Articles by: "Jason Kint, CEO – DCN"

Consumer advocate Julie Brill leaving FTC

March 22, 2016 Jason Kint, CEO – DCN

Julie Brill has been an unwavering advocate for the consumer during her time as FTC Commissioner. DCN had the privilege of hosting her at our event last December “The Consumer Rules: Lessons From Ad Blocking” where I interviewed her on everything from the definition of consumer harm to the notion that privacy today is more about controlling who you communicate with — and how — than seclusion.

Hindsight is 20/20 but many of her concerns over the years related to privacy and consumer trust in the digital ecosystem have come true with the advent of major issues like ad blocking. I look forward to seeing where her expertise and focus on consumers and privacy takes her as she re-enters the private sector.

Perspectives

Consumer matters: trust, transparency and the open web

March 3, 2016 Jason Kint, CEO – DCN

I have no doubt the next year will bring meaningful developments in defense of the open web—the essential platform where publishers are able to distribute and monetize their content directly with consumers. On the open web—one in which information flows freely and gatekeepers are not able to restrict that flow—transparency rules, from sources to source code, and the most valued commodity is trust.

To that end, champions of the open web are now writing and debating rules that will impact the value of publishers’ relationships with their readers and viewers. It’s our role at DCN to ensure that the united voice of the 74 premium publishers in our membership is clearly heard.

Last week, DCN sent an important letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) after it recently signaled it’s drafting the privacy rules it promised last year when it issued the Open Internet Order (aka “Net Neutrality”). Internet Service Providers (ISPs), which include both carriers and cable operators, have argued that the rules of the wider web are sufficient for them. Of course, Verizon Wireless famously proved otherwise last year.

DCN, as the voice of premium publishers, has asked the FCC to consider context and consumer expectations in writing these rules. Significantly, it appears that no ISP wants to be identified as holding a privileged position in being able to collect and use data on consumers. I’m not sure how this argument holds water considering the fact that consumers now keep personal, connected devices on 24/7 wherever they go. Consider that your mobile broadband provider can see all the activity on your phone—your web history, app usage, phone calls, friends and even your location history—and then tie that data back to the subscriber data they have about you. Clearly ISPs have a heightened responsibility to provide transparency, choice, and control for consumers.

ISPs have begun to fund research from respected academic and industry thought leaders in an attempt to prove that they are in an inferior position to companies like Facebook and Google in collecting this data. Let’s face it: There are also plenty of concerns about how Facebook, Google (and much of the adtech complex) mine data across the web and mobile as well, and our interest in a higher level of consumer trust is certainly not limited to the ISPs. All parties collecting data out of context of consumer expectations carry responsibility to be transparent and offer real choices to consumers. That said, just because some parts of the marketplace have systemic problems with trust doesn’t mean we should default to the lowest common denominator for ISPs. We should all aspire to do better – publishers as well, who carry the flag of trust as much as any party.

DCN’s focus on data ownership and consumer privacy is not only an effort for securing consumer trust but also an effort to secure the economics that will pay for the trusted content of the future. Location and behavioral data collected by third parties is what currently fuels much of the dysfunctional digital advertising marketplace. You know, the one where Google and Facebook eat half of the dinner while adtech gobbles up much of the marketers’ dessert. This market, unlike any other media, consists mostly of direct response advertising targeting thumb taps, installs, clicks and fleeting actions – not the kind of advertising that engenders consumer trust and funds premium content experiences.

Then, of course, there is the rising specter of ad blockers. The industry has rightly been up in arms over this issue for more than a year. The IAB, which represents ad tech companies, went so far recently as to call ad blockers “an unethical, immoral, mendacious, coven of techie wannabes” with “silly titles and funny walks.” Although it made for an interesting sideshow, this is a serious issue and we need to be clear on what is happening: Google, the single largest recipient and dependency of advertising revenues and by far the largest and most influential member of the IAB, is paying the #1 blocker, Adblock Plus (“ABP”), to have its ads “whitelisted” and thereby likely helping to keep ABP’s lights on.

However, pointing all of the blame at ABP and their sketchy business model only does so much because I’m not so sure that consumers care. If ABP and any other for-profit ad blockers went away tomorrow, there are plenty of non-profit ad blockers that would immediately fill the void. The best thing the leaders of our industry can do is to focus on solving the problem from the consumer’s perspective.

I see countless examples of DCN Member companies taking this approach and testing a wide range of possible solutions to ad blocking, from revamping ad and content experiences to consumer education to streamlining mobile experiences by reducing interference by intermediaries. And this month, I have the opportunity to explore approaches and issues from another vantage point at dozens of meetings with senior leaders of European organizations representing advertisers, agencies and publishers. As always, I’ll be leaning in, particularly focused on seeking consumer-focused insights that help advance the future of trusted content. I expect these insights to include thoughts on Google AMP, Facebook Instant Articles, ad blocking and an issue very much related and important in 2016—data ownership. I’ll keep you posted.

Perspectives

Beyond 140: Will another walled garden bloom?

January 14, 2016 Jason Kint, CEO – DCN

The latest report on Twitter’s efforts to reinvigorate its platform included the long-rumored project to break loose from the 140 character limit. Like all newsfeed changes, this triggered a polarizing debate about people’s preferred experience of the almighty feed. Lost in the fray was a more important development, that Slate’s Will Oremus astutely captured: “Twitter isn’t raising the character limit, it’s building a wall.”

So while the fundamental user experience of seeing 140 characters is likely to remain the same, a story can be expanded and be read in full, without linking back to (and delivering traffic to) the site of origin. This comes as we just wrapped up a year in our industry that saw the “platformization of content” with Facebook, Snapchat, Apple and Google rolling out proprietary experiences to seduce content creators. (Yes, AMP is proprietary until proven otherwise.)

I’m on record as a fan of these platforms. I think any new distribution channel that meets consumer demands is fertile ground for the trusted content of our membership. Some of the greatest innovation in content creation has come as a result of these platforms. Consider the power of the social graph (Facebook), real-time (Twitter), user-created video (Google), anytime/anywhere (Apple). As long as the open web and competition remain in force then it’s a win-win for consumers. It’s why we made this the first point in our DCN Trust Principles.

Yes, a virtual elimination of the character limit in Tweets allows content to be embedded on Twitter. It will enable text to travel in a way that is more native to the Twitter experience, similar to what Twitter has done with images and video. A better in-Tweet text experience will mean less text screen grabs, which will serve all parties better by opening up improvements to search, discovery and sharing. But most importantly—if properly executed—it creates an opportunity to improve the consumer experience by making it faster and easier to read interesting content. I have no doubt that, with Jack Dorsey at the helm, Twitter will do this the right way so that it first delivers consumer value and then creates business value.

So given Twitter’s plans to go “Beyond 140” and speculation on what this will mean in terms of content delivery and consumption, what are the big issues we should be thinking about? First off, we need to remember that this is nothing new. As each of these closed distribution points emerge, people suggest we are facing something radically new. But, before there was the open web, there were proprietary platforms (Compuserve, AOL, Prodigy). They ultimately lost because of the open web and the innovation it enables.

However we also passed through a phase dominated by portals, which were essentially platforms that allowed for content to be natively distributed on them. I recall fierce debates in the late 90s when I argued to embed Times Mirror content directly on Yahoo! as they rolled out channels. Right or wrong, it’s where the eyeballs were seeking the content.

So if we accept that content is going to live on platforms, there are some basic requirements: Trusted content creators need to be able to maintain brand identity, measure audience and make the financials work. What this means is that…

Yes, GroupM’s fight to have market-maker Facebook play by the same rules and measure their ad impressions like the rest of the Web were important. The fox can’t guard the hen house.
Yes, the WSJ report that Apple News has no idea how large your audience is should be concerning. Actually, it’s even worse than not knowing: They were miscounting. It’s good to see the transparency on the problem and I hope it gets fixed if the platform is going to be meaningful.
No, Google can’t develop its own controlling markup language and be the arbiter of which companies can play ball. Well, they actually can, as long as competition exists. But again, please don’t try to pass this off as “open.”
Finally: Snapchat. Dear Snapchat. The world is moving towards a measurement based on time. Your video views are a nice press release but as Nielsen recently pointed out, they will soon rightly be a measurement of the past.

Here at DCN, we’re focused on advancing the future of trusted content. The positives and negatives of these new platforms are top of mind for us. We’re keeping a close eye on both the competition they do (or don’t) foster and—most importantly—how they continue to bring back value to the vital information, entertainment and news that our members plant in their gardens.

I encourage our members to continue to experiment on emerging platforms as it makes business sense for each of them. And I look forward to the many ways they will continue to share the insights and lessons among our trusted forums. The future of content will flourish on the open web and in carefully tended gardens, as long as we all remain focused on the customer.

Perspectives | Revenue

Playing poker: betting big on the brand

November 19, 2015 Jason Kint, CEO – DCN

Brands. Conventional wisdom is that they matter less and less in a world gone digital — that consumer media brands no longer serve as the anchor to media experiences because the tidy packaging that came from a magazine, newspaper or a TV show has been blown up. And what’s been left in its place is an endless stream of content competing for the attention of millions of goldfish swimming in social media.

The reality is that, in a world with a multitude of options just a tap away, the brand is more important than ever. More and more the brand is a proxy for trust, which represents consumer (and advertiser) confidence in value. Do I find this report from the Associated Press credible? You bet. Will I be entertained by this show on HBO? Likely. Will this new car review on The Edmunds help me with my car purchase decision? Will this video from The Onion make me laugh? Does the AccuWeather forecast help me plan for an outing? Yes, yes, yes!

Focusing on consumer needs offers the greatest opportunities in expanding a digital media business. What needs are being left unfilled and how can your brand uniquely deliver on those needs? Meeting these needs in a reliable, ethical manner builds a valued relationship between brand and consumer. This deep relationship takes time and trust. It isn’t measured in the sort of hockey stick adoption rates crowed about in the social sphere. Media brands aren’t a value-add, they are, by definition, valued. Why do you think that so many new social media platforms lead with these media brands? They are building their credibility and trust by leveraging the credibility and trust the media brands already have.

Consider the brand a big pile of poker chips. Each poker chip represents the trust of 1,000 of your most loyal consumers. As you consider new opportunities for your brand, you’re playing those poker chips. If you play them wisely, you’ll build a larger pile of chips and have even more opportunities. If you play them haphazardly, your pile will likely shrink. It’s ok to make some big bets, just make sure you’re aware of the risks.

I’ve been asked a lot about native advertising in the past year. It seems to come up more and more given the growth of adblocking. Native advertising is nothing new. Packaging experiences for advertisers to inform, entertain or engage their targets and customers is tried and true. Your brand equity is exactly why the advertiser wants you to deliver the content for them. The trust in your brand is exactly why the consumer is open to quality native advertising within the context of your content. You’re just playing another hand of poker.

And, as the power of brands allows for native ad plays, strong media brands are able to find revenue opportunities that provide growth outside of traditional advertising streams. Sure, subscription models are terrific, but they aren’t right for every media brand, no matter how loyal the audience.

On December 1st, we’re launching an event for our DCN members called Power of Brands — I encourage anyone responsible for marketing, product innovation, digital strategy or revenue generation to attend. We’ll spend the day hearing from brands who have expanded into new revenue lines. Whether it be experiential marketing, subscription products, licensing into products or digital formats, e-learning or face-to-face events, these opportunities for growth start with a strong relationship between the consumer and the brand. And digital isn’t a simple question of disintermediation. Digital offers endless opportunities for new points of genuine connection.

Perspectives

Why I declined to attend the roundtable with AdBlock Plus

October 27, 2015 Jason Kint, CEO – DCN

Eyeo, the owner of the AdBlock Plus product, has been quietly inviting industry influencers to a roundtable discussion on the future of adblocking. I received, and declined, their invitation and want to publicly explain why I will not attend.

First and foremost, adblocking is a consumer-driven challenge to our industry and therefore, as I’ve consistently advocated, solutions to this challenge should be focused on consumer needs. Mozilla, maker of Firefox and advocate for an open and accessible Internet, has also focused on consumer needs, creating a great framework that is focused on privacy, performance and security.

It’s crystal clear that billions of dollars have been spent in ad technology with little to no value for consumers. And now, users are fighting back by installing software which opts them entirely out of advertising. As Doc Searls notes, this might be the “biggest boycott in human history.”

Paving the future for trusted content requires an open and transparent discussion in the marketplace but it does no good to use inflammatory and threatening language (“extortion”, “inner-city crack dealers” , “profiteers”) towards adblockers (or the consumers who use them). Especially when, to varying degrees, we’ve all been a part of the problem for quite some time.

Consumer (and advertiser) trust are vital to premium publishers. With this in mind, I’ve openly met with as many interested parties as possible on industry challenges including adblocking. My meetings with stakeholders have included dozens of premium publishers, associations, research companies and ad tech companies on both sides of the Atlantic.

I’ve had discussions with AdBlock Plus and some of the newer makers of adblockers including Shine and Crystal. And I listen even more intently when I meet with consumer advocacy organizations. Even the FTC has now weighed in on adblocking. Bottom line: If you’re thinking about adblocking or have a stake in the ground, I’m interested in being in the meeting.

Like many in the industry, I have always been concerned by the reports of Eyeo profiting from selling whitelisting of ads into AdBlock Plus. Their majority owner, who benefits the most from these sales, broke it down in some detail a year before the industry press erupted. Frankly, I see this practice as benefiting their owners possibly even at the expense of consumers. At minimum, it rightly creates a lot of questions about who is really looking out for the consumers.

I would look at these reports on Eyeo’s business model and their focus on consumers much differently if they were 100% open about it. If AdBlock Plus publicly stated which companies were paying them for whitelisting ads and the terms under which this was happening, then my level of trust would increase dramatically. I would even show up at their meeting! This statement also applies to Google which is reported to be one of the companies paying AdBlock Plus the most for whitelisting services.

Google has also been making waves that they want a new set of ad standards “within months.” How can we sit down at the table with a company that wants to set new standards but is also funding Eyeo in its own self-interests? And who in their right-mind thinks consumers will be better off if ads grow to look more and more like Google’s text ads? It certainly won’t subsidize the professional content consumers enjoy and love.

Standards must be set in a way that encourages better ads and higher-quality creative rather than simply reducing the Internet to light-weight text ads and low-quality advertising. We’ve spent close to 20 years proving that the Internet can provide engaging, brand-building advertising experiences and we’re ready to scrap that now because we have been sloppy in rolling out the technology?

Standards should help meet consumers’ demand for a better overall experience by protecting premium content and allowing only respectful, trustworthy advertising. Adblocking is a blunt technology instrument with no regard for the content or its advertisements. Consumers are choosing it because it is their only choice right now. A true solution can’t be equally blunt in its lack of regard for the value of the content in exchange. As Univision’s Kevin Conroy wrote months ago in Ad Age, “we need to set the bar higher to see advertising truly break through on digital.” Kirk McDonald of Pubmatic recently followed with “and when the experience for the consumer is great, the invasion of the ad blockers should die out.”

Many have argued that ad blocking is a direct result of a flood of intermediaries clogging up websites in an effort to ubiquitously track consumers. I agree. These issues clearly are impacting performance and more quietly are impacting privacy and security delivering a vacuum in trust. If we’re going to truly work to create our industry’s future — Advertising 2.0 — then we’ll need to make certain the benefit flows to the consumer and not yet another intermediary.

Here is my email declining the invitation.

Hi Ben, I appreciate you reaching out with the invitation. As discussed in our meeting, I’m deeply supportive of consumer-focused approaches to solutions. As much as your independent board is empowered to align better principles with what ultimately will drive consumer value long-term, I’m highly supportive. However, I’m still troubled by the existence of models where your company profits from allowing ads to be served. I must send my regrets and pass on the invitation. Thank you again for the consideration.

Best-

Jason

Jason Kint | CEO
Digital Content Next | digitalcontentnext.org
Twitter: @jason_kint

Perspectives | Policy

Can you hear me now?

October 22, 2015 Jason Kint, CEO – DCN

The Internet has ushered in the most profound shift in the history of media. The public is in charge. As the seminal book of the 90s, Cluetrain Manifesto, noted in its preamble,

“We are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers. We are human beings — and our reach exceeds your grasp. Deal with it.”

Yet, at the same time, the Internet boom has also brought endless ways middlemen can take advantage of short-term opportunities without serving these human beings. These self-serving intermediaries do not survive long-term, but they can do plenty of damage regardless of their lifespan. Whether you’re an e-commerce company as respected as Amazon, a publisher as trusted as the New York Times, a brand advertiser as loved as Coca-Cola or a platform as large as Facebook, if you fail to think about your customers and what they most want, you will be replaced. Understanding that we’ve migrated to an on-demand, consumer-driven world is key to building, long-term sustainable businesses.

So how did we get here? It starts and ends with the simple but powerful idea of what the Internet really is. It’s not the web, it’s not your iPhone, it’s not Comcast or AT&T and it’s not Facebook. The Internet is and will always be “packets” traveling between two points without discrimination. The Open Internet that was gifted to all of us by the geniuses that created it and put the consumer in charge for the first time.

At DCN, our members understand that their brands and businesses are built on the delivery of experiences, be it information or entertainment, to advertisers and consumers. Delivering that value builds trust. And, by definition, a premium publisher balances that trust with consumers and advertisers each and every day. To illustrate this ongoing commitment, take a look at our recently released research, DCN Bot Benchmark Report.

Against this backdrop, I recently responded to a request by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to offer comments on the future of cross-device tracking. It’s an incredibly important discussion and I’m thrilled to see the FTC continue to play the role of fostering open and candid discussion without threat of regulation. We’re building the future and these discussions have significant consequences. That being said, this discussion isn’t new. Yes, the method and scope of the discussion has changed. But it’s fairly simple to find the solutions when you wear your “consumer hat” and put their needs, expectations and concerns first.

Thus, it won’t come as a surprise that DCN’s comments to the FTC are focused on consumer expectations. At a bare minimum, any consumer should have transparency into how they’re being tracked across devices and be provided with simple, effective ways to control this tracking. At this point in time, I have deep concerns about incumbent interests once again getting this wrong. The industry currently suffers from an advertising supply chain that acts as a trust vacuum to the point that consumers are now opting entirely out of advertising altogether in what must be considered nothing short of a boycott.

Consider some ways in which cross-device tracking can be used:

Verizon Wireless, the ISP that connects more Americans to the Internet than any other company, has in the previous year been caught and pulled back from publicly broadcasting unique IDs of their customers for advertisers and everyone else to see. They’ve since acquired AOL, all of its inventory along with MSN’s inventory, and announced plans to monetize behavioral data from tracking consumer consumption across their pipes and airwaves. Would a consumer expect this? No. Can consumers control it? Not easily. Value to consumers: Zero.

Facebook, the largest social platform having achieved one billion active users in a day, has announced plans to begin using the ubiquitous “Like” button to track consumers, before they even click on the button. They’ll do this on other sites, apps and devices if consumers are logged into Facebook anywhere on their device. Would a consumer expect this? No. Can consumers control it? Not easily. Value to consumers: Zero.

Amazon, the largest e-commerce company in the world, allows consumers to log into multiple devices thereby pulling up their order history and making recommendations on other products they may want to buy. Would a consumer expect this? Yes. Can consumers control it? Yes, they can choose not to use Amazon. Value to consumers: Significant.

ESPN, the largest sports media company in the world, allows consumers to log into multiple devices thereby recognizing their favorite teams and personalizing their sports experiences. Would a consumer expect this? Yes. Can consumers control it? Yes, they can choose not to visit ESPN products. Value to consumers: Significant.

Our industry has spent billions of dollars in advertising technologies over the past few years. These investments have benefited advertisers, publishers and—most often—intermediaries. What clearly demonstrates that this money is not being spent wisely is that the consumer has been left out. Now those same consumers through the rise in adblocking are saying, “Can you hear me now? Deal with it.”

Perspectives

7 important ad blocking issues you need to know

September 24, 2015 Jason Kint, CEO – DCN

This morning, DCN and WAN-IFRA, the global news body issued a “Call to Think” statement to help our industry in deal with the challenges of ad blocking. Clearly, ad blocking is a topic of extreme concern and we all need to be thinking hard about how we approach it so that we apply our efforts to what is most important: the consumer. To that end, I recently had an expansive conversation with Joshua Benton, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University, about how worried publishers should be that ad blockers have now arrived on mobile.

Here are seven takeaways from our wide-ranging conversation:

1. Ad blocking is not new, but it is escalating.
Historically, our industry has not taken this threat seriously enough even though we’ve known about a fringe group of consumers that want to block all ads since they were turning off auto-load images in Netscape Navigator in the 90s. As I wrote in March, ad blocking has escalated on the desktop and now, with iOS9’s ability to block ads on mobile, ad blocking is an issue publishers must focus on more than ever. On a scale of one to ten, my concern is at a level eight or a nine (by way of comparison, the transition to viewability never hit this level.) The cold hard truth is that there have been billions of dollars invested in ad tech software – with little consideration for the consumer – and now these same consumers are speaking up with new software.

2. This is everybody’s problem.
In part, the issue of ad blocking is a “tragedy of the commons” in which the actions of even one rogue site or ad network that creates poor consumer experiences and erodes consumer trust can end up affecting the business model of everyone, even the most valuable content sites on the planet. It might be easy to lay blame at Apple for opening up its APIs in iOS9 but they aren’t the enemy here. In fact, Apple might just be the most consumer-oriented company of our generation. Tim Cook has been one of the loudest and clearest voices calling for protections around consumers’ privacy and data. You could take a cynical view that facilitating ad blocking doesn’t hurt Apple. But if you think about it, it definitely lines up with consumer demands. That is a valid, even essential, perspective. We need leaders across the industry to focus on providing better experiences, transparency and controls that will solve this issue.

3. Emerging ad formats are part of a solution, but so is better display advertising.
There have always been new revenue opportunities—ad units, devices, and formats—that show promising growth. This will only accelerate with the rise of ad blocking. Non-skippable video ads, podcast ads, native in-stream advertising—these all will continue to accelerate because of the fear of ad blocking. Anyone who is in the content business and is trying to build diverse experiences for customers would be foolish to think that any of these solutions will be a panacea for the problems with display advertising. It is also foolish to think that technology will once again save the day to allow these ads through to the same users who have opted out of advertising. Let’s end the tech arms race. If the customer isn’t happy, they will find another way to skip ads.

4. Revenue diversification is essential, but not the answer.
We’ve been counseling our members since the first dot com bubble that they should think about expanding their business models and diversifying their revenues to be less dependent on advertising. And if ad blocking continues to accelerate you will undoubtedly see publishers testing more and more ideas. And you’ll see more technology companies testing ways to enable these ideas. However, at the end of the day, pixels on a screen that marketers want their messages to run alongside will have to be part of the mix.

5. Data is not the solution. In fact, it may be part of the problem.
The industry has created a very dangerous myth that online behavioral advertising is vital to the content ecosystem. This myth has led to underwhelming controls for privacy-focused consumers who have answered with ad blocking. In the absence of simple and persistent controls, the user will find alternative solutions.

6. Native apps are a great experience, but the open Web must be too.
Ad blocking on mobile may accelerate energy around native apps again since publishers can more tightly control their clean, well-lit environments on a native app, though there are undeniable adoption issues. Conversely, the advantages in being distributed through apps that already have high adoption and engagement rates—Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat—come with less control and a corresponding fear that we’re surrendering to the platforms.

Ultimately, we can’t afford to lose the beauty of the open internet and everything that is fabulous about the browser in terms of openness, new content and new ways to explore that content. The worst thing that could happen is that we go back to private, walled-garden experiences.

7. Solutions begin—and end—with the consumer.
I think any solution that involves engaging directly with the consumer is interesting right now. The easiest most natural thing to test is asking the consumer to whitelist your site, but unfortunately all of the intel I’ve seen so far is that it isn’t getting consumers to act any differently.

Publishers need to test and learn about which options will work for them both in the short and long term. But at the end of the day the focus needs to be on giving customers what they want.

We won’t solve revenue issues with a tech arms race or a race to the courts. Premium publishers have the ability to navigate this course for the long term and have the added advantage of strong brands and established relationships with their consumers who greatly value their content.

Despite what you’ve just read, I am optimistic and believe all of the concern, discussion and search for solutions will lead to a re-focus on the consumer and better experiences that will end up benefiting the brands and premium publishers. If we stay focused on the consumer, new business models will emerge to deal with this in the long term. If we focus on any other stakeholder but the consumer then we’re doomed to fail.

——-

Listen to the full Nieman Lab podcast.

Perspectives

In Memory of Curt Hecht

September 3, 2015 Jason Kint, CEO – DCN

The team at DCN is saddened to hear of the passing of Curt Hecht. He was a close member of our community and the entire digital media world. Curt made significant and lasting contributions on behalf of advertisers, agencies and programmers that have changed the business. We will miss him and send his family and colleagues our deepest condolences.

Those who would like to make a donation to the Hecht girls’ education fund, can do so here.

—-

A Personal Note from CEO, David Kenny, to The Weather Company Family

Dear Weather Company Family,

I am incredibly sad to share the incomprehensible news that we have lost our dear friend and colleague, Curt Hecht, to lung cancer. Curt was battling lung cancer over the last five months, something that is almost impossible to believe given what an amazing athlete he was and that he never smoked. Life is neither fair nor predictable.

I have known Curt for at least one third of his short 48 years, and I can tell you that his life mattered in countless ways. His life mattered most to his wife, the love of his life, and his two beautiful, young daughters.

Curt’s life mattered to the digital advertising industry, as he pioneered countless innovations with his clients at Starcom MediaVest, VivaKi, Publicis, and The Weather Company. Curt was an early pioneer in search, “native” advertising, localization, social-informed ads, and retargeting. Curt created the first agency trading desk.

Curt’s life mattered to The Weather Company. He recruited and developed an extraordinary team. He strengthened our relationships with key partners, including Google, Twitter, Facebook, and Hearst. He had the vision for WeatherFX, which has totally changed the value of our audience to advertisers. He championed the best programmatic operation in the industry.

Curt’s life and friendship mattered to me. Curt and I had breakfast in Las Vegas during CES 2012, and he encouraged me to take the risk and realize the potential of transforming The Weather Channel Companies. A few months later, he took his own risk to join us. In every tough situation, Curt kept me anchored on what matters — family first, our people second, clients and audience third, and the money will take care of itself. Curt and I both dream big, but he is the one who could turn the dream into a reality. When daily pressures created chaos and drama, Curt would prioritize and keep us focused on the most important and critical matters.

Curt only shared his cancer battle with a few people. He did not want a fuss, or pity, or distraction. Those of us close to him developed an aspiration to be “just half as tough as Curt.” To him, cancer was like a challenging bike ride. He attacked it with grit and determination, and fearlessly agreed to clinical trials so that others could also learn from his fight.

Curt’s life mattered, and he is simply irreplaceable. His spirit is still with us, and we will continue our success if we are only “half as strong as Curt.” I miss you already, Curt. I am sure we all do.

-David Kenny

Perspectives

Change is the Name of the Game in Digital Sports Media

August 27, 2015 Jason Kint, CEO – DCN

I have to admit last Friday was a bit of a time warp for me. I attended the inaugural Digital Media Summit launched by The Knight Foundation and digital upstart SportsManias. Although I ran major sports properties for much of my former life, most people in the room now know me as the head of a digital media trade association. Not nearly as sexy to this particular audience (or maybe any audience for that matter!) but, as always, it afforded me an opportunity to bring a broader context to the discussions.

Remarkably, in my nearly 20 years in sports media, I never attended a sports conference from start to finish. But this time, I was able to sit back and take notes. I experienced a lot of déjà vu in the themes, and left with a few important takeaways. Most of all, I was reminded why sports is the ultimate playground for digital media: It constantly brings with it the opportunity to take on risks and to innovate without many of the barriers in other categories.

Here are three of the themes at the SportsManias Digital Media Summit that stood out for me:

Sports is the ultimate reality television
Long before we had Big Brother and Survivor, we had sports media. It’s well-documented that sports is the most defensible media on television because it’s immune from time-shifting: Much of the value comes from watching it live and sharing in the thrills and surprises that fuel watercooler conversations the next day. The difference? Today those same moments fuel the real-time watercooler that is social media. Long ago, Nielsen research documented that sports TV programming accounted for nearly 50% of TV tweets while only representing about 1.2% of TV programming. That’s not too surprising: Sports is full of entertaining characters cast in an unpredictable drama for passionate fans with insatiable appetites. Consider that more than 70% of NFL fans are on Twitter and you have live, 24/7 the stuff of which Ellen-selfie-legends are made.

Sports reporters are walking, broadcasting, fully-interactive Apple Stores
There was much agreement on the importance of new and old tools of trade. Gone are the days of reporters scribbling notes with pens and paper dashing back to their hotel to file 750 words. The modern sports journalist has to be fluent not only in his or her topic and the craft of writing, but also multilingual on social and video. At the Summit, Pittsburgh Pirates beat reporter, Rob Biertempfel was pretty much a live case study on the modern journalist: He tweets, posts on Facebook, writes, shoots video, and Periscopes all in the course of performing his usual duties–from filing his notes and analysis to tweeting the line-up card in real-time.

This year’s Red Smith Award winner, Bob Ryan, has more than 40 years of experience but constantly reinvents himself by using the latest tools to stay engaged with his audience. That being said, he emphasized the importance of being able to take good notes and provide context and historical perspective. Again, this ability applies well beyond sports and it brings to mind digital innovations like Vox.com’s card stacks. You’ve got to wonder why someone hasn’t rolled out explainer cards on a sports property.

Tools are only effective if they are used well, of course. Woody Paige kept it simple with an elegant rant on the (declining) art of writing, “Learn to write and you’ll learn to communicate.” However Biertempfel provided hints of The Cluetrain Manifesto when he described his role as a balance between providing information and relating to people–which is an essential piece of today’s content-community connection. (They don’t call it social media for nothing.) In a similar vein, ESPN NFL writer Coley Harvey described his role as one of personalizing to his audience. As he pointed out, one-way streaming video has now been replaced by interaction with tools like Periscope. Pete Vlastelica who runs FOX Sports Digital, made a related point: The moment you see yourself above your audience you’ll end up losing that audience.

Sporting News deputy editor Chris Littmann and ESPN columnist Jemele Hill both commented on how sports has strengthened their games by forcing them to be less complacent and more accountable in real-time. As sportswriter Dan Le Batard put it, “You can shake your fists at blogs but the marketplace has spoken.”

Sports media plays moneyball
Lastly, although the event was focused on the content side, there were hints of the monetization struggles still to be solved. As Le Batard eloquently pointed out, most newspapers “are charging you money to throw yesterday’s news into your bushes. Getting real-time news for free seems like a much better deal.” That said, digital sports is a constant chase for the latest “front porch.” Yesterday’s AOL anchor tenant deals are today’s Snapchat Discover and Facebook Instant Articles. Despite questionable business terms, there’s a need to stake out an optimistic position that monetization will follow. Yet sports has proven many times that a beloved brand can be monetized in many ways. Yes, consumers will even pay for sports content if it’s well packaged: ESPN Insider, MLB.tv, Rivals, 247 Sports, Rotowire and the entire fantasy sports business are proof it is possible to generate revenue beyond advertising.

The rules of the game keep changing for all of us and sports media is no different. The front lines of socially-mediated interactive journalism is exciting to watch, from the classic moves to the risky plays that keep this business of media interesting and innovative.

contact me: @jason_kint

Perspectives

Are Recommended Links the Gateway to Brand Hell?

July 30, 2015 Jason Kint, CEO – DCN

Warning: If you’re 100% focused on short-term revenue with little regard for your brand, your customers, or what they think, you don’t need to read further.

This press release recently caught my eye: Revcontent Powers 100 Billion Content Recommendations Per Month. Allow me to translate: A company that is unknown to the average consumer is creating 100 billion content links per month. Research says that these links are clicked by someone (or something, as the “clicker” is loosely defined as consumers, bots or something in between) .1% of the time resulting in more than 100 million visits per month.

I’ve always judged these content-recommendation platforms with my own version of the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” game: How many clicks away from the worst of the web do they put me? If you click on their “Recommended Links” on subsequent pages, how quickly are you on a page that you wouldn’t want anyone to know you’re on? Just like the Kevin Bacon game shows that everyone in Hollywood is connected to the actor, my version shows that with shady recommendations you always get to a very, very dark place in six clicks or less.

Let’s be clear, there is considerable opportunity and white space in the category of automating links to relevant content for audiences. Many of our members have deals with companies like Outbrain and Gravity that provide incremental revenue and helps them fund consumer access to free content. The same innovation that we’ve seen in automating the delivery of advertising is also happening in the automation of the delivery of content. This is a good thing, we just need innovation that focuses on customers.

Back to Revcontent, which I pick on because they brag about the quality of the sites participating in their network, stating that they turn down 98% of applicants. It wasn’t surprising to me that I couldn’t find their module on any of our DCN member sites but I did track down a release last week for their latest, quite-proud client, Barstool Sports. And just to clarify: In my role, I don’t judge the type of content on sites. I simply advocate for trusted content relationships, in which consumers and advertisers get what they expect. So, using my Six Degrees of Crap test, the Revcontent links on Barstool Sports didn’t make it even close to six clicks before they took me someplace I wanted to immediately delete from my history (since I can’t actually “unsee” the content).

In fact, the Revcontent execution fails on every level:

Poorly labeled links: Let’s start with the “Recommended Links” module which is poorly labeled (heads up to Barstool Sports, it’s worth reading about the FTC’s pending guidance on labeling). I chose to click on the most tasteful of the six links for my own peace of mind, yet I still ended up on a cesspool site in just one.

Arbitrage: Typically, if the “Recommended Links” all drive to pages with their own “Recommended” links delivered by the same company, it’s a strong warning you’re going down a very bad path as a consumer, advertiser or as a publisher. It’s an arbitrage game and you’re the willing victim.

URL: Look at the address of the destination page. In this case, the links were driving users to a site called uberhavoc.com. Not sure I can (or need to) say more than that. Other popular domains include buzzfudge.com, dailyquenchers.com, buzztrend.com. On the link-swapping side, you’ll find zergnet, crowdignite and other players.

Cookie littering: Clicking on any link results in countless 3rd party tracking cookies sometimes more than 100. Blue Cava, eXelate, BlueKai, Audience Science, LiveRamp, Aggregate Knowledge, Neustar, Semasio, Krux, Dotomy, Videology, Rocket Fuel, Chango, Tynt, 33Across, Quantcast, DoubleClick, DataLogix, Simpli.fi, Turn, MediaMath, Casale, Criteo, TradeDesk, dStillery, Advertising.com, Specific Media, Adapt.tv, Facebook, OpenX, AdTech, Rubicon, Pubmatic, LiveRail, BrightRoll, Rightmedia, Kauli, Twitter, impact, Sonobi, Burst, AdScale, LiveRail, AppNexus, Tapad and dozens of others all felt a need to know that I clicked on a single garbage link likely in order to retarget me elsewhere. The full map of trackers (hat tip: Ghostery) from that one click is essentially all you need to see to understand why adblocking adoption is skyrocketing with consumers. NOTE TO AD TECH: if you think the solution to cookie littering is more nefarious methods like digital fingerprinting then please call me so I can explain why you’re nuts.

Brand Destructive: Now, let’s get to the really bad. Ford, Mercedes-Benz, Lexus, Smart Car, JetBlue, Oreo, Staples, Budweiser, Comcast, Pizza Hut, Purina and countless other brand advertisements are all running next to this “Recommended content.” If you’re the Chief Marketing Officer for any of these brands, I challenge you to rationalize how this type of media plan isn’t destroying the value you spend dearly on to move minds and create conversations around your brands. There’s a “brand halo” that comes along with placing an ad in a terrific context. Certainly the reverse is true as well. If you’re not factoring in brand safety and targeting clean, well-lit environments, then you’re killing one Super Bowl ad with millions of fifty-cent clicks. Unlike other media, more than 65% of digital advertising continues to be mostly crappy direct response ads driving brands into a death spiral.

Ok, if you read this far then I assume you care about your brand, your audience, and what they think of your brand. It’s clear there is a correlation between brand safety, viewability and pleasing customers. If you care about clean, well-lit environments then you absolutely must insist that all of your agency and media partners protect your brand fiercely which includes full transparency on where your campaigns are running. If you don’t then I just wasted your time as you clearly don’t care as much as you should.

contact me: @jason_kint

photo credit: Andreas Levers “Road to Hell” (modified from original)

Perspectives

5 Ways Industry Leaders Need To Step Up

June 11, 2015 Jason Kint, CEO – DCN

For those that have been watching the move to digital for decades, it’s often hard to appreciate how much transformation is still going on. We’re literally writing history and building the future of digital media every day. The value to consumers coming from the technology, automation and innovation does not cease to astound.

DCN continues to point out that the humans setting the rules also need to keep up with the pace of change. I’m not talking about the ones on Capitol Hill but rather the leaders and the decision-makers in the media and tech companies and their self-regulation bodies. We must show a higher set of ethics and concern for the industry and its future. I’ve been pleased to see that in the past year we’ve elevated the discussion: Thought-leaders as varied as Om Malik, Tim Berners-Lee, John Battelle, Fatemeh Khatibloo, Andrew Keen, Tony Haile and countless others have taken on the types of issues that will help pave the way for the content and services that consumers trust and love.

However, more must be done. I have not yet seen the market step up with real solutions to the problems. There are few companies, not to mention leaders, joining me in calling out the issues and pushing for meaningful change.

As the leader of a trade association, I hear I’m not supposed to rattle too many cages. But I see my role as one that guides a transformation in the economics so that that we can continue to fund the content that consumers love to view, share and interact with for the long term. This means calling out issues and uncomfortable discussions that, at times, involve our own members. Perhaps my role is to also change the nature of a trade association in an accelerated world (or maybe this is a fast exit to the early retirement door). Regardless, promising young content sites like Vox, Refinery29 and Quartz, as well as brands that have been around for decades, are creating high-quality, trusted experiences for consumers and advertisers—each in their own unique and innovative ways. I want these businesses to absolutely crush it and be around for a long time to come.

To get there, we need to see more leaders make bold statements like Tim Cook’s last week: “I’m speaking to you from Silicon Valley, where some of the most prominent and successful companies have built their businesses by lulling their customers into complacency about their personal information. They’re gobbling up everything they can learn about you and trying to monetize it. We think that’s wrong. And it’s not the kind of company that Apple wants to be.”

Tim Cook’s call to arms should create opportunity, not fear. An op-ed in Al-Jazeera America said it best: “As an undisputed leader among Internet companies, Google could seize the opportunity to be not just used, but trusted. All it takes is a single, clear commitment not to use our data against us. By invoking established principles of agency and loyalty, Google could assure users that their interest comes first, and advertisers won’t use all that data at the expense of consumers. Anything less just looks like whitewash.”

We need more leaders to step up. Enough hand wringing and talking about the problems, let’s see some real change. Across each of the key issues we’ve surfaced this year, there have been countless opportunities for companies and leadership to step up and take bold action to make a difference. For now, I’ll just highlight the most egregious misses in my mind.

Fraud
Bombs have been dropping regarding the level of digital advertising being served to “bots” rather than humans. As with many issues, the industry has been slow to react. The first year was spent deciding whether to call them bots, invalid traffic, non-human traffic, or God-forbid: “fraud.” All the while, Bob Liodice, CEO of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), has dutifully led the charge calling out the fact this cancer is “funding criminal activity” and we need “a true call to action to stop this.” I completely agree.

Yet I was shocked last week by a fact discussed on an industry panel: An estimated 18% of “bot” traffic comes from data centers according to the seminal report on non-human traffic that was produced by the ANA and White Ops (page 26). As Michael Tiffany, CEO of White Ops, stated, “I think that successful botnets doing ad fraud today out of data center IP addresses is obscene.” That’s the right word for it.

For the less technical readers, there are very few instances in which human traffic would be coming from a data center such as AWS (Amazon Web Services). Independent researcher, Augustine Fou, breaks down the problem quite well. And Distil Networks also published a bot report (p. 6) last month that shows a number of hosting companies in the list of top sources of bot traffic.

Tiffany said it best when discussing how the industry can approach solutions: “Are we going to do the least to placate the audience while upsetting the status quo the least? Or are we going to take the steps that really direct those dollars in a big macro way which means changing some of today’s winners into losers and vice versa.”

Opportunity to Step Up: The dozens of ad networks and exchanges currently thriving in the programmatic space. The buyers and their trade groups should absolutely demand that all ad exchanges, ad servers, networks and 3rd party sellers of inventory block data center IP traffic to ads or, better still, those ad networks should simply step up and block data center IP traffic now.

Ad Blocking
We have already surpassed 200 million instances of ad blocking software installed. I’ve heard of DCN member sites with as low as 10% of their ads being blocked to as frighteningly high as 80%. As I wrote back in March, this is a massive issue. It’s not going away and it’s only going to get worse without real change. TechCrunch covered the issue in depth last week and, like us, connected the dots to privacy.

Opportunity to Step Up: Google. Yes, Google has the number one browser on the planet. They also have the most installations of ad blocking software. (Note: this could quickly change, and not for the better, with iOS announcing APIs for ad blockers on Monday.)

But according to the Financial Times, rather than initiating cross-industry discussion and action about the issue, Google instead chose to negotiate a deal in a dark room with Adblock Plus to whitelist their text ads across the entire web thereby ridding them of most of the problem. We’ve got to rebuild consumer trust in advertising so consumers won’t take steps to block all ads. Over the long term, that probably means less bottom of the barrel direct response retargeting ads and more brand campaigns that excite and engage with consumers.

Advertising Measurement
It’s no secret that much of the digital media industry is still finding its way through the wilderness as we move to the viewable currency. The current standard is clearly defined by the independent Media Ratings Council (MRC) is that a minimum of 50% of the pixels of an ad must be displayed for a minimum of one second. Any deviation from the standard causes confusion in the marketplace. Most premium publishers agree with their agency and advertising partners that a move to a viewable impression is a good thing. The process of getting there so that the additional value of a viewable impression is realized has been difficult. Calls for engagement beyond the minimum opportunity to see have been frustrating, but to me Facebook is much more worrisome.

Opportunity to step up: Facebook. Right now, Facebook lives in another world where a single pixel viewed for any amount of time counts as a viewable impression. As John Montgomery of GroupM also recently pointed out, Facebook also chooses to measure its own ads rather than allowing third-parties to verify like the rest of the media world. Facebook should join the rest of the industry in following the MRC standard and allowing third-parties to verify that they do. Interestingly, Facebook used protecting consumers’ privacy as their excuse for hiding from third party verification which brings me to…

Privacy
As I wrote in WSJ nearly a year ago, Facebook collects and uses your browsing history across the web through its seemingly innocuous Like button, which appears on most sites. While this is permitted, according to a page deep in their privacy policy, very few consumers know that this is happening. And the practice provides dubious value to the publisher or their consumers. In fact, Facebook’s Like button shouldn’t collect data until a consumer clicks on it. Period.

Opportunity to step up: Facebook. Needless to say I found myself shaking my head at a recent publisher event where sites were discussing how they could block Facebook from tracking their users. How on earth did this become a responsibility of the publisher to hack together a short-term solution?

Facebook could solve this in a matter of minutes. They already share code with most of the web to add the Like button to their sites. By simply adding a parameter to turn off “tracking”, any publisher could ask Facebook to not track its users across the web and apps. Facebook, do this:

Native Ads
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will likely release more guidance this year on native advertising. It’s unfortunate to me that the bar isn’t being raised across the industry ahead of their intervention. I still see way too many instances of “You may also like this” rather than a clear label of advertising. Last week, Mike Zaneis at the IAB once again called out that this wasn’t likely to be enough. However, most premium publishers are clearly labeling as Michael Sebastian wrote today on Ad Age.

Opportunity to step up: Facebook wins again. Ruthlessly weed out clearly deceptive advertising. It pained me to receive this ad the other day falsely labelled as content from ESPN that actually linked to this site. This goes beyond simple deception and is a clear violation of all sorts of intellectual property issues.

These are just a few of the issues where organizations have the opportunity to do more than form task forces that spend months merely discussing and defining rather than doing. Tim Cook has it right. We don’t want to be the kind of industry people can’t trust. Our businesses and brands are built on trusted relationships with consumers and advertisers. These relationships crumble without trust that the media will deliver what the consumer or advertise expects. We need some heavy hitters to get in the game and turn it around. The future of the industry depends on it.

Advertising | Perspectives | Research | Revenue

Bad Ads: Research Shows They May Cost More Than They’re Worth

May 14, 2015 Jason Kint, CEO – DCN

No one likes to click a link on a tantalizing bit of content only to be assaulted by a barrage of intrusive and annoying advertising. That fact is as in your face as a blinking pop-up ad prompting you to punch a monkey to win an iPad. And unless it’s the result of fat fingers, you aren’t clicking these annoying ads; you are hitting the back button as fast as you can to find a more pleasant place to consume content. And here’s the part that should send a chill down the spine of premium content publishers: Microsoft research has found that they’re not just bad in customers’ eyes; there’s also a high cost to be paid by the publishers that run them.

The research, The Economic and Cognitive Costs of Annoying Display Advertisements, set out to better understand the cognitive impact of annoying ads on users, and also to quantify the economic cost of annoying ads for publishers. Let’s just say their findings are more than a little jarring. The research shows the economic cost of “annoying” ads is about .153 cents each (for the revenue wonks, this works out to a $1.53CPM). Given that Turn reports that more than 53% of all online ads sell for between $.10 and $.80CPM and we know premium publishers typically earn around $1.35CPM from open exchanges, a little math paints a disturbing picture. We’ve always known digital ads can impact users and the bottom-line but not in the wrong direction.

If you believe the research—undertaken by an impressive team of researchers whose experience includes work for Yahoo, Google and Microsoft—then publishers need to know that running ads which site visitors find to be irritating, annoying, inappropriate or offensive has a significant net cost, both to brand value and the bottom line. Private marketplaces reinforce this need for brand safety for all. Chasing page-views and impressions at scale has diminishing returns and makes a sites more vulnerable to bad ads. What this means is that by running these ads, often to maximize sell-thru rate of your inventory, you’re actually chasing short-term revenue rabbits without understanding where that rabbit hole leads.

The Microsoft researchers conclude that “the practice of running annoying ads can cost more money than it earns.” That’s right: a site might be better off not running ads at all because of the net loss they will incur if some or all of their ads are perceived as bad by their users. A site or app actually needs more quality content and premium ads to make up for the economic loss from bad ads.

As is the case with bad advertising, we all know great ads when we see them. And research shows that there is a “halo effect” to advertising that is positioned within the context of a strong media brand with quality content, so it only stands to reason that the reverse would be true: that there would be a negative effect to a media brand associated with bad advertising. Microsoft’s research confirms this, finding not only that people notice annoying ads and complain about them, they are more likely to abandon sites on which they were present. Interestingly, in the presence of annoying ads, people had to work harder to understand content that contains annoying ads. In other words, they’re distracting and a general nuisance to user experience.

Again, it’s very important to note this isn’t simply about low-quality dating ads, yellow-teeth and belly-fat ads. Media companies need to consider the subtle and long-term effects that any ad running on their sites may have on user retention and revenue. The alarming rise of Adblocking software adoption makes clear that customers are fed up with poor advertising experiences. And once customers are driven to this extreme, they are taken out of the ecosystem for everyone, good and bad advertisers alike. Already 41% of 18-29 year-olds in America have opted-out of digital advertising altogether by installing an adblocker.

But we can’t simply take the lazy position that “people just hate ads.” It simply isn’t true. And the Microsoft research backs that up. We can also clearly see examples of superior advertising and content experiences on Vox and Conde Nast sites, among many others. Premium publishers like the members of DCN who focus on high-quality content, premium, well-lit experiences and brand-safe environments should be well-served as this all shakes out because they are laser focused on creating great customer experiences that are only enhanced by the relevant, quality advertising experiences that support all of the terrific content that they enjoy.