Articles by: "Rande Price, Research VP – DCN"

Subscription strategies to convert light readers

October 12, 2021 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

The pandemic was a key driver of new subscriptions from news and gaming sites to entertainment streaming services. As a result, publishers registered record subscription growth. For digital media businesses, once 100% reliant on advertising revenue, the question now is how to sustain this growth over time.

Publishers naturally encourage heavy readers to convert to paying subscribers. These readers offer a high lifetime value and are an excellent market for new products, upgrades, and cross-sells. However, heavy users were not the only segment showing an increase in subscriptions during the pandemic. Casual readers also increased their subscriptions sign-ups.

Greg Piechota highlights strategies to convert and retain light readers after the pandemic in the International News Media Alliance (INMA) new report, Light Readers: Digital Subscriptions’ Next Growth Path. Publishers should think differently about light readers and develop a value proposition and marketing mix that fits this target audience.

Open a door for casual readers

Publishers grew their subscriber base last year. High-interest news events such as Black Lives Matter and the U.S. presidential elections, in addition to the pandemic, signaled light readers to learn more. As a result, casual news consumers were part of the wave of increased traffic to news sites.

Recognizing the historical events of 2020, many publishers responded with looser paywalls during Covid. They recognized the value of trading content for reader registrations. Once readers registered, it allowed publishers to track and understand their content preferences. It opened a valuable communication channel to push content to causal readers via e-mail, paid ads, etc. — hopefully leading to new subscriptions.

The standard acquisition funnel may not be the right path for casual readers; they may need more passes in the first stages of the relationship to trigger registration, engagement, and subscription.

Insert chart optimize customer journey

Developing a new habit

Onboarding new subscribers need to be centered around developing a new habit of regularly visiting publisher’s content. Piechota cites research from University College (UCL) that suggests “people are most likely to adopt new habits after 66 days of repetition.” In other words, publishers have approximately two months to engage light readers daily to become a regular habit.

Developing a new behavior is a critical step in creating a long-term subscriptions relationship with light readers. Further, trial lengths should include sufficient time to adopt this new habit-forming behavior.

Learn about the light reader

Publishers must focus on engaging light readers in both content and site design. Segment personalization in many content management systems (CMS) can offer different homepages to different reader segments. A homepage design for casual readers can include explanation sections, added news analyses, and 24-hour recaps.

Light readers, by definition, are more limited in what they read on sites than heavy users. Heavy readers often look at everything. Therefore, it’s more challenging to figure out what is truly interesting to them. Given the disparity between these two cohorts, it may be beneficial to focus on the overlap of their content interests. Finding this intersection can serve light users well while maximizing the reach of content.

Further, increasing engagement of light readers can be more critical than maximizing heavy-reader engagement. Piechota points out increasing heavy readers from 50 visits per month to 60 may not affect their engagement. However, moving a light reader from two visits a month to 10 is likely to affect their engagement significantly.

News publishers see casual readers as a valuable audience. A renewed focus on this cohort, understanding their behavior and knowing their unique characteristics offer an opportunity for growth and a gateway to engagement.

Advertising | Industry-Research

Premium VOD advertising placements outperform YouTube and Facebook

August 31, 2021 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

Researchers continue to prove that ads viewed within a premium publisher environment drive greater advertising effectiveness. Each of the studies (here, here and here) offers insights and empirical data proving ad performance is better in premium content environments.

A new study to add to this notable library is the second phase of The Benchmark Series, the largest cross-media advertising effectiveness study conducted in Australia.

It’s important to note that the first phase of research showed that ads in premium environments offer 1.8 times better recall and 2.8 times the brand lift than short-form video on run of the internet. Further, ads in premium content also deliver 1.8 times higher recall than Facebook video. It appears that the brain processes ads differently depending on where an ad is seen. When people see ads in an environment that helps contributes to memory encoding, ad effectiveness is maximized. Premium editorial sites offer this context.

This new research supplies a unique perspective on advertising performance in premium long-form using Broadcast Video on Demand (BVOD). The VOD broadcasters’ included were 7Plus, 9Now, and 10 play. The study compares BVOD to YouTube, Facebook, and run-of-the-internet sites. It uses core ad effective measures likeability, brand recall and lift.

Both phases of the study were conducted by MediaScience, which is well-known for their expertise in neuro-measures (i.e. biometrics, facial expression analysis, eye tracking and EEG) methodologies. It included more than 5,350 participants and campaigns ran across 252 websites in Australia.

MediaScience defines premium content as:

Professionally produced content.
A media brand that people know and trust.
Brand safe environment.
Meaningful scale for advertisers.

Overall, the new research shows that ads that appear in BVOD are more effective and outperform video advertising across YouTube, regardless of whether the ads align with short or longer-form content.

Recall

Ads in BVOD environments are remembered better (1.3 times) than ads aligned to YouTube videos of any length. Further, when ads in BVOD are compared to YouTube videos shorter than 9 minutes, they generate 1.5 times greater unprompted recall.

Further, BVOD advertising delivers better unprompted recall (4.7 times) than Facebook video ads and 2.5 times better recall than run of internet short-form video.

Likeability

In terms of likeability, ads in BVOD generate 15% greater likeability compared to YouTube short-form. Dr. Duane Varan, CEO of MediaScience explains, “advertising in premium long-form video environments benefits from the content the ads sit alongside with premium content boosting their impact.” He adds, “The content is priming you for certain emotions and that benefits the ads that follow.”

The research shows that not all digital video environments are equal when it comes to advertising performance. Quality content environments matter when advertising and there’s plenty of research to support this statement. The reality is that it’s long overdue for advertisers to reevaluate where they place their ad dollars and their micro-targeted ad campaigns.

Industry-Research

Subscription growth continues globally, but competition is fierce

August 25, 2021 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

Streaming services continue to rack up subscriber growth in the global marketplace. In fact, Juniper Research forecasts nearly 2 billion active subscriptions globally to on-demand video services by 2025. That’s an increase of 65% compared to the end of 2020. Domestically, USB analysts believe that Americans will add 50 million net new video subscriptions this year, up from a 47 million increase in 2020.

To gain insight into the market breakdown of global streaming marketplace, Finder.com conducted a survey with close to 30,000 consumers across 18 countries. In total, approximately 56% of consumers report having access to at least one streaming service. Finder.com is a content site focused on helping consumers make informed decisions in categories such as credit cards, mortgages, health insurance and others.

Streamer concentration and service popularity

New Zealand and Brazil represent the highest concentration of respondents using at least one streaming service (65.3% and 64.6% respectively). On the opposite end, France and Pakistan report the least number of streamers in their countries, 45.2% and 44.6%, respectively.

Respondents were asked specifically about three global services: Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney+. Netflix is by far the most popular streaming service among the three with more than two in five (40.1%) consumers subscribing to it around the world. Nearly 14% of those surveyed subscribe to Amazon (13.9%) and 13.1% subscribe to Disney+. Ireland had the highest number of respondents reporting that they subscribe to Netflix and Amazon Prime (56.9% and 19.9%, respectively). The U.S. ranked the highest in Disney+ subscribers at 32.8%.

Demographic appeal

Women tend to consume more on these platforms with an average of 57.2% reporting at least one streaming service compared to men at 55.6%. Countries with highest female usage are Ireland (69.2%), Brazil (65.9%) and New Zealand (65.3%). The U.S. ranks fifth with at least 63.9% of women reporting that they subscribe to at least one streaming service. In terms of popularity, Netflix is the most popular streaming service among women (45.2%) followed by Disney+ (14.7%), and Amazon Prime (13.8%).

U.S. streaming close up

The survey included Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Hulu, and YouTube TV when asking U.S. respondents about streaming services. Again, Netflix leads with 45.4% of respondents saying they use it, followed by Amazon Prime (32.8%), Hulu (22.3%), Disney+ (18.1%) and YouTube TV (7.4%).

Hands down, Netflix is the most popular platform in the U.S. across each age group. Sixty percent of people aged 18-24, 54.0% of 25-34-year-olds, 53.1% aged 35-44, 50.2% of 45-54-year-olds, 42.3% of 55-64-year-olds, and 38.2% of those over 65 all report that they use the streaming service.

Subscribing to video streaming services is the norm for today’s consumers. But competition is fierce. These services not only need to attract subscribers, they must also hold on to them. With an increasing number of subscription services, retention is critical to market growth and expansion. Importantly, subscription services need to employ strategies that build loyalty, provide added value, and offer personalization to compete in the global marketplace.

Industry-Research

A Covid-era study reveals best practices for automated reporting

August 17, 2021 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

Though automated journalism is not new, the pandemic — characterized by a slew of data driven stories — accelerated adoption for some newsrooms. By in large, automated approaches use a natural language generation (NLG) application to automatically transform data into human-readable text. It has long been used for weather and sports, as well as financial market updates. However, it has been making significant in-roads at a wide range of newsrooms and other coverage areas over the past decade.

Early adopters included The Los Angeles Times, which used NLG to for earthquake alerts and to report on homicides, and the Associated press, which used it for corporate earnings. Today, numerous media organizations are adopting automated journalism in their newsrooms and a wide range of storytelling practices.

In a new report, Samuel Danzon-Chambaud, a Knight News Innovation fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, examines how automated news has been used to cover the pandemic. Covering COVID-19 with automated news outlines use cases at nine news outlets in eight countries to reveal both opportunities and stumbling blocks in adopting automated storytelling processes.

The media organizations include:

Bayerischer Rundfunk (Bavaria’s public service broadcaster, Germany);
Bloomberg News (news agency, United States);
Canadian Press (news agency, Canada);
Helsingin Sanomat (newspaper, Finland);
NTB (news agency, Norway);
Omni (news service, Sweden);
RADAR (news agency, United Kingdom);
Tamedia (media group, Switzerland); and
The Times (newspaper, United Kingdom).

Rethinking the process

Using automated storytelling tools requires newsrooms to rethink their process from data sources to workflow and operations. For starters, it’s important to ask the following questions:

How will the automated content serve readers?
What metrics are needed?
Who are the data sources?
How often will you update the data?
How will you upload the data into a usable information?
Will your CMS allow easy data integration?
How does the automation process fit into the current workflow?

In terms of the pandemic, automated news coverage offered timely updates on the spread of the virus. News outlets were able to provide audiences with dashboards and newsletters as well as automated or semi-automated graphics. Publishers also created new news products such as an automated-live blogging platform.

Case studies show challenges met in real-time

Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR), Bavaria’s public service broadcaster questioned which metrics to track. They started by tracking absolute increase in Covid cases and total numbers of cases. However, early in the process they realized the data did not allow them to track the evolution of the virus. They quickly pivoted and switched their focus to access more detailed data points such as doubling times, reproductive numbers, and 7-day incidence rates. This allowed for more robust reporting and updates on the virus.

For some news outlets, CMS issues can prevent full-on automation. At The Times, a newspaper in the UK, the process could not be completely automated. After the text was generated and edited, it had to be copied and pasted it into the newspaper’s CMS. Unfortunately, the numbers were often outdated by the time the story was ready for publication. The data and interactive team were called upon to change their workflow until the automation process could be integrated into the CMS. The new workflow allowed journalists to update the data in their articles without an editorial review, unless the story’s lead changed.

Similarly, the automated tool built at the Canadian Press (CP) asked journalists in the field in different regions to input different Covid statistics into a master spreadsheet. The spreadsheet was exported into a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) file which stores the information in a simple data structure. The data is then transformed into automated stories and graphics but on separate webpage. Again, the need for copy and paste was necessary to place CP’s automated content in their CMS. CP will soon have a CMS that will generate and integrate an automated story using a simple Slack command.

Using automated news to develop new workflows

Bloomberg News, a news outlet in the U.S., uses their automated news process to extract relevant information on companies’ financial statements and reports. The automated system is connected to an AI-powered system to analyze the data through “knowledge graphs.” These graphs combine different data silos and illustrates the relationship between them.

Bloomberg’s process includes machine-learning elements in the analysis of the knowledge graphs. However, it’s also important to point out the human effort is needed in writing scripts in advance to prepare for the potential scenario in the analysis. Bloomberg News was able to include their business insight in their Covid-19 analysis to assess the economic impacts of the pandemic. Their Covid-19 analysis included assessment of metro riders to flight reservations, restaurant bookings, and supermarket visits.

Automated news invites new technology — and opportunity —into the newsroom. Increasingly, newsrooms are thinking of new ways to incorporate automated practices into their product development roadmap. Next steps include ideas such as an alert system to inform teams when new data is being released and cloud storage services to keep track of historical data.

The more that media practitioners engage with automated news systems, the better their ability to manage the process and foresee potential disconnects. Importantly, keeping reporters involved in this process will ensure that journalistic standards are encoded into the automated content creation process.

Industry-Research

Social platforms fail to protect users from hate

August 10, 2021 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

Many question the boundaries of social media discourse. Is free speech protected on platforms? And what are the limits and liabilities? As assured in the First Amendment, private companies like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and TikTok have no legal obligation to protect an individual’s right to free speech.

They are, however, entitled to moderate content on their sites is also guaranteed by the First Amendment. Each social platforms sets its own community guidelines. However, all five of these platforms have rules that prohibit hate speech against individuals or groups based on protected characteristics including ethnicity, nationality, race, or religion.

And just 10 months ago, Facebook updated its guidelines to prohibit any content that denies or distorts the Holocaust. Mark Zuckerberg reflected on this change, “My own thinking has evolved as I’ve seen data showing an increase in antisemitic violence, as have our wider policies on hate speech.” In fact, the Anti-Defamation League reports that U.S. antisemitic incidents were at a historic high in 2020.

Lax enforcement

Yet despite stated guidelines and goals, the question remains: How effective is social media in protecting their users from online hate and disinformation on their platforms? Unfortunately, the answer is not good.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate’s (CCDH) works with practitioners in diverse fields to develop strategies that strengthen tolerance and democracy, and counter-strategies to new forms of hate and misinformation. It’s new report, Failure to Protect, finds that social platforms fail to act on 84% of reported anti-Jewish hate content. All five social platforms prohibit common forms of antisemitic content defined as hateful conspiracy theories, genocide denial, dehumanization and hate symbols.

CCDH recorded and reported 714 antisemitic posts seen up to 7.3 million times.

The CCDH identified and reported 714 posts, between May and June of 2020, containing antisemitic content on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok. They used the platforms’ own reporting tools to measure the effectiveness of each companies moderating process. In aggregate, the 714 posts reached a total of 7.3 million impressions.

Importantly, of the 714 posts, only 16% were acted upon. Seven percent of the posts were removed while 8.8% of the accounts were remove, resulting in the removal of the antisemitic posts. However, 0.1% of the posts were labeled as false content but remain on the platforms.

Platforms failed to act on 84% of reports of anti-Jewish hate.

Conspiracy theories

Further analysis of the 714 posts identified that more than two-thirds — or 477 of them — contained anti-Jewish conspiracy theories. The platforms only acted on 11.5% of these posts, significantly lower than the 16% of the full sample. Interestingly, the CCDH concludes that social platforms are far less responsive to antisemitic conspiracy theories than other, more common forms of antisemitic content.

Extremist content

In addition, 277 posts or 39% of the sample were associated with extremist anti-Jewish hate content. This includes holocaust denial or minimization, references to inciting explicit violence towards Jewish people, racist caricatures of Jewish people, references to the blood libel and Nazi, neo-Nazi, or white supremacist content. Social platforms acted on 25% of these posts. With additional analysis, the CCDH findings show that the platforms ignore at least 80% of posts that dismiss the Holocaust and overlook 62% of posts that call for violence against Jews.

Hashtags add to the problem

Hashtags also allow for the proliferation of antisemitic content because they direct users to more content on a topic. But platforms have little incentive to restrict their use because they help fuel the social ecosystem. More content consumption generates more traffic and the serving of more ads. In other words, hashtags generate revenue. The 447 posts identified using antisemitic hashtags generated 3.3 million impressions across Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter.

Respond responsibly

The CCDH research clearly demonstrates the role social platforms play in increasing the visibility of hate and misinformation. Social media has no liability for the content posted on their platforms. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 provides immunity to platforms for third-party content. Unfortunately, hate drives traffic and social platforms profit from it.

The CCDH recommends how social platforms can correct their failings to act on anti-Jewish postings:

Remove user groups dedicated to antisemitism.
Ban antisemitic hashtags.
Close accounts which send racist abuse to Jewish people.
Hire, train, and support the moderators to effectively remove dangerous anti-Jewish hate.
Legislators and regulators should ensure platforms are liable in the same way as any other person or corporation for the harms they create.

Despite on-going and valuable debates on regulation, legislation will not be an immediate solution. However, the other CCDH recommendations are clearly within the platforms’ control and should be an urgent priority.

Industry-Research

Meeting these consumer expectations is critical for streaming success

July 28, 2021 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

Consumers have numerous entertainment options when it comes to video streaming. There are many choices to be made — from content and viewing device to whether to access the content from a film studio, a network provider, streaming network, and more. The options are endless and overwhelming. As an industry, we need to understand how consumers feel about these entertainment options and how they are navigating the marketplace.

PriceWaterhouseCoopers’s (PwC) new research shows that 83% of consumers are happy with their options. That’s up from 73% compared to a year ago. In fact, approximately 40% say they are “happy,” “excited” or “satisfied” with their video viewing experience.

PwC surveyed 1,000 consumers, ages 18-59, to better understand content choices and preferences. They used historical survey findings for data comparisons.

Supplying the ultimate user interface

Consumers report that they now use close to eight streaming services, up from six services the prior year. When asked what they like about their favorite services, key factors include “ease of use” (55%) followed by “being able to find something to watch on the service” (35%). Consumers expect an intuitive user interface (UI). The findings indicate that exceeding expectations in ease of use and finding content can act as key differentiators for streaming services.

Getting personal

Respondents like the idea of content recommendations getting more advanced and personal. This includes factors like viewing mood, co-viewing identification, length of the content and other data points.

Using advanced personalization can help the search and discovery process be even more customer centric. However, ensuring user privacy and maintaining consumer trust is non-negotiable in the process. With this in mind, directing subscribers to accessible content with ease and efficiently is a golden ticket.

Advertising context

Most consumers do not mind advertising. In fact, close to two-thirds (63%) of respondents are willing to see more ads if it means a lower cost of a streaming service. Not surprisingly, 72% of respondents report that they prefer to see fewer ads that are not of interest to them. In other words, context and relevancy matter.

Retaining subscribers

Positive consumer satisfaction supports a growing entertainment marketplace. Nearly half of all respondents (46%) report paying more for video content in 2020 than they did in 2019. Further, 59% of them expect to pay more a year from now. Even with high satisfaction and expectations of a growing market, retaining users is a top priority. Respondents report the top three retention vehicles: a price discount (64%), larger movie library (50%), and less ads (50%).

Significantly, PwC’s research shows that consumers are still adding services in their video service portfolios. In a crowded streaming marketplace, meeting and exceeding consumer expectations to easily find content drives stickiness. Further, new partnerships and tiered models may offer new opportunities to attract and retain users. However, it’s important that these new opportunities align with consumer benefits.

Industry-Research

Should newsrooms remain neutral?

July 21, 2021 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

Accurate and impartial storytelling has long been considered an essential component of effective newsrooms. However, in recent years some news outlets have taken a far more partisan approach over the provision of objective news and information. With plenty of opinion-based commentary available, how significant is objective journalism to audiences?

The latest report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism questions the importance of impartial news reporting to audiences. The new study offers insight into whether objective news coverage, or point of view offerings, appeal to consumers. Reuters’ findings are based on survey results from close to 100,000 adults worldwide and in-depth interviews with 50 adults in Brazil, Germany, the U.K., and the U.S.

Impartial vs. opinion-based reporting

Overall, respondents say they want to hear different and impartial views on social and political issues. In fact, three quarter (74%) report that social and political news coverage should present a range of different views. Just 15% of respondents believe that news outlets should argue for the points of view that they think are best.

Importantly, respondents often recognize the difference between news reporting and opinion-based commentary. However, they also think newsrooms should be very clear and identify when they report opinion-based commentary.

Significantly, Reuters’ findings show that consumers are interested in understanding opinions that are not their own. The majority (72%) of consumers in all markets think that news publishers should give equal time to all sides. A mere 17% think news outlets should give less time to sides with weaker arguments. Respondents agree that there should be a fair balance of opinions in objective news reporting.

Neutrality is not always an option

Interestingly, 30% of people in the U.S. think that sometimes neutrality is not an option when reporting the news. Specifically, younger respondents, along with those who are left leaning, think there are some issues where it is impossible for newsrooms to be neutral. In fact, a minority think that there is ethical justification, in some cases, for a non-neutral approach. Importantly, respondents express discomfort with newsrooms excluding points of view entirely.

Reuters’ findings show the desire for truthful storytelling in news but also for the inclusion of different perspectives. Yes, consumers want the facts. However, the report also suggest news publishers should offer different perspectives and different points of views. This approach will assist in breaking echo chambers and offers opportunities for healthy news discussions about multiple points of views.

Industry-Research

Investigating YouTube’s algorithmic black box

July 13, 2021 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

We’ve all taken a trip down the YouTube rabbit hole. It starts off innocently enough as we view a video recommended by a friend. Then about 30 to 60 minutes later, after countless video views, your brain neurons set off an alarm. This alert registers and you realize you are watching a video that clearly violates YouTube’s standards and practices. But wait just a minute: this video was recommended by YouTube itself.

That’s right, the platform recommends videos that disregard their own standards. It is difficult to explain how this happens because YouTube provides little transparency into their recommendation algorithms (well, any of their algos, really). The rabbit hole turns out to be an algorithmic black box.

While there are penalties for video violations, the determination process for YouTube’s actions for prohibited content are often unknown. They range from demonetization to the removal of individual videos and suspension of an entire account — to nothing at all. Not much is known about the end results. Meanwhile, there is little the user can do on the platform to prevent the targeting and amplification of regrettable (if not deplorable) content.

RegretsReporter

Consequently, Mozilla, a non-profit creator of browsers, apps, and tools, stepped in to shed light on YouTube’s black box of algorithms. They created the RegretsReporter browser extension. It’s a crowdsourcing tool to help users identify their path to a “regrettable” YouTube video. The browser extension captures the user’s YouTube browsing behavior. The tracking will only occur up to 5 hours prior to initiating the report. Further, the data is shared with Mozilla only if the user actively agrees.

Mozilla’s newly released report, YouTube Regrets, is an analysis of shared browser data from over 37,000 YouTube users in 91 countries. In all, the pathways and content of 3,362 regrettable videos are explored in this study. It’s the largest-ever crowdsourced investigation into YouTube’s algorithms.

Regrettable videos, often recommended

This analysis finds that one in 10 of the reported videos (12.2%) “should not be on YouTube” or “should not be proactively recommended,” based on YouTube’s Community Guidelines. The most frequently reported videos include misinformation and violent or graphic content. Covid-19 misinformation is categorized separately from “general” misinformation because of the volume of videos. It comprises a third of all categorized video regrets.

Unfortunately, YouTube recommendations represent 71% of the regretted videos reported to Mozilla. And at least two-fifths (43%) of all regrettable videos are recommended by YouTube and are completely unrelated to videos the user is watching.

Mozilla and other researchers cannot confirm YouTube’s claims at progress in correcting algorithms. YouTube provides no insight into the design and operational practices of their recommendation systems. Therefore, Mozilla sees these recommendations as necessary next steps in YouTube’s accountability:

Allow independent audits of recommendation systems.
Provide information about how recommendation systems work.
Give users more control over which of their data is used to generate recommendations.
Implement risk assessment programs to identify and evaluate the possibility and magnitude of harm caused by the recommendation system.
Provide users with an option to opt-out of personalized recommendations in favor of receiving chronological, contextual, or search term-based recommendations.

Mozilla and other researchers believe there are significant consequences connected to YouTube’s algorithms. Further, many believe the algorithms are optimized in favor of YouTube’s business model – increasing users’ time spent to serve more advertising. The amplification of regrettable video content including pseudo-science, 9/11 conspiracy theories, mistreated animals or encouraging white supremacy cannot be a byproduct of YouTube’s business model. Clearly, transparency is a needed to identify and resolve the problems embedded in their recommendation ecosystem.

Advertising | Industry-Research

Top ad servers service the fake news ecosystem

June 29, 2021 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

Fake news is often driven by deeply ingrained partisanship. Its proliferation is also fueled by financial motivation, of course. New research, Market Forces: Quantifying the Role of Top Credible Ad Servers in the Fake News Ecosystem, found that that the top-10 credible ad servers alone account for 67% of fake news and 56% of and low-quality ad traffic. Further, Google delivers 48% of the ad traffic on fake news publishers and 32% on low credibility sites.

Methodology

To conduct this research, Lia Bozarth and Ceren Budak at the University of Michigan used a web API tool to simulate peoples’ browsing behavior. Their research identified fake news sites as those filled with pseudoscience and false facts. They also found that low credibility publishers are often hyper-partisan. The API tool initiates a browser session, navigate to the site’s homepage, scrolls through the page, and focuses the mouse on each ad’s iframe. Bozarth and Budak then filtered the collected data by the top 50 ad serves. In all, 84% of their ad data was served by the top 50% ad servers.

This methodology allowed the authors to measure ad server usage of high-quality sites, fake, and low-quality news sites. Three-quarters (74%) of all publishers (high-quality, fake and low-quality) have one or more ad servers displaying ads and 26% of all publishers are ad-free. The findings also show that fake news publishers often have fewer ad servers on average compared to low-quality and traditional news sites. Further, the median number of ad servers for fake and traditional sites is six and eight ad servers, respectively.

Ad server quality

Consumers navigating to fake and low-quality news site are at potential privacy and security risks. Fake and low-quality news publishes have a higher tendency to serve more ads and to partner with riskier ad servers when compared to traditional news media with similar popularity and age skew. Importantly, while fake news publishers use riskier ad servers, they are also dependent on credible ones. According to the findings, the top credible ad servers play a substantial role in delivering ad revenue to fake news sites. For instance, 6.7% of all fake domains are dependent on top-10 ad servers.

Impact on ad server revenue

Bozarth and Budak also provide a weighted ad traffic analysis to illustrate the role top credible ad servers play in providing revenue to fake and low-quality news sites. They found that full 61% of fake news ad revenue is estimated to be supplied by the 10 credible ad servers.

In terms of revenue to the ad servers, Bozarth and Bodak estimate that the top-10 firms, in aggregate, generate $24,500 to $28,600 monthly through fake news sites. That’s an average of $985,700 to $1.15 million of revenue or approximately 0.1% to 1.0% of the top 10 ad servers’ their annual revenue.

While the authors support ad servers blacklisting fake and low-quality news sites, that may not be the best answer. Profit-driven fake news sites banned by top-tier ad servers will partner with less reputable ones without hesitation. Further, owners of blacklisted websites will also migrate to new domains. It becomes a game of “whack-a-mole” unless there is an ability to detect these sites before ads are served. Additional research is needed to clearly identify fake and low-quality news sites. Criteria like the type of advertisers on these sites and their CPM or CPC rates to identifying profit models by category sectors. Each additional factor identified as a predictor of fake and low-quality news site can help inform ad servers about the content qualify of news sites. And this, in turn, supports sites that provide better consumer experiences and higher quality information.

Advertising | Industry-Research

Targeting practices: a critical look at surveillance advertising

June 1, 2021 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

Personalized advertising offers relevance. And algorithms that help target specific products and services towards interested consumers can be beneficial. However, collecting massive amounts of consumer data is highly problematic. Some digital advertising methods use large-scale data collection, profiling, and data sharing in order to micro target ads based on behavioral habits and search history. Unfortunately, these practices are all aspects of surveillance advertising models.

The New Economic Foundation’s report, I-Spy, The Billion Dollar Business of Surveillance Advertising, explores concerns around surveillance advertising – targeted advertising using personal data provided by websites and platforms. In particular, the report examines issues around the collection and use of children’s personal information.

From data collection to buying and sharing data, surveillance advertising is questionable in terms of its legality. Data protection regulations like General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) are in place to protect consumers. However, it is clear from this report that market needs a thorough compliance review.

Mechanics of surveillance advertising

Real-time bidding (RTM) with algorithms and automation accelerated the usage and growth of data-intensive advertising. In fact, targeted advertising serves as the business model for two of the largest internet platforms, Facebook and Google. While many consumers are aware that they are being tracked, they are often not aware of the extent of that tracking.

The process of surveillance advertising:

When we click on a webpage, a site identifies the number of advertising slots for sale and begins a bid request.
To compile this bid request, the site assembles as much information about the user as possible. A standard bid request usually contains:

– A user ID set by the supply-side platforms (SSPs)
– Full referral URL, the link to the site where the ad is supposed to appear
– Birth date
– Gender
– Location
– IP address
– Interests or segments previously assigned to the user
– Other information collected directly, from a data broker, or inferred
The information contained in the bid request is then used by demand-side platforms (DSPs), working for advertisers, to decide whether, and how much, to bid in an auction for the right to show the advertisement to the targeted audience.
The winning bidder gets to place the ad on the page and to keep a copy of the data in the bid request.

The New Economics Foundation estimates that bid requests on U.K. users containing personal information are sent out at a rate of approximately 10 billion a day. This translates to approximately 164 bid requests per person per day across all the ad exchanges. This information is seen by a multitude of ad tech companies. In fact, vast amounts of personal data are broadcasted across the digital advertising ecosystem.

Advocating for children

Children are protection under the Data Protection Act (DPA) in the U.K. and under Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) in the U.S. The two laws require parental consent prior to any data collection, usage, or disclosure of the personal information for children under the age of 13. Unfortunately, the more children spend time online, the that more digital platforms and ad tech platforms companies target them to gather data. The data collection process also employs algorithms to keep children online longer. This leads to an endless loop of data collection and advertising.

Recommendations

The New Economic Foundation recommends policymakers address surveillance advertising as follows:

Ensure platforms do not serve surveillance-based advertisements to children. And if data is collected, the child will be compensated, and their data will be deleted.
Platforms tracking and collecting data have a legal responsibility to handle all in a fiduciary manner.
Eventually prohibit the practice of surveillance advertising.

Critical context

Extensive online tracking systems coupled with the use of online auction systems shifts the advertising paradigm from contextual to behavioral. Many marketers today prioritize targeting over ad environments that are safe for consumers and advertisers. . Unfortunately, data is now the holy grail, which allows fake news, clickbait, and user-generated content to easily be monetized.

Importantly, GDPR and CCPA legislation are critical steps to reset business strategies and their reliant on extensive third-party consumer data collection. However, enforcement has been uneven at best. And when it comes to kids, it is clear that much more needs to be done to curb these unethical, even illegal, practices.

Industry-Research | Revenue

Understand consumer expectations in the ecommerce journey

May 17, 2021 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

As digital publishers diversify revenue strategies and develop ecommerce businesses, it is important to understand the consumer purchase process. For many publishers, ecommerce is more than just affiliate links, branded content, and online stores. Publishers are exploring investments in online shops, unique product offerings, wellness programs, virtual learning, and events. With new ecommerce businesses and multiple digital touchpoints consumers, expect an efficient and personalized shopping experience.

BlueVenn, a provider of tools and analytics for marketers, explores consumer purchase behaviors and engagement in a new report, Digital Divide. They partnered with OnePoll to survey 4,000 consumers and 500 marketers in U.S. and U.K.

Key findings include:

Over half (55%) of all respondents in the U.S. report that having a personalized shopping experience with a brand is important to them. Interestingly, only 27% report that brands provide a similar and cohesive shopping experience across all channels.
While marketers report that their businesses collect a lot of consumer data, only four in 10 report using the information. Clearly, it’s important to analyze the data and incorporate the findings to improve the consumer experience.
Fifty-seven percent of U.S. consumer report that they prefer to share their data directly with a brand they trust. This offers a unique opportunity for publishers to grow their ecommerce businesses since they already have a direct and trusted relationship with consumers.
Mobile ecommerce is the new norm in the U.S. Six in 10 U.S. respondents (61%) agree (32% “strongly agree” and 29% “somewhat agree”) that they’ve increased the amount of time they shop on mobile compared to last year.
The top two digital channels that U.S. consumers use to interact with brands include email (61%) and desktop/laptop web browser (51%). Interestingly, Facebook placed fifth (39%).
Close to two-thirds (63% “very important/somewhat important”) of U.S. respondents report that they think it is important for a brand to create a personalized shopping experience.In fact, 58% of U.S. consumers report that they are likely (23% “very likely” and 35% “somewhat likely”) to stop buying a product/service online due to the lack of a personalized experience.
Less than half (43%) of U.S. respondents report that brands understand their shopping need.

Browsing and browsers

When shopping for specific goods and services, U.S. consumers prefer overwhelmingly their desktop/laptop browser. Ranking and ratings:

Clothing, homeware, and exercise equipment – desktop/laptop browser (#1, 48%)
Financial services – desktop/laptop browser (#1, 41%)
Insurance – desktop/laptop browser (#1, 47%)
Cars – desktop/laptop browser (#2, 26%)
Charitable donations – desktop/laptop browser (#1, 26%)
Holiday or leisure – desktop/laptop browser (#1, 54%)
TV, movies, or entertainment – desktop/laptop browser (#1, 38%)

Diversifying product offerings and revenue streams is helping publishers deepen their audience relationship. As publishers continue to build their direct-to-consumer ecommerce portfolios, it’s important to monitor the consumer’s digital shopping experience. Understanding the process of multiple touchpoints and shifts in online shopping behavior provides insight into consumer needs and expectations. There is a growing opportunity for publishers to play an important role in offering consumers a cohesive digital shopping experience.

Advertising | Industry-Research

Research reinforces the value of premium ad context

May 10, 2021 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

Media research continues to prove that ad performance is better in premium content environments. From comScore’s 2016 research to more recent reports, World Media Group (WMG) and Integral Ad Science (IAS), findings show that it matters where advertising campaigns run. In fact, running ads on premium publisher sites substantially impacts advertising effectiveness.

ThinkPremiumDigital‘s new research, What’s so premium about premium digital?, further demonstrates the significant impact of content over ad perception. ThinkPremiumDigital partnered with MediaScience to conduct one of the biggest cross-platform ad effectiveness studies.

Their findings confirm that advertising in premium content is more effective than run of the internet and Facebook. The research includes two phases. Phase 1 examines advertising across 252 websites among 5,300 participants in Australia. Phase 2 will continue to explore ad effectiveness in social environments and include YouTube.

Measurement metrics

MediaScience’s research methodology is rooted in the fact that memory builds brands. It also confirms that memory pathways are more open to brand messages when people are consuming information and entertainment.

The analysis includes three stages of memory: encoding (recognition), storage (prompted recall) and retrieval (unprompted recall). Specifically, the research highlights premium digital’s ability to encode memories, which validates its power to build brands.

Encoding is processing incoming information so it can be entered in memory.
Storage is maintaining information in memory for a set amount of time.
Retrieval is accessing or recalling stored information from memory to use.

The brand lift metric represents a composite measure of:

awareness (of the brand, product, or offering);
attitude (opinion on quality, value and appeal);
recall (ability to remember);
favorability (likelihood to recommend); and
intent (likelihood to purchase).

Overall findings

Across display and short-form video content, premium environments deliver 2.4 times better recall. They deliver 1.6 times the brand lift of run-of-internet ads.

In terms of short-form video content, ads in premium environments offer 1.8 times better recall and 2.8 times the brand lift than short-form video on run of the internet.

They also deliver 1.8 times higher recall than Facebook video. It’s important to note that this research uses Facebook as a proxy for all social media. The research looks ad placement on the platform in aggregate, without any distinction of the content on Facebook, premium or not. Future research will include the impact of content brands on Facebook.

This study once again proves that advertising on high quality content sites drives higher brand attention and engagement for both display and video advertising. It recognizes the positive lift from the premium environments as a key driver of needed brand signals. The findings should be a loud wake-up call to marketers to place their advertise in quality and trusted media brands.