Category results for "Featured Post"

How Kumu’s Roland Ros partners with media companies for commerce and community

August 13, 2020 Peggy Anne Salz, Founder and Lead Analyst – Mobile Groove

Global interactive platforms such as TikTok may strike a chord with younger audiences. Still, they miss the opportunity to drive hyper-local content and shape tight-knit transnational communities. It’s a significant and growing gap that Kumu, a Filipino-centric social app and livestreaming platform, seeks to fill with customized content channels. The combination of communication, commerce, and community allows fans to interact and purchase products while watching their favorite livestreamers.

It’s a smart move when platforms everywhere on the planet are forging relationships to become Super Apps. But content will be the factor that sets some of these Super Apps apart. By cultivating relationships with media companies and content creators, they can reach audiences with entertaining content that inspires lasting passion, not just one-off purchases.

It’s a blueprint that makes business sense for companies lining up to engage Internet-addicted populations in emerging markets. Boston Consulting Group’s Center for Customer Insight forecasts that Internet users in emerging markets, which include India, Indonesia, Kenya, Morocco Nigeria and the Philippines, will contribute 3x the number of new Internet users compared to developed markets. It’s a young community that will engage in “digitally influenced” content. They’ll also make purchases worth a whopping $4 trillion by 2022.

Continuing our series of DCN video interviews, I talk to Roland Ros. Ros founded Kumu, a livestreaming app that counts a community of more than 5 million GenZ and Millennial Filipinos spread across more than 50 countries. Kumu recently raised $5 million in a Series A funding round led by an impressive mix of investors including OpenSpace Ventures, Summit Media, and Philippines-based media conglomerate ABS-CBN. We discuss the importance of trusted conversations and the efforts of media companies, including Cosmopolitan and Esquire, to unlock the creative and commercial potential of its growing and global audience.

Here are three key takeaways from our talk:

Power community-driven commerce with authenticity and positivity

Younger audiences are eager to participate (and purchase) on platforms that make them feel involved and accepted. “GenZ and Millenials are tired of the social anxiety that comes with pretending life is perfect,” Ros explains. Authenticity has replaced attention as members no longer value millions of likes or hundreds of thousands of followers. The payoff is positivity, he says. Kumu’s “Kumunity” appreciates “microtransactions and virtual gifts that simply say ‘thank you’ for the content you create.”

Segment according to journeys, not customers

Ros encourages companies to rewrite the marketing playbook to emphasize the “aha” moments that keep audiences everywhere hooked. To pinpoint these events, he relies on CleverTap to track behaviors, patterns and architect a customer journey to make each member feel like an individual. “The logic has to be clean: if this, then that.” Building these capabilities has allowed Kumu to reach “month four retention rates in the 40% range,” he says.

Micro-influencers have a massive impact

Ros reveals the fastest-growing business on the Kumu platform is driven by influencers and creators on the platform talking about their passions and interests. This realization has prompted him to partner with media companies to launch “the concept of an interactive social television network,” amplifying the content and content creators the community loves.

Ros also talks about blending content and commerce to pave the way for “Super Social Apps” fueled by connection and microtransactions. He also lifts a lid on the best practices that allow Kumu and its partners to reach “up to 10%” conversion rates for livestreaming commerce on the platform.

Watch the full interview:

How three media companies are approaching virtual events and monetization

August 6, 2020 Esther Kezia Thorpe – Independent Journalist

Many media companies have turned to virtual events as a way to engage audiences on a personal level during the pandemic. From webinars to virtual festivals, teams have worked to evolve their offerings as the long-term outlook for physical events remains uncertain.

The Financial Times, The Atlantic, and Bloomberg, are among media companies that produce events as one of their diversified revenue streams. They are also among those that have had to evolve their revenue strategy as their teams hit their stride with virtual events.

Maturing virtual events strategies

In March, FT Live went from being completely focused on physical events to virtual in just days. As a test, they launched The Global Economic Emergency webinar. And with just three days of promotion, they racked up over 7,000 attendees who logged in to watch.

“We had these huge numbers, and it was a bit of a lightbulb moment for us,” explained Orson Francescone, the Managing Director of FT Live. “We quickly realized that we could do something bigger and bolder.”

Weeks later, the company launched The Global Boardroom. The three-day event featured 110 remote speakers and boasted 52,000 registrations. The event focused on the impact of coronavirus on policy, business, and finance. And it was so popular that a second edition is scheduled for November.

The Atlantic has seen similar success with online registrants, with over 20,000 attendees attending their 28 virtual events. “It’s a larger audience than we would have been able to convene in person,” said Aretae Wyler, COO of The Atlantic. “It’s more international, and we’re seeing the same caliber of attendees.”

Bloomberg faced a different challenge with virtual events, as they already had an established Bloomberg TV offering. For them, it wasn’t a matter of a pivot to video. Rather, it was creating a distinct experience and value proposition for a new offering. This meant the focus for its virtual events had to be on the level of interaction attendees could have, and what the value would be for sponsors.

“Once we got crisp on these elements…what we needed from a platform, resource, and process perspective became self-evident,” Bloomberg Live’s Global Head Patrick Garrigan explained. “Not only are our audiences tuning in, they’re staying with us and engaging.”

The value for sponsors

For Bloomberg Live, attracting sponsors came down to the basics of why clients support events in-person. “We distil it down to three core attributes: thought leadership, brand awareness, and content creation and amplification,” said Garrigan. “Similar to in-person, it then becomes a matter of identifying how our platform can deliver on these metrics.”

Bloomberg delivers this by creating sponsor “moments” throughout its virtual programs, as well as allowing sponsors to share the perspectives of their senior leaders. They then share segments from the events widely across Bloomberg channels.

For the FT, it is their technology stack – as well as their access to large global audiences – that has been a key selling point for sponsors. Early on, the team focused on ensuring they had a strong analytics functionality in place.

“We can analyze who is attending, what stage of the event, how they are engaging, and serve this intelligence to our sponsors,” Francescone outlined. “Sponsors really enjoy our platform because it’s giving them, from an ROI point of view, much bigger and more detailed numbers than in a physical environment.”

Big numbers are also a draw for The Atlantic’s sponsors. The publisher is gearing up for The Atlantic Festival in September which will be entirely virtual, and free to attend. Whereas they would normally have 3,000 in-person attendees, the team is targeting between one and 2 million registrants for the virtual version.

Sponsor interest has grown as The Atlantic’s confidence in their model and ability to pull in high-caliber attendees. “Most of the sponsors that we have worked with in-person have been interested in trying this model with us,” said Wyler. “Part of that is the belief they have in our power to convene and engage audiences. We’ve maintained a 75% average watch time for our audience, which is pretty incredible.”

Reader revenue and data

When it comes to audience revenue, the FT is now charging delegates for all its events from autumn onwards. But for the second edition of its Global Boardroom event in November, FT Live is taking a freemium approach.

The event has three tiers of ticketing. First, they’ll offer a free pass which gives live access to talks, Q&As and polls. A $65 pass provides on-demand access to all talks and summary reports. The professional pass, at $385, adds 1-1 networking, exclusive access to extra sessions, and a business community area.

Beyond ticket sales, the FT sees long-term opportunities for the newly engaged data. “Of the 52,000 people we had attending The Global Boardroom, about 75% were completely new to us,” said Francescone. These attendees can be monetized not just through the event, but as part of the FT’s core subscription strategy.

The Atlantic also sees opportunity in bringing in new subscribers. “We are constantly thinking about how this can be a driver of subscription growth,” Wyler emphasized. “The benefit of virtual events is that it’s an opportunity to convene both the superfans, but also to introduce The Atlantic to new audiences.”

In previous years, tickets to the in-person Atlantic Festival have ranged from $50 to $975. However, registration to the virtual Festival in September this year is free. That said, there will be subscriber-only benefits like exclusive sessions and Q&A opportunities to bring value to existing subscribers and entice new joiners.

Bloomberg has historically not charged for its events. However, the exception is their Bloomberg Break a way CEO membership community, where virtual events have been leveraged as part of the membership package.

“We’ve created content that is exclusively for members. It gives them the tools, best practices, and essential feedback to grapple with the issues that are impacting business,” said Garrigan, highlighting the opportunity to provide another touchpoint to members through virtual events.

The future of virtual business events

Garrigan sees virtual events being a part of Bloomberg Live’s programming for the foreseeable future. “Given Bloomberg Media’s global footprint, virtual events are such a natural fit,” he said. “While we are incredibly eager to get back to in-person events as soon as it’s safe to do so…[virtual events] serve as a way to connect broad geographies in real-time that may not be able to join us in-room.”

For FT Live, their early success gave the team the confidence to run events for the rest of the year in a digital form. But for 2021, they are being cautious. Francescone suspects that they will iterate towards a hybrid event model. However, details (such as access and pricing) are still to be determined.

“We’ve set up a small internal task force within FT Live which is examining what the future is going to look like,” he explained. “What people’s preferences might be today might not be the same not only in five years’ time, but in months or even weeks.”

These publishers may have the scale that makes it easier to convince top-tier sponsors to get on board, but there are lessons for publishers of all sizes. Virtual events offer a wider audience and higher engagement than in-person events, whether that be hundreds or thousands of attendees.

As for reader revenue, features like on-demand viewing or virtual networking can be sold as an add-on, or as a subscriber-only benefit. The key is being flexible in your offerings and understanding what your audience will respond to as the situation evolves.

Featured Post | Perspectives

It’s time to rethink the opinion section

July 30, 2020 Chris M. Sutcliffe – Independent Media Reporter

Newspapers are more than just news. They’re also an integral part of the national conversation through their opinion columns. That, in fact, is how many newspapers (particularly weekend editions) market themselves; with huge banners above the masthead proclaiming which columnist is being most opinionated that day.

Recently, though, the two disciplines of news and opinion have started butting up against one another. The twin crises of lack of trust and falling revenue have exposed the sore spot where news and opinion clash to the detriment of the whole.

When words collide

News and opinion are the two sides of the coin for newspapers, each valuable in its own right. It’s unthinkable that any title should drop one for fear of impoverishing the other. However, of late, things are heating up.

Take the latest flashpoint: Almost 300 journalists at The Wall Street Journal sent a letter (later leaked) to the paper’s publisher arguing that a lack of fact-checking standards in its opinion columns were undermining the credibility of the newsgathering operation. The letter itself is worth a read simply for the examples it cites. However, the key point is as follows:

“Many readers already cannot tell the difference between reporting and Opinion. And reporters nonetheless face questions about the Journal’s accuracy and fairness because of errors published in Opinion.

“Some of us have been told by sources that they won’t talk to us because they don’t trust that the WSJ is independent of the editorial page; many of us have heard sources and readers complain about the paper’s “bias” as a result of what they’ve read in Opinion.”

Experts excluded

Perceived bias is, of course, one of the most frequently cited reasons for a lack of trust in news. One of the letter’s signatories’ suggestions for improving that is to impose an even stricter division between the two sides of the paper’s content, specifically to remove accusations of bias.

The tension is exacerbated by the way newspapers use social media to attract audiences, where that division isn’t enforced as rigidly. The main Twitter or Facebook channel is as likely to push an opinion piece as it would news content, which only contributes to readers’ confusion. Even when papers have dedicated opinion accounts, there is crossover.

That’s especially bad given that opinion writers are, for the most part, hired for their ability to create conversation. There is considerable incentive for columnists to be controversial or deliberately strident on some arbitrary issue, because they are rewarded for driving views. That controversy may be good for newspaper businesses in the short-term. However, when it undermines trust in the news side of the house, it undermines the business as a whole.

Oh M8 pic.twitter.com/Rr4ULyAU3X
— tom jamieson (@jamiesont) July 28, 2020

The issue is further compounded because truly expert voices often do not have a place in the opinion section. Star columnists are usually celebrities, or generalist writers reacting to the news cycle. They don’t have the depth or breadth of expertise to comment on, say, epidemiology or the social aspects of managing a pandemic.

Truly, there is no bottom to this barrel. pic.twitter.com/y1j9lqSxMn
— David Andress (@ProfDaveAndress) July 28, 2020

Solutions journalism

So how do we counter misinformation from popular columnists without hamstringing their ability to attract readers?

One potential solution is, as the WSJ news team suggests, to allow the news team to rebut and call out inaccuracies in columnists’ content. That, at least, would lean into the transparency that I’ve previously argued is necessary for the restoration of trust.

Newspapers could also follow the model used by The Conversation and commission genuine experts to write on their chosen topics. Their journalists are on hand to filter that expertise and make it understandable to the public. The Conversation UK’s chief executive Chris Waiting told me that, at times of crisis like the pandemic, news publishers are rewarded for doing so. As Waiting said:

“From February or March, we saw our traffic go through the roof because everything was changing, and nobody knew what was going on. So, the public was just really hungry to have experts not only explain the current moment, but to put it in context.”

Whiting points out that there have been more than a few successful doctors and scientists who have had secondary careers in the media off the back of their expertise. However, he says the majority of academics balk at appearing in newspapers for fear of being misrepresented.

“A lot of academics are quite skeptical of talking to the mainstream media. They’ve seen their work misrepresented or over-sensationalized. The trust between the two has broken down and so the partnership that we create is very important to that.”

View from the audience

The recent row over The Guardian carrying content with which its core audience disagreed shows that you can’t please everyone. But if that content is demonstrably coming from experts and not attention-seeking columnists it’s more defensible.

"the guardian could have become hugely profitable simply by running only articles that agree with me" – everyone
— Tom Chivers (@TomChivers) July 16, 2020

Opinion columnists are part and parcel of a title’s appeal. And without them a newspaper would lose part of its identity. That said, the industry needs to recognize the act of giving them a platform is perceived as a tacit endorsement of their views, and that those views are inextricably linked to how the public views the news outlet as a whole.

An insider’s guide to next week’s Antitrustpalooza

July 23, 2020 Jason Kint, CEO – DCN

EDITOR'S NOTE: As of 4 p.m. July 24, 2020
Monday's first-of-its-kind congressional hearing with the CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google was been officially postponed due to a conflict with the memorial services for the late Rep. John Lewis, the House Judiciary Committee confirmed Friday. 

How to watch 
Congressional Hearing: Online Platforms and Market Power, Part 6: Examining the Dominance of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google
Who: Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Jeff Bezos
Date: Originally, Monday, July 27 / Rescheduled for Wednesday, July 29
Time: 12:00 p.m. ET 
Stream: on YouTube of course!

As CEO of DCN I have the privilege of addressing the executive leaders from our membership at our annual Next: Summit. This past January, my remarks were titled “2020 Vision.” When I look back at my presentation just six months later, it is astounding to me how little we knew about what 2020 would bring.

However, my first slide had a close-up of the eyes of the CEOs of the four companies who have most benefited from the growth of our industry: Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon. On Wednesday – halfway through this tumultuous year – we will hear from them directly. “The 4 Horsemen of the Techopolypse” – as Kara Swisher called them in The New York Times – will testify under oath before Congress for the first time, on antitrust matters, an area where they face the most risk to their massive businesses.

Two of the companies, Google and Facebook, are already under highly sensitive antitrust investigations by nearly every state, federal, and international regulator of note. And Apple is being investigated by EU antitrust regulators. So, this is the public accountability portion of the show. Get the popcorn ready, because this is going to be one to watch.

Tuning in

There is a well-paved road of industry concerns around these four companies. Like many topics these days, they tend to gravitate towards specific concerns of the left or the right. For serious experts, though, antitrust becomes a critical focal point because nearly every one of the grievances is a symptom of too much power and too much control over the design, delivery, data and dollars that fund the media ecosystem. This hearing offers an unprecedented opportunity to discuss these issues with the chief executive at each of these organizations. And while it is clear that everyone involved in these antitrust investigations has become far more knowledgeable on the issues in play here over the past few years, we can’t afford to waste a moment.

Having closely studied prior global testimonies for these companies, I am optimistic the committee will be confined to lawmakers focused on antitrust. But I’ve been thinking a lot about the way these lines of inquiry usually go. And while there are absolute must-ask questions for each of these companies, there are also those that should be avoided. I call the latter group “rabbit hole” and “sand trap” questions.

The trouble with rabbit holes is that – while the question may well be a good one – the answer is likely to be complex, unwieldy, and take the inquiry places that will confuse many and clarify little. As for the sand traps, these are the types of questions that the PR and lobbying machines at these companies adore. They lend themselves to unrelenting spin and little actual insight. And critically for this hearing, they will do little to illuminate the issue of antitrust.

Targeted questions and unwanted detours

Here’s my list of burning questions that must be addressed, along with likely rabbit holes and sand traps to be avoided.

What to Watch For – Apple

Tim Cook, CEO

Burning question: App store terms
This is of particular concern as Apple rolls into TV, Music, and now News. The company even acquired a weather app last month.

Rabbit hole: Security
Whether it be backdoors for law enforcement, data access by China, or app security, this discussion won’t get anywhere; it leads to a false choice between security and privacy. Consumers deserve both. Period.

Sand trap: Privacy
Tim Cook, on behalf of Apple, has been a unique and powerful voice carrying the torch for the human right to privacy. This is good and favors them significantly, most notably in contrast to the practices of Google and Facebook. However, it is important to remember that Apple doesn’t have an advertising business. So, it is happy to criticize the core asset of Google and Facebook.

What to Watch For – Google

Sundar Pichai, CEO

Burning question: Advertising marketplace
All parties – the UK, Australia, France, the Department of Justice and State AGs – seem to be focusing antitrust investigations on Google’s advertising systems. This includes its vast data collection across its dominant search, operating system, browser and its many adtech acquisitions. An expert economist described it as a “walled garden” yet across the open web. Remember this every time Google champions the “open web” and the small publishers all while taking half of the revenue for itself.

Rabbit hole: Censorship
Republicans would love to nail Google for bias in its search engine. I’m empathetic because all searchers should readily find their trusted news sources in search results. Algorithmic bias is an issue of concern. And censorship is a troubling topic. However, these are complex issues that cannot be adequately addressed in this context. The short answer is that you need competition to provide alternatives, as I testified to Senate Judiciary last year.

Sand trap: Revenue share confusion
In previous testimony and in press reports, there has been significant debate around the “ad tech tax” or the percentage taken by Google whether it be 70/30 or 30/70. Don’t go there. It’s a time suck. Google has powerful spinners working on obfuscating their dominance here.

What to Watch For – Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO

Burning question: Data collection
As the German courts concluded, Facebook uses its data collection across the web and its own apps to dominate social media. Copious research and leaked documents have shown how Facebook has used this access to data to cut out competition and control markets. Facebook has created an advertising marketplace fueled by its massive data and has turned away from addressing issues of quality of the experiences around it, harming both publishers and advertisers.

Rabbit hole: Content moderation
Don’t get me wrong, the push for Facebook to better moderate its content is incredibly important. But the solution isn’t simply tighter enforcement and arguably outside the scope of this hearing. Mark Zuckerberg will point to EU audits on Facebook policing hate speech and their tens of thousands of “moderators.” Put simply, if Instagram and Facebook were two different competing companies, the incentives to act on issues such as harassed journalists like Maria Ressa, boycotting advertisers or persecuted people, would be much higher.

Sand trap: Censorship
Zuckerberg would love to have a partisan debate in which Facebook carries the torch of free expression and he cloaks himself in love for the First Amendment. The real conversation Facebook wants to avoid is its algorithmic amplification decisions which provide velocity and reach to the content and advertising on Facebook’s platforms, regardless of its potential harm and without any liability for it. However, this issue is better suited for a hearing on CDA 230. In the context of antitrust, alternative and competitive social platform choices for consumers and advertisers will only drive more quality.

What to Watch For – Amazon

Jeff Bezos, CEO

Burning question: Platform privilege
Did Amazon lie under oath to the committee? Do they use data from retailers to inform their own product decisions as WSJ reported? Do they unfairly control prices and exclude competition? Lawmakers want to know, and Congress should find out.

Rabbit hole: Getting personal
Anything related to Bezos’s ownership of Washington Post or personal life. It’s his first time testifying and let’s hope this hearing stays on topic.

Sand trap: Pandemic savior
Amazon, more than any company represented, has a critical role in supply chains and is vitally important during the pandemic. While they are certainly the fox in the hen house, they’ll happily talk about how they benefit online small businesses (even launch an entire association to do it!) The fact is that local businesses are struggling mightily during the pandemic while Jeff Bezos is reported to be closing in on $200B as the wealthiest man on the planet. His fortune grew a record $13B on a single day last week – during a global pandemic. That pretty much tells you what need to know about who benefits the most. So, why even go there?

There is so much that we’d all love to see uncovered in the interrogation of these powerful tech CEOs. But this hearing is focused on antitrust. And frankly, there are so many issues with these companies that would be addressed, or at least alleviated, if their unrelenting market dominance was diminished. It is critical that this questioning stay on point and avoid rabbit holes and sand traps. It is clear that each of these companies has been allowed to benefit from rules that were intended to foster capitalism and innovation – strong American principles that everyone can still get behind. As Scott Galloway has consistently pointed out, real competition is the basis for both of these.

It is time for change.

How Vox Media and The Atlantic are building reader revenue

July 16, 2020 Evan DeSimone – Independent Journalist

The coronavirus pandemic has disrupted every sector of the global economy, and digital publishing is no exception. The virus and the resulting lockdowns have depressed ad spend and changed consumer behavior. It has also forced publishers to rethink foundational aspects of a business model that was already under pressure. For many publishers, the pandemic has increased these pressures and accelerated trends that were already on the horizon. In particular, it has hastened the need to shift to a greater reliance on subscription revenue.

In recent years, publishers have worked to diversify their revenue streams. However, the pandemic has challenged this revenue remix as advertising rates have fallen precipitously and live events remain off the table for the foreseeable future. At the same time, media companies have seen spikes in traffic as consumers seek out information about the virus or new content to pass the time in lockdown.

We spoke to two leading digital publishers that have been successfully navigating this period of change. We discussed how the pandemic has impacted their subscription programs, their strategies for converting new readers into paying subscribers, and how they plan to maximize retention.

Two reader revenue models

Corinne Osnos manages Audience Strategy at Vox Media. The digital publisher operates a portfolio of properties across multiple verticals and has not historically relied on reader revenue. Vox Media maintains a diversified revenue model across its portfolio that includes advertising, branded content, and commerce across print, digital, audio, and video content.

Last year, however, Vox acquired New York Media, which is heavily grounded in reader revenue from subscriptions. New York Magazine and its related digital properties – like Vulture, The Cut, and Intelligencer – use a metered paywall through which they allow readers to sample a limited amount of content before prompting them to subscribe. In April, Vox Media rolled out a reader contribution model on Vox.com to better leverage reader revenue for the network.

Emilie Harkin is Executive Director of Customer Growth at The Atlantic, a news, politics, and culture media brand. Launched as a print magazine in 1857, The Atlantic has extensive experience with reader revenue having relied primarily on subscriptions along with live events to support itself for over 160 years. In September of 2019, it rolled out a pay model for its digital property for the first time. Like New York Magazine, The Atlantic uses a metered paywall that gives readers a chance to try before they buy.

How they’re gaining

Both publications have seen significant traffic and subscriber growth since the start of the pandemic. According to Harkin, The Atlantic has seen subscriptions rise steadily since March, with growth outpacing pre-pandemic projections. She attributes this additional growth to the decision the magazine made in March to exempt its coronavirus content from the metered paywall. They provided readers with unlimited access to The Atlantic’s in-depth reporting on the virus.

“We felt really strongly that ungating our Coronavirus coverage was a public good,” Harkin said of the move. For now, The Atlantic plans to keep essential COVID coverage ungated indefinitely, replacing its paywall meter with hyperlinks that direct readers to a hub that aggregates all the magazine’s coronavirus coverage. Despite the decision to steer this new audience toward more free content, Harkin still credits The Atlantic’s pandemic journalism with driving growth across the magazine.

People “wanted to see what The Atlantic had published about the Coronavirus. But we also saw that people did move from the Covid coverage to other areas of the site.”

New York Magazine is also seeing substantial subscriber growth in the time of Coronavirus. When asked to compare subscriber gains during the pandemic to pre-pandemic projections for 2020, Osnos points to April, during which the magazine saw its single largest month of subscriber growth on record. They added roughly three times as many subscribers as compared with the same period in 2019.

Vox Media is also leaning into member-only virtual events and community building to drive growth during the pandemic. “This week, we announced the launch of “Inside New York.” The new subscriber-only event series gives our readers an unfiltered behind-the-scenes look at our magazine. “We also launched Pivot Schooled, a first-of-its-kind virtual event series bringing New York’s award-winning Pivot podcast to life,” said Osnos.

“As we scale for a larger audience, we’ve remarketed our Vulture membership program to foster a digital community. We’re utilizing the program to deepen brand appreciation and grow paid subscriptions.”

How they are maintaining

While growth remains steady, both publishers are taking steps to ensure that they retain these new audiences post-pandemic. The unusual circumstances driving the growth mean that it’s difficult to predict what will happen when life starts returning to normal. Osnos and Harkin aren’t leaving anything to chance. Both are rolling out new email marketing and reader communication strategies to cement their connection with readers.

“We’ve been working on deepening our subscribers’ relationship to our brands through onboarding and engagement campaigns. But we’ve not seen churn definitively tied to economic or editorial reasons thus far,” said Osnos. “Our largest successes for mitigating churn are often the direct results of improvements to our billing and renewal communication series. We find that transparency with matters of account and expanding our subscriber benefits with events, supplemental content, and other benefits have provided the greatest results when retaining subscribers.”

According to Harkin, The Atlantic will also emphasize communication and reader connection. “We really value the relationship with our readers. We’re constantly evolving and developing our retention plans through email welcome series and onsite experiences as well as how we talk to people throughout their life with email marketing and on social media.”

A new normal

It is unclear how long Covid-19 will be with us and which of the changes to daily life and reader habits will persist once the virus is contained. What is clear is that, in the near-term, publishers’ reliance on reader revenue will be greater than at any other time in the digital era. The work publishers do to grow subscriptions today, and to retain those subscribers as the situation evolves, will determine how well-positioned they are to survive and thrive.

As for Osnos and Harkin, both expressed the belief that the success of their efforts ultimately rests not in the hands of marketing or revenue teams, but with the quality journalism of their respective publications. As Harkin puts it, “What people ultimately subscribe to is your journalism. So, as long as the quality of your journalism is there, and the quality of your marketing reader relationships match the quality the journalism that you’re producing, you’ll have a pretty winning combination.”

Why Skift is putting reader revenue in the pilot’s seat

July 7, 2020 Esther Kezia Thorpe – Independent Journalist

Travel industry intelligence site Skift has become the latest publisher to put membership at the forefront of their business. CEO and founder Rafat Ali announced the launch of Skift Pro on Twitter, saying that “Skift is now officially a Subscription-First business information company.”

Skift is now officially a Subscription-First business information company…
— Rafat Ali, Media Owner & Operator (@rafat) July 1, 2020

Skift joins a growing number of publishers turning to reader revenue as a way to diversify revenue streams and mitigate the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on other aspects of the business like events and advertising.

We spoke to Skift co-founder and Chief Product Officer Jason Clampet about the details of the launch, how it sits alongside its other products, and why this is such an important shift for the niche travel publisher.

Laying the foundations

Skift Pro has been in the works for over a year. The publisher already has two existing subscription products: Skift Research, which does deep-dive reports, data and analysis on travel industry trends, and Skift Airline Weekly, a subscription product dedicated to aviation news and analysis. The two products were faring well. However, Skift had een eyeing examples from other B2B companies like Digiday and Business of Fashion, which made subscription models a more central part of their strategy to build business resilience.

The first task the team had to tackle before adding another subscription product into the mix was to bring everything into one payment platform. “We built our own database to store users and details about the payment process so that everything was seamlessly tied together,” Clampet explained. This meant that subscribers to multiple products would be able to manage their subscriptions in one place.

In the last week of February 2020, Clampet held a big team meeting where he walked everyone through Skift Pro. In particular, he told the team how excited they were to be launching it on March 16th. But March 11th would be Skift’s last day in the office.

“We decided not to launch Skift Pro at that point,” said Clampet, aware of the potential scale of lockdown disruption to the travel industry. “Instead, we did a Guardian-style contribution model. We said, “Hey, we’d love direct reader support. You can make a one time gift or a recurring gift.””

Spurred by the success of the contribution model, Skift then introduced a ‘Pay what you want’ model to their new online events and webinars, using the payment system they had built to support subscriptions the previous year. As the initial shockwaves of the pandemic settled, Skift Pro’s launch moved to the top of the agenda.

Membership benefits

Despite the initial delay, Skift’s decision to launch a membership product marks an important shift in the publisher’s relationship with its readers. Rather than simply adding another revenue stream into the mix, Skift Pro will help build business resilience and audience engagement, as well as strengthening their editorial work.

“It’s become a centerpiece of how we think about our readers and customers,” said Clampet. “Hopefully it’ll be a much more significant part of our revenue, but it’ll also allow us to tie things together better.”

Clampet believes that Skift Pro members will be more deeply engaged with the brand, from attending events to reading its analysis and reporting. In turn hopes that he and the team will be able to learn more about them. “It’s a way for us to have a better insight into who our users are, and then serve them better,” he explained.

This plays a key part in the presentation of Skift Pro as a membership product rather than a straightforward subscription. Skift Pro goes beyond just access to stories online. It includes additional content and events, as well as a custom newsletter which will start up in August, for $365 a year, or $1 a day.

“We want it to be more than just a newsletter in your mailbox every day. It’s about being actively engaged with other things beyond just reading,” Clampet said.

Launching in a pandemic

Following the delay, deciding when was a good time to finally launch Skift Pro was a subject of much internal discussion. Skift’s other major revenue streams are from its content studio, which works with travel brands to develop bespoke content for them, and its events. Both have suffered as a result of coronavirus, making reader revenue a more urgent consideration. But the travel industry as a whole is also under immense pressure, with many furloughed or laid off.

“It’s hard to know what is a good time right now for anything,” Clampet explained. “The reality of business is that direct from consumer revenue is vital to just about any media business.”

“We also know that the people who are still at companies in Europe and Asia, which is waking up again. They need actual information to do their jobs better and make smarter decisions. We’re still here providing that, so in that sense, it is a good time [to launch].”

A new route

Skift Pro may be live, but the team aren’t resting on their laurels. Clampet’s main goal for the membership is that people are really happy about their decision after signing up, and that is going to require some changes to the product as time goes on.

“The launch is just the very first phase for us. We need to be constantly evolving the product experience,” he emphasised. “What it is right now is going to be very different from what it is a year from now, and hopefully we’ll have made a lot of smart decisions.”

This is a very important lesson that other publishers with subscription or membership products can learn from. For Skift, the launch is not the end of the road. It’s the starting point of a product which will change and grow as they focus on the reader response, and how they can best serve those needs.

Featured Post | Perspectives

Transparency and trust in the media business

June 25, 2020 Chris Pedigo, SVP Government Affairs – DCN

Like most Americans, I have been closely watching and reading coverage of the worldwide protests over racial injustice. And I am reminded that, during this time of unrest and dialogue, trusted news organizations and journalists are more important than ever.

Why? Because trusted news organizations give people credible reports of the protests and counter-protests; a framing of the national conversation through fair and accurate reporting and informed editorials; and a platform where elected officials are held accountable for their actions – or inaction. Imagine the state of our country if we only found our news on Facebook where everyone’s crazy uncle shares a conspiracy theory article link from Russia Today or outright falsehoods and where the fact-checking is mostly performative and the leadership can’t be held accountable.

Inside out

That said, even trusted news organizations are confronting their own issues right now. The New York Times published an editorial that fell short of the standards we have come to expect – and without following their own editorial protocols. Their actions, and reactions, triggered an important discussion about the role of news organizations in airing opposing points of view.

Unfortunately, this speaks to a bigger problem. Across the spectrum of media outlets, less than 40% of people say they trust news most of the time. The top concerns for news consumers are around accuracy and bias. And, unfortunately, the difference between news and opinion is not always clear to many Americans. Historically, editorials were created as a way for newspapers to provide opposing points of view while maintaining objective news operations. Certainly, transparency will help. Because the better that audiences understand the processes by which news is produced, the more confidence they are likely to have in it.

And perhaps this particular situation with Cotton’s editorial signals a shift in what younger generations will come to expect from news organizations when it comes to the presentation of opposing opinions. Just because it’s always been this way doesn’t mean it always will be this way. We need to recognize that the consumption of news and opinion is different. Audience expectations have evolved. And we need to evolve accordingly.

Accurate reflections

Another critical issue for news consumers, however, is one of seeing themselves accurately reflected in news coverage and in newsrooms. Historically, newsrooms have not appropriately incorporated minorities in the ranks of journalists and executives. This lack of different voices and perspectives has led to blind spots in coverage and, wholesale ignoring of issues important to these communities.

We’ve seen a slew of stories emerge around longstanding issues in media organizations in the wake of Black Lives Matter. Editors and executives have left (or been removed from) their positions and many organizations have pledged to do better. And this is a good thing, because the stakes are high.

Work to do

Some organizations are making a concerted effort to remedy these shortcomings. The aforementioned New York Times, for instance, publishes an annual Diversity and Inclusion Report, where they share “data on the composition of our staff, and provide updates on the steps we’re taking to continue to build on our progress.” The goal is to be fully transparent around the current state of their diversity staffing as well as the efforts they are making to improve. However, there is some debate about whether these kinds of efforts move the needle or just underscore the problem.

But at least we’re talking about the problem. For example, there was a great deal of public debate around the merits of The New York Times’ choice to publish an editorial by Senator Tom Cotton. And the Times’ own justification and internal review were widely shared.

From my perspective, transparency is paramount. Without transparency, we won’t ever have meaningful conversations or realize change. The conversation about racial injustice is profoundly important because Black Americans need to be heard. We all need to listen. And we need fundamental and systemic change. The media plays an essential role in this important issue. So, a frank open discussion of the issues at hand – globally, nationally, locally, and in our own newsrooms – is critical now, more than ever.

Featured Post | Perspectives

Objectivity vs. transparency: Let journalists be opinionated on social

June 18, 2020 Chris M. Sutcliffe – Independent Media Reporter

As much as newspaper proprietors might wish otherwise, journalists are indivisible from the brand from which they write. Whether they’re a lifer at a particular title or flit between a number, each is both product and ambassador for that outlet.

But just as social media has allowed the public at large access to audiences as large as those of publishers, it’s allowed journalists to do that same. That’s caused problems. There’s a list of journalists fired for behavior unbecoming to their employer as long as your arm. And some major media brands have effectively made public dissent a firing offense for their journalists.

Recently both Channel 4 and Sky News in the UK have taken steps to prevent their journalists from sharing opinion on anything at all – especially if it’s not their specific beat.

Blurring the line

However, two giants of the newspaper world – Will Lewis, the former boss of Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal, and ex-Financial Times editor Lionel Barber – have expressed a slightly different take on the issue. They, presumably having seen the horrific collapse in trust in journalism, have decided that the “blurring of fact and opinion” has contributed to the perception that newspapers are biased and therefore untrustworthy.

Barber said: “I would make a more general point. We’ve seen this particularly at the BBC: we have to be very careful in the way journalists are using social media. They are essentially seeing [their social media pages as] their own platforms, and it’s definitely comment. Therefore this blurring that Will rightly identifies has been massively accentuated by social media.

“And it’s not good enough for journalists to say: Oh, by the way, on my Twitter handle, these views are [my own]. Because they do work for an organization.”

Trust issues

They have a point. Bias is consistently cited as a reason for lack of trust. And the Digital News Report makes it clear that a vast array of newspapers’ target audiences value objectivity. That’s especially true for publicly-funded news organizations, But even as media marketing becomes more tribal, it’s true that the public does see pH-neutral news content as something to be striven for.

There is also a gap between what people say they want & what they buy. But one reading of this is that a majority coming from various points of view wouldn't mind journalists exercising restraint and delivering the news with a kind of even tone (again, in various directions). https://t.co/fBAy6CQ8JK
— Ben Smith (@benyt) June 16, 2020

The issue is that we each have our own biases, whether we acknowledge them or not. Social media allows the public to see that journalists (being people too) do have biases and beliefs.

Warts and all

However Lewis, Barber and the rest are wrong about the solution. The answer is not telling journalists to “just stop it.” Instead, newspapers should lean harder into making their journalists the ambassadors for their brands, warts (and opinions) and all.

Firstly, despite cries of balanced reporting, it’s bleeding obvious that publications have a political bent. The polarization of the news media is readily apparent, and we do a disservice to our audiences if we say that journalists don’t have a political agenda when their parent publications do. We shouldn’t be trying to pretend we’re objective individually. Rather, we should aim for absolute transparency about why we make the decisions we do – even around theoretically impartial sources like data.

As The Financial Times’ senior data visualization journalism John Burn-Murdoch put it: “I think any data journalist who says that data is objective, and it’s the highest form or the purest form of journalism, I think they’re pulling your leg.

“And so the way you have to do it is you just have to put all of the politics of it aside. Think: what is the fairest, or just sort of straightest way of doing this stuff? And I think the nice thing for me in this process is that because I’ve been quite open and transparent in communicating the rationale for this stuff on on Twitter, for example, or in interviews. I’ve had to hold myself to that really.”

Clear vision

Secondly, you can’t trust what you can’t see. Having journalists simply vanish from the public conversation makes them faceless. It wouldn’t deflect criticisms of bias – we have to trust that our audiences are smart enough to know journalists are people too. But it would remove a key way to counter those accusations personally.

Many publications are making access to their journalists a core tenet of their membership and subscription models, for exactly that reason. Publications as diverse as The Athletic and The Atlantic offer direct contact with journalists as a major selling point. And as a byproduct, trust improves because we trust the people we communicate with directly.

Thirdly, there’s the issue of newspapers needing to get their own houses in order. Many pay their columnists specifically to be opinionated. And, while most label the distinction between reportage and columnists’ articles clearly, there is no clearer indication of a newspapers’ bias one way or another than the columnists they choose to employ.

Money matters

Beyond the potential boost to trust of having visible journalists, there’s a financial incentive for boosting their visibility on social media. For one thing, journalists are the most ardent proponents of their own work. Typically that’s been played to the hilt by papers looking to drive traffic, but there’s evidence it works for driving subscriptions too. Membership-based publications like Tortoise gave its employees a specific discount code to pass onto potential new subscribers, and have seen significant success as a result.

Meanwhile, the Dallas Morning News is trialing a system that allows its journalists to give would-be subscribers a reporter-specific code for a month’s free access. Writing for Nieman Lab, Hanaa’ Tameez says: “The Dallas Morning News‘ latest experiment to boost digital subscriptions is something you’ve seen before. If you’ve ever been tempted to buy a lipstick off Instagram because an influencer gave you a discount code (guilty), this works in the same way.”

Influencers and Instagram

The concept of journalists as influencers is bound to raise hackles among some. Despite that, I’ve argued before that journalists have traditionally done a bad job of communicating the value of their own publications. And they could learn a lot about being ambassadors from influencers. As it looks like Instagram might become more vital for driving conversions than Twitter, that could become an even more apt comparison.

Beyond even that, allowing journalists to be more visible and outspoken on social media could help salve one of the biggest issues of the past few years. Journalism has a real problem in not accurately reflecting the public. That’s doubly true in the UK where graduates of two universities hold a disproportionately high number of senior roles in the industry, and BAME journalists are hardly represented at all. If journalism is to regain the trust of the public, better representation is paramount.

Papering over the cracks by hiding the opinions the public knows we hold anyway is a sop to an impossible ideal. Instead of obfuscating them and squirreling them away, we should be loud, proud – and completely transparent.

How CUNY’s Anita Zielina cultivates change leaders in the media business

June 17, 2020 Peggy Anne Salz, Founder and Lead Analyst – Mobile Groove

The outbreak of Covid-19 and the growing realization that systemic racism is a “pandemic within a pandemic” highlight the critical need for trustworthy news and information. Yet it comes at a time when the media business is fighting a major battle of its own. Disrupted by the deterioration of revenue streams and business models, and devastated by what Reuters Institute estimates could be a $20 billion drop in income available to media worldwide, news media businesses face what has been described as an “extinction event.”

At this transformative moment for news media, executives must cultivate the skills to take charge of change. Otherwise they risk being crushed by it. Planning and priorities must focus on the approaches that make journalism viable and sustainable. Which raises the question: What are the new paths to excellence and profitability? The answers revolve around retooling teams to drive culture change and manage transformation in their news organizations.

Continuing our series of DCN video interviews, I talk to Anita Zielina, Director of Innovation and Leadership at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. Zielina, who shapes CUNY’s executive education and leadership initiatives, draws from her own change-making career in several media organizations. Her experience includes stints at Switzerland’s NZZ Media group, Germany’s Stern and Austria’s Der Standard, to provide insights on what’s needed to run an innovative, customer-centric, and sustainable news media business.

Here are three key takeaways from our talk:

Open career paths for digital natives

News media organizations have to improve ongoing training and overcome their own digital divides. “We are running into a terrible talent crisis in journalism,” Zielina says. Many young people entering the profession are not getting what they want most. They want the freedom to reimagine news and explore the digital storytelling technologies and models that can make it possible – and even profitable.

Be representative of the audiences you serve

Local newsrooms, which provide community coverage at a time when audiences are eager to know what is going on in their city or district, are well-positioned to come out of the pandemic strong, Zielina says. But the sustainable edge comes when news organizations listen to underrepresented communities and make a greater effort to include them as part of their newsrooms.

Revenue models are ready for a rethink

Media organizations get high marks for efforts to grasp analytics. The next step is to combine data points to arrive at a more holistic view of the consumer and what they are willing to pay for. This will require media leaders to open the aperture of how they view audiences and the value they can offer. Events, membership, exclusive content, and subscriptions can all be part of the mix. But no matter the revenue model, the requirement for a deeper understanding of “what people expect from you and why they are passionate about you” is a universal constant, Anita says.

Zielina also offers insights around the future prospects for news media and the key skills and capabilities needed to weather the post-pandemic storm.

Watch the full interview:

Featured Post | Perspectives

Media execs weigh in on Covid-crisis inspired trends: creativity, productivity, and growth

June 11, 2020 Will Harris – Independent Journalist

Throughout the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, media organizations have had no option but to rapidly – and even radically – change their existing processes to keep things running smoothly. despite being unable to work within their usual offices and create content in the manner to which they’d become accustomed.

We reached out to some of the members of Digital Context Next and asked them the following question:

“Given the way companies have been necessarily adjusting and adapting to the Covid-19 crisis, what trends have particularly caught your eye, and which ones do you think are most likely to continue into the post-pandemic digital landscape?”

As you’ll see below, the responses were wide and varied, with each exec offering insight from their own unique perspective. But there were also several distinct similarities of observation, hinting at some potentially noteworthy trends in creative problem-solving, consumption of news and information, and increased productivity in a remote work environment.

“The increase in news consumption among younger demographics has caused an influx of new advertisers to the genre. We have also seen a decrease in keyword blocking over the last month compared to the start of the pandemic. Marketers realized that keyword blocking was being applied too broadly and that they were missing important, brand safe content.”

– Jeff Collins
Executive Vice President, Advertising Sales
FOX News Media

“Advertisers, agencies and publishers continue to navigate these challenging times with flexibility, speed and increased communication. The rapidity of creating solutions and working together across the industry has been impressive, and surely that nimble nature will be a constant moving forward. Additionally, the power of live news in a digital environment has been a force. Partners are embracing cross-platform service advertising to support necessary journalism while communicating brand campaigns and messages with mission at the helm. The value for partners and consumers alike is inherent, and from here, we’ll continue to see that grow in importance.”

– Christine Cook
Senior Vice President & Chief Revenue Officer
CNN Digital, WarnerMedia Ad Sales

“I’ve been impressed with how productive our staff has been in a fully remote work environment. I worry that our strong culture supports an effective WFH structure, but that over time, with departures and new hires, that could erode. Even with that concern, I do think that we will be much more accepting of remote work arrangements and lower occupancy in the office.”

– Michael F. Finnegan
President
Atlantic Media

“In addition to some obvious trends that will stick, involving remote work and public health precautions, I’m hoping that the speed and agility of our response to the crisis as publishers will be long lasting. In the AP’s case, we converted to remote operations worldwide, including complex video newsgathering and distribution. The move required us to move master control rooms to staffers’ homes immediately and implement remote tools for video editing to staffers worldwide. Not every project in the future needs to be run as a fire drill like this, but my hope is that we will retain a lot of the muscle memory from our response to the Covid crisis.”

– Jim Kennedy
SVP, Strategy & Enterprise Development
Associated Press

“Independent trustworthy journalism has proven itself in the crisis and is emerging even stronger than before. However the advertising markets across the globe have collapsed significantly and we cannot be sure whether they will return or shift even further towards the mega-platforms. Increasingly, a very few mega-platforms decide if, where and how citizens can use and access journalistic offerings and other services. The Covid crisis has accelerated this development. The policy response in Europe and in the US must be faster, more determined and more comprehensive in order to safeguard free, independent journalism and to re-establish fair competition in digital markets.”

– Dr. Dietrich von Klaeden
Senior Vice President Public Affairs
Axel Springer SE

“The pandemic is forcing us to look more closely at who we’re reaching and when. And it’s making the case for more surgical, performance-based advertising in lieu of broader brand marketing efforts. Going forward, I think we’ll see a more concerted effort to tie media investment to business outcomes, but those business outcomes will still include brand building KPIs in addition to performance focused KPIs.

“We’ll also see an increased emphasis on flexibility and agility across the media industry as a whole, specifically in relation to upfront/annual budget commitments and creative production. With so much changing so quickly, the last several months have created an environment in which marketers want to mitigate risk as much as possible, especially when it comes to media distribution or to creative campaigns that may need to be altered based on micro/macroeconomic conditions and societal issues.”

– Craig Kostelic
Chief Business Officer, U.S. Advertising Revenue and Head of Global Advertising Solutions
Condé Nast

“Mobile has been a central part of our business but Covid-19 has brought that to a new level – people aren’t in the office so that workday routine is out the window. Our audiences are toggling between mobile devices, laptops, and Connected-TVs at all hours. This means more news during the day (especially streaming broadcasts) but also on evenings and weekends. Offering a great experience across all devices is so important. We’re also seeing the value of effectively pushing content out through app notifications, search optimization, email and third-party aggregators. It’s a very competitive market and you can’t sit back and hope people find your content.

“We’re seeing how important it is to be ready to tell stories with video and with text. Video does well on social media, text does better on search – people have different preferences. By consistently telling stories in multiple ways, we maximize our audience and the engagement we receive. Explainer videos that offer foundational information have been extremely important during Covid-19. Things like ‘What you need to know about Covid-19’ have been consistently among our top videos and most shared on social media. They also have companion articles that share similar information and that’s been a winning formula for us.”

– Marian Pittman
SVP, Content
COX Media Group

“In our space, OTT and other platforms have seen explosive growth. We are also seeing an uptick on online donations, even in these challenging economic times. This is directly related to an increase in the consumption of PBS content both on air and online. We’ve also seen marked growth in PBS Learning Media as more students and teachers and parents look for online educational tools and growth in PBS Kids content, especially the games app that launched only a few years ago but is now used as much as the PBS Kids video app. For PBS I believe all these trends will continue as consumers adopt new habits and discover the quality content Public Media and our local stations bring to them.”

– Ira Rubenstein
Chief Digital & Marketing Officer
PBS

“Three trends catch my eye. One is the necessary acceleration of creating value from audiences other than via advertising, which is proving to be a fickle friend. That means specifically paid content/membership strategies, but also the value in analysis and research via first party direct relationships with readers. In a world without a compass, insight into the thoughts and inclinations of key audiences are gold dust, both for publishers and partners.

“The second trend is the changing definition of ‘journalism’ from the spoken, video or written format to a more data-driven and graphical experience. The Covid-19 crisis has been played out – and devoured by readers – in charts and graphs. I think there’s a lot more potential to engage readers in the future with this format.

“The other trend is of course the reinvention of the event space. Digital events were always thought to be a poor relation of the live experience. But I’m seeing audience appetite, bags of creativity, and lots of opportunity to develop engaging, valuable events online.

“It’s a terrifying time for a lot of reasons, but there are exciting opportunities out there, too.”

– Jon Slade
Chief Commercial Officer
Financial Times

Gen Z has a misinformation problem

June 4, 2020 Kasia Kovacs – Independent Journalist

“I have some great news about the coronavirus,” says TikTok user Khalilslife, speaking with the confidence of a newscaster, while wearing a backwards baseball cap. It’s May 5 when he uploads this video, and Americans are growing restless. By now, many have followed Covid-19 social distancing rules for six weeks or more. At this point, any “great news,” is undoubtedly welcome.

“If (coronavirus vaccine) trials are successful, that means that it could be in emergency use by September,” Khalilslife says to his 2.8 million TikTok followers. “In other news, Madagascar president said they already have the cure, and it’s made from herbal natural remedies. It’s already ready to begin production. What would you rather do, a vaccine or an herbal drink?”

It’s easy to hear “information” akin to “an herbal tonic can cure Covid-19” while idly scrolling through TikTok. In fact, Khalilslife’s video has been viewed 1.7 million times. It takes more effort to go to a news website and find explanatory articles about medically- and scientifically- researched efforts around coronavirus vaccines and treatment.

If Khalilslife viewers were to double check his facts, they’d find his video lacks context. it’s true that Madagascar’s president claims that an herbal concoction can work as a coronavirus cure. The veracity of that claim is highly questionable. Some stories do mention a vaccine appearing in autumn. However, most experts find that projection highly doubtful. In fact, in May, scientists and medical experts predicted that widespread use of a vaccine would be 12-18 months away.

For zoomers, the medium is the message

TikTok, a social platform where users create and consume 15- to 60-second videos, was the fourth-most downloaded app of 2019. It is especially popular with Gen Z, those born from 1997 to 2012. Colloquially called zoomers, Gen Z members post dance challenges, lip syncing, comedy sketches, slang-filled history lessons, and political punditry. Along with YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat, these apps concentrate much of Gen Z’s time.

However, social media platforms are also where most members of Generation Z get their news. A 2019 report from the Reuters Institute at Oxford University found that young people largely consume news passively or as a time filler as they scroll through social media. People under 35 also tend to think of the news as a source of entertainment, the research showed.

Unfortunately, though, misinformation is rampant on these platforms. They disseminate political conspiracies and false information about climate change, flat earth beliefs, and anti-vaccination propaganda. Unsurprisingly, coronavirus conspiracy theories have found a home on social media apps.

Perhaps what is surprising is the fact that Gen Z-ers have just as difficult time sniffing out false or out-of-context statements as their elders. News organizations may need to rethink their strategies when it comes to tackling misinformation directed at Gen Z. It is critical to support this generation’s media literacy skills and help them learn to identify quality information from trustworthy sources.

Digitally native, but digitally naive

The problem is not just the misinformation itself. Because as it turns out, although they use social media fluidly, Gen Z has trouble distinguishing fact from fiction.

Despite their familiarity with online media, 82% of middle schoolers who responded to a Stanford University survey could not tell the difference between an advertisement and a news story. The 2015-16 survey also found that over 30% of middle schoolers surveyed considered a fake news story more credible than a real one.

A Stanford study from 2019 echoed these claims. Researchers showed more than 3,000 American high school students a Facebook video of Russian election workers secretively loading ballots into bins. The caption incorrectly identified these workers as Democrats during the 2016 election. Over half of respondents believed the caption. They agreed that the photos were “strong evidence of voter fraud” during the 2016 Democratic primaries.

Zoomers are not alone. A Pew study found that nearly 90% of U.S. adults thought fake news either caused some or a great deal of confusion during the 2016 election. Nearly a quarter of American adults admitted to sharing fake news during the election, whether they realized it at the time or not.

“The problem of digital media literacy is truly multi-generational,” said Katy Byron, editor and program manager of MediaWise, a fact-checking initiative from the Poynter Institute. “Teenagers spend a ton of time online, upwards of 4+ hours every day by some estimates and anecdotally … But just because they are online a ton doesn’t mean they know how to navigate digital information.”

Given their ease with social media, the internet and digital devices, it’s a conundrum. Why do zoomers struggle to identify misinformation online just as much as older adults who remember floppy disks and prefer Facebook to TikTok?

“The ability to operate a device fluently and fluidly does not mean that you understand the information that that device produces,” said Dr. Sam Wineburg, professor of education at Stanford. In carrying out the two Stanford above, Wineburg aimed to investigative civic online reasoning in young people.

Wineburg likens online media literacy to driving a car. For anyone who drives with a stick shift, switching gears doesn’t require any thought; it’s an automatic response. But not everyone who can change gears can also fix a broken transmission. In short, somebody’s ability to use a tool or technology doesn’t mean that they understand how it works.

Misinformation in the age of Covid-19

Here’s a Sparknotes version of social media’s transmission, so to speak: Algorithms reward posts with high engagement. More eyes see content with shares, retweets, comments, and likes. This alone may seem obvious enough. But these high-engagement posts and videos sometimes promote extremist or conspiracy theories, born on anonymous sites like Reddit and 4Chan before spreading on more mainstream platforms.

YouTube in particular has come under fire for its algorithm, which, if left to its own devices, seems to play more and more incendiary content. And in 2016 and 2017, Russian bots took advantage of spreading misinformation through fake Instagram accounts.

On top of that, it’s not always easy to pinpoint false claims if they aren’t immediately outrageous or obviously extremist. Khalilslife’s video about coronavirus cures, for instance, is rooted in news reports. However, it lacks critical context.

Thea Barrett, a recent graduate and zoomer who works as a Mediawise intern, sees this often enough. Misinformation “presents itself in subtle ways, where it isn’t completely right or completely wrong. So, one can share something not thinking too deeply about the post but actually be spreading misinformation,” Barrett said.

When it comes to coronavirus, much of the misinformation spread by social media follows this pattern. In April the Reuters Institute found that about 38% of misinformation regarding Covid-19 was completely fabricated. In comparison, the majority (59%) was real information that had been taken out of context or twisted in some way.

Social media at a boiling point

Historically, social media platforms have been criticized for their failures in identifying and taking down false information. Recently, the debate about social media’s role intensified. The Wall Street Journal reported that top Facebook execs knew the platform’s algorithms were divisive and polarizing, but ignored this information. And Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he didn’t think “Facebook or internet platforms in general should be arbiters of truth.” In other words, according to Zuckerberg, social platforms shouldn’t be responsible for fact checking.

But the misinformation debate has really flared up on Twitter, when the social platform labeled two tweets from the president as “potentially misleading.” Twitter also took the unprecedented step of hiding a tweet from the president that seemed to call for violence against protestors in Minnesota. Twitter’s public interest note claimed that Trump’s tweet “violated the Twitter rules about glorifying violence.” In response, the president issued an executive order that threatens to make websites and social platforms vulnerable to lawsuits.

Covid-19 has also been an impetus for platforms to take more action. Instagram added a note to its community guidelines about not permitting false information. YouTube announced it would take down unsubstantiated medical information about the virus. TikTok revealed a $50,000 research grant meant to “better understand the misinformation ecosystem on social media.”

Even so, plenty of out-of-context or wrong information remains online and is widely disseminated via social media. And experts don’t believe these platforms are doing enough: “They need to be less reactive and abandon this game of whack-a-mole unless they plan to significantly increase content moderation efforts which is clearly not happening in an effective way,” Byron said.

What about news organizations?

Gen Z consumes much of its news on social media. However, it is clear that some of that news is wrongly contextualized (or just plain wrong). So, how can credible news organizations engage this audience and deliver the facts?

It’s not always easy to compete for the attention of a generation that views reading the news as a chore, as reported by the 2019 Reuters Institute study. But the study also found young people are, at least, aware that “fake news” is a problem. They tend to trust what they consider reputable organizations, like the New York Times, Bloomberg, or the Washington Post.

For reputable news sites, this means adapting to the content that Gen Z-ers prefer. They gravitate toward short-form stories, videos, and illustrated formats. It also means delivering the news in a way that fits with the platform, not simply a 800-word traditional news story lazily reformatted to fit a TikTok video or Instagram story.

Some independent initiatives are not only targeting their content at young people, but also getting zoomers involved. The Poynter Institute, for instance, runs the MediaWise Project and Teen Fact-Checking Network. Teen fact checkers show their work at the Mediawise Instagram account, talking viewers step-by-step in how they evaluate “sus” information on social media.

Barrett, who started as a Mediawise teen fact checker and became an intern, says this approach works. “Once you even get one person started talking about it, that has a ripple effect,” Barrett said. “I’ve seen that in my own life. Friends have started sending me claims and asking me if things are legit just because they know I do this work.”

That was, perhaps, one of Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron’s aims In his Harvard commencement speech last week. Baron addressed the college’s seniors, the oldest members of Gen Z. He reminded them that false information can directly impact issues of public health like coronavirus, leading to more hospitalizations and deaths.

“I would have settled for emphasizing that our democracy depends on facts and truth. And it surely does. But now, as we can plainly see, it is more elemental than that,” Baron said. “Facts and truth are matters of life and death. Misinformation, disinformation, delusions and deceit can kill.”

The Google antitrust ship has set its course

May 21, 2020 Jason Kint, CEO – DCN

When DCN created our original chart, where we coined the term “duopoly,” it marked the first wave of what would become five years of interest and activity, marked by intense journalistic investigation – which heats up as antitrust scrutiny does. The line of inquiry often starts with challenging whether anything is new or different. While some industry pundits like to posit that they’ve already “seen this show,” this time around the players are wiser and the stakes are even higher.

In the seven years since the Obama-era FTC issued its decision not to take action against the cool kid in their class, Google, the company has managed to triple its U.S. ad revenues (source: GOOG SEC filings) in line with the overall U.S. digital ad market (source: IAB/PwC Internet Advertising Reports). Put differently, Google has maintained its market share, which is hovering at around 50%.

How on earth has Google maintained share during the same period in which Facebook has grown from virtually nonexistent to the other half of the two-headed duopoly monster? Answer: Pilfering the open web by establishing a walled garden to shift revenues from everyone else to Google’s own properties.

Tired arguments

Yet a small handful of academics, analysts, and influencers (who often fly too close to the sun) continue to rehash the tired arguments that were widely shared back in 2013. They start by broadly painting any scrutiny of Google as a combination of the jealousy of dying legacy media and protectionism by Europe. Often, they claim that news media is manufacturing outrage with an “axe to grind” rather than rightly doing its job of holding the powerful accountable.

They misleadingly suggest that Google makes no revenue from Google News while turning a blind eye to the billions in value they collect from harvesting news content. Much of the value of search would disappear without news content for consumers to find. And when these pundits finally get down to pragmatic analysis, they point out the “gift of web traffic” publishers receive from Google’s free search engine, as if the web, and publishers, couldn’t exist without Google’s pixie dust.

The new wave

However, what these arguments miss is that the voices and minds leading the case in 2020 have evolved their understanding of tech and the marketplace. There is a significant and growing body of consistent research and investigation around the globe about Google’s anticompetitive action from savvy digital thinkers in academia, think tanks, state and federal regulator offices. Say what you want about the various Congressional hearings these days, but they undoubtedly make the committees, public, press, and thought leaders wiser on the topic

Reading long investigative competition reports may not be your cup of tea, particularly during a global pandemic. So, I’ll summarize what DCN is focusing on, what the latest research shows, and what is most important to the health of our members’ businesses.

The latest research

Two key investigative reports have been released: The Australian Competition & Consumer Commissioner (ACCC) July 2019 Final Report and the U.K.’s Competition & Markets Authority (CMA) Dec 2019 Interim Report. If you can only read one, read the latter (and don’t miss Appendix E). The U.K. investigation launched well before those in the U.S. and it offers a solid look into how Google and Facebook are being examined.

I was also delighted to see a Yale professor, Dr. Fiona Scott Morton and co-author David Dinielli, publish “A Roadmap for a Digital Advertising Monopolization Case Against Google” earlier this week. They lean heavily on the U.K. CMA report and did a masterful job of translating hefty regulator documents into a readable form that anyone who has followed our industry will understand. They assert that any eventual court case will demonstrate how Google’s established monopoly in the search business was subsequently leveraged for market power in the design, growth, and capture of value through its intermediation of ads across the open web.

Inside Google’s walled garden

It is important to understand that approximately 90% of Google’s revenue growth (3x over the last seven years) was captured on its own properties (search, Gmail, YouTube, etc.). This led to a shift of Google’s source of revenue to increase from a total of 74% to 84% from their own properties, where their costs to acquire traffic approaches zero. Not coincidentally Google was, all the while, cementing a dominant position in the buying, selling, serving, and measuring of all ads across the open web.

This shift in revenue growth towards areas where Google keeps the most revenue has only been possible because of Google’s market power and ability to see large amounts of data throughout the consumer and advertiser journey, in its own so-called “walled garden.” This allows them to optimize the customer experience in a way that will inevitably keep consumers and advertisers driving the most profit to Google.

Revealing revenue research

Just a few weeks ago, the U.K. advertiser group ISBA published a transparency report. For the first time, the report laid out empirically just how much revenue was captured by intermediaries. Google was, of course, the most substantial player on all sides of the market. (Though there was a curious mystery 15% that the researchers couldn’t lock down.) At this point, it’s beyond hypocrisy each time Google preaches “transparency” but refuses to report both gross and net revenue for its advertising services.

Based on various investigations, Scott Morton and Dinielli expose how Google has achieved this dominance. They examine how Google collects 40% of the revenues across the open web, limits the use of data, and steers consumers to its Google-owned properties with its own higher-margin ads. Google does so while appropriating publishers’ data and audiences for its own gain on its own properties and elsewhere on the web.

Anticompetitive conduct

Morton and Dinielli clearly lay out 20 examples of Google’s potential anticompetitive conduct. Many of them tie to previously published concerns and research from DCN. All will require further investigation and subpoena power – but I’m sure we can agree that they pass the sniff test.

Acquiring Independent Companies To Cement Its Role Across the Ad Stack
Leveraging Market Power in General Search into Display
Designing Auctions That Facilitate Arbitrage and Rent Seeking
Cross-Subsidizing Competitive Functions of the Ad Tech Stack with Monopolized Functions In Order to Rise Rivals’ Costs and Foreclose
Deceptive Gathering and Integration of Data
Strategic Disabling of Interoperability To Disadvantage Rivals
Withholding Interoperability to Steer Demand and Supply Through Its Own Exchange
Providing Exclusive Programmatic Access to YouTube Though Google’s DSP
Retiring the Third-Party Cookie
Disadvantaging Rival Exchanges by Google’s Publisher Ad Server
Undermining Header Bidding Through the Development of So-Called “Open Bidding”
Undermining Header Bidding Through Exclusionary Features of AMP
Designing Analytics to Steer Market Participants to Google Products and Prevent Entry
Resisting Transparency at All Levels of Ad Tech Stack
Obscuring Fees So That Competitors Cannot Enter and Compete Effectively
Using Privacy Laws as an Excuse to Hide Performance Data
Thwarting Publisher Efforts to Understand Source of Payments
Designing Attribution to Favor Search and Disadvantage Publishers
Raising Rivals’ Costs and Foreclosure of Existing and Potential Horizontal Competitors
Capturing Publisher Data in Order to Monetize Their Audiences

Antitrust investigations

Finally, we should still ask whether Google’s lobby and power somehow afford it unique protection in the U.S. market. Only time will tell. But we expect Congress’ antitrust investigation to issue a report in the next 90 days.

Nearly 50 state attorneys general, who previously announced their inquiries, are expected to move forward along with the (not easily intimidated) Department of Justice. Both have broad subpoena power as well as the U.K. and Australian reports to inform their deliberations. Providing further confidence thus far is that the Texas Attorney General office is leading the states’ investigation. They provided Google with an extensive list of nearly 130 questions focused mainly on Google’s advertising business. (Note: DCN received this “CID” through a public records request). It certainly looks like they want answers to Morton and Dinielli’s claims.

The internet has evolved, and it continues to do so. While many of the arguments media pundits and academics may have made a few years ago seemed plausible at the time, that time has passed. It is clear that serious research and reflection is being done that will inform any discussions around the duopoly, antitrust in the advertising ecosystem, and restoring the value exchange between premium content and the “virtual pipes” of technology that control and make money off its flow.

Here are three key takeaways from our talk:

Power community-driven commerce with authenticity and positivity

Segment according to journeys, not customers

Micro-influencers have a massive impact

Watch the full interview:

Maturing virtual events strategies

The value for sponsors

Reader revenue and data

The future of virtual business events

When words collide

Experts excluded

Solutions journalism

View from the audience

Tuning in

Targeted questions and unwanted detours

What to Watch For – Apple

What to Watch For – Google

What to Watch For – Facebook

What to Watch For – Amazon

Two reader revenue models

How they’re gaining

How they are maintaining

A new normal

Laying the foundations

Membership benefits

Launching in a pandemic

A new route

Inside out

Accurate reflections

Work to do

Trust issues

Warts and all

Clear vision

Money matters

Influencers and Instagram

Here are three key takeaways from our talk:

Open career paths for digital natives

Be representative of the audiences you serve

Revenue models are ready for a rethink

Watch the full interview:

– Jeff Collins Executive Vice President, Advertising Sales FOX News Media

– Christine CookSenior Vice President & Chief Revenue OfficerCNN Digital, WarnerMedia Ad Sales

– Michael F. FinneganPresidentAtlantic Media

– Jim KennedySVP, Strategy & Enterprise DevelopmentAssociated Press

– Dr. Dietrich von KlaedenSenior Vice President Public AffairsAxel Springer SE

– Craig KostelicChief Business Officer, U.S. Advertising Revenue and Head of Global Advertising SolutionsCondé Nast

– Marian PittmanSVP, ContentCOX Media Group

– Ira RubensteinChief Digital & Marketing OfficerPBS

– Jon SladeChief Commercial OfficerFinancial Times

For zoomers, the medium is the message

Digitally native, but digitally naive

Misinformation in the age of Covid-19

Social media at a boiling point

What about news organizations?

Tired arguments

The new wave

The latest research

Inside Google’s walled garden

Revealing revenue research

Anticompetitive conduct

Antitrust investigations

– Jeff Collins
Executive Vice President, Advertising Sales
FOX News Media

– Christine Cook
Senior Vice President & Chief Revenue Officer
CNN Digital, WarnerMedia Ad Sales

– Michael F. Finnegan
President
Atlantic Media

– Jim Kennedy
SVP, Strategy & Enterprise Development
Associated Press

– Dr. Dietrich von Klaeden
Senior Vice President Public Affairs
Axel Springer SE

– Craig Kostelic
Chief Business Officer, U.S. Advertising Revenue and Head of Global Advertising Solutions
Condé Nast

– Marian Pittman
SVP, Content
COX Media Group

– Ira Rubenstein
Chief Digital & Marketing Officer
PBS

– Jon Slade
Chief Commercial Officer
Financial Times