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

The number of people using social media to find news is leveling off according to the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2017, the largest comparative study of news consumption. The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) surveyed more than 70,000 people in 36 countries, on issues of trust, changing business models, and the role of platforms.

Unsurprisingly, mobile is a key access point for news. However, consumers’ usage of mobile alerts has risen 8 percentage points in the U.S, +7 in Korea, and +4 in Australia. The report finds that smartphones are an important access point for news inside the home as well as on the go. More smartphone users now access news in bed using their smartphone (46%) than when commuting to work.

On a global level, Reuters Institute reports that users are also looking to private messaging apps instead of social media (i.e. What’s App) in Malaysia (51%), Brazil (46%), and Spain (32%).

It is interesting that video doesn’t appear to be a big influencer in online news. People are only consuming a marginal amount of video on news websites. This is true as well for younger audiences and in countries where social media is a bigger part of the media mix.

Other key findings include:

Only a quarter (24%) of respondents think social media does a good job in separating fact from fiction, compared to 40% for the news media.
Trust (or lack of it) in the news of has a wide range depending on the country. The highest was found in Finland at 62% and the lowest in Greece and Koreas at 23% each.
Consumers are tired of the negative effects of news on their mood and attitude. In fact, almost a third of respondents (29%) avoid the news.
A quarter of respondents (24%) report that they regularly use ad-blockers, which is consistent with last year’s findings. Importantly, close to half (43%) of those with ad blockers agreed to temporarily turn off their ad-blocker to access a specific news sites.
Voice-activated digital devices like the Amazon Echo and Google Home are rising new platform for news.

Paying for News

Across all countries, only around one in ten (13%) pay for online news. Digital news subscriptions registered strong growth in the U.S., from 9% to 16% of the sample. Reuters Institute reports encouraging findings with regards to the growth of digital subscriptions. The report shows a strong correlation between consumers paying for online video services like Netflix and those paying for digital news subscriptions. Once consumers step away from the concept that all digital content is free, they are much more likely to pay for news.

Critical Qualities

Reuters Institute identifies transparency, fairness, and accountability as critical components for news publishers today. In the report, Melissa Bell, Publishers and Co-founder of Vox Media said: “If we work to rebuild trust with our audiences, we may find our way to more stable, significant businesses.” Bell also commented on the importance of a strong news branding and voice, “We have to know who we are and what we are trying to do, so our audience can come to know us and what to expect from us.”

Industry-Research

A fan-centric formula is a must for the media businesses today

June 20, 2017 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

According to PwC’s annual report, Perspectives from the Global Entertainment and Media Outlook, today’s entertainment and media companies must be “fan-centric.” And to remain competitive, they must use technology and data to attract, retain, and engage consumers. Content and distribution remain important factors in monetization and healthy survival rests on a positive user experience. Businesses built on occasional and noncommittal visitors are not likely to succeed.

PwC’s guide to a fan-centric approach:

Know your fans
Understand what drives fan loyalty for your brand. Analyze and know the value of different audience or user segments.

Increase your business agility and flexibility
Ensure business flexibility to respond faster to new user preferences, new business models, and new technologies

Monetize your fan relationship
Build brand extensions to create new revenue opportunities among your passionate fan base.

Adopt a user-/fan-centric focus
Super-serve fans and compete in the direct-to-consumer marketplace. Build an end-to-end user experience that includes customer acquisition and retention, personalization, customer service and billing.

PwC also reports that most of the traditional entertainment and media industry, TV advertising, B2B content, and cinema, will decline as a share of the global economy in the next five years. And while digital video and advertising show growth opportunity, it’s at a decelerating rate. In addition, several new content and entertainment businesses — music streaming, e-sports and virtual reality — are just ramping up of which the latter two are not yet mainstream. Therefore, consumer consumption and spending on media and entertainment will not outpace the GDP.

Today’s marketplace presents numerous challenges for media and entertainment businesses. They must manage their current delivery platforms and experiment with new distribution platforms and revenue streams all while remaining consumer-focused across all platforms.

Industry-Research | Innovation

Artificial Intelligence gains momentum with news media

June 13, 2017 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

Artificial Intelligence (AI), a computer’s ability to replicate the human thought process and solve problems, is hard at work in today’s news media. And for those not already leveraging AI, the time is now. In the new report, Artificial Intelligence: News Media’s Next Urgent Investment, Martha L. Stone, CEO of the World Newsmedia Network, in association with the INMA, explores how AI is being applied in today’s news industry.

Stone explains that AI has three main forms of behavior: natural language processing; predictive analytics; and machine learning/neural networks. Publishers can apply all three forms to address a wide range of news challenges.

Natural Language Processing

The first form describes the way in which computers understand the natural language process (NLP). It allows for automatic creation of articles (“robo-journalism”). Both the Associated Press and the BBC use Wordsmith, an NLP automated database, to create huge volumes of stories within seconds.

Natural language processing enables speech recognition and is used in devices like Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, or Google’s Home. This type of AI process allows CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, Quartz, the Huffington Post, and others to offer “flash” new briefings. Users signal these audio devices to inform them of the day’s news.

Media companies use sentiment analysis, a subset of NLP, to identify opinions in social media and blogs. The sentiment analysis sorts through comments about people, brands, etc. by analyzing both positive and negative words used in online discussions.

NLP also powers the recommendation engines used by many news publishers. Story recommendations help increase both traffic and user engagement. Chat apps and bots can also be used to drive traffic. However, they are especially good at repetitive tasks such as answering specific questions and offering data alerts. A successful example is The Washington Post’s Facebook Messenger feed bot. Users ask the bot questions and responds to overall news inquiries by suggesting links to other relatable news stories.

Predictive Analysis

The second form of AI, predictive analytics, allows analysts to predict trends and behaviors based on a subset of data. Predictive models are often used to target advertising, subscription, or membership offerings. The analytics identify consumer patterns and project the potential the outcome. The Financial Times uses predictive analytics to correlate revenue to content usage and conversion rate to engagement.

Schibsted, one of the biggest news media publishers in Europe, uses predicted analytics to identity the gender of their users. Using predictive analytics, Schibsted’s accuracy of gender prediction grew from 15% – 20% to 100%. Demographic assignments are extremely important in serving personalize content and advertising. Likewise, The Weather Channel uses weather trends to help predict the optimal time for advertising. A cold front or snow storm approaching is a perfect time to advertise hot breakfast foods or batteries.

Machine Learning

The third form of AI is machine learning, which is essentially computers learning to make decisions. Computers identify patterns and apply new logic based on the results. Algorithms allow publishers to make predictions on data, including consumer usage patterns and personal preferences. The New York Times uses machine learning to help identify content for readers. Pinterest uses machine learning to identify relevant user-generated content for their users.

Personalization is a great way to utilize machine learning. These practices include recommendations of text and video, location-specific content, segment-based personalization (identifying users or specific products or a demographic, etc.) and newsletter recommendations. Of course, there are concerns that personalization bubbles leave little room for new content discovery.

Artificial Intelligence offers support and efficiency in real-time using sentiment and machine based audience analytics. It presents the news media with a way to connect with consumers and provide relevancy. Importantly, the use AI technologies has direct and positive impact on revenue and customer engagement.

Advertising | Industry-Research

Meeker’s annual report exposes opportunities to connect with consumers

June 6, 2017 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

Mary Meeker’s annual Internet Trends Report is often referred to as the state of the union for the media and technology industry. In it, Meeker—a partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers (KPCB)—highlights the biggest internet developments for the coming year. Her report provides insights on digital adoption, identifies which interfaces are resonating, and examines the dynamics of ecommerce.

Some key takeaways from her presentation:

Mobile dominates digital usage. U.S. adults now spend 5.6 hours a day using digital media, 3.1 hours (from 2.8 in 2015) via mobile devices and 2.2 hours on desktop and laptop.
The ad spend on mobile is not proportionate to the share of time spent on mobile. While consumers spend 28% of their time on mobile, only 21% of the digital ad dollars is spent on mobile media. This is expected to correct itself in the second half of this year.
As internet advertising continues to increase, the growth is concentrated in Google and Facebook, the internet duopoly. Meeker’s report notes that Google and Facebook control 85% of online ad growth. Google’s ad revenue grew 20% and Facebook 62% in 2016. For everyone else, the growth was less than 10% year over year.
Internet users are concerned about their privacy and security online. Consumers report being concerned with how their data is being collected, used and stored. Consistency and self-regulation of privacy policies are important steps in the monitoring the Internet ecosystem.

Where Meeker’s insights meet opportunity:

Voice recognition software and devices such as the Amazon Echo and Google Home are reshaping the consumer digital experience. In fact, Amazon Echo is now installed in 11 million households in the U.S. Further, 20% of all mobile searches are now voice activated.
Gaming goes mainstream. There are now 2.6 billion gamers today compared to a 100 million in 1995. In fact, viewing time for eSports, professional video gaming live-events and tournament, increased by 40% compared to a year ago. The gaming revenue concentration remains in Asia, with 47% of 2016’s $100 billion global market. Meeker believes video gaming’s socially engaging features will offer new businesses opportunities and sporting events.
Streaming music helps revives the music industry. Spotify, the marketplace leader, exceeded physical music sales, adding to the first revenue growth in the music industry in the last 16 years. Free trials are also driving sampling and subscription sign-ups.
Healthcare data is flowing with approximately 25% of U.S. consumers owning a wearable device, up 12% from a year ago. Further, 6 in 10 people report they are willing to share with health information with Google. Collecting and analyzing healthcare data has huge implications for the medical and healthcare sector from aiding clinical trials to identifying geographical and environmental healthcare concerns.

The marketplace is rapidly advancing and continues to grow in importance. According to Meeker, the top 20 Internet companies—many of which were not around before 1995—have a market value of nearly $3 trillion. New media platforms and information technologies are transforming new market economies. Yet it is important to note that Meeker sees new opportunities across multiple platforms to connect and add value for consumers.

Industry-Research

The fundamentals of media manipulation

May 24, 2017 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

A wired and collaborative culture makes it easy to manipulate the media and with it, public opinion. Today’s digital communication landscape offers a ready means for radicalized groups to bias the media spread their beliefs. Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis offer insightful context to media manipulation and disinformation in their powerful new report, Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online.

The report focuses on how internet subcultures use the media ecosystem to Influence the news and spread their ideas. It identifies who is involved, their motivations, and where they function online. This report is s a must-read in today’s fake news media environment.

Getting to know the bad actor(s) is the starting point. Often bad actors are identified as “alt-right” but Marwick and Lewis point out that this definition is limited. The bad actors include a mix of conspiracy theorists, techno-libertarians, white nationalists, men’s rights advocates, trolls, anti-feminists, anti-immigration activists, as well as bored young people.

Trolls

Trolling is a strategic tool used by bad actors. The goal of trolling is to incite responses in its targets, be it specific individuals or a group of like-minded people. This internet behavior involves commenting and sharing content and opinions with the intent to anger or frustrate the targeted in order to provoke a reaction.

Four unique characteristics of trolling include:

Deliberate use of offensive speech
Opposition toward sensationalism in the mainstream media
Generate emotional effect in targets
Maintain ambiguity

Conspiracy theorists often use trolling in their attempt to dominate the information on the internet to increases fears about a loss of control.

Currently, top fears include:

Loss of white majority in the U.S.
Islamophobia
Fear of immigration
Fear of the emasculation
Transphobia and homophobia
Fear of Jewish conspiracy

Memes and Bots

An internet meme is another powerful internet tool for galvanizing people around a core issue. A meme, often an image with a comment, portrays a slice of culture. Again, the goal is often provocation as the meme is shared and circulated online. When a distorted or radicalized meme goes viral, it’s a home-run for the bad actor’s team.

Social bots, software that creates content on social media to interact with people, are also significant manipulators of media. Bots can be used to increase the numbers of followers a government official has; or spread propaganda and false information. Often the believability of fake news is based on the number of comments or likes an article receives, which can be generated by bots. Bots can easily add the appearance of weight to the masquerade of fake news.

Conspiracy Theory

Notable online trolls and their conspiracy theorists act as powerful influencers of media manipulation. They have the power to amplify messaging and move marginal beliefs to major concerns in mainstream media. Marwick and Lewis identify two noted leaders in this realm: Richard Spencer, the white supremacist leader of the National Policy Institute and editor of altright.com and Milo Yiannopolous, the anti-feminist, anti-Islam media personality who was pressured to resign from The Breitbart Report. Social participation is encouraged to propagate radical beliefs in mainstream media. Several dedicated blogs, websites, forums and message boards where collaboration of the fringe is encouraged include:

Alex Jones’s Infowars – conspiracy theorist
Roosh V’s blog Return of Kings – men’s rights movement
The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website
Sub-threads in comment sections and forums of Right Stuff and The Daily Stormer;

Social Media

Mainstream sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, are also used to spread and amplify extreme messaging. Private groups find social media a fertile place to share thoughts on social networks of similar people. Using Twitter hashtags and Facebook’s like and share symbols allow individuals to rally troops of like-minded people.

Marwick’s and Lewis’ report provides insight into the current mistrusted media landscape. It offers a clear-eyed view as to how the far-right and other radicals are successful at spreading their messaging. It’s only after we understand of how fake news is create and amplified that we can begin to disband the culprits.

Industry-Research

Attitudes toward news media are fractured along party lines

May 17, 2017 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

Republicans and Democrats are more divided along ideological, educational, and generational lines than ever before. So, it’s no surprise that they trust and rely on different news sources. However, they also disagree on the news media’s purpose. Do news stories and analyses of current affairs help keep politicians honest or distract them from doing their jobs?

A new report from the Pew Research Center shows that 89% of Democrats say that the news media reports keeps political leaders in line, while only about 42% of Republicans say the same. That 47% gap, is significantly different from a year ago when roughly about three-quarters of both Democrats (74%) and Republicans (77%) backed the news media’s watchdog role.

In whom do we trust?

Still, trust in news and information is questionable these days. Only one-fifth of adults say they trust “a lot,” of the information they receive from national news organizations, 25% trust local news organizations and fewer than 15% trust information from family and friends. Social ranks last as a trusted news and information source with just 5% of U.S. adults. Yet we all know that social, i.e. Facebook, is often quoted as a major news source.

Among these four sources, one-third of Democrats (34%) report “a lot” of trust in news and information from national news organizations compared to 11% of Republicans. For local news, approximately 36% of Democrats trust the local news media “a lot,” compared to 24% of Republicans.

Americans are also paying closer attention to national news compared to 2016. Four-in-ten U.S. Adults report following national news very closely, up from one-third last year. Nearly three-quarters of Americans (72%) report that news organizations tend to support one side in presenting news on political and social issues. In contrast, only a little over one-quarter of digital news users think the news media deals fairly with all sides. Specifically, more than half of those identifying as Democrats (53%) report that the news media tends to favor one side compared to 87% of Republicans.

Pew’s trending data shows it’s not unusual for Americans who support the President’s political party to be less likely to support the watchdog role of media. Still, the current gap is far wider than at any prior point over the past three decades.

News travels

As overall mobile usage increased this year, so did news consumption on mobile, with almost half of U.S. adults (45%) getting their news often on a mobile device, a 9% increase from a year ago. Among those who get news on both mobile and desktop, nearly two-thirds (65%) prefer mobile access to digital news over desktop access.

Overall, 73% of digital media users report that the national news media does well keeping them informed (21% “very well” and 54% “fairly well”). However, when looking at political orientation, 33% of Democrats report that the national media does “very well” at informing them, compared to 18% of Republicans.”

Importantly, when judging if a news story is trustworthy, about half of U.S. adults say the source of the story (51%) and the story’s publisher (48%) have “a large impact” on the assessment, followed by a gut instinct (30%) and the person who shared (26%) the story.

The insights from this study are especially important to publishers whose digital content is progressively reaching readers outside their own websites and apps. A publisher’s commitment to quality content produces value for its readers. While this may not cross partisan lines, it provides an accurate and level-playing field to strengthen the trusted relationship publishers and reader.

Industry-Research

Research offers insight into fake news and how to build a culture of truth

May 9, 2017 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

The proliferation of fake news in today’s post-truth environment is a major concern. Fake news blurs the lines between fact and fiction and offers no accountability. The Harvard Kennedy School and Northeastern University collaborated in a deep examination of the current state of fake news. In the report, “Combating Fake News: An Agenda for Research and Action,” Matthew Baum (Harvard) and David Lazer (Northeastern) identify key steps, as a community we can act on, to stop the spread of fake news.

Assessing information

Our ability to accept information and misinformation depends a lot on personal evaluations and the social process. First and foremost, people trust information coming from known and familiar sources. They prefer to receive information that confirms our existing views. People also tend to accept new information when the source is perceived as credible or the information confirms our prior views. Often, when the information is unfamiliar or from an opposing source, we choose to ignore it.

Misinformation spread via social media is very powerful because its constantly growing and amplifying with postings and shares. Social media is the loudspeaker that enables users to distribute volumes of fake news. Assessing the credibility of information is challenging given the multitude of sites and sources. Importantly, once fake news is out there, it’s often internalized, normalized, and accepted.

Social influence

People who share fake news are those who tend to share lots of information in general. They are also likely to be leaders and influencers. Very often fake news is created and distributed for a strategic purpose, such as a political or military campaign. Limited attention and information overload affect our ability to differentiate real news from fake news on social networks. In addition, the use of bots amplifies the reach to further manipulate consumer attention.

Interestingly, social pressure also affects the acceptance of information. No one wants to be known for sharing fake news. Given these social pressures, new fact-checking tools may become popular. This offers a way to identify individuals sharing fake news and to develop new dialogues on different issue. Encouraging discussion, especially among people with different perspectives, is an effective way to reduce fake news and misleading information.

Combating fake news

Braum and Lazer believe that to combat fake news, we need to strengthen trusted and established sources and support the news media to further increase the creation of high-quality information. In addition:

Establish guidelines for journalists to avoid common consequences in constructing stories and headlines. Journalist should lead with facts, seek out audience-credible interviewee and verify circumstances. News organizations should also reinforce the emotional connection with consumers in their storytelling and unbiased coverage.
Research and data should be common practice in the newsroom as much as possible to provide robust and reliable sources of information such as background context, details for understanding important statistics, civics information and more.
Perpetrators of fake news should be identified and publicized. There are several known fake news sources. Social platforms must also act to detect and respond to bots spreading fake news. Further, social platforms must establish strict practices to deal with these sites.

Technology and social media both introduce new challenges in the wake of fake news. The platforms, the related technology companies, and the news media outlets must all work to understand how we can encourage a culture that values and promotes truth. We must identify social factors that fosters a culture of truth and to establish interventions that reward and amplify well-sourced news.

Advertising | Industry-Research

Digital advertising insights as the market reaches attention saturation

May 3, 2017 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

Digital advertising will capture 77 cents of every new ad dollar this year and will surpass TV advertising in five additional countries, reports GroupM in its annual Interaction Report. Rob Norman, global chief digital officer and author of the report, addresses the value exchange between the user and the advertiser. Norman points to new revelations in today’s advertising model, “Attention is a reward not a right. Useful advertising is a function of relevance which in turn is a function of time, place, context, cognitive targeting and creation, and actionability.”

Once again, overall daily media usage grew by nine minutes in 2016, to a total of eight hours. Mobile and its many devices drove the increase with a 14-minute increase of time online. In this report, GroupM states that the 2017 forecast appears to be approaching a point of saturation. They see this period as a time of two distinct challenges: peak advertising and peak segmentation. Peak advertising refers to a state of reduced commercial interruption and peak segmentation is the point at which the value of user data cannot be converted in value. Both of these challenges can offset advertising results, for example when inefficient allocations counterbalance detailed targeting precision.

GroupM media snapshot offers key insights on digital platforms and marketing practices. These include:

Advertising paradigm shifts

GroupM recommends that every brand have data and every brand have a data story. Without a data story, a brand lacks discovery, relevance and algorithmic referred platforms. Today there are also expectations of augmented reality and data overlays. Consumers expect brands to have a voice (which may soon be powered by artificial intelligence) to increase consumer interaction, both structured and unstructured.

Many market channels are experimenting with limited commercial interruption on a whole, or within individual programs. The thinking here is the less cluttered an environment, the higher the recall, the more an advertiser is willing to pay the premium that offsets the reduction in inventory. And further, the better the advertising, the more native to its environment, the even better and improved recall. This thinking warrants creative advertising content to be easily placed inside programming and network context.

Media options:

TV with commercials, as we know, will continue to exist. However, commercials will be more creative with skippable options.
A middle ground of mostly short form commercial content will be traded with guarantees on view duration and “sound on” consumption. GroupM’s current standard will continue to apply; human verified exposure to 100% of the video window, audio on and 50% of the ad viewed.
An entirely new creative category that values both time and attention with the opportunity scale and share.

Platform profiles

Google/YouTube/Google Preferred

Google/YouTube/Google Preferred want to change the idea of the “forced view” advertising television paradigm, which is the forced completion of a commercial. In contrast, Google’s TrueView counts viewing only after a video ad is clicked on or after completed viewing or viewing of the first 20 seconds. The video ad length has no limits, it can be longer than 30 or even 60 seconds and the advertiser only pays for the ads the consumers choose to watch.

Combining the viewership data with all of Google’s other data, provides a robust and detailed report of an opt-in view. Despite YouTube’s success, it has not achieved the watercooler moment of significant simultaneous reach. Consequently, YouTube is often used as a compliment to TV and not a replacement. Even Google Preferred, an aggregation of its highest quality content, has difficulty building scale. The impressions are often placed in questionable content causing marketers concerns.

Facebook/Facebook Video Live

Facebook’s video product is questionable as an advertising vehicle given unease with auto play and sound off. Unfortunately, the consumer’s news feed is now being populated by content that is not necessarily of interest. GroupM shares their Moat data which implies that for every 20 video ads served in the news feed, three are watched for three seconds or more and just one is watched for ten seconds or more. Facebook believes that even minimal exposure has value. However, advertisers need to factor into their own valuation of the platform’s performance to accurately reflect actual video ad consumption.

Facebook’s Live video inventory is familiar to the advertiser because the ad frame is content rather than just the user interface. These ads are initiated by the producer of the content with Facebook determining which ads are seen.

The challenge of measurement is huge with the need to identify and share who watched what, where, for how long and on what device. This is a necessary building block to assess ad and audience value.

Over-the-Top (OTT) or Connected TV (CTV)

Over-the-Top (OTT) or Connected TV (CTV) refers to “television” content delivered via streaming over the internet to a smart TV, streaming Player (such as Apple TV, Roku, Chromecast, Amazon Fire TV) or gaming console. OTT services offer consumer choice, new distribution for program and channel owners and new opportunity for advertisers. The OTT inventory is currently limited but becoming more targetable and measurable. OTT offers an opportunity to reach quality content in a brand-safe and on-demand environment.

A hybrid service combining on-demand and live linear television, called skinny bundles, has a number of strong players in the marketplace; AT&T, Turner, Google, Verizon, Hulu, CBS, Sony and Sling (Dish Network). The premise here is that consumers via their broadband connection can access a reduced channel line-up for a fraction of their original cable bill. The monetization of skinny bundles is based on subscription sales, highly targeted advertising (at a higher cost to marketers) minus the network transmission fees.

Audio on-demand and streaming

Spotify is an online on-demand music collection with the added the ability to find playlists from others, to customize your own and download music for offline listening. Spotify is generally recognized as the global market leader with 100 million users and 40 million subscribers. Pandora, on the other hand, is more about music discovery and a radio service. Pandora decodes music on hundreds of vectors and uses it to create custom “stations.” Pandora also launched an on-demand service (including offline downloads) bringing it closer Spotify’s model. Neither Pandora nor Spotify are profitable, as about 80% of their revenue is returned in royalties to artists and labels. Pandora and Spotify revenue models include subscriber fees and advertising revenue.

AOL/Verizon

The merger of AOL and Verizon offer the world’s third largest aggregation of ad impressions with scaled “channels” in news, sports and finance, and significant ad tech assets and first party data from Yahoo Mail. While it may not challenge the duopoly of Google and Facebook, it could be, if executed properly, a strong offering for advertisers.

Twitter

Twitter is a unique environment for brand video advertising and for brands to be an immediate and timely connection to consumers. While Twitter’s social significance is unquestioned, it still has not established itself as a profitable entity.

Snapchat

Snapchat has over 100 million users. It is the first of the internet mobile giants to offer a multimedia person-to-person communication experience. The Snapchat Lens is the most innovative digital ad product since the keyword and the news feed. It’s native to the platform and the ability to offer brand assets in user communication makes earned media that much more powerful.

Pinterest has approximately 150 million monthly users with approximately half residing in U.S. People use the platform to collect and share images. While often used by hobbyist, it also presents highly commercial and monetizable categories like fashion, food, design and crafts. Pinterest users “pins” (picture postings) of what they like and also learn about what they do not know much about from other user pins. This duality offers a unique advertising opportunity to reach different audience across the lower, mid and upper marketing funnel.

Google and Facebook Duopoly

The market dominance of Facebook and Google is concerning. Google operates seven platforms with more than a billion users globally: Google itself, Google Play, Gmail, Chrome, Android, YouTube, Google Maps. It also operates five of the top 10 apps. It’s data machine monetizes user information through paid search, through the Google Display Network (GDN) and through YouTube.

Facebook has more one billion people using it every day, Instagram has 600 million uses and Messenger and What’s App have another 1 billion users. Three to four of the 10 most used apps are operated by Facebook. Facebook Audience Network competes with Google’s GDN among mobile publishers. The company is video centric and this forces a dependency on content outside of their network. To date, new models and interfaces have not disrupted the duopoly or the dominance of these two players.

Conclusion

Technologies growth and advancement in both hardware and software is shifting market dynamics from the Information Age to the Intelligence Age. Today’s digital strategies must include plans to build a content destination that allows users to find, experience, share and buy and have the high probability for sharing and recommending.

Industry-Research | Video

OTT video viewership will surpass traditional TV in the next two years

April 26, 2017 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

According to a survey of nearly 500 media professionals, over-the-top (OTT) video is exploding in today’s marketplace. Close to three-quarter (72%) of respondents agree that offering OTT services is a viable revenue opportunity according to the 2017 OTT Video Services Study by Level 3 Communications, Inc., Streaming Media, and Unisphere Research.

OTT is a good business strategy for competing in the marketplace. It can be ideal for a linear based video supplier, attracting viewers or new subscribers, distributing new content, and increasing profitability. Seventy percent of the respondents forecast that within the next five years, viewership of OTT video will surpass traditional broadcast TV.

Nearly 85% of survey participants that currently offer OTT are very positive about revenue opportunities. Sixteen percent anticipate 50% or more increases year-over-year.

OTT revenue potential

OTT is compelling for content publishers. Over the next three years, OTT will account for more than a quarter of overall revenue, according to nearly two-thirds of respondents. More than a third (34%) of respondents expect it to account for more than half of their overall revenue.

OTT challenges

As the survey participants thought about the future, there are several OTT challenges to tackle:

Commercial challenges include competition from free services/direct broadcasters access, securing linear content rights and lack of consumer awareness/interest (roughly 17% each).

Technical challenges include service and quality (27%), insertion of local ads (15%) and content security (13%).

Of OTT providers, monetization strategies include a mix of subscriptions (42% 2016 vs projected 38% for 2017), advertising (35% in 2016 vs. 36% projected for 2017) and pay-per-view/event (23% in 2016 vs 25% projected for 2017).

The reality of VR

In terms of future content, 43% of OTT providers are actively researching VR content, 5% will launch soon, and 5% have already launched VR-video services. The remaining 47% report they’re not developing, creating or distributing VR-video content. This year respondents also focused on offering higher frame rates (HFR) and high-dynamic ranges (HDR) to consumers.

As the cord-cutters and cord-nevers markets continue to grow, so will new OTT opportunities that extend beyond VOD to live events and live-linear offering. Media companies need to strategically reinvent their portfolios to get ahead of the consumer viewing shifts occurring in the industry.

Industry-Research

Nearly half of political news content tweeted is fake

April 4, 2017 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

The rapid spread of misinformation—better known these days as fake news—was named one of the top 10 dangers to society by the World Economic Forum in 2014. Powered by automation and algorithms, fake news is amplified more than ever on social media. In fact, orchestrators of fake news rely heavily on social media to create web traffic, drive engagement, and influence political views.

To understand the threat and impact of fake news, researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) studied 22 million tweets that contained hashtags related to politics leading up to the 2016 US Presidential Election. The research, “Junk News and Bots during the U.S. Election: What Were Michigan Voters Sharing Over Twitter?,” identified 138,686 users from Michigan, a battleground state evenly split between both presidential candidates, Clinton and Trump. The state of Michigan was specifically selected because the two presidential candidates were equally supported, limiting political biasness in the research.

The Twitter data revealed that Trump-related traffic (57%) significantly outpaced Clinton-related traffic (20%) and neutral content (13%). Importantly, the research uncovered that professional news and fake news are close to a one-to-one ratio when it comes to political news tweets. Further, nearly a quarter of political tweets (23%) contain fake news links. and a full 47% of the political news content can be classified as political propaganda. Needless to say, social media’s proliferation of fake news is reason for concern.

Social platforms provide a fertile environment for the fast spread of fake without the necessary vetting and questioning of the information. Significantly, the Oxford Internet Institute defines “professional news” as that produced by major news brands. The information displays “the qualities of professional journalism, with fact-checking and credible standards of production. They provide clear information about real authors, editors, publishers and owners, and the content is clearly produced by an organization with a reputation for professional journalism.” And, while social platforms claim to be addressing the problem, premium publishers consider ensuring the accuracy of the information they report fundamental to their business so that they can deliver value to the reader and maintain consumer trust.

Industry-Research | Perspectives

As content consumption evolves, so must media and marketing strategies

March 28, 2017 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

Streaming online content continues to grow as social media and over-the-top services appeal to more consumers, especially to Millennials and Gen Z audiences. In fact, almost half (49%) of all US consumers now subscribe to a paid streaming video services with almost 60% penetration among Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z.

Interestingly, cable and satellite subscriptions remain steady at 74% of US Households. This can likely be attributed to pay TV subscriptions bundled with Internet services. US consumer media habits are shifting significantly. To better understand these changes, Deloitte’s Digital Democracy Survey offers insight into the multi-generational view of consumer technology, media, and telecom trends.

Key takeaways:

Binge watching becomes the new norm. Close to three quarters (73%) of US consumers report binge watching. Nearly nine in 10 Millennials and Gen Z say they binge watch video content. Deloitte defines binge watching as viewing at least three or more episodes in one session. It’s time for marketers and content produces to think differently about reaching the binge-watching audiences. An advertiser may want to try product placements in a series for added frequency. Content producers may want to think about new distribution strategies such as releasing content as a bingeable mini-series instead of offering a feature-length movie. Of the content streamed, paid streamed content comprises 35% of consumers streaming time and free services take up 40% of stream time.

Social recommendations are proving more influential than TV ads. More than a quarter (27%) of Gen Z consumers report that an online recommendation from someone within their social media circles can highly influence a buying decision. This can be more impactful than TV ads (18%).
Advertising struggles for attention. When the TV is turned on, it competes with everything for attention. Nearly all Gen Z and Millennials (99%) report multitasking when they are watching television reporting an average of four other activities occurring simultaneously. Further, eight in 10 (80%) consumers’ report skipping online video ads when allowed, and just over two-thirds (67%) of consumers report mobile ads on theirs phone are irrelevant.

Digital ad avoidance is growing. Almost half (45%) of Millennials use ad blocking software on desktop. Forty percent report using it on their smartphones with 85% doing so to improve the speed and performance of their online experience.
Relevant and optional are key to engaging ads. More than half of all consumers say that they would be willing to receive geographically relevant ads on their smartphones. Further, nearly half (46%) of consumers say they pay more attention to an ad they can skip versus an ad they cannot skip.
Social media usage is ubiquitous. A full 84% of all consumers are active on social networks. Penetration is higher among Millennials (96%) and 93% Gen Z (93%).
Social media helps in connecting consumers to companies. Consumers interact with corporations, with more than 70% of Millennials reporting that they used social media to interact with customer service in the last year. Nearly three-quarters (74%) of Millennials find their interaction with customer service on social media more positive than connecting with customer service on the phone (70%).

Consumers are now conditioned to watch content whenever, wherever, and on whatever device they choose. The constant availability of streaming content and social media offer new opportunities in the marketplace. Advertisers and content creators can form new relationships with the consumer, interacting with and personalizing the consumer experience.

Industry-Research

Understanding the impact of mobile multitasking

March 22, 2017 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

The mobile device is the command center for the hyper-connected consumer. Increasingly, it provides the point of access to the Internet of Things (loT). Today’s publishers and brands need to understand cross-device usage and identify the best pathway to attract and engage the hyper-connected consumer. In order to identify the appropriate channels and marketing opportunities, Verto Analytics analyzed cross-device usage in their research report, “Multitasking and Mobile Apps: New Ways to Measure Consumer Behavior.”

It’s no surprise that mobile device usage is on the rise. On average, American adults own five devices, such as PCs, smartphones, tablets, and wearables. In Q4 2016, PC usage totaled an average of 104 minutes per day. That’s slightly less than consumer’s total mobile device usage, which averaged 75 minutes per day on smartphones and 39 minutes per day on tablets (totaling 114 minutes per day).

Mobile apps also drive usage and far exceed mobile web usage. In fact, consumers spent 6.9 billion hours on mobile apps compared to 1.2 billion hours of mobile web usage in December 2016.

Mobile App Usage

Overall, consumers have an average of 89 apps installed on their smartphones and use approximately 25 each week and only eight per day. Fewer than 10% of all apps installed on a smartphone are used daily.

Device sessions:

56% of all device sessions are still single-app sessions.
19% show at least three distinct apps being used in a single session.
9% show at least four distinct apps being used in a single session.
5 to 4% of all smartphone sessions are multitasking sessions.

Multitasking Sessions

Verto Analytics defines a multitasking session as using at least four different apps and at least seven differ shifts (movement from app to app).

Consumers are using multiple apps to engage with the external world. External environment apps allow consumers to interact with their environments. This category of apps includes fitness tracking apps, connected home and personal assistant apps, and streaming media apps combined with hardware.

Personal assistant apps (i.e. Amazon’s Alexa) currently make up only 4% of all usage. Verto Analytics predicts these apps will increasingly be incorporated into consumer’s multitasking behavior.

As one would imagine, social media services and messaging apps (such as Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, and WhatsApp) are most likely to be a part of a consumer’s multitasking behavior.

Multitasking Likelihood

Interestingly, the report found that the list of apps with the highest total number of returns does not necessarily correlate with the list of apps with the highest return rates (total number of people returning to the same app). The return rate is an important metric. It’s the ratio of multitasking sessions when a given app experiences a return against the total number of sessions of that app within a given time frame.

For example, if a consumer uses the Waze app once a day every day for a month (30 days) and on five of the those occasions, there is multitasking session (the consumer leaves and returns to Waze during the same session), the return rate for Waze is 18% (5/30). Waze, in this instance, had an 18% tendency to attract consumers back to the app during a multitasking session. What we learn from this is that the plays a central-role in a consumer’s session because it is actively used with other apps. Learning about how consumers actively use apps with other apps, often referred to as a smart hub, plays a key role in chart the consumer pathways to best target for frequent interaction and engagement.

Understanding multitasking, the best rate of return, and smart hubs offers insight into important mobile touchpoints. Brands and publishers need to identify and understand these points of interaction and their relationships to drive usage grown, engagement and monetization.