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

Consumers crave news, but what satisfies their appetite?

July 13, 2016 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

Both the immediacy and the mobility of news has anchored it as an important part of today’s life. In fact, more than seven in ten adults follow national and local news somewhat or very closely and 65% follow international news with similar regularity. Digital access appears to fuel American’s hunger for news, according to a new report from Pew Research Center, which conducted a study in association with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. For example, at least a full 81% get at least some news through websites, apps or social networking sites.

Some key Findings:

Friends and family are important sources for news, even though consumers still rely on news organizations as their primary source. Trust in news reporting is an overarching problem however today’s online news consumers tend to place as much trust in the information they get from news organizations as they do in information coming from family and friends. Still, online news organizations play the larger role: 36% of online news consumers often get news from news organizations compared with about half as many who do so from people with whom they are close (15%).

Consumers are more cautious about news coming through social media. Close to two-thirds of U.S adults (62%) get news on these social platforms, however just more than one-third (34%) trust the information a lot/some.

Just as many consumers are loyal as are not loyal to their news sources. Just over three-quarter of respondents (76%) reported turning to the same sources over and over again. Importantly, consumers do pay attention to their digital sources. Among those who got their news three or more times from a link in a given week, at least 70% remembered the source half the time.

Consumer believe strong media bias exists in news reporting. Close to three-quarters of consumers (74%) feel that the news media favors one side. Another 75% of consumers credit the news organization for keeping leaders accountable and honest.

The majority of consumers prefer to watch news on TV. When asked where consumers get their news, 57% reported TV, 38% stated online and only 20% said they get their news from newspapers. As one would expect, only 5% of younger consumers, ages 18-29s, often got news from a print newspaper in contrast to close to half (48%) of adults, age 65.

News remains an important part of public life with digital news consumption becoming increasingly mobile. As more people get their news online, it’s important to distinguish between those who seek out the news online versus those who stumble upon it. This is an important consumer distinction as news sites look to market to the news consumer.

Advertising | Industry-Research

Positive viewing experience and ad-recall correlate to screen size

July 6, 2016 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

Consumers pay more attention to advertising on televisions than advertising viewed across other screens according to a new report Evaluating Engagement & Recall by Platform. Nielsen and the Council of Research Excellence hired independent researcher Hub Entertainment Research to measure how people watch television.

In the study, consumers viewed the same five shows “Bones,” “Family Guy,” “The Big Bang Theory,” “Survivor” and “Family Feud” with identical ad loads across TV, computers, smartphones and tablets. Interestingly, 62% of TV viewers reported they were able to recall half or more advertisers compared to viewers of tablet (47%), smartphone (46%) and computer (45%). In contrast, program engagement did not register notable differences by platform.

Viewers also reported that TV (89%) offered the most positive viewing experience, followed by tablet (63%), computer (54%) and phone (43%). Further, viewers paid the most attention to advertising on television (29%) compared to 23% for smartphones, 20% for computers and 17% for tablets.

Additionally, the study found that multi-tasking negatively impacts ad recall but not program plot recall. Importantly marketers need to understand drivers of engagement across platforms as well as those specific to their targeted demo. Identifying drivers and assigning value to each platform will better align expectations with campaign effectiveness.

Industry-Research

Half of all viewers subscribe to SVOD

June 29, 2016 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

Subscription VOD (SVOD) penetration now equals DVR penetration in the United States. In fact, half of all viewers now have a subscription based service such as Netflix, Hulu Plus and Amazon Prime, according to Nielsen’s 1Q16 Total Audience Report. Interestingly, close to 30% of households have both an SVOD service and a DVR. Nielsen also noted that DVR penetration has flattened while SVOD is on a strong growth path. So while consumers are still obtaining most of their content on television, live TV consumption is declining as smartphone and tablet viewing is increasing.

The older the consumer, the more time spent watching television. Among adults 18-34, 39% of media consumption occurs on digital (e.g. smartphones, tablets and desktops), 15% on connected TVs (e.g. Apple TV, Roku, Google Chrome) versus 29% on live-TV and 17% on radio. In contrast, Adults 50+ spend 53% of their time on live-TV, 21% on digital, 17% on radio and 8% on connected-TVs. It’s no wonder traditional TV networks are clamoring to remain relevant and shifting to digital options such as HBO to go, CBS’ All Access and MTV’s Snapchat Channel.

Nielsen also found that the heaviest users drove a disproportionate amount of overall time spent consuming media. Just over half of the total minutes viewed (52%) on TV came from the top quintile of TV users. In addition, 83% of smartphone video viewing, 87% of home PC streaming and 71% of connected device usage came from the top 20% of users.

Consumer behavior is responding to the growth of technologies and services and therefore reducing consumer usage on older devices. Shifts and usage of new technologies are anticipated. More media choices lead to more competition. Content providers must think about multi-platform strategies and distribution in an exceedingly connected media environment.

Industry-Research

News sites face strong market challenges

June 22, 2016 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

Digital publishers face three market challenges today that are triggering the re-examination of business strategies: 1) an increase in consumption of distributed content, 2) a surge in mobile traffic, and 3) growth in adoption of of ad blocking software. In order to better understand these market shifts and their impact on news consumption the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism commissioned a multi-country study, the Reuters Institute Digital News Report, in February 2016.

Digital news publishers, in particular, are rethinking business models as social platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, are now viewed as major news resources for consumers, especially among millennials. In fact, half (51%) reported they use social media as a source of news each week. Around one in ten (12%) stated it is their main source. Further, the percentage of U.S. consumers subscribing to online news outlets has declined from 11% in 2015 vs. 9% in 2016. Many companies are thinking about taking down their paywalls in an effort to attract more users.

While personalization is often a positive experience, consumers are concerned with the personalization of their news content. Personalized content and social media applications often select news stories built on algorithms which are based on a consumer’s reading history, what his/her friends are reading and the sharing, the popularity and recency of an article. Respondents raised concerns with the algorithms selecting their news stories. In fact, six in 10 worry that personalized news applications change the nature of story selection and that they miss challenging viewpoints (60% and 59%, respectively). And half (49%) are concerned their privacy may be compromised.

In addition, the shift to mobile directly attributed to the increased use of smartphones to access news and the decreased use of desktops. Demographically, younger consumers prefer mobile for news access while older consumers look to desktop and tablet. Across multiple countries, over half (53%) reported that they use a smartphone to access news. Interestingly, consumers who report mainly using their smartphones to access news stories, do so by entering social media sites versus a branded website or app. Apps have become an impactful tool to send alerts and notifications to attract consumers and to bring them more regularly to the branded website.

The consumer adoption of ad blocking software is a most challenging problem for digital publishers, especially for those heavily dependent on advertising revenue. Of those that currently use an ad-blocker, the majority do so on a desktop with only about 8% do so on mobile. In addition, about one-third of consumers in Germany, UK, and the U.S. plan to install an ad-blocker on their smartphones in the next 12 months.

In the U.S. the key reasons for consumers using ad blocking software included:

I was fed up with the volume and distracting nature of advertisements in general, 68%
I dislike ads that follow me around from one site to another (privacy concerns, 55%
To improve the speed at which pages load, 50%
To save battery life, 13%
So I don’t use as much data on my mobile phone plan, 10%

As digital news publishers adapt to the changing marketplace, it’s important to note that consumers still want and value traditional news brands. The Reuters Institute Digital News Report speaks to digital news brands needing to clearly brand their high-quality content and provide a positive audience experience. Further, news brands need to find a balance between destination and distribution and continue to build their brand equity in order to evolve and continue to monetize their content.

Advertising | Industry-Research

Entertainment and media revenues continue to grow

June 15, 2016 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

The media environment still presents numerous growth opportunities despite the competitive marketplace and the struggle for consumer attention. Importantly, PwC’s Annual Global Entertainment and Media Outlook Report projects the U.S. media and entertainment revenue will increase and account for $632 billion, or 29.4% of the worldwide total of over $2.1 trillion. Further, the entertainment and media revenues are expected to grow at a compound rate (CAGR) of 4.4% from $1.7 trillion in 2015 to $2.1 trillion in 2020. In order to provide this forecast for 2016 to 2020, PwC analyzed historical and projection data for advertising and consumer spending in 13 major industry segments across 54 countries.

U.S. highlights:

Internet advertising in the U.S. continues as the largest market in internet advertising revenue, projected to grow from $59.6 billion in 2015 to $93.5 billion by 2020 with a 9.4% CAGR. Important to note, internet advertising ($75.3 billion) is expected to surpass broadcast TV advertising ($70.4 billion) in 2017.
Mobile has been a key driver of digital advertising revenue comprising 34.7% or $20.7 billion in 2015 of U.S. total internet revenue. PwC projects mobile video advertising revenue will grow from $3.5 billion in 2015 to $13.3 billion in 2020 for an increase of 30.3% CAGR.
Video on Demand (VOD) and over-the-top services (OTT) will drive TV and video revenue from $121.4 billion to $124.2 billion in 2020 (0.5% CAGR). In addition, TV advertising revenue is expected to rise from $69.9 billion to $81.7 billion in 2020 (3.2%CAGR).
Continued declines are anticipated for newspaper publishing, declines of 2.9% CAGR by 2020. Further publisher consolidations are expected. As well, magazine publishing revenue is not expected to decline but register a fractional increase, from $30.5 billion in 2015 to $30.7 billion in 2020. In addition, radio is predicted to increase from $21.4 billion to $23.1 billion in 2020 (1.6% CAGR).

Virtual reality devices and games will be the impetus for rising video games revenue from $17.0 billion to $20.3 billion by 2020 (3.6% CAGR). Virtual reality devices and games will be the impetus for rising video games revenue from $17.0 billion to $20.3 billion by 2020 (3.6% CAGR).

Overall, PwC projects that consumers will look for less expensive content bundles, streaming offers and less commercial interruptions. As a result, consumers’ share of time for ad-supported media will not increase. For advertisers and content providers, this means a detailed examination of the consumer experience to identify drivers of engagement and understand their impact on time spent and their influence on advertising effectiveness.

Industry-Research

Automated detection improves privacy practices

June 8, 2016 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

A consistent routine of privacy detection, measurement and practice allows websites and services to improve their privacy practices. Privacy measurement is specifically used to find out what user data companies collect, how they collect it, and what they do with it.

OpenWPM is an effective privacy measurement tool developed by Steven Englehard and Arvind Narayanan at Princeton University, who recently published a study, “Online tracking: A 1-million-site measurement and analysis.” Their tool provides an opportunity for web privacy measurement to be a more common place practice. OpenWPM collects large-scale data for simulating users, detects and classifies trackers. This automated process is designed to improve the effectiveness of browser privacy tools by efficiently updating the tracking-protection lists.

What exactly is web tracking and why is it a problem? As consumers browse different websites, they are often monitored by “first parties,” which are the sites themselves. However, they are also observed by “third parties” which are very often ad networks embedded on the web page. Third parties capture consumer browsing history through cookies to uniquely identify the user. Often third parties obtain data such as email address or user characteristics without the consumers’ awareness or permission. Interestingly, cookie syncing is also a tracking practice that allows different trackers to share user identifiers with one another.

While hard to detect, cookie syncing is transferred server-to-server by sending the ID in the request URL or in the referer URL. DoubleClick net is one of the most active in cookie syncing and shares 108 different cookies with 118 other third parties (this includes both events where it is a referer and where it is a receiver).

As Englehard and Narayanan wrote in their introduction:

Web privacy measurement — observing websites and services to detect, characterize and quantify privacy-impacting behaviors — has repeatedly forced companies to improve their privacy practices due to public pressure, press coverage, and regulatory action. On the other hand, web privacy measurement presents formidable engineering and methodological challenges. In the absence of a generic tool, it has been largely confined to a niche community of researchers.

In the course of their online tracking study, OpenWPM determined that of the top one million sites there are 81,000 third parties. Interestingly of 81,000 present, only 123 are on more than 1% of sites. In fact, the top five third parties are Google-owned domains. News sites had the most third party tracking in terms of content categories across websites.

Overall, web privacy measurement has three parts: simulating users, recording observations and analysis. The difference in OpenWPM is that it automates the first two parts of this process. It also uses 15 measurements on each site it assesses, such as stateful (cookie-based) and stateless (fingerprinting-based) tracking and multiple fingerprinting techniques.

The automated process of creating tracking-protection lists is a key benefit of OpenWPM. Its ability to scale data, detect and catalog trackers is the holy grail. As well offering a web-based analysis platform provides ease and availability to those with limited technological ability.

Industry-Research

Seven steps you can take to manage the risk of ad blocking

June 1, 2016 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

Publishers, platforms, and industry groups gathered together last month for the third time to discuss the continued threat of ad blocking. Attendees included ESPN, the Guardian and Google to name a few. The meeting was organized by Johnny Ryan, the head of ecosystem at PageFair, a company that builds technology to by-pass ad blocking, and Jason Kint, CEO of Digital Content Next, an industry trade association for quality digital content companies. Though the meeting was private, the participants agreed to share the seven takeaways to best deal with the risk of ad blocking

On the blocked web, the user must have immediate tools to reject and to complain about advertising. There needs to be a set of tools and choices for consumers to provide feedback to advertisers especially offering feedback in real-time to address a particular problem or concern with advertising.
Rather than restore all ads on the blocked web, only a limited number of premium advertising slots should be restored. This will make a better impact for brands, clean up the user experience, and incentivize better creative. Publishers need to offer few and better ads. In doing so they will provide the consumer with a better online experience.
The blocked web may provide the opportunity to establish a new form of above-the-line advertising. Advertising must be less intrusive and complement the consumer’s digital experience, not disrupt it.
Contextual targeting can be used on the blocked web to establish ad relevance if other forms of tracking are not practical or desirable.
On the blocked web, where third-party tracking is largely blocked, publishers can create new value by engaging with their users to elicit volunteered data. Publishers should find alternative methods to obtain consumer details such as offering a valued exchange for personal information such as customized content, newsletters and/or exclusive promotions.
Measuring advertising success on the blocked web with broader top-of-funnel metrics may incentivize buyers to focus on value rather than cheapness. Importantly, publishers must work with marketers to ensure they recognize the value of engaged consumers and trusted publishers. Introducing new measurements such as an attention metrics, will further advance digital media advertising effectiveness.
On the web as a whole, there should be a maximum page load time standard that publishers and advertisers both commit to. The digital media experience should be a positive consumer experience.

The seven recommendations identify the most effective ways to improve the consumer experience on publisher sites and thwart the adoption of ad blocking. Further, communicating to consumers on changes and new implementations will be key to rebuilding their trust for a restored and stronger relationship with publishers.

Industry-Research

Attention is a valuable audience attribute

May 25, 2016 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

Since the beginning of broadcast television, exposure was the currency of audience measurement. Gradually audience metrics evolved from tuning behavior, to program selection, to page views, to viewable impressions. Interestingly, none of these measures capture the audience’s engagement with media or the advertising. Today’s media companies collect or count on third parties for an abundance of measurement data including page views, expressions of liking and sharing to quantify audience attributes of value to advertisers but again none quantify the audience’s attention.

Jacob L. Nelson and James G. Webster of the International Journal on Media Management at Northwestern University recognized the need to further evolve media measurement. They designed a research study to analyze the relationship between the amount of time visitors spend on sites, news sites in particular, and the number of unique visitors the sites receive.

They used comScore data to analyze 887 news websites in their study “Audience Currencies in the Age of Big Data.” Through then analysis of this data which measured an individual’s time spent on a news site and the average number of minutes spent on a specific page, Nelson and Webster found that these two variables most accurately represented an individual’s level of engagement. In further probing, they also found no significant correlation between the number users a site reaches and the amount of time visitors spend on that site. In other words, the number of visitors to a site does not necessarily correlate to the level of engagement. In fact, unique visitors and attention measures are very different measurements, one identifies the quantify of visitors and the other the quality of visits (engagement).

While publishers and advertisers have begun to adopt an attention based metric, there is still research to be conducted. Specifically, for advertisers, confirming the value and predictability of the halo effect of user engagement on ad recall and effectiveness. In programmatic buying, advertisers need further qualification of a time based audience especially since heavy users are often the easiest for advertisers to reach (and cheaper too). Further, time based metrics should not be a measure of consumption where gimmicks ensure long visits that stimulate engagement. Attention metrics must ensure creative methods to monitor user activity and interest to protect against gaming of this measurement. Being that attention is a core requisite for retention, both publishers and advertiser stand to benefit using it as a media based currency.

Industry-Research

Mobile is powerful platform for long-form content

May 18, 2016 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

Consumers are willing to engage with longer content on their phones. A recent Pew Research study conducted in association with the James L. Knight Foundation and Parse.ly, a web analytics company, found that consumers spend almost twice as much time with long-form stories (i.e., news stories over 1,000 words) on mobile devices than short ones (123 seconds compared with 57). In fact, longer stories attract readers at about the same rate as shorter stories. While a 123 seconds or just over two minutes may not seem so long, it’s longer than most consumers spend with local television news stories. Importantly, the higher word count appears to directly correlate to increased consumer engagement.

However, consumption of content, short and/or long can vary based on how the reader came to the article, the time of day, and even by the topic covered.

Consumers spend the most time with content in the late night and morning. In late night, consumers spend on average 128 seconds on long-form content and 60 seconds or less on short-form. In the morning, consumers spent 126 seconds long-form and 59 seconds on short-form content.
Time spent with long-form content also varies based on how consumers access the content whether it be via a link from an external website, social media, search, etc. Time spent with long form articles based on entry points appear in ranked order: access via an internal link averaged 148 seconds, visit an article directly or follow an email link averaged 132 seconds, arrive from external website averaged 125 seconds, search averaged 110 seconds and social Media averaged 111 seconds (while lowest in time spent with long-form article, still accounted for greatest share of traffic).
Consumers accessing long-form via Twitter spend on average 133 seconds on content where as if they access via Facebook, they spend on average only 107 seconds. The same pattern follows with short-term content.
As one may expect news articles, both short and long, have a brief life span. Eight in 10 consumers interact with short form articles within the first two days of publication and 72% interact with long-form within the first two days of publication.
Important to note, visitors to long-form articles (28%) are somewhat more likely to view multiple articles on a site than visitors to short-form articles (22%). However, long-form reading does not necessarily develop site loyalty.
The research further identified the most popular long-form content on cellphones. Consumers read long stories on crime, foreign policy and government and entertainment and were also more engaged as the story lengthened.

Content on mobile does not need to limit itself to short-form. Mobile offers publishers a strong outlet for long-form content allowing for more sources, more points of view and additional context.

DCN-Research

2016 DCN content distribution impact research

May 12, 2016 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

The 2016 DCN Content Distribution Impact Research report – the first comprehensive examination of content distribution’s impact on premium publisher’s brand websites across content type — examines the current market for content distribution, consumer motivations for interactions with various platforms and the impact on engagement with premium publishers’ brand sites.

Available to DCN members only, the research showed when known brands appear on the social platforms measured – Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram – they saw a double-digit net increase in engagement. The research also showed Snapchat Discover currently has the greatest ability to drive longer engagement with premium brands (53% between 10 and 20 minutes) and 51% of respondents noted they’re more likely to engage with a brand that publishes on its Discover offering.

The research also found that nearly 75% of consumers access more information now that their favorite brands are on social media: Social is additive – respondents who plan on spending more time accessing information from brands on social media sources don’t plan to reduce their content consumption on brand sites and apps.

Additional findings from the report:

Usage – Current events and depth of information on brand sites/apps drive usage.
Impact – A majority of consumers are likely to visit a brand’s site or app after reading a story on a social media platform.
Engagement – Viral and personalized content are hidden drivers for engagement on premium websites.

Important Note: If you are a DCN publisher member, please be sure to log in or register to access this special members-only research, which will appear below this notice once you have logged in.

Industry-Research

Evaluating content distribution channels

May 4, 2016 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

Publishers face unprecedented pressures in the mobile and social media dominated marketplace. In fact, according to eMarketer, mobile accounted for half of digital ad spending in the U.S. in 2015 and is suspected to reach 70% share of advertising by 2019, according to eMarketer. In response to publishers’ needs, the International News Media Association (INMA) released a report “Evaluating Distributed Content in the News Media Ecosystem” to help educate on the implementation strategies of distributed content.

As background, it’s important to note recent digital media announcements promoting content consumption on mobile and social media. Digital platforms are dominating users’ time and advertisers’ spending. Specific announcements include:

April 2016, Facebook opened Instant Articles to all publishers worldwide. IA is rich-media articles that open instantly within the Facebook mobile app instead of sending users away to a Web browser.
February 2016, Google launched Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), an open standard to speed up the mobile Web experience and Snapchat announced a new subscription option to publishers in its Discover section
Apple’s News app attracted 100-plus publishers.
October 2015, Twitter launched Moments, a magazine-like story format for curated streams of Tweets.

The INMA report identified different roles a publisher can choose to distribute their content on social platforms and classified them into three categories:

On-platform hosts: Facebook Instant Articles, Snapchat Discover, Twitter Moments.
Off-platform open standard: Google Accelerated Mobile Pages.
Off-platform aggregators: Apple News, Axel Springer Upday.

Publishers first need identify which category can support their business strategy. Specifically, is the publisher looking to build an audience (growth), to develop an exclusive consumer relationship (content marketing) or are they interested in experimentation on multiple goals (laboratory).

Social media strategies are vital a publisher’s digital business. It allows one to distributes content beyond its property and to grow its audience base.

Industry-Research | Perspectives

Brand activation marketing offers unified approach to target audience

April 27, 2016 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

Over $595 billion dollars was spent on brand activation marketing in 2016. Brand activation refers to marketing that both builds a brand’s image and drives a specific consumer behavior or action.

PQ Media in partnership with the ANA conducted a comprehensive analysis of brand activation, an organized assessment of brand marketing, by platform, channel, and consumer segment. The research also projected that by 2020 activation spending will be over $740 billion outpacing advertising and trade promotion spending.

rand activation encompass focuses on six platforms that connect and interact with the consumer: promotion marketing, experiential marketing, retailer marketing, relationship marketing, content marketing, and influencer marketing. Each platform includes 32 different channels.

Interestingly, 60% of all overall marketing spend is placed on integrated traditional and digital strategies with relationship marketing as the largest brand activation marketing platforms used in 2015. Relationship marketing channels includes direct mail, catalogs, list management, database marketing, marketing information and big data analysis, email and search lead generation marketing, loyalty programs, mobile marketing apps and proximity services.

The study identified that consumer brand activation accounted for 59% of all B-to-C spending ($332B) while B-to-B spending accounted for 41% or $229B. Automotive is the largest industry vertical to spend on brand activation. Importantly successful brands are using a combination of brand activation methods to effectively target audiences.