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To paraphrase L.L. Cool J, “Don’t call it a comeback. Contextual advertising has been here for years.” However, more recently behavioral targeting has been hogging the spotlight because it allowed marketers to hyperfocus their targeting and track individual users across the web — no matter where they went.

As the industry now swings toward a privacy-centric model, publishers have a chance to double down on the value they bring to contextual advertising. Of course, this isn’t news to publishers. But what may be surprising is that, for the foreseeable future, the real goldmine is in contextual ads on mobile and in video.

Contextual advertising: Why now?

Google has been heralding the end of cookies for years, while putting off the actual implementation — which is currently slated for the second half of 2023. More recently, though, Google announced that it is expanding its Privacy Sandbox to Android. While this implementation is years away, Apple has been taking more decisive steps to protect user privacy. Not only did it deprecate IDFA in 2021 — changing the way mobile marketers track attribution and optimize campaigns on iOS — but it also allows users to turn private browsing on in Safari on all devices.

Apple’s shift to a more privacy-centric model has already led mobile marketers to shift spend to Android. But we can expect to see spending shift on Google’s platforms as well.

Mobile marketers — and digital marketers in general — will need to reckon with the changing industry. Publishers have a chance to step in and remind marketers that contextual advertising is a great way to reach potential customers. They also need to let them know that advertisers who have already shifted away from mobile ad spending on iOS have an opportunity to contextually target iOS users in publisher apps.

Publishers and advertisers prepare for the contextual revival

The good news is that publishers seem to have recognized this opportunity. “The State of Contextual Targeting: Tactics, Technology and Revenue in 2021” from Digiday and Connatix found that many publishers are already prepared for the revival of contextual ads.

“Publishers are expecting a year of rising demand — and advertiser spend — in the area of contextual targeting,” says the report. “Among our respondents, 84% expect advertiser spend to sustain current levels or grow — and on the growth front, 61% expect to see an increase in buy-side budgeting for contextual-based campaigns.”

This isn’t just wishful thinking on publishers’ parts. The report also surveyed marketers at brands and agencies, finding that 96% of respondents said they would spend as much or more on contextual advertising that year. And 65% of advertisers will be adding to their contextual-based budgets.

So how do publishers win those contextual ad dollars?

The mobile opportunity

Much of the conversation about the resurgence of contextual advertising revolves around cookie deprecation. While we continue to wait for that to go into full effect, there is a hole that needs to be filled for mobile advertisers who still want to reach the estimated 1 billion people who use iPhones around the globe.

The rich data available to apps — especially those with a subscription model — presents marketers with a special opportunity. Forget basic, third-party demographic information, apps that require people to enter actual location data or other granular first-party data give marketers the ability to market to users based on real-time context, like weather conditions, or personally supplied information about their interests.

Publishers who can capitalize on this mobile opportunity now have the ability to build trust and solve problems for mobile advertisers who still need to reach iOS users. For instance, Sheri Bachstein, CEO of The Weather Company and GM of IBM Watson Advertising, says, “By helping mobile marketers drive forward their audience engagement efforts with addressable, performant data sources, we’re confident that this powerful data signal can be a solution for brands trying to solve the identity crisis and ensure consumers derive a more relevant experience across the mobile web and app ecosystem.”

Contextual video is on the rise

When we talk about ad trends, video seems to be a perennial list-topper. And it’s no different when it comes to contextual advertising. Digiday reported that “A number of publishers, ranging from Tastemade and Crackle, have added contextual targeting capabilities for their OTT and CTV inventory.”

Additionally, Xandr — a data-enabled technology platform powering a global marketplace for premium advertising — “launched a contextual targeting capability for CTV inventory, as part of a bid to maintain the momentum behind the video side of its business, which now represents 35% of the spend on Xandr’s DSP.” And at the time of the reporting, Iris.tv, which provides a contextual targeting marketplace, “has been growing 25% per month since the start of 2021 and now handles 28 billion ad requests per month, according to a spokesperson.”

Contextual and connected

CTV — and online video content in general — presents many opportunities for publishers, and, ironically, harkens back to the glory days of television advertising when soap companies advertised on daytime TV giving rise to soap operas. The ability to pinpoint this kind of targeting has only increased with CTV, and opens up opportunities for more interactive experiences that also allow for better tracking.

“I think one of the really powerful arenas, where contextual data will be pivotal, is CTV and more and more people are shifting to an addressable approach with their linear television as well,” Katie Price, programmatic media lead at the agency PMG, said in the Digiday Connatix report. “As contextual data gets more powerful from a digital buying perspective, we will be able to mesh together the efficiencies of programmatic buying and digital buying with that contextual relevance that has been such an advantage for TV advertisers and linear advertising in general.”

The report found that 44% of publishers were already using context-based video ad tools or were working with a third-party partner on a solution. Nearly a quarter of respondents were planning to work with contextual video in the year ahead.

That’s an opportunity The Weather Company is poised to capitalize on. According to Bachstein, “The advanced TV market is a huge growth area for us in 2022, and we’re excited to push deeper into this space. After hearing directly from our brand customers, we know that the market craves solutions that deliver personalization and drive action in this rapidly scaling medium. We’re continuing to improve our offerings to remain flexible across a multitude of platforms.”

Integral Ad Science (IAS) has already recognized and invested in the opportunities for CTV and contextual advertising. As AdExchanger reports, “Most of IAS’s growth currently lies in programmatic, and its biggest driver of that revenue line is a product it calls Context Control, which helps shift ad dollars into brand safe environments.” Through strategic acquisitions, IAS can now analyze video in addition to text. IAS creates contextual segments based on video analysis — detecting everything from language to emotions.

That’s a lot of context!

Mobile video: The perfect storm

If mobile and video present opportunities, then it only stands to reason that mobile video is a perfect storm of opportunity for publishers — and the numbers back it up. Google says three out of four adults report watching YouTube at home on their mobile devices. TikTok is predicted to have 1 billion users by January of 2022 built squarely on the popularity of mobile video.

Platforms that combine the convenience of mobile with the engaging nature of video are rewarded with vast audiences. However, marketers looking for controlled, brand-safe environments may be more likely to turn to trusted media outlets. Publishers who can capitalize on the power of mobile video and combine it with contextual ads will stand out from competitors.

The added benefits of contextual targeting

Consumers have, frankly, had it up to here with intrusive ad experiences — and that includes ads that follow them around the web. Audiences are primed for a contextually relevant, yet unobtrusive experience that provides them more control while still delivering a level of personalization. Publishers can seize that opportunity by embracing, and perfecting, the art of contextual advertising.

Contextual is not new. But these days, there are many good reasons to give it another look. Of course these include increased consumer concerns around tracking, privacy regulation, and big tech’s response.

However there’s more to it: contextual ads are smarter than ever. Natural language processing (NLP) allows marketers a deeper understanding of not only the context but the sentiment of each page, and increasingly, video on the web. With the help of machine learning, advertisers and publishers can go beyond keywords and whitelists to find the most relevant content possible.

Advertising | Featured Post | Perspectives

Can CTV avoid the pitfalls that plague digital advertising?

March 29, 2022 Chris M. Sutcliffe – Independent Media Reporter

Nobody doubts the power of television. It retains huge audiences, commands enormous ad spends, and influences discourse at all levels of society. Those strengths largely remain despite the ongoing issues of the retirement of linear TV, the great unbundling, and new entrants into the space cutting into existing revenue strategies among incumbents. What advertisers and brands doubt is the stability of the modern TV landscape — particularly given the rise of television sets connected to the internet.

The advent of connected TVs (CTVs) was supposed to herald a new era of better measurements, more accurate audience demographics, and better return on investment for advertisers. Some of that has come to pass. Other developments have meant that the CTV landscape is not yet delivering upon its full potential, and that it could destabilize TV advertising more generally.

Options abound

According to industry organization Thinkbox 80% of households in the UK have at least one television that is connected to the internet, either directly or through a third-party device like a gaming console. In the U.S., research from The Diffusion Group has found that the share of U.S. broadband households with CTVs has grown by just a single percentage point from last year, and currently stands at 86%.

That plateauing of growth coincides with a growing number of players within the space. Streaming services and digital video platforms jostle for position on CTVs with channels and broadcasters that are more associated with the medium. The number of CTV apps available on the Roku channel store, Apple TV, and Amazon Fire TV increased by over 38% year-over-year in 2020 according to research from 42matters.

It is a collision of different forms of video that mean advertisers have more choice — but also that there is a lot of confusion when it comes to measuring the success of advertising across CTV.

YouTube, for instance, is betting upon that plurality of choice to grow its own advertising business. Philip Miles, country sales director for YouTube and Display, UK & Ireland, told me after the latest YouTube Festival, “Historically, there tended to be a versus conversation — so YouTube versus television… pitted against each other. [But] our key thing that we were trying to land with Festival is YouTube is effectively part of the UK TV industry now, and increasingly advertisers are recognizing that it’s not an either/or conversation.”

But that entrant of new players, combined with resurgent spend after the pandemic, has led to inflation in TV ad prices. It is a volatile market — and exacerbated by issues around measurements. Nielsen is widely seen as not having adapted quickly enough to audience consumption habits, and its UK equivalent, BARB, only announced an upgrade to measure across subscription video on-demand (SVOD) in late 2021. At the time BARB’s chief executive Justin Sampson said, “It’s great news for the television and advertising industry that we’re upgrading our always-on measurement service to include SVOD and video-sharing platforms. For the first time there is audience measurement for these services that bears all the hallmarks of a joint-industry currency: independence, objectivity and transparency.”

Doomed to repeat digital history

Yet media buyer reticence around CTV suggests that the market is unsure about the extent to which it can reliably deliver upon its promise. And the reasons for that reticence will be uncomfortably familiar to anyone who has kept abreast of issues surrounding digital advertising more widely.

For starters, creating that joint-industry approach to marketing is easier said than done. There isn’t yet true consensus on what metrics should be captured, by whom, and which bodies should oversee the data. In the meantime, the lack of any one default measurement body is leading to non accredited bodies offering services that claim to offer a true yardstick for pricing of ads across CTV.

The European Connected TV Initiative says that, just as with digital advertising, opacity of the supply chains is paramount to making the most of the CTV opportunity. Its second most-important priority is the development of a more transparent and integrated CTV advertising supply chain. The goal, it says, is “to give advertisers and agencies the confidence to know what they are buying and where their ads will run – be it premium TV inventory, secondary TV content or social video.”

It all speaks to confusion around the different forms of video available on CTVs. With linear TV, satellite or cable, there was at least the perception of uniformity in form and quality. With the vast number of services available across CTV, that is no longer the case. Although YouTube might like to claim the quality of its content is on par with that across other CTV apps, is it really?

The problem is extremely similar to that of digital advertising, which also has the unfortunate issue of being undifferentiated. Just as projects like overtone.ai seek to provide a quality score for digital advertising — based on a number of criteria that demonstrate the veracity and safety of sites — there is a need among CTV advertisers to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Data and other dilemmas

Some marketers and buyers believe that, as with first-party data provided by digital publishers, there is an opportunity individual apps and CTV services can provide. Tal Chalozin, chief tech officer and co-founder at Innovid, told The Drum: “More data can be generated and a lot more endpoints can be connected together. Marketers would like to see other forms of measurement, more than just panels, more like a census into website traffic or app downloads.”

And probably most similarly to digital advertising, the potential for bad actors to enter the space is a growing concern. Omnicom has cited a lack of linear TV-level transparency as a major flaw in any attempt to sell CTV advertising, even among the bigger players. The company says “an inability to understand audiences at the household level across partners; and a measurability gap that translates to an open invitation to cyber criminals who are generating millions in ad fraud” is the big problem to be solved.

CTV is an enormous opportunity for advertisers. As different forms of video content collide on connected devices, the line between what is and is not TV content is eroding. With that erosion, however, comes the potential for context collapse around TV advertising and a revision of TV advertising’s effectiveness. And despite many of the challenges being familiar, there is no clear path to ensuring the industry doesn’t replicate the mistakes it made in creating digital advertising.

Advertising | Featured Post | Perspectives | Policy

Apple and California are pushing advertising to adapt. That’s a good thing.

March 24, 2022 Chris Pedigo, SVP Government Affairs – DCN

For far too long, many have falsely equated the value of digital advertising as the ability to track consumer behavior. This belief, and much of the marketing strategy it inspired, eroded consumer trust, which hasn’t been a win for anyone. Regulation is catching up and efforts are now being made to align business practices more closely with consumer expectations.

Regulation is catching up and efforts are now being made to align business practices more closely with consumer expectations. Unfortunately, this has a lot of pundits opining about the negative impact of privacy governance on marketing. The reality is that digital advertising has much more than tracking to offer consumers, marketers, and media companies. The changing landscape is a necessary evolutionary step, and an opportunity to get things right.

CPRA in effect

Later this summer, California regulators will spell out draft rules for how companies should comply with the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), which builds on and strengthens existing California privacy law. One of the biggest changes will be the ability for consumers to opt out of being tracked with a single click. The CPRA specifically requires companies to honor an opt out signal generated from a global privacy control in a browser or device.

Interestingly, this new provision in the CPRA mirrors Apple’s approach with App Tracking Transparency (ATT), which it rolled out in 2021 as part of its update to iOS 14.5. Under ATT, apps must ask consumers for permission to track them. The results have not been surprising: 81% of consumers have chosen the option not to be tracked.

So, what will happen when Californians have the same ability to opt out as Apple users have today?

It’s not unreasonable to assume that Californians will opt out of tracking at similar rates. Given that there are more than 39 million California residents, an 81% opt out rate translates to 31,590,000 people. And really, if even half that opt out, it is not a small number. Advertisers will understandably want to find new ways to reach these consumers. The industry is already feeling the impact of consumers’ privacy preferences and advertising must evolve accordingly.

Dominant companies dented

Since the launch of ATT, companies that depend on web-wide tracking of consumers have suffered. Facebook warned investors that Apple’s improvements to privacy will cost them $10 billion in revenue this year.

It’s interesting to note that ATT’s impact is felt solely in Apple’s platform, which has provided Google with the unique calling card to advertisers of being the operating system and browser still “all-in” on tracking. However, CPRA will apply to everyone. Given that Google, like Facebook, has built an advertising empire based on invasive tracking, it seems inevitable that the company will see an impact on its ad revenues as well.

Some have noted that Apple has also seen revenue climb from its own App Store search ads. However, they are quickly reaching capacity constraints in the app promotions category, so this is unlikely to serve as a major growth category for Apple.

Ad innovation

Of course, despite limits to tracking, Apple users still see display ads as those ads just aren’t targeted using behavioral profiles. Apple allows ads to be targeted to cohorts or by using first party data. So, I believe that we will start to see more innovation in how advertising is targeted to consumers. First party targeted ads seem like an obvious winner. In particular, ad innovation on Apple platforms could yield significant success because those audiences have long been seen as a more valuable consumer demographic than Android users.

Premium advertising alignment

Consumers frequently complain about creepy ads that follow them around the web. Those kinds of ads are not subtle. In fact, they are viewed by many as the digital equivalent of junk mail. And, as such, they don’t match well with premium content.

However, ads that are based on first party data might be better suited to a premium environment. For starters, the consumer is likely to realize that they are seeing a certain ad because of data they shared with the publisher. They are also likely to have a more favorable view of that ad because of the context. That’s because – instead of focusing solely on targeting a user at the lowest cost – the advertiser has instead intentionally aligned themselves with the relationship the publisher enjoys with the consumer. The ad is, therefore, likely to leverage that premium context to greater effect. In a world where third-party profiling is restricted, we could start to see higher quality ads in premium contexts – and ads that are more effective as a result.

Valuable consenting consumers

While it is a relatively small number, the 19% of consumers that intentionally opt-in to data sharing with sites and companies they trust will become extremely valuable. Trusted, well-respected brands promise to be the main beneficiaries as they are those most likely to gain consent from consumers. Obviously, advertisers would pay a premium to reach these audiences. It’s also interesting to consider how premium publishers could find new ways outside of advertising to monetize their most loyal consumers.

If past is prologue, big tech lobbyists and lawyers will forebodingly warn that the CPRA will cause irreparable damage to the advertising industry. They will bemoan the impact on small businesses and diverse voices. However, it is critical to remember that their real goal is to blunt the hit to Google and Facebook’s bottom lines, which is already driven by upwards of 70% of the digital advertising market.

The future is good advertising

Ultimately, we need to focus on the fact that consumers want, and will get, more control over how their data is shared across the web. As Carnegie-Mellon economist Alessandro Acquisti points out: When consumers are empowered with more privacy, welfare doesn’t evaporate, it shifts and reallocates towards a new set of winners.

The adaptation required from ATT and CPRA are likely to shake up digital advertising and shift advertising revenue from current channels. Like Apple’s tracking prevention last year, CPRA is poised to have a huge impact on the companies dominating digital advertising by logging every aspect of a consumer’s behavior. At the same time, these shifts promise to expand opportunities for trusted, premium publishers; They will stand out to consumers by offering something consumers actually want: valuable news and entertainment, delivered in a way that respects them and their wishes.

How a one dollar offer drives The Boston Globe’s subscription success story

March 17, 2022 Meena Thiruvengadam – Independent Media Reporter

It took The Boston Globe seven years to reach the first 100,000 subscribers. It only took a year to add the next 100,000. They’ve found that the key to accelerating growth is an introductory subscription offer so low, they’re practically giving the news away.

Head to bostonglobe.com and non-subscribers are given the option to read all the content they want for a bargain $1 for the first six months. While the Globe’s generous offer comes with an expiration date, a surprising number of subscribers decide that it’s worth paying more to stick around.

“We’re at the point where 90% of growth and revenue comes from subscriptions,” Tom Brown, vice president of consumer revenue for Boston Globe Media, said of the company’s digital operations.

How The Globe got here

With subscription growth slowing, The Boston Globe decided to try an experiment in 2018. The Globe, which has long believed its product was worth $1 a day, began charging that rate in 2015. It also decided it would try to accelerate subscriber growth with a bargain introductory offer.

In the first few days after making the one dollar introductory offer, Brown said they got thousands of new subscriptions “which was far higher than the 150 or so subscriptions that came in on a normal day.”

Beyond that, though, a higher number of those one dollar introductory offers converted into full-rate subscriptions. The Globe’s 2018 experiment alone led to a tenfold increase in subscriber conversions. “You’re stepping more people to the full rate every week than you ever would have with another other strategy,” Brown said.

“We felt good right away that we had not mortgaged our future in any way to do this test.” In fact, more than 80% of subscribers kept their subscriptions in the first month after prices reset. That fell over time but remained above 60% by the time a subscriber hit their three-month anniversary. And more than 30% of people continue to subscribe to bostonglobe.com after two years.

Attracting young audiences

There’s one almost surefire way to get a new customer to try a product — a discount so good it can’t be refused. That is especially true with younger audiences, which are accustomed to getting news from places like Instagram and TikTok.

“New and younger audiences were willing to give us a shot because it’s almost like a free trial,” Brown said. However, while a free trial might seem an obvious choice, research has found that charging any amount increases the odds audiences will convert from trial to subscriber at the end of the introductory period.

The paper also tried offering a four-week subscription for 99 cents but ultimately found the details of the offer didn’t make a meaningful difference in conversion rates. Audiences are required to enter a credit card to pay their $1 balance and are told their subscription will eventually renew at the weekly rate of $6.93.

Full funnel options

Brown notes that many younger subscribers didn’t grow up with a newspaper subscription so they were unaware of the breadth of the local paper’s offerings. “We’re a general interest news site that has so much and I’m not sure how much everyone knows all that we have,” he said.

Most visitors to bostonglobe.com get at least one free article. This classic move is designed to keep the top of the customer acquisition funnel open and signaling to Google and other platforms that audiences are engaging with the site.

Because an estimated 80% of Boston Globe readers don’t hit a paywall right away, readership – and ad views – don’t suffer because of a strategy aimed at driving long-term revenue growth, according to Brown.

Long-term customer value

It is wise to invest in the lifetime value of a customer. While an offer like this may take cash out of your pocket today, it offers the promise of exponential returns if audiences are happy with their experience.

“We’re making lots of decisions that we know may hurt or may not pay off this year, but will pay off over the long term,” Brown said. “The more subscribers you can acquire now, the better off you’ll be in the future.”

Nowadays, Brown and his team focus on making revenue-maximizing decisions without getting hung up on the small sacrifices it might take to get there. “This strategy is the right one for us,” he said. “The pandemic crystallized that in the sense that we became even more relevant to our readers as advertising became extremely volatile.” Being reader-supported makes the brand less vulnerable to the whims of advertisers.

And while the first few months after a price reset triggers some cancellations, those who stick around tend to be loyal customers. The volume of new subscribers can also make it easier to stomach the churn. “Our model is as tight as it’s ever been, and our audiences are larger,” Brown said.

The pandemic is just the latest thing to show subscription revenue can be much more dependable than ad revenue, Brown said. “It’s certainly not recession proof, but news is very relevant to people in times of crisis.”

Social audio brings NPR new, engaged audiences—and much more

March 10, 2022 Jessica Patterson – Independent Media Reporter

Social audio, which came to prominence with the now eerily-quiet Clubhouse, took off during the pandemic. A slew of competitors has emerged during the past 24 months. And just this week, Amazon joined the market with Amp. The company’s pitch is that the new audio app allows users to become live radio DJs, curate playlists, and talk to listeners and guests.

NPR is no stranger to live radio. The Washington-based non-profit media organization hosts two flagship news broadcasts: Morning Edition and All Things Considered. And, in 2020, more people than ever before were consuming NPR content through their website, radio, apps, live streaming, and smart devices, according to Nieman Lab, which pinned its audience around 57 million.

For Matt Adams, engagement editor + social audio at NPR, moving into social audio spaces made sense because it allowed them to meet audiences where they are. Audio also clearly plays to the strengths of their radio roots—but offers added benefits. And, unlike live video, which may take a while to set up or look a certain way, Adams explained, social audio can be set up in minutes. “This is like, get on your Twitter app. You start it. And then you’re just in a conversation. It’s very quick and easy.”

NPR has been doing Twitter Spaces for a year. Adams says that its first Spaces was with the Code Switch team about their fellowship. “I thought it would be a great way to get people who are interested in applying to that fellowship to ask questions and get answers for it,” he said.

And from there, Adams started to experiment. What’s Next: An NPR Conversation Series ran two or three Spaces every day for a week. NPR and member stations would invite their audiences to join on various topics including kids and COVID, climate change, The Supreme Court, and Indigenous community coverage.

Get feedback

Social audio is a great tool for digital content companies to connect with and expand audiences. Adams says it clearly offers a quick and easy way to talk to their social audience. “What I think is cool is it’s we’re not speaking at them; we’re speaking with them. We can bring them on stage and get their questions and thoughts.”

One of the Spaces that worked really well in the What’s Next series, Adams says, was a conversation about the housing market. “There was a lot of back and forth about, how do you buy a house now? Why is the housing market so wild out there? How do you figure it out?” Adams said.

Find new audiences

While engaging with current fans is important, a big goal for a lot of digital content companies is to attract new and younger audiences. Adams believes social audio offers a way to do just that. In fact, over the last year, Twitter Spaces has introduced new audiences to NPR.

One way is through audience referrals. As companies invite speakers to social audio spaces, their followers are notified that there’s a Space happening. When NPR Weekend Edition host Scott Simon interviewed Matthew McConaughey, they did it on Spaces. And that brought Matthew McConaughey‘s fans to NPR’s Space. “They might not follow NPR, they might not even listen to NPR, they might just be there because they’re Matthew McConaughey fans,” Adams said. “But maybe we pick up some new followers… and that’s key.”

“It’s a great way to just interact with people that you might not be able to interact with otherwise. I think that’s very cool.”

Find new content

Adams said that NPR’s social audio spaces have also sparked content and story ideas from the audience. “Sometimes they’ve said, ‘I think you should be thinking about this or doing that. The host’s like, ‘it’s a good idea. We should think about that or add that to our coverage.’”

NPR has opted to record some of their social audio spaces and later make them downloadable—or even broadcast them on air. They have also transcribed their Twitter Spaces into stories that get page views also grow audiences. All of these tactics allow them to better leverage what might be a one time live-only event in a variety of ways, and to reach broader audiences.

Where Adams has seen social audio really work is for trending topics. They can quickly produce Twitter Spaces to discuss current events and issues, like Ukraine, Russia, or the State of the Union Address.

Listen and learn

As Amazon jumps on the bandwagon this month, it’s clear that social audio isn’t going away soon. And, with potential options to monetize it in the future – from in-app tipping features, to sponsorship, to tickets for premium events – it might become a revenue stream as well.

Social audio offers Zoom-weary audiences the intimacy of podcasts but also the ability to participate in discussions, be brought up on the stage and ask questions directly to speakers in real time.

It is interesting the way in which live social audio experiences mirror live radio, but also how they differ. Unlike pre-recorded segments or podcasts, live offers real time audience engagement. But, as the name would imply, social takes it even further. Audience members can “see” each other. They are able to react even if they don’t speak up. And they feel easily empowered to engage. For younger audiences, who may have never listened to terrestrial or even satellite radio, this new format offers the ease and comfort of social media. But for all audiences, engagement and interaction can clearly reach a new level altogether.

Adams saw this firsthand when NPR hosted a Twitter Space based on a story about college students’ experience during the pandemic. Adams asked the reporter to bring her sources into a Space for a discussion. “And then all of the college students in the audience were joining and then jumping up to talk about what was happening at their school and what they were going through,” he said. “There was just this big conversation between the sources and the audience, and we were just directing traffic. It was awesome. It was not what you would do on the radio.”

Can newspapers ever be “essential” apps on smartphones?

March 3, 2022 Chris M. Sutcliffe – Independent Media Reporter

TikTok, the insanely popular social video app, comes pre-installed on a number of Samsung smartphones. That’s hardly surprising. Samsung and TikTok have a longstanding relationship, with the app finding a place on Samsung smart TVs back in December of 2020. It’s a mutually beneficial partnership: The hardware manufacturer rides the wave of the app’s rapid growth in popularity, the app expands its audience, and the pair have access to a new suite of data between them.

What is surprising, though, is how deeply embedded TikTok appears to be in Samsung hardware. As reported by Screenrant, and as pointed out in Samsung forums, the app is not just pre-installed on Samsung devices. It is in fact deemed “essential.” That means it can’t be uninstalled completely, on par with the Camera app. While workarounds do exist, the message is clear: Samsung dearly wants its users use that TikTok app on its smartphones.

As Screenrant’s Nadeem Sarwar points out, there must be a tangible benefit for both parties – even if that comes at a storage and data cost to the user: “How TikTok is an essential app is unclear. But to the average smartphone user, it is nothing more than a cash-grab scheme between the world’s most popular app and the world’s largest smartphone seller.”

While the partnership between Samsung and TikTok is pertinent for media companies, it is far from the only pre-installed or essential app tie-ups of the past few years. The PlayStation 5 media remote comes with physical buttons for launching Netflix, Disney Plus, Spotify, and YouTube. Samsung also includes Facebook as one of its essential pre-installed apps, which adds fuel to the fire of user accusations of bloatware.

But what does that mean for media companies, news publishers whose apps are not considered essential in their own right? And should those companies be considering pursuing similar exclusive partnerships with hardware manufacturers?

Apps strong together

Newspapers do have a presence as pre-installed apps to some extent already. Apple’s News app has been pre-installed on iPhones for some years now, itself the successor to its Newsstand app. That has been further developed with the implementation of News+, which boasts any number of publishers by now. That means that users, at least in theory, have a pre-installed and essential app through which they can reach newspapers on iOS (provided they agree to Apple’s terms, which have been… tumultuous).

In practice, however, it isn’t the same at all. Access via an aggregator is not the same as having a dedicated app, for both publishers and audiences. Readly, Apple News+, and many of the other aggregators are not focused on media brands creating a direct relationship with audiences. They’re about revenue, not engagement.

Worse still, this bundling robs publishers of the ability to iterate and experiment with an app they own and operate. Mathias Douchet, director of product at The Telegraph, says that freedom is the single most important point when it comes to establishing long-term user relationships:

“Even with a continuous improvement cycle, it is important to celebrate your success as it happens. With the new digital edition app, three out of four users are coming back daily. This is even higher among core subscribers at 95%.”

So even when publishers do have a presence on essential apps, it doesn’t necessarily replicate the benefits of the partnership between TikTok and Samsung. It does not serve the same purpose, nor does it necessarily benefit the user.

Beat the bloat

So why does it matter to publishers if their apps do not appear as pre-installed solutions on smartphone hardware? The answer is that in the battle for attention those pre-installed solutions allow some apps to cheat. They leave the starting line before the firing gun has gone off. This puts the rest of apps – newspapers and magazines included – at a disadvantage when it comes to audience attention.

A good rule of thumb is that unless your app appears in a users’ top five most-used apps, they aren’t visiting it every day. That in turn means that users are unlikely to develop the habit of opening a news app regularly, which creates fewer touch points with your subscriber.

According to research from App Annie in its State of Mobile 2021 report, news publishers very rarely appear in the top five most used apps on users’ smartphones. The few that do typically are state broadcasters like the BBC. The top two most used apps among Gen X in the UK are BBC Weather and BBC News respectively. No news apps appear in the top five most used apps for either Gen Z or Millennials. In the US, the only news app to appear in any of the cohorts’ most used apps is The Weather Channel.

Preferential treatment

There is a self-perpetuating cycle to the issue of pre-installed apps. They get chosen as partners by hardware manufacturers because they are popular; and they become more popular because they are pre-installed. By contrast news apps, which barely account for more than 6% of time spent in apps in total, barely factor in and are unlikely to be considered essential in terms of user priority.

A second factor is that news apps come with political and emotional baggage, which apps like TikTok are unlikely to have. It is unlikely given accusations of bloat and the need to work out partnership deals that any smartphone manufacturer would seek to force users to keep a particular outlets’ news app on their device. It is more unlikely still that they would do so given that accusations of bias and monopolistic practices around big tech companies are rampant.

Consider U2’s “Songs of Innocence” debacle, in which the band and Apple received backlash for distributing the band’s album for free onto people’s devices. Now add in the current supercharged political climate and consumer’s polarized position on news brands. Things could get complicated fast.

Apps, particularly on smartphones, remain a key part of many newspapers’ and magazines’ strategies. Users spend more time on their phones than with television, and time spent in apps made up a significant proportion of that. But despite the value they create for media companies and their audiences, it is unlikely that hardware manufacturers consider them as big a draw for their consumers as entertainment apps.

So, if newspapers want to be included in a pre-installed app on smartphones, maybe they should invest in dancing lessons for their journalists. Because, for better or worse, making their apps a fixture of users’ mobile diet may not come as easily as negotiating a pre-install position.

How NYMag, NYT and Atlantic are leveling-up their game strategy

February 24, 2022 Esther Kezia Thorpe – Independent Media Reporter

Last month’s Wordle acquisition by The New York Times hit headlines inside and outside the media world. It serves as a useful reminder of the value of simplicity in creating a successful game. However, it also reinforced the NYT’s ambition to be the destination for people spending time online.

The subscription behemoth isn’t the only publisher looking to level up in games. As the pressure to gain and retain subscribers grows, publishers are using puzzles not just to build habit, but to open a two-way relationship with readers – and their friends.

A move to daily games

Jonathan Knight, The New York Times’ General Manager of Games, sees a correlation between daily engagement with the games and long term retention. “We see it as a great diversion from the news, when the news can often be quite rough,” he said. “We have a lot of people who are coming to read the news, and then the games are the ‘dessert’ at the end of the meal.”

Sensing an opportunity with a new wave of daily puzzle enthusiasts, New York Magazine announced a new crossword in January – with a twist. The 10×10 puzzle, housed under the Vulture brand, is entirely focused on entertainment and pop-culture.

“We explored a few different avenues. But eventually we realized that what made the most sense was to start with something we already had,”said Vulture Editor Neil Janowitz. The 10×10 format is a relatively digestible puzzle that can typically be solved in under six minutes. But it also sits comfortably alongside the flagship New York crossword.

As the biggest site in the magazine’s network, Vulture made the most sense to house the new puzzle. “There’s a clarity and simplicity to making it a pop culture puzzle that everybody can immediately understand,” Janowitz added. “You can put 10 crosswords side by side, and you can clearly pick out the one that Vulture published, because it feels like us.”

The Atlantic launched its mini daily crossword puzzle in October 2018, ahead of the publisher’s wider digital subscription drive. This one gets a little bigger and more challenging as the week goes on. “In addition to all the journalism we provide, we were drawn to the idea of giving people a moment of whimsy,” explained Executive Editor Adrienne LaFrance.

A gateway to subscriptions

The New York Times has taken a layered approach to its puzzles in order to entice players. Their ‘The Mini’ crossword is free to play for everyone. But if a user wants to be a part of the leaderboard and compete with friends, that’s a subscriber benefit. “That’s a great example of how we’ve managed to build a huge audience with daily engagement on a game that has a couple of layers to it,” Knight explained. Similarly the Spelling Bee word game has higher ranks of the game that are only accessible to subscribers.

The hope is that newly-acquired Wordle will introduce even more people to the NYT’s stable of games. “We want more people spending more time with the New York Times, and [the Wordle acquisition] plays a key role in that,” Knight commented.

Knight is committed to keeping the popular word game free on the site. They have no plans worked out for any other layers to it yet. But looking at where the subscriber walls fall on other NYT games, it is not inconceivable that leaderboards or additional levels could be added to Wordle as a subscriber-only perk.

The Atlantic’s crossword is also free to play. LaFrance sees this approach as habit-building. “If people are developing a regular relationship through the puzzle, meaning they’re coming back every day, these puzzles become a ritual,” she said. “It’s useful because people are going from the puzzle to reading. So it means developing a deeper relationship, not just with the puzzle, but with The Atlantic as a whole.”

Both the Vulture 10×10 and New York Magazine’s other puzzles sit outside the paywall. Readers can play as many as they want, and will only hit the metered paywall when they try to read an article. It’s an experiment for now, with the purpose of pulling new readers in by building habits.

Beyond puzzles: merch and newsletters

Puzzles may be an excellent way to keep people coming back to publisher sites on a regular basis. But the gap between a habitual puzzler and a reader still remains. For some publishers like the NYT, this isn’t a problem. Their separate games subscription means that they still monetize that audience, even if some of them never interact with the news product.

“We think of the news as the sun in our solar system,” explained Knight. “But increasingly—with cooking, with games, with Wirecutter, with audio—there are these planets that rotate around that sun, and that is an essential part of our strategy.”

However, for other publishers who haven’t put a price on the puzzles, attention is turning to ways to bring regular gamers more fully into the fold.

The Atlantic is trying a different approach to bridge the gap between player and reader. Two months ago, the publisher launched The Good Word. Crossword Editor Caleb Madison does a weekly deep dive into a favorite word or phrase from that week’s crossword; what it means, where it comes from, and what led him to “enshrine this bit of language in the grid”.

“We love the idea of creating a closer and more direct connection between Caleb and the people who are fans of the puzzle,” LaFrance said. As well as being able to collect details, the newsletter serves as a useful tool to expose puzzlers to The Atlantic’s journalism. The bottom of each edition is carefully utilized to promote popular stories and events.

For these reasons, The Good Word is one of the newsletters The Atlantic is keeping free. “It’s a useful entry point into The Atlantic,” LaFrance explained. “There may be people who play the puzzle and aren’t deeply familiar with The Atlantic and start reading. In fact, we’ve seen that the puzzle is a real portal to the rest of our journalism.”

The NYT spotted a further monetization opportunity from its puzzles: merchandise. Fans can buy ‘Mini’ crossword baby onesies or Spelling Bee tote bags. The Spelling Bee merchandise, which was released late last year, immediately sold out, according to Knight.

Humanizing the games

For all three publishers, centering the puzzle’s creators is a key part of their strategies. The Atlantic’s Madison fronts both the crossword and the associated newsletter. Both New York Magazine and the New York Times have bylines on their various crosswords.

“I think the idea that there’s a human behind the game is really important,” said Knight. “You really sense you’re trying to solve a puzzle that some other human has put out there for you to solve versus just playing against the machine.”

New York Magazine has seen puzzle creators become “puzzle influencers” in the audiences they build. “There are a ton of constructors out there who have personalities. If you are a devoted puzzler, you have your favorite constructors,” Director of Editorial Operations Mariam Aldhahi explained. New York Crossword author Matt Gaffney has an established audience, and Stella Zawistowski and Malaika Handa who work on the Vulture 10×10 are now building a following.

“For us, it was about finding constructors that we think brought the right voice and tone to our puzzles,” said Aldhahi. “There is an audience around specific [puzzle creators], and people will go where their favorite constructors are.”

During the pandemic, The Atlantic introduced a social “Play Together” feature to its crossword. This allowed puzzlers to invite friends to help solve the crossword together each day. But it is more than just a nice bonding opportunity for friends in lockdown. Being exposed to The Atlantic’s work by collaborating on a puzzle is the ultimate in referral by stealth.

LaFrance noted that social play was something the team were keen on introducing, even without the pandemic. “In print, you have the puzzle on the kitchen counter and someone else wanders in and works at it for a bit… so I think people are familiar with this experience of collaboratively doing puzzles,” she said.

Collaboration is a feature the Vulture 10×10 has also built into its gameplay. The team were inspired by the social nature of Wordle, and how many people share their results online. “I have a group chat with friends and we text each other our Wordles in the morning,” said Janowitz. “Clearly there is some amount of interest in comparing, and the bet being maybe collaborating and doing these things together.”

Time to level up

The race to reader revenue shows no signs of slowing. It is evident from each of these publishers that attention is now turning to more sophisticated ways of engagement and habit-building.

But simple games are no longer enough. Offering games is not a strategy in itself. To fully maximize the gaming investment, publishers need to find ways to bring regular puzzlers into a deeper relationship, whether that be through newsletters, social features, or additional layers to the games themselves.

The rise of NFTs comes with unanswered copyright questions

February 22, 2022 Charlotte Ricca – Independent Media Reporter

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have dominated the headlines of late. Whether Kanye West is dissing NFTs, or Jimmy Fallon is hyping them, hardly a day goes by without a big news story related to virtual property. While the splashy headlines are fun, there is increasing attention on the copyright implications of NFTs. With a growing number of digital publishers looking to cash in, it has become evident that there is misunderstanding around ownership and copyright issues of this burgeoning technology.

“The whole premise of NFTs is that they are unique. But while the token might be unique, it doesn’t mean the item attached to it is,” explains Andres Guadamuz, a Reader in Intellectual Property Law at the University of Sussex in the UK, who wrote a paper on NFTs and copyright.

“Blockchain is public, so anyone can download and view the item for free,” Guadamuz adds. “But these issues are nothing new; they already exist online. You can easily copy and paste an image on the internet.” With this in mind, it is important for publishers to be cautious, and consider the same digital rights management issues that have been a part of digital publishing since its inception.

“The digital rights management aspect might prove to be an important part of NFTs,” says Guadamuz. “But the potential for copyright infringement could have a more immediate effect on the development of NFTs. Given the hype that exists about the technology, as well as the prices that are being paid for NFTs, there is considerable scope for legal action in this area.”

So, while Doug Shapiro claims “NFTs represent a massive financial and strategic opportunity for traditional media companies,” they may also represent a massive headache.

What does it mean to own an NFT?

Each NFT has a unique identifier, with metadata recorded in a public ledger, including who originally minted the NFT and who owns it. The NFT can only have one official owner at a time, and no-one can modify the record of ownership or copy and paste a new NFT into existence.

However, the blockchain is unable to store the actual underlying digital asset. That means when you buy an NFT, you are only buying a link to the item – not the item itself. Aram Sinnreich, professor and chair of the communication studies division at American University, explains, “Mostly, what you ‘own’ is the exclusive right to transact that little entry in the ledger.”

He adds, “For instance, owning an NFT of a song doesn’t mean you own the song — unless the prior owner of a song also wrote a contract saying ‘whoever buys the NFT also owns the song itself.’ In which case, why not just buy the song, and skip the NFT part?”

He does have a point. According to Sinnreich there are two kinds of people buying NFTs: “gullible people and scam artists.” One of the key drivers behind the NFT phenomena is scarcity, because each one is supposed to be unique.

“A creator can write a song, and everyone can listen to it, but the NFT is sold as a unique version of the work, digitally signed by the author,” explains Guadamuz. “NFTs are therefore seen as collectors’ items and not property of the original itself. However, there is practically no ownership transfer involved in NFTs.”

NFT copyrights and wrongs

Confusion about what you own when buying an NFT is further muddied by the aforementioned copyright concerns. The buyer of an NFT doesn’t necessarily acquire its copyright. Similarly, if you already own an original work of art, photo, or song “off chain,” it doesn’t mean you have the right to sell it as an NFT.

This confusion has led to a number of high-profile disputes. An NFT of a Jean-Michel Basquiat drawing was withdrawn from auction on the platform OpenSea, after the late artist’s estate confirmed the seller did not own the license or rights to the work – even if they did own the original piece of art.

Miramax accused Quentin Tarantino of violating the company’s copyright and trademark, when he minted NFTs based on “Pulp Fiction.” More recently, a website called HitPiece was accused of selling iconic songs as NFTs without the artists’ permission.

The sellers of the NFT of Basquiat’s “Free Comb with Pagoda” claimed the transaction would “memorialise ownership” of the physical drawing, as well as “reproduction and IP rights that will be sold to the highest bidder in perpetuity.” While some parts of the law surrounding NFTs remain uncertain, there is no question that NFTs do not have the power to overrule existing copyright protection. Only the lawful copyright holder can transfer the reproduction rights.

Caution: Copyright questions abound

“NFT is a smart contract, but it doesn’t include copyright,” says Guadamuz. “So, you can claim you own the original link, but not the original artwork – unless the copyright transfer is explicitly stipulated.”

According to Sinnreich, one of the reasons NFTs don’t include copyright is because “they are not creative works, and don’t warrant copyright. They’re also not derivative works, so they don’t infringe on copyright.”

Guadamuz adds, “The issue is that an NFT is just code with a link; I don’t even need to have a copy of the work.”  

But to confuse matters more, Guadamuz says, “However, most NFTs actually do link to a copy of a work, and that copy could be infringing. So, I could mint an NFT of a picture I don’t own, and I would upload a copy of it to the intermediary, say OpenSea. In this case I am infringing, not by the minting of the NFT, but by uploading an infringing copy to a website, where it is publicly available.”

The bottom line is: The same copyright laws apply to digital art as to physical works of art. The fact that the work has an ownership certificate in the form of an NFT doesn’t change the rules. In publishing, this means ensuring you have permission from the creator of the original content before minting an NFT of their work.

Publishers may be keen to get a piece of this very profitable NFT pie, while the market is booming, but it pays to be cautious and careful when it comes to copyright.

Magic wand meets crystal ball: My digital media predictions

February 17, 2022 Jason Kint, CEO – DCN

It’s the start of a new year. So, two of the most popular questions I get are:

“If publishers could wave their magic wand, what would they change about media?”

“If you look into your crystal ball, what do you see for the future of publishers?”

You may be surprised to hear this, but I don’t own a magic wand or a crystal ball, although I’d find either quite satisfying. Despite my lack of magic tools, I do have predictions about the future: Publishers have never been closer to having many of their key needs being addressed in the market. I see a steady march towards meaningful change. And now, publishers only need to maintain the drive to follow through on what they’ve wished for.

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Market power of the “gatekeepers”

On both sides of the Atlantic, legislation is emerging that limits the potential for, and real abuse of, market power. This will specifically impact “gatekeepers” like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple. The EU’s Digital Markets Act, which is expected to pass by summer, will put heightened obligations and constraints on gatekeepers. Meanwhile in DC, antitrust reform legislation has gained serious bipartisan momentum.

In particular, two bills are front and center: the American Innovation and Choice Online Act and the Open App Markets Act. These seek to limit platforms “preferencing” – highlighting or promoting – their own products and services, whether in advertising or content discovery and limit app stores in their ability to capture unfair profits. For many years, DCN has played a leading role in documenting the clear imbalance in market power. And now, for the first time, DCN has chosen to endorse legislation in our support of these two bills.

Prediction #1: By the end of 2022, we will have the first laws passed that limit gatekeepers from abusing their market power.

The emperor has no clothes

Years ago, Facebook taught the market that it couldn’t be trusted as a business partner. And it has reinforced this fact again and again and again and yet again.

These days, most publishers treat Facebook as any other marketing channel in which the business value needs to be proved – it’s no longer the new, sexy test bed for marketing ideas. Of late, we see this in the lackluster performance of long-form video on IGTV, causing Facebook to once again pivot to short-form video with Reels. Long gone are the days in which Facebook would say “jump at this shiny new object” and publishers would respond “Yes! How high?”

Through various lawsuits, Google finds itself in a similar situation. Publishers are finding out that the promises made by Google’s external ambassadors often differ wildly from the company’s internal ambitions. We see this in many ways, from how it conducts advertising auctions to its abuse of consumer data or the way it positioned Accelerate Mobile Pages (AMP). DCN recently surveyed our members to understand their thoughts on AMP and learned that more than half were re-evaluating their use and expect to stop participating because it significantly under-delivered on the revenue and promised value by Google.

Prediction #2: Google and Facebook feel significant pressure for the first time to truly appease publishers through their commercial deals.

Value of direct relationships with consumers and advertisers

Facebook’s record one-quarter-of-a-trillion-dollar stock drop last week should signal optimism for publishers. There is significant movement in technology and public policy to align the value of data and attention with the sites and apps we trust — and actually choose to use. The downturn in Facebook’s fortunes is a sign that their core surveillance advertising business model no longer passes muster.

Apple has played a leading role by cutting out much of the tracking done by companies with which consumers aren’t even interacting. This move led to a reduction in Facebook’s revenue expectations by $10 billion, a whopping number that represents more than half of our membership’s annual advertising revenues.

Counter to the sky-is-falling-rhetoric posited by Facebook and Google’s trade bodies, this advertising investment won’t just “vanish into thin air.” Expect further market realignment as regulators flex in the EU and as California’s new law comes into enforcement in January 2023.

Prediction #3: By 2023, the tracking of consumers and the use of third-party data to target them will have changed significantly under the pressure of legislation, lawsuits, and consumer preferences.

Premium means premium

We’ve long established that brands are proxies for trust and, in turn, value for both consumers and advertisers. As the advertising market continues to accelerate away from the 2020 slowdown, there is a noticeable shift appearing – validated in our DCN Benchmark Report – towards premium environments where advertisers can create desire and demand for their products. Often this entails instructing their agencies to be more focused on where their ads appear, a strong advantage for professional media over user-generated content.

Additionally, consumers are speaking with their wallets louder than ever. DCN members are setting new highs for subscriptions across the board – from streaming services to news brands and from local to international. And as our Gen Z research showed, the kids are alright and more likely to put their money behind services that speak to their own values.

Prediction #4: Although 2020-21 was an atypical growth period for subscriptions, expect steady growth in 2022 and beyond.

The future we deserve

If I did indeed wield a magic wand, I would curb data collection and limit it to the services people actually choose to use. I would also wave away the fear of giant gatekeepers, triggered by the sense that we can’t avoid them. They are not unassailable. What we see in terms of policy and public sentiment suggests exactly the opposite.

Right now, the battle for a competitive, thriving, and plural publisher ecosystem sits at the integration of data and competition policy. For media brands to retain value and ensure that their news and entertainment isn’t seen as an interchangeable commodity, we must continue to push against unscrupulous data collection.

Predictions and pressure prevail over magic. I see the power of the progress that has been made from the growing alignment of concerns globally and the education of those charged with regulating and policy making and maybe more importantly consumers and advertisers seeking out the trusted brands of the future.

Advertising | Featured Post | Innovation | Policy | Revenue

Regulation, revenue, and relationships top of mind at the 2022 DCN Next: Summit

February 7, 2022 Jessica Patterson – Independent Media Reporter

Held virtually January 31-February 3, the 20^th annual members-only DCN Next: Summit was a gathering of digital content companies from all over the world.

CEO Jason Kint opened the event by offering his perspective on how the last few years have underscored the need for quality information. He also reinforced the need for trust, particularly as we move toward web3. “Where people have choice and a competitive market, where they spend their time, attention and relationships, trust will matter. Trust matters more than ever,” Kint explained.

Keynotes and discussion sessions touched on subscriptions, paywalls and reader revenue, video, film, audio strategy, and AI. The event also explored the political and technical forces shaping the media landscape today, with sessions focusing on cookies, identity, trust, privacy, and platforms.

The personal is political, and platforms

The opening keynote featured 2021 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Maria Ressa speaking with investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr. They discussed platforms and the critical role a free press plays in healthy democracies. As Ressa put it, “Until technology gets guardrails around it, until we get to the point where the platforms that deliver the news are redesigned so that lies laced with anger and hate do not spread faster and further than facts, journalists will be under attack.”

Investigative Journalist Carole Cadwalladr in conversation with Maria Ressa, CEO of Rappler

Platform concerns and necessary regulation arose again throughout the event, notably in Thursday’s final keynote. Attendees heard from U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar, mere hours after a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights hearing.

Klobuchar, who has been working to hold big tech platform accountable, provided an update on the bipartisan antitrust app store bill that just went through committee, as well as other bills she’s leading. “We just had an incredible vote on a bill that Senator Blumenthal and Blackburn and I … put out a few months ago on app stores: 21 to 1,” she said.

The bipartisan legislation, called the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act would enable news organizations to collectively negotiate terms with platforms to provide fair compensation for news content. Klobuchar told attendees, “The big issue is advertising money and fair compensation. These companies are sucking up the ad dollars using the original content that you produce and they’re using the data they collect from your audiences to compete against you.”

Chris Pedigo SVP, Legal Affairs of Digital Content Next, interviews Senator Amy Klobuchar

First-party data and identity

Unsurprisingly, the upcoming deprecation of the third-party cookie was a topic of much discussion at this year’s summit. The change has destabilized the advertising ecosystem. Experts discussed how to prepare for the post-cookie reality and how publishers could invest in their first-party data.

To prepare for the post-cookie reality, Rachel Parkin, CafeMedia’s EVP, Sales and Strategy, suggested publishers strengthen relationships with advertisers and build up their arsenals and come up with the right framework for identity and authentication for users and content.

TRUSTX CEO David Kohl suggested that publishers, by acting as a group to create scale, can create competitive advantage. ” We are in transition and there’s tremendous chaos in identity and audience data. But here’s the thing: Chaos creates opportunity,” he said. “And the question is, how can publishers take the lead in organizing the chaos? How can we band together? It is time to create an ‘easy button’ for scale.”

Another session discussed how publishers are leveraging consent-based visitor relationship data sources to fuel monetization as the industry moves forward into a cookie-less future. David Rowley, senior director data and identity products at News Corp. said they feel first party data is going to be one of the most important assets to a publisher. News Corp is assessing what’s out there for external identity solutions, Rowley said, and building out a proprietary identity solution.

“Publishers use so many different types of technology, DMPs, CDPs, analytics platforms, you name it, all of them spit out and create their own identifiers. Being able to stitch all of those together to have a unified view of a user is critical, so you can have that one-on-one relationship with a user,” he said.

People and empathy

Another theme that echoed through the conference was that of managing during these difficult times. As Agnes Chu, president of Condé Nast Entertainment remarked, “I think it’s hard to drive change during a time where people are experiencing so much anxiety themselves.”

Lindsay Peoples Wagner, editor-in-chief of The Cut, outlined that it’s important for leadership to have and bring a sense of empathy. Leaders must “be able to step outside of yourself and understand that, yes, we’re all employees and work at a company, but we’re human beings,” Peoples Wagner said. “People, especially in the past couple years, have had a really hard time with mental health or their family issues or being sick. It’s important to understand, I think, that people may need time, and that push and pull as a manager, I think is more important than ever.”

Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director of DCN interviews Lindsay Peoples Wagner, Editor of The Cut

The biggest shift for TripAdvisor’s Christine Maguire when the pandemic hit, was from building products to empathy. “I had to sort of take a step back and realize where everybody was in their journey,” she said. “Having empathy for what goes on in their day to day is so important, because oftentimes we come in to make a change when there is a problem, and that’s too late.”

The future of work

The newsroom of the future may look nothing like the pre-pandemic one. Indeed, as publishers move forward, they’re stepping into a future which doesn’t look much like the past. There’s upside, such as the ability to create more flexible working situations, which facilitates broader recruiting.

However, as author Anne Helen Petersen noted, when companies allow their employees to live anywhere and work any time, they may run into a lot of sticky situations.

“The larger question that a lot of companies are dealing with is if we say that people can have really flexible work schedules and can go in when it is most convenient for them, are we also going to put stipulations on the states or countries where they can live,” she said. “Are we going to say that they get into New York within the day, that they take the train in? Is that okay? Or are we going to say that it’s one flight away? What are our boundaries?”

The future of the industry

On the last day of the summit, Co-founder and CEO of Insider Henry Blodget and Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson engaged in a spitfire conversation about the digital media industry. They discussed the complicated relationship with platforms, new technologies like AI, NFTs and blockchain, and made predictions for web3.

Blodget was optimistic about the future of local news. However, he sees a different scenario play out for others going forward. As the industry evolves, he thinks there will be three to five big generalists, a bunch of targeted specialist publications that serve a particular niche, and everyone else is in the middle.

Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson in conversation with Henry Blodget Co-founder & CEO of Insider

“I do think we’re all going to face pressure and there’s going to be a lot more consolidation because there are enormous returns to scale,” Thompson replied. “We see that every day with The New York Times, when they roll out some cool new tech feature that they can spread across their 10 million subscribers.”

“Let us just acknowledge that The New York Times is Netflix of journalism,” Blodget said. “My view is in five to 10 years, they will have 25 million subscribers and they will still be growing strong and they will become one of the most powerful English language journalism publications in the world. And the rest of us are gonna have to find places to carve out what is left.”

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion | Featured Post

Terminology matters: Tackling cultural nuance in the UK media

January 27, 2022 Nina Goswami, Creative Diversity Lead and journalist – BBC

When we talk about minority groups should we use BIPOC, POC, something different or nothing at all? It’s a question posed in America many times since the death of George Floyd in May 2020 – from Newsweek to The New York Times.

His murder sparked a similar debate across the pond over the United Kingdom’s equivalent acronym: Should BAME (black, Asian and minority ethnic) be used by British broadcasters?

Taking collective action

At the end of 2021, four of the UK’s major broadcasters formulated an answer. They committed to avoid using the collective term in their corporate communications, content and editorial news content. Instead, they would use more specific terms where available.

For Miranda Wayland, the BBC’s Head of Creative and Workforce Diversity and Inclusion, the departure from the catch-all term allows for a greater acknowledgement of the experience of people from different ethnic backgrounds.

“As a creative industry we are focused on increasing representation, so our content reflects society,” she said. “At the heart of representation is how we recognize people’s varied lived experiences and their identity. The more specific we are when describing someone’s heritage, the better we represent them. In turn, we create more inclusive and relevant content for our audiences.”

UK broadcasters – the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5/Viacom CBS UK – agreed to avoid “wherever possible” the BAME acronym following a report the Sir Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity. Commissioned by the BBC, the study stated that “A major concern, apparent in recent public responses to BAME, is that it homogenises culturally distinct social groups.”

A question of trust

Through interviews and audience research, the report’s authors found there was a lack of trust around the term BAME because of a belief that it has been used to hide failings in the representation of specific ethnic groups. They wrote: “Several interviewees illustrated this point by saying organisations are quick to announce hitting ‘BAME targets’ but what does that mean if there is still massive black under representation or east Asian representation.”

The researchers did acknowledge, however, that it would not be realistic to remove BAME terminology altogether because it is widely used in society. However, where BAME must be used, content-makers will strive to ensure that any use of the term is accompanied by an explanation. This will be achieved, for example, by stating that ”data for ethnic groups is unavailable.” Another solution is writing out the acronym in full – “black, Asian and minority ethnic” – to recognize the constituent groups that make up the collective term.

Sarita Malik, Professor of Media and Culture at Brunel University London and Academic Lead on the Report, said broadcasters need to acknowledge the importance of language as part of wider work to tackle racial disparities.

“Language is a really important issue for media and cultural organizations to look at when trying to tackle inequalities,” she said. “At the heart of the issue is a power dynamic; a power dynamic between those who have the power to label and those who are labelled. Our research identified a mostly negative sentiment towards the grouping of people under collective terms.”

She added that “Committing to use language in more culturally nuanced ways can help to deepen understandings of different ethnic groups. This is one of the ways in which trust can be built with audiences.”

Supporting cultural nuance

As Professor Malik observes, broadcasters need to give their content-makers the right support and resources so they can get their language right and add nuance to their work. At the BBC, the content-makers’ inclusion toolkit seeks to provide such support. Tools include Ipsos MORI’s Language Matters audience research, which echoes the findings of the BAME report by concluding that “specificity around identity is key”.

“In communicating, we often seek to oversimplify. But, when it comes to identity, ensuring the full nuances of someone’s identity are acknowledged as important,” said the Ipsos MORI researchers. “We see this when it comes to how ethnic and national identity interact with one another and how individuals navigate between these two aspects of their identity.”

Participants in the research succinctly illustrated the point. “I always say I’m Indian even though I am a British citizen. I am proud of my Heritage,” he said. Another explained: “My identity shouldn’t be defined by what ‘colour’ I am. I’m an individual and part of a diverse community with a diverse heritage.”

We are not the same

Understanding this type of nuance is at the heart of the BBC Audience’s BAME: We’re Not the Same report. It explores the culture, identity and heritage of the six largest ethnic minority groups in England and Wales – Indian, Pakistani, Black African, Black Caribbean, Bangladeshi and Chinese.

BBC Senior Audience Planner Helen Xa-Thomas began work on the report after noticing that content-makers had no tools to help them move away from “bucket terminology” and address the “nuance” within groups.

“All our identities are so multifaceted and complex. We are never just one entity of our identity,” she explained. “Labeling is a symptom of the shortcuts that we use as an industry. We all think very much demographic first and that can be problematic. For example, when we say ‘youth’ as if all young people are exactly the same.”

She continued: “It’s about understanding, culture and identity for different groups and making us more consciously aware of those differences. Because we are not the same.”

The BBC Audience’s report is backed by the Corporation’s Director of Creative Diversity, June Sarpong, who encouraged people “to grab a coffee and take a moment out to read this insightful BBC Audiences research”.

“This report starts to unpack ‘BAME’ because a ‘one size fits all’ approach doesn’t help us appreciate the complexity and richness of identities that fall within it,” she wrote in her foreword to the report. “One of the barriers we face when seeking to address the diversity deficit is the limits of our own perspective.”

She also pointed out that “The catch-all term of BAME may feel a like a convenient box for those interested in counting people. But when you fail to acknowledge the difference in people’s lived experience and history then people won’t feel like they count.”

Universal takeaways

As stated previously, four of the UK’s major broadcasters have committed to ensuring that people feel better represented by avoiding the use of BAME.

Marcus Ryder, Head of External Consultancies at Sir Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity, applauded the decision to adopt the report’s recommendation. He believes there are wider themes that can be taken from the research and applied by content-makers – trust, transparency and the need for bravery.

“As a Black person, when I see the Covid reports I am thinking ‘how does it affect Black people?’ When a journalist just stops short and says People of Colour, it feels as if they’re not representing me properly,’ he said. “So even if you don’t have the information you should acknowledge it as you’re acknowledging that question of how it affects me.

“Admit what you don’t know. If the story was ‘Covid affects People of Color or BAME more according to the latest statistics’ but there’s no breakdown, then say that they have not provided us with more detailed information as to how it affects individual specific races.”

Ryder also said content-makers need to ensure that they are not using BAME, or BIPOC or People of Color because they are “scared to use the term white”.

“Sometimes collective terms are used as a way to avoid using the word white and so we should also ensure that we aren’t just using a term as a way to avoid white,” he explained.

“Lots of studies have shown that white people often think of themselves as being raceless. If we want to have a serious conversation about race, then we need to ensure that we don’t just talk about race of non-white people.”

What each of the reports and research illustrate is that catch-all terminology erodes the trust of the audience, which could cause them to tune out (or worse, log off). As we address increasingly diverse audiences, there is an altogether reasonable expectation that our language, and its use, adapts.

Featured Post | Innovation | Perspectives

Exploring the potential – and threat – of the media metaverse

January 25, 2022 Chris M. Sutcliffe – Independent Media Reporter

The metaverse doesn’t exist. The term is a framework for discussions around Web 3, NFTs, decentralized virtual spaces, and the gaming landscape. Despite the fact that it does not yet exist, there has been a huge amount of money invested into the metaverse, from people purchasing virtual real estate adjacent to celebrities to building out festivals within platforms like Roblox. Despite its hypothetical state, it’s already lucrative.

There’s an early mover advantage for news and magazine publishers to launch on new platforms. While only 8% of news publishers currently say they intend to invest in metaverse products, the need to discover younger audiences and to discover new revenue sources is a powerful lure. But as we saw with the overreliance on platforms in the era of Web 2.0 — and the terrible consequences that wrought — there is enormous danger for publishers when it comes to building strategies around platforms they don’t own.

So how can publishers take advantage of the potential of the metaverse without making the same mistakes around platform over-reliance? More importantly, to what extent can media companies help define the metaverse, and take a leading role in its development?

The lure of new platforms

The appeal for news publishers is obvious. We know from recent forays into NFTs that they are hungry for new sources of digital revenue, particularly those that do not just replicate non-digital revenue strategies online. Much of the early pitch to brands of the metaverse is around selling persistent virtual products, which are being marketed as a new form of social status for particularly younger consumers.

Andrew Kiguel is CEO and co-founder of Tokens.com, which builds and sells services and real estate within the metaverse. He says, “The metaverse is the next iteration not just of gaming, but of social media. Right now, the status symbol on Facebook or Instagram is posting a picture of the restaurant or whichever resort you’re at. What’s going to be the status symbol soon in the metaverse [is] you walk around with your NFT Gucci bag or your Nike running shoes.”

The bigger draw, however, is that of creating touchpoints for new audiences. We’ve seen newspapers experiment with virtual reality spaces before, from The Wall Street Journal’s 2016 foray into VR real estate to the virtual town halls run ahead of the 2016 elections. Persistent and long-lasting communities are being built in those unreal spaces, based in no small part on lessons learned from social media and gaming. Friends lists, followers and gaming clans have formed the basis of how we will keep track of and communicate with friends and co-workers in the metaverse space.

That’s an opportunity for the news publishers who are making access to a community a big part of their offering. Start-ups like Tortoise make its community “Think-Ins” part and parcel of its marketing. And legacy titles, including The Telegraph, organize exclusive events for subscribers. The ability to open those events up to audiences who wouldn’t otherwise be able to attend is a big opportunity. We’ve already seen them experiment with these in Twitter Spaces and other remote meeting tools during the pandemic.

In addition, we’ve already seen early examples of news outlets within metaverse platforms. The Second Life Enquirer, for example, maintains a newsroom on Second Life. And other titles and magazines create their own communities from audiences already on metaverse platforms.

Decentralizing the threat

So, if the benefits for entering the metaverse space early are obvious, how do we go about building those spaces without becoming over reliant on the platforms? One of the criticisms already being levied about platforms like Roblox is that its publisher, Roblox Corporation, controls both a portion of any sale and the data of its users. That’s not tenable for media companies in 2022, who are only just rediscovering the value of their first-party data.

Instead, the media industry could look to spaces like Decentraland, which aim to build upon the promise of Web 3 by taking the power away from any one platform or owner. That, in theory, would allow them to control not just the look and feel of their own virtual environment, but also the sale and revenue options of any virtual products (or subscriptions!) sold in those spaces. As Matthew Lines writes, news is inherently linked to crypto payments already:

“Real world cryptocurrency analytics companies like Messari and Coincheckup are starting to display ‘news’ sections. These amalgamate different articles which address a specific metaverse platform and its associated crypto token. In a similar vein, websites like NFT Plazas also display an individual ‘news’ page, showcasing all the latest stories occurring in specific metaverse platforms like Decentraland.”

Dream or reality?

It’s a utopian idea, one that potentially extends a newspaper or magazines’ community far beyond geographic bounds. It also allows them to monetize audiences directly through crypto payments.

However, there are huge questions around the extent to which these decentralized platforms actually are immune to the bottleneck of control that plagued Web 2 for publishers. Between the countless current rug-pulls, crypto scams, lack of interoperability and the funnelling of funds to a handful of big players, the promise of that decentralization is under threat already.

That utopian ideal also relies on companies like Meta – whose relationship with media companies is already fraught – not seizing control of the metaverse through the scale of its investment alone. By inserting itself into the conversation as forcefully as it has, it raises the possibility that it will also try to control payments and data on its metaverse platforms as well.

Years of uncertainty

While virtual real estate is relatively cheap (and potentially comparable to the purchase of Manhattan according to Time), it is still an outlay for publishers already stretched to cover existing platforms. The BBC was recently criticized for ignoring TikTok, despite the fact that it admitted to lacking resources to do so effectively. If even the BBC can’t spread itself across the biggest social networks, can we expect most publishers to invest in an untested space like the metaverse?

Building offices in the metaverse is a nice stunt for marketing companies. But without the surety of return on investment and a lack of time to maintain it, many newspapers and magazines are adopting a wait-and-see attitude to the metaverse.

There may be huge opportunities for community development and creating audience touchpoints, but the revenue model is currently unclear. And it is likely to remain so for years. As tech giants struggle to control it, the metaverse might never even live up to its initial promise.

It is incumbent on newspapers, broadcasters and magazine companies to ensure that any forays they make into the metaverse are shored up by solid revenue and data strategies. Otherwise, it’s just a gimmick, and one that risks the industry repeating its platform-dependency from web2.0.

That said, if nothing else, writing about the metaverse is a valuable and lucrative new vertical. So there’s that.