Publishers are reclaiming their voice when it comes to how and when they are reaching their most important readers. As the market continues to feel pressure from ever-changing trends of the duopoly, publishers are putting more effort into direct relationships with their audiences and leveraging actionable intelligence from data. This means much more than ad targeting today. Data allows publishers to better serve their readers and, as a result, better profit from true engagement.
A study by the American Press Institute
surveyed over 4,000 consumers of news and found that 78% respondents value getting
reliable, accurate facts. An audience survey conducted by The New York Times,
found that 73% polled believe “that it has never
been more important to support quality journalism.” As consumers are willing to pay for quality journalism,
publishers are looking to leverage these trends to deliver their best content
and form meaningful reader relationships that will sustain the media business.
Although the vast majority of readers don’t
subscribe, those that do are the that do are the most impactful. They spend
longer on site and drive greater revenue. Of course, it is important to
remember that there is no one-size-fits-all for subscriptions. Solutions will
be different for every publisher and publishers must adapt to audience
behaviors quickly, as they change often.
Flexible
paths to subscription
For example, some audiences respond well to metered
paywalls. Among digital subscribers, it was found in the same study by the
American Press Institute that 47% of respondents became a subscriber after they
reached a limit on free access. Other audiences engage after enjoying a
newsletter. Deciding on what content to show and when to show it is something
that needs to be finessed in order to satisfy audiences (and hopefully entice
them to subscribe).
Yet, even as subscriptions become a focal point, advertising revenue still accounts for the majority of publisher revenue, despite per-ad revenue declining. At the same time, readers are getting savvy about how they choose to consume content, bouncing quickly from pages when they are blanketed with disruptive ads. Publishers that deliver a clean website experience are more likely to build long-term relationships with readers.
Engagement is key. But getting there is not
easy. One route is personalization.
In fact, publishers who successfully drive subscriptions share a common theme
in understanding the importance of integrating both analytical and editorial
teams to provide deeper reader personalization in this digital era. This can mean content
personalization, but it can also take the form of personalizing subscription
offers based upon customer behavior and preference.
Data
driven success
Hearst Newspapers has integrated various
initiatives where their growth is fueled by data. The publisher’s goal was to
evolve its digital properties into a portfolio of diversified subscription and
ad-supported sites. Through the use of AI, Hearst analyzed over two years of
subscriber data and can now identify what users are going to convert and where,
as well as analyze pre- and post-subscription patterns.
Editorial teams at The New York Times use
content analytics platforms to understand readership in real-time. They also centralize
the data for actionable intelligence that helps them better serve their
audience. (We’ve seen customers who take this kind of approach increase
conversions up to 200%.)
Data enhances the reader experience and makes
valuable connection for publishers by allowing editors adjust content
strategies based on where audiences come from and how they convert.
By being data informed, publishers can better
understand reader engagement as well as how that readership consumes their
content and what helps convert them from casual readers to seriously committed,
and even to become subscribers.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is part of today’s decision-making process. It’s used when companies identify the value and risk of issuing credit cards or forecasting unemployment benefits. It’s also used in employee recruitment and the college admissions process. Since AI is based on machine learning, each small decision impacts larger ones. Unfortunately, AI algorithms, especially among those conducted in black boxes, may include discriminatory practices. A biased outcome may not necessarily be the intent of the algorithm, but it can easily be a by-product.
Frederik Zuiderveen Borgesius, Professor of Law at the Institute for Computing and Information Sciences (iCIS), Radboud University Nijmegen, addresses issues of AI bias in his new report Discrimination, artificial intelligence, and algorithmic decision-making. Borgesius analyzes the AI process to better understand how unfair differentiation can be produced. He wrote this report specifically for the Anti-discrimination department of the Council of Europe. However, it is an important read for anyone involved in or thinking of using AI in decision-making.
The AI Decision-making Process
It’s important to first understand the basics of an AI
decision-making program. AI involves machine-learning to find correlations in
data sets. It uses algorithms to identify the relationships in a set of related
attributes or activities, also known as class labels. The class labels separate
all possibilities into mutually exclusive categories. When building a machine
learning tool, programmers use class labels to predict a derived outcome or
what is called the targeted variable.
To understand how this is works in a common application, think
of a spam filter. The spam filter is an AI program that sorts through email
messages and identifies those that are “spam” and “non-spam.”
The program uses archives of older emails labeled as spam or non-spam to help
identify the characteristics (a certain phrase, an email address or an IP
address) of each.
Professor Borgesius references the
work of Solon
Barocas and Andrew D. Selbst, two academic research experts, who
identify five ways in which the AI decision-making process can lead
unintentionally to discrimination.
How AI Leads to Discrimination
1. Defining the target variables and class labels
When defining target variables and class labels, it’s
important to think beyond how they are defined. For example, let’s say a
company wants to define an “engaged employee.” A variable assigned to an
engaged employee is someone who is never late for work. Unfortunately, this
could negatively impact employees who do not own a car and depend on public
transportation. Car ownership can also reflect higher income while reliance on
public transportation can connote lower income. Therefore, this class label of never being late creates a bias against
lower income employees. Mindfulness in the usage and creation of class labels
is important to prevent built-in biases.
2. The training data: labelling examples
AI decision-making also offers discriminatory results if the
system “learns” from discriminatory training data. All training data
should be scrutinized to ensure against biases. For example, a medical school decided
to use AI decision-making in its application process. The training data for the
programs included old admission files from 1980. Unfortunately, the acceptance
policy in the 1980s was heavily weighted against women and immigrants. While the
AI program was not introducing new biases, it included those inherent in the
admissions process of the older applications.
3. Training data: data collection
The sampling process of the data collection must be free of
biases. If the sampling process is biased, it will train the predictive models
and reproduce the biases. For example, the number of police officers sent to
patrol a neighborhood is often dependent on key variables such as neighborhood
size or density, etc. If a larger number of officers patrol a neighborhood and
report a high level of crime, we need to understand the factors involved. Otherwise,
the data amplifies a high crime rate in this neighborhood when it could be that
was a higher ratio of officers to see more crimes in progress.
4. Feature selection
A programmer selects the categories or features of data to
include in their AI system. By selecting certain features, a programmer may
introduce bias against certain groups. For example, many companies in the U.S. hire
employees who graduated from an ivy league university. An ivy league education
cost significantly more than a state university. If a company uses ivy league
universities as part of their data features, they are establishing a bias against
individuals of lower income. Data features must be fully accessed to ensure
characteristics do not introduce bias in the results.
5. Proxies
Sometimes measures to make a relevant and well-informed
decision may lend themselves to a biasness. Zip codes are often used as a
neutral criterion to provide socio-economic information for decisions on loans,
credit cards, insurance, etc. However, if a zip code is used as proxy to
identify people of a specific race or gender, it will impact business results.
Summary
Importantly, transparency of AI systems and the decision-making
process is necessary. Borgesius, as well as other academic scholars, advocate
for the development of transparency enhancing technologies (TETs) to drive
meaningful transparency of the algorithmic processes. AI decision-making can
result in negative consequences for people, especially protected member classes.
Caution must be used in algorithmic decision-making to ensure AI does not pave
the way for discrimination.
Of the millions pieces of content that are
published online every day, only 10% are ever seen.
If that shockingly low statistic makes your heart sink, you’re certainly not alone. Publishers across the globe are fighting the increasingly difficult battle to get their articles in front of the right people – or even just real people. From fake ad impressions to the death of organic traffic, the digital maze that your content needs to navigate its way through before appearing on the newsfeeds of your target audience is becoming more and more complex.
This crowded, often disingenuous advertising landscape
has brought the industry to something of a crossroads. Quality engagement is
both publishers’ most valuable and scarcest commodity. It’s also more expensive to achieve than ever
before. So how do publishers give advertisers more of what they want without
spending themselves into the red to deliver it?
Perhaps the greatest obstacle to winning the fight for engagement is the CPM, or cost per thousand impressions, model. Only by tossing this outdated method of ad performance measurement out the window can the industry move forward. But what’s so bad about CPM, and what should be called upon to replace it?
Out With the Old…
The CPM model was created during a time when banner
ads and impressions reigned supreme. Getting an impression on a banner ad only required
a reader to open the webpage and view the ad for a second, which is fine when
you’re raising awareness of a shoe sale or a flight deal. But it simply doesn’t work for content. Whether
that content is an article, a video, or a social post, its power comes from
engaging readers or viewers with a story for an extended period of time, during
which they become aware of your values and develop a connection with a brand’s
voice. Scrolling past a sponsored headline on your homepage just doesn’t
deliver the same result.
The mass publisher shift towards branded
content and content marketing arose out of a desire to forge more meaningful
relationships with customers — and when was the last time you made a
connection with someone in a second? For this reason, selling on impressions
and praying you succeed doesn’t work. This model also doesn’t put value on the
thing publishers are best at: crafting an engaging, powerful story. Content
needs a new measurement (and pricing) strategy that better reflects its
strengths and rewards publishers for their efforts.
… And in With the New
If you’re seeking guaranteed, meaningful interactions with your stories, one possible solution could be the Cost Per Read (CPR) model. Where CPM measures split-second impressions better suited to display ads, CPR bundles the content with a number of high-quality reads, so advertisers know exactly what to expect.
The
rapidly growing and evolving digital advertising landscape also demands a greater
degree of flexibility and control over content. To cover the reach limitations
of models like CPM, publishers often tack on things like banners, social posts,
and e-newsletter mentions in order to drive engagement. These tactics (and
their associated costs) can earn pushback from advertisers who want to see as
many of their hard-earned dollars go towards content as possible. To better
reflect this modern mindset, the CPR model focuses solely on drawing in quality
views to a piece of content, making investing in branded content less risky and
removing ambiguity around campaign deliverables.
How the Death of Organic Traffic Killed the CPM
CPR also puts publishers back in the driver’s seat in terms of amplification. Organic traffic has been rapidly declining since 2014. And when Facebook swung its metaphorical axe down upon the News Feed in 2018, it seemed as though the industry would never recover. Publishers had spent years honing their Facebook promotion skills and building a larger, more dedicated audience through the platform, only to have that effort made to feel pointless. Reaching the same readers they used to reach suddenly cost significantly more, making content amplification a loss-leader for many sites.
But it doesn’t have to be. Business models
like CPR allow publishers to charge a premium on amplification. That’s because
advertisers want to leverage a publisher’s brand and audience to reach as many
people as possible. From a profitability
standpoint, it also creates an opportunity to generate more revenue on
additional earned reads. As long as you’re confident in your story and your
amplification skills, you can earn incremental revenue for every new person
reached.
Additionally,
CPR allows you to grow site traffic on someone else’s dime, because the cost of
the social amplification used to drive traffic to branded content is factored
into the pre-set cost per read. This wider readership closely aligns with your
own target audience, meaning you can connect with new readers who may someday
become a loyal part of your audience.
Digital advertising is an innovative, fleet-footed industry
that demands a great deal of adaptability from publishers, brands and agencies
alike. In the tug-of-war over audience engagement, you’ll want the business
model that favors quality attention over cursory impressions on your side.
Want
to keep up with the latest plays in the streaming game? You practically need a
scorecard and the guidance of a fast-talking play-by-play announcer to keep up.
For proof, consider just some of the latest streaming service bombshells to hit
the news in the past few weeks:
All of these moves speak, of course, to a larger and evolving trend: Anybody and everybody in the media business seems to be getting in on the OTT act. The idea is to take their product direct to the consumer via an AVOD or SVOD (subscription-supported video on demand) model. And that’s creating an increasingly crowded field of competitors.
It will be fascinating to see who else
enters the fray and who will survive and thrive in a crowded OTT world where consumers
only have so much viewing time. To help make better sense of all the market
chaos—and understand what streaming services will need to do to stand out from
the crowd—I spoke with several industry experts.
Why more media players
want in on streaming
It’s no big surprise why news and
entertainment companies are jumping in and jostling for position in an already
congested OTT pool: Consumers crave streaming content.
“They don’t want the same bundle of
channels they receive today. And they don’t want the same, scheduled experience
they’ve had for decades,” according to Peter Naylor, senior
vice president/head of advertising sales for Santa Monica-based Hulu, which now
has 25 million subscribers. “Consumers want choice and control in their TV
experience. In order to continue to reach consumers, TV must move from a
business ruled by cable and satellite gatekeepers and by a traditional schedule
to a model where the consumer truly gets to choose.”
Billy Nayden, research analyst
for Parks Associates in Dallas, agrees. “Younger consumers are watching
traditional television at decreasing rates. In order to reach them with video
content, internet video is a necessity. A dedicated streaming service helps
facilitate delivery of that video and gives consumers a centralized place to
access content,” Nayden says.
Offering a direct-to-consumer streaming
service also provides some unique benefits.
“Broadcasters and content companies are
able to collect data on consumption and their audience, which is often not
available through over-the-air broadcasts or pay-TV providers. Direct offerings
also provide a hedge in pay-TV licensing negotiations, allowing networks to
reach consumers even when blackouts occur on pay TV,” adds Nayden.
Overcoming
multiple challenges
However, experts caution that fragmentation
of content sources, changing viewer habits, multiple direct competitors, and
rising content costs make competition in streaming extremely difficult.
“The number of streaming services
available globally has exploded in the past few years, and they are now
competing not just with other streaming services but also pay TV,
user-generated content like YouTube, and digital entertainment options like
video games for consumer time and eyeballs. Standing out and innovating in a
crowded ecosystem is a major challenge,” says Nayden.
Laura Martin, senior media analyst for New York City-headquartered Needham and Company, says discovery and clutter are huge problems. “Roku has nearly 4,000 video apps of free TV and about 1,000 apps of SVOD that the 28 million connected TVs in their network can choose from,” she says. “That’s many more choices than the 200 channels you typically have in a linear pay TV bundle.”
Additionally, to succeed long-term in the streaming space you need deep pockets, says Dan Rayburn, principal analyst at Frost & Sullivan in New York City. “Think about who’s behind the big services today—Sling TV is owned by Dish, Direct Now is owned by AT&T, and Hulu is co-owned by Disney and Comcast” (as well as Fox and AT&T), Rayburn points out. “A lot of these services can’t stand on their own as a profitable platform because the costs to license and create all their content is too high.”
You also need a deep library of content to
compete effectively, per Alan
Breznick, cable/video practice leader for Light Reading in Toronto. “Although,
if you’re a niche player going after a specialized market, like wrestling fans
or hobbyists, and no one else has such a channel yet, then you don’t
necessarily need a huge library of old content,” says Breznick.
Another huge hurdle? Retention. “You’ve got to worry about churn rates and how
to keep your customers as well as keeping the cost of acquiring customers
down,” Breznick adds.
Plus, “it’s going to get harder for the
smaller companies because so many of the big competitors entering this space—like
Sinclair, NBC and Disney—have free marketing opportunities. They have other
media outlets with unsold ad inventory they can use to promote their streaming
services,” says Martin.
A myriad of models
In the OTT space, there is no such thing as one size fits all. A variety of service models and pricing tiers exist that often make it difficult for analysts and consumers alike to compare apples to apples (see Sidebar for an overview of the major services). Some brands strictly follow a direct-to-consumer formula while others also partner with a pay-TV service (by, for example, offering authenticated streaming apps). And some services run ads while others don’t.
“Ads have always been in the mix for many of these subscription channels because the cost to make and license the content is still too high—you can’t make enough money on subscription alone,” says Rayburn. He notes that ad-free Netflix—despite its 139 million paying subscribers—still expects a negative cash flow of $3 billion in 2019. This is likely a big reason why it recently raised (and will continue to raise) its subscription fee.
“It’s tricky. We’ve had this mentality as
consumers that content should be free for a long time, thanks to YouTube and
others. Now, we’ve got several channels charging up to $15 or more per month
and live services like YouTube TV charging $40 and up monthly,” Rayburn says.
“The question is, how much higher can streaming services push their prices
before consumers say no?”
Strategies for
success
Ian Wishingrad, creative director/founder of BigEyedWish in New York City, says the formula for sustainability and profitability in the streaming market is simple. “Have award-winning content. ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ legitimized Hulu and ‘House of Cards’ legitimized Netflix. You also need the right price. If you’re good and your price is right, you’ll get hits,” says Wishingrad.
Nayden seconds that sentiment. “To
maintain subscribers, services must offer a variety of compelling content
exclusive to their particular service,” says Nayden.
That’s why, according to Naylor, “over the
last year, we’ve focused a lot on adding more content to the service, including
full series runs of shows like ‘ER’ and ‘Lost,’ and new originals like ‘Castle
Rock.’”
Content may be king, but so are customers,
insists Breznick.“You really have to know your customers and the market you’re
going after.”.
Offering your patrons more choices—in
programming as well as pricing—can go a long way, too. “Convenience to the
consumer is the new service. Giving options makes you flexible and cool, versus
‘this is the rule, take it or leave it,’ Wishingrad adds.
Ask Martin and she’ll tell you that the
best way forward for OTT services is to “have at least two revenue streams,
such as subscription-supported, ad-supported, eCommerce, micro-payments,
etcetera.”
And, as mentioned, partnering with pay-TV
providers could bring increased visibility and exposure to your service, “especially
among consumers who otherwise would not have known about the service,” suggests
Nayden. “Until recently, the operator set-top box has remained one of the few
in-home connected devices that OTT video services were unable to penetrate. The
pay-TV set-top box is often used daily. Being available on that box is a big
boost to user convenience.”
A booming market
Virtually all of the media giants have launched or announced an impending standalone streaming service by now. But there are others poised to make a splash, and legacy video brands are far from the only players looking at the streaming opportunity.
Nayden foresees major print media brands entering the fray eventually, too. “While print media has found it financially difficult to transition to the new digital marketplace, I think the space for news-based OTT services represents a significant opportunity for content creators,” Nayden explains. “Cheddar and Newsy give us an example of what is possible. If a traditional newspaper like The New York Times or Wall Street Journal could partner with a video content creator and build a service that combined access to premium print and video content, I think it would attract a significant amount of paying news junkies.”
Breznick also envisions a day coming soon when college sporting programs—like Notre Dame football—roll out their own streaming service. “And at some point, every single broadcast channel out there is going to have to think about it,” adds Rayburn.
In 2019, top media challenges include consolidation, regulation, and “fighting
the pervasive mentality that all content needs to be free and the ever-spawning
attacks on the independent press, even from the U.S. administration,” according
to Jason Kint, CEO of Digital Content Next (DCN).
In speaking to attendees of the 17th annual DCN Next: Summit
at the Ritz Carlton in Orlando on January 29th and 30th, Kint noted that mitigating
those challenges means that trust will continue to be a media company’s
greatest asset, augmented by high quality content that informs and delights,
creates a direct relationship with customers, anticipates the audience, and reflects
diversity. Diversity, as Kint put it, “is a fact and a business imperative. It
encompasses the range of ethnic, gender, economic, sexual or political identity,
geographic, education, abled-ness, and so much more.”
The event’s speakers represented a breadth of media organizations from legacy print and television organizations to digital pure-plays, upstarts, agencies, and industry watchers. This year’s Summit speakers did have one thing in common though: They were all women.
Regulation and Scrutiny
During his opening remarks, Kint referenced a prediction he made last
year of an intensification of a global policy war for big tech with its early
stages continuing to emerge in 2019 as Facebook and Google face global scrutiny
regarding transparency and accountability.
While GDPR has set the global tone for privacy protection, and
California’s privacy bill may set a foundation for the U.S., it remains to be
seen how the issue will be taken up on a U.S. national level, noted well-known
industry insider Kara Swisher, co-founder and editor at large of Recode.
Regulation is far from
the only pressing issue on media businesses today. In fact, the past year has
seen governments at home and abroad exert extreme pressure on journalists and
the media as a whole. In addressing global efforts to suppress journalism,
Maria Ressa, CEO of Rappler and 2018 Time Person of the Year, called herself
the “canary in the coal mine” as she recounted her story of answering a
subpoena to appear before the Philippines National Bureau of Investigation on charges
of tax evasion and failure to file tax returns.
Maria Ressa
Political Pain Points
A vocal critic of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, Ressa illustrated
the impact of social media disinformation campaigns. She showed attendees a
timeline of manufactured information social media attacks with global tentacles
corresponding to her political coverage. She also described a meeting with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg
during which she implored him to understand the company’s global impact and how
experiences such as hers demonstrate the need for platforms to take more
responsibility for the role they play in disinformation and attacks on
journalists.
In response to attacks from the U.S. administration, The New York Times continues its focus on “good journalism.” The company is emphasizing transparency in its processes by showing consumers the great lengths to which reporters go to put together a story before publication through its TV marketing campaign, noted Meredith Kopit Levien, COO of The New York Times Company.
Meredith Kopit Levien and Jen Saba
While attacks on journalism and emerging regulations have set the stage for 2019, brands also are placing a high priority on how to sustain their mission of building trust with consumers through offering high-quality content, connecting with audiences and monetizing the effort.
“The New York Times is so far ahead of most in the industry. What they
have done is so compelling. The relationships they’ve built from a business
standpoint with consumers continues to impress,” said Wenda Harris Millard,
Vice Chairman of MediaLink. “Publishers are understanding that relationship is
everything.”
Diversification and
Experimentation
On the heels of a seven percent increase in 2018 third quarter earnings
for digital and print, Levien pointed out that there is
a long-held belief at The New York Times that a “subscription business
first is the key to a great and scaled ad business” with marketers re-awakening
to the value of context as the world comes to grips with privacy concerns.
In addition to continuing to produce its high-quality news content, she
pointed out that The New York Times also is responding to consumer lifestyle
habits by expanding its popular crosswords into a games business. It is also offering
subscriptions for specialized offerings in the cooking and parenting spaces.
Additionally, two million listeners tune in each day to The Daily,
which has become the nation’s most
downloaded podcast.
Podcasting plays an increasing role at NPR, says Anya Grundmann, the
company’s senior vice president Programming and Audience Development. Its Fresh
Air ranks fourth on the most downloaded podcasts and its flagship Planet Money
podcast is also among the top 20. Interestingly, some NPR podcasts start as
radio shows while some radio shows have grown from podcasts so the legacy and
digital ecosystems feed one another. Grundmann says that NPR also is committed
to becoming a leader in audio this year in the voice search smart speaker
environment, Grundmann said.
While audio offers
emerging opportunities for media companies of all types, digital video
maintains its popularity. The Guardian’s Oscar-nominated ‘Black Sheep’
documentary – a story of a black teenager who befriended racists – is part of the
company’s strategy to deliver journalism through written, filmed, and spoken
formats. As Evelyn Webster, CEO U.S. & Australia, Guardian News & Media
argues “good journalism can be good business.”
The company has three revenue streams: a trust reserved for economic
downturns and advertising revenue. But rather than deriving revenue from
subscriptions, the Guardian has been successful using the reader voluntary
contribution business model. The company also crowdfunds initiatives to support
special reporting.
Reaching Audiences Far and Wide
Organizations like NPR,
The New York Times, and The Guardian are known for serving audiences at a
national and even international scale. However, local remains a point of
concern for many in the media business.
To beef up local news, Marian Pittman, Executive Vice President of
Digital Strategy and Research of Cox Media Group, says that the company seeks to
innovate on its TV side with its “garage projects.” The initiative draws
together the diverse skills of engineers, marketers, and reporters to produce
and test prototypes in an effort to appeal to consumers through different
platforms.
In support of local journalism, CEO Pam Wasserstein said New York Media plans to launch The City
in early 2019, a not-for-profit initiative providing New York City news and
investigative journalism in addition to its portfolio of premium digital
brands.
Identifying underserved consumers is a business strategy Morgan DeBaun,
CEO and co-founder of Blavity used when she left her Silicon Valley career to
start a media company with her own money. Blavity targets black millennials,
which DeBaun identified as an underserved demographic in the media ecosystem. The
company is now backed
by investors who share Blavity’s value system.
Navigating Revenue Streams
While more people are consuming media digitally, there is a
simultaneous desire among consumers to connect as part of a community. That’s
where events play a key role in establishing direct relationships with
consumers. At the Summit, speakers from Blavity, The New York Times, CondeNast,
Recode, and Combs Enterprises all cited events as a significant way to connect
with consumers while deriving healthy revenue streams.
Subscriptions, events, advertising, and ecommerce all play roles in
enhancing relationships, according to Wenda Harris Millard from MediaLink. “When you really understand your consumer,
that’s where you have an advantage. You have to be thoughtful strategically.
What is it you’re building and why?”
In 2019, marketers will be focusing on trust, data security and
management and attention to disruption, noted Millard.
Marketers are concerned about safety, security and the environment in which
they’re marketing.
“In a world where marketing is so fractured and there’s a plethora of
choice of where to put dollars, the ‘F’ and ‘G’ buttons are easy to press. But it’s
not enough anymore,” she said. “We have to fight to keep that conversation
about the quality of the environment as well as context and the importance of
publishers continuing to put forward what is critically different about what
they have to offer.”
Millard cautioned attendees not to “write off Amazon.” She noted that
the rise of Amazon as a force in the ad industry represents the importance of
search – including voice search. In particular, she pointed out that Amazon has
access to an “extraordinary data trove” with the ability to push its brands
first based on its insight into consumer behavior and scale.
Millard noted that now, more content has been consumed online than on
TV, “forcing dollars into OTT versus linear television. While TV may be
important, it’s not television the box, it’s content.”
Values-Driven Marketing
For digital advertising and marketing, Laura Correnti, Partner at Adweek
Breakthrough Agency of the year Giant Spoon, said that attention
should be focused not on “how to buy impressions, but how to make one. With
$200 billion dollars in advertising this year, that’s 200 billion ways to make
an impact.”
Adrienne Lofton
Increasingly, that impact is become more driven by values.
Adrienne Lofton, incoming Nike marketing executive and former Under
Armour CMO, said that while at Under Armour, she created a set of values that
included loving the athletes. Her emphasis was on equality, fighting the good
fight together, creating fearlessly, always connecting, telling stories, thinking
‘beyond’, and celebrating the wins.
“Values-driven marketing should be infused in everything a company
does,” she added. “Understanding what you stand for and what space you fit into
in the world is critically important.”
To answer that question, we need to look to the past—1440 A.D., to be exact. When Gutenberg created the printing press, it was suddenly possible to print and distribute thousands of copies of written material, all typeset so that the letters lined up perfectly every time.
Since then, the way we read text—including online—has changed very little. But that doesn’t mean it hasn’t evolved at all.
When I was living in Japan in the 90s, for example, everyone read the newspaper on the train. Japanese newspapers, unlike the papers you find in the U.S., are designed to be folded in half as you read because the trains are so crowded. You couldn’t open a Wall Street Journal arm-to-armon the train in Tokyo because there simply wasn’t enough physical space.
But today, the way we consume content is not restricted in that way. We’re much more likely to read the news on our smartphones and laptops.
Instead of holding the physical paper in our hands, we scroll away on phones or tablets. But we’re still attached to some old-school tactics that make less sense today. Things like above-the-fold, which is a vestige of newspapers that were folded once they hit the stands so that only the top half of the paper was visible to the passers-by. This basic format remains the same for digital content, but it no longer serves much of a purpose.
Since the advent of the printing press, technology has enabled us to deliver more content more quickly to more people than ever before. As digital technology continues to evolve at an increasingly rapid pace, it’s time authors and publishers rethink how we present digital content. Just as a Japanese newspaper was designed to create the optimum experience for reading on the train, we have to evolve the way we present online content to give users the best experience.
Your users live in a digital world. Here’s how to meet them there:
It’s time to ditch trees, categories, menus, and the like.
Navigation is among the most important elements of web design.
The original navigation favorite was the tree structure, which was popularized with the explosion of Yahoo and its original navigation. It presents a hierarchical view of information, in which each item (or “branch”) leading to a number of subitems. Any branch can be expanded to reveal subitems, or collapsed to hide subitems.
However, with the rise of mobile devices, the once common tree structure is falling out of favor. Designers are creating new and improved ways of navigating websites. They have stopped. forcing users to navigate a tree, a giant list of categories, or even think of search terms. Instead, they are thinking of ways to create a digital user experience that is responsive in real-time.
Just as Google’s search engine rendered Yahoo’s original navigation approach obsolete, AI is pushing out traditional web navigation. An AI-driven site design that can pick up on and infer user signals and direct them accordingly is much more user-friendly. Before long, all websites will be creating menus, landing pages, and content generated dynamically in response to user understanding.
Ideally, prebuilt navigation should be as streamlined and minimalist as possible. When done right, it allows users to open your website or app and find what they’re looking for instantly.
Otherwise, users will become frustrated and sign off—and that’s the last thing you want.
User engagement is at stake.
Today’s consumers are less patient than ever.
According to a 2015study from Microsoft, the modern American brain loses concentration after eight seconds, a result of our increasingly dependent relationship to technology. “Heavy multi-screeners find it difficult to filter out irrelevant stimuli,” the report read. And they’re “more easily distracted by multiple streams of media.”
Today’s customers expect instant gratification. They want to be met where they are, with an article or product recommendation that’s relevant for them at that exact moment, regardless of the channel or device in use. Real-time customer engagement requires knowledge of past purchases, specific preferences, and situational context to make instant recommendations.
Without it, your customers will go elsewhere.
Data shows that modern real-time companies that embrace this type of real-time responsiveness see double or triple level of user engagement. If it’s a content site, that means up to three times more people watching videos or reading articles, or becoming paid subscribers. On a product site, it means tripling the number of people buying your stuff.
If you’re not leveraging AI to give users a better experience already, you’re leaving money on the table and users in the dark.
Environmental cues
Soon, it won’t be enough to just show users a few options based on past purchases. The next iteration of digital experiences is content presented based on behavioral and external cues.
Rappi, or what I like to call “the Uber Eats of Latin America,” is a great example of this next generation UX and a customer of my company, Liftigniter. The app determines what you’re interested in eating and delivers it to your door—whether it’s a four-course meal prepared by a restaurant, fast food takeout, or ingredients delivered from a grocery store for you to cook on your own.
They use our AI engine to make individual determinations based on such signals as users’ behavior in their app. It understands what devices they’re using, where they are, and what time of day it is. Using this information, they can make behavioral and environmental inferences. This allows them to determine whether you’re interested in something healthy or comforting, quick or slow, fancy or casual. When it’s cold out, they’ll suggest even suggest a warm holiday soup.
If you can create a website or some sort of digital experience that can determine the user interests without them telling you, why wouldn’t you? The only conceivable reason is habit. It’s natural—and easy—to cling to the status quo.
However, the printing press no longer reigns supreme. And it”s time online publishers shake off the vestiges of an archaic user experience.
“Alexa: What’s the news today?” That depends. If a consumer wants to get news from a voice assistant such as Amazon Echo or Google Home (or the hundreds of devices that support them), the process isn’t always easy and the results are inconsistent. People have complained that the news reports on voice assistants are too long, or don’t answer questions accurately, according to a recent Reuters Institute report.
But the devices aren’t going away. In fact, they are multiplying like rabbits, if last week’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) was any indication, with more voice assistants in U.S. households and more of them built into other “smart home” devices such as refrigerators, mirrors, home security and yes, “Intelligent Toilets” (“Alexa, flush!”). So: What should publishers do? Experiments so far have been mixed, but that doesn’t mean giving up is an option. Instead, publishers need to fight to get better deals for content. They also need consider new types of business models such as product placement, as Meredith is doing.
Amazon Alexa vs. Google Assistant, Part 2
If you want to understand how big the voice wars have become between Amazon and Google, you just need to go to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show. Last year, Google was the upstart taking on the incumbent at Amazon. This year’s battle was more evenly matched. Google plastered ads all over town and even had an “It’s a Small World” Disney-style ride as part of its booth. Amazon opted for a lower key approach with “Works with Alexa” tags on all the associated products.
Amazon touted selling more than 100 million Alexa devices. But Google shot back by saying it had 1 billion devices with Google Assistant – though that includes all Android phones sold with it built-in. While CNET had its writers decide who won the Amazon vs. Google voice war at CES (Google got the nod), the real question is how can publishers use this battle to their advantage? Will the tech companies ever give more credence to news and information on voice assistants, and what will that value be in the long run?
What People Want
Before we answer, we first need to understand how people are using voice assistants in their everyday life. People typically use these omnipresent devices in the morning and evening. And people mostly want them to play music, answer general questions and get weather updates. In an analysis of the Reuters Institute report, Nieman Lab’s Laura Hazard Owen noted that people love using smart speakers, but not really for news. Even though 42% said they used smart speakers for news, only 1% said news was the most important feature for them.
Users also have a lot of complaints about news on voice assistants: The updates were too long, they aren’t updated enough, many use synthesized voices to read the news, and there’s no way to skip or select stories. Even worse, when people asked specific questions related to news stories, the answers were inaccurate and inconsistent.
While people do use the devices to stream live radio (19% of all NPR online listening happens on smart speakers), they aren’t keen to listen to longer form audio or podcasts. Maybe that’s just a factor of podcasts being an on-the-go commuting format, while smart speakers are in the home.
What Publishers Can Do
In the wake of Reuters Institute study and many experiments by publishers, how can they better reach consumers via voice assistants? As with all new formats, publishers must understand how people use the devices and tailor their content appropriately. The New York Times announced a new briefing for Alexa-enabled devices based on “The Daily” podcast. It is in a much shorter format for smart speakers and they are promoting it through the print edition of the paper. The Times has developed a weekly News Quiz taking into account the popularity of trivia quizzes on the devices.
As The Verge’s James Vincent pointed out: “Audio content won’t necessarily drive subscriptions, but it could be a relatively easy way for the paper to reach millions of new listeners before — maybe — turning them into readers.”
Meanwhile, Meredith announced its new Innovation Group at CES. The new division includes a Voice Network that brings together all of the company’s audio, voice, and podcast products under one umbrella.
Meredith has experimented with “content-to-audio” where someone reads story content. However, what’s most interesting is their initiative to create skills or actions for smart speakers. One example would be using Alexa to open an AllRecipes skill with an option to order ingredients for a recipe. “The skills are actually the best place to do the product placement and direct links to commerce,” Meredith’s head of innovation Corbin de Rubertis told Folio.
Publishers are still feeling their way to what works best on voice assistants. (And the payoff is difficult to envision right now.) However, growing use of these proliferating devices means that publishers can’t dismiss them. Instead, they need to start with shorter briefings, try out some new interactive skills, and as the platforms become more mature. And perhaps they can even get compensation for offering the most up-to-date relevant answers for users.
Hot on the heels of reports that reveal AR and VR will become mainstream sooner than we expect, media companies are lining up to test the waters and push the boundaries. While they recognize that implementation of immersive technologies can bring audiences deeper into a story than text, 2D images, and video ever could, many have yet to grasp that they have to create stories that move people, not just “wow” them.
One company that is further along on learning curve is USA TODAY NETWORK, part of Gannett Co, Inc. and the largest local-to-national media organization in the U.S. It’s cleverly harnessed talent from a variety of disciplines, including video games development, to bring new life and excitement to environments (life on the USS Eisenhower), events (launching a Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center), and formats (an investigative podcast revealing the hidden power structures behind our cities really work).
Ray Soto, Director of Emerging Technology for USA TODAY NETWORK
Peggy Anne Salz—mobile analyst and Content Marketing Strategist at MobileGroove—catches up with Ray Soto, Director of Emerging Technology for USA TODAY NETWORK, to discuss recent AR projects and delve into how media companies can leverage growing interest in AR and VR to elevate storytelling and engage audiences.
PAS: Please bring us up to date on the storytelling experiences you have created and what you have learned.
RS: We recognize that both virtual and augmented reality are fairly new within our industry. But that’s what really motivates and inspires us to take that extra step to experiment and try something new. An example is the 321 LAUNCH app, our first AR app. It gives users a close-up live view of real launches and landings, allowing them to build and launch their own Falcon 9 rocket within the app—an experience enhanced with access to live video and real-time updates.
The aim was to combine immersive storytelling with a live launch AR broadcast, paving the way for users to engage with content in new ways. Metrics show strong retention rates and long session times, even on non-launch days. Overall, we have seen engagement times of around 3.5 minutes, and we observed that user engagement for our live launch broadcast spiked up to around 8 minutes. Right now, we hovering at around 3.5 minutes on non-launch days and about 5 minutes on launch days.
We learned a lot from the app about how to reach and engage audiences. We also learned a lot about the development cycle and the UX. The experience of creating the app—and seeing how users wanted to be in control of their experience—helped us to focus on building the foundation that would support all our augmented reality experiences moving forward. We saw that there was deep engagement with AR through interactivity, and what we didn’t want to do was leverage existing APIs that would limit us in the types of stories we could tell.
PAS: So, it sounds like you have “augmented” augmented reality platforms to suit your requirements and ensure you can support how audiences have shown they want to interact with your app…
RS: You’re right. So, we ended up leveraging the GUI game engine, and that is essentially the foundation of our AR platform. Unity provided us that foundation, where we can leverage AR kit and AR core. But we also built on top of that to incorporate the functionality we envisioned we would need for our storytelling experiences. So what we have created is a series of editorial templates, that include design templates and animations, allowing us to quickly support interactive storytelling through AR.
A good example is the augmented reality Hurricane Florence tracker. At first, it was a challenge that I presented to my team, which is made up of former video game developers with experience working with companies including Electronic Arts and NC Soft, to turn this AR experience around quickly. And we did this. By drawing from our game design experience and working closely with our product development, mobile dev team, and the editorial team, we leveraged our template to create the tracker—which we were able to ramp up, turn around and publish within 24 hours.
PAS: In the case of the hurricane tracker, you harnessed AR to bring breaking news to life. But to go mainstream AR will need to enhance content and experiences that are a little more downtempo. Do you have an example where AR adds a layer of storytelling, not just effect?
RS: A great example is our AR experience for The City, an investigative storytelling podcast where we developed the augmented reality trailer. The podcast is already a powerful story paired with an immersive audio experience—but it was missing an equally powerful visual. We recognized that, through our AR platform, we could create an experience that would allow you to explore the community that is the focus of the podcast and “tease” users to engage with the powerful story that was being told within the podcast.
In this scenario, AR gives the audience a sense of place. Clearly, it was a different type of story to tell and a different goal from launching a Falcon 9 rocket. However, we found we could just leverage what we’d learned from earlier projects and that was a plus. It was exciting to think no one had ever done this before—and we did. And through this, we recognized there is a real opportunity to fill in some of the gaps in content, such as audio, with AR and adapt what we create based on the story we’re trying to tell.
PAS: It’s exciting to push the envelope, but you also need to know where to draw the line. How do you decide if AR is a match with the storytelling in the first place?
It can be a tough one to call. So, we start by drawing from our experience and our understanding of the unique opportunities that emerging tech can provide and support when it comes to creating a very strong interactive story. The story comes first. Before we commit resources or time to develop an augmented reality experience, we work very closely with the editorial team to define what the story should be and how augmented reality can drive value to the story we’re trying to tell. It’s very much a collaborative process. There have been times when we’ve gone down a path of exploration and determined that the particular story might actually be best suited to being told with the support of an interactive graphic on the web or a video experience.
We’re at the point now where we’re able to produce an offline prototype quickly to really understand how we can tell the story in a new way that the audience can engage with again and again. The goal for an AR project can never be to create a one-time gimmick that folks will see and walk away from saying, “oh hey, that was neat.” The goal—and this is our goal—has to be to give audiences the feeling they have gained something from the experience or learned something. You don’t want the technology to overshadow the story because it comes down to the story first. We understand this because our team has had years of experience, not just with game design but in VR and more recently AR.
PAS: Your team is made up of talent from video games companies, which you’ve pointed out is a plus. What talent mix should publishers assemble and orchestrate if they are serious about creating AR experiences?
RS: We’re fortunate to have a team that is made up of former game developers, but I don’t think it’s a team that has to made up of game developers exclusively. Yes, it definitely makes it much easier to create AR experiences and ramp up a team to support AR and VR. But it’s not the only way. Publishers also need to bring together people who have a passion for the work and a desire to explore what’s possible. It’s through passion that companies can build a team able to go outside of their comfort zone. Passion guides you and helps you find ways to tell a story that hasn’t been done before. So, game development is helpful, but it’s not required for interactive storytelling.
PAS: So, what is required? What is the checklist publishers should have top of mind?
RS: Start by thinking through how you can create a narrative arc. As I said before, it’s not about gimmick. It’s about trying to do things differently and avoid getting too comfortable with how you have told stories in the past. Even if you have a template to build a story, you don’t want it to be the same every time. The aim is to encourage people to engage and come back. We want audiences to recognize that USA Today is telling interactive stories in a new way with AR, and that means pushing the boundaries through seeing the opportunities and exploring approaches.
It’s also important to identify the gaps within the story. This is where AR platforms can enhance that story. Again, a great example is the City podcast where we could improve an immersive audio experience with AR. It still just boggles my mind that we even considered it in the first place and I’m proud of the results. We recognized that it was a strong story that we could do differently. That’s the mindset you have to have for every project: try to do something that’s different but do it by creating a narrative arc that engages your audience and helps them coming back.
Everyone has a unique opportunity to define their path, but don’t only focus on the visual experience. You have to think about scalability and accessibility. You don’t want to exclude users who are impaired in any way –and this is why we have incorporated subtitles within our USA Today app. We want everyone to be engaged with the experience and able to make it what they want.
PAS: Brands are also focused on engaging users with brand storytelling and experiential content. Is there a place for brands in your future plans?
RS: We’re looking for opportunities to work on branded content. That conversation started because we observed such high engagement and retention rates. These metrics tell us there’s an opportunity—through AR—to create a personal connection. We’re poised to tell our stories in new ways, and we see ways brands can build on the growing excitement around augmented reality to engage with their existing audiences and acquire new ones.
Successful media companies have always relied upon having a direct, trusted relationship with consumers and advertisers. Consumers want to know the brand and the experiences they’ll get from them. And advertisers that want to build this same level of customer relationship directly seek out these trusted media brands or tune advertising algorithms their way.
The teams at trusted content brands wake up every day and create content people love, products that serve them well, and safe and valuable advertising environments—all while maintaining the high level of ethics and professional standards that benefit viewers, readers, listeners, and a healthy marketplace. And we’re here to support you.
What makes our members unique is also what makes DCN unique. By focusing at the brand level across the entire media strategy, we’re able to advocate and work to advance the future of trusted news and entertainment and partner to develop all sources of revenues. We can also do it without needing to curry favor or meet the needs of a few large tech platforms with out-sized influence who are required partners for any modern publisher.
As we turn toward 2019, it is a good time to reflect on the top-of-mind trends for media companies. Here are four important shifts happening in digital media right now—all of which play into the strengths of trusted media brands:
1. Revenue, direct from audience.
With our quarterly and annual members-only benchmark report, DCN has unique access to market research specific to premium publishers. Importantly, our research isn’t skewed with numbers from Google and Facebook. (This is a very common issue in industry research. Always look “under the hood.”) Our research is based solely upon our members. One of the things our benchmarks tell us is that approximately 80% of members’ digital revenue comes from advertising. However, we’re finally seeing growth in direct revenue from audiences whether it comes in the form of membership, subscription, or donation.
Trusted publishers are uniquely positioned for this shift because they offer exactly what people want: high quality news and entertainment – that’s worth paying for. It remains to be seen how the market evolves in order for this revenue segment to grow as it must, but we’re thrilled to see our members playing a proactive role in shaping the opportunities.
2. Distributed platforms, going over the top
The list of platforms is endless and evolving: YouTube, Facebook, Snap, Twitter, Apple News, Flipboard. While publisher revenues on these distributed platforms have been promising at times (YouTube), they’ve often been disappointing (Apple News, Facebook Watch). But right now, quality content creators are seeing the fastest movement in the video space, particularly long-form and over the top (OTT).
Our best practice research on OTT earlier this year showed how our members are taking aim at these opportunities. However, new gatekeepers are surfacing in the OTT space like Amazon and Roku. And while Google and Facebook don’t like being called “walled gardens,” every new platform will no doubt be planting their own seeds to maximize their profits off your content. Experimentation is essential. But protecting your IP and deal terms early on is critical.
3. Ad targeting, rebirth of context
In the EU, the impact of GDPR has just started. There are new claims calling into question the entire way Google has collected consent for its ad supply, how real-time bidding operates, not to mention endless class-action suits mostly focused on Google and Facebook. DCN has distributed research on Google’s unique and unavoidable ability to mine behavioral and location data significantly beyond user expectations as you browse the web and walk the streets . We’ve argued towards raising the bar on companies who collect data across most of the web while recognizing the inherent trust in choosing to visit your environments, brands and context.
Global leaders are asking more questions than ever. Looming large over the discussion is a new law in California which will impact the very companies that are now (albeit, ironically) advocating for federal laws to save them through preemption. It’s been a wild year when Google, Facebook and its trade group, IAB, are now finally pushing for a federal privacy law thereby admitting their existing frameworks may be failing consumers. Quality publishers have a unique role in shaping any solutions as consumers seek more controls and alignment with their expectations. Consumers don’t know the hundreds of ad tech companies mucking up their web experiences, but they do know you and your brands. And, of course, this value then transfers to ads in this environment.
4. Advertising, direct to consumer
Research from the IAB, as well as industry discussions, has driven a DTC (“direct to consumer”) movement as the next big thing. Here is the great news about this conversation: It’s no longer focused on the plumbing, data, ad tech, and vendors. It’s focused on how brands have value and can connect directly with audiences and consumers, bypassing gatekeepers and intermediaries. This is the sweet spot for quality content companies. In fact, I’d say if anyone wants to better understand how to go direct to consumers, they should start with the members of DCN.
But here’s the rub: Many players in the market won’t ever really be able to go “direct to consumer” without relying on the brand equity of trusted media. In order to find scale, they’ll first need to build demand, be willing to bundle, and find quality brands to associate with and carry their flag. They’ll want to be near those with purpose and value recognized by the public.
I’m sure each of these movements will surprise us in ways we can’t predict. They may develop more slowly than anticipated or accelerate at light speed like the privacy regulation has with GDPR and Facebook’s mishaps hitting in the same quarter. But either way, premium publishers should be ready as, with the right proactive strategy, there are opportunities in all.
O is for ‘Over’. T is for ‘the’. The last T? Well, it’s not that simple.
What exactly is the ‘Top’? You probably haven’t heard two people define OTT alike. In fact, lately it has come to mean everything Other Than Traditional.
So, let’s start from the top, with a multiple-choice question:
What is OTT?
(a) STB: the set top box with your cable subscription and remote control using a private cable network also known as an MVPD (multichannel video programming distributor). These days, consumers can also stream their favorite content like Netflix via apps integrated with their STB. A lot of streaming content can also be accessed via Xbox and PlayStation gaming consoles that increasingly take centerstage in living rooms.
(b) STV: the smart TV. No longer just a screen, these televisions are equipped with an operating system (e.g. Android TV) so that they can connect to the public Internet network and directly stream content. Moreover, CTV (connected TV) streaming devices like Fire TV, Apple TV, Chromecast, and Roku, connect TVs to the Internet to stream consumers’ favorite content onto any TV no matter its IQ.
(c) iOS, Apple mobile Apps, and Android Apps on Google Play. These apps allow consumers to stream content on mobile phones anytime, anywhere. Users can also directly “cast” or project from a smartphone to televisions, which allows the mobile to serve as the new universal remote. And let’s not forget how many people stream video over the Internet onto laptop, desktops, and tablet.
(d) All of the above. Or, DTC- Direct to Consumer. This is the right choice and what it’s all about. Essentially, it’s all about the direct distribution of video content to consumers over the Internet, no matter how its accessed whether by streaming device, gaming console, Smart TV, mobile device, computer or STB. No cable company/private network required.
What’s not OTT
Often, there is confusion about PTV (Programmatic TV) — which is the enablement of digital data capabilities for greater audience insights than GRP (Gross Rating Points) and reports in real-time instead of months. There’s also its subset ATV (Addressable TV), which accomplishes one-to-one digital targeting capability. PTV and ATV improve the targeting and reporting capabilities of both OTT and traditional linear TV.
For broadcasters and video creators, OTT offers a direct relationship (and possibly content subscriptions) with consumers outside of the cable TV universe. But like OTT itself, the Internet-delivered video market is acronym-riddled and complex. A good grasp of the basics will help you understand the many opportunities ahead when viewership of various OTT video services will overtake traditional broadcast TV. This is predicted to happen within the next 5 years, according to a recent OTT Video Services Study.
In addition, revenues in the Global OTT market will increase to $18 billion in 2019, more than doubling the market from just three years ago. This has massive implications not only for those who produce content, but for agencies, advertisers, and technology providers as well. As companies in this space begin to assess how they will address this massive paradigm shift, it’s a good time to get familiar with the OTT opportunity.
Mozilla’s user research, and research conducted by universities and independent experts, consistentlyshows that most people who use the web do not approve of many of the ways in which their personal data is collected and shared for targeted advertising. In fact, people consider some practices to beinvasive,creepy, and even scary. User tracking can also create real harm, including enablingdivisive political advertising andaffecting health coverage decisions. To help make the web more trustworthy for our users, Firefox is developing, testing, and deploying new privacy features to protect them.
As a leader of Firefox’s product management team, I am often asked how Mozilla decides on which privacy features we will build and launch in Firefox. Since transparency is fundamental to our way of doing business, I’d like to tell you about some key aspects of our process, using our recent Enhanced Tracking Protection functionality as an example.
Mozilla is a mission-driven organization whose flagship product, Firefox, is meant to espouse the principles of our manifesto: “A Pledge for a Healthy Internet.” Firefox is our expression of what it means to have someone on your side when you’re online. We believe in standing up for consumers’ rights while pushing the web forward as a platform that is open and accessible to all. As such, there are a number of careful considerations we must weigh as part of our product development process in order to decide which features or functionality make it into the product, particularly as it relates to user privacy.
A focus on people and the health of the web
Foremost, we focus on people. They motivate us. They are the reason that Mozilla exists and how we have leverage in the industry to shape the future of the web. Through a variety of methods (surveys, in-product studies, A/B testing, qualitative user interviews, formative research) we try to better understand the unmet needs of the people who use Firefox.
Another consideration we weigh is how changes we make in Firefox will affect the health of the web, longer term. Are we shifting incentives for websites in a positive or negative direction? What will the impact of these shifts be on people who rely on the internet in the short term? In the long run? In many ways, before deciding to include a privacy feature in Firefox, we need to apply basic game theory to play out the potential outcomes and changes ecosystem participants are likely to make in response, including developers, publishers and advertisers. The reality is that the answer isn’t always clear-cut.
Balancing the pros and cons
Recently weannounced a change to our anti-tracking approach in Firefox in response to what we saw as shifting market conditions and an increase in user demand for more privacy protections. As an example of that demand, look no further than our Firefox Public Data Report and the rise in users manually enabling our original Tracking Protection feature to be Always On (by default, Tracking Protection is only enabled in Private Browsing):
Always On Tracking Protection shows the percentage of Firefox Desktop clients with Tracking Protection enabled for all browsing sessions. (Note: the setting was made available for users to change with the release of Firefox 57.)
The optimal outcomes are clear. People should not be tracked across websites by default and they shouldn’t be subjected to abusive practices or detrimental impacts to their online experience in the name of tracking. However, the challenge with many privacy features is that there are often trade-offs between stronger protections and negative impacts to user experience. Historically this trade-off has been handled by giving users privacy options that they can optionally enable. We know from our research that people want these protections but they don’t understand the threats or protection options enough to turn them on.
We have run multiple studies to better understand these trade-offs as they relate to tracking. In particular, since we introduced the original Tracking Protection in Firefox’s Private Browsing mode in 2015, many people have wondered why we don’t just enable the feature in all modes. The reality is that Firefox’s original Tracking Protection functionality can cause websites to break, which confuses users. Here is a quick sample of the website breakage bugs that have been filed:
Bugs filed related to broken website functionality due to our original Tracking Protection.
In addition, because the feature blocks everything, including ads, from any domain that is also used for tracking, it can have a significant negative impact on small websites and content creators who depend on third-party advertising tools/networks. Because small site owners cannot change how these third-party tools operate in order to adhere to Disconnect s policy to be removed from the tracker list, the revenue impact may hurt content creation and accessibility in the medium to long-term, which is not our intent.
Finding the right tradeoffs
The outcome of these studies caused us to seek new solutions which could be applied by default outside of Private Browsing without detrimental impacts to user experience and without blocking most ads. This is exactly what Enhanced Tracking Protection, being introduced in Firefox 63, is meant to help with. With this feature, you can block cookies and storage access from third-party trackers:
The feature more surgically targets the problem of cross-site tracking without the breakage and wide-scale ad blocking which occurred with our initial Tracking Protection implementation. It does this by preventing known trackers from setting third-party cookies — the primary method of tracking across sites. Certainly consumers will still be able to decide to block all known trackers under Firefox Options/Preferences if they so choose (note that this may prevent some websites from loading properly, as described above):
Sometimes plans change. So we test
As part of our announcements that ultimately led to Enhanced Tracking Protection, we described how we planned to block trackers that cause long page load times. We’re continuing to hone the approach and experience before deciding to roll out this performance feature out to Firefox users. Why? There are a number of reasons: The initial feature design was similar in nature to the original Tracking Protection functionality (including ad blocking). But blocking only occurred after a few seconds of page load. In our testing, there was a high degree of variability as to when various third-party domains would be blocked (even within the same site). This could be confusing for users since they would see blocking happen inconsistently.
A secondary motivation to block trackers and ads on slow page loads was to encourage websites to speed up how quickly content loads. With the tested design, a number of factors such as the network speed played a part in determining whether or not blocking of trackers and ads would occur on a given site. However, because factors like network speed aren’t in the control of the website, it would pose a challenge for many sites, even if they did their best at speeding up content load. We felt this provided the wrong incentive. It could cause sites to prioritize loading ads over content to avoid the ads from being blocked, a worse outcome from a user perspective. As a result, we are exploring some alternative options targeted at the same outcome, much faster page loads.
Open, transparent roadmaps
We work in the open. We do it because our community is important to us. We do it because open dialog is important to us. We do it because deciding on the future of the web we all have come to rely upon should be a transparent process — one that inherently invites participation. You can expect that we will continue to operate in this manner, being upfront and public about our intent and testing efforts. We encourage you to test your own site with our new features, and let us know about any problems by clicking “Report a Problem” in the Content Blocking section of the Control Center.
I hope this glimpse into our decision-making process around Enhanced Tracking Protection reaffirms that Mozilla stands for a healthy web — one that upholds the right to privacy as fundamental.
About the Author
Peter Dolanjski is the product lead for Firefox on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Along with a team of like-minded internet advocates and a vibrant open source community, he fights for the fundamental right to online privacy through innovative browser features and meaningful privacy defaults.
With so many new and immersive ways to reach audiences on their mobile devices, it’s natural to wonder if email, now nearly 50 years old, has lost its luster. But before you make a call consider reams of researchthat show email rules as the most reliable way to reach consumers everywhere on the planet. Granted, email took a hit in the wake of the European Union’s May 25 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), legislation that raised opt-in standards for email campaigns. However, the cleansethat followed also produced audiences that are genuinely interested in receiving communications and content from companies that have their express consent. It raises the question: Can companies do more with email newsletters to drive deeper engagement with their content?
The answer is a resounding “yes.” That is if they move beyond offering collections of links to offering content that has a distinct voice, format and style all its own. This is the strategy championed by Quartz, a six-year-old mobile-first publisher widely credited with helping reinvent the email newsletter. The company, which was recently acquired from Atlantic Media by Uzabase, a Japanese business intelligence and media company, broke new ground in 2017 with the launch of Quartz Obsession. The edgy email deep dives into topics that have “seismic importance to the global economy” and reports an open rate of 78%, much higher than the industry average of 22%.
Adam Pasick, senior editor, Quartz
Peggy Anne Salz – mobile analyst and Content Marketing Strategist at MobileGroove – catches up with Adam Pasick, a senior editor at Quartz who oversees Quartz’s push team, which includes email newsletters, apps, and bots. Pasick discusseshowQuartz looks beyond the newsroom for content that inspires and engages audiences, and why it pays to publish newsletters with a “sense of purpose and cohesiveness.”
PAS:Katie Weber, VP of client partnerships for Quartz, is quoted as callingthe inbox “the new homepage for executives.”How do you choose and craft newsletter content that will consistently appeal to this high-value audience?
AP:I think we’ve certainly struck a chord with an audience that is more than the sum of the numbers. We have bespoke editorial and news coverage that we tailor for our products including the Quartz Daily Brief, Quartz Obsession, as well as the Quartz app for iOS and Android. Each has their own content and their own voice.
Sometimes we adapt articles from the main Quartz site, but most of the time we are writing the content from scratch. It’s the best way to treat each of those products as their own thing, with their own audience, their own appeal and their own writing staff to make the package complete. Quartz Obsession is a great example of this. We looked at just piping regular Quartz content into these products, but we found it to be an unfulfilling experience. It just fell flat.
PAS:I’m hearing that your audience is a demographic that values an element of serendipity and rejectscontent that feels stale. How do you keep your content fresh?
AP: We are constantly testing and rolling out new products, and the Quartz Obsession email is a great example. It’s had a hugely positive response out of the gate because it invites readers to go down a rabbit hole every day on one very kind of narrow topic. Then it opens your world by giving you a big-picture view of the topic in the context of the wider world.
PAS:You call it the daily “digression.” But is the starting point the daily news?
AP: The content is inspired by topics that are in the news. But we go a step further delivering more evergreen content that sheds light on the weird and wild tangents. In this way we fill a need that people have to be delighted and surprised with content that touches on the issues of the day but also takes some unexpected turns to inspire them to see and experience what is beyond the news.
Across all Quartz stories and products there’s kind of a common editorial DNA that should run through them. But we don’t only use Quartz stories as a starting point. We are agnostic in terms of where our stories start off. It can start with a Quartz story, we are also happy to use stories from other sources for the app and the emails. It’s not about driving traffic back to the Quartz mothership; it’s about finding the best stories for our audience no matter where they started off or where they may have originated.
PAS:You oversee several products, including apps and chatbots. What are the content offers and audience preferences across these platforms?
AP: Each of those products has its own advertising format, one that is appropriate and native to that platform. This ensures that we are not reliant on driving people back to Quartz.com. This is why we feature stories from other news outlet and then adapt it and tell it in our own way. Across all these formats it’s about channeling the news into a more casual conversational style, while keeping it very tight and concise. The tone that we are aiming for is one that is how you would write if you were describing the story to your friends.
The chatbot on Facebook Messenger presents content in a conversational format, so we use different tools to kind of mimic having a conversation with a real person. There are real people writing the responses, but it takes place in an automated algorithmic fashion. The starting point is often a push notification. Thenthe experience can go beyond what’s happening in the world to sharing ways you can enhance your world. For example, we’ve taken people through lifestyle ideas and inspiration like how to bake your own soda bread. We’ve experimented with different experiences and see audiences spend the most time on content around the news. But for chatbots, as well as apps, it’s also important to mix serious stories and with topics that are off-beat or lighthearted. You want to have a diverse story mix that doesn’t kind of beat people over the head with one kind of story. It should feel more eclectic.
Our app is available on the watch, so we know we touch reader’s lives in ways that are immediate. It’s about developing innovative ways to be valuable and offer value throughout the day and across platforms. So, you start the morning reaching for your smartphone and you scan the news on what happened while you were sleeping. The Daily Brief provides a kind of editorial intelligence service and it has a very loyal audience. With the app, that’s where readers dip in and out to learn something or be delighted with content and then get on with your day. Obsession comes in when your day is wrapping up, when you’re a little exhausted and you just need something to kind of take you out of your world and into an unexpected direction.
PAS: You provide me the news and experiences you think I want. Why don’t you ask me?
AP: We are assuming that if you found your way to us you that you also like the Quartz editorial. That’s why we purposely pick, curate, and write stories that fit in with our kind of Quartziness. And that’s our goal. It’s not about the capability to write something different for every individual person. It’s about having a purpose and approach to telling the story that resonates with our audience.
