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.”
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.
At our Digital Content Next members-only Tech Day, held April 2 at the Time and Life building in NYC, topics included dealing with cyber security threats, how to make decisions about moving into the Hybrid Cloud and how to respond to the challenges brought on by viewability and ad blocking.
This event brought together senior-level technology executives from our member companies to learn, network and share common experiences from their respective – and sometimes very different – businesses among them Slate, CBS Interactive, AP, Forbes, About.com, Everyday Health, and Hearst. We also hosted a special interview with Co-founder and President of Power to Fly Katharine Zaleski. Three takeaways from the event:
Flexibility is key
“Different groups needed to interact with content in very different ways.” By decoupling the schema from its CMS About.com “Created a content schema that could grow and change as business needs do.”
— Nabil Ahmad, CTO, About.com
“Moving to the cloud has allowed us to cut the order processing time but even more importantly, it allows us to move from concept to deployment much more quickly.”
— Lorraine Cichowski, SVP, CIO, Associated Press
“Flexibility is a bad word to a lot of people… but allowing people to work remotely and be focused on outcomes actually allows them to work longer and harder.”
— Katharine Zaleski, Co-Founder & President, Power to Fly
Jefferson Rabb, CTO and Thomas Rhiel, Director of Reader Experience, Atavist
Building its CMS using Google Polymer Web Components allows Atavist’s CMS to quickly and flexibly produce interoperable custom elements. The result “encourages unique and creative stories” that include “easily assembled blocks of images, sound, video and interactive charts.”
— Jefferson Rabb, CTO and
Thomas Rhiel, Director of Reader Experience, Atavist
Integrated Tech Is Integral to the Business
“It is essential to be a technology-enabled company…technology can enable better monetization. You need your tech team to be tied into revenue goals. If they are in the loop, they can make ad delivery better or faster and make you, as a publisher, able to perform better than anybody else.”
— Dan Check, Vice Chairman & VP, Engineering/Product, Slate
David Hahn, CISO, Hearst
“You must have a security strategy from the top down. The reality is that employees are often the weakest link it any company’s security…it is essential to not only inform employees, but also to enable security to be everyone’s business, not just the tech department.
— David Hahn, CISO, Hearst
“Today’s audience wants to easily transition across devices: 40% of users run the same app in multiple devices, many switch between devices to complete a task. We need content and UX to work together to maintain a seamless experience.”
—Deepak Chokkadi, VP, Software Development and
Premal Parikh, CTO, Everyday Health
Invest in Tech Talent
“For me the whole thing is culture. You want people who will fit in and inspire others around them…you can do a lot to train them and get them fully up to speed.
—Nabil Ahmad, CTO, About.com
“The numbers speak for themselves, we don’t have enough people in tech so we can’t afford not to have women in these careers…I think we have to give up this idea of being valued by the amount of time you sit at a desk and evaluate our tech performance based on outcomes.”
—Katharine Zaleski, Co-Founder & President, Power to Fly
Lorraine Cichowski, SVP, CIO, AP
“As we work on our strategic cloud planning, we find that tech staff needs new skill sets so we are doing cloud training for some of the staff.”
—Lorraine Cichowski, SVP, CIO, AP
Click here to see the full agenda with speakers and sessions.
Publishers would have you believe that environment matters more than ever when it comes to the effectiveness of digital advertising. The Financial Times wanted to make this more than a theory. To that end, on March 4th, 2015 Daniel Rothman, director of marketing and insight at the Financial Times, presented The 2015 Halo Study – new research that set out to test (and prove) that environment matters more than ever in digital advertising. While this is not the first time this type of research has been conducted (i.e., BBC’s Advertising Dress Test, IAB’s VW campaign test, and DCN’s Branding on Display Research), it’s easy to understand the need for regular updates to this research given the constantly evolving digital landscape.
“This research highlights for advertisers the importance and relevance of websites affiliated with traditional media companies and helps educate (in Halo’s case, using neuroscience) how brands are clearly viewed depending on the environment that they appear within,” Rothman said.
The FT study coined and defined the term “Observable Halo Effect”: the subconscious perception that brands that have ad placements next to high-quality content benefit from the “halo” of that publishers brand, creating trust, and positive measures for their brands. The FT research looked at six brands and nine content providers; brands with ads on the more established content providers (FT, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg) garnered significantly higher brand perceptions, or Observable Halo Effect, compared with brands with ads on emerging sites (Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, Drudge Report, Twitter and LinkedIn).
Rothman noted that “Commissioning a project such as our FT Halo Study is a significant financial and time commitment. Many brands and even smaller agencies may be unable to make investment into projects such as this. We are happy to share all the findings with all marketers and agencies– and have already begun to do that across the US and UK.”
Additional findings from The 2015 Halo Study:
Not all content providers are equal. Established content providers are more likely to be perceived as high quality, trustworthy, and more prestigious than non-traditional media owners.
You can’t fit a square peg in a round hole. When consumers act like media planners, they place 50% more ads in established content sites compared with emerging sites.
Right environment = implicit added value to a brand. Customers implicitly have a higher perception of the brand and a quicker reaction time indicating the best natural fit with established content providers. The same attributes — especially high quality and trustworthy — are what people look for in new products and services.
After presenting his findings, Rothman moderated a panel of marketers and agency executives to discuss the results. The panelists were Christine Bacon, Head of Advertising at Allianz Global Investors, David Rosenbaum, EVP, Group Account Director – LVMH at Havas and Matt Hickerson, Managing Director, Marketing & Communications at Macquarie Group.
Some takeaways for agencies and marketers from Rothman’s panel:
Ask questions. Before picking content partners, brands must ask themselves:
What is the brand’s DNA? What are my goals and what am I trying to accomplish? What is the right audience? Is the content provider the right environment for my brand?
Brand reputations matter. Brand perception can change based on platforms. Smart brands want to be in smart environments.
Quality over quantity. Brands are looking for quality interaction and will only make an impact if there is the right integration. Being on many different platforms and in front of a myriad of audiences is not always the answer.
Content adjacency is key. Content adjacency problems are an ongoing issue. Brands can mitigate risk with high quality and collaborative briefs that focus on desired goals and outcomes.
Thoroughly evaluate platforms. Well-established brands are not always looking to rush into new environments. And in certain categories (such as financial institutions and luxury products), many choose not to unless there is proven success by similar brands. Brands should properly evaluate each platform they partner with – it’s not always about being the first.
“The Halo Study is an example of the commitment that FT has to providing our clients and the advertisement community at large with unique market insights. One of the advantages of the Financial Times is that we invest significant funds into analytics, which include campaigns performance analytics, brand lift studies, brand tracking studies as well as larger macro industry trend pieces,” said Rothman. While The Halo Study may not repeated for another two to three years, we can expect to see more research from the FT this year, including a study of Opinion Leaders and a Media Engagement study.
A Nielsen analysis found that as young viewers cognitively and developmentally change, so too do their cross-platform habits.
According to Nielsen, kids’ media consumption across age ranges is akin to transitioning from strained peas to silverware—with distinct differences in taste, viewing and listening preference, and even who they’re viewing with.
For example, while more than 95% of all kids (2-17) prefer to watch traditional television over 20 hours a week—with Hispanic kids averaging about a half-hour more—the analysis found that older kids and teens go online on computers more, as about 29% of teens 14 to 17 years old were online via computer for at least one minute in March 2014.
