what the data is really about and then he said you can play with presentation so that “graphics take on a life of their own” and can effectively communicate far more than numbers: what those numbers really mean to those involved in the story and to those reading about it.

Certainly, one of the day’s most enthusiastic champions of experimentation was Mike Yapp, Director of Google’s YouTube in house agency, The Zoo (pictured, top). He believes that content is becoming increasingly “liquid” and that it is constantly being transformed by the users themselves. Thus, Yapp said “writers and designers need to think more like inventors” in order to create content ready-made for increasingly malleable, immersive and experiential consumer experiences.

MarsNoting that the first wave of virtual reality content innovation created experiences were just for one person, he said that future innovations will include shared VR experiences. For example, his team worked with Lockheed Martin to create a VR experience for children who collectively experienced a VR visit to Mars while riding on a school bus together. The goal was not simply to push the bounds of VR from single-user experience to one that is social, but to employ innovative storytelling to ignite the minds of children so that they can go farther than ever before.

For the Creative Director of The Independent Journal Review, Benny Johnson, experimentation drives the site’s entertaining (and often irreverent) news coverage. When asked how he gets politicians such as Marco Rubio and Lindsay Graham to participate in creating such viral hits as “How to Get Revenge with a Football” and “How to Destroy your Old Cell Phone,” Johnson said “we’re in a special time where politicians from the highest levels to local levels are experimenting with how to engage the public” and, he said, content companies should too.

Yet Johnson expressed a point that also recurred throughout the day: Technology is a storytelling tool, not an endgame. “You need to do more than express the fact that your company has the technology,” he said. It is essential to tell a story so powerful it transcends technology.

Advertising | Perspectives

To mock or not to mock? Avoiding fraudulent advertising campaign verification

To mock or not to mock? That is the question frequently asked by media publishers trying to meet advertiser demands related to digital campaign success. The industry’s intense focus on viewability and transparency issues associated with ad fraud hijacks the limelight from another vital area of interest for advertisers: Are campaigns actually running as contracted?

What the advertiser wants, the advertiser gets
To justify the millions (and millions!) of dollars spent promoting products, advertisers rightfully demand proof that their campaigns execute as promised. From expected ad rendering on the page to accurate targeting by geography and behavior profiles, advertisers want to know that the right ad has been served in the right way in the right location on the right page to the right demographic. In fact, when considering the average spend of a large-scale national campaign flight, many advertisers will assert they deserve to know their campaign is performing as promised.

Authenticated ad inventory yields benefits
The advertising ecosystem is a dynamic environment processing millions of ads covering billions in spend at any one time. Considering that 5% of display and mobile ads are served incorrectly at launch and countless more break during flight, publishers need to actively monitor and protect their ad-generated revenue channels.[i]

Authenticated ad inventory helps publishers secure ad revenue by avoiding pre-planned delivery overages to compensate for anticipated discrepancies. In addition, it also reduces the frequency of misfiring campaigns, thus minimizing instances of “make good” campaigns.

Ad verification is more than good looks
Reputable publishers recognize the value of their high-quality inventory and demonstrate it by providing proof of ad delivery according to established terms. This is a complicated prospect in an age of large-scale campaigns incorporating ads of varying formats (i.e., HTML5, pre/mid/post-roll video, native, etc.) through multiple platforms (i.e., display, tablet, smartphone, gaming consoles, etc.) across increasingly granular targeting segments.

A Photoshopped mock-up or full-page capture of the ad on a screen is a start, but it isn’t enough. Presenting a “mock-up” of how an ad should look could be considered fraudulent as it’s not a true representation of how an ad performs across all formats, devices and geographies. In fact, several industries (Tier 2 automotive, pharmaceutical, etc.) and countries (especially those in Latin America) regulate advertising-based billing processes and require third-party verified screenshots upon invoice presentation.

Beyond the visual of “how” an ad looks on a device, publishers must prove that each ad is delivered as contracted with the advertiser. Continuous monitoring of campaigns at launch and throughout flight will quickly detect errors associated with targeting, creative and device-specific issues that impede optimal campaign execution.

Authentication of possibly hundreds of ad combinations—by size, format, device and geography—is used by publishers to substantiate inventory value and by advertisers to audit and measure campaign ROI.

Consider this
To verify accurate ad placement, execution and targeting, a publisher must consider these five factors:

  1. Legitimacy: Screenshots of ads in a live environment truthfully demonstrate that an ad is delivered to the right target. A “mock-up” or “test page” may display how an ad appears on a site, but in reality it provides a false sense of security for how the ad is actually executing. It also infers that the ad will render the same across all devices, OS, formats and geographies.
  1. Accuracy: Mock-ups can’t prove ad placement as many ad units only occur behind paywalls or require an IP address in order to serve the correct messaging to the individual user.
  1. Automation: Imagine scaling the manual process of verifying ads across the overwhelming number of devices, browsers, user profiles, formats, sizes and geo-locations. Without automation, the task is almost impossible. Leverage technology to streamline the process.
  1. Costs: Carefully consider the total cost of ownership when deciding between an in-house or outsourced process. While in-house resources are easier to control, it is difficult to secure funding and keep the staff engaged. On the flip side, outsourcing requires integration, training, probable coordination with targeting vendors, and continuous oversight which could ultimately be more costly than anticipated—not to mention the complications of managing a remote team, in a case of choosing a non-local entity if a non-native entity is selected.
  1. Quality Assurance: Reliance on mock-up designs to certify campaign execution will no catch errors that occur at launch or throughout the campaign flight.

Ad verification is a complex, yet critical endeavor for publishers looking to highlight inventory value. Don’t mock it.

ChrisChris Olson founded The Media Trust (@themediatrust) with Dave Crane in 2005. He currently serves as CEO, where he drives the company’s vision, direction and growth plans. Prior to establishing The Media Trust Company, he spent four years as the chief operating officer and board member at Spheric Media. From 1998 until 2000, he was the vice president, global equities at Commerzbank; and from 1993 until 1998, he was the vice president of electronic trading at Salomon Brothers, Inc.

[i] The Media Trust analysis of millions of ad campaigns verified over the course of 10 years
Perspectives

No comment: NPR joins the growing list of media companies shuttering comments

Given its moniker—that P does stand for public—it seems particularly significant that NPR has opted to cut comments from its site and instead focus its resources on social media as its means of engagement. As the company’s announcement points out, “NPR introduced public comments to its website eight years ago, when many of today’s most popular venues for digital interaction didn’t yet exist or were in their infancy.”

Another factor in the decision is the fact that only about 1% of its audience is currently commenting on its site. Bloomberg’s former digital editor Joshua Topolsky also cited low reader participation as a reason for Bloomberg’s recent decision to drop comments. Topolsky’s team felt that they’re more likely to reach a more representative cross-section of their audience via external social platforms.

NPR plans to focus on maintaining its presence across Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram and Tumblr—as well as support journalists’ efforts to interact on their own accounts. Yet, undoubtedly, maintaining that presence across numerous (and ever-proliferating) social media sites takes a toll on any organization that must prioritize its resources.

Recode is another site that opted to focus on conversations in social media and to eliminate comments. According to founder Kara Swisher, social media provides a more optimal setting to “engage a smart audience that’s not trolling.” This sentiment was in large part shared by The Week’s Editor-in-Chief Ben Frumin who, upon announcing that the site would no longer include comments, specifically called out the problematic nature of pseudonymous commentators. Though it should be acknowledged that social media is not without its share of trolling and other bad behavior, something platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are struggling to combat.

Other sites that have opted out of comments sections cite research that connects unruly and unpleasant comments with a lowered estimation of the content and brand with which it is associated.

Organizations such as CBS, The New York Times and The Guardian remain committed to their comments sections (for now). To confront the issue head on, CBS decided to require all of its online commenters to use real names and The Guardian went so far as to undertake a study of its own comments section as part of a larger series on online harassment. The picture painted by the study was not pretty, with particularly bold lines underscoring the high level of vitriol aimed at female writers as well as those from ethnic and religious minority groups, and LGBT people.

While The Guardian does not plan to close down comments across the site, it has opted to reduce the number of places where comments are open, particularly around contentious subjects. The New York Times also limits the number of articles on which comments are permitted, though it plans to increase the number.

NPR’s Managing Editor for Digital News, Scott Montgomery, emphasizes the organization’s continued commitment to experimenting with opportunities for community engagement, such as the Hearken audience engagement platform, which is already used by dozens of NPR member stations. Yet as Elizabeth Jensen, NPR’s Ombudsman/Public Editor pointed out in her post examining the decision to eliminate comments, sites that are managing to keep comments civil are those that make a significant investment in moderation resources; resources that many media organizations need to apply to creating quality content and to continuously evolving distribution—and engagement—strategies.

Innovation

The Washington Post, The Associated Press and LA Times get an assist from Artificial Intelligence

Robots aren’t taking over the media (yet) but Artificial Intelligence and automation are lending a helping hand.

The challenges of running a profitable media company have resulted in a “streamlining” of these organizations, often requiring staff reductions that create holes in coverage, particularly in areas that require domain expertise or a nuanced interpretation. What if there was a way to free up the increasingly valuable reporters from some of their tedious or time-consuming tasks to focus on telling complex stories or digging into subjects deeply? Enter Artificial Intelligence (AI) for journalism. An increasing number of media companies are employing robot journalists—or, more accurately, artificially intelligent algorithms adept at analyzing data and writing serviceable prose – to do just that. (Fusion’s Kevin Roose does a terrific job explaining how it works.)

Here are some of the ways AI is making its mark on journalism:

The Associated Press, working with Automated Insights and Zacks Investment Research, automatically generates almost 4,000 stories about U.S. corporate earnings each quarter—about twelve times what AP reporters and editors previously created. For a small fraction of these stories, editors add “the human touch” to provide more nuanced interpretations.

More recently, the AP added sports reporting to its automated journalistic endeavors. The move allowed the company to expand its coverage of Minor League Baseball (and could offer similar possibilities for other sports coverage). AP baseball editors and reporters worked with Automated Insights to configure the Wordsmith platform to ensure that it would follow AP standards for baseball coverage.

The Washington Post is also taking a crack at automated journalism, developing its own proprietary artificial intelligence tool, “Heliograf,” which automatically generates brief, multi-sentence updates. The Washington Post will roll it out to report key information from the 2016 Rio Olympics, including results of medal events. Heliograf, which will continue to be developed by Post engineers to enhance storytelling for large-scale projects, will also be leveraged for data-driven coverage of major news events, including the U.S. election. This technology can process a combination of different data sources, such as crime and real estate numbers, customize stories depending on individual user actions, and help look for anomalies in data to alert journalists to a potential story—all of which The Washington Post plans to leverage as it further develops Heliograf’s utility.

Algorithmic journalism is not limited to sports and finance, however. One of the longest-running robo-journalists in the game is Quakebot, which was written by Los Angeles Times Writer Ken Scwenkie. According to Business Insider, Quakebot is an automated system that resides on the Los Angeles Times’s servers, which receives emails from the US Geological Survey, runs that data through an information checklist, and then determines if it’s newsworthy based on the magnitude. It then parses out content from the email and inputs it into the Los Angeles Times’s content management system. Posts are structured using a formula based on previous posts.

HomicideLAIt is interesting to note the LA Times also uses its own brand of automated journalism for The Homicide Report, which tracks every homicide victim in LA County. This sort of approach (visualized data journalism) is particularly suited to the algorithmic approach in that analyzing huge (and possibly constantly growing or changing) data sets is a massive undertaking. With solid structure and oversight, these can be reliably created, updated and presented in a dynamic visual way by leveraging AI.

The momentum for automated journalism has been building for years now and is definitely picking up steam. The New York Times reports that Tronc, Hearst, Bonnier, Gannett and the Weather Channel use automation to do everything from streamlining video production to analyzing and summarizing text and finding photographs and video clips to go with it. And, in an April memo to Bloomberg’s staff, Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait announced that the news organization is creating a 10-person team to determine how automation can be used throughout the company’s portfolio of editorial products.

As Dr. Andreas Graefe, author of the Tow Center for Journalism report “Guide to Automated Journalism” noted, automated journalism is particularly useful in generating routine news stories for repetitive topics for which clean, accurate, and structured data are available. He also outlines the potential for algorithms to generate large volumes of news quickly, potentially in multiple angles and personalized for reader preference.

But, as the report points out, there are limitations to automation that must be carefully considered as more organizations use artificial intelligence to augment their journalism. Given many of the current implementations reliance on data, the quality of that data is paramount. And, as Micklethwait points out in his memo, “one irony of automation is that it is only as good as humans make it.” That, of course, extends to the media organizations that deploy algorithmic approaches, which must balance efficiency, transparency, and the consumer demands of more information, faster—but who also love a good read.

Advertising | Industry-Research

Premium context impacts mobile ad performance

Teads has released new eye-tracking insights that show the impact of various content environments on the performance of mobile advertising. The study found that advertising placed in premium editorial articles increases consumers’ purchase intent by 27%. They also found that when users are on premium publisher sites, their scroll rate slows down, thus building a slower, more concentrated experience, driving a higher chance of attracting attention to engaging advertising.

TeadsContentContextKey takeaways:

  • Premium content drives highest engagement.
  • Native video ads within premium content are more likely to be viewed.
  • Longer exposure on skippable pre-roll doesn’t guarantee stronger ad impact.
  • In-article native video ads put the user first and drive the most campaign impact.
  • In-article native video ads resonate even more with millennials.

Teads also made recommendations for mobile video ad optimization:

  1. Advertise within premium content to drive increased viewership and to extend average dwell time.
  2. Leverage in-article native video to drive increases purchase intent.
  3. Consider using formats outside of pre-roll, which doesn’t guarantee a quality view.
  4. Use in-article native video to impact younger consumers.
Innovation | Revenue

CBS Interactive Advanced Media bulks up its vertical subscription strategy with TrainerPass

CBS Interactive Advanced Media has tapped into a market ripe for reinvention: the home video fitness industry–though “home” might be a misnomer given the fact that mobile increasingly dominates video and consumption. CBSi Advanced Media just debuted TrainerPass, which features hundreds of workouts from fitness pros, which is offering via website access and on iOS and Android Apps.

“It’s an interesting time for fitness,” says David Katz, Vice President and General Manager of CBS Interactive Advanced Media. “Home fitness was dominated by a huge DVD market for a time, but that’s fading away and nothing has replaced it.” Though there have certainly been web-based forays into this market, Katz feels confident that TrainerPass is the first to aggregate such a large variety of trainers’ content in one place.

According to Katz, cross-platform delivery was a given because of the way mobile has effected users’ behaviors and expectations of anytime anywhere content access. He points out that users won’t just want to access content from home or hotel room — certain types of technique-oriented content, for example, may prompt them to review a short video at the gym or before heading out on a bike ride.

Another distinctive aspect of TrainerPass is that it highlights interaction. Features include direct messaging that trainers can use to react quickly and respond to user needs and requests. While not every trainer who has signed on will feel that audience interaction is essential to their content offering, Katz looks forward to seeing how the opportunity to connect with audiences impacts different trainers’ engagement level and popularity. “It’s quite possible that one who hustles and listens and hears their fans and delivers what they want may even be more successful than better known trainers who aren’t as engaged.”

And while CBSi Advanced Media is enthusiastic about any trainer bringing their own audience to the platform, Katz is confident that, given his company’s reach as the eighth most trafficked brand online, they will be able to deliver significant audiences to all those participating. He notes that creating an offering like this one under the larger CBS umbrella has the added advantage of allowing him to “leverage all of the great technology, learning and experience that happens within this company all of the time across our disparate sites and services from CNET to CBS’ College Sports Live to CBS All Access.”

myworkoutsOne key component of this is in helping to develop a business model around a specific content vertical. TrainerPass offers two types of memberships so subscribers can sample a variety of workouts across disciplines or dive deeper into the complete workout libraries of individual trainers. The FlexPass subscription ($4.99 per month) features access to more than 100 videos from multiple celebrity trainers and workout programs, including yoga, Pilates, kickboxing, boot camp and barre, allowing users to discover the program that fits them best. The Trainer’s Pass subscription (starting at $6.99 per month) offers complete access to a specific trainer’s workout library, as well as nutrition tips and more.

TrainerPass, which is built on CBS Interactive Advanced Media’s suite of digital product offerings, gives trainers the flexibility to manage their content and subscription pricing and interact with their followers through videos, blog posts, and social media integration. Trainers can continuously add new content to their libraries to help followers keep their workout routines fresh—all with the support of CBSi’s customer services team.

Katz foresees the TrainerPass model being emulated for a variety of different verticals. Next up:  identifying areas that “may or may not have an existing audience, whose business model has been disrupted or in which there’s not yet a fully-developed digital business model” and then leveraging the technological and publishing acumen at CBSi to create new interest-based offerings that meet the needs of consumers and foster the growth of the digital content marketplace.

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