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Featured Post | Revenue

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

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’

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.

Featured Post | Innovation | Revenue

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

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.

Hearst’s All Out Studio

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.

The Guardian’s Soulmates app

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.

Featured Post | Perspectives

Platforms, politics, people and sharks

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

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

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 21st 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 21st 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.)

Featured Post | Perspectives | Policy

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

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.

Featured Post | Industry-Research

What the Australian Broadcasting Corporation can teach podcasters everywhere

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.

Featured Post | Marketing | Revenue

Local news: Forget national metrics and focus on your strengths

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.

Featured Post | Marketing

How marketers and agencies can address increasing privacy regulation

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.

Featured Post | Perspectives | Policy

Google continues its offensive, but we’re all smarter now

There is a certain musical rhythm to our digital media industry calendar. If there was a crescendo, I expect it would be in the Fall, as leaders migrate from execution to strategic planning. And with this shift, conference season begins. There are many forces at work shaping these agendas, not the least of which are businesses wanting to get their messages to market.  

As is so often the case, Google sits at the top of the influence food chain and its extensive industry relations efforts impact nearly everyone else’s agenda. Whether Google’s wishes and goals are delivered directly (as they are for a privileged few of their so-called “premium partners”) or through the company’s trade lobbies, press efforts, investments and research, Google’s impact is as predictable as the autumn leaves.  

But this year is different. 

As we wind down 2019, Google is a bit less focused on driving its own profits and a lot more focused on strengthening its fortress against scrutiny. Right now, it seems that Google’s first and only priority is to dispel or confuse any analysis being done on anticompetitive behaviors. This marks a more sensitive and controlled conversation for Google.  

For us, it is important to bear in mind that one of Google’s best defenses can be getting the industry to support its efforts. This is where all of us come into play. We need to be sure we clearly see (and accurately portray) how self-serving Google’s “industry relations” efforts are. The good news is that we are all smarter now. And we – the media industry, the press, and politicians everywhere – are in a position to take informed, proactive action to confront wrongdoing in the form of untenable industry dominance.  

The market today 

Here is what we know about the scrutiny of Google:  

  1. Everyone has upped their game. Everyone. The people involved in the many antitrust investigations have done a lot of homework. This isn’t 10 years ago; it’s not even three years ago. Global scrutiny by international regulators, the press, and the industry has made everyone smarter on the topics. These days, critics are unlikely to get lost in the complexity of Google’s digital business. (As an example, this time around regulators are asking questions about nuanced industry topics like auction mechanics and data rules.) 
  2. Everyone understands Google’s core business. Everyone. Google operates free services in order to devour as much data as possible in order to micro-target advertising to audiences. Investigations appear to be focused on Google’s vertical control over experiences and the entire advertising stack funding them. This is where Google continues to make more than 85% of its revenue. And dozens of Google products work together to enable it.  
  3. Everyone is significant. Everyone. Investigations happening globally from Australia to the U.K. In the U.S., it includes 48 State Attorneys General, Congress, and the Department of Justice. Put another way, a lot of serious antitrust experts across nations, and political aisles, are aligning to explore areas of concern.  

Growing concerns  

These investigations primarily focus on the intersection of Google’s data practices and its market dominance. Both are protected by Google’s command of search and mobile operating systems – two areas where the company has already been found by EU regulators to have violated antitrust law.  

Aggregating other’s content for searching the web was the original and easiest version of Google’s strategy to understand (and attempt to address). However, the company has extended into new services that exponentially increase its ability to collect data. And, as we now know, a majority of Google’s data collection occurs when users aren’t even choosing to interact with Google.  

So, the roll-out of privacy laws in Europe (and now the U.S.) present escalating risk to Google’s business. As Google attempts to comply with these new data protection laws while maintaining its profits, it needs to avoid tripping more antitrust wires as it did last year in Europe.  

Make no mistake, the cards are still stacked in Google’s favor. Its annual budget for academic research, think tanks, lobbying, publisher support, trade press PR, and event sponsorships likely matches the top lines of revenue for nearly every organization in the industry. No one wants to upset Google and therein lies one of the key symptoms of the problem.  

What can the industry do? 

But in the interest of transparency and support for a fair assessment of Google’s business practices, what can the rest of the industry do to be supportive? 

1. Press scrutiny. I would emphasize that the trade and policy press must continue your great work to cover the company fairly and with the healthy bit of cynicism it deserves. This has shifted significantly over the past few years in a positive way as newsrooms have ramped up their coverage of big tech. We’re seeing fewer instances of the industry press simply rehashing Google’s announcements or sharing its carefully crafted blog posts. Instead, they’re reporting on them with proper context and careful analysis.  

It is important to add that as an industry that seeks to inform, instead of simply propagating the spin of a corporate blog post, we have a responsibility to share the best coverage of issues, even when it’s written by the competition. With the advent of social, proliferating quality information must be one of our highest objectives.  

2. Independent academic research. We saw something remarkable play out this past quarter. Academics at Carnegie-Mellon and Minnesota released independent, empirical research that showed how little publishers actually benefit from third party cookies (around 4%). The research spanned three years and offers critically important analysis as publishers consider changes to data policy. For this reason, it also very much threatens Google’s interests.  

Recently, Google released its own “internal research” consisting of a single data point, which suggested that more than 50% of advertising revenue would be lost without third party cookies. It’s a ridiculous argument. After reporters and academics scorched Google for the claim, they eventually posted a thin three-page summary which they subsequently buried and backed off from (suggesting, perhaps, that they weren’t anxious for another careful analysis of the quality of this “research”). No doubt there are many more examples. 

As an industry, we must continue to question self-serving or corporate-baked research. The onus is upon us to seek out the best independent research and share it widely.  

3. Persistence. When Google’s Head of News put out a blog post defending its practices and unwillingness to pay publishers for use of their content despite competitors’ willingness to pay and new copyright laws rolling out in Europe, that’s not the last word. When Google sends a note to publishers in France extorting them to give Google permission to use their content for free or lose traffic to their website, there is only one answer: “No.” This all happened in the past week. Really, Google is not going to turn off Google News across Europe and they’re also not likely to want to be in an inferior position as other news platforms roll out.  

As an industry, and bound by ethics and the law, we need to continue to hold the line for the proper value of trusted news and entertainment and the trust of the users and advertisers we serve.  

The PR machine rumbles, but its workings are exposed 

Just this week, we witnessed the incredible power of the Google disinformation machine. A senior executive at Facebook and several industry influencers are sharing a piece that uses an arcane analysis of file sizes (yes, as in bytes) instead of referral traffic to confuse the issue of the company’s search dominance and disparage the knowledge of a vocal antitrust proponent. It is disheartening to see this get any air. At the same time, we clearly see that politicians have increased their knowledge of how Google’s business (and PR machine) works. Rather than being buried by obfuscation, we see clear-eyed and immediate push back coming from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle including Senators Josh Hawley and Elizabeth Warren. 

I considered titling this piece, “Winter is Coming” but that’s overused. I’ll just conclude with a note that there are significantly important investigations happening by competent authorities which will impact the future of our industry. And California offers new guidance for how data can be collected and used. Both issues play directly into publishers’ business interests.  

Fortunately, there are positive signs. We see well-informed, reasoned calls for a close examination of technology’s impact and its business practices. Journalists and industry watchdogs have begun to see biased research and self-serving statements for what they are. And that is progress.  

Featured Post | Innovation

How quality content and tech are critical for safe online experiences for kids

Increasingly, parents and policy-makers acknowledge that some of the most popular online content channels for children leave much to be desired. That has prompted a push to ensure that content targeted at children remains compliant in a shifting regulatory landscape. It also presents an opportunity to provide places where parents, kids, and advertisers feel secure. 

Finding the right spaces for kid friendly content has been challenging on many levels. Issues range from inappropriate content mixed in with kid-friendly viewing, the use of young people’s personal data, and creating content that truly appeals to — and serves — young audiences. 

Recently, Group Nine Media ventured into the kids content space with its Dodo Kids YouTube channel. Launched in July, Dodo Kids joins a number of efforts from media organizations that are trying to navigate the challenging kids-specific content channels. 

For the creators of some of the most-viewed content on the internet, the existence of the kids content vertical made sense, says Group Nine Media’s chief marketing officer, Rachel Baumgarten. Dodo Kids is “an evolution based on the content that we create, and the audiences that we already serve. The Dodo, as a brand, is already brand safe. [It’s] already a brand that parents watch with their kids, as there’s a lot of co-viewing that happens.”

The strategy starts with content

Group Nine’s move into kids content is paying off. Two months into its run, the numbers have started to come in: views have increased 30% month over month and the YouTube channel has seen more than 1 million unique monthly viewers. 

With cute hops and nose boops, best pals Bubbles the pig and Seamus the lamb are two of the many adorable characters found on the Dodo Kids YouTube channel. Beyond featuring appealing animals, Dodo Kids tailors its on screen content to be better aligned with younger viewers. That means less text and more images and voice overs to communicate the messaging.

“It’s playful. It’s fun,” says Baumgarten about the content made for kids aged three to seven. “And it speaks to bonds and relationships, whether in this case, it’s between children and animals, or the relationship that kids have with feeling good and dancing and singing—which is why we went into Dodo Sing Dodo Dance as a franchise.”

Advertisers want in

Having a channel specifically made for kids has also allowed the company to grow deep partnerships with advertisers. An early example is their work with Paramount Film’s Dora the Explorer live action movie Dora and the Lost City of Gold. Content used in pre-roll and a standalone mini-series was created specifically for the main Dodo channel, the Dodo Kids channel, as well as the El Dodo Spanish-language vertical. Baumgarten sees that as a critical way moving forward to maintain brand safety. 

“We are looking to create these larger partnerships with brands that are looking to be in a brand safe environment and a trusted environment,” she says.

In producing this material, Group Nine Media has also maintained compliance with a slew of policies that protect younger viewers. Any sort of product integration needs a distinction or call as advertisement. There aren’t any third party websites or social platforms linked to in the content. The Dodo’s legal team reviews product integrations before launch. And any on-screen personalities linked to the editorial content aren’t used to sell products or services.

“[Parents] want them to be able to see content that they know is regulated and safe and is trusted,” says Baumgarten. “So it felt like the right time to lean into kid specific programming.”

Evolving regulations require nimble strategies

The efforts at The Dodo are occurring at the same time as the overall regulatory environment continues to change. YouTube has settled its case of non-compliance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (Or COPPA). Beyond a Federal Trade Commission fine of $170 million, there are changes for publishers on the giant video platform. While the changes have yet to be deployed, it appears that content flagged for children will not include personalized ads and comments fields will be disabled as well.

According to a blog post by lawyers at Fenwick & West LLP, this interpretation of COPPA could have implications for the wider publishing business. The FTC made clear that companies can be found liable for non-compliant content even if they have “actual knowledge” of the subject matter and target audience. That means, even if the kids content is found on a website targeting the general population, the platform should be prepared to make special arrangements to make sure the content and technologies comply with the COPPA rules.

Regulatory clarity opens new avenues for solutions

However, newly clarified standards could prove to be an opportunity for emerging players in the online kids video market. Dylan Collins, CEO of U.K.-based SuperAwesome, says that the current methods of age-verification will no longer be enough to protect against liability in this space. 

“Today, for example, when a child goes to a general audience platform, they get an age gate which says tell us you’re over 13.  Chances are that that child ticks the boxes and says ‘yes, sir, I’m over 13,’” says Collins. The FTC has made it clear that standard is not good enough, he adds.

In a bid to address the lack of technology efforts to solve some of these problems, SuperAwesome announced the details of its Rukkaz (pronounced raucous) free, ad-supported streaming platform earlier this summer. Made for publishers trying to get the attention of kids aged seven to 12, it will also contain technologies that protect children’s privacy and offer more guarantees to brands and advertisers.

“We want to make sure that kids have got access to all of the creators and influencers that they want, but that they’re able to engage with them and to completely safe environments.” Collins believes that human review of ad media alongside just using context-based targeting, rather than personal info will define the growth of “kidtech” in the next few years. 

Since YouTube’s settlement with the FTC, Collins says the interest in Rukkaz’ protected, kid content platform has grown tenfold. The platform is still in development and has not had an official launch. However, content creators are already in the midst of getting onboard, according to Collins.

Going forward, he sees potential in technologies similar to today’s CAPTCHA systems to detect when it’s a younger viewer, automatically directing them to age-friendly content. He also says that the wider internet, used by adults and children alike, will benefit from this new focus on standards and privacy.

“The kids digital media environment is really setting the standard for what I think the adult digital media space is going to look like in five or 10 years time, or certainly where a lot of people want it to go,” says Collins. 

Featured Post | Innovation

Voice search offers publishers a big opportunity. Here’s how to make the most of it

Content providers have always known that word of mouth can work wonders. Now, they have to apply that principle by speaking up—literally—in order to reach more consumers via voice search.

Voice searches already account for about 20% of mobile queries. By next year half of all online searches will be performed via voice. Yet only 4% of businesses surveyed regard themselves as voice-search ready. Publishers who are behind this important tech curve risk being silenced by rivals intent on commanding the conversation.

The talk on the street

“It’s no surprise that voice as an interface for technology and information is taking off so quickly,” says Rachel Reed, senior innovation manager for food, lifestyle and entertainment company Meredith Corporation. “As consumers, we are drawn to technology that understands us, empathizes with us, and can ultimately predict our needs and wants. As publishers, voice paves the way for us to create more personalized and meaningful connections with our audiences.”

Bryan Osima, software engineer and CEO of Uvietech Software Solutions, says people are relying more on voice search for three primary reasons: convenience, speed, and accuracy. “We are bombarded with tons of information every day and we have shorter attention spans. So, the speed of getting the information we need is paramount,” he says. “The primary devices for that today are smartphones, smart speakers, and wearables with built-in smart home assistants like Alexa and Google Assistant.”

Publishers who choose not to optimize for voice search are leaving a lot of traffic on the table, Greg Secrist, cofounder of BKA Content, believes. “This area is especially beneficial for news organizations and other content providers who want to increase their chances of their content being found and consumed by readers,” says Secrist.

Real world success stories

Reed can attest to how crucial voice search is becoming for content companies. For years, Meredith has employed a predictive framework that enables its brands to dynamically serve content to targeted users. Now, they’re extending this personalization and predictive framework to voice to make informed predictions about and deliver useful voice content to individual users.

“We employ a two-pronged approach. First, we’ve implemented voice search optimization to ensure our content surfaces in response to general user queries. We are seeking to own the phrase, not just the keyword, by providing shorter responses to longer queries and implementing concise headlines and summaries,” notes Reed. “Second, we are building data-informed voice-first experiences designed for different platforms. This involves identifying the most meaningful use cases for voice and launching interactive experiences to address what we see as unmet needs in each space.”

Currently, Meredith is focused on voice search categories related to health and wellness, entertainment, and food. It recently launched two skills: Balance by Health, which offers daily wellness inspiration and motivation tips; and Entertainment Weekly’s The Must List, which provides an exclusive look at the top movies, TV shows, and movies that its editors recommend.

Secrist, whose business writes and packages customized content for clients, has also been working hard to ensure his team’s compositions are properly optimized for voice. “We use conversational language and semantics to make sure our content is compatible with voice search. Thinking about the way a customer would use their voice to access certain information is important when creating voice search-friendly content,” says Secrist.

Best practices for voice search

To improve voice search optimization (VSO) results, Osima recommends the following best practices:

  • Analyze all content carefully and think about as many contexts and questions users could have about that piece of content.
  • Provide concise yet comprehensive answers to those contextualized questions that could be returned in a voice search result.
  • Structure the content as clearly as possible with logical headings and sections that explicitly detail what each section is focused on. Content found in a frequently asked questions page often get the best returns on voice search. While you can’t make every page on your site FAQ, you can provide a similar structure: Employ a heading that’s descriptive and which could be a contextualized question or query a user would have, and then provide the answer immediately after.
  • Use structured metadata, rich snippets, and other tags made primarily for search engines to ensure that they precisely understand what your content is about.
  • Make sure your site and pages load very quickly.
  • Increase backlinks to your site to improve your domain authority. Search engines want to be sure that, as much as possible, they are returning results from very credible sources. Your overall domain authority is the biggest indicator of that.
  • Pay attention to semantics by targeting long-tail keywords related to the subject matter. For example, a consumer may be searching for “pants,” while others might refer to them as “trousers”; be sure your content addresses both terms.

Keep it simple for success

However, “skip buzzwords, as they don’t work in voice search. Drill down into the most generic keywords your business uses to attract an audience,” suggests Andrew Schrage, CEO of the popular personal finance blog Money Crashers. “Remember that voice search inherently involves brevity. So, you want to strip things down and find out what customers really want to know about your business in as few words as possible.”

Also, aim for content that reads in a conversational manner. That means ensuring a high Flesh-Kincaid readability score – 70 or higher is ideal.

“Having simple answers to questions is important, as voice search is looking for the simplest way to answer the users question. If your content has lengthy paragraphs answering something, it is not voice search friendly,” says Secrist.

Lastly, keep your eyes on the prize: Make a strong effort to identify the value and utility your brand provides and choose a unique way to deliver that utility via voice.

“Give users a reason to come back,” Reed advises. “Test, learn, listen to feedback, and continue to optimize.”