Category results for "Featured Post"

Rappler CEO Maria Ressa says 2020 is the year that we must fight the battle for truth

January 16, 2020 Carol Brzozowski—Independent Journalist

The year 2020 will be a tipping point year for media companies. This is the year in which journalists must fight the battle for truth, according to Maria Ressa, CEO of Rappler, a digital news organization based in Manila, the Philippines.

“What we do this year – not just in the Philippines, but all around the world and especially in the United States – will determine whether or not the whole world walks into a cycle of fascism. We’ve been here before. What we do now matters.”

Ressa – who has been the target of persecution in her country – offered these comments as part of a recorded statement presented to attendees of DCN Next: Summit at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Miami, Florida on January 15.

In her statement, Ressa expressed gratitude to DCN CEO Jason Kint, the DCN Board of Directors, and the members of DCN for supporting her cause and helping her to “shine the light” through journalistic endeavors.

“That really is the only weapon that journalists have,” noted Ressa. “What we’ve lived through in the Philippines…our dystopian present is your dystopian future. This is it, the battle for truth.”

The DCN Board of Directors issued a statement (included below) supporting House and Senate Resolutions calling on Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte to end his political persecution of Ressa and Senator Leila de Lima.

“Healthy democracies thrive with vigorous political discourse and a free, independent press,” noted the statement.

On, the question of whether there exists a line between journalism and activism, Ressa said that “in the battle of truth, journalism becomes activism. This is a hard-fought lesson we have learned in the Philippines.”

Popular populist authoritarian-style leaders are getting elected throughout the world. “Just like they had a dictator’s playbook, they lie,” she said. “A lie told a million times becomes a fact. Without facts, you can’t have truth. Without truth, you can’t have trust. Without all three, democracy as we know it is dead.”

Ressa referenced her own experience when in 2018, the Philippine government investigated Rappler in at least 11 cases. “In 2019, I was arrested…not once, but twice,” she said. “I posted bail eight times.”

Ressa – who in 2018 was named by Time magazine as one of several journalists honored as Persons of the Year – spoke of her experiences at the 2019 DCN Summit in Orlando, Florida – just before one of her arrests. She also made the 2019 TIME 100 List as one of the most year’s most influential people.

The relevance of her travails extends to journalists everywhere. Because, as she said, the “the enabler for all of this is technology. And technology is in the hands of American social media companies,” said Ressler.

“Facebook is our internet” she said. “Where Facebook goes, the Philippines goes. The weaponization of social media was followed by the weaponization of the law. This is what’s happened to the gatekeepers, right? And when the gatekeepers move from the journalists to technologists… lies spread faster than facts.”

Official Statement from the
DCN Board of Directors

“We applaud Senators Edward Markey and Marco Rubio along with Senators Marsha Blackburn, Christopher Coons and Richard Durbin who introduced Senate Resolution 142. We also applaud Representative Jackie Speier along with Representatives Henry Johnson, Jamie Raskin, Brad Sherman and Lloyd Doggett who introduced House Resolution 233.

Both resolutions call on Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte to end his political persecution of Senator Leila de Lima and journalist Maria Ressa, founder and CEO of Rappler, a digital news organization based in Manila. Healthy democracies thrive with vigorous political discourse and a free, independent press.”

—DCN Board of Directors

Featured Post | Innovation

The snack is back: How messaging will satisfy audience appetite for bite-sized content

January 9, 2020 Peggy Anne Salz, Founder and Lead Analyst—Mobile Groove

A decade ago, The Power Of Pull described the amazing outcomes possible when we have the tools to find and access the people, content, information, and resources we need. Pull was seen as the mechanism that would put people in control. It would give them more choices and more information to make those choices.

Today, pull has been turbo-charged by mobile, a transformative technology (the impact of which the authors could not address in their book, so I will here). Mobile has become our collective default state. It eclipses all other digital technology and enables us to do exactly what the authors hoped we would: “collaborate in a complete re-imagination” of our experiences. From content to commerce, and from advertising to advocacy, mobile has left an indelible mark.

You could even say that, thanks to mobile, the Power of Pull has finally arrived. But it’s the advance of messaging apps and platforms that takes this to a new level. Pull brought us the toolset and the mindset to take charge of our content and experiences. Mobile amplified this ability exponentially. And messaging is giving us a new environment to experience both.

A new wave

The first wave of messaging saw the emergence of what I will call pull content, delivered primarily via app notifications. In this scenario, individuals granted permission and volunteered preferences (the choice of news categories, the frequency of alerts and notifications, the level of personalization). And that they opt-in is a must for audiences increasingly concerned about personal privacy. For this reason, content companies that delivered pull content could build trust and brand. In retrospect, it was this reach and impact that allowed the first wave to deliver scalable efficiency.

The second wave of pull, powered by mobile messaging apps and platforms, is destined to be even more transformative because it promises scalable connectivity. Messaging is a platform where companies can deliver interactive, personalized, and conversational experiences. And they can do it affordably at scale.

Messaging is also free to consumers. It also vastly reduces the blight of unsolicited communication. That’s because, as a rule, messaging platforms do not permit companies to send bulk messages as they can via SMS. And it’s growing in popularity. Analysts forecast that the volume of messages sent via the major messaging platforms is expected to exceed the number of SMS text messages by as much as 10x in 2020.

Pull and pictures

Messaging apps and platforms provide an ideal space for companies to forge relationships with audiences and drive connection with brand fans. They have also become the epicenter of our most frequent digital activity: messaging. In August 2018, app market intelligence provider Apptopia reported users globally spent a whopping 85 billion hours in WhatsApp over a period of just three months. (Compare that to 31 billion hours spent on Facebook).

Messaging platforms have experienced explosive growth in users and usage, outpacing some of the biggest social media channels. Together, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger alone have nearly three billion daily active users– that’s almost half the planet. In 2018 the Big Four messaging apps (WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat and Viber) had 4.1 billion combined users. A whopping 72 trillion messages were sent across these platforms (compared to 1.6 trillion searches on Google).

However, people aren’t just messaging more or more often. Empowered by pull, are using the universal language of pictures. People share more than 4.5 billion photos, 1 billion videos, and 80 million GIFs per day on WhatsApp alone. A comprehensive analysis of people’s messaging behaviors on Facebook Messenger (conducted by Facebook) reveals that nearly 60% of respondents have sent emoji-only messages to communicate a concept. What’s more, over half indicated that messaging has replaced all other forms of communication.

United by their passions and interests (supported by a shared visual language), this audience craves instant access to what matters. There’s no room for trial and error. Content must be hyper-personalized, highly visual, and always to the point. Against this backdrop, messaging platforms offer the perfect petri dish to experiment with new approaches around content design and distribution.

Bite-size is back

Messaging platforms also unlock the potential of content companies to satisfy our appetite for bite-sized content. That means short videos, short-form content, graphics, and memes. Content that might feel out-of-place in-app or online is at home on messaging platforms. Media companies and publishers need no convincing. In fact, some new organizations are encouraging audiences to visually enhance the conversation.

The Washington Post’s news stickers on Viber.

The Washington Post, which distributes snackable news content via Viber, a messaging app used by more than one billion people worldwide, has had remarkable success with a series of news-related stickers. The packs count more than 2 million downloads since they were first launched in 2016. “The stickers we’ve created allow users to say what they want about news without having to type a complete thought and simply add delight and character to their conversation,” Amy King, Design Director of Emerging News Products at The Washington Post said in a recent interview.

The Washington Post is just one of a long line of news organizations — including the BBC, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, HuffPost, and Financial Times — that are experimenting with messaging apps as an additional distribution channel. For many, the primary focus has been on providing short news updates and links to related and relevant content. However, some companies have zeroed in on the interactive nature of messaging platforms. They’re adding a new dimension to bite-sized news and leveraging yet another aspect of pull: two-way conversation.

Micro-newsletters for mass audiences

Bloomberg has harnessed WhatsApp to send messages every day and hear back from users directly, Katie Boyce, Managing Editor, Digital, Bloomberg, stated in an email interview. “After big news would break, we started to ask our WhatsApp audience what they want to know. We would get such thoughtful feedback that we could then incorporate it into our reporting and send back updates,” she explains. “It was a much different conversation than what we get on our public social channels. We built up a very highly engaged audience.”

It also paved the way for Bloomberg to bundle bite-sized content into personalized packages that balance depth with the demand for distilled information. The outcome was a new format it calls the “micro newsletter.” The content is longer than a push alert but shorter than a typical newsletter.

Boyce describes the content as a “very conversational update three times a day at the end of each region’s news day, summarizing the big stories of the day.” It has been so popular with the audience that it prompted Bloomberg to “create multiple sub-groups around topics like markets or the Middle East so that we could send more targeted messages.”

Using this approach, which was nominated for a SOPA (Society of Publishers in Asia), a benchmark for world-class journalism, Bloomberg has done more than grow its numbers. It has recruited and audience of advocates eager to follow the discussion no matter where it takes them.

In December Bloomberg moved its distribution to Telegram, a messaging platform projected to hit 1 billion users by 2022. (Admittedly, Bloomberg’s move was driven more by necessity than inspiration as Facebook, which owns WhatsApp, made good on its promise to crack down on what it considers “non-personal” use on the platform. In December efforts turned to the gray area of newsletters. And it ruled that publishers will no longer be allowed to send out newsletters on WhatsApp.)

Within two weeks of moving the micro-newsletter messages over to Telegram, Boyce reports that Bloomberg “gained over 25,000 followers” on the new platform many of whom migrated from WhatsApp. But efforts to leverage the popularity of messaging platforms doesn’t stop there. Bloomberg is “continuously evaluating other ways to meet users where they are,” Boyce says. It’s a smart approach in the age of pull.

Messaging is the new frontier

As we kick off a new decade, it’s critical that content creators — be they media companies or marketers — understand consumers’ growing appetite for concentrated content on their terms and in the spaces where they choose to congregate. It’s a global phenomenon that sees audiences flocking to messaging apps, drawn by the simplicity of snackable content.

It also offers audiences the opportunity to “share and discuss news, away from the toxicity of political debate that threatens more open spaces,” according to the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2019. Based on data from almost 40 countries across six continents, the report highlights this mega-trend. It notes that WhatsApp has already become a primary network for discussing and sharing news in western countries (where WhatsApp has a strong presence) as well as non-western countries including Brazil (53%), Malaysia (50%) and South Africa (49%). The upshot: “as more people use messaging services, news usage has also risen.”

Now that news organizations and media companies have an audience on these platforms, they must adopt the culture and language of these communities and capture the Zeitgeist to deliver on the promise of pull. A decade ago, companies were just beginning to develop this mindset, with the understanding that constant and instant accessibility of information was an audience demand and responding with models that would rebalance businesses and organizations to be powered by pull.

But there was a catch. We had the message, to borrow a concept from the visionary Marshall McLuhan. But without messaging platforms, we lacked the medium to deliver at scale. Today we have both. Mobile — messaging in particular — is where people spend their time. And content companies who build experiences that are right-sized and optimized can leverage this behavior to engage highly-receptive audiences.

Featured Post | Innovation

Yes, your newsroom can get into podcasts. Here’s how.

December 19, 2019 Corinne Podger—Director, Digital Skills Agency

Starting a podcast is easier than ever now. But how do you create a sustainable strategy around audio content, especially in the local and regional newsrooms that are dwindling at an alarming pace? That was the question Alison Gow, Digital Editor in Chief for regional content at Reach Plc – one of Britain’s biggest regional publishers – began exploring last year.

Reach had several podcasts spread across the business, created as passion projects by staff keen to experiment with audio. These included Black Mirror Cracked and Blood Red, both of which performed very well with audiences.

However, Reach lacked a strategic framework around its shows, which would better enable growth. So, at the end of 2018, it began formalizing its podcast output, switching from Audioboom to Acast. It also created new internal positions to explore the long-term viability of audio content and other emerging platforms.

One of those staff, Michael Pearson, now a permanent podcast producer at Reach, says the results were enormously encouraging. “We found that the levels of engagement of a podcast audience were far greater than any other platform we were currently utilizing, be it website dwell time, video watch-rate on our owned and operated websites or on other social platforms,” he says. The podcast audience also gave additional value to Reach’s existing sites, because people clicked through from podcasts to the site and vice versa.

Putting formal support structures in place gave shape and focus to existing shows. It also provided strategic direction to new ones, including Everything is Black and White and a mental health show called No Really I’m Fine.

Audience demand

However, one question the publisher still didn’t have an answer for was whether there was an appetite among regional audiences for podcast content made specifically for them. “Audio at the moment is dominated by comedy, true crime, and sport. We wanted to know whether local news providers could find a foothold in that market, and – on the other side of that equation – how a local audience might discover that content,” Gow says.

So, Reach joined forces with another large regional publisher, JPI Media, and a new podcast provider called Entale, to bid for Google funding to explore the viability of local and regional shows. In July this year they secured a €500,000 Google News Innovation grant over two years for the Laudable Project.

Google’s Digital News Innovation Fund was created to fund creativity in digital journalism and the development of new business models. Madhav Chinnappa, Director of News Ecosystem Development at Google says, “We’re seeing more and more innovation by publishers in podcasts and voice technologies, and we’re proud to support initiatives like Laudable which can have a real and positive impact on the news ecosystem.”

Reach used the grant to help pay for studios, recording equipment and dedicated podcast producers. It also paid for training for around 50 reporters to help them turn ideas for new regional podcasts into reality in three trial cities – Manchester, Birmingham, and Edinburgh.

The new shows will be available across all major podcast platforms. However, they’ll also be hosted by Entale, which is using some of the grant funds to design bespoke analytics that give greater granularity on key indicators. Entale will also build an Android version of its IOS app, through which users can access interactive visuals and other online content as they listen.

The first Laudable shows are starting to go live, beginning with The North Poll, a show about politics from a northern British perspective, which launched in November. Other new shows include North In Numbers, which gives a human voice to data journalism stories, The Edinburgh Briefing, and Scran, a new podcast about food from The Scotsman. More podcasts will launch in early 2020.

Building the business

Gow says the Google grant has given Reach and JPI “breathing space” to test the value of podcasts to local and regional audiences without the pressure to monetize those shows straight away. “We wouldn’t have been able to scale like this [without Google’s support],” she says. “The time commitment and investment involved in this project, the cost of building studios – it’s a huge amount of money when you’re a regional publisher.”

Now, she says, they’ve “been given a low-risk environment to find out whether what we create has value beyond being appreciated … that it has value commercially, and can attract advertising clients, and we’ll be layering commercial into it next year.”

That will include creating a new post to sell audio advertising. Mind you, that’s a skill that doesn’t come naturally to journalists and editors. Nor is it a natural fit for advertising departments at newspapers that have yet to dip a toe in the podcast ocean, and which will face stiff competition from an increasingly crowded market in 2020.

Structure and strategy

Gow acknowledges that most publishers don’t have the luxury of Google funding, but has some tips for outlets that have organic podcasts that need structure and strategy to have a chance of long-term sustainability. “First, you really need to look at your audience, and at your digital analytics to find the themes that people are engaging with.

“For us, sports like rugby and football absolutely drive our audiences and have a huge fan base, so that was a no-brainer. It’s where we can start building revenue quickly because there are advertisers keen to get on board and the opportunity to host live events.”

They also found that their audiences were quite interested in financial information particularly because “audio means they can tell those stories in their own voices.” And Gow says that “combining those voices with insights from our data unit in a show like North By Numbers, moves the format on from being a host talking to an expert about housing shortages, to an individual who becomes a first-person case study for that data, and that’s incredibly humanizing.”

Trying to monetize podcasts before experimenting with audio is difficult, and Gow cautions against it. “You do need to create content first, but as soon as you’ve done it, you’ve got something your advertising team can show to clients as a proof of concept,” she says.

“And sometimes you just need to think of a podcast as loss-leader marketing. That may be what some of our Laudable podcasts become, a way of exploring issues that are occupying minds in places like Edinburgh or Birmingham, which might attract a sponsor at some point, but might not but it’s good journalism and may be worth doing on that basis alone.”

Monetization matters

In 2020, Gow says her focus will shift to trying to monetize the new shows. This includes those that are purely journalistic, as well as branded content programs.

“My approach next year is going to be working with our commercial team on themes we have in mind for 2020, what clients might want to be associated with different ideas, and what kinds of stories would overlap with what they’re interested in.” That doesn’t mean that advertisers will dictate the content, she says. Rather, they’ll work in partnership through things like sponsorship.

Gow believes that there’s an audience for the ‘how to live a good life’ podcast market beyond mindfulness. This could include practical questions like how to have a good divorce, how to buy your first house, how to prepare for a funeral, or how to pick the right school. “And there are potential commercial partnerships around all those ideas, because I can see someone tuning in while they’re in the kitchen asking Alexa to find something to listen to.”

Tracking results

The team at Reach adheres to the strategic approach recommended by the Reuters Institute to help outlets experiment with new formats and approaches while keeping business as usual running smoothly. “SMART principles have been drummed into me since I went on my first management course about 20 years ago, and we also had Google milestones to hit,” she says.

“We’ve been specific about what we need to deliver for Google, what we tell editors to achieve, and what our podcast producers need to deliver, and all of that can be measured.” However, podcast statistics are still somewhat lacking. So, Entale is building bespoke analytics as part of their partnership.

Beyond that Gow says that they are tracking what’s been produced, how many people have generated ideas, and how engaged they are in the process to gain a better sense of staff buy-in and participation. “I work with incredibly smart people who love journalism and care about their audiences.” And giving them the tools to achieve good journalism on the podcast platform – the physical hardware, the training, the encouragement and feedback to build confidence and deliver the best possible outputs – has made it achievable.

Ultimately, Gow would encourage any size newsroom to experiment with podcasts. “With all this in place, it’s 100% realistic for any newsroom to create great podcasts.

The state of news subscriptions – and a newsworthy approach worth considering

December 12, 2019 Chris M. Sutcliffe—Independent Media Reporter

Doggedly following the pace of the duopoly and facing falling print revenue, they anxiously watch as an increasing number of rivals drop out. And let’s face it, the route has only continued to slope uphill.

The next great hope is in digital subscriptions. Over the course of 2019, revenue growth was strong for many of the larger publishers that have been investing in subscription marketing and retention. The New York Times – effectively the poster child for news subscription success – reported its highest ever subscriber total in August: 4.7 million paid subscriptions across digital and print, of which close to 3.5 million are digital. Times’ CEO Mark Thomson said: “We’re making steady progress toward our goal of reaching 10 million total subscriptions by 2025.” A big part of that, as we’ve previously reported, is by converting young people to paid subscribers.

Meanwhile, the Guardian achieved its ambitious break-even target of financial stability by mid-2019, as 655,000 regular monthly supporters and a 300,000 one-off contributions buoyed their balance sheets. This suggests that readers do not necessarily even expect exclusive content to pay what is effectively a subscription in all but name. Similarly, Wired has claimed success after introducing a paywall in 2018, announcing a 300% increase in the number of digital subscribers.

Nor do the titles need to be international in scope to make successes of paywalls: a few years after launching a digital subscription the Shawnee Mission Post has over 2,500 subscribers. That’s more than enough for a local title that employs three people full-time. In the UK, too, more regional titles are launching paywalls as well. Some of JPI Media’s newspapers with larger circulations are currently trialling paywalls, too.

Overall, WAN-IFRA’s World Press Trends report found that: “Digital news subscriber numbers worldwide have increased 208% over five years to 2018 and are expected to grow by a further 13% in 2019.”

Smart paywall strategies

Small wonder then that so many news publishers are following the leaders and attempting to make digital subscriptions a larger part of their business strategy. There are countless examples of investment into smart paywalls, better retention efforts, and into data tools designed with the sole intention of signing up users.

That’s not to say that erecting a paywall is a guarantee of survival. Joshua Benton’s in-depth look into the L.A. Times’ disappointing subscription results in July makes it clear that if even one of those areas of investment is neglected, the result is that a publisher can be left running in place. They face failing to sign up sufficient subscribers or worse, a loss of existing ones.

A fear of fatigue

But the real shadow that falls across any conversation about paywall success is the term ‘subscription fatigue.’ Despite encouraging signs that readers have not yet reached this critical tipping point, the worry looms large. Essentially, it’s the tacit acknowledgement that audiences only have so much disposable income, that people are far more likely to subscribe to multiple entertainment products than a single news one, and that the people who have already subscribed were effectively the low-hanging fruit.

That last point was referred to in Wired editor-in-chief Nick Thompson’s one year paywall retrospective. He said, “We don’t know if they’ll resubscribe (please do); we don’t know if they’ll ultimately pay higher prices (please do); we don’t know if it’ll be as easy to get the next batch of people to join (please do).” Of those concerns, it’s the latter which is the most pressing.

Who pays?

In the UK, for instance, only 7% of people currently pay for a digital news subscription (a tiny increase over the previous year). On the face of it, that gives publishers a lot of headroom for growth. However, they’re up against competition for finite disposable income with entertainment services like Spotify, Netflix, Disney+, PlayStation Plus, etc. According to the latest Ofcom Media Nations report, for instance: “Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Now TV and Disney Life – increased from 11.2m (39%) in 2018 to 13.3m (47%) in 2019.”

That’s broadly in line with other findings, which demonstrate that people are far more likely to prioritize entertainment content over news. In fact, WAN-IFRA found that younger people – on whom many publishers are pinning their hopes – are less likely to prioritize a news subscription: “Just 7% of under 45s would pick news over everything else for the next year, compared to 15% of those 45 and over.”

What is news?

With relatively sluggish growth for news subscription numbers and the implication that it is seen as a luxury for young audiences, can publishers combat the potential “subscription fatigue” among audiences and prove they are as vital as an entertainment subscription? For most audiences, the reality for the foreseeable future is that entertainment will be prioritized. So, is it just that publishers need to reappraise what a successful ‘news’ subscription looks like?

A report by researchers at the University of Minnesota’s Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication, in collaboration with the News Media Alliance and the Star Tribune, found a positive correlation between people’s willingness to pay for entertainment and news. Their findings suggest that people’s increasing willingness to subscribe to entertainment is a tide that floats all boats.

It follows, then, that the way younger audiences think about subscriptions to both entertainment and news is similar. And, ultimately, they want unique content in a format that suits them best.

Bridging the divide

For instance, a paid-for subscription to something like a news podcast could help close that divide between entertainment and news. Media analyst for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism Nic Newman recently told me: “Publishers are really finding it hard to reach and engage with younger audiences. It’s not ‘news’ [that’s the problem], it’s about how you create content that is interesting, engaging, fun… But is also meaningful, and to me that’s where the daily news podcasts are hitting all those spots at once.” Notably, NYT CEO Mark Thompson has discussed spinning its flagship title The Daily off into a paid-for product in its own right.

In France, Le Monde is experimenting with a blend of news and entertainment content, with its three new podcasts being explicitly in service of squaring that circle. As Digiday’s Lucinda Southern notes: “French news publisher Le Monde has launched three podcast series adapted from investigative articles that have been successful at driving high numbers of new subscriptions.”

Subscription plus

So, it’s still vanishingly unlikely that every large-scale news publication will be able to sustain themselves through subscriptions alone. Many are already investing in non-news products to attract people to the top of the funnel. It’s also true that the first ones out of the starting blocks have an early mover advantage.

None of that is to say that news publishers should give up and transition entirely to entertainment content. Instead, they should be considering that the young people on whom much of their subscription success or failure rests are demonstrably interested in news content. Unfortunately, the vast majority of how that is currently presented on doesn’t necessarily convert or retain them.

Rather than attempting to push the fast news-based content that adds value once people are past the gate, publishers need to re-evaluate what types of content will lure younger audiences through in the first place.

Beyond news: How publishers are building subscriptions around non-news products

December 5, 2019 Chris M. Sutcliffe—Independent Media Reporter

A welcome consequence of the abortive chase for scale is that publishers, no longer slaves to the Big Number, are diversifying their revenues. News events, podcasts, even forays into long-form video content – everything is back on the menu. At the same time, many media companies are also recognizing that they have the expertise in selling subscriptions to launch new paid-for products and services, rather than catering to anonymous audiences on platforms.

The collision of those two factors has inevitably led to a reappraisal of publishers’ ongoing activities around which they could conceivably launch a new subscription service. The New York Times’ success with its dedicated Crosswords app is well documented, for instance, with fully 400,000 people subscribing to the service as of February this year. Beyond that, some publishers are seeking to capitalize on their existing reputations when launching new subscription products. Forbes, for instance, recently announced the acquisition of stock prediction tool Quantalytics AI Labs, which Digiday reports could well be spun out into its own subscription tool using Forbes’ expertise.

The ARPU (average revenue per user) of those non-news subscriptions is often lower than the core proposition. However, they have advantages that the core news membership proposition often doesn’t. At the NYT, for example, they’re growing faster: “News product subscriptions totaled approximately 2,713,000 at the end of 2018, a 21.6% increase compared with 2017. Other product subscriptions, which include subscriptions to our Crossword product and Cooking product, totaled approximately 647,000 at the end of 2018, a 56.7% increase compared with 2017.”

Here, then, is how news publishers are looking past current affairs for subscription revenue. Some seek to monetizing loneliness, others want to owning gambling, but all are building upon their reputations to diversify their revenues.

Lifestyle and aspiration

Cooking apps – both paid-for and ad supported – are big business. The NYT prices a subscription to its Cooking portal and app at $1.25 per week, while in the UK Immediate Media acquired the BBC Good Food magazine and ad-supported app in part because of how valuable recipe content performs for its ad business.

Equally lucrative, the health and lifestyle vertical is prompting some traditional publishers to launch new subscription services. Hearst, for instance, launched a new video on demand platform and mobile app dedicated to workout videos in July. All Out Studio features content centered around its brands like Men’s Health, Runners’ World, and Cosmopolitan, and is priced at $15 a month. Meanwhile Stylist is moving from the current affairs space into evergreen fitness subscriptions with Stylist Strong, which is based around real life events in London.

Meanwhile, off the back of its existing lifestyle content – and a savvy bet that people can’t get enough parenting content – the NYT launched its Parenting vertical earlier this year. At launch, The Times Open Team explained that it was important that the standalone product strike a balance between being identifiably part of the NYT brand and having its own identity: “While establishing how to structure content and topics in the product, we also invested in developing the site’s visual language. We knew that we needed to build on The Times’s brand equity while making our product feel distinct and premium, much like Cooking and Crosswords.”

The Guardian’s standalone Soulmates dating app similarly offers in-app purchases, and builds upon the longstanding digital service provided by the website through the branding.

VICE’s ‘Astro Guide’ astrology app (which offers in-app purchases) is almost completely standalone in terms of branding. Nevertheless, it feels like a Vice product in terms of the language used and audience at whom it is pitched. As the team noted in the Astro Guide launch announcement, “We were all proud of the site’s daily and monthly horoscopes and their growing readership, and we wanted to figure out what could come next. We ignored practicality for a moment – obviously, it was Pisces season – and dreamed up something entirely new.”

Meanwhile, as with the Quantalytics example mentioned above, health and science publisher Stat News is explicitly launching new products outside its core Stat Plus subscription model. One of those, Expert Advantage, offers the subscriber the chance to listen in to conference calls with leading researchers. Another hearkens back to the age-old technique of selling reports, this time with a digital slant.

Not one of those products is based around the core news and current affairs proposition of its parent publisher. That said, they each have something in common: They rely upon the audience knowing and feeling affinity with the brand, even if they would not necessarily pay to access their news content. They are, then, effectively a bet that news publishers can still take advantage of the fact that people are more likely to pay for entertainment or lifestyle subscriptions than they are for news.

Beyond beyond news

In addition to working as additive revenue, it’s been noted that standalone products can act as connective tissue between user and a news subscription. The NYT’s crossword and cooking subscriptions, for instance, are priced at half the amount of a news subscription. That’s welcome in its own right, but in terms of creating brand loyalty and habit, it’s incredibly valuable.

Similarly, efforts like The Telegraph’s Fantasy Football and Fantasy Rugby services, and their respective apps, potentially generate ad revenue. The real benefit, however, is that they encourage users to log-in, which works in service of The Telegraph’s stated aim of having 10 million registered users by 2023.

They can also be bundled as part of a wider subscription package. The fact that they also exist separately serves as inducement to pay for the more expensive news package, as the NYT notes in its 2018 annual report about its Cooking and Crossword subscriptions.

The sheer variety of non-news products demonstrates that there is plenty of opportunity for news publishers to diversify their range of paid-for products. That isn’t to say that every newspaper should suddenly launch a standalone cooking vertical, however.

For one thing, there are far too many recipes out there already. Competing with free and an already crowded market is something news publishers should be particularly wary of. Instead, as the NYT did with its Parenting vertical and Vice did with its Astrology app, the best new product launches will build upon successful brands and their understanding of what their customers are most interested in. Yet to succeed, they will also standalone, apart from the company’s core value proposition, and offer their own distinct value for consumers.

Platforms, politics, people and sharks

November 20, 2019 Jason Kint, CEO – DCN

Last week at the 2019 World Media Congress in Las Vegas I had the privilege of being asked to address the weighty topic of “Platforms, Politics, and People.” At this moment in time, it presents a remarkable challenge to cover the confluence of these topics before a global audience.

I found myself trying illuminate a perilous intersection between the growing distrust of tech platforms (which continue to register record usage) and the growing divisiveness in politics. And, to make things even more challenging, my speaking slot was at 5 p.m. just before cocktails in Las Vegas, of all places.

And so, facing challenges both topical and logistical, I decided to do what had to be done: I cued up “Baby Shark.”

Jumping the shark

As much as this dreaded video is guaranteed to intractably embed itself in the mind of any hapless listener, it also represents the good of these topics. This song impossibly united all of Washington, regardless of politics, as the Nationals won their first ever World Series. It has racked up close to four billion views on Google’s YouTube making it one of the most watched videos of all time. If there is good in the world of platforms and politics, it’s represented in Baby Shark.

Yet, despite the tenaciously peppy and persistent beat of Baby Shark, my mind turned to the bigger, badder sort. After consulting DCN member National Geographic and the Merriam-Webster dictionary, I found the term I was looking for: feeding frenzy.

This wildly aggressive attack of prey by an animal or group of animals provides an accurate description of policy makers’ and the press’ relationship to tech companies right now. Their frenetic scrutiny of tech has been driven primarily by Facebook’s woes over the past 18 months. It took some time but there are already signs of Google’s blood in the water. The alpha predators are under attack.

Boiling the ocean

Tech platforms currently face two issues that are making big waves. The first is a slew of antitrust investigations, which are underway in the Germany, UK, Israel, Australia, and France. Oh, and also in the offices of nearly every one of the United States’ Attorneys General, not to mention by the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and Congress. For perspective, recall the antitrust investigation of Microsoft two decades ago, which many argue provided the oxygen for Facebook and Google to launch. That investigation (which resulted on certain limitations being imposed on the company) involved a mere 20 states as compared with this bipartisan group of nearly 50.

On its own, an antitrust review might not cut too deeply. Significantly, however, this one takes place at the same time as new laws around privacy and data protection are being enacted globally. The business model of devouring personal data to micro-target advertising is at risk. It’s this intersection of data and competition policy which presents significant challenges to this mighty Duopoly.

Google and Facebook would prefer to keep antitrust scrutiny focused on the price of their products. That’s because most of their services are free to the end consumer. But price is not the only factor in an antitrust investigation. And, in an increasingly complex profit-driven data economy, new issues have arisen that raise the stakes. For one, there’s the obvious question of whether Facebook’s dominance allowed it to look the other way while users’ data was abused, and its post-IPO profits soared.

Shark tank

Significantly, today’s political concerns – and these investigations – are bipartisan. Republicans and Democrats alike are increasingly worried about data privacy and the ability for market entrants to innovate in a world where two companies dominate through data-based surveillance advertising. At the same time, everyone is getting more educated on the issues as we can see in the hearings. And we’re seeing an increasing flow of press coverage and research.

I find no better examples of these two developments – bipartisan concerns and savvy scrutiny – than in the actions of some of our youngest politicians:

The youngest member of the House is the media-friendly Democratic US Representative, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Ahead of Mark Zuckerberg testifying two weeks ago, she went to Twitter to learn more about the issues and asked the public for good lines of questioning. Her engaged constituents dutifully replied with more than 12,000 responses.

With this input, her questions of Zuckerberg captured significant attention and highlights spread through Twitter receiving millions of views. We witnessed a representative using Twitter to gather input to question one of the most powerful people in the world and then to move the discussion further along after the hearing. Simply put, she came of age with the Internet and social media and knows how to use it.

The youngest member of the Senate is Missouri’s Republican Senator, Josh Hawley. I played his grilling of a Google policy executive for attendees of the World Media Congress. The audience was clearly pleased to see a Google executive being expertly questioned about concerns ranging from antitrust to child safety and privacy.

Chumming the water

These matters continue to drive down consumer trust in Facebook and Google. Unfortunately, this is where we confront an uncomfortable dichotomy between the interests of advertisers and the public. To date, advertisers are still drunk on the precision targeting, efficiency, and scale that Facebook brings to the table.

As such, they’ve been willing to avert their attention from the growing body of research that shows that the perception of environment seeps into advertisements presented there. In the right context, that’s a good thing. In the wrong context, irreparable brand damage can occur.

Shark tale

The sailing is not smooth for publishers right now. While digital offers incredible opportunities for consumer engagement, audience interaction, and innovation, the market is reacting having been driven to the brink by the dominance of a few predatory players.

But it’s time to take the offensive and go on the hunt. There’s blood in the water and a frenzy of scrutiny buoyed along on a tide of changing consumer perspective. We need to focus on the opportunities emerging amidst this political and public scrutiny of the way in which information is being distributed and data is being collected and deployed.

DCN member research shows considerable growth in non-advertising revenues driven primarily by subscriptions and direct-consumer revenues. DCN’s public research, further confirmed by recent News Media Alliance research, also shows that most digital subscribers are happy with the value they’re receiving and at the same time are not concerned about how much they’re spending in any given month. These are two very good things: Consumers are happy with the value and not closely tracking what they’re spending. I smell opportunity in the water. The launch of Disney+ last week for $6.99 per month saw more than 10 million customers sign on in the first 24 hours. That’s a clear testament to this dynamic.

Open water

With all of this in mind, there are four things I encourage everyone to focus on as we continue to build safe and sustainable businesses. First, know that trust is the currency our industry must capitalize on. Publishers can take their uniquely trust-based consumer relationships and brand safe environments to the bank. Second, premium publisher brands add considerable value to any platform. This is evident in the $100 million Facebook spent to entice publishers to participate into its latest foray into news. Third, media’s revenue mix is changing. Publishers are doubling down on consumer revenues and it’s paying off. And fourth, direct relationships win, and data is very much a part of this equation.

Above all, publishers need to maintain their trust-based relationships with consumers. They must protect their data and ensure that under emerging privacy laws, Facebook and Google don’t find ways to circumvent these protections and continue to vacuum up consumer data outside of their expectations. We must continue to illuminate these behaviors when we see them, and to build the next wave of digital innovation as the tide turns against the Duopoly.

Featured Post | Innovation

How People and Entertainment Weekly grow audiences with video

November 14, 2019 Caitlin Kelly, Independent Journalist

It’s a brand people have known and loved for four and a half decades – as a magazine. Now People is focused on video, determined to grow the brand and bring its content to new, and larger, audiences.

“The most important thing is that the brand has to have a voice to begin with,” said Will Lee, SVP of Digital for the Entertainment Group of Meredith Corp., a role he’s held for two years, which coincides with Meredith’s acquisition of Time, Inc. “People has a very strong brand voice that it’s cultivated over 45 years. We know what the consumer expects from us. We have a very well-developed playbook for how the brand should sound and look.”

People’s emotional DNA

That means sticking to the brand’s core emotional DNA when showing work on Snapchat, for example. “We don’t say snarky, mean things about celebrities. It’s not what we do.” So, even if Snap viewers prefer things a little salty, People stays true to its own style, regardless of medium. “We get a lot of data from Snapchat,” Lee said, “and that audience has evolved. It’s very different from what it was three years ago.”

People’s video content focuses on what Lee called “the three R’s, the content their readers just can’t get enough of: reality TV, the British Royal family, and the red carpet. “Streaming is a different level of engagement. The really passionate audience comes from reality TV.” So, Lee’s team of 60 to 80 staffers produce a reality-based video show four nights a week and a Royals show once a week. “Reality TV is a conversation starter,” said Lee, of the genre’s powerful appeal.

Reality check

The numbers back him up. “We’ve done 100 episodes of ‘Reality Check.’ And after four episodes, we already had the second most viewed show on people.com, with 2 to 3 million views of show clips in a week. That is a pretty good debut for us.”

Pivoting constantly is key and Lee knows how hard his team works to keep up. “All the parts of video work closely together because we’re constantly iterating product on a daily basis. It’s a very special kind of producer who can do three or four formats and keep it all together.”

“What’s interesting about our model is that we’re not tied to 26-week orders so we can adjust. We have a lot of flexibility which differentiates us from cable. We can iterate and improve the product.”

Brand building

But, when deciding which next steps to take, “we have to be very thoughtful, as a media brand with a history and the brand equity we’ve built,” Lee added. “Where is the growth? How do we amplify the brand and move into new markets?” Newer platforms like TikTok , he said, are “the solar power. That’s where the future lies. We have a great brand, but that is no guarantee of future growth.”

However, Lee feels confident that streaming is essential to their success. “That’s why we’ve made such a big bet on it. If we’re not in that space, we’re going to be left behind.”

Lee’s team also partners with Meredith Local Media Group , which has 17 TV stations across the country, which Meredith will leverage when it launches a new daily syndicated television show in September 2020. “That will be the centerpiece of our overall video product.” Lee acknowledged how ambitious this new product is: “Thirty minutes of daily broadcast level TV is a huge amount of work.” The magazine-style show, with “all new and original material really represents a pretty important next step for this iconic brand. It brings us more markets, and more audience. There aren’t a lot of media brands that will have this as part of their media ecosystem. In a company already producing print, digital and video, “this is going to be another evolution of how we all work together,” he said.

Entertaining audiences

When it comes to his other responsibility, Entertainment Weekly, Lee says a new launch is imminent as well. “We’re really trying to amplify the brand. We want to go to where the audience is, in local markets. It’s important for us to reach those audiences.”

EW has announced that it will be working with Jeffrey Katzenberg’s short form mobile video platform Quibi, slated to launch in April 2020. The morning show, which will recap late-night TV, will take a similar strategic approach to the Lee he employs with People. However, he emphasizes that the brands are quite distinct, and that EW is “known as a cultural curator.” That should play well on Quibi, which offers a new audience that Lee is excited to reach.

Featured Post | Innovation

Watch out, streamers: Disney+ just can’t wait to be king

November 7, 2019 Will Harris – Independent Journalist

In the amount of time it takes the average TV viewer to contemplate subscribing to a new streaming service, five new streaming services have appeared.

That last part’s not actually true. But given the way streaming services keep popping up, it’s likely closer to accurate than either we or our wallets would like to believe. That said, there’s only one such service looming on the immediate horizon that’s capturing the attention of viewers in virtually every age demographic. Slated to make its grand debut on November 12, everyone is watching out for Disney+.

The origins of Disney+ date back to August 2016, when The Walt Disney Company acquired a minority stake in BAMTech, a spin-off of MLB Advanced Media, the digital media arm of Major League Baseball. A year later, they upgraded to a controlling stake in BAMTech and on April 18, 2018, Disney subsidiary ESPN kicked off their streaming service (ESPN+).

Picture this

By that point, however, Disney had long since seen the potential in constructing their streaming offering. They began setting things in motion, having already swiped back the rights to the Marvel and Star Wars movies from Netflix and set a deal to acquire 21^st Century Fox’s entertainment assets.

If you’re wondering what this means in terms of content available on the Disney+ service, just sit back and spend the next three hours and eighteen minutes (give or take a few seconds) watching this trailer. As its title helpfully explains, it offers a glimpse of “Basically Everything Coming to Disney+ on November 12.”

And we’re back!

No, we don’t think that you actually watched all three plus hours. However, we suspect you couldn’t resist skipping around enough to see how much Disney, Marvel, National Geographic, Pixar, Star Wars, and other programming Disney+ is bringing to the table – and to your screen – when it bows next week.

Subscribe now

Unsurprisingly, The Walt Disney Company is making it very easy to secure subscriptions to Disney+ as they prepare for rollout. They’re also providing ample incentives to give it a try, whether it’s the 7-day free trial membership, the streaming bundle of Disney+, ESPN+ and the ad-supported version of Hulu for $12.99 a month. There’s also the deal where Verizon is offering 12 free months of Disney+ to all new and existing 4G LTE and 5G unlimited wireless customers as well as to existing Fios Home Internet and 5G Home customers.

Yet the question remains: Given all the other streaming services out there, will viewers really be champing at the bit to add Disney+ to their “collection” come November 12?

Watch it

Here are five reasons why Disney+ looks like a must-watch:

1. Disney+ is the new “Disney Vault.”

In the past, whenever Disney has decided to reissue various films, they’ve done so in an ostensibly limited-edition fashion. They assure consumers that, at a certain point, they’ll stop production and the film will go “back into the Disney Vault” until such time as they decide to reissue it again. Disney+ is already being viewed as a virtual vault. However, viewers can access their favs whenever they want…for a nominal monthly fee, of course.

2. If you like Star Wars and Marvel movies, it’s now the only place you can stream them.

As we mentioned above, it wasn’t a good day for Netflix when they found out that they were going to be losing not only the Disney movies they’d had in their catalog but, indeed, the Star Wars and Marvel stuff, too. One need only look at the top box office blockbusters of the past decade to see how valuable those franchises are. And that’s not even contemplating the drawing power of the new original Star Wars and Marvel series that Disney+ is adding to their programming roster.

**3. Those 21^st Century Fox entertainment properties? Yeah, that includes The Simpsons.**

Yes, yes, Avatar is in the mix, too. And that’ll be a big deal as we get closer to the release of Avatar 2. But Simpsons fans are a devoted bunch. Remember that FXX’s earlier deal with the series resulted in some record-setting programming and a great deal of viewership. However, giving those fans the opportunity to secure access to more than 650 episodes of the series – and the movie, too! – in an ad-free environment is enough to make them shout, “Gimme, gimme, gimme!” and subscribe post-haste.

4. The “come for the classics, stick around to see what’s next” rollout plan.

Disney+ certainly isn’t shirking on offering interesting and high-profile new programming straight out of the gate. This includes a Toy Story spin-off series (Forky Asks a Question), a new Star Wars series (The Mandalorian), and an extension of the High School Musical franchise with a tongue-twisting title (High School Musical: The Musical: The Series). However, Disney+ also has some deals on the horizon that strengthen the appeal of its debut. They’re understandably confident that no one will walk away from the service when they know they’re going to be getting a Monsters Inc. sequel series (Monsters at Work), a second Star Wars series that has Ewan Macgregor reprising his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi, and no less than eight new Marvel series.

5. Even setting aside the aforementioned sign-up deals, the standard monthly price is still a steal.

Of course, the definition of “a steal” is relative. That said, consider this: Disney+ is $6.99 a month, whereas Amazon Prime is $8.99 a month, Netflix is anywhere from $8.99-$15.99 depending on which plan you have, Hulu is $11.99 a month, and HBO Now is $14.99. No matter how you slice it, Disney+ is a bargain.

We can’t say that November 12, 2019 will be remembered as the day the sun set on Netflix and rose with Disney+ as the new king of streaming. But it’s evident that there’s a tussle on the horizon that’s going to put the battle between Simba and Scar to shame. And, hey, the good news is that ringside seats only cost $6.99 a month!

About the author

Will Harris has a longstanding history of doing long-form interviews with random pop culture figures for the A.V. Club, Vulture, and a variety of other outlets, including Variety. He’s currently working on a book with David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker. (And don’t call him Shirley.)

TikTok: How China concerns highlight the lack of US leadership on data

October 31, 2019 Chris Pedigo, SVP Government Affairs – DCN

Last week, US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) sent a letter to the Director of National Intelligence to request an assessment of the national security risks posed by TikTok. As you may know, TikTok is owned by ByteDance, which is based in Beijing. With TikTok’s popularity surging worldwide, the Senators expressed concerns about the Chinese Communist government’s ability to access consumer data collected by TikTok, censor speech, or even influence elections.

Of course, these concerns are not new. In the past, other policymakers have expressed similar concerns about the Chinese government when there is news about a US company operating in the Chinese market. Recently, Apple and Google among others were criticized for removing apps from their app stores that the Chinese government did not like.

A unified front

Chinese censorship has long been an issue that runs contrary to American beliefs and policy. Across the board, American policymakers agree that free speech is an important principle that should be protected. And this political consensus informs our stance with regard to China. There are questions about the best way to strategically engage with China, but there is no question that America supports the right of people to protest and speak freely.

The Chinese government has also been heavy handed with its use of data for surveillance as well as to monitor public (and private) sentiment. Though it has GDPR-like data regulation, what companies can do and what the government can do under Chinese law are quite different. This becomes a more complicated issue for the U.S. as we lack a federal standard or consensus for what constitutes ethical use or reasonable protection of consumer data by corporate entities or the government.

In 2018, Europe began to enforce the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which provides a framework for the proper collection and use of consumer data. And, in the last year, a handful of states (California most prominently) have adopted consumer privacy laws. For years, individual states have maintained separate and different data security and breach notification requirements. However, federal policymakers remain divided over a national standard for how consumer data should be protected, collected and used. This lack of consensus hinders America’s ability to lead the global conversation about data. And it certainly prevents our ability to take a unified stance on China’s data policies.

Competitive behavior

This year, we have seen multiple investigations opened into the anticompetitive behavior of Google and Facebook. Some have argued against breaking up Facebook and Google because these two companies need to be big enough to compete with China. For me, that argument runs counter to the core American values of democracy and capitalism. Ignore for the moment that monopolies (or duopolies in this case) tend to grow stagnant and stifle innovation. Our answer to China shouldn’t be “let’s be more like China!” Rather, we should be focused on enabling a fair marketplace where small and large businesses can compete, where consumers are protected and empowered, and where ideas and speech are protected.

DCN has long supported the passage of a federal standard for data security and breach notifications and a comprehensive consumer privacy law. Having a single national standard for the protection and use of consumer data would benefit consumers, who currently have no or different laws that apply. It would also benefit businesses, which would prefer to avoid having to comply with multiple and sometimes conflicting state laws.

Now, we have one more reason to unify our policy. A national standard on data security and use would get the US off the sidelines and enable American policymakers to lead the global conversation about data.

What the Australian Broadcasting Corporation can teach podcasters everywhere

October 24, 2019 Corinne Podger—Director, Digital Skills Agency

Research presented at Australia’s fourth national podcast conference offers some good news for media outlets that have yet to put a toe in the podcast waters. Ozpod, convened annually by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Australia’s public broadcaster, commissions a national podcast survey each year to accompany the event.

ABC’s 2019 Podcast research found that nearly 90% of Australians have now heard of podcasting, although just 19% listen to a podcast once a week. However, the number of regular listeners – people who listen to a podcast at least once a month – is growing by about 30% year-on-year.

Kellie Riordan, head of ABC Audio Studios, says that represents enormous opportunity for growth. “Because once people do start listening, they listen a lot. For example, if they’ve listened in the last week, they’re listening to more than one show, and consume between six and 10 episodes, so that’s fantastic in terms of growth,” Riordan says.

She says that about 80% of people who start listening to a show go on to listen to it all the way through. This is a particularly promising statistic for outlets keen to scatter advertisements throughout a podcast.

Search and discovery

The survey also looks at discoverability. According to the results, the most popular way of choosing a new podcast is via word of mouth, with 71% of respondents saying this was their favorite method of finding fresh must-listen content.

Riordan says the ABC takes advantage of this by cross promoting its own podcasts. It also uses its broadcast and social media channels to ensure the audiences who are most likely to want to listen to a particular podcast hear about it.

This approach “makes it a very sticky platform for us. For example if you listen to Richard Fidler on Conversations and he tells you we’ve got a great new true crime podcast, or we’ve got Ladies We Need To Talk, you’re going to go and check it out,” she says.

Spread the good word

There are plenty of pathways to build word-of-mouth momentum around a new show, even for outlets that don’t have the advantage of being a public broadcaster, Riordan adds. “You can leverage it through social media, through newsletters, through making short-form videos – and if you’re an independent podcaster who can’t lean on the ‘network’ effect’, you can tap into communities and influencers in your genre.”

Riordan says the ABC has done this successfully with No Feeling is Final. To promote the award-winning show that explores suicidal feelings, ABC asked national organizations like Beyond Blue and the Black Dog Institute to let their audiences know about it.

She says some audiences are also underserved, particularly children. This is particularly the case at a time when parents “are increasingly looking for ways to get kids off screens, and also to share in co-listening experiences with their children”.

In response to audience research, the ABC launched a children’s ethics show, Short & Curly, in 2016. It’s remained one of the broadcaster’s most popular podcasts ever since, and has been made into a book and a collaboration with WNYC in New York in 2017. “Building on this success, the ABC has created a whole suite of family shows that both kids and adults can enjoy, from Fierce Girls, to Animal Sound Safari, Imagine This, and Classic Kids,” Riordan says.

Make a splash

Just over half the survey respondents said they felt ‘overwhelmed’ by the increasing choice of podcasts. And, at first glance, the finding appears to give weight to suggestions that the podcast market may have peaked.

Riordan acknowledges that creating a splash in a crowded market isn’t easy. She urges outlets preparing to get into podcasting to thoroughly research their target audience and design a truly differentiated product. “People get it wrong if they think they have to pump out a podcast every week. You really need to think what your true podcast value is, what the audience is, and whether a [time-limited] series is a better fit,” she says.

She also points out that the gap in podcast awareness and listening, particularly among older audiences – who comprise just 8% of regular listeners in Australia – means podcast creators still need to explain to potential listeners how to find, subscribe to and download their show.

That’s echoed by the Australia-based editor of Podnews James Cridland, who presented the survey results at the OzPod conference. “My biggest recommendation is to have a big bang launch, and I’m not talking about an ad on page 5. I’m talking about ads throughout the day on your website, a strap on your newspaper for the week. Or, if you’re a radio station, it means promos every hour for the whole day of your launch, and instructions that make it easy and obvious for people to find and listen to it,” he says.

“If you do this, then you almost guarantee yourself a good position in the charts. Because podcast charts are trending charts, there’ll be some momentum because lots of people are subscribing to you for the first time.”

Building on a legacy

Cridland also has advice for legacy brands that are considering their first move into podcasting. “Firstly, use your brand and your talent,” he says. “There’s a temptation to launch a new brand around podcasts, rather than using your legacy brand. But if you do that you end up not having any heritage, and more importantly no points of difference from all the other podcasts out there.

“So if you are, let’s say, ‘The Sun’, you might launch a podcast called Bizarre – which is their big show business page – or a podcast with a star columnist, because your brand is your main asset here.”

Cridland says there’s also work to be done by many advertising departments on how to sell podcasts. He recommends approaching an agency that can provide specialist advice on how to sell a new podcast product to potential advertisers.

“People who sell full page ads in newspapers find it quite difficult to go out and sell audio, so having sales people and teams that understand the specifics of selling this kind of content is absolutely essential,” he says.

About the author

Corinne Podger is the Director of The Digital Skills Agency, which provides consultancy and training in mobile journalism, digital multimedia, social media and digital return on investment for newsrooms all over the world. She serves as a judge for the WAN-IFRA World Digital Media Awards, and as an advisor to the European Journalism Observatory at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

Local news: Forget national metrics and focus on your strengths

October 17, 2019 Chris M. Sutcliffe—Independent Media Reporter

Regional papers depend on building communities based on geography. But younger people prioritize interest-based communities. So, how can local and regional papers build new relationships with digital natives?

At the latest World News Media Congress in Glasgow, the publisher of The Globe and Mail Philip Crawley spoke about the unsurpassed value of an engaged local audience. He argued that—while digital engagement metrics provide invaluable data about audience funnels and propensity to convert—there are metrics that are unique to regional media they consider just as important.

He used the example of the paper’s packed obituaries pages to illustrate how a local title can measure its tangible engagement with an audience through non-digital interactions. Ultimately, Crawley made it clear that the worth of a local title cannot be measured through ones and zeroes alone.

Regional titles have long been experts in measuring engagement. These metrics might be tallying attendance at events they organize, counting submissions to the letters pages, or by less concrete metrics like the willingness of the public to interact with their journalists.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t necessarily translate to sustainability, even for publishers that have the same drive to reinvest in news products. Whether it’s due to quirks of geography, unpredictable societal differences, or for any number of reasons, local news publishers have been hurting. Investment in the print product is no guaranteed panacea either.

The key issue for many is that they have struggled to find ways in which digital products can serve as a focus for local engagement as print editions once did. Another factor is the often top-down approach from regional publishers who try to use national-level engagement metrics for their regional titles. Crucially, they largely miss those specialist ‘obituary pages’ engagement measurements that are an indication that audiences are invested in a community with a news brand at its center.

What does local engagement look like?

The race, then, is for local titles to discover what local engagement looks like in the platform age before their business models become unsustainable. To the industry’s great credit, it has been quick to launch research projects designed specifically around that.

One, the Community Listening and Engagement Fund (CLEF), was co-founded by a group that includes the Knight Foundation and the Lenfest Institute for Journalism. The goal of this initiative is to develop tools that measure that engagement (as opposed to the many approaches around finding funding or cost-savings).

Meanwhile, Poynter launched the Table Stakes initiative, which focuses on diversifying revenue for local newspaper, public radio, or digital news organizations. And the recently announced Project Neon is explicitly focused on finding ways to intensify audiences’ engagement with regional publisher Archant’s titles. We can look forward to seeing useful findings from these efforts in a few years’ time.

Investment in an uncertain future

Those efforts are welcome—and exactly what the industry should be doing. The unfortunate reality, however, is that while regional publishers have the expertise and history of engaging regional audiences in print, digitally they are playing catch-up. This is particularly significant given their need connect with younger audiences—and from something of a standing start.

This is not a consequence of a lack of effort in engaging audiences. In fact, there has been plenty of excellent work done to discover how young audiences interact with news digitally. However, that hasn’t always helped local publishers build engagement with young people.

For instance, Research from Flamingo on behalf of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism demonstrates that, as a result of having grown up with ready access to the internet, younger readers do not necessarily share the same values or expectations about the purpose of news:

“They still need and want news to connect their world to the world – and fulfil an array of different social and personal needs – but they don’t necessarily see the traditional media as the best or only way to do that… They don’t need to seek it out, news comes to them.” As a result, the reality of engaging young audiences is that it is much harder to build a community around a geographical rather than an interest-based niche.

The Flamingo study also found that no news app was in the top 25 most-used app in their respondents’ phones. This implies that local publishers must have a presence on social platforms to reach those young audiences on which they are increasingly going to rely.

To make matters more difficult, social platforms do not typically offer user data or tools that are of value to local publishers. (Although Facebook’s most recent endeavor in this area is reportedly better in this respect than past attempts). Local publishers are stuck between a rock and a hard place, then, trying to build communities on platforms that don’t necessarily cater to them.

In an excellent thread on Twitter, The Los Angeles Times’ engagement editor Adriana Lacy argued that publishers having a presence on even the recently-launched platforms like TikTok will eventually help with that engagement issue. However, she also notes it might take precious time – something local publishers particularly are often short of – to see any real return.

Part of the solution

Local and regional titles have always relied on creating a community out of their local readers. Efforts like comments sections on pages are useful for eyeballing the levels of community engagement, but without a print title to provide those ‘obituary metrics’, and with younger audiences increasingly finding ‘news’ content through platforms and intermediaries, regional publishers have struggled to demonstrate they have the heart and trust of a community.

One potential solution is for regional publishers to double down on what the BBC World Service Group’s head of editorial partnerships Emily Kasriel has termed ‘Solutions-focused Journalism.’ As Kasriel put it:

“Another factor driving our SFJ initiative is the desire to better serve our audiences, particularly young people. According to recent BBC Audience Research, 51% of 16-18 year olds and 47% of 19-24 year olds in the UK ‘agree or strongly agree’ that they want news to also provide solutions. The figures were even higher in the developing world: 75% of Indians, 78% of Nigerians and 82% of Kenyans of all ages want their news to provide solutions and not just problems.”

Solutions-focused journalism, centered around local areas, are potentially how publishers can marry the interest-based communities of the internet to the local areas they cover. Here, they can happily use those platforms on which they have established themselves as both a place for discussion and to provide calls for action around those proactive, solutions-based causes they are championing. The UK’s Pink News, though an interest-based title, grew to be the largest LGBTQ+ publisher in the world as a result of its campaigning journalism, for instance.

In the city of Hull in the UK, that focus on providing solutions journalism appears to be bearing fruit for one regional digital publisher, for instance. Journalism.co.uk reports: “Constructive journalism project Hull Is This launched in November 2018 with early promise, reaching 37k hits in its debut month and 45k in January 2019. While page views alone are not always the best metric for measuring the success of editorial content, it does at least suggest demand for local, positive stories.”

Similarly, the Yorkshire Post’s high levels of trust in the community have been attributed in part to its campaigning journalism around loneliness in the region.

So, while there may not be a direct digital successor to the ‘obituary metrics’ that demonstrated there was a community around local print titles quite yet, it isn’t to say that it is impossible to recreate those communities in the age of platforms. Instead, it could be that regional publishers will find a new path by shifting from being passive but present in the community to a much more pro-active and campaigning force around which a new, younger community will form.

How marketers and agencies can address increasing privacy regulation

October 10, 2019 Maureen Morrison, Independent Marketing Consultant

Privacy has been in the spotlight more than ever before. Tech giants like Facebook and Google have been scrutinized in congressional hearings, fined, and are under investigation from the Department of Justice, dozens of states attorneys general, and the Federal Trade Commission.

Regulation has taken hold via GDPR. Now on the immediate horizon is the California Consumer Privacy Act, which is set to go into law Jan. 1, 2020. (And other state laws are on the horizon.) Though it is less comprehensive than GDPR, CCPA is the first significant data privacy law in the U.S. and will therefore set a precedent for how companies comply to privacy regulations stateside. It also effectively ends what has long been an environment of self-regulation.

These laws certainly impact how players outside the tech giants operate, including client-side marketers and agencies. Media buyers and sellers, for example, are left to make sense of how to handle the demands of reaching targeted audiences at scale while also not alienating potential customers by mishandling data or using it in a way that makes them uncomfortable.

Privacy is, unsurprisingly, among the top concerns for executives in the industry, given the potential to affect how they target their advertising. A survey from Marin Software polled marketers across categories and asked them what challenges will most impact their businesses in 2019. Atop the list was data privacy, tracking restrictions and ad blocking.

Legal fragmentation

CCPA allows people to know who is collecting their data, what is being collected, and with whom that data is being shared. Businesses of a certain size will be required to comply. As of now, the CCPA is not yet finalized, though approval of amendments are expected to finish this month.

What the ad industry wants is one national law. Four industry trade groups, including the ANA, formed a coalition called Privacy for America to lobby to “Congress to ensure federal online privacy legislation is less strict than a law scheduled to go into effect in California in 2020,” according to Reuters.

Dan Jaffe, group executive vice president of government relations for the Association of National Advertisers, said of the ANA’s problems with CCPA: “At the most fundamental level, it is that it is a single state law. We don’t think that privacy rules work on a state-by-state basis. The business has already gone through a substantial amount of fragmentation and that is only going to increase in 2020 unless there is a federal law passed that preempts state laws.”

Last year, tech giants like Google, Facebook, IBM, and Microsoft began lobbying the Trump Administration for a gentler federal law – one that would override CCPA. However, unless something major happens, it looks like the CCPA may set the tone for how online companies approach privacy in the U.S., at least in the near term. And the marketplace will have to respond quickly.

Privacy now

But despite cries for a federal law, CCPA will soon go into effect. So, what are agencies and marketers to do in the near term?

While companies have already had to make adjustments to comply with GDPR that can apply to CCPA, CCPA is “still a bit of ‘wait and see,’ given that there are still negotiations taking place and amendments being made,” said Jon Taylor, SVP of Global Data Strategy at WPP media agency Essence.

However, the looming California regulation will almost certainly affect media buys and plans, according to Taylor. This could result in more contextual-based ads (versus behavioral targeting based off cookies) and ads that are targeted to more general audiences. “Agencies and marketers need to be able to work more seamlessly across a spectrum of aggregated, normative data and granular, programmable data where it’s available. This may result in media plan that feature more generalized targeting options, but these are hopefully informed by more robust insights.”

For agencies, said Taylor, the challenge is around vendors and “predicting how these same new rules and regulations will affect partner offerings. For instance, the advent of GDPR saw some companies completely pivot their business models (Tapad), change the way data could be accessed and used (Google) or even exit the Eurozone completely (Verve).”

When agencies and marketers work together, Taylor says that “more marketers should bring their legal practitioners into discussions with their agencies around privacy issues” to ensure enforcement is happening everywhere along the supply chain. After all, “agencies have excellent points of view of these issues, and a broad market view, but are also not legal practices.”

First- and third-party data

Outside of agencies and marketers working together to ensure compliance, there is the issue of the growing importance of first party data. Tanya Forsheit, Partner and Chair of Privacy and Data Security Group, Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz, told the Wall Street Journal that transparency will be required, and that marketers and other companies like ad-techs, agencies, exchanges and intermediaries, will be among those held accountable. “Marketers will have to rely more on first-party data, the information they get from having a direct relationship with the consumer. They will rely less on third-party data that they don’t collect directly.”

Some, however, are concerned that the reliance on first party data resulting from privacy protections will only strengthen the hold that Facebook and Google have on the marketplace. “It’s actually concentrating power and market leverage within the walled garden, because they have certain advantages, direct relations with consumers,” Adam Solomon, CMO of marketing technology platform Lotame, told Ad Age.

“The effects of regulation mean that the walls of the walled gardens only seem to get higher. But conversely, the likelihood that those platforms will ever share data between them – for the benefit of the marketer – only seems to get lower… In a sense, our industry is at an all-time low in terms of data portability,” said Taylor.

About the author

Maureen Morrison is a writer and consultant, working with agencies, startups, publishers and brands on editorial and communications strategies. She previously was a reporter and editor at Ad Age for 12 years, covering agencies, digital media and marketers.

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