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Featured Post | Innovation

Why the New Statesman turns a long-read feature into a podcast every week

The podcasting boom shows no signs of slowing just yet. As publishers get to grips with flagship shows for their brands, some are now exploring ways they can turn other content into podcasts.

Following the success of its existing shows The New Statesman Podcast and World Review, news publisher the New Statesman launched its third podcast in April of 2022. Both The New Statesman Podcast and World Review doubled their listenership since the creation of an in-house audio team in 2021.

While the first two podcasts followed a more typical interview and discussion format involving the New Statesman’s journalists and guests, Audio Long Reads takes a different approach. Each week, one of the publication’s feature articles is read out loud then published as a podcast that is about half an hour long. 

Long reads debuted with four features covering Macron’s France, the anti-ageing industry, a refugee hotel and Cary Raditz’s side of the story. Since then the New Statesman has released an episode every Saturday, focused on the idea of one big listen every weekend.

Many publishers have experimented with audio versions of their articles in order to improve accessibility of written content and open up another way for readers to interact. However, those who have taken the next step and published these as full podcasts are fewer in number.

“The reason that we wanted to do it for the New Statesman was because long-form, deeply reported journalism is one of our greatest strengths,” said Chris Stone,  Executive Producer of Audio & Video at New Statesman Media Group. “It is one of the things that the brand has been known for over the years, and so it seemed like a natural thing to adapt from our existing stable of content.”

The importance of curation and selection

The New Statesman publishes multiple features in its website and magazine a week and produces one of them as a podcast. Features Editor Melissa Denes oversees all the written features output, including commissioning and editing the long reads. She also decides which of the New Statesman’s many features get the audio treatment.

There are a number of criteria that a feature has to match to be considered suitable for a podcast. The first is the narrative. In other words: Is it a strong story that is going to engage a listener for an extended period of time? The second factor is the shelf life of the story. Audio Long Reads “have to be evergreen, because we want this to be a catalogue of things that people can come back to,” Stone explained. “We see that people listen to one and then go back and listen to earlier episodes.”

However, being evergreen doesn’t mean they can’t be current or topical. The themes are often chosen based on what’s happening at the time. One recent example released at the end of July is “Boris Johnson: the death of the clown”, looking at how the ex PM’s “buffoon” administration came to a close. Other episodes have covered topics from exploring the surge in adult ADHD diagnoses to the history of women’s football.

Article length is not a determining factor, as Stone cautioned when giving advice to other publishers looking to turn their features into audio products. “Just because something is long, doesn’t make it a good audio long read,” he said. “What is the determining factor is the quality of the story, how much it grabs you, and the authority and eloquence.”

Because the majority of the work has already been done in terms of the content, the workflow for turning a feature into a podcast is straightforward. “We wait until we have a ready-to-publish version of the article before we record it,” said Stone. He notes that they often batch record a few weeks before release. “Compared to doing a conversational podcast, it’s an easier lift.”

Once the audio version is published as a podcast, it has a dedicated podcast article on the New Statesman website. The audio player is also embedded in the full written feature as well, which gives audiences an option to listen to or read the article.

A premium listening experience

One surprising point Stone noted was that production values are particularly important for the Audio Long Reads podcast. “I think you can get away with Zoom calls for conversational podcasts,” he explained. “But for these, the actual pleasure of the listening experience comes into it as well. The ones that have been recorded with the highest production values have seen longer listening times.”

The New Statesman has found that certain voices and certain readers perform particularly well. They have experimented with journalists reading their own stories versus having voice actors doing it. “It’s really nice if we’ve commissioned someone to do a story to give them a chance to read their own,” Stone noted. “But we can’t manage to do that all the time, either for logistical or creative reasons.”

Stone has also explored the possibility of using an AI voice. A growing number of publishers offer AI text-to-speech on their sites as an alternative way to consume a piece. However, for these stories, the richness of the listening experience is of such importance that it’s not a task AI voices are up to taking on … yet.

“The performance element is not to be underestimated,” Stone emphasised. “It only works if you’ve got people who are really good at reading  out loud.”

Text-to-speech would also only benefit existing subscribers as the New Statesman’s written content is paywalled. Having a curated selection of features available as a podcast allows the publisher to build a relationship with those who don’t otherwise interact with their journalism.

Steady growth

Although Stone wouldn’t divulge specific listening figures, he did say that it has surpassed his expectations, with listenership growing steadily week on week. “When we launched it, I set a benchmark of getting to 2,000 downloads in the first two or three months,” he said. “Actually, it has far surpassed that. We’re getting thousands of listens a week.”

As a subscription-focused publisher, the Audio Long Reads podcast has been designed to show off some of the New Statesman’s best long-form reporting outside their paywall. Although the podcast is still in the experimental stages, Stone hopes that it will increase users’ propensity to subscribe to their other products.

It’s a strategy which could work well for other publishers with hard paywalls. The content itself has already been created. Repurposing features into long-read podcasts is an inexpensive way to broaden the top of the subscriber funnel, as well as giving existing subscribers another way to interact with the work.

For the New Statesman, being selective is one of the biggest reasons Audio Long Reads has been a success. Carefully choosing which pieces would work well being read aloud, then matching those pieces with people who are good at reading creates a strong product which can build habit and loyalty.

Featured Post | Innovation

How Insider uses Twitter Q&As to increase transparency and trust

In an era where journalism faces a crisis of trust among audiences, Insider has taken to Twitter. 

Since 2021, Insider has done over a dozen live Twitter conversations called #TheInsideStory with its staff – from its Singapore bureau chief, to travel and entertainment editors, to reporters covering finance and health. The goal of the series is to help its audience connect with the newsroom and better understand why its staff are passionate about the beats they cover, says Alexandra Cancino, Insider’s Marketing Communications Manager. 

In June 2022, Insider did a proprietary study with its readers called Minding the Generation Gap: Media Usage & Trust Across Generations, to better understand how different generation demographics consume and trust media. They found that 94% of Insider readers feel that trustworthiness of a source is important, which reinforced the idea behind The Inside Story according to Cancino. 

The series kicked off in September 2021 with a live Q&A with Conz Preti, Insider’s parenting + health editor. The goal of the series is to give the audience a behind-the-scenes look at how Insider’s journalism is done. It also gives Insider’s journalists and editors a chance to talk about work, their networks, and their interests. 

With six more scheduled through to the end of the year, the series outlines how reporters and editors work. They showcase the breadth and depth of reportage and help grow journalists’ profiles. 

“We’re able to use these Q&As as a way to give readers a ‘behind-the-scenes’ peek at who our reporters and editors are, as well as how they perform their craft, including how they source, vet, and share information,” Cancino says. “We want them to feel what feels like a personal relationship with Insider and get to know the correspondents and editors better and why they do what they do.”

Insider view

In one Q&A, Insider spoke with media correspondent Reed Alexander, who was a finance reporter at the time of his Twitter conversation. As a finance reporter, Alexander wrote about the global economy, Wall Street, banks, and markets. The Inside Story gave Alexander the opportunity to get his work in front of a potentially broader audience. It also allowed him to share a side of him that his colleagues didn’t often get to see. 

“I had the opportunity to share with our Insider community some of what makes me passionate about business reporting, as well as to share insights into my other undertakings, like teaching a journalism class to undergrads at the University of Miami,” he said. It also “allowed me to share a side of my life that my work community doesn’t often get to see — for instance, pointing out some of my mentors in the newsroom, and explaining how I transitioned from the entertainment industry to a life in journalism.”

Earlier in October, Insider also did a Twitter Q&A with Health Correspondent Hilary Brueck focusing on what was happening in the public health sphere. As a health correspondent, Brueck writes about all facets of public health, including debunking health misinformation and reporting on health-related news. 

“The Q&A was a nice opportunity to highlight some of my recent work and share how I approach stories on my beat,” she said. The best part of the Q&A, according to Brueck, “was probably the unexpected opportunity it gave me to connect and reconnect with colleagues and sources who I’ve worked with through the years.”

Evaluating engagement

The live Twitter Q&As have had a knock-on effect in terms of engagement following the events. 

Cancino said the Q&As generated thousands of impressions on Twitter and a strong engagement rate — more than 100x Twitter’s benchmark. (According to Statista, the overall Twitter engagement rate is .04%.)

“Our reporters do a great job engaging with and tagging people, groups, and organizations they work with, and those accounts often engage back via retweets and replies,” Cancino said. 

“I definitely saw an uptick in likes and retweets on my tweets generally,” Alexander says. “It’s always difficult to isolate or pinpoint one reason for anything as a driver of a broader phenomenon, but certainly I would say it was a benefit for engagement.” 

Takeaways

With public trust of national news organizations in decline and widening partisan divides, news organizations are wise to embrace strategies to combat it and regain trust. Contemporary research suggests that transparency is a strategy to improve the public trust and brand perceptions, which in turn presents a way to restore and strengthen trust in journalism. 

Perhaps the industry should do showing, not just telling. Insider has found that its Inside Story Twitter Q&As offer just such an opportunity.

“As journalists we should be coming out behind the veil and making ourselves available. We are asking sources … to avail themselves and be open with us. I do think there is an expectation or a best practice of doing that reflexively for our audience and giving them a sense of who we are,” Alexander says. 

Being accessible and visible to the audiences and communities that journalists engage with will make them better practitioners of journalism, Alexander says. “I think it’s a great thing for other journalists to be doing… We want people to come to us for various reasons, to engage with us, to read our content, to share information. You know, how do people know where to find you if you are not really available to them and readily accessible?”

Featured Post | Policy | Video

Policy issues on the streaming video horizon

The streaming video marketplace is expanding and evolving at a breakneck pace. While the market was growing long before Covid, the pandemic lockdown spiked demand and cemented new habits for consumers across demographics. Consumers have devloped a ravenous appetite for streaming, which content providers are happy to satisfy.

Not surprisingly, the number of policy issues surrounding streaming video has grown at a similar pace. Some of these issues have been around for a while, while others emerged just this year. As with all expanding markets, it is critical to monitor regulatory and policy activities to ensure that the market is positioned for healthy growth. To that end, let’s review the current slate of legal, regulatory and legislative issues poised to impact streaming video companies.

New taxes and fees

A host of states and municipalities are attempting to extend franchise fees, which are typically levied on cable and internet service providers, to streaming video companies. Similarly, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is considering requiring edge providers (aka companies with apps and websites) to pay into the Universal Service Fund (USF).

The rationale is that the companies that provide high quality, high bandwidth content to consumers should pay for the infrastructure that enables consumers to access this content. Of course, this position fails to recognize the fact that franchise fees and the USF were initially established as a way for cable companies and ISPs to return the benefit they gained from public investment in their infrastructure.

Streaming video companies, however, did not receive any federal or local funding. While actions like these would be detrimental to the entire streaming market, they would disproportionately impact small and diverse content creators because they don’t typically have diversified revenue streams. Instead of levying new taxes on an emerging set of services, it would be better for Congress to continue funding broadband deployment initiatives, which helps level the playing field for equitable access.

Emergency alerts

In 2021, the FCC asked for comments on whether streaming companies should be required to broadcast emergency alerts in the same way that traditional television and cable providers are required to. DCN weighed in with big concerns about the technical and financial burdens of that proposal. We also noted that the costs would likely significantly outweigh the benefits when you consider the fact that consumers already receive these alerts on their phones. The agency prepared a report for Congress and appears to have shelved the proposal for now, but it’s worth monitoring.

Caught up in the techlash

Policymakers at the state and federal level have grown increasingly antagonistic toward big tech platforms. With each new scandal, we typically see a rash of bills introduced in an effort to right the wrongs. Unfortunately, sometimes those bills are overly broad, and they inadvertently affect streaming video companies.

One recent example is the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which was introduced by a group of bipartisan well-meaning Senators after whistleblower Frances Haugen testified before Congress about Meta’s predatory practices with regard to kids on their platforms. The bill purports to address the role that “social media platforms play… in the mental health crisis for children and teens.” However, the bill would also cover streaming video companies which offer professionally-curated content in a safe environment – pretty much the polar opposite of social media services teeming with user generated content.

Data rights and consumer privacy

In the absence of a federal privacy law, five states have now passed their own privacy laws. Of course, these laws apply to a wide range of businesses, impacting far more than streaming companies. However, the new laws will certainly have an impact on how the sector develops, particularly on how consumer data is collected and used.

For example, the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) builds on existing California privacy law to provide consumers with robust rights to delete, correct and port data that companies hold about them. Starting next year, consumers will also enjoy easy ways to opt out of the sale or transfer of their data.

Meanwhile, big tech companies like Amazon and Google are battling with newer platforms like Roku, and a raft of advertising-supported video providers, to carve out space in the streaming business with an eye toward harnessing valuable flows of consumer data. If this plays out like the broader web, then whoever controls the data will corner the revenue.

As the streaming video market matures, more policy issues will surface. It’s the hallmark of every evolving sector. The question is whether the streaming video market can continue to grow with healthy competition or whether punitive fees and the collateral effects of dealing with the bad behavior of tech platforms will gum up the works.

To ensure that new entrants and innovation have the opportunity to flourish, DCN will continue to advocate for sound legislation that addresses the specified harms and that unnecessary hurdles are removed. Consumers have high expectations, so should we. 

Featured Post | Policy

How Consumer Reports is fighting to save democracy 

Publishers and consumers are on the same side in a fight against gatekeepers wielding market power through inscrutable algorithms, says Marta Tellado, president and CEO of Consumer Reports. Her new book, Buyer Aware, explores the promise of today’s connected products and the many predatory practices and commonplace data harvesting and unacceptable risk.

“The marketplace is changing so dramatically, and so rapidly, but the balance of power has shifted away from consumers. I really wanted to kind of reveal to consumers: what does this new marketplace look like? What protections and rights do you have?” said Tellado in a phone interview. 

Consumer respect

That’s where her new book Buyer Aware comes in. Tellado weaves together a history of previous consumer advocacy success stories with the challenges people face today while trying to navigate a world where the gatekeepers of the digital media prefer profit over privacy and attention over accuracy. 

“Consumer Reports has been around for 86 years. We’re incredibly proud of the consumer rights and protections that we’ve been able to forge with and for consumers. But the reality is, that many of those things do not translate into the digital space. Technology has raced so far ahead of us,” said Tellado.

All of these threads speak to the premise of the book: that the right of consumers to fair marketplaces be deemed equivalent to people’s civil rights – instead of being an afterthought, as it often feels. Tellado says we’ve reached a critical moment on the frontier of consumer protection, one where Consumer Reports is in a position to be highly instrumental. Throughout the brand’s history, the ongoing efforts of its team has led to accountability in the market. And today’s market is in need of increased accountability. 

Publishers implicated in today’s issues

While Buyer Aware includes an overview of the state of financial scams (it’s bad), a status report of today’s latest safety issues and industry responses (also not great), a large portion of the book is dedicated to the threat of big tech’s market power and the misinformation in the media ecosystem. These are two issues in which the publishing industry is directly intertwined – Consumer Reports included.

“What many [media companies] are struggling with, is that we’re in an age where we have monopoly platforms that are essentially gatekeepers,” said Tellado. “They stand between us and the consumers we’re trying to reach.”

Tellado says the digital market doesn’t have the standards, the rules, and the guidelines to sufficiently protect consumers from exploitation. And she points out that publishers are at the mercy of search engine optimization and algorithms which ingrain society’s biases. Certainly, consumer rights are important for society. But she says that even beyond this, fundamental American values are at stake. 

“Writing the book was also a way to tell a larger story about our democracy, that it can only really thrive if you have a fair and just marketplace. Those two things are incredibly connected.” However, the main thing that Tellado wants readers to take away is that there are constructive paths forward.

She points to the emergence and vilification of “hipster anti-trust” as the force which shouldn’t be underestimated through patronizing nicknames. With Lina Khan’s ascension at the Federal Trade Commission, the potential of real action taken against the big tech giants is palpable. Tellado also endorses the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act helmed by Minnesota Democratic senator Amy Klobuchar as a legislative solution. 

Equipping consumers with tools

In a very on-brand “consumer-empowerment” move at the end of each chapter, Tellado suggests ways an average person could shield themselves from perils found in the previous pages. To combat big tech’s extensive reach over people’s private data, Tellado recommends people reduce the amount they hand over. More innovative options for people to leverage are found after following a QR-coded weblink. Consumer Reports has developed online tools people can use to protect themselves. For example, they offer an app that reveals the information companies collect from individuals.

Perhaps this seems ironic considering how much the book pins on other digital systems. But that’s the point: these new marketplaces are a reflection of how our digital tools are used, not that they’re inherently bad. Despite the risks, the work by Consumer Reports and its peers in the media space show us there is a flag to rally around in defense of the rights of the consumer. 

Featured Post | Innovation | Perspectives

Unlock media innovation by experimenting every day

In science, experimentation is everything. In publishing, maybe not so much.

Innovation is the go-to buzzword for ambitious publishers, but there’s no such thing as plug-and-play innovation. You can’t buy it off the shelf. I’s a process not a product. And it’s always going to be specific to your business.

For workflow specialist Kilian Schalk, experimentation is a crucial part of that process. At the Magazine Street conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, last month, New York-based Schalk emphasized the need for publishing organizations to experiment constantly if they want to get better at what they do.

“Why would you experiment every day? Well, the point is that every little incremental change can make a difference. Every time you do something you’re thinking about it. You’re being present.”

With a career stretching from Rolling Stone to the New Yorker, Schalk understands that where you start experimenting depends on what it is you want to improve in your operation. However, your pain points are the best place to begin.

Kilian Schalk onstage at the Magazine Street conference, Edinburgh Text on screen behind him reads Assumptions can be dangerous
Kilian Schalk onstage at Magazine Street, Edinburgh
Photo Credit: Philp Sayer

“What is most urgently in need of attention within the organization, those are good places to start,” he says.

He also recommends focusing first on experiments that will bring answers quickly.

Newsletters are often a great starting point. That’s because they have a regular cadence, which makes it easy to spot trends, and they operate with the same set of known users. You can also see results quickly. And adjustments made to a single email can deliver significant results.

Optimizing tactics

Effective experimentation should generally be focused on developing and optimizing tactics in the service of a larger strategy. Look first at your strategic plan and consider the measurable targets that you are trying to reach.

Schalk cautions that, sometimes the assumptions embedded in an overarching strategy can be shown to be incorrect. While this can be painful, he says it’s good news and better discovered sooner than later.

“Implementing strategies based on incorrect assumptions will drive organizations into a ditch and kill morale as well as belief in the leadership’s ability to lead,” he warns.

Becoming aware of untested assumptions is a particular challenge for leadership with deeply held beliefs about audiences or products. For Schalk the biggest asset in identifying and challenging these is a diverse and empowered team.

“People must feel free to draw on their own experience to question prevailing beliefs or speak up to ask: ‘How do we know that?’”

Schalk believes the first step surfacing assumptions that you can experiment on is to stay focused on what you are doing and ask questions as you go. He points to methods like the Five Whys to help drill down to the root cause of a problem. It works by identifying a problem and then asking why until you arrive at the reason it’s happening and, hopefully, a potential solution.

“Experimentation is not a lot of work,” says Schalk, “It’s a lot of thinking.”

Data is your friend

Before data was a thing, instinct was everything. Editors especially relied on their gut to make the big decisions from editorial calendars to cover stars. But in the world of real-time media metrics, behavioral data is a much more reliable indicator.

“Our gut instinct sometimes will lead us in good directions. But it’s most dangerous when it is unchallenged and unverified. Discovering that your instincts are incorrect is more valuable than reinforcing previously held beliefs.”

Schalk gives the example of a client whose social media schedule was driven by their content creation workflow. The publisher always shared social posts in the middle of the day, as soon as fresh content had been published to the web. Although they were unhappy with engagement levels, they had never stopped to think about the best time to post. They assumed that audiences would simply read content when it was posted.

Once they surfaced this issue, they tested the assumption by sharing their content at night instead of at 3pm. In doing so, they found that the aggregate audience engagement for their publication was five times higher at night. When they did some research they discovered their new audience were parents and, once they’d put their kids to sleep, that’s when they went on Facebook.

Critical thinking

Schalk says that if you think critically about the nature of your problems, the potential solution is usually not far behind. He explains that “learning how to learn” is a key skill in mastering an efficient experimental mindset and that comes from thinking critically and running experiments on a day-to-day basis.

Giving things a go is very different from running formal experimentation and while there are many ways to set up experiments, the most effective will answer the following three questions:

  • What has been happening?
  • What do we think will happen if we do something different?
  • How will we measure this?

Once the experiment has been run and the data gathered, you can then ask:

  • What actually happened?
  • How does what happened compare with what we thought would happen?
  • What did we learn?

Schalk says things are most likely to go off the rails when a publishing team doesn’t produce a written, measurable hypothesis that they are trying to prove or disprove. They haven’t answered the question ‘What do we think will happen?’

“The human instinct is to preserve energy by not going against the flow,” he explains. “This means people wait for the results then ‘rewrite’ the hypothesis in such a way that it justifies previously held beliefs. This is especially important when it comes to assumptions that leadership holds dear.”

Outside in

A key concern in deciding what experiments to run is whether to focus efforts internally or externally.

The decision ultimately depends on the specific needs of the business, but Schalk says that in a multi-channel world, most brands want to know about their audience first.

Once a clear understanding of what your audience responds well to and where organizational energy should be directed, the focus can shift to internal experiments that will help make specific workflows more efficient and effective, delivering more or different content at the right time to the right places.

From the stage in Edinburgh, Schalk gave some examples of experiments that delivered real results.

  • A weekly magazine, 100 years old, worried that their subscriber base was getting older. They assumed that their online engagement was concentrated among their oldest readers. However, they discovered that the youngest members of their audience were every bit as engaged online as the oldest. Taking this data as their starting point they experimented with a podcast targeting a younger demographic. It was a hit.

“I was supposed to have lunch with the editor, Zach, but he canceled on me because he had been invited to give a live performance of the podcast in Australia”.

  • A bi-weekly newspaper alternated print editions with an email newsletter. The open rates on the newsletter were dropping and they knew they were in trouble if they didn’t change something. Instead of publishing on Thursdays, they decided to experiment with a Saturday send. The hypothesis was that open rates would increase because people might have the time to sit back and read it on the weekend. Open rates doubled.

“It took probably 10 seconds to pick a different send time on their newsletter. They just had to have the imagination to try something different.”

  • A monthly magazine launched a weekly newsletter. Results were good, but they noticed a button in their email distribution service that said ‘Resend content’ which would send the email again to anyone who didn’t open it the first time. The resend increased their open rate by 12%, taking it from 39% to 51%.

“They used what I call the ‘what does this button do’ approach. Now, more than half the people that get their newsletter open it.”

Does experimentation work?

Schalk is careful to point out that not every experiment works and that there is no specific set of instructions or examples to follow. Of course, what works for some publishing organizations might not work for others.

He suggests that it’s OK to use other people’s results as inspiration. However it is important to recognize that unless you are working with your own data you won’t know what you are actually dealing with. “Your circumstances may be quite different from someone else’s. And you may get very different results from a similar experiment.”

Reassuringly, running your own experiments shouldn’t require a huge investment.

“The goal is to adjust what you are already doing in a way that allows you to learn something new. The power is to show you something you didn’t know you didn’t know.”

Featured Post | Perspectives | Video

Industry experts offer 3 ways streaming services can reduce churn

The Wall Street Journal recently profiled a couple that they characterized as  frustrating customers for streaming services. They subscribe to a streaming service, binge what they want to watch, then drop that service and move on to something else. Unfortunately, they are emblematic of a growing segment of streaming audiences.

When Netflix was king of the streaming services, this practice was rare. This was, in part because Netflix had a little bit of everything: hit shows like “The Office” and “Friends,” interspersed with licensed movies from blockbuster studios and must-watch original programs like “House of Cards” and “Orange is the New Black.” Didn’t have Showtime but wanted to watch “Dexter?” Netflix had it. Want to watch “Breaking Bad” without cable? Netflix had that, too.

But over the last few years—as others seek to reap the attraction of their own IP—Netflix has lost some of those key titles that once made the streaming service a must-have for households. NBC moved “The Office” to its own service, Peacock. Warner Bros. did the same thing with “Friends,” bringing it to HBO Max. “Dexter” is now exclusive to Showtime, which can be had as an add-on within Paramount Plus. “Breaking Bad” is still on Netflix, but only for the next few years, at which point it will presumably be exclusive to upstart streaming service AMC Plus.

Unfortunately, the diffusion of content to various services has created a nightmare scenario for streamers. Now, couples like the one profiled by the Journal are becoming the norm.

According to the analytics firm Antenna, around 19% of customers who subscribed to premium, cornerstone streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney Plus, and Hulu dropped three or more of their subscriptions between June 2020 and June 2022. That’s an increase of 6% compared to the period between June 2018 and June 2022.

Their loss has been a benefit to newer streaming services like Paramount Plus, Apple TV Plus, Discovery Plus, and others. However, the nature of how the streaming video business works means their models are not ironclad. Most services offer monthly subscriptions, and with no contract or other long-term mechanism to lock them in, customers can drop those start-up services just as easily as churn through the premium ones.

There are some obvious ways a streaming service can keep customers engaged in a way that reduces churn: Offer compelling shows and movies. Keep the price affordable. Make it easy to use. Make it available on every platform and every device. But with a dizzying landscape of streaming services that are spinning up at a breakneck pace, low prices and hit programming aren’t enough of a strategy to keep viewers locked into a service over the long term.

So, we asked some experts in the video space for other ways streaming services can grow their audience while keeping churn levels relatively low. Here is what they suggest:

1. Know your audience, and respond with that content

When the Fox Nation streaming service launched four years ago, the brand was franchised from Fox Nation section of the Fox News website, which offered a mixture of political and social commentary from thought leaders and digital correspondents. In some ways, it was a “Fox News Plus,” in that it carried several streaming political commentary shows and documentaries that were largely hosted by Fox News personalities.

That worked to a point. But as time went on, executives at Fox News Media realized the Fox Nation streaming service could serve as a platform for other types of content. It offered a home for historical documentaries, general entertainment programs, reality-based shows—content that Fox News enthusiasts had to find across a number of other services, if they were offered at all.

So Fox Nation has stepped up to fill the void. The service commissioned original shows and documentaries that it figured would appeal to the average Fox News viewer. And it has made them easy to find in a single service at a low price point.

“We definitely know what the space looks like for Fox Nation: it looks a lot like what the Fox News audience watches when they’re not watching Fox News,” Jason Klarman, president of Fox Nation, said in an interview. “Curation is at the heart of this. It’s about serving an audience that wants us to give them the content that they otherwise might go somewhere else—everything from real estate shows to cooking shows.”

The opinion programming is still there. In fact, Fox Nation viewers get next-day access to prime-time shows like “Tucker Carlson Tonight” and “The Ingraham Angle” as part of their subscription. But they also get shows like “Sharon Osbourne: To Hell and Back,” a documentary that dives into the issues of cancel culture; “The Pursuit with John Rich,” an interview show with the country music star; and “Historical Battles for America,” a docuseries hosted by Kelsey Grammer.

While the Fox News audience might be considered niche, Klarman said focusing on what those viewers would want to see from a general entertainment streaming service has done very well for Fox Nation. In fact, he went so far as to say Fox Nation has one of the lowest churn rates in the industry (second only to Netflix, he says) because the streaming service’s programming is able to make an emotional connection with the core Fox News audience.

“The opportunity is as big as we want it to be,” he said.

2. Partner with a streaming platform

While some companies like Fox, Showtime and Discovery are able to leverage their traditional cable brands to lure viewers into a streaming service, other upstarts like Acorn TV, Britbox, and Shudder have ventured into the streaming landscape with virtually no name recognition. And all still have the challenge of keeping customers once they’ve signed up.

None of this was a problem for media companies in the era before streaming: If a customer wanted premium television, they signed up for cable or satellite. When they did, they could reasonably expect to have access to the channels carrying the shows that were discussed around the water cooler at work the next day. And accessing a new show was as simple as changing the channel.

Today, things are different. Content is spread out across a few services, which makes for a confusing landscape with many gatekeepers. That is a problem that the big four streaming platforms—Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, and Android TV (Google TV)—have sought to address with various algorithms that help viewers discover content across services.

Roku takes things a step farther with its Roku Channel, an app that comes preloaded on every Roku device sold. Through the Roku Channel, users can sign up for dozens of third-party streaming services like Showtime, Starz, Discovery Plus, Paramount Plus, Epix, Acorn TV, and others. The services are paid for using Roku Pay, and content is streamed within the Roku Channel app. The approach makes purchasing a new service and streaming shows and movies a frictionless experience for customers.

“The Roku Channel allows us to showcase content and make it easy to discover and find and potentially attract audiences that would never have discovered it,” Nicole Fencel, a Roku executive in charge of premium streaming services, said at the NAPTE Streaming Plus conference last month. “Otherwise, it’s very hard for smaller services to play in an ecosystem that’s consumed by these major services…finding ways to bring that content up and elevate it across the platform is a way that we can help.”

The Roku Channel is not alone in offering this type of feature. The Apple TV app and Amazon’s Prime Video Channels also offer a marketplace for buying third-party streaming subscriptions, with content delivered within those apps. Google is reportedly working on a similar marketplace that will be powered by its YouTube streaming service.

None of those tech companies require streaming services to offer subscriptions through their marketplaces in order to reach customers on their platforms: Showtime, Epix, Paramount Plus, and others are still available as individual downloads, and customers can sign up directly for those services through the websites of each company.

But Fencel said there’s a benefit to partnering with the Roku Channel: Users have an easier time watching movies and TV shows across different services when they do so through that app, and Roku has developed numerous technologies centered around learning what its users like to watch, then surfacing movies and TV shows they may want to watch next.

“Finding ways to bring that content up and elevated across the platform is a way that we can help,” Fencel said, noting that helping users discover new content can lower overall churn rates.

3. If a customer is going to leave, make sure they leave happy

But Roku’s technology, and that of its competitor platforms, can only take a streaming service so far, something that Fencel acknowledged during her interview at NAPTE last month.

“We will make sure we help prevent churn as much as possible, but if a customer is going to make the decision (to leave), they’re going to make the decision,” Fencel said. “So, our job is to try to figure out, how do we re-attract them?”

Some might assume that the answer is simple: Add more programming that people want to watch. Or lower the price of a service to attract more customers. But some streaming services don’t have the benefit of adding programming or changing prices on a whim.

Philo is one such streaming service: It offers more than six dozen live pay television networks, the same found on cable and satellite, for $25 a month. Philo is able to keep the price low by making deals with programming partners that don’t offer cable news or sports channels. And, luckily, Philo carries a handful of channels that are responsible for many cable hits, including AMC (“Breaking Bad,” “The Walking Dead”) and Paramount Network (“Yellowstone”).

However, Philo is still very much at the whim of its programming partners. It can’t control the shows and movies that the live channels choose to carry in a given season. And it knows that customers might sign up to watch a season of a show like “Yellowstone”, and then leave for a different service once that show has run its course for the year.

Thus, Philo’s executives spend a lot of time thinking about the thing they can control: The customer experience. Does the app work? Is there enough variety? Can customers tune in and relax, or do they have to spend a lot of time finding something to watch?

That strategy has worked well for Philo. The service has grown to over 850,000 paying subscribers as of last year. (The company is private and doesn’t regularly reveal how many subscribers it has). Still, like other streaming services, it allows customers to start and stop service on a whim, which it considers to be its advantage over cable and satellite. However, its a situation that keeps the door revolving.

“I think everyone kind of accepts that churn is a reality,” Andrew McCollum, Philo’s chief executive, said in an interview. “But we have a particular belief that it’s really important people have a good experience with Philo, and that even if they leave, they leave happy.”

Philo’s philosophy is that a satisfied customer who ends their subscription will likely return when their favorite show starts up again, or when they discover a new program that is on a channel carried by the service. It is the kind of brand loyalty strategy that starts and ends with the overall customer experience.

“In a world with high churn, if people have a good experience with Philo, and they leave, and they leave happy, the next time they want to watch something we carry, hopefully they’ll come back to us,” McCollum said.

Featured Post | Innovation | Video

What publishers can learn from the creator economy

The creator economy is estimated to be a $104.2B market with “a substantial growth trajectory similar to the gig economy.” And, just as the gig economy has transformed the shape of work, the creator economy is impacting the media landscape.

Image via Influencer Marketing Hub

Industry-watcher Simon Owens notes how bootstrapped content entrepreneurs are harnessing platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and Substack to engage new audiences, often through verticals overlooked by mainstream outlets. Some are also very successfully monetizing these efforts. Globally, more than two million creators have six-figure incomes, as they tap into opportunities for sponsorship, subscriptions, and other revenue. 

Excitement about this potential has unlocked more than $800 million from venture capitalists in recent years. This is “sending strong signals confirming the creator economy is not only legit, but a force to be reckoned with,” Influencer Marketing Hub suggests.

“This is really a new form of work and a new form of entrepreneurship,” according to Kaya Yurieff, a former CNN journalist who covers the creator economy for The Information. 

The rapid rise of this sector is evident in the flurry of deals, creative campaigns, and platform developments featured in a four-times-a-week newsletter Yurieff and her colleagues have produced since April 2021. 

Five actionable lessons for publishers 

Collectively, the size of this market, its characteristics, and projected growth makes this a sector that media companies should not just report on. They should be learning from it too. 

Below are five ways that publishers can learn from the creator economy.

1. Harness the value of niche

“As solo operators, creators handle everything from content creation to marketing to monetization,” Owens explains. “This forces them to be incredibly innovative if they want to compete with much larger media organizations for subscription and advertising dollars,” he adds. 

One of the ways that they have addressed this is through niche content verticals. Yurieff points to Substack newsletters focused on indigenous news as an example of one “area that traditional publishers historically haven’t dedicated a ton of resources to.” 

“Creators have proved that there are audiences for maybe more varied topics than we’ve seen traditionally in the media,” she says. 

For publishers, this demonstrates the potential to superserve smaller, targetted, audiences. It isn’t always about scale. Rather, the focus should be on tapping into passions and subjects that audiences will engage with – and potentially pay for. 

2. Learn how creators are growing their businesses 

Niche verticals don’t necessarily have to remain small. “The most successful of these solo operators eventually end up hiring staff and acting more like traditional media companies,” Owens points out. 

He highlights how a former Cosmopolitan editor, Mia Freedman grew Mamamia from a one-person blog to Australia’s largest women-focused media company (with c.100 staff, 99% women). Owens also cites Adam White’s Front Office Sports, which began as a college project and now reaches over 20M people per month, as “examples of creators who leveraged their initial success to grow into more traditional media companies.” 

The transferable lessons from these types of success stories are highly relevant to the digital strategies being developed and deployed by publishers. As such, they should be required reading in the C-Suite.

3. Understand it isn’t just about flashy new social networks 

Many of the methods used by independent creators to share content and generate engagement – such as newsletters, podcasts, groups and messaging apps, paid memberships, subscriptions and other tactics – will be very familiar to traditional publishers. 

That said, in doing this, they are more likely to use newer platforms like Patreon, Discord and Geneva, than traditional publishers. But in terms of their approach, it shows you don’t necessarily have to reinvent the wheel. However, you do need to offer something valuable and distinctive. Content is King. Yet, in many cases, community is nearly as powerful. Distinctiveness can arguably be rooted in content, tone of voice, distribution channels and/or a combination of all three.

The Mamamia podcast network features around 50 different shows and 90 female hosts. According to their website, “it’s the largest women’s podcast network in the world.” Their podcast journey will be of interest to traditional publishers with similar audio ambitions. 

By the same token, alongside a daily newsletter and podcast, Front Office Sports has created a paid Pro product. This includes research reports, access to events and market data, as well interactive courses sponsored by the likes of Meta and Ticketmaster. 

Areas such as events, courses and research are among the tactics a number of publishers are also exploring as part of their efforts to diversify their revenues. The lessons Front Office Sports learned from these efforts is therefore relevant beyond the creator economy. 

Image: Screenshot highlighting a selection of Mamamia’s podcasts

4. Reach new audiences where they are

Publishers are increasingly moving into spaces like TikTok and Twitch in an effort to engage new (often younger) audiences. To make these efforts more successful, it can pay to hire staffers conversant with the style and tone of the creator economy.

NPR’s Planet Money might seem like a venerable show, but its TikTok account counters that perception. Run by 25-year-old Jack Corbett, it has nearly 750,000 followers. Teen Vogue describes Corbett as “a wacky-professor figure, a talented TikTok comedian, and most importantly, a guide through the largely inaccessible world of economics.”

For NPR, Corbett’s skills potentially brings audiences to Planet Money’s content who would otherwise find it inaccessible, or assume it wasn’t for them. It’s a tactic others should study, if not try to duplicate.

5. Unlock the potential for partnerships 

Publishers might, rightly, see the creator economy as a source for talent. But, those hires don’t necessarily need to be full time. Partnerships offer another approach that can potentially work for both parties. 

Image via The Washington Post

Launched last month, as part of a suite of new advice columns, The Washington Post ​​added TikTok content creator Jules Terpak to its cadre. The weekly column, Ask Jules, explores how technology intersects with digital culture and the lives of her readers.

Moves such as this enable publishers to benefit from a creator’s established audience and recognized expertise. (And in turn, creators may also benefit from an association with, and the resources of, a trusted mainstream media brand.) 

Creators have a built-in following and have demonstrated that audiences value their voice and viewpoint. Partnering with them can help publishers diversify their own voice and content offering. This provides a gateway to new audiences for other content and products. 

What’s next? Two trends to follow.

The creator economy is home to valuable case studies, talent and skills that the wider media industry can benefit from. 

This may become especially acute given the latest set of changes to Facebook’s mobile product. The move is part of what New York Magazine’s John Herrman refers to as social media’s “race to see who can copy TikTok the fastest and with the least dignity.” As a result, It may put a premium on the style and types of content that are the bread and butter of what many top creators produce.

Short-form video

“The algorithm changes will probably push publishers to create more short-form video content,” predicts Owens. “I wouldn’t be surprised if publishers start looking more and more for prior TikTok/Instagram Reels experience when hiring out their social media teams.”

Private communities

For Yurieff, one potential trend to note is the migration of online conversations into “more private spaces… I think that’s something really to watch,” she says. 

She cites Discord as an example of a platform which now has “lots of different niches and groups and audiences using it.” It’s part of a wider move among online users to connect in smaller groups, communicating privately and potentially going deeper on certain topics, Yurieff says. These are principles more publishers might want to get on board with.

In that vein, The Information’s move to create opportunities for its subscribers to network directly with each other demonstrates how some of the community principles evident in the creator economy can be applied by media outlets. 

“These new features are meant to add more value to the news site’s subscriber base, as opposed to driving meaningful revenue themselves,” Axios reports. Nevertheless, in the future, The Information may look to monetize them.

Like and subscribe

The growth of the industry, and the success of some of its proponents, means that if the creator economy is not on your radar yet, then it should be.

For publishers, the maturing of the creator economy, and the growing numbers engaged in (and with) it, present a number of learning opportunities. We need to be looking at the creator economy, as well as the more traditional media industry, for case studies, talent and insights into how to respond to the next wave of digital disruption. 

Yet, despite its growth, “this new breed of creators may be looked upon as charlatans and opportunists by some purists in traditional publishing,” suggests Josep Nolla, VP, Business Development & Partnerships at the e-commerce provider Bolt. “But the reality is there are more similarities than differences between this exciting new economy and traditional publishing,” Nolla advises. 

Creators, like traditional publishers, are looking to drive subscriptions, diversify their revenues, and generate engagement and loyalty. They may use different platforms, content styles, or verticals to do this. But arguably, a lot of their core business goals are the same. And there’s a lot to be learned in these similarities – and maybe even more from the differences. 

Care to disagree? Then let’s debate it on Discord!

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion | Featured Post

The gender gap in media is still wider than you think

When it comes to the representation and visibility of women across all media platforms, the industry still comes up short. That’s what The Status of Women In the US Media 2021, a report by Women’s Media Center (WMC), — an organization founded by Gloria Steinem, Jane Fonda, and Robin Morgan — found. Among the U.S.’s top five Sunday news shows more than two-thirds of the guests were men, and most of those guests were white men. While research into gender representation in prime-time broadcast and cable news, print, digital, and wires found that women told only 41% of stories, and just 15% of sports stories. 

“This report will help to hold news media accountable for the persistent inequalities in media,” said Steinem in the report .“ Women must be visible and powerful in all aspects of media if American society is ever to be a real democracy.” While the struggle continues, strides are being made — thanks, in part, to top down initiatives.

The gender gap is closing — slowly

According to the Global Media Monitoring Project, things are slowly improving globally. However, the numbers make the U.S. media look like a beacon of hope in terms of inclusion and equality. Between 1995 to 2020, across 120 nations, the number of female news sources and subjects increased from 16% to 24% in newspapers, 15% to 24% in radio news, 21% to 26% in TV news, and 25% to 27% online.                     

Coverage during Covid-19 was particularly startling, with WMC reporting women comprised just 5% of experts in science, technology, engineering and math, and a third of people quoted in 146,867 articles about the pandemic, in the likes of The New York Times and USA Today.
                                                                       

“One productive step forward would be for media companies to release employment numbers by gender, race, and position,” said Julie Burton, President and CEO, in WMC’s report. “This transparency would allow comprehensive tracking of progress or regress for diverse women in the workplace. We recommend that managers and editors establish standards that require producers, bookers, and journalists to make sure the experts interpreting news stories include representative numbers of women and people of color to ensure that stories are told with authenticity and accuracy.” 

Driving diversity with data

The WMC has a database for this exact purpose. SheSource connects journalists, bookers and producers with more than 1,000 female, media-friendly experts in a number of fields, ranging from politics to technology. It is these experts that a growing number of media organizations are seeking out and putting center stage. The BBC launched its 50:50 Project in 2016 to push for gender parity in its content using a data-driven methodology to monitor its content. What started in one newsroom has become a global initiative, used by 150 external partners, spanning 30 countries. These include the Financial Times, Australia’s ABC News and Times Radio, as well as partners in academia, conference businesses, law, public relations and the corporate world. 

“It is well established in the BBC and we have got 750 teams filling in spreadsheets every day of every month,” says Miranda Holt, 50:50 External Partners Lead. “It’s very empowering to content makers, because it’s about what you can control. For example, we don’t count politicians or people in the news, but we do count the number of women we interview about that news. It’s about collecting data to effect change.”

In the most recent Impact Report report in March 2022, 61% of all BBC teams reached 50% representation of women in their content. While external partners (of whom 70 out of 145 shared their data) showed a 73% improvement in female representation, after one year of sharing data. 

Bloomberg’s New Voices is another successful initiative, which has already made significant strides in amplifying the voices of women. Since launching in early 2018, outside guest appearances of women on Bloomberg Television have increased from 10% to 26%. The program has also provided media training to over 180 women all around the globe, who have gone on to appear more than 530 times on Bloomberg Television, as well as other media outlets.

Equity at every level

Another way to ensure gender equity in content, is to ensure equity in content creators. If the newsroom doesn’t reflect society, the content it produces isn’t likely to either. Even though women outnumber men in journalism programs and colleges, they become the minority voice soon after entering the workforce. On average, women represent 41.7% of newsroom employees and produce 37% of reports. Furthermore, men account for 69% of all newswire bylines published by the Associated Press and Reuters, 63% of prime-time news anchors or correspondents, and write 60% of all online news. 

Emma Tucker is the first female editor of the Sunday Times in 100 years and says she is all too aware of the impact her newsroom has on its readership. “We are very conscious of the need to diversify our newsrooms,” Tucker says. “It’s a work in progress, but we are aware of it. For example, we encourage applications from as broad a pool as possible to our graduate and apprenticeship schemes and we are making strides there. We know that if we want to grow our audience and build new cohorts of Sunday Times subscribers, we need to produce content that matters to a more diverse audience.”

Holt agrees it makes good commercial and economic sense to increase female representation in the newsroom and beyond. While 50:50 is about content and not about content creators, it naturally has a knock-on effect. 

“The BBC has set new targets for the end of 2023 for our workforce to aim for 50% women representation, 20% Black, Asian and minority ethnic, 12% disabled and 25% from lower socio-economic backgrounds,” explains Holt. “These figures are based on the demographics of the UK, and as the national broadcaster it’s the people of the UK who pay for BBC content, so we have to represent them. And senior leaders are being held to this.”

Leadership is at the heart of a recent report by Reuters Institute, which analyzed the gender breakdown of top editors in 240 major online and offline news outlets in 12 different markets, across five continents. The results are shocking with women representing just 21% of the 179 top editors, despite the fact that, on average, 40% of journalists are women. The good news is that the U.S. and U.K. appear to be flying the flag for female leaders in the media, as half or more of new top editors appointed there in the last year were women.

Closing the pay gap

Not only are there fewer female reporters, they also earn less than their male colleagues, according to the WMC report. At the Associated Press there is a pay gap of $15,000 between white, male journalists and black, female reporters, while female reporters on the LA Times take home $14,334 less than their male counterparts. Similarly, at the New York Times, for reporters with annual salaries of $150k or more, only 36% are women. Working at the Washington Post? Women can expect to be paid 86 cents for every dollar white men are paid.

However, there are exceptions. Walt Disney Co. has just released data on employee earning by race and gender for the first time, revealing that women earn 99.4% of men. However, as Natasha Lamb, a managing partner at Arjuna Capita who put forward the proposal for the report, points out: “Disney is stepping into an elite group that are showing leadership on pay equity.” Transparency, it seems, is still a rarity rather than the norm.

While we should applaud these organizations working toward gender equity there is still much work to do. One reason could be that leaders in news media across the world believe their organizations already do a good job in terms of gender diversity, and therefore do not collect or make available data about their diversity. Or they don’t even have anyone formally in charge of this vital process.

But this has to change. Greater transparency is key, with media companies releasing employment numbers by gender and position. While creating new talent strategies to support and promote women in media, will ensure the “pipeline” excuse is buried deep underground, once and for all. According to Katica Roy, the founder and CEO of Pipeline Equity, these strategies should include hiring, pay, promotion, performance, and potential.

Representation leads to engagement

The word “engagement” is constantly used in media circles, but you can’t engage with your audience without representing the diversity of their communities. “Ultimately, any company that creates content should be thinking about how they appear to the external world, and how they represent society fairly,” says Holt. “This leads to diversity in the workforce at every level in a dynamic way, by identifying people, progressing people, and retaining those people. Only then can the media and its content truly reflect and represent women. Only then we will truly have gender equity.”

Featured Post | Policy

The cracks in Google’s adtech façade are starting to show

Behind the scenes, Google is flailing – despite its predictably tight control over industry narratives. 

The underlying shockwaves stem from an increasingly widespread understanding of Google’s dominant role over the entire adtech supply chain. Those who have sought to unpack and explain the complexities of the company’s hold on the industry can thank a senior Google employee for providing this apt analogy in discovery: They described Google’s role in adtech as “if Goldman or Citibank owned the New York Stock Exchange.” Now that’s something a jurist can understand. 

The escalation of enforcement 

In the last sixty days, Google has floated three different test balloons in an attempt to head off the intensifying scrutiny: 

  1. The Wall Street Journal reported Google has offered to split off part of its adtech business in an effort to head off the Department of Justice’s filing of a landmark lawsuit – expected this month according to a Bloomberg report. The only problem: Google’s offer was to split the adtech business and put it under a different part of parent Alphabet. To extend the previous analogy, placing the NYSE in a different division of Goldman Sachs would not solve the inherent issue. Hard pass.  
     
  2. Google announced a new feature with the innocuous title of “Confirming Gross Revenue.” They’ve pitched it to advertisers and publishers – and little doubt to enforcers, too – as providing transparency in a “privacy-safe way” as to the money flow in the advertising supply chain. The problem with it is that Google will avoid having to provide insights into auctions, transactional flow, or any real detail as to how Google’s decisions determine revenues across the market. Google’s press announcement crows that “Display & Video 360 is onboard as an early tester.” That sort of says it all, since Google owns DV360.  
     
  3. Google once again delayed its deprecation of third-party cookies, something that they’ve been dragging their feet on for nearly three years. From the very beginning, Google has used misleading Google-authored research of the Google-dominated supply and data system to suggest their delays are only due to their interests in not harming publishers. What is true is that a wrong move by Google (hello Floc, hello Topics) can very well continue the ongoing harm to premium publishers by treating every website as an interchangeable commodity. If there’s any chance that a move will hurt Google’s ad business, it won’t happen. 

Litigation, legislation, and learning 

So why all the flailing? To illuminate what’s going on underneath the surface, let’s take a roll call. Fifteen U.S. states, the U.S. Department of Justice, the E.U. Competition Commission, the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority … Netherlands … France … well, suffice it to say that the list is long (and growing) for investigations, lawsuits, and enforcement action underway – all of which are probing Google’s advertising tech business(es).  

The E.U. has been particularly active by fining Google more than $8 billion across three decisions. It also recently passed its new landmark gatekeeper law, the Digital Markets Act, and is ramping up enforcement of its landmark privacy law, the GDPR, by pressing Google-friendly Irish regulators. 

Importantly, enforcers and litigators are studying and learning from each other across issues of competition and data privacy worldwide. And they’re keeping especially close eyes on the Texas-led lawsuit which now counts 15 bipartisan state attorneys general as plaintiffs along with countless private plaintiffs. They certainly won’t have overlooked Google losing much of its arguments last week in attempting to dismiss this case. This blow came at the hands of a SDNY Court which very much seems to understand Google’s business. And that’s a huge problem for Google. 

Full court press 

Although “Jedi Blue” received the most press attention, due to the allegations of Google colluding with Facebook, there are a range of other very serious allegations which the Court has now given the green light for further discovery and trial. And, significantly, they are readily explainable to a jury. Two foremost allegations are the tying of Google’s adtech services and the manipulation of its auctions.  

What if I told you Google required the use of its ad server in order to receive the benefits of Google’s market-leading ad exchange and the fast-growing advertising demand dollars flowing through it?  Some might call this “tying,” which – if proven – is illegal.  Note that Google had about 50% of the ad server market when it acquired DoubleClick (DFP). It has since steadily increased that stake to claim nearly 99% of large publishers. Please allow me to quote the Court:  

 “The States plausibly allege that Google used its monopoly power in AdX to actually coerce publishers into licensing a separate and distinct product, Google’s DFP ad server, and that Google’s actions had anticompetitive effects in both markets, affecting a substantial amount of interstate commerce.” 

Or what if I told you Google had paid its publisher clients based on the third-highest price in an auction while collecting on the second-highest price with the determination it would re-route the variance into more advertising demand for its own services?  Some might call this, “market manipulation,” which – if proven – may well have been an illegal way to protect its monopoly. As the Court again summarized Google’s project “Bell”:  

“In other words, Bell penalized publishers who did not grant AdX preferential access by paying them based upon the third-place bid rather than a second-place bid, while using the difference to increase the bids made to publishers who allowed preferential access.” 

In fact, the only count which was dismissed in the lawsuit is the infamous “Jedi Blue” allegation. Despite Google anchoring its press spin on this win, it’s this single dismissal – one that befuddled many legal experts watching the case. I wager this one will resurface again as the E.U. and U.K. have already announced their own investigations. Also, the “Jedi Blue” allegations are included in a private lawsuit against Facebook that has already been given the green light in the northern district of California. Each of these efforts builds on the others and the subsequent learnings can only aid the U.S. Department of Justice in its work.  

Antitrust is in the air 

It was rightly said nearly three years ago that antitrust enforcement will take significant time. The wheels of justice do indeed turn slowly. Attempting to propose solutions before the investigations and allegations landed would be premature, but Google’s efforts to settle these cases shows they are nervous. And Google’s efforts to manipulate the outcome may be the most transparent thing about its business.  

The reality is many of the charges against Google have now been found plausible and will proceed into deeper discovery just as many other regulators and legislatures attempt to curb its power. Make no mistake, Google is stumbling in a way we’ve never seen in its two decades. Of course, the company will look to proactively lay out solutions for all of us. But we all see through this. No one should settle for anything less than a return to competition and the rebalancing of bargaining power that comes with it. 

Featured Post | Perspectives

Get smart, TV: Fix the usability experience

Do you have more than one remote to operate various connected and streaming devices?

Among your family members, are there as many different streaming habits and preferences as there are people? And do these disparate behaviors lead, for instance, to heated arguments over whether captions should always be on and who’s responsible for turning them on and off?

Have you rented someone else’s home for a short stay recently? If so, could you log in and start using your streaming services on the TV? Within five minutes? After multiple emails with the host?

For all the joy that streaming “Stranger Things” and “Abbott Elementary” has brought us, the user experience of Smart TVs and connected devices has delivered far too much frustration. The mere act of turning on the TV to find something to watch is an inexcusably disastrous viewer experience—a complete fail on the part of the television industry.

Unfortunately, the proliferation of streaming services has not improved viewers’ TV usability experience. In fact, it seems exponentially worse. This is despite 81% of consumers citing “ease of use” as the second-most important attribute for video streaming, close behind “cost” at 84%, according to a 2020 Nielsen study. If streaming service providers and device manufacturers spent as much time improving the viewer usability experience as they spend building pricing models, perhaps they wouldn’t be forced to continuously raise prices.

While I think we’d all agree that there are much bigger problems in this world, viewer frustration with streaming service features and connected devices illustrates how much the TV industry takes its customers for granted. Sure, some products are arguably better than others. And right now, there’s probably someone making the argument somewhere that their supposedly excellent usability is a competitive advantage. And though there are some excellent products out there, there is considerable room for companies to improve the viewer usability experience and to gain loyalty and attention for the entire sector.

Let’s examine a few areas in need of improvement:

The multiple remote e-waste factor

First, proliferation of different and incompatible remotes is rampant. This is not a new issue with the streaming era, but it is now even more difficult to solve. Universal remotes notoriously challenge even the most tech-savvy and usually end up taking space in a drawer. In fact, many people have drawers full of extra, old and broken remotes, exemplifying the wastefulness of this sector of consumer devices.

Perhaps we need a new way of looking at this particular frustration, beyond the fact that it’s hard for consumers to navigate. So, let’s look at a similar issue in which an entity made a decision intended to minimize e-waste long-term: In June, the EU mandated the use by 2026 of a common charger for all new portable devices such as smartphones, earbuds, wireless keyboards and laptops. The argument could be made that mandating even a baseline of standardization for TV and streaming device remotes would minimize e-waste. Which government wants to take it on?

The personalized feature set

Second, personalizing one’s TV experience, within the operating system navigation, is ridiculously complex. Because this topic is vast, let’s look at just one example – turning captions on and off. Nothing exemplifies the lack of care for the TV viewer more than the inaccessibility of captions, especially given that the original purpose of the caption feature is … accessibility!

In one family I surveyed, one person likes to always have captions on. This preference is not due a hearing issue. Rather, this person believes captions or subtitles augment their understanding of a show, especially while they simultaneously are playing a video game on their laptop and scrolling TikTok on their phone.

This sort of use case is hardly uncommon. In fact, four out of five viewers ages 18-25 say they use subtitles all or part of the time according to one study. Meanwhile, within the family surveyed, other members complain that captions ruin their experience, often revealing a joke or a plot twist before it happens on screen.

The difference in preferences means that family members sharing the same TV and streaming services must frequently turn captions on and off. If you’ve tried to do this at all, you know that every service and device is different. If you haven’t tried yet, please do just to see how needlessly complex it is.

As we know, the lack of standardization for caption functions is the same lack of standardization for everything from start to fast forwarding to volume functions. It’s all unnecessarily complex and frustrating for the consumer.

The unfamiliar TV panic

Third, the issue of standardization goes beyond consumers’ own homes. Based on my recent unscientific, informal survey of a half dozen short-term rental property hosts and their guests, struggles with unfamiliar remotes and/or TV operating systems are one of the top sources of friction between hosts and guests. This applies to those young and old, tech-savvy or not.

One guest called his host frequently, complaining that the TV was broken. In fact, the TV worked just fine, but the guest was flummoxed by the Apple TV remote, despite several lessons. The guest is still complaining about the host’s Apple TV, although he has moved on to another short-term rental property (and despite the fact that this TV-challenged property was a beautifully designed home in an idyllic natural setting).

Another host described a guest who emailed a half dozen times in advance of his arrival, concerned about how he would watch TV. He asked for photos of both the front and back of the TV and a detailed assessment of whether he’d be able to plug in an antenna to watch local TV. After his arrival, this guest complained that he found the remote “awkward.” The host described losing sleep over whether this guest would write a bad Airbnb review solely based on his TV experience.

The bottom line is that both hosts and guests clearly would appreciate a TV experience that just works, easily, without instructions. And they really don’t want to have to communicate with one another about it. By setting a new baseline common standard for TVs and streaming services, the industry could perhaps improve the rental home industry’s host-guest relations – and help the rest of us at the same time.

Let’s fix the consumer experience

Forget for a moment some of the common complaints about today’s streaming industry, such as too many mediocre shows or ideas that should have been 90-minute movies but are needlessly stretched to seven-part series. Given all the investment in Smart TV technology, and all of the money to be made from distributing content via that technology, the industry would benefit from providing viewers with a much better experience. For what we are paying, we certainly deserve it.

We should have more standardized devices, accessible navigation interfaces, excellent search capabilities across devices and services, and more. Achieving this would require some cooperation among the major players. But primarily, it would require that the players start to care about their customers. It’s evident that they don’t.

Featured Post | Innovation | Video

Forget cable 2.0. Streaming video is TV 3.0

A few weeks ago, analytics firm Nielsen Research earned some splashy headlines after it issued a press release reporting that television viewers streamed more content than they watched on cable TV for the first time.

To clarify, Nielsen’s own research put streaming services ahead of traditional cable products for the first time since it began collecting data on those practices. And, arguably, some of its data is debatable, since it rolled services like Hulu with Live TV and YouTube TV into both the “streaming” and “cable” categories (cable networks are core to both products).

Also, while Nielsen’s own data has streaming at a slight edge over cable, columnist David Bloom notes that the measurement firm doesn’t typically gather data from devices like computers or game consoles where streaming services are also offered. More importantly, as  Bloom pointed out, the Nielsen report probably reflects a consumer trend that has been taking place for several years.

Still, the survey has fueled comparisons between streaming services and cable television — and not always for the better. Bloomberg media correspondent Lucas Shaw recently wrote that price hikes and advertising made it so that “the streaming business is starting to look like cable TV from 10 years ago.” The idea is that price hikes and advertising are turning the streaming industry into “Cable 2.0“.

It is difficult to argue with that logic from a price perspective: Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Disney Plus are among the streaming services that have implemented one or more price increases since their debut. (Netflix has raised subscription fees on average at least once per 1.5 years since 2014). But to focus squarely on price misses the bigger picture: Streaming has liberated good entertainment from the wall jack and the television set. And, in doing so, has made it cheaper and more-accessible than at any point in television history.

Streaming is not too far removed from cable’s history

Accessibility has spurred technological advances throughout the history of domestic television: Broadcast TV emerged about a century ago as a way to add moving pictures to radio programs. What is commonly known as cable TV started out as community antenna television. Regions in remote parts of the United States banded together to build a giant antenna capable of receiving distant broadcast signals, then ran coaxial cable from the antenna to homes. Customers paid a few dollars to maintain the system and had access to most, if not all, of the main three networks plus a handful of independent stations.

In the mid-1970s, television mogul Ted Turner figured he could make a few dollars more from the advertising he ran on his Atlanta station, WTBS (Channel 17), if he uplinked it to satellite. From there, cable systems could receive the station and distribute it to their viewers. The idea took off, and soon stations like WGN (Channel 9, Chicago) and WOR-TV (Channel 9, New York) jockeyed for satellite space so they, too, could get national distribution on cable.

Years later, another television pioneer, John Malone, saw that cable was a much-bigger business opportunity than anyone else seemed to realize. His Tele-Communications Incorporated (TCI) grew to become one of the dominant-players in the industry between the late 1970s and the mid-1990s. Malone and TCI bankrolled some of the first cable-only networks around (including Turner’s own CNN when it faced bankruptcy). And many of those cable networks are still around. (TCI is currently owned by Comcast.)

Both phases of television limited viewers to their TV sets. It wasn’t until streaming came along that video was finally liberated from the living room cable jack.

Streaming is not an extension of cable — it’s an evolution of television

Jason Cohen spends a lot of time thinking about this 30,000-foot view of the domestic television industry. In 2019, he left his job as a media portfolio manager for a Wall Street firm to launch MyBundle.TV, an online marketplace for streaming services. He thinks people who focus on streaming services being the new cable — “Cable 2.0” — are missing the bigger picture. He believes that “TV 1.0 was broadcast, TV 2.0 was cable and TV 3.0 is streaming. It’s taking the closed, set-top box model of TV 2.0 and opening up the marketplace.”

There are still pain points for streaming services, with price being an obvious one. It’s true that over the last few years, most major media companies have raised their subscription fees as they invest billions of dollars in original content production earmarked for their own direct-to-consumer services.

And the marketplace is reacting to rate increases by diversifying their subscription tiers. For years, Hulu has offered customers the choice of buying their streaming service at a budget price if they are willing to tolerate ads. They also have the option of paying more money if they want a commercial-free experience. Since then, other streaming services like HBO Max, Discovery Plus, Comcast’s Peacock and Paramount Plus have taken the same approach. Disney and Netflix have confirmed plans to do the same in the near future.

Cohen thinks price diversification will help a streaming service appeal to a broad group of customers at any given time: “If a household wants to save money, they can watch tons of free, ad-supported streaming services. If a household has money to burn, they can spend a ton of money on ad-free tiers of streaming services and never watch another commercial again. And if it’s something in-between — which is probably most of the country — it’s subscribing to a handful of services at one point, and then switching them out during the year.”

TV 3.0 is a chaotic landscape that will stabilize with time

There is some data to suggest that consumers are growing more comfortable with the idea of switching services on a whim. According to the analytics firm Antenna, around one in five households dropped three or more subscription services in the two years ending this June. In 2020, the number was closer to one in 20 households within the same two-year stretch.

One reason why subscribers might be switching away is the sheer volume of streaming services. Consumers are also finding their favorite TV shows and movies shuttled between them. Netflix, for instance, has lost several of its top comedy shows: “Friends” moved to HBO Max, then “The Office” moved to Peacock. Disney has slowly pulled titles from Netflix, too, as it seeks to reclaim movies for its own Disney Plus streaming service.

The revolving door of content hits on another pain point for streaming: In the TV 3.0 world, finding content can be a confusing experience. Cohen believes that platforms are starting to address this by building technology that makes it easier to find shows and movies across a number of different services and devices, and recommendation engines should become better and easier to use over time.

As Cohen describes the situation, “Where is it easiest to discover shows? It’s probably your phone. Where’s the best place to watch TV? It’s probably on the TV.”

So, how do manufacturers and platforms respond to that? By building a bridge between the two — whether that’s Vizio Account, or a Samsung app, or a Roku app, or something else. As he points out, “every TV maker and every operating system is trying to figure out the best way to help consumers find content on their platform.”

That said, Cohen acknowledges the streaming world is something of a mess right now. Mergers and acquisitions mean the owner of one streaming service (like CBS All Access or Discovery Plus) suddenly becomes the owner-operator of another (Pluto TV, HBO Max). And that, of course, means figuring out a long-term strategy for both. (If you’re Paramount Global, each streaming service lives in its own ecosystem. If you’re Warner Bros Discovery, you announce plans to get rid of two flagship streaming services and start anew).

It is a particularly chaotic time to be a sports fan, with sports rights to popular franchises like the National Football League and Major League Baseball split between broadcast, cable and streaming. Major League Baseball games, for example, are carried on regional cable sports networks in many markets, except for a few games that are exclusive to either NBC (and Peacock) or Apple TV Plus. This means that baseball fans this season might have to subscribe to cable and make an account with Peacock and Apple just to follow their home team.

Adding to the confusion is the lack of a single sign-on feature that allows customers to have one username and password that covers every service they want access to. Some companies have experimented with offering a feature that comes close to this: Roku, Apple and Amazon have streaming marketplaces baked within their own platforms. And Vizio recently announced Vizio Account, which seeks to replicate that experience. (Google is also reportedly exploring this idea.)

Cohen’s own MyBundle.TV is a platform-agnostic marketplace that asks streamers about the channels and programming they want to receive, then directs them to streaming services where they can find it. Eventually, customers will be able to manage their subscriptions from within the MyBundle.TV platform. Currently, MyBundle.TV only offers this feature with Sling TV, but other partners are in the works.

Malone, the cable magnate who pioneered TV 2.0, thinks bundles will eventually be the winning ticket for TV 3.0. He also believes there will be further consolidation between media companies as their war with each other intensifies.

Cohen backs the idea of a single platform where customers can start and stop streaming services at will — he left his Wall Street job to build that kind of product. But he’s not convinced that streaming services have to appeal to everyone with everything. He thinks niche streaming services can be successful on their own merit: “Streaming services don’t need to be everything for everyone. There are options that appeal to every household.”

As content becomes more fractured, Cohen said consumers need to resist the itch to sign up for every streaming service that is out there. The idea that customers had to have access to everything hearkens back to the days of TV 1.0 and 2.0 — when popular shows were watched in real-time on just a handful of channels, whether they were on broadcast TV or cable. That experience resulted in appointment-viewing — people had to watch shows at a certain time (later, they could record them for delayed viewing) — and also helped spur water cooler conversations and pop culture moments.

The TV 3.0 landscape is different. Streaming, for the most part, doesn’t require appointment viewing, because people can — and do — watch things on their own time and at their own pace. Cohen says things like streaming watch parties are offering solutions to people who still want television viewing to be a social experience. But it appears to be a technology that few people want. What customers do want is access to everything. But those days are long gone.

Streaming still has its challenges. However, the technology will improve over time and consumers will eventually come around to the idea that the convenience and price of streaming is worth the sacrifice of not having access to everything. That, coupled with the flexibility of starting and stopping services as well as the ability to watch programming across any number of devices, means streaming should not be reduced to Cable 2.0. It is an evolutionary leap in a revolutionary entertainment experience. It’s TV 3.0.

Featured Post | Innovation

Live sports may be the ticket to growing streaming audiences 

Live sports have been the jewel in broadcast companies’ crowns for decades. The allure of a live and hugely engaged audience has proved to be an effective draw for brand advertisers, particularly those with high-value consumer goods to hawk. That allure hasn’t lost its luster. 

Sports broadcast rights remain competitive, expensive, and increasingly fragmented. But what has changed is how audiences choose to interact with sports content. The rise of social media and streaming platforms has changed the game, as their inherent interactivity enhance the appeal of live sport. 

Combine this with the investment other media companies have placed in their subscription- and advertising-based streaming platforms, and the growing cost of sports content, and you have a space ripe for disruption. And while the details of exactly how disruption is taking place varies by platform, sport and country, it ultimately has the same cause as the tumult across the media world: tech turning passive audiences into active participants. 

Social sport 

At Twitter’s recent Newfronts appeal to advertisers, the company announced the rolling over of the platform’s partnership with the WNBA. This marks the sixth year of the partnership which grants Twitter the broadcast license for live games. It is no coincidence this is designed to further engage a predominantly women-led audience at a time when bringing in new audiences is key. Following its 2022 regular season, the WNBA announced that the league “set records for engagement with 186 million video views (+36% vs 2021)” across its social media platforms. 

Twitter’s rationale for that partnership is its ability to offer real-time reaction to every basket and foul on. The real-time interplay between tech platform and sports content is part and parcel of how many media companies are selling their sports streaming to advertisers. 

Theo Luke, senior director of global content partnerships at Twitter, tells me, “A fundamental to the live sport experience is talking about it. Increasingly broadcasters are actively including social media rights in their deal renewals with leagues because they see the value of highlighting clips alongside the live streaming experience to capture larger audiences and other revenue streams.”  

“For example, through our recent Twitter Amplify partnerships with ITV and Formula 1, we offer a number of real-time highlights and the opportunity to engage with the moments that matter directly on people’s timelines,” Luke continues. “From an advertiser’s perspective, this not only allows you to align with premium video content, but also position yourself at the heart of the action and fanbases. When sport happens on Twitter, you don’t have a passive viewership, but an engaged, attentive and connected audience.” 

Live community interaction has also been Twitch’s core appeal from even before it was Twitch. Since its acquisition by Amazon, the livestreaming platform has been inching ever closer to a destination for premier sports content. That’s been accelerated by Amazon’s investment in the broadcast rights for sports, and the deeper integration of its advertising tech with the Twitch platform.  

In 2020, only two years after Amazon acquired some of the rights for Premier League matches, it was already streaming those high-value matches for free on Twitch, as well as NBA content. At the time, Twitch’s content acquisition lead, Eric Brunner, said, “They’re very open to exploring new ways to engage their community, like co-streaming USA Basketball on Twitch.”  

Effectively, then, the new streaming platforms are hoping the pre-existing live interaction that formed their core appeal will supercharge interaction around sports coverage. That creates huge opportunities for potential advertising partners, both in terms of activating those audiences in the moment and by providing analytics around the interaction. 

Sports clubs reap the benefits of streaming 

The transition to sports streaming on new platforms is also being driven by the sports leagues and clubs themselves. Andreas Jung, chief marketing officer for FC Bayern Munich, told me the club’s engagement windows have widened beyond match day: “This is the expectation that the fans have and they want to participate in everything. This means that they consume content everywhere and anytime… 24/7.” 

Fans can pay a yearly fee to be club members, and Jung says members, “have the expectation to get more information, to get to be closer with a club and therefore we have to bring them more information, we have to bring them more services and so on and so on.” As a result, Bayern is betting on its multi-year partnership with Adobe to boost its streaming content for users – and to deliver greater advertising revenue. 

Opportunities for smaller leagues and networks 

And while platforms and the bigger legacy leagues take advantage of the new advertising opportunities afforded by live streaming, smaller clubs and platforms are effectively launching as alternatives. Unbound by the limited amount of airtime on linear channels, new wrestling leagues are vaulting over the lower bar to entry to replicate some of the new opportunities – albeit at a smaller scale. 

Guildford Town FC is a regional soccer team in the UK, far removed from the glittering heights of the Premier League. Speaking about the club’s partnership with dedicated sports streaming platform Joymo, its manager Paul Barnes echoed the comments from larger clubs: “I believe this is where the world is going. We’ve talked about the benefits from a playing perspective and staying connected with our fans, but this is also a way for us to make revenues that can help the ongoing development of the club.” 

In the U.S., too, smaller leagues are using streaming to grow audiences and revenue. Overtime, a sports media company aimed at Millennials, recently raised over $80 million in a Class C funding round. Much of the confidence around the investment is predicated on Overtime’s strong social media and streaming offering, which includes 65 million followers across all of its 80 social media channels 

The strategy was pioneered by esports leagues, which grew from grassroots to huge events through judicious use of live streaming platforms like Twitch. What is especially interesting for wider media companies, though, is that even traditional broadcasters, such as BBC and BT Sport, are now adding esports coverage to their linear offerings.  

New audiences, new approaches 

“Twitter works alongside broadcasters and rights holders to help make live sporting events even bigger,” explains Luke. “Our platform connects people directly to what’s happening around live events and that conversation provides greater value to our partners.”  

He continues, “Most recently, we saw this with the UEFA Women’s EURO 2022, which saw the number of tweets [triple] ahead of the final and nearly 900 million impressions in the UK throughout the tournament. Watching live sport in 2022 isn’t just about consumption, it’s also about engagement.” 

James Hartnett, account director for sports-specialist marketing agency The Playbook, told me, “As the topics and ways they are discussed has also evolved, so too have the platforms sports fans turn to. The primary source of 39% of 18-24-year-old ‘social natives’ for sports news – including match highlights, unique moments and opinion commentary – is TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. The stats are much the same for 25-34-year-old, though they tend to prefer Facebook over TikTok.  

Streaming has indelibly altered sports viewing. This creates new opportunities across the ecosystem, especially when it comes to engaging new, often younger, audiences – a challenge most publishers can relate to. 

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