- Washington Post: How the battle for the future of the web is shaped by economics (5 min read)
- Digiday: Kraft: Digital advertising has a serious data quality problem (20 min video)
- Folio: TheStreet Experiments With A Freemium Model For Its $50-Million Subscription Service (2 min read)
- MediaPost: It’s Not TV, It’s VAB: Trade Bureau Drops Cable, Television Too (2 min read)
- WSJ: Belgian Watchdog Raps Facebook for Treating Personal Data ‘With Contempt’ (4 min read)
- AdWeek: With Facebook’s Instant Articles, Publishers Contemplate a Social-First World (4 min read)
- Ad Age: Behind All Good Ad-Tech Is Data — and Verizon, AOL Have Lots of It (4 min read)
- WSJ: With Facebook’s Instant Articles, Publishers May Find 70 Cents Is Better Than a Dollar (4 min read)
- Jeff Jarvis: I, for one, welcome our new newsstand (9 min read)
- AdExchanger: Fraud And Data Ruptures Could Spark a Consumer Revolt (5 min read)
Articles by: "DCN"
DCN’s Recommended Reading: Week of May 21, 2015
Making Sense of Media Acronyms with NBCUniversal
ODCR. TVE. VOD. OTT.
Doesn’t it seem like this year’s Upfront presentations were filled with way too many acronyms, making it harder and harder to make sense of them? Playing House’s Executive Producers, writers and stars Lennon Parham and Jessica St. Clair break down what they all mean and how they illustrate the innovation taking place at NBCUniversal.
What Drove Hearst to Invest in Ride-sharing Service Via?
Darcy Frisch, vice president of Hearst Ventures, discusses the unique model, business structure and future of Hearst Ventures’ newest investment, ride-sharing service Via.
Hearst Ventures is always on the lookout for the next big thing in the technology space that can help impact consumers’ lives. The group’s newest investment, ride-sharing company Via, shows big promise in the on-demand transportation sector and has a unique business model that provides an attractive price point and sophisticated technology that differentiates the company from the ever-expanding market competition.
Can you give us a brief background on Via?
Frisch: Via is a ride-sharing service that allows you to reserve a seat in a car using an app on your smartphone. Using Via’s app, customers drop a pin in the location where they’d like to be picked up and where they’d like to be dropped off. Via’s technology matches the request with a nearby vehicle that can fulfill the ride, and dynamically coordinates the route to include other users going in the same direction.
We think there is pent-up demand for transportation alternatives in Manhattan and other major metro areas. Via offers a solution to riders who want to share the cost of their ride, but are looking for, and willing to pay for, more convenience and comfort than what is currently offered by mass transit.
What Hearst Ventures finds particularly compelling about Via is its software platform: an automated dynamic routing system optimized for many variables ranging from traffic conditions to predicted demand along routes traveled. The software—not the vehicle driver—chooses the route and ensures that the customer will always be picked up and dropped off within two blocks of their pin drops. It automatically communicates critical information about the location of the vehicle as it approaches and clearly instructs the customer, through the app, on where to meet their driver and vehicle.
Can you talk a bit about Via’s plans for expansion?
Frisch: Via has been expanding its service in Manhattan gradually over the past year or so and demand for the service has been extraordinary. At the time Hearst invested, service was operating limited hours and in a zone from 32nd Street to 110th Street. Very recently, Via announced that it was extending its hours of operation to be 6:30 a.m.-9 p.m. and expanding its service zone to cover from 14th Street to 110th Street, river to river. Via also has plans to expand into other metro areas in the U.S., and eventually internationally. The first two targets will likely be Chicago and Washington, D.C.
Tell us a little about Via’s pricing model and how the company keeps costs so low.
Frisch: There is a pre-pay option on the app where customers can use money they have already loaded, at the five dollar per-ride price. If customers pay for each individual ride, the cost is seven dollars per ride. If there is more than one person being picked up, each additional rider is charged at 50 percent of your per-ride price. The company keeps the cost low by matching vehicle supply and customer demand. The drivers are independent contractors, licensed by the New York Taxi and Limousine Commission, and are called to work based on what Via expects demand to be on a given day, at a given time. Fully utilized, a vehicle can make three to three and a half loaded trips per hour. Ideally, Via’s vehicles will run at full capacity, but there will always be times of less-than-full utilization. The supply of drivers and vehicles is being managed to grow with demand for the service. The two will expand together.
Tell us more about the founders and the team behind Via.
Frisch: The founders, Daniel Ramot and Oren Shoval, are impressive entrepreneurs. In their home country of Israel, they grew up with Sheruts—shared taxis and vans—that are a popular and effective means of transportation. Ramot and Shoval are both graduates of the elite Talpiot program of the Israel Defense Forces, and clearly have the engineering skills, training and experience that made them able to build the Via technology and successfully roll out the service in New York. Their team is divided between New York and Tel Aviv. The engineering team resides in Tel Aviv, under Shoval, and the operations and marketing teams are based here in New York with Ramot.
What separates Via from some of its competitors?
Frisch: We think there is a lot of room for new transportation solutions in Manhattan. Via is offering a new type of service that combines the low price and sharing aspects of mass transit with the personalization and convenience of a for hire taxi or limo ride. Also, the software and technology platform that I described before is a defensible advantage that Via has over its competitors.
What about Via ultimately made it an attractive investment for Hearst?
Frisch: Hearst Ventures has been interested in on-demand service models and we have spent a good deal of time thinking about these businesses. On-demand transportation is particularly interesting because it is a very large market opportunity that is in its early days of disruption by smartphone hailing services like Uber and Lyft. We spent a long time thinking about the market, and Hearst President and CEO Steve Swartz challenged us to find a company for investment that offered a real competitive advantage to the market counterparts. When I came across Via, I honed-in on its technology platform as something that would differentiate the service. The automated routing system that enables the shared service and the low price point is truly groundbreaking.
Via’s management team is rock solid and their business model is new and different. The timing feels right, since well-funded companies already in the space have educated both the drivers and riders that it is very easy and convenient to transact using smartphones. With this new round of funding, Via can expand and grow more quickly. We are very excited about working with them as they do.
DCN’s Recommended Reading: Week of May 14, 2015
- AJR: Ad Blocking Poses a Growing Challenge to Media Companies (5 min read)
- The New Yorker: Tomorrow’s Advance Man (1h read)
- Politico: N.Y. Times accelerates digital-first effort (2 min read)
- eMarketer: Marketers Share Data Externally, Whether or Not They Want To (2 min read)
- Microsoft: The Facebook “It’s Not Our Fault” Study (5 min read)
- AdWeek: Marketers React to Mobile Viewability Criteria, as Challenges Loom (3 min read)
- NYT: For Verizon and AOL, Mobile Is a Magic Word (7 min read)
- TheWorldPost: Facebook Said Its Algorithms Do Help Form Echo Chambers. And the Tech Press Missed It. (7 min read)
- Vox: Cable news is in trouble, and it’s more about the news than the cable (4 min read)
- CNET: Feds to cable industry: Embrace broadband competition, or else (6 min read)
DCN’s Recommended Reading: Week of May 7, 2015
- WSJ: Vox CEO Says Quality Will Trump ‘Clickbait’ (5 mins)
- Mashable: I watched the Pacquiao-Mayweather fight on Periscope and saw the future (6 mins)
- WSJ: Facebook Offers to Let Publishers Keep Revenue From Certain Ads (3 mins)
- Medium: The beta version of a new business model for news (5 mins)
- 614 Group: Viewability: State of Operations Analysis and Vendor Study (3 mins)
- AdExchanger: Publisher Redesigns Can Knock Viewability Out Of The Park (3 mins)
- AdExchanger: The New York Times Optimistic About Viewability As Digital Ad Revs Rise 11% (2 mins)
- AdExchanger: Chartbeat launches engagement tools (4 mins)
Member Spotlight: AccuWeather’s Marie Svet
Q: Tell us a bit about your role.
A: I lead the monetization strategy for the web, mobile, and connected media platforms of AccuWeather. That means I direct everything from sales to intelligent ad strategies to trafficking and optimization on the site.
I have a deep background in revenue generation for television and media, and working with the world leader in digital and weather data is a great opportunity to take advantage of our meteoric growth and offer advertisers levels of granularity and control in 1-to-1 marketing campaigns that you just can’t find elsewhere. We have the flexibility, worldwide audience, trusted brand, and massive raw data to make uniquely targeted advertising a reality across multiple platforms.
Q: What is the biggest challenge for you in your role?
A: Programmatic advertising can mean many different things, but some believe it has come to mean a completely back-end-driven ad serving system with very little human involvement. This attitude from agencies and brands has publishers worried about the commoditization of their ad inventories.
We are an advertising partner – not a vendor – that understands that human creativity cannot be replaced by a computer, so while we sell a lot of our inventory programmatically, we also have a team dedicated to meeting the needs of our partners, who need to deliver their message beyond the banner – through unique and custom executions that combine all our data with our best in class content for seamless advertising experiences. Our start-up mentality allows us to be early adopters of new technologies so we’ll always be on the forefront, trying and testing new things. The goal is to provide the easiest, most seamless way possible for advertisers to meet their marketing objectives across our platforms, however they choose to transact.
Q: What do you think is the most important aspect of your job?
A: Building the right team in sales and ad ops is essential to our overall success.
We look for new team members who are natively digital with a strategic ad ops focus. The way digital advertising is bought and sold is very different than traditional media and requires a technical and almost entrepreneurial mindset due to the ever-changing landscape and infinite ad product possibilities when platform, audience, behavior, and weather data are all in the mix.
We have a large global audience, and selling programmatically through both private marketplaces and open exchanges has given us the ability to maximize yield across our non-U.S. inventory while keeping costs to a minimum.
Q: Describe one of the most unusual or most memorable experiences in your career.
A: I’m fortunate to have been on the ground floor of many interesting media ventures, including the early days of the FeedRoom.com, Nickelodeon, Nick @ Nite, and World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). But some of the most personally satisfying work I do is with the New York Chapter of Women in Cable Telecommunications (WICTNY). I believe strongly in its mission to develop women leaders who will transform the media industry. I served three terms as chapter president and continue to serve on the New York board of directors.
Q: What are you most excited about for the future of AccuWeather?
A: Big Data is opening up whole new ways of defining campaigns and reaching your audience with a personalized message that can follow them throughout their day on multiple touch points.
AccuWeather has continued to grow enormously, and as we launch on exciting new platforms like smartwatches and wearables and of course the new 24/7 AccuWeather Network, my team can offer more value to advertisers across multiple platforms.
In my time with AccuWeather, we’ve achieved 40% growth in digital media revenue generation and established a new record and standard for success for a 53-year-old company. I’m excited to see where advancements in the industry and AccuWeather’s diverse customer data points take us in terms of what we can offer. As new platforms grow, we can offer more value than ever before.
Marie Svet is the Chief Revenue Officer of AccuWeather.
DCN’s Recommended Reading: Week of April 30, 2015
- AdAge: Apple Watch Creates Wrist-y Business for Publishers, Advertisers (5 min read)
- The Atlantic: Facebook Is Eating the Internet (5 min read)
- The Guardian: Google admits mistakes with news outlets as it announces new partnership (3 min read)
- Re/Code: Blocking Comcast Is a Start. But if We Want Better Broadband, We Need Much More. (2 min read)
- MediaPost: ANA Advises Advertisers to Make ‘Measurably Viewable’ New Digital Ad Currency Standard (1 min read)
- Digiday: Hearst’s Troy Young: The modern publisher needs a platform (4 min read; 27 minute audio)
- MediaPost: ANA Calls Agency Financial Relations ‘Disturbing,’ Releases Findings to Back It Up (3 min read)
- Re/Code: Money Can’t Buy Everything, Comcast Learns as Deal Implodes (4 min read)
- TechCrunch: Cablevision Becomes First Pay TV Provider to Resell Hulu’s Service (3 min read)
DCN’s Recommended Reading: Week of April 23, 2015
- AdWeek: Facebook Tweaks Cause Concern Among Marketers, but Not Necessarily Panic (4 min read)
- AdAge: As Marketers Rush to Programmatic, Consumer-Privacy Rules Still Apply (4 min read)
- PressThink: “It’s not that we control NewsFeed, you control NewsFeed…” Facebook: please stop with this. (5 min read)
- Economist: Google Mobilegeddon (2 min read)
- George Brock: Andy Mitchell and Facebook’s weird state of denial about news (4 min read)
- New York Times: Comcast’s Track Record in Past Deals May Be Hitch for Merger With Time Warner Cable (4 min read)
- WSJ: Comcast Strives to Save Merger With Time Warner Cable (5 min read)
- BBC: AdBlock Plus defeats German publishers in court (3 min read)
- The Atlantic: The Eternal Return of BuzzFeed (21 min read)
- AdExchanger: How Can Programmatic Inspire Audiences? (3 min read)
Recommended Reading: Week of April 16, 2015
- NYT: E.U. Charges Google With Violating Antitrust Laws (5 min read)
- AdAge: Are Attention Metrics the Future? (3 min read)
- NYT: A ‘Darker Narrative’ of Print’s Future From Clay Shirky (5 min read)
- Washington Post: In cable, it’s survival of the fittest as channels drop from the bundle (5 min read)
- Washington Post: Washington Post Executive Editor Martin Baron on journalism’s transition from print to digital (23 min read)
- AdAge: Kraft’s Julie Fleischer at Ad Age’s Digital Conference: Not All Data Is Crap (1 min read)
- AdAge: Welcome to the Video Revolution (2 min read)
- MediaPost: Turn Hit With New Lawsuit Over ‘Zombie’ Cookies (2 min read)
- WSJ: Growth of Ad Blocking Adds to Publishers’ Worries (4 min read)
Inside DCN’s Next Conversation: Revenue Diversification
Revenue diversification is the final topic in the three-part series taken from our invite-only dinner The Next Conversation—an event we hosted inside the Digiday Publishers Summit in Vail, CO on March 26th. It’s a topic we think and talk a lot about with our members—from podcasting to events to eCommerce and subscriptions – digital content companies are well aware that advertising won’t fully pay for the great content of the future. And one clear take-away is that all forays into new streams of revenue must align with and complement one’s brand. Context matters.
Some highlights:
“You have to diverse your portfolio in terms of revenue. Whether it’s through subscription, events…you cannot have 70% of your revenue coming from advertising and only 30% of your revenue coming from elsewhere. It has to be more balanced”
—Steve Suthiana, Global Head, Digital and Media Operations, Mansueto Ventures
“You’re really looking for a path that allows your users to demonstrate loyalty and that grows your revenue separate and apart from ad dollars”
—Paul Marcum, Head of Global Digital Video, Bloomberg
“I think what Vice has done really well is bring equity back to the brand.”
—Lindsay Nelson, VP, Vox Creative, Vox Media
“Content is king.”
—Brian Danza, CTO, Daily Caller
3 Ways the Digital Newsroom is Evolving
A recent American Press Institute report showed that although audiences are increasingly viewing news on laptops (69%) and cell phones (56%) television remained the number one news source, with over 87%. According to a 2014 Pew Research report the top six most known and trusted news sources were all television outlets.
Your area’s local TV station most likely has the dominant news brand in your market and despite their usefulness, hot new devices and clever apps have yet to change that. TV news has the dominant, trusted brand, visual quality, and local star power to retain audiences. But in order to keep that position, TV stations are having to operate in ways that go beyond “traditional.”
Today, local newsrooms need to think not just about appearing on multiple platforms, but also in terms of making the local newscasts that are the staple of their brand better suited to a digitally-savvy audience.
So, how are they meeting the challenge? Here are three ways:
- TV needs to maintain its status as the most stunning visual media.
Showing is always better than telling and touchscreen presentations are an easy way to do that because those on-air touchscreens used by many TV news anchors are much more than just a fancy display. Touchscreens allow vivid, animated presentations for elections, sports, 3D modelling, local events, traffic, and weather all to be created on the fly and put directly into the hands of the on-air talent.
Touchscreens not only make it easier to create and use animated presentations, they show on-air personalities using technology similar to what audiences use at home, which builds the perception of broadcasters being on the right side of the technological curve.
- TV needs to be a social activity.
Social Media is used by 73% of the people in the U.S. Viewers on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are enthusiastically uploading pictures and commentary as quickly as stories develop. Social media comments, images, and videos can (and should) be integrated with news broadcasts. This is accomplished through touchscreen presentations using complex filtering to grab user-generated content as it becomes available. The result is that viewers are transformed into a virtual army of on-the-scene reporters and, perhaps even more importantly, increasingly dedicated viewers.
- TV needs to immediately gratify.
Arguably, all content consumers today expect real-time information. But when it comes to news, time is of the essence. As information about events emerge, social media provides a way to keep on top of events as they unfold. However it is also important for on-air talent to demonstrate their expertise and integrate the video coverage and on-the-scene reporting that viewers expect, despite the demands of the increasingly rapid news cycle. From Amber alerts to elections, crime coverage, severe weather and national disasters, today’s broadcasters need to leverage digital tools to deliver real-time information.
At AccuWeather, we’ve worked with TV news for 30 years to help them not only with accurate weather forecasts, but also by developing digital tools that help them continue to evolve their craft. The future of the complete digital newsroom is already here. This year, at the 2015 NAB Show, AccuWeather will introduce a number of new features and enhancements to help create a complete digital newsroom, including street-level, 3D traffic, social media and UGC integration, real-time polling, and drone HD video.
In the landscape of local news, TV may still be king. But it won’t stay that way if it ignores the power of digital. By leveraging the power of their brands while embracing the changes in their audiences’ behavior and expectations, local TV news stations will stay dominant news forces in their markets that can grow with rapidly evolving media technology.
Loren Tobia, VP of Display Sales & Services at AccuWeather, has over 25 years of experience in broadcast news, as television news director for stations including WTVH Syracuse, NY; KMTV Omaha, NE; and WSAZ Huntington, WV. Loren was also chairman of RTDNA in 1996 and has been treasurer of the same organization since 2001. He is a former member of CBS News Affiliates Board, a former member of the Bloomberg News Affiliate Board, and the former chair of West Virginia Associated Press Broadcasters.
DCN’s Recommended Reading: Week of April 9, 2015
- Nieman: The Economist’s Tom Standage on digital strategy and the limits of a model based on advertising (19 min read)
- MondayNote: Jumping In bed with Facebook: Smart or desperate? (7 min read)
- Medium: Micropayments for news articles are a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea (6 min read)
- WSJ: Facebook Privacy Controls Face Scrutiny in Europe (5 min read)
- Digiday: Why viewability and programmatic often don’t mix (2 min read)
- WSJ: Is the Online Ad Industry Cleaning Up Its Act? (3 min read)
- Digiday: Ad blocking is every publisher’s problem now (3 min read)
- Nieman: By building partnerships with other newspapers, The Washington Post is opening up revenue opportunities (5 min read)