Articles by: "Dennis Yuscavitch, VP of Product Marketing—Outbrain"

How publisher operating systems will help save the business

August 13, 2019 Dennis Yuscavitch, VP of Product Marketing—Outbrain

It’s a brutal time to be in the news publishing business. One troubling example is that, between 2004 and 2018, more than one in five American newspapers folded. However, I believe that publishing can be saved, and that one promising new technology may play a leading role in bringing publishing back: the publisher operating system.

To help explain what the publisher operating system is and why it’s so crucial, let’s back up to understand what’s driven the current struggles and decline. It’s a story of a centuries-old industry upended by technology. It is also one that I believe technology can fix.

Discovery

The publishing business is a discovery business, and it always has been. For centuries, readers have flocked to sources like newspapers and magazines to learn new things, understand their world—and, of course, to find new ideas to entertain and delight them.

For most of publishing history, much of that discovery business was dominated by a handful of regional newspapers and magazines. Whether they covered a small neighborhood, a city, or an entire state—the logic was the same. The publications hired journalists and editors to create content for discovery-hungry audiences. At the same time, they invested in operations and technology, like ad sales teams, printing presses and other infrastructure, to fund the business and distribute their information.

Of course, creating and distributing all that content presented heavy fixed costs—which raised the barriers to entry in a given media market. The high cost of doing business gave most publishers monopolies (or sometimes duopolies or triopolies) in their respective markets. Readers had one or two publications they loyally subscribed to and read—and through which advertisers could reach them. All of this served to fund the journalists and editors who kept readers engaged and informed.

Disruption

The internet changed all of this. Now, between push-button publishing and programmatic advertising, readers, even those in local markets, have a vast array of outlets to choose from to discover new content. As a result, advertisers have an endlessly-expanding number of outlets through which to reach those audiences. And regional publishers are getting squeezed out of the equation. Close to 200 American counties lacked a local paper in 2018. That’s not just bad news for publishing businesses. Ultimately, it hurts journalism and communities.

Not that struggling publishers are taking the changes sitting down. Instead, they’re pursuing lean, efficient operations in a vastly more competitive era. They’re in a constant battle to recapture the ad revenues and readership they’ve lost, and to cut down heavily on fixed costs. To keep those costs down, many publishers have been forced to downsize content teams. They lay off journalists and editors while trying to diversify their revenue stream away from advertising into ecommerce, subscriptions, memberships, and experiential events.

In the short term, investing less on the content side may be many publishers’ only choice. However, this approach also means de-funding the very content that draws audiences and justifies higher ad prices. In other words, many publishers are caught in a vicious cycle: commoditization forces them to slash the very assets that set them apart.

Managing content and costs

That’s the state of much of the publishing industry today. It’s a situation that cries out for a tech solution. Rather than cutting editorial teams, publishers ought to be able to streamline operations and maximize efficiency. And this is an objective that software and automation ought to be able to meet.

Unfortunately, software solutions have been hard to come by. Outside of content management systems, meaningful offerings are few and far between. Instead, publishers have been forced to struggle with disjointed tech stacks on the advertising side of the house, and dismal offerings for managing subscription businesses. They’re left to support costly IT integrations across systems—and resource-heavy manual labor when systems don’t integrate. That’s hardly promising for a struggling industry that critically needs efficiency gains.

Introducing the publisher operating system

Recently, however, things have changed. In 2016, the Washington Post brought its in-house publisher solution, Arc, to market. Last summer, Vox Media introduced its own in-house publisher platform, Chorus, as well. More than just piecemeal offerings, these are true end-to-end solutions. They help publishers manage the full range of news publishing operations—from ad sales, including a built-in ad network; to subscriptions; to content management; to community management. In other words, they’re full operating systems for publisher’s businesses.

An end-to-end solution is exactly what it will take to give publishers the efficiency they need. And judging from their success in the market, these OS’s have clearly struck a chord. “Combined,” Digiday reports that “the two platforms reach nearly 1 billion unique users every month across more than a dozen countries around the world.”

Given the success of the two leading players, it wouldn’t be surprising to see other market entrants as well, and the birth of a full-fledged publisher OS sector. That’s good for local news businesses, and local news. The increased efficiency from OS’s are likely to free news organizations to focus less on business operations, and more on editorial content and journalism. For the struggling regional news business, that’s good news indeed.

Internet technologies have forced the news publishing industry into a tailspin. I believe this new technology—the publisher OS—will help publishers right the course again.

Advertising | Perspectives

If attention is the currency for advertising, what does it take to get more?

October 9, 2018 Dennis Yuscavitch, VP of Product Marketing—Outbrain

In today’s crowded digital advertising landscape, consumer attention is a much sought-after currency. The question is: Do consumers respond better to quantity or quality of advertising? I’d make the argument for the latter and many of my industry peers agree. Compelling, informative and relevant ad content – the non-interruptive kind — is what matters the most in gaining consumer attention.

Granted, the six-second video ad (blink and you’ll miss it) came into vogue at the beginning of 2017 when YouTube/Google showcased their best quickie video ads at Sundance, encouraging more brands and agencies to adopt this “snackable” format. The rationale was that consumers’ attention is so fragmented that advertisers need to pick up the pace to keep them engaged.

However, there’s a better case to be made for longer-form advertising that is well-targeted and brings value to the viewer or reader.

I had the privilege to speak on a panel on October 2 during New York’s Advertising Week called If Attention is the Currency for Advertising—What does it take to get More? My co-panelists were engaging executives from digital advertising company Acuity, creative agency BBDO and Prudential Financial.

Among us the feeling was mutual—quality matters more than quantity and giving more control to the user is paramount in gaining their attention.

Compelling, Long-Form Creative Works

There were some great examples of compelling long-form campaigns offered by my fellow panelists. I’ll choose one here: Anna Papadopoulos, VP of Advertising at Prudential described the financial company’s latest TV campaign, “The State of Us,” which included 30, 60, and 90 second commercials centered around its retirement planning services in which real people —not actors — were featured talking about their financial futures. She pointed out that “the magic about the campaign is that it wasn’t about Prudential. It was about people’s stories.”

I shared with the group one of my favorite examples of long-form sponsored content — The New York Times Magazine’s audio podcast that launched in September (to accompany its annual “Voyages” photo essay issue). The audio content was described as a “soundscape ecology project” allowing listeners to hear real sounds of moving lava in Hawaii or bats in Mozambique, for example. GE sponsored this engaging content. This qualifies as an advertising coup in my opinion because as a consumer, I enjoyed the audio so much I actually remembered who the advertiser was!

Consumers Appreciate Native Advertising

Our panel discussion also revolved around native advertising, another long form approach. I know from experience that consumers look at native ads 53% more than display ads and native ads create an 18% increase in purchase intent. It just stands to reason. If the sponsored content that is surfaced is based on reader interests and preferences, it is way more likely to capture their attention.

What’s noteworthy is that non-social native works best. eMarketer recently found that consumers trust information from advertisers on publishers’ sites 24.4% more than on social media platforms, and 69% trust publisher site ads while only 54% trust social platform ads.

Let’s not forget that context always matters. If someone is reading a news article, they are probably more disposed to reading another article that is recommended to them (even if it’s sponsored). A more natural content experience that seamlessly integrates into the media that users are already consuming has to be more attention-grabbing.

Want Attention? Give Users Control

The panelists agreed that we need to give consumers a greater sense of control. Are your videos fully opt-in? (This means no sound and no motion unless the reader proactively opens it.) If the video automatically starts playing, most people tend to “click to skip.”

However, if the advertiser allows the user to choose to open the video, it could be 6 seconds, 30 seconds, or 60 seconds. It becomes less about short attention spans and more about earning the right attention with the right people that will actually drive good content experiences, and hopefully, conversions.

Overall, advertising should be less about the brand, the agency, or the technology company, and more about what will resonate with the consumers viewing the ad. After all, in the words of digital analyst Brian Solis, “attention is a precious commodity.”

Perspectives | Revenue

What happens when you take “publishing” out of the “publishing business”

August 20, 2018 Dennis Yuscavitch, VP of Product Marketing—Outbrain

In May of 2017, Bill Simmons, former ESPN personality and creator of The Ringer, made an interesting decision to move his successful sports media empire to Vox Media. Simmons maintained editorial independence but relied on Vox for all the non-content creation requirements of a traditional publisher. This included all revenue and product development because as Simmons said “they are great at sales and technology.” The plan, it seems, was to offload the “publishing” part of the publishing business. This allowed Simmons to focus on content creation for his widely popular podcast and website.

This wasn’t a viable model 20 years ago when publishers had established oligopolies by controlling distribution in their respective geographic regions. As a result, the publishing needs of the business, HR, printing press, sales, and distribution existed to support editorial and content creation. Now that the internet has driven distribution costs to near $0, and oligopolies no longer exists, there is little need to combine traditional publishing sales, product and HR overhead with the journalism it is intended to support.

Even so, content creations like Simmons still need to make money. To do so, they rely on content management platforms like Chorus, the purpose-built platform Vox created to manage content and revenue. As of July, Chorus supported 350 media brands. The system includes “content management, data-informed multi-platform content distribution, integrated advertising, and a suite of publishing tools.” Media brands that strip away activities not directly related to content creation establish a sustainable model that allows them to create even more great content, a reinforcing cycle of success.

In his May 2017 post, Ben Thompson covered the changing business model while referring to platforms like Vox’s as the “Faceless Publisher.” The platform handles all the monetization, resources, and infrastructure, which allows journalists to focus on creating amazing content.

The term “Faceless Publisher” might be a misnomer in Vox’s case given they have established several great brands in the market including SB Nation, Vox and Eater. However, it is clear that this federated group of journalistic brands, supported by a single business platform, creates great efficiencies. This efficiency will deliver what readers and content creators need: a sustainable business model that delivers amazing content.

Advertising | Perspectives | Revenue

Thinking differently about outstream video ads

July 10, 2018 Dennis Yuscavitch, VP of Product Marketing—Outbrain

Assaulted by a sudden rush of sound while surfing the web, you probably have found yourself asking “where is that audio coming from?!?” We’ve all been there, frantically searching for the video ad that auto-played with sound. This negative video experience has become so problematic that leading browsers now stop video that auto-plays sound. Without a doubt, this should have us all asking how can publishers gain the revenue benefit of video without annoying readers?

Marketers enjoy video because it creates a deeper connection with the audience. And publishers are willing to push the boundaries of an acceptable video experience in the name of improved RPMs. That said, there are three things publishers can do to take advantage of these improved connection and revenue opportunities while creating a healthy and friendly user experience:

Personalization is Relevancy

Video ad content must be personalized for the reader. The over-abundance of video demand shouldn’t be a license for inundating the reader with whatever demand meets the viewability (vCPM) completion rate goals. Make video ad content relevant and users will engage and stay through completion.

Video signals are important

The experience must be customized based on reader habits. If the reader has shown a propensity to engage with video, make the video experience more prominent with more entry points to accommodate their preference. Gather signals like time of day, device, and user’s preference to consumer short and long-form ad content to help tune their session.

Interruption is non-starter

Allow video ad content to become ‘native video’ and non-interruptive. On mobile this works best by emulating a feed experience through inline play. Alternatively, by placing it at the end of an article in non-feed formats, you can show at the exact moment the reader is deciding what content to consume next.

These strategies are required for a successful and user-friendly auto-play video experience. However, there’s another powerful alternative: enabling click-to-play outstream video ads. Publishers can put the control back in the hands of reader while proving to marketers that lean-in, long-form video ad content and immersive storytelling experience they’ve been looking for.

Outbrain’s Click-to-Play solution, which we launched earlier this year, has averaged view times of 37 seconds, 49% completion rates, and 10% conversion rates for 60 second videos. This proves that amazing engagement stats can be achieved while giving full control to the viewer.

Lots of value can be extracted from auto-play video ads for both publishers and marketers. But we need to think differently and invest in the right mix of video experiences. If we do, we’ll all be able to forge a relationship with our readers that keeps them coming back.

Innovation

How Google’s News App is tackling some of social delivery’s tough problems

June 5, 2018 Dennis Yuscavitch, VP of Product Marketing—Outbrain

Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai kicked off last month’s Google I/O by stating that “there is more great journalism being created today than ever before.” Pichai and Trystan Upstill, Head of News Product and Engineering at Google, went on to highlight the programs and products Google was working on to help publishers sustain quality journalism. A lofty approach by a company often on the receiving end of publishers’ ire. They are making an effort, however, by doing the work and committing the resources to change the narrative.

The core of Google’s strategy relies solely on the Google News app. Typically, social feeds aren’t aligned with publishers’ needs. This is because social lacks brand awareness, revenue opportunity, and data about the end audiences. Furthermore, social feeds are often blamed for creating “filter bubbles” that negate a holistic approach to a topic and disintermediate the publisher/reader relationship. The Google News app has put some serious work into addressing some, but not all, of these concerns.

Here are the top four concerns that they appropriately addressed.

1. Featuring the Publisher Brand

The publisher brand is well-featured and prominent in the app experience. This helps bolster publisher brand awareness and avoids the “I read it on Facebook” dilemma. (This is what over 50% of readers answer when asked which publisher authored an article they read online.)

2. Avoiding the “Filter Bubble”

The “Headlines” section of the new app lets readers view what everyone else is reading. This helps address the “filter bubble” effect that comes from a 100% curated social experience. Discovery of new content from outside your social circle or creating more engaging ways to expose interesting content is critical.

3. Delivering Full Coverage

Our favorite geek-out feature is “Full Coverage,” which is a link placed under most news topics. Full Coverage provides multiple points of view from many different sources. As stories evolve over time, Full Coverage hosts a timeline so readers can understand the changes in the storyline. To enable Full Coverage, Google uses temporal co-locality. In layman’s terms, Google can understand the people, places and things related to a story in real-time and then package them. Even tweets, fact-checking and commonly asked questions are included in Full Coverage.

4. Creating Better Content Experiences

In the ‘make it easier to consume content’ category, “Newscasts” is a new user experience for packaging content. It neatly combines articles, videos, quotes and other types of content on a single topic, no matter where you are in the app. Upstill referred to it as “a preview that allows you to get a feel for the story.”

At Outbrain, we applaud any effort that helps readers discover new content, and addresses publisher concerns. We aren’t ignoring the legitimate business issues publishers have with Google, but are more than willing to highlight a great product, we’re all readers at the end of the day.

Innovation | Perspectives

Publishers need to work together—not against each other

April 10, 2018 Dennis Yuscavitch, VP of Product Marketing—Outbrain

Recently, a close family friend said “I actually liked getting my news on Facebook. It was relevant for me and easy.” We went on to discuss Facebook’s focus on “time well spent” and how the social network plans to emphasize content shared by family and friends. However, lovers of the News Feed on Facebook have certainly not been the only ones affected. Given that they are on the losing end of Facebook’s algorithmic attention deficit disorder, publishers need to give some thought to the ways in which they will continue to attract high quality audiences.

In fact, publishers should seriously consider working together on this one. An option that isn’t getting enough attention is allocating part of their owned and operated pages for other premium publishers’ content. This would allow publishers to recapture the monetization, brand awareness, and data they’ve lost from Facebook while creating a healthier ecosystem for all. If done properly, publishers will have an audience that is more engaged, something the early data from Outbrain’s Sphere initiative has proven out. Put another way, audiences referred between premium publishers are simply more engaged than folks who come via social referrals.

Facebook audiences were always a challenge, mostly “side-door” with high bounce rates. But, it was a trade-off most publishers accepted until their brand awareness, monetization opportunities, and knowledge about readers were undermined by Facebook’s decision. Rather than relying solely on Facebook, publishers have an opportunity to band together and expand the personalized discovery experience to include other premium publishers. By linking out to other publishers and gaining the benefit of similar inbound audiences, publishers can establish a “flywheel effect” that nets them either referral revenue or engaged inbound audiences. Win, win!

Three important characteristics are needed to ensure such an audience exchange is truly reader-focused. First, transitioning audiences between publishers can’t be based on a ratio, whether 1-to-1 or 1-to-many. The reader wants the best experience possible and by requiring content from a publisher to meet ratio requirements, the reader will get overlooked. Second, publishers must have the controls and input to decide what other publishers are allowed in the club. Third, data must be provided to all participants that clearly shows the number of engaged users in order to prove out the value of the exchange.

While these three characteristics are critical, the biggest concern we hear is “why should I link to a competitor?” Given the changes in the landscape over the last several years should we all rethink our competitive set? Do I compete with publishers or social platforms for readers? In his 2007 article New Rule: Do What You Do Best and Link to the Rest, Jeff Jarvis discusses the benefits of linking to other publishers. Frederic Filloux built on this idea in Why Publishers Should Consider the “Smart Curation” Market, which supports selective linking based on editorial preference. These are great examples for linking to other publishers meant to create a healthy and vibrant ecosystem while establishing trust with readers.

Bottom line: Providing readers the best discovery experience, even linking to other publishers, establishes a deeper level of trust that will pay-off for everyone in the long-run.

Perspectives

Partner or vendor? The downside of guarantee deals

February 20, 2018 Dennis Yuscavitch, VP of Product Marketing—Outbrain

It started with a simple hypothesis: The most powerful long-term driver of publishers’ business is reader’s trust, which builds loyalty and habits over time. If a person who reads something today comes back tomorrow for another serving, that would create a sustainable return audience. That audience would consistently contribute to the bottom line and produce much greater returns than simply increasing the number of ads-per-page until the user experience breaks down.

However, over the past few years, most of the industry drifted in the exact opposite direction. Most seek more revenue extraction on each visit, while handing people’s loyalty and habits over to platforms like Facebook. It may have seemed like a logical approach for revenue-strapped publishers. Unfortunately it is also one that carried negative long-term implications, which spawned guaranteed revenue deals with myriad monetization partners, including Outbrain.

When considering guaranteed revenue deals, keep these three topics in mind:

Restrictive Page Layouts. The days of asking a publisher to maintain a static page layout or conform to a certain number of paid placements are over. Always-on testing and optimization are critical tools in publishers’ toolbox. Guarantees prohibit flexibility by locking in page format, design and a specific number of placements. Without flexibility, publishers forgo a core capability to engage their audiences and improved monetization.
Constant Compliance. Slow approval and legal overhead reduce time to deployment, reducing revenue opportunities. In addition, ongoing compliance creates a burden of monitoring, coordination amongst internal teams and strains partner relationships. Ironically, most guarantee deals eventually default to revenue share because compliance is so cumbersome.
Reader First. To deliver on guarantees, publishers have to push the boundaries of recommendation quality. This trade-off can sometimes lead to a lousy reader experience, frustrating editorial teams and creating recommendation blindness. It’s a short-term revenue win but one that can degrade reader trust. This dynamic is one reason we recently launched Sphere, a publisher traffic exchange to promote high-quality editorial content.

Guarantees work in certain cases, but more often than not are an illusion for revenue-strapped publishers because they can undermine the long-term reader relationship. In addition, a lack of flexibility and a heavy compliance process distracts from more value-add and strategic activities.

Recent market developments show signs that publishers are beginning to understand the trade-offs between true partnership-based revenue share relationships, where participants work together to improve the overall health of the publisher business. This contrasts with vendor-based, revenue-focused deals that are narrowly defined by extracting highest possible RPM. Guarantee deals will remain relevant for some publishers, but hopefully the industry can make more informed decisions based on the mutual benefits of revenue share relationships.

Perspectives | Revenue

What if publishers could see the revenue value of their content in real-time?

March 28, 2017 Dennis Yuscavitch, VP of Product Marketing—Outbrain

More content is being produced and consumed than ever before. However, one of the biggest obstacles to success for publishers today is the inability to fully understand the value of their content. Yes, publishers are getting more and more data. But with so many different types of ads, targeting, and decision-engines running on a publisher’s site, the revenue generated from a piece of content has become impossible to retrieve beyond general averages.

In fact, as we have previously noted, most publishers merely settle for what’s available (averages) rather than what’s needed (real-time values). However, as we all know, a data-driven business cannot run on averages. That would be like trading stocks based on the average over the past week while someone else is trading based on precise real-time values.

Add to this the silos between the editorial and ad ops and you have an ad stack and content stack that don’t talk to one another.

The Opportunity

So, how can publishers harness bridge these gaps and work smarter? There are three significant opportunities for publishers in this challenging landscape. Those that tap into these will be empowered to do more than simply survive. They’ll have a competitive advantage.

1. Use Data to Fuel Audience Insights

Data should be the glue that connects publishers to their audience. It should enable them to serve more personalized content and enhanced user experiences, so they can better compete with social media platforms. Data should flow between publisher Data Management Platforms, network insights, and 3rd party data providers via APIs. This enables publishers to connect their content with their user and deliver customized experiences based on content type, device and location.

2. Connect Content and Revenue

Publishers need to connect content and revenue so that content can be personalized and optimized for yield. There is currently a lack of understanding about the true value of content. This doesn’t mean the total value of content. Instead, it means knowing the exact value of any article or video at a single point in time and the ability to take meaningful action based upon that insight. When content is a publisher’s currency, and each click is the trigger for revenue, a publisher must connect what they are selling (advertising) with the content that accompanies it

3. See a Holistic Picture of All Revenue

Lastly, publishers need to understand revenue from all sources in a single dashboard, not as individual boxes on the page. Once publishers have access to these insights, they can further optimize to the correct partner, referral source, or set of specific pieces of content to maximize additional revenue. Simply adding more paid links as a way to generate more revenue is sure-fire way to disappoint users, while being counter-intuitive to the principles of yield optimization.

The Power of the Complete Picture

Partners with expansive network insights as well as multiple paid relationships and networks can help publishers meet revenue goals. This model has played out over the last decade, beginning with display and evolving over time to include native, sponsorship, ecommerce and even off-platform distribution. However, the majority of publishers have not yet brought those revenue sources together into a single, manageable view to that they can take direct actions that are maximized for each piece of content.

Connecting content with revenue allows publishers to understand how much RPM value their Facebook referral traffic is delivering compared to all of their other sources. Yield teams can understand which partner delivers the most value. Audience development teams can launch campaigns based on feedback from ad operations about under-delivering sponsorship campaigns. Executives can see how revenue goals in real-time, all based on the connection between revenue and content.

Publishers must break down the walls that are typically built up between revenue and editorial teams. Real-time insights allow them to personalize the content experience, while also considering the value of each piece content. It is clear that publishers need to leverage the appropriate tools and strategies to achieve this level of insight and opportunity.

Dennis Yuscavitch has spent the last several years creating and launching new product, most recently with Outbrain as director of product marketing. When he’s not making publishers and advertisers happy he’s often coaching his local youth soccer team. The consummate early adopter, you can find him online @dennisy or via LinkedIn.