Category results for "Featured Post"

USA TODAY has big plans for immersive storytelling

January 14, 2021 Esther Kezia Thorpe – Independent Media Reporter

Many publishers have experimented with virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), but few have gone beyond test projects into longer term developments. However, as mobile devices have become more advanced and social platforms have started integrating AR technology into filters and tools, audiences are warming up to using AR as part of their everyday lives. This presents an opportunity for publishers.

USA TODAY was among those running early experiments. Now, the publisher has a team dedicated to emerging technologies. They’re exploring how stories can be told using virtual reality, augmented reality, data visualizations, and more. It’s a way for the publisher to enhance their storytelling capabilities, as well as drive users to spend more time in USA TODAY’s native app.

“As AR technology became embedded natively into mobile devices, we saw an opportunity to really adapt,” said Ray Soto, USA TODAY’s Director of Emerging Technology. “People were really interested in the new technologies, and our audiences were starting to seek out different experiences.”

The publisher’s Emerging Technologies team achieved “exceptional engagement” across their immersive stories in 2020. From interactive guides on germ spreading to an AR graphic novel on the 100th anniversary of women winning the right to vote, USA TODAY boosted its total views of interactive content 288% year over year. Their interactive experiences have been viewed by more than 1.3 million people over the past 12 months.

On the back of such strong metrics, Soto spoke to us about what makes USA TODAY’s AR content a success. He also discusses their plans to further develop immersive storytelling approaches.

Explore and discover

There are no restrictions on the subject matter of an AR story for USA TODAY. They have produced interactive experiences on topics from science and technology to history and entertainment. However, the type of story matters. So, the team work from the outset to ensure it’s one that their audience can spend time with, digest, and can come back to.

“We encourage all our reporters and all our editorial teams to reach out when they’ve got a story that they feel AR could be a great component of,” said Soto. “We don’t want to replace the existing story that they have. Rather, we want to use it as a form of storytelling that provides a different perspective.”

His Emerging Technology team sits with the editor. Together, they brainstorm what type of enhancement would be appropriate for the story, from traditional video to AR, or even 360 interactive widgets on the web. The core question they bear in mind at all times is one of value.

“We need to make sure we’re leveraging AR in a way that adds value to the story and ensures that we’re not treating the technology as a gimmick,” Soto emphasized. “We really don’t want to do a ‘one hit’ type story. It comes down to two words: explore and discover. And we have to feel very strongly that interactive AR storytelling is a great path forward.”

Development and collaboration

The timeline for turning around these kinds of stories can vary, according to Soto. For long-form and major editorial initiatives like their “Women of the Century” project, development can take from six to eight weeks. These types of stories involve collaborating across the business, with reporters, editors, designers, graphics researchers, narrators, and others contributing.

However, the team has achieved faster turnaround times with more news-driven stories. Some of USA TODAY’s Covid-related interactive content was developed and released in days. These were among the brand’s most engaged with pieces in 2020.

One example, “Flattening the curve: An AR guide to social distancing” was developed as a gamified experience. Users were offered a series of behavior choices relating to social distancing, in order to help teach users safe practices. The experience, developed in just five days, was viewed over 164,000 times.

AR and social media

At present, much of the AR development has been done on USA TODAY’s own app. One of Soto’s priorities for 2021 is to expand beyond the publisher’s native platforms. He plans to further explore Snapchat, Instagram and other social platforms, not just on the storytelling side but from a marketing perspective as well.

“We are looking to expand because for us, we see an opportunity to learn,” he said. “What does social engagement look like for an AR story through Instagram or Snapchat? Where are they at with accessible storytelling?”

Strengthening their AR experiences on social media will be a valuable way of introducing new audiences to the publisher’s stories. Native app users are valuable. However, social media users are more likely to share stories and experiences that resonate with them. This, in turn, helps build trust in USA TODAY’s journalism.

Visualizing the future

Soto also has data visualizations and 3D interactives in his sights. He’s also thinking about how they can apply AI to visualizations. “What is really exciting for me though is the convergence of all these technologies,” he explained. “How can we work with 5G, AI and AR? How can we leverage that conversation with our brand from not just the storytelling, but also from a product perspective?”

For now, the technology for VR hasn’t advanced to the point where enough people have the devices to make significant development on those platforms worth it. However, Soto is optimistic about these technologies becoming more accessible and cost-effective.

Mobilizing monetization

The success of the team’s work in 2020 has set them up for a strong year ahead. The primary focus at the moment is on growing audience confidence in engaging with the stories, as well as increasing the time spent with USA TODAY’s content. As these metrics increase, they are beginning to explore opportunities across the business to test the viability of AR storytelling as a revenue stream, such as branded content.

“There is a lot of interest, which is fantastic,” Soto explained. “We’re very fortunate to be able to share our numbers like we did for 2020, which shows that our audiences are going to [the app], they’re spending quite a bit of time there.”

“We’re focused on making sure that it’s a nice user journey, from the native app into the story, and then following whatever CTA [call to action] we might have embedded in there. So we’re beginning to explore those revenue opportunities.”

A path to profitability may not be clear yet. But as the technology evolves to enable faster and cheaper development of immersive storytelling, publishers like USA TODAY, who are spending time refining their approach, will be at an advantage.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion | Featured Post | Innovation | Revenue

How Vix fueled 10x audience growth with Hispanic audiences

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

The proliferation of on-demand platforms and services combine to drive what Nielsen calls “the most profound media disruption of the last half-century.” Record-high audience numbers and time spent using streaming services and apps add up to make 2020 the biggest year yet for streaming.

But the real growth could be in serving culturally relevant content to underserved audiences such as Hispanics, which now make up nearly 20% of the current U.S. population. It’s a demographic that demands balanced content and appreciates diverse views and voices. It’s also an audience of cord-cutters that uses streaming services, smartphones and apps. During March, Hispanics increased their weekly viewing of movies or TV shows using a streaming service by “about 8 hours.” That’s well above the numbers reported by non-Hispanics.

It will be a stretch for many mainstream content companies to bulk up on content and capabilities to cater to this mobile-first audience with culturally relevant content. But not all companies will be in catch-up mode in 2021. Vix, a free Spanish-language ad-supported video-on-demand streaming service (AVOD) company founded in 2016, has a significant head start.

Inside Vix’s success

The move to acquire Pongalo, a market-leading Hispanic AVOD, in August 2019, has established Vix as the largest Latino AVOD player in the world, growing its audience more than 10x. Today, Vix, backed by Discovery Communications and HarbourVest Capital, creates, acquires, and distributes Hispanic-focused content to audiences in the U.S., Latin America and across the globe. It counts over 20,000 hours of Latino-focused films and TV shows.

Blockbuster and premium content is a crowd-pleaser. But it’s the company’s social media footprint, which includes 100 million Facebook followers, that keeps audiences engaged. Importantly, social media is also the motor that drives customer acquisition and allows a modest 50-person ad sales team to achieve ambitious growth targets and expand efforts to Brazil.

The company has also grown the number of partnerships (Amazon, Google and Roku). The top-ranked app (the #1 most downloaded entertainment app on Android devices in Mexico ahead of Netflix) recently became a top-five free film and TV streaming app on Roku in the U.S. Vix is the first-ever free streaming app to hit that benchmark.

Continuing our series of DCN video interviews, I talk to Rich Hull, formerly the CEO of Pongalo. Hull, now the Head of Streaming Platforms and Chief Strategy Officer at Vix, received Variety’s Dealmaker of the Year honors for his part in architecting one of the most significant media deals of 2019. He is also instrumental in growing Vix’s platforms and partners.

In this interview, we discuss why all media companies must acknowledge the demographic revolution and the requirement to serve up culturally relevant content to 60 million Hispanics in the U.S. alone. We also debate the future of streaming, the role of personalization and the business benefit at the “collision of advertising, international and content.”

Here are three key takeaways from our talk:

Drive discoverability through platform diversity

U.S. Hispanics are ahead of the curve when it comes to digital. They lead in the adoption of new devices and services. And they are the power users of mobile and over-index in video consumption.

To keep pace with consumers and cater to a growing and global audience for Spanish language content, Vix has maintained a mobile-first approach. It’s all about choice and letting consumers decide for themselves how they want to consume our content, Hull says.

To date, Vix is available on multiple platforms including Apple TV, Fire TV, Roku and connected TV devices from Samsung and Vizio. “We’ve put ourselves there so that they can discover us.” Following this strategy has allowed Vix to “punch above its weight” and leverage partnerships to build scale. Amazon counts Vix as its biggest supplier of Hispanic content, Hulls says. It’s more than an accolade. It’s also an inroad to Amazon’s Alexa, a platform Hull says is important for his company – and many others – to extend the brand and win new audiences.

Tap social media to fuel your audience growth flywheel

Social media presence boosts awareness and buzz. But there’s no reason to stop there. Vix has tapped its community to create a new kind of funnel, Hull says. The audience of 100 million Facebook followers alone is one that Vix cultivates and activates with content. “It’s a really massive audience that we can speak to and it’s a very powerful megaphone that we have,” he explains.

At a high level, Vix works with major brands to create content and branded entertainment to amplify key messages and recruit audiences. “So we’ll do things like say: Here are the top five J-Lo movies ever made and, as it turns out, we’ve got two of them, so click here to install our streaming service.’” The outcome, he says, is a “very elegant way to drive people down the funnel.” It’s also helping Vix increase organic reach and reduce dependence on Facebook or Google or Apple search ads to target audiences.

Engage consumers by making free content the “front porch” of your offer

In the search to find the right mix between subscription models and advertising companies, Hull says companies should widen the aperture of how they view the potential of free content supported by advertising. He points to the example of NBCUniversal. Rather than compete head-on with Disney, AT&T’s WarnerMedia and others that have launched subscription-based on-demand services to compete (or at least catch up) with Netflix, NBC has launched a free, ad-supported service. Free doesn’t just bolster audience numbers, he says, “As the space evolves, where [streaming] is monetized with ads, it is also becoming a better user experience.”

In addition to challenging the viability of locking content behind a subscription wall, Hull also debunks the myth that original content is the way to win audiences. Granted, Game of Thrones and original content has paid dividends for Netflix, but it’s a competitive space where smaller players can go broke fast. Instead, Hull advises companies to keep content free, and bottom lines in the lack, by curating quality content, not creating it. “For us, it’s about volume and choice,” he says. The value is in curating content in a “very authentic way.”

Featured Post | Innovation

Web accessibility isn’t just an ethical duty – it’s good business

December 10, 2020 Greg Dool – Independent Media Reporter

The Covid-19 pandemic has shifted an ever-larger share of public life online. Unfortunately, however, the internet remains a largely inaccessible place for people with visual or hearing impairments. As publishers rightfully aim to become more inclusive, the 61 million American adults with disabilities are an underserved group well worth remembering.

To overworked editors and designers, provisions for web accessibility can feel extraneous and opaque. Considerations like image alt text or video subtitles often require added steps before publishing a story and may not seem like a vital imperative. But given last year’s Supreme Court ruling that essentially sets precedent that the Americans With Disabilities Act applies to online platforms, media companies should be thinking about digital accessibility.

Priorities and skill development

“Web accessibility can be very confusing. It can be daunting,” says Bryan Gould, director of accessible learning and assessment technologies at the National Center for Accessible Media. “It’s a whole other skillset to learn, potentially. And you don’t necessarily have editors who can talk to developers and designers all in the same language.”

Publishers, particularly news outlets serving the public interest, should consider making themselves as widely accessible as possible central to their mission. But the fact is that accessibility isn’t just the right thing to do, it is also good business.

Text matters

Gareth Ford Williams, head of user experience design at the BBC, has long been an advocate for accessibility in media. In 2004, he founded the national broadcaster’s first digital accessibility team.

More recently, he was part of the team that developed BBC Reith, a new uniform typeface used across the organization. With distinguishable letter shapes, legible in small sizes, Reith is meant to ease the experience for a multitude of users. These include those with visual impairments and neurological conditions like dyslexia, as well as less-advanced readers.

On top of improving accessibility, Reith has become an element of the BBC brand. Moreover, it actually saves money, eliminating the cost of licensing third-party fonts.

“Pretty much everything in accessibility has a much bigger context,” Williams says. “It is about disabilities, very much so. But it’s also about situational and environmental disabilities as well as medical disabilities.”

Williams points to video consumption statistics on social media platforms. On Facebook alone, as much as 85% of all video views occur with the sound turned off. “Captioning is expensive,” he adds. “But look at the reach opportunity. If you’re not capturing that potential, you’re undermining your own business case.”

A good look

Three years ago, Boston public radio station GBH undertook a “massive redesign” of its website, says senior editor Ellen London. Among the priorities was creating a more “visual-forward” experience. This meant a design that is accessible and appealing to a larger share of users.

The newsroom partnered with Gould’s team at NCAM, a part of the GBH organization, to develop accessibility guidelines specific to the new CMS. Provisions included sufficient contrast between text and background colors and alt text for images. Rather than simply saying “click here,” hyperlinks should be descriptive, catering to users of assistive technology like screen readers.

GBH then created a highly condensed, one-sheet checklist, which editors, reporters and producers can print and keep at their workstations. “Putting together some great resources to refer to and empowering producers and editors to get involved has worked really well for us,” says Gould. “It’s not that editors don’t want to make their content accessible, it’s just that you can’t know what you don’t know.”

Picture this

This focus on accessibility was manifested in GBH’s “Year in Pictures” feature, published at the end of 2019. Photographs representing the most important stories of the year were accompanied by concise yet thorough descriptions. These descriptions were then recorded by GBH radio reporters and uploaded as audio files.

“The whole point was to put the accessibility out where everybody can see what it is and why it’s there,” says Gould. “The idea was not just to make it accessible, but to make accessibility a feature.”

It was a learning experience for the GBH team, London says. Creating effective image descriptions proved to be more of an art than previously thought. It required careful decision-making around how to best convey the purpose, context and information in an image for someone who can’t see it.

“As an editor, I have definitely put elements like audio descriptions in more of a transactional category,” London adds. “In learning how to write and record and produce them myself, I learned how much those descriptions are part of the editorial process just like any other part of the story. That was really an eye-opener to me; it’s highly editorial.”

Identifying weaknesses

Of course, not every publisher has the benefit of a media accessibility center within its organization. While resources such as the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines exist, they are dense and difficult to understand—even for experts.

“I myself remember looking at the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and being overwhelmed,” says Patrick Garvin, a former designer and developer at The Boston Globe. Now an adjunct professor at the Missouri School of Journalism, Garvin suggests that one of the biggest accessibility obstacles publishers face is simply awareness.

“The way to appreciate the WCAG is to first understand how people with disabilities use the web,” he says. “I think many people either are unaware of how their work is inaccessible. Or they might be aware but not sure what they can do to fix it.”

Inclusive approach

At the BBC, internal design research teams recruit users of various levels of ability for focus groups. Williams specifically recommends consulting with users who have disabilities.

“They’re brilliant people to work with, because they know the coping strategies and can teach you about the barriers that they experience,” he says.

Just as architects no longer design buildings without ramps, Williams says publishers shouldn’t build websites that exclude people.

“If you have an impairment and we don’t build things that are accessible, we are disabling you,” he says. “You’re not disabled until we gave you a barrier, and it’s our fault the barrier is there. We designed it.”

To better integrate this mission into the corporate culture, Williams established an “accessibility champions” network in 2011. Completely voluntary, that group has since grown to include about 230 BBC employees.

“They have one core function, and that’s to be the voice of the disabled user in every sprint,” he says. “They don’t have to be the person with the answers. All we expect them to do is to talk about it. It’s more cultural and structural. It gets people thinking about accessibility and dealing with it.”

Basic steps

For publishers who wish to ensure they’re at least covering the basics of accessibility, Gould recommends four key considerations. Multimedia and images should be accompanied by captions. Colors and fonts should not be distracting. There shouldn’t be motion on a page that can’t be paused or switched off.

Accessibility considerations extend off of owned and operated platforms as well. Social media strategist Alexa Heinrich suggests taking advantage of platforms’ accessibility features, limiting emojis, and avoiding text-heavy images.

On a cultural level, encouraging staffers to think about accessibility throughout the design and production process is far easier (and cheaper) than retrofitting things after the fact, says London.

“Accessibility should be treated the same way as accuracy: Everyone has a role to play in ensuring it, even if not everyone plays the same role,” adds Garvin. “The commitment to accessibility should come from the top.”

Gould believes that awareness is growing that digital accessibility is important. And he emphasizes that it doesn’t have to be expensive. “If you start planning from the beginning, you can make an accessible web experience that doesn’t really cost more. In fact, it saves you money from having to retrofit things—or deal with a lawsuit.”

When embedded into the culture of an organization, accessibility becomes a self-sustaining investment, says Williams. “It brings so much value and efficiency back into the organization, it enables accessibility in such a massive context, that it improves usability across the board,” he adds.

As ecommerce surges, publishers turn to certification to cement trust

December 3, 2020 Esther Kezia Thorpe – Independent Media Reporter

Ecommerce has been a strategic priority for publishers for a number of years. Then, in just the space of a few months, Covid-19 accelerated the shift to digital shopping by five years. It’s no surprise that the competition in online shopping is heating up as a result.

Trust is a crucial component in ecommerce success. With many online shopping sites providing overwhelming choice and increasing issues with fake or incentivized reviews, consumers are turning to recommendation and comparison sites in order to help narrow down and evaluate purchase decisions.

Publishers have benefited greatly from this. Their established audiences and high levels of trust have allowed them to build their own authority in product recommendations and gift guides, with many generating significant revenue from affiliate schemes and referrals.

However, as competition in the space increases, some publishers are looking to certification and branded seals as a way of cementing that trusted relationship between them, their audience, and the products they recommend.

SELF launches seals after commerce surge

Conde Nast’s SELF magazine is the latest publisher to expand its commerce efforts by launching two new award seals. The title has seen ecommerce content traffic in October up 949.3% year-over-year, and the time spent with ecommerce content up 1,130.5% for new shopping.

In response to increased demand for its product recommendations, the health and beauty magazine has launched two seals. The SELF Certified seal is awarded after a thorough product analysis and review. And a product must score at least 7 out of 10 in order to be eligible for it.

The second seal, SELF Fave, is for wellness products that the editors themselves personally use and recommend. These are “the ones we keep coming back to, again and again, and enthusiastically rave about to anyone who will listen,” they explained.

SELF has been creating ecommerce content for several years now. Their decision to launch the seals was as an extension of a strategy that they describe as “thriving”. “SELF editors know the wellness market better than anyone, and our audience trusts our recommendations,” SELF magazine’s Editor in Chief Carolyn Kylstra said. “Now, they know that products and services that get a SELF seal are the best of the best.”

Building additional trust

Having audience trust is particularly important in the health and wellness space, where new products are often launched with big promises, scientific-sounding tems, and celebrity endorsements. While some do what they say, others can be really misleading. Others can be more harmful than helpful.

“People want to know that they’re buying the very best wellness products out there, and that the products are going to be genuinely helpful, rather than a lot of empty promises,” Kylstra explained. “The SELF Certified and SELF Face seals can give them more peace of mind in that regard.”

SELF’s editors play an important role in building trust alongside the new seals. As journalists, they are skilled in interviewing experts, seeking out relevant research and cutting through marketing speak in order to properly assess products. But there have also been improvements to the assessment process to support the editors.

A transparent process

In order to launch a certification scheme, publishers must first have a set of standards for products, either in reviews they publish themselves or in recommendations given by experts. At SELF, they revamped their review process to introduce added rigour.

“First, before considering a product for a SELF Certified seal, we turn to research and experts to set expectations and figure out exactly how to test the product, and what criteria we should be judging it against,” outlined Kylstra. “We publish that criteria publicly as a buying guide. So, there’s transparency with the process.”

This research and pre-testing phase means that the editor or writer carrying out the actual process will be on the lookout for specific things, rather than testing against generic catch-all standards. The SELF team have taken care in communicating these standards and what they mean to their readers, with the rating system available at the top of each review.

Product categories on SELF have their own buying guides published publicly as well. These feature expert-suggested criteria that not only helps the editorial team evaluate products, but also helps readers make their own decisions.

“Transparency is key to trust,” Kylstra emphasised. “We want to make it as clear as possible why a product gets the seal, how we tested it, and why it scored what it did. This transparency will help readers feel more confident that the product is truly as good as we say it is.”

Cementing expertise

Conde Nast is not the only publisher looking to boost their ecommerce credibility through certification and seals. Hearst UK unveiled a state-of-the-art product testing and accreditation facility in London over the summer in order to expand its famous Good Housekeeping Institute seal of approval across a wider range of titles.

“We know more than ever that what our readers are after is impartial, trusted information,” CFO Claire Blunt said at the launch. “All our readers are smart, savvy shoppers, and they want to know how best to spend their money. So our testing functionality is also about providing them with impartial, trusted insight.”

There is also an additional commercial benefit to publishers with certification. When a seal has been awarded to a product, brands can then pay to license the use of the logo in their own marketing campaigns.

As publishers compete to stand out in ecommerce, it is likely we’ll see more brands launch seals and certification as a way of gaining additional trust. But it is important to do this alongside a rigorous testing process, and to communicate clearly with readers about how products are evaluated in order to build trust in the long term.

Alexa, can I trust this news service?

November 19, 2020 Jason Kint, CEO – DCN

No, not that Alexa. Many years before Amazon hatched the infamous brain inside of their smart devices, there was another Alexa on the Internet. The original Alexa started as a 1990s plug-in for web browsers before it was acquired by, oddly enough, Amazon in 1999.

After acquisition, OG Alexa evolved into a simple web traffic service that, because it was free, was often cited by academics who lacked access to pricier (and better) alternatives. Those who were around in the early days of the world wild web may have forgotten about the Alexa Site Rankings — I certainly did. And it is safe to assume that you would never guess that today, this service influences global news on what is arguably the most controversial, if popular, platform: Facebook.

In 2014, I noticed that Alexa Site Rankings resurfaced in an industry advertising report that evaluated premium publisher experiences. I questioned how the researchers determined which sites were “premium” (they also called them “respected sites.”) I discovered they used Alexa Site Rankings as the proxy, effectively substituting popularity for quality. They also didn’t take into account that the list included porn and piracy sites which, while certainly popular, aren’t known for quality. All of this raised significant concerns about the findings, which I outlined on Re/Code, “False Advertising: When Lazy Headlines Undermine Great Research. Let’s not confuse clicks with respect.”

Popularity contested

Fast forward to October 2020 and what (seemed to be) the peak of U.S. election hysteria and concerns over election and information integrity. I read a brilliant report by Alex Hern at The Guardian that examined a controversy around Facebook’s fact-checking process and found some startling surprises – including that Facebook is using the same dubious popularity data from the Alexa Site Rankings as a proxy for trust. Hern’s analysis relies on sections of leaked Facebook content moderation guidelines including this (emphasis mine):

Stories can be “enqueued” for Facebook’s third-party factcheckers in one of two ways: either by being flagged by an AI, or by being manually added by one of the factcheckers themselves.

Facebook’s AI looks for signals “including feedback from the community and disbelief comments” to automatically predict which posts might contain misinformation. “Predicted content is temporarily (for seven days) soft demoted in feed (at 50% strength) and enqueued to fact check product for review by [third-party factcheckers],” the document says.

But some posts are not automatically demoted. Sites in the “Alexa 5K” list, “which includes content in the top 5,000 most popular internet sites”, are supposed to keep their distribution high, “under the assumption these are unlikely to be spreading misinformation”.

Wait. What? Indeed, it looks like Facebook gives a “fast pass” to any site on the Alexa 5k Site Rankings.

Integrity, please

In 2016, I wrote to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg pleading for him to show actual leadership by inspiring a “moonshot” to address a growing information integrity crisis on his platform, asking him to use brands, not popularity or engagement, as proxies for trust.

Soon after, Facebook created its own “News Page Index” to maintain a list of trusted news organizations that could be used to surface additional context, exempt the press from rules applied to political advertisers and source stories for its News tab. Yes, there was some controversy in that Facebook included Breitbart on its list. But that was Facebook’s decision to make, not ours. Welcome to responsibility, Facebook. Kevin Roose, a brilliant technology columnist at The New York Times, has spent years documenting the effects of social media platforms. Recently, he has drawn significant attention with his daily list of the top ten news posts on Facebook. The pages appearing in his list are often sites that are popular beyond belief. They also clearly show the drawbacks in relying on engagement metrics.

Misinformation

By using the Alexa Site Rankings as its benchmark, Facebook provides these sites with the digital equivalent of an airport TSA Precheck under the assumption they “are unlikely to be spreading misinformation” (Facebook’s words, not mine) by being on the Alexa 5k. This is a list which includes Zerohedge, Infowars, PJ Media, Gateway Pundit, the Palmer Report, and Russia Today. If you are unfamiliar with these sites, they’re generally considered to be flush with misinformation and disinformation (Russia Today is even funded by the Kremlin.) This isn’t partisan, it cuts down both extremes where there’s often a common intent to deceive.

Do you know what sites don’t get this same Alexa 5k benefit of the doubt that they’re not spreading misinformation? The websites for the newspapers of record for nearly every local market in America, from the Portland Oregonian to the Lexington Herald-Leader to the Kenosha News to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

These news desks are full of journalists from cities large and small, from red states and blue states, and who have been on the streets over the last six months covering justice in America. Yet, their information isn’t given the same benefits as some of the most toxic sites on the web. Instead, they are presumed guilty and put into a long line for fact-checking whenever Facebook’s AI determines a story may be problematic. For years, The Knight Foundation has found that, among news sources, local news is the most trusted. So, this isn’t a rational or responsible decision by Facebook.

Outsourced responsibility

There have been many important reports on how Facebook outsources content moderation in order to separate itself from decision-making. Casey Newton at The Verge has been recognized for shining the light in this area, work that even led to a major Facebook settlement. Now, it appears that Facebook may also be outsourcing the criteria for its automated decision-making to the Alexa Site Rankings to determine whether a news site is trustworthy.

By choosing “popularity” rather than Facebook’s internal decision making, Facebook doesn’t disrupt its business need to drive engagement. It also avoids political backlash for favoring a particular ideology; conservative sites are every bit as popular and engaging, as Roose’s reporting demonstrates. And, finally, Facebook outsources liability for maintaining its list.

I’ve put these concerns to Facebook’s leadership asking for clarity or a correction. But, three weeks later and: crickets. Earlier this week, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey testified to the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee that algorithmic amplification has a profound impact. We agree. The largest news platform in the world reaches nearly 3 billion people and we don’t know how or why it makes these decisions. We all deserve better.

With great power, comes great responsibility. Facebook is a monopoly with the power to limit choice for consumers and advertisers. Now we know that this platform, where half of Americans consume news, uses a vetting process that equates clicks with quality, that devalues many of the most trusted newspapers and gives a fast pass to sites that serve Facebook’s priorities – engagement and popularity. If that’s the case, the public should know about it so they can decide if that’s where they want to put their precious time and attention.

Widening the funnel: Where are news sites finding new subscribers?

November 12, 2020 Chris M. Sutcliffe – Independent Media Reporter

Nobody ever said subscription success was easy. Yet over the last few years, the press in the U.S. and U.K. have had some things stack up in their favor. Political heat triggered a slew of signups as did frenzied interest in trustworthy information around Covid-19. And audiences, particularly younger ones, have generally become more willing to pay for subscriptions.

It would be premature to suggest that any of those trends is nearing its zenith. However, publishers are always trying to attract the next great swath of subscribers.

Unfortunately, competition for those audiences is only going to become fiercer. The majority of financial reports from news brands — large and small — over the past year have made plain that advertising revenue is in decline. The New York Times’ latest report, for instance, states:

“Digital readers were the only growth business for The Times. Every other unit fell. As online subscription revenue rose 34 percent, to $155.3 million, print subscriptions decreased 3.8 percent to $145.7 million. And advertising sales, once the lifeblood of the newspaper business, dropped 30 percent, to $79.3 million.”

The proportion of people paying for a digital news subscription is up across the board. Notably, younger audiences are far more likely to pay than those over 55. Those are both excellent indicators of the future health of subscriptions. It’s less clear, however, that there will be enough subscription revenue to go around, especially in the short term. Many vital papers will – grim as it sounds – probably not last to reap the benefits of these positive trends.

So, where are the successful publishers seeking out new audiences?

A common tongue

For the most part, media companies have — due to a lack of resource and local knowledge — tended to focus on their core geographical markets. Many have bureaus or access to wires within other countries to draw from. But few have made them a focus of revenue growth.

Where it has occurred, it’s typically been media brands in countries that share a common language. The Guardian overreached itself with its launch of Guardian U.S., but is forging ahead in Australia. Earlier this year The Economist redoubled its efforts to become a name brand in the states.

Magazines have made the leap too: The Week Junior’s launch in the U.S. was predicated in part on the shared language. The title’s chief executive Kerin O’Connor said that: “The first week actually has been fantastic, we’ve sold 1,000 subscriptions. I mean, I think that’s incredible for a product that no one’s ever seen in America. I know it’s a big country, but that is a hell of a starting statement in terms of the enthusiasm that we’re feeling for this product.”

Breaking language barriers

On other occasions, foreign expansion makes sense when there is significant lexical similarity between countries. El Pais, the second-largest Spanish-language newsbrand, has a limited presence outside of Spain, with English-language inserts in titles including The International Herald Tribune. Despite that, in 2013 it launched a Brazilian Portguese site in an attempt to grow its audience outside its home nation, an effort that has led to El Pais brand becoming the second-most used news site in Latin America last year.

The practice of launching in countries without a shared language is more common among well-resourced English titles. In 2016 it was widely reported that Forbes, among others, were eyeing France as a target for expansion. Given Forbes’ model of providing a platform for writers, it’s unsurprising that expansion using its existing platform is continuing.

Others might well follow suit, as titles increasingly try to leverage their brands to launch in new territories. In September, the London-based newspaper The Independent (no stranger to capitalizing on its brand) announced plans to launch Independent en Español, a new website created to serve the Hispanic audience in the U.S. and other Spanish-speaking markets.

In doing so it seeks to take advantage of an extremely lucrative new audience, as the InPublishing write-up makes clear: “According to recent data from the Selig Center for Economic Growth, Hispanic consumers have a buying power of $1.5 trillion – larger than the GDP of Australia, and a 212% increase in a decade.”

Under pressure

While The Independent’s focus is on brand partnerships and advertising, other subscription-based publications are making similar moves. As the pressure on advertising revenue becomes more acute, I would be shocked if more publications did not take the plunge and launch subscription products in other countries.

The early movers in that space, with significant brand recognition, will be the key beneficiaries. The titles that have the benefit of being primarily published in the English language could even eschew translations, as The Washington Post did when it launched the still extant Today’s WorldView in 2017 to grow its international subscriptions.

A wider funnel

Of course, publishers should not neglect any opportunity to build their domestic subscription bases. The proportion of people willing to pay for digital news specifically tends to hover around the low double digits in many countries. As a result, news publishers are widening the top of their marketing funnel in an attempt to bring as many people into the fold as they can.

That’s especially true when it comes to attracting young audiences. The vast majority of digital subscription titles offer student subscription prices. They do so with the tacit understanding that they are taking a hit on present revenue while investing in future subscribers. Student subscriptions are nothing new, but the breadth of titles aimed specifically at professionals, like The Financial Times, offering them widens all the time.

Creative product offerings

Nor is it always quite so mundane as a discount. The New York Times uses its flagship The Daily podcast as a free introduction to its content. Four million daily listeners to the podcast alone offers a huge audience for marketing messages, particularly used in partnership with adjunct products like newsletters. I’ve written before about the value of other subscription products as additive value to the total package, with Crosswords and Cooking both adding significantly to The Times’ total subscriber base.

The same is also true of other titles. Publications like The Guardian use non-news products to introduce people who might not pay to support news alone to the subscription mentality:

“There were notable increases in the number of people subscribing to the premium version of The Guardian’s mobile phone and tablet app, plus people subscribing to the Daily edition and the new Guardian Puzzles app. About half of the regular contributors are from outside the UK, aided by growing numbers of readers in Australia, the US and across Europe.”

One thing that all these products have in common? They skew younger than traditional news and information. Younger people are more habituated to pay and could provide greater lifetime value than older audiences. Small wonder, then, that media outlets are trying to appeal to as many of those people as possible. Between new products and new territories, newspapers are looking ahead to mitigate any potential slowdown of subscription revenue growth.

Featured Post | Innovation

Text-to-speech is the audio opportunity no one’s talking about

November 5, 2020 Charlotte Ricca – Independent Media Reporter

Audio articles are making quite a noise in publishing. Podcasting may be hogging the headlines. But creating features and news that your audience can listen to is an audio opportunity that should not be ignored.

While offering articles in an audible format is nothing new, this type of content is currently enjoying a massive boom, as time-strapped audiences look for convenient ways to consume online media.

A boom

In the U.S. alone, spoken word’s share of audio listening has increased 30% over the last six years and 8% in the last year alone. And when multi Pulitzer Prize-winning titles jump on-board, you know that audio content is a serious business. In July, The Washington Post announced plans to make audio versions of all of its articles. And a few months earlier, the New York Times acquired Audm, a platform that turns longform journalism into audio content.

Other big brands using Audm’s audio services include The Atlantic, BuzzFeed, Wired, and Rolling Stone. Similar platforms Curio and Noa – which are based in the UK and Ireland respectively – have signed up the likes of the Financial Times, The Telegraph, The Economist, and The Guardian.

What’s even more interesting is that listener numbers have risen since Covid-19. In fact, 75% of the U.S. population has listened to spoken word audio in the past month.

The Washington Post began testing text-to-speech capabilities on its Android app in early 2020, assuming the feature would appeal to readers on their daily commute. But Leila Siddique, senior product manager, said they have been surprised to see steady adoption rates, despite people working from home.

“What we’ve learned from users is that they listen to the news while doing other things. And they are consuming far more content than they would normally,” she says.

It’s not just the U.S. that has seen a boom in audio articles during the pandemic. England’s The Economist has offered audio editions of its weekly magazine since 2007. However, according deputy editor Tom Standage they are currently enjoying “record numbers of streams/downloads and unique listeners.”

Engagement

Listener figures are still way below the numbers of people who read text online, with the New York Times enjoying in excess of five million subscribers across its print and digital content. However, audio content isn’t just about numbers, it’s about audience engagement.

Reading takes time and focus – which is in short supply with modern audiences. According to Chartbeat, even the top stories only engage readers for around two-and-a-half minutes, while 45% of readers leave within 15 seconds. In contrast, Noa cites an 84% average completion rate for stories

“Completion rates are higher because people are generally busy doing other things while listening. So, it’s less convenient to switch away from something,” says Standage.

Basic value

Despite the fact that these platforms use professional narrators, audio content is still fairly simplistic compared to podcasts, which often require dramatic story-telling and high production values. The key to audio articles’ success is convenience – and quality journalism.

“We know that readers are time-pressed and feel guilty that they have not read enough of a given week’s edition before the next one arrives,” says Standage. “Offering audio content sends the message: we know you are busy and are willing to pay for high-quality information. So, here’s a handy feature that will help you ensure that you get value from our journalism.”

Publishers, in turn, get more value from their audience. While The Economist hasn’t shared numbers for the performance of their audio content, Standage says figures suggests the audio edition is an effective retention tool. “Once you come to rely on it, you won’t unsubscribe.”

The Washington Post’s managing editor Kat Downs Mulder agrees the convenience of audio is a “huge benefit” to both their subscribers and their subscription numbers.

“We know people love listening to news – our podcasts show that,” she comments. “Opening up more audio content and making it easier for them engage with The Post helps draw them into our ecosystem even further. That improves retention rates.”

Offer more

Interestingly, while most publishers create a limited number of long-form, analytical audio articles, The Post is using the text-to-speech features on Android and iOS to offer audio versions of all its articles. The 143-year-old paper has been experimenting with audio since 2017. However, Downs Mulder explains that they decided to offer automated storytelling across all its content.

“We are excited about the habit-forming nature of audio. But it’s

hard to build those habits if you only offer a limited number of articles,” she says. “Our readers know they always have an audio option, across all articles, which really reinforces its availability.”

Feedback from users is positive so far. Downs Mulder says subscribers who listen to audio articles spend three times as much time in Post apps.

Niche and personal

It’s not just the big brands getting onboard. Audio is a great way for niche brands to engage with their audience and create loyalty. Danish startup, Zetland, launched its audio model in early 2017 and has since grown an incredible 650%.

Just like The Post, all Zetland articles are available as audio. However, they only produce about three longform articles a day. This means they can offer a far more personalized audio experience, with each article read out by the journalist that wrote it.

“The personal voice of the journalists is quite important to the success of our audio products,” explains Zetland CEO, Tav Klitgaard. “We originally tried using professional voice actors, but it sounded too perfect. We like to build what we call a ‘human product’, including all the glitches and quirks of human beings. It is important for us that our content conveys honest passion and curiosity, and we’ve found that to be done best when the journalist narrates.”

This personalized approach certainly seems to be working. They now have more than 18,500 paid members, whose consumer habits are around 75% audio. What’s more, engagement levels are impressive, with close to a 90% listen-through rate.

“We’ve learned that once we get people to hit play on that first piece of content, chances are they listen to the end,” says Klitgaard. “They also have a higher usage frequency and subsequently membership retention, than those who do not listen.”

Audience appeal

In addition to increased retention, audio is also a great way to reach out to new audiences, as it is traditionally consumed by a younger demographic. According to Klitgaard, more than 30% of their paying members are under age 30. And The Post says their audio audience is “generally younger” than their average reader.

As with all content, creating a successful audio model is all about knowing your audience. You need to recognize their needs and match the user experience accordingly. Whether that’s long-form analytical content, or easy-to-access daily news, audio is proving to be a highly effective way to engage, retain and attract audiences.

“Audio isn’t about changing user habits, it’s about embracing their habits,” states Downs Mulder. “Our goal is to convert causal listeners into dedicated listeners, by opening them up to getting news from us in other ways. And audio is proving to have an enormous importance to the news-interested public.”

Cutting through the noise: podcast marketing tactics from NPR, Vox Media and WaPo

October 29, 2020 Greg Dool – Independent Media Reporter

Media companies continue to flood podcast platforms with new launches. The attraction is clear: a much-needed and potentially lucrative source of revenue. An additional venue in which to engage with core audiences. And, perhaps most vitally, publishers are capitalizing on the longer-term opportunity to introduce themselves to a massive and ever-growing pool of listeners.

But amid a glut of content, viral hits are rare. Rising above the noise to build audiences of scale is often a slow and arduous process. It’s far more involved than simply producing a compelling program and waiting for listeners to find it.

“I think a lot of people in media believe you can do it that way. We’re so used to a story succeeding or failing based on whether or not it’s good,” says Jessica Stahl, director of audio at The Washington Post. “Podcasting is such a crowded ecosystem. You really need to put as much might as you can behind letting people know that something is there.”

Dependence on platforms like Apple and Spotify makes it difficult for publishers to attribute success to individual marketing tactics. But it’s clear that the totality of these efforts has an impact. In their absence, the lack of engagement is noticeable.

“We try to do as much as we can with all of the levers that we have,” Stahl adds.

Leveraging existing capabilities

No stranger to audio, NPR has expanded aggressively into podcasts, complementing its radio programming with on-demand offerings for a generally younger cohort of listeners. The non-profit relies heavily on social media to boost its shows and tends to focus on promoting its podcasts during surges of traffic to its website.

“The question is, how do we take these people who are likely new to NPR and turn them into engaged users?” says senior director of brand marketing, Kristin Hume. “Podcasts are a great way to do that because they’re a really valuable engagement tool. You’re asking people to tune in week after week.”

On social media, NPR uses hashtags and affinity targeting to join conversations around specific topics relevant to its shows. Hume recommends posting individual episodes or clips rather than general marketing around the podcast itself. Facilitating shareability is key.

Vox Media also favors an omnichannel approach, leveraging websites, newsletters and social media channels from across its portfolio of 13 media brands. But building awareness is only the first step, according to Brandon Santos, Vox’s director of podcast marketing.

“The second step is converting people when they’re actually ready to listen,” says Santos. “We typically do that through audio promos on our existing podcasts, collaborations between shows, and occasionally through promotion on podcasts outside of our network. These tactics tend to drive more noticeable spikes in our downloads, but they work best when we’ve done the awareness-building work first.”

Pragmatic cross-promotion

All three companies cite the use of existing podcasts to plug new ones as one of the more immediate and effective ways of boosting downloads. “Our listeners really value these cross-promotions,” says NPR’s Hume. “They don’t see them as advertisements. They see them as a way to learn about new content from a brand they love.”

Typically, a new launch will enjoy four weeks of promotion across NPR’s entire podcast network. Hume says that this provides a solid foundation from which to engage additional listeners outside the core.

At Vox, these cross-promotions take several forms, including ads inserted into shows with similar audiences, content collaborations, guest appearances by hosts on other shows, or episode previews shared in another show’s feed.

“We’re fortunate to have producers and hosts who respect each other’s work and understand the value in supporting one another,” says Santos. “Listeners already have a lot of confidence in those brands and hosts, so they’re much more willing to give that show we’re promoting a chance.”

Like Vox, NPR is comfortable buying or bartering for ads with “like-minded podcasts” produced by other publishers without fear of cannibalizing audiences. “It doesn’t feel like people are peaking out yet in terms of the number of podcasts that they’re willing to listen to,” Hume says.

Gaming the platforms

Discovery remains an inherent problem in a world where the dominant platforms host an overwhelming surplus of content, Stahl says. But there are still ways to optimize.

“One simple way you can help drive discovery is to make sure that you’re very clear about what your show is about in your description copy, your episode titles, and your show notes for each episode,” notes Santos. “Both [Apple and Spotify] scrape those fields for their search results and their ‘related podcast’ algorithms.”

Hume says NPR has had success pitching Apple for featured spots within its podcast app, a formalized process open to anyone. “We try to get in their curated collections as well, and the best way to do that is to make sure you’re publishing content that connects to the issues of the moment,” Hume says. “Apple does try to be pretty editorial and topical in what they’re promoting, so listing individual episodes in your pitches is really helpful.”

On Spotify, it’s more about getting different episodes of shows into the platform’s curated playlists. Examples include “Real People, Real Stories,” or “Your Daily Drive,” which offer a mix of music and news originally intended for morning commuters.

Monetization, in perspective

When it comes to actually making money, solutions are a mixed bag. All three companies promote their reach and the intimate, trusting relationships between listeners and hosts, but offerings vary.

Vox provides both host-read ads and branded segments produced for advertisers, both as standalone sponsorships or as part of integrated packages. NPR sells a plethora of options, from mid-roll ads to programmatic insertions.

Inserted ads are the dominant offering at The Washington Post. But while advertising is a big piece of monetization, Stahl says it’s worth remembering that a successful podcast can also benefit the business in more indirect ways.

“As we think of subscriptions at The Washington Post and the value of loyalty, podcasts stand out as a particularly loyalty-driven medium,” she explains. “The amount of time a podcast listener spends with us each week is astronomical. That idea of capturing and holding those audiences is really valuable in itself.”

Despite the fact that most podcasts are offered for free, that cost for entry—20 to 60 minutes of a listener’s day—is actually relatively high, says Santos. This constitutes a much larger commitment than reading an article or subscribing to a newsletter. “That means it’s even more important that you have a compelling reason to listen and that you’re communicating it very clearly. Collaborating with content teams to make sure you understand the unique strengths of a show and the benefit to the listener is extremely important.”

Here are 3 big changes coming for digital media

October 22, 2020 Chris Pedigo, SVP Government Affairs – DCN

In case you haven’t heard, there is an election coming up in a couple of weeks. Regardless of which party wins, the public policy landscape for digital media is likely to undergo some major shifts in the next couple of years. Let’s take a look at three big changes on the horizon:

Google and Facebook will pay for premium content

In 2019, the European Union approved the Copyright Directive and underlying publishers’ right, which gave news publishers legal leverage to demand better terms from platforms. Now, all eyes are on France where a court ruled earlier this year that Google must negotiate in good faith with publishers. Of course, Google will avail itself of all the legal channels to slow down any effort to force them to pay for content. However, it’s likely just a matter of when, not if.

On the other side of the globe, in 2019, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to develop a voluntary code to rebalance the relationship between news organizations and big tech platforms. As the latter predictably dragged their feet, the ACCC switched gears earlier this year and moved to the development of a mandatory code, which appears likely to be easily approved by the Australian parliament in 2021.

In response, Google and Facebook have threatened to drop news from their services and/or pull out of these markets altogether. However, we know these are empty threats. For one, there’s common sense. If Facebook’s news feed and Google’s search results were devoid of trusted news organizations, what kind of miserable consumer experience would that be?

Really, given the massive profit margins of these tech companies, and the political scrutiny they are facing on multiple fronts, it makes sense for them to simply buy their way out of this problem. Case in point: Earlier this month, Google launched Google News Showcase, which will pay out approximately $1 billion in licensing fees to a select group of news publishers. As News Corp’s CEO, Robert Thomson, noted, “…the principle and the precedent are now established.” My take: Google sees the writing on the wall and is trying to get ahead of regulators in an effort to set the market.

Also, earlier this month, the House Judiciary Committee issued a lengthy report that summarized their investigation into big tech platforms and laid out a host of legislative solutions. One of those proposals would allow news publishers to collectively negotiate terms with platforms like Google and Facebook. It’s pretty clear which way the wind is blowing. Platforms will pay for premium content in the not-to-distant future.

Consumer privacy laws will impact data collection and profiling, especially programmatic advertising

The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which went on the books in 2018, was meant to give citizens new rights and protections over their data. Since then, the common narrative from big tech’s apologists has been that GDPR didn’t work. It only resulted in annoying pop-up notices while Google and Facebook cemented their dominance in digital advertising.

I dispute the narrative that GDPR didn’t work. It hasn’t been enforced…yet. The most significant enforcement action to date has been a French court ruling (currently under appeal) that Google improperly gained consent from consumers, which resulted in a $50 million fine. The resolution of that case could have huge implications for the entire industry, not just Google.

Meanwhile, Google, Facebook, Apple, and other companies claim Ireland as their European headquarters, which gives primary jurisdiction to Helen Dixon, Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner (DPC). Last month, in response to a European court ruling, she announced that Facebook and other companies could not transfer data about European citizens back to the U.S. because the U.S. does not have equivalent privacy safeguards. In response, Facebook sued the DPC and declared that they might pull out of the European market if this ruling stands. (Sound familiar?)

At the same time, there are hundreds of cases pending before the Irish DPC, any one of which could have wide-ranging ripple effects. Adding to the pressure for her to act, the Belgian data protection authority iss u ed an initial finding just last week that the IAB Europe’s Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF) is not compliant with GDPR. While the IAB Europe is expected to push back on these findings, the ruling could have massive implications worldwide for programmatic advertising, in particular the real-time bidding systems for open exchanges.

According to the United Nations, 132 out of 194 countries have enacted some kind of data privacy law – many of which are modeled after GDPR. This November, California voters are likely to approve a ballot initiative called the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), which will align California’s privacy law much more closely with the GDPR.

Of course, Google and Facebook have enormous legal and lobbying budgets that they will leverage to forestall regulation and enforcement for a time. But, eventually, the same public pressure that led to the enactment of GDPR and other data privacy laws will lead to the enforcement of these laws, which are primarily targeted at limiting the ability of big tech platforms to collect data about consumers.

Platforms will soon face new responsibilities and liabilities

Policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic seem to be hell-bent to make platforms more accountable for what’s happening across their services. This morning, the U.S .Department of Justice, along with 11 state attorneys general, filed suit alleging anticompetitive practices by Google with regard to the search marketplace.

The suit does not lay out specific remedies but could include breaking up pieces of Google into separate companies and/or imposing new obligations on the company. While the suit is likely to take years to play out in the courts, it dramatically ramps up the pressure on Google while also ensuring the conversation will remain top of mind for policymakers. It’s also widely expected there will be additional suits filed by the bipartisan state attorneys general who have been investigating Google on a range of practices including digital advertising.

Meanwhile, members of both political parties in the U.S. have expressed grave concerns about the anti-competitive practices and dominance of the big tech platforms. Democrats have expressed additional concerns about the impact on democracy, news organizations and vulnerable segments of society. Republicans have lambasted the platforms for allegedly suppressing conservative speech.

Importantly, both parties agree that platforms’ algorithms should be transparent. They think regulators should have greater authority to oversee their actions and mergers. And both sides believe that that Section 230 protections should be significantly narrowed. The CEOs of Google, Facebook and Twitter will likely be walking into a political minefield next week as they testify to Senate Commerce on this sensitive topic under threat of subpoena.

In Europe this month, European Commission Vice President Margrethe Vestager announced plans to move forward by the end of this year with two major legislative initiatives designed to impose a whole new set of obligations on big tech platforms. These big tech companies used to be the darlings of innovation. Now they are nearly uniformly seen as impediments to economic growth and democracy.

What does all this mean for publishers?

Taken together, these three unfolding and inevitable changes should provide a unique opportunity for premium publishers. Obviously, public policy debates are messy. And lawmakers and regulators don’t have the best track record in terms of truly understanding tech.

But, as we’ve seen with enforcement action in Europe, investigations by various competition authorities and hearings before the US Congress, policymakers have gotten a lot savvier and are poised to act in bold, new ways. Going forward, companies that enjoy trusted, direct relationships with consumers and advertisers are likely best positioned to flourish in a world where premium content and contexts will have greater value.

Featured Post | Innovation

How Vox Media uses its podcast network to grow franchises

October 15, 2020 Esther Kezia Thorpe – Independent Media Reporter

Vox Media has become a podcasting powerhouse, with more than 200 shows across multiple categories. From news and tech to culture, comedy and sports, the publisher is seen as a leader when it comes to building and monetizing audiences around their premium podcasts.

The Vox Media Podcast Network is well-established. However, there is a great deal of strategic thinking and consideration that goes into developing new shows. This has been highlighted recently with the launch of a new narrative podcast, Go For Broke, from Epic Magazine.

Vox Media’s VP and Executive Producer of Audio Nishat Kurwa and Epic Magazine’s Director of Business Operations Melis Tusiray discussed the development of Go For Broke. They also explore the ways in which they leverage the power of the network when launching new shows.

Developing Epic’s first podcast

Go For Broke is a narrative franchise that looks at the stories within historical success “bubbles.” The idea for the podcast stemmed from a discussion of Pets.com. For those who don’t remember, the pet supply enterprise rose to fame after a sock puppet advertising campaign. It became one of the more high-profile victims of the dotcom bubble burst in the early 2000s.

“As we started talking about bubbles, it just really occurred to us at that moment that there was so much rich storytelling under this thematic concept of bubbles. It really made sense to do it as a podcast,” said Tusiray. “We could put in the audio texture of that time period, and really immerse the listeners in it. So when Epic merged with Vox Media in 2019, this was one of the first stories that we pitched.”

Hosted by BuzzFeed News alumna Julia Furlan, the series will address the ways in which the first dotcom bubble set up the dominance of the tech industry. It will also highlight how the same forces that caused the first crash are still at work in today’s tech economy.

This is Epic’s first full podcast show. So, it will be an opportunity for the team to discover their own audio voice and style within Vox Media’s Podcast Network. The brand has a strong background in storytelling through their publications. They’ve also done film and TV work, all with a focus on telling extraordinary true stories.

“It was when we joined Vox Media and we got to know the Vox Media Podcast Team that the opportunity became very clear,” explained Tusiray. “It became the right entry point for us to do our first Epic Magazine-branded narrative podcast.”

Leveraging a network

Having a well-established podcast network is key to the success of new shows at Vox Media. “We leverage our network inventory to do a lot of audio promotion across different audio sets and different categories,” Kurwa said.

New podcasts are frequently cross-promoted through audio promotions in similar categories. Occasionally Vox Media makes use of feed drops; it puts a trailer or whole episode of a new podcast into another show’s feed in order to attract listeners.

Go For Broke’s focus on the dotcom crash for the first season means that it covers both business and technology. These are categories which the Vox Media Podcast Network already publishes some of its biggest shows such as Pivot and Land of the Giants. “We know our audience is already interested in insightful coverage and historical narratives in those areas,” explained Kurwa. “So we took that as a strong signal that this would be a smart series to pursue.”

“That is really important when we’re thinking about developing a new show. What do we know about the audiences we already have? What do we know about the ways that we’ll be able to leverage our network to promote any new shows that we decide to publish?”

Building out franchises

One of the strategies that has made the Vox Media Podcast Network so successful over the past few years has been leaning into its franchises. This involves building out an area of focus for a brand, and then doing special series within that. For Epic, Go For Broke will play a formative part of shaping its future audio portfolio within Vox Media.

“Part of that initial pitch and development process was looking at what we can grow as a franchise,” Kurwa outlined. “As a network, we really have to develop our discipline around what makes sense for the individual brands, and what makes business sense, especially when looking at a very saturated podcast market. Where can we have success, where can we make inroads?”

This strategy plays out across other podcasts Vox Media looks to develop as well. The idea has to be able to extend across multiple seasons and stories to capitalize on the established audience. “While we’re in production for the first season, we’re already thinking about what a second, and even third season can be,” Kurwa added.

Go For Broke has benefited from Vox Media’s centralized audio team, who work across the various editorial networks to help shape their audio strategies under the Vox Media umbrella. This covers everything from the pitching and development process to support with production, marketing and sales.

Stability in podcasting

Coronavirus has not slowed Vox Media’s podcasting efforts. Like many other publishers, it has seen growth during this period, with listeners increasing by almost 50% over the past year.

At the start of 2020, Vox Media was reportedly aiming to double their $10 million-a- year podcasting business. Kurwa wouldn’t comment on revenue specifics, but said that they were on track with the target. Most importantly, the podcast business has shown stability throughout the pandemic.

“The fact that podcast audiences have remained stable and grown so much is very encouraging for the Podcast Network,” Kurwa said. There have been changes in the time that people listen, with a notable shift from the commute to now listening in the middle of the day or in the evening after dinner.

“The listening has time shifted. But it’s grown in really promising ways,” she added.

The strength of the Vox Media Podcast Network is in knowing its audiences. Epic Magazine’s Go For Broke launches into a vertical that Vox Media already has established podcasts in. This gives the brand an edge when it comes to promotion, monetization, and developing further audio products.

How NowThis’ new channel plans to tackle climate in a crowded video ecosystem

October 8, 2020 Evan DeSimone – Independent Journalist

When you’re launching a new brand amidst multiple global crises, it helps to hone your focus and target audience. That’s part of the thinking behind NowThis Earth. The new channel from Group Nine Media’s mobile-first news publisher NowThis will address the impact of human actions on the Earth’s climate.

NowThis Earth launched in partnership with a coalition of climate-focused non-profits, research organizations, and NGO’s. The new channel will offer daily coverage of science-based coverage of the changing climate, as well as stories that focus on sustainable living. According to NowThis President Athan Stephanopoulos, climate change is a topic around which the NowThis audience is already highly engaged.

Mobilizing the brand

That’s one way in which NowThis differs from some legacy publishers. Many have struggled to find a way to cover climate change comprehensively. They cite limited consumer appetite for science-based coverage and the risk of fatigue with the sometimes-dire stakes of the issue. Attitudes toward and interest in the issue has started to shift among the public at large. However, Stephanopoulos is confident that NowThis’ young audience, primarily composed of Millennials and Generation Z, is more than ready for a sharper editorial focus on the issue many see as the defining challenge of their age.

“When we’ve covered issues of climate and sustainability in the past we’ve seen those stories over-index in terms of engagement, particularly with our younger audience,” says Stephanopoulos. In fact, NowThis viewers are five times more likely to engage with climate and sustainability content than with any other topic. This engagement has produced a reported 600 million views across NowThis’ existing news and politics channels. Clearly, its native audience is ready to see the topic take center stage.

Audience engagement

Of course, even with signs of growing consumer interest, launching a new mobile-first news channel in a crowded ecosystem presents challenges. That’s why NowThis is leveraging some of its existing assets to give the new brand a boost. NowThis Earth will take over the channel previously occupied by NowThis Future, a science and technology vertical that was one of NowThis’ most frequent homes for sustainability-driven content. Taking over an existing channel with a built-in audience will give Earth a leg up as it aims to break into an increasingly competitive mobile video market. NowThis can seamlessly connect new brand’s content directly with the segment of the audience most primed to receive it.

The channel also enjoyed a boost from science educator, climate activist, and occasional NowThis collaborator Bill Nye. He gave the launch a boost with the introduction of a live climate tracker. The new channel is open to partnerships with relevant voices in the climate conversation. However, Stephanoulos stays that bringing Nye into the launch has more to do with foregrounding future collaborations with the brand than a concerted influencer strategy for the channel. “It was mostly about the fact that we’ve done work with Bill in the past. And we’re talking about things we can do with him now under the NowThis Earth umbrella.”

Strategic partnerships

The new channel will also leverage an array of non-profit partnerships that will play a key role in informing its editorial coverage and helping it to connect with new audiences. NowThis has teamed with the Global Commons Alliance, a coalition of climate-focused organizations including research, business, and philanthropy. According to Stephanopoulos, the partnership will help NowThis Earth to identify stories on the frontlines of climate coverage. IT will also provide access experts who can provide additional context. GCA member organizations will also contribute local reporting from journalists and NGO employees involved in conservation efforts around the world.

The Global Commons Alliance will also help support the new channel through funding that will allow it to remain, at least initially, ad-free. In the near-term, the focus for Stephanopoulos and his team is on building an editorial brand that can motivate its viewers to take the kind of actions that help to address the global climate crisis. This could be by donating to preferred causes, following tips for more sustainable living, or engaging in activism.

NowThis has successfully partnered with commercial brands in the past. However, Stephanopolous thinks it’s important to avoid any potential conflicts at launch. He remains optimistic about the long-term potential of traditional advertisers to support sustainability-driven content both on NowThis Earth at large.

“We’ve seen a lot of brands and advertisers who want to be in this space, particularly content around sustainability,” says Stephanopoulos. “There are a number of companies that are driving themselves to be more sustainable as brands. I believe there will be even more opportunities in the future.”

Lessons to repeat

For publishers looking to launch a new video brand into today’s highly competitive market, there are some valuable lessons in the NowThis approach. NowThis Earth isn’t so much a new vertical, as a distillation of coverage that was previously spread across multiple channels in the NowThis portfolio.

With close attention to user engagement, the NowThis team was able to identify an area of opportunity that it was already well-positioned to develop based on its existing network of partners and to grow based on its established cross-channel audiences. The topic is timely, but as Stephanopoulos pointed out, NowThis has been nurturing this audience across several of its brands for years already.

Insight killed the video star: The role of video in premium subscriptions

October 1, 2020 Chris M. Sutcliffe – Independent Media Reporter

It doesn’t seem so long ago that premium video was the great hope for publishers. Newspapers including The Daily Telegraph were investing heavily in building up their video teams, only to have the ground fall away from underneath them when platforms changed the terms of agreements. The result? Newspapers cut their losses and jettisoned the teams around which they had so recently built their strategies.

Premium video now finds itself in a bit of a limbo. It is no longer the star of most publishers’ offerings (save for a few examples). And it has taken a back seat when it comes to the marketing of news paywalls. Instead, insight and access are the new tentpoles of subscriptions. That’s never been more clear than when the Telegraph, fresh from abandoning its video unit, launched an out of home ad campaign heralding its unfettered access to Westminster.

The Athletic has taken a similar approach. The sports analysis site, which has outperformed during Covid, has emphasized the access its journalists have with athletes (and the access its subscribers get with the journalists). Crucially, The Athletic has eschewed video for the most part. The company does create or licensing video. However, it does not view it as central to its value proposition, as this interview with its president and cofounder Adam Hansmann demonstrates:

“According to Hansmann, the industry’s sense of news, often based on daily newspaper deadlines rather than what readers will pay for, is outdated. ‘The modern fan already knows what happened in a game, whether it be from Twitter or Instagram or Facebook. They’ve seen the highlights a million times on the internet’”.

Short and social

Hansmann’s nod to the popularity social video is telling. Mobile video is still far and away the largest growth market for the medium. That’s especially true in markets like China, where short-form video dominates any growth charts. Users spent a total of nearly 600 million hours per day watching short-form videos on mobile in April 2019. That’s more than in any other category.

Additionally, premium video is expensive to produce and the ROI is less clear-cut than for the mass-produced videos on YouTube. As Vanita Kohli-Khandekar explains: “Because [ad-supported] video is free, platforms will do anything to get eyeballs. But subscription-supported programming (usually) is well-researched, written and produced – whether in entertainment or news.”

So, the bottom has dropped out of the video advertising market on platforms. Short-form video is the new normal. And even sports-based digital publications don’t feel the need to make premium video part-and-parcel of their offering. Is it now time to call “cut” on the concept of premium news video at newspapers?

Not news

News publishers do license footage and social video to accompany breaking news. However, the reality is that, unless premium video is a newspaper’s key focus, it just doesn’t make sense for them to invest in strictly news-centric video. For one thing, news video has a shorter tail than other types of video. For another, given that individual papers have a far smaller footprint than other platforms, it’s unlikely that they can attract enough eyeballs to compete with viewers on, say, YouTube.

That is, in part, why publishers like Joe (and its current affairs-based YouTube spinoff PoliticsJOE) choose to produce vox-pops and simple interviews. Frankly, they suit the ad-based platforms better. Even The Financial Times, which does produce longer form videos, typically hews close to the interview-led format on its in-house videos. This format entails a relatively low investment in terms of time and editing, despite looking extremely professional. However, they don’t match the level of production quality of traditional broadcasters or OTT entertainment services.

Head of audio and video for The Evening Standard Chris Stone said: “When a breaking news event happens there is obviously massive spikes in traffic, and everybody’s very interested in this one thing that’s happening. And so, it’s actually quite easy to serve video to that audience, because there’s people out there that are looking for that right then. But it tends to be a shorter tail. And that spike will disappear very quickly. And then you’ll be on to the next thing.”

The lifestyle lifecycle

Instead, he argues that lifestyle video content is the way forward for newspapers. It has a longer lifespan and greater opportunity for commercial partnerships.

Paul Newman is brand director for Future Plc’s home interest titles. Speaking about its own “pivot to video” with the Real Homes Show, he notes that: “Real Homes Show… has been a huge success since we launched it last April. We generated hundreds of thousands of views of the show. It’s proved incredibly popular with commercial partners.”

“I think the important thing is just to start with a good solid business plan, and to understand why you’re creating video, rather than just creating video because you think you should, or because somebody in senior management thinks, ‘Oh we haven’t gotten the video content, maybe we should get on with creating some.’”

The success of lifestyle content in attracting users to sign up for a subscription has already been clearly demonstrated by The New York Times, whose Cooking app is frequently cited as a reason for paying. It is, unsurprisingly, heavily base d around video.

Similarly, major lifestyle publications have made their archive of health and fitness videos available as part and parcel of their memberships. The reality, then, is that while video is still a good investment for newspapers for driving subscriptions, oftentimes news video is not.

Marketing medium

So, does that mean that there is no opportunity for newspapers around news video? Not at all. Just look at the success of Vox’s Explained series on Netflix. It delivers an awful lot of value to the parent brand in other ways that aren’t primarily monetary. At the time of Explained’s launch, Vox’s editor-at-large Ezra Klein stated that “… the Vox team did think about the overall Netflix audience, which is much bigger than Vox’s. But not as much about whether those people were watching on phones or tablets or other devices.”

Newspapers also recognize that video consumption habits are different among their key demographics. Consumption is growing across the board. However, it is effectively the primary means of media consumption among younger audiences. The Guardian, which hit one million subscribers on its YouTube channel last year, is keenly aware that those younger audiences are the key to its future.

One million subscribers may not sound like a lot on YouTube. It is considerably smaller than many individual’s channels, and any ad revenue it generates is likely to barely cover production costs, if at all. That, after all, is why many larger (non-media) YouTube channels operate Patreon or donation models as well.

The longer-form explainer news videos that The Guardian produces and makes available for free is effectively the best form of brand marketing possible. It hits audiences where they typically spend their time and can be used as a lure to drive interest back to the paper’s own membership scheme. More than that, as audiences shift to seeing YouTube as a primary source of news, it helps demonstrate that the brand can be trusted above all the conspiracy and polarized videos that typify the platform.

News publishers are serious about the quality of their journalism, no matter the medium. As younger people’s consumption habits lean further towards video, then investment in news video is a way to communicate that quality. It just requires publishers to recognize that the return on that investment is unlikely to come quickly or easily. Rather, it will come from a deeper overall relationship with the audience segment on which they will soon depend.