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

Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of August 1, 2019

August 1, 2019 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

Here are some of the best media stories our team has read so far this week:

Business Insider | Facebook just had an absolutely wild rollercoaster of a week. Here’s everything that happened. (7 min read)
Bloomberg | Facebook’s Like Button Makes Websites Liable, Top EU Court Rules (2 min read)
Digiday | ‘Value is a proxy’: Publishers are soliciting feedback from readers with one-question surveys (5 min read)
Nieman Lab | The L.A. Times’ disappointing digital numbers show the game’s not just about drawing in subscribers — it’s about keeping them (12 min read)
Buzzfeed News | There’s An Underground Economy Selling Links From The New York Times, BBC, CNN, And Other Big News Sites (5 min read)
Baekdal / Plus | Publishers need to think about link-jacking too (16 min read)
Bloomberg Law | Moran Tees Up Data Privacy Bill As Senate Effort Splinters (2 min read)
What’s New in Publishing | Google unlocks 33% of publisher paywalls on July 30. This is what happens next. (2 min read)
Nieman Lab | Apple’s podcast categories are on a brief vacation — and a reminder of how thin the industry’s infrastructure can be (3 min read)

Industry-Research | Perspectives

Marketers seek brand safety and awareness, but focus spending on search and social

July 31, 2019 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

With Facebook, YouTube, mobile, and OTT prevailing in the expanding video space—and people spending more and more time in front of small screens—advertisers are increasingly prioritizing video. In fact, they rank it among their most effective advertising channels.

However, they continue to spend the bulk of their budgets on paid search, with paid social taking the next biggest chunk according to the 2019 “State of Digital Advertising” released by Marin Software. Based on a survey 460 digital marketers, the report details the main priorities digital advertisers are focusing on this year, as well as the biggest challenges and trends.

Marketers cited increasing brand awareness as their top priority (25%). Other priorities include:

Enhancing the customer experience – 22%
Embracing omnichannels – 20%
Delivering personalization – 20%
Campaign management – 19%

Advertising trends

Data privacy, video advertising, and visual search were the three largest trends advertisers believe to be impacting their business in 2019. A total of 22% of digital advertisers indicated that both video advertising and information security in the form of data privacy, tracking restrictions, brand safety, and ad blocking will have the largest impact on their businesses this year. Within social specifically, marketers surveyed cited attribution/cross-device measurement (28%), generating quality creative (26%) and brand safety (26%) as their top concerns.

“Advertisers are very sensitive to these privacy and tracking issues and need to strike a balance between brand safety/sound privacy policies and ad performance tied to audience targeting,” according to Wes MacLaggan, senior vice president of marketing at Marin Software. So, while marketers continue to prioritize search and social channels for digital advertising, their priorities and concerns provide and opportunity for other marketing channels to address these issues and help them reach their objectives.

Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of July 25, 2019

July 25, 2019 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

Here are some of the best media stories our team has read so far this week:

NBC News | Facebook’s FTC settlement points toward a future for privacy regulation (2 min read)
Insider | UBS reveals the combined company that could challenge Disney and Netflix in the ‘content arms race’ (2 min read)
Politico | Who should keep an eye on Silicon Valley? (7 min read)
AdAge | Google closes ‘incognito’ loophole, leaving publishers to rethink paywalls (4 min read)
Poynter | How a GateHouse-Gannett merger would work (4 min read)
The Guardian | To fix the problem of deepfakes we must treat the cause, not the symptoms (5 min read)
AdWeek | As Traditional TV Evolves, Television Rating Systems Remain the Same (8 min read)
Medium Times Open | Introducing the News Provenance Project (5 min read)
The Wall Street Journal | Google’s Tool to Tame Election Influence Has Flaws (8 min read)

Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of July 18, 2019

July 18, 2019 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

Here are some of the best media stories our team has read so far this week:

Fortune | ‘We’re Not Like Facebook.’ Tech Giants Will Squirm in Capitol Hill’s Hot Seat (3 min read)
Harvard Business School | Are Paywalls Saving Newspapers? (5 min read)
REDEF | The Streaming Wars: Its Models, Surprises, and Remaining Opportunities (40 min read)
Buzzfeed | At VidCon’s 10-Year Anniversary, Influencers, Fans, And Brands All Seem Ready To Leave YouTube Behind (6 min read)
The Guardian | The Netflix cash machine needs the kind of hits that money can’t buy (8 min read)
Nieman Lab | Apple might be getting into the podcast-making business. Is its reign as the industry’s benevolent overlord coming to an end? (5 min read)
Bloomberg | YouTube’s Trampled Foes Plot Antitrust Revenge (13 min read)
9to5 Google | Google introduces redesigned News tab for desktop Search (2 min read)
The Wall Street Journal | FTC Approves Roughly $5 Billion Facebook Settlement (5 min read)

Industry-Research

Young people rely on the news. Unfortunately, they don’t always find it reliable.

July 12, 2019 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

The good news is that young people continue to read the news. The bad news is that they are losing faith in it. A report released by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation finds that 88% of young adults access news at least weekly, which includes 53% that do so every day. Conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago, the report analyzes the findings of a survey of 1,660 adults between the ages of 18 and 34.

Unsurprisingly, young adults of all races are highly digital news consumers. They find their news on social media, smartphone alerts, or news websites. And a majority of young adults share news regularly with their friends, family and social networks. Fifty-six percent of young adults share news stories at least weekly, with around 1 in 5 sharing news every day.

Political leanings and learnings

Certainly, it is heartening that young people rely on the news. However, it is unfortunate to note that the report found that a majority of young adults are concerned about the impact of news on democracy and unity in the country, expressing that news organizations may actually divide and polarize citizens.

The survey found that many young adults have concerns about the ideological and political leanings of news sources, according to the survey. In fact, a majority believes certain news sources have ideological positions, divide society, and hurt democracy.

Cultural and ethnic perspectives

Given that the report surveyed large samples of African American and Hispanic participants, the results offer significant insights across races and ethnicities. In particular:

A majority of young adults rely on news to make decisions, particularly young African American people: More than 60% of young adults use their favorite news source to decide which policies to support. And more than 50% do the same when deciding who should have their votes. Young African Americans are twice as likely to do this as young white Americans.
Young adults largely believe that their race or ethnicity is not covered regularly in the media: Overall, 31% of young adults say that people of their race, or issues that affect people of their race, are rarely covered in their most-liked news sources. Forty-seven percent say the same thing about their least-liked news sources.
The majority of African American and Hispanic participants do not feel like media sources accurately or fairly portray their groups, when they do get coverage: Only 45% of African Americans and 40% of Hispanics say their most-liked source very accurately portrays them.
As young adults question the media’s coverage of race, many get news from ethnic media sources: 58% of African American and 52% of Hispanic young adults use ethnic media sources at least once per week. Seventy-five percent of Hispanics and 71% of African American young adults who say they regularly experience racial discrimination. Thus, they are more likely to use sources that provide news specific to their race or ethnicity.

Use this news

Given the transformation of news consumption, it is gratifying to see that – while they may access it differently than previous generations – today’s youth continue to rely on news to inform significant decisions. Perhaps the fact that much of news consumption takes place once-removed from the source and that it is delivered in often polarized social media contexts are forces driving today’s young news consumers’ perception of the potentially negative impact of news. They are certainly affected by the fact that the news does not consistently reflect their racial and cultural perspectives. While dispiriting, these insights should prove helpful as news organizations seek to better engage and serve young audiences, who are seeking out news that reflects and informs their perspectives.

Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of July 11, 2019

July 11, 2019 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

Here are some of the best media stories our team has read so far this week:

The New York Times | The Great Race to Rule Streaming TV (11 min read)
The Wall Street Journal | Regulators Eye the Auctions That Decide Which Web Ads You See (5 min read)
Recode | Why you have to keep logging in to read news on your phone (11 min read)
Digiday | Guide to European regulators’ war with the tech platforms (5 min read)
Free Press | Questions Remain as New Jersey Gov. Murphy Approves Funding for Groundbreaking Local-News Initiative (4 min read)
Nieman Lab | Six months into 2019, what new do we know about the state of podcasting? (20 min read)
Shorenstein Center | A Landscape Study of Local News Models Across America (47 min read)
What’s New in Publishing | 5 global social media trends, and how they impact publishers (6 min read)
Digiday | In Germany, questions hang on the impact of Facebook’s latest news initiative (4 min read)

Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of July 5, 2019

July 5, 2019 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

Here are some of the best media stories our team has read so far this week:

Business Insider | Apple’s new subscription bundle, Apple News Plus, is key to its revenue growth, but it’s off to a slow start, publishing execs say
Bloomberg | Facebook Is Latest Tech Company to Come Under EU’s Antitrust Scrutiny (1 min read)
CJR | Faceplant (10 min read)
Wired | Microsoft’s Ebook Apocalypse Shows the Dark Side of DRM (5 min read)
The Verge | Endless AI-generated spam risks clogging up Google’s search results (6 min read)
The New Yorker | Will California’s New Bot Law Strengthen Democracy? (7 min read)
Business Insider | Instagram is Gen Z’s go-to source of political news — and it’s already having an impact on the 2020 election (3 min read)
Esquire | For Ben Smith, the Answer Is ‘Keep Reporting’ (24 min read)

Industry-Research

Content discovery is a critical component of SVOD success

July 2, 2019 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

More choice sounds like a good thing. However, it’s been shown that there is a point at which too much choice no longer improves perception of value. In fact, too much choice can leave you feeling less satisfied than having fewer choices to begin with. The proliferation of streaming services may well be reaching this tipping point, though arguably cable television has long suffered from choice overload.

The 2019 first-quarter Nielsen Total Audience Report looked at how modern consumers navigate the “paradox of choice” to decide what to watch. Nielsen found that, among adult SVOD users, only one third of them report browsing the menu of a streaming service to find content to watch. And, unfortunately, 21% will quickly stop watching if they are not able to make up their minds.

Given that about 70% of homes have a subscription video on demand (SVOD) service and 72% use streaming-capable TV devices streaming services will need to figure out the best way to keep users engaged with content on these platforms. At present, most streaming users will gravitate back toward their traditional TV preferences when they’re not sure what to watch

At present, almost two-thirds of adults who stream video content use the services to watch exactly what they know they want to watch. One-third will watch when they have a rough idea, and only 22% watch when they don’t know what they want before exploring their options. An interesting thing about video streamers is that—despite the growth of original content offerings from providers like Netflix and Hulu—they focus on the familiar. Almost 60% say they routinely return to their favorite traditional channels, 44% like to scan through traditional channel options, 39% scan the program listings, and 31% browse their DVR recordings.

Younger viewers are more likely to use menus and check out recommended programming, as well as to spend more time exploring, than older viewers. However, they are also the most likely to tune out altogether if they are frustrated and don’t find something they want to watch. Thus, it is critical for streaming solution providers to master content discovery as they seek to cement their place in consumer viewing habits.