The phrase “pivot to video” has become something of a cliché in the media industry. Lately, the mere mention of this phrase triggers a slew of mean-spirited tweets, resentment and existential mourning for the written word among those who wonder what publishers are thinking — and where their strategy lies.
And that’s the rub when it comes to pivoting to video. Mashable, Vocativ, Mic, FoxSports, Vox, Vice Sports, and BuzzFeed, among others, have all jumped on the video bandwagon in the past couple of years. But just as they differ in how they restructured staff and resources, so too does the quality of video produced.
It’s easy to feel the schadenfreude when hearing that web traffic dropped at a video-pivoter by 88%. Wow, how stupid was that move? But the reality is that pivots to video are not about pageviews at a website, but about serving up quality video that moves the needle on revenues, and engagement. They can be done right – or very, very wrong.
The premise – and pitfalls – behind the pivot
With the Facebook-Google behemoth eating up nearly all of the growth in the U.S. digital ad industry, publishers are under pressure to somehow make money from ads — and banners and programmatic advertising aren’t doing it alone. In comes the promise of video advertising dollars, which are expected to generate more than $18 billion by 2020, according to eMarketer (nearly double the $10 billion in 2016). A survey by IAB of more than 350 advertisers found that advertisers would spend an average of more than half — 56%, to be precise — of their ad budget on video.
Mashable was an early mover in the pivot to video last year when it laid off a slew of text reporters to double-down on video. More publishers followed this year. A major risk when pivoting is over-reliance on distribution platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Snapchat, which run these videos according to their enigmatic algorithms. Essentially, publishers relinquish control to third parties that have their own objectives and often provide poor and inconsistent metrics. Topping that off is data from Pew Research showing that millennials (often the target audience in these advertising goals) still prefer to read news in text.
Heidi Moore, writing at CJR, has called these pivots an outright failure:
“There are four reasons the pivot to video has failed: faulty metrics for measuring the audience; trusting other platforms, like Facebook, to do the hard work of distribution; low-quality video production and weak technological support for video content; and, ultimately, a failure to effectively turn video views into either higher readership or ad dollars.”
While she might be a little heavy on the hyperbole, she’s right when she says the main problem is that the video being produced by some publishers are all flash and no substance.
Mashable, Vox and BuzzFeed: A tale of three strategies
Obviously, traffic isn’t the only measure for success for publishers, so traffic drops aren’t always a dire sign. Pioneer pivoter Mashable says it actually grew its revenue 36% in 2016 while increasing the traction of its videos on Facebook, YouTube, and other distribution platforms. It’s now facing a potential sale. And, while nothing has been confirmed, its valuation — likely at more than $300 million, based on trends — suggests there may be something to their pivot. Any smaller valuation would signal more skepticism.
Meanwhile, publisher Melissa Bell has argued that Vox’s pivot, which includes four new shows on Facebook’s Watch tab, is much more of a “leaning in” strategy. That doesn’t mean Vox will relinquish a priority in text based content. “As a robust and dynamic media company, we have to leverage our talent and our expertise across all formats,” she wrote. “We do not believe video comes at the cost of our journalism or people with non-video skillsets. Writing is a crucial component of what we want to offer our audiences – as is photography, video, sound, graphics, and illustrations.”
Meanwhile, BuzzFeed, which restructured last year in order to generate more video for its entertainment and news divisions, recently launched an original live-streaming program, “AM to DM,” on Twitter. In the same vein as Vox, BuzzFeed hasn’t shied away from admitting much of its strategy comes from trying and potentially failing. But unlike several other media outfits that have tried video, BuzzFeed has the resources to back up its editorial focus. “Video is an extension of what we do, not a liability or a threat to our journalism,” BuzzFeed head of U.S. news Shani O. Hilton wrote in a post.
While much outcry has surrounded the traffic decline experienced by some of the publishers that have pivoted to video, it’s worth remembering that this is a correlation, not a causation of the pivot. It’s important to note that the publishers moving to video were looking for increased revenues and not pageviews.
Among publishers, there’s a flight to subscriptions and paid content, as well as video – and they don’t have to be mutually exclusive. But for those going “all-in” on video, they better make sure the strategy pans out, attuned perfectly for social platforms, and for audience members. Not all video pivots will work, but not all video pivots will be flame-outs.
When Spirited Media launched Billy Penn in 2014, the online publication had a broader mission than simply covering local news in the City of Brotherly Love. Co-founders Jim and Joan Brady wanted to do no less than rejuvenate local journalism itself by building a new business model that made local news coverage relevant to a younger audience, who saw traditional print media as old and stodgy.
It was a tall order by any measure. Brady and his intrepid team had just five people to cover Philadelphia—a huge city. They knew they needed to pick their coverage battles and find ways to engage with their target demographic to make their stories resonate with them.
Brady, a 20-year veteran of the news business, had witnessed the decline of local media first hand and knew it was time for a new approach. It was clear the old ways weren’t working. Local papers were either shuttered or had severely cut back coverage, and citizen journalism had not filled the gaps as many had hoped a decade ago. Without local news, there was a news gap that left uninformed citizens in its wake. And, as Brady knew all too well, a local news vacuum also left room for corrupt politicians to operate unimpeded without the white-hot journalism spotlight shining on them.
Brady understood that Spirited Media couldn’t fix all that ailed local journalism, but they were going to try to deliver news in a new way that would attract audiences and revenue. Today it consists of three local publications with Pittsburgh and Denver joining Philadelphia (in May of 2016 and this March, respectively).
Building new models
When Brady and his team prepared to launch Billy Penn, they knew that the under-35 crowd wanted to get their news digitally – and they wanted news with a voice. “We decided the site wouldn’t have a dry unemotional voice. The site had to reflect energy,” Brady said.
What’s more, they’ve found that their audience wants to go beyond the news and get involved to help shape the direction of their communities. “We have a fair number of stories about things in the community you can get involved with and how to connect with issues you care about,” he said.
Instead of trying to be a publication that delivers all the news from sports to art to politics, they decided to focus on a smaller set of stories that Brady and team believe their readers care about. Then, to create that larger scope, they plug into a broader system of sites. “There is a whole little solar system of smaller sites biting off pieces of everything the big papers once did – art, sports, education, city hall. You have a lot of journalists covering a lot of interesting things in Philly,” he said.
Getting readers together
While the Spirited Media approach still uses an ad model, it concentrates on mobile ads, not display ads, which Brady says don’t really work for digital news. Even more importantly, Spirited wants to be more than another publication pumping out posts with ads to support the mission. It wants to get its readers involved.
That requires putting readers together with the people behind the stories, whether the reporters themselves or the subjects, and having an advertiser sponsor the event. Brady says they learned the hard way that a panel on a stage wasn’t what people wanted. Instead, they host smaller, more intimate gatherings. As Brady said, if you put a bunch of interesting people in a room with food and drink, interesting conversations tend to happen. A happy byproduct is that advertisers can buy a package that includes ads and event sponsorship, which means additional revenue.
Spirited Media is also planning its own take on the membership model, which is slated to kick off in October. Readers who become members will have special access to the publication’s events, which will include meeting interesting people from the community and accessing places they might not typically get into like a tour of the Steeler’s locker room in Pittsburgh or a VIP City Hall tour in Philadelphia.
The Spirited Media approach appears to be working as the company has grown its team to 26 and expanded to two additional cities. Brady notes that the company earns just 40% of its diversified revenue from ads. And as for that younger demographic target, all three publications have more than 40% audience in the under 35 age group – with Billy Penn hitting 45% in that demographic. For ages 44 and younger, it’s more than 65% with Billy Penn’s audience comprising 71% in the 44 and younger age group.
It’s still early days for Spirited Media. However, it has developed a fresh take on the local model that publications of all types can learn from. And that is certainly good news.
In the early days of digital, media companies believed that more was better. However today, they are waking up to a hard truth. Stockpiles of content – without technology platforms to make it widely available in ways people find valuable, meaningful, and dead-simple – can destroy competitive advantage, rather than build it. National Geographic, an iconic brand with over 360 million social fans, including a significant audience across desktop and mobile for its editorial and video content, is exploring technology platforms and partnerships to open the aperture of the content they offer and the audiences they reach.
Peggy Anne Salz – mobile analyst and Content Marketing Strategist at MobileGroove – caught up with Marcus East, National Geographic executive vice president of product and technology. They discussed the company’s strategy to build strong emotional engagement with global audiences through deep personalization, intuitive access, wider app distribution, and an intelligent platform codenamed CHIP. National Geographic has no shortage of compelling content. Here’s a look at their strategy to deliver experiences to match.
PAS: You joined National Geographic from Marks and Spencer, where you ran e-commerce, digital product, digital operations and technology platforms. Before that you ran e-commerce solutions for Apple in EMEA, and later at HQ. How does your experience prepare you to define and drive mobile strategy at National Geographic?
ME: Spending half of my career in technology and the other half in consumer brands allows me to understand what it takes to deliver mobile content consumers love. Your app is only as good as the content and the utility that sits within it. And for us, the emphasis is on making sure that we’re investing in both of those areas. That means having the right technology platforms and the right app strategy, but driven by content. Ultimately, it’s the content that our consumers love and why they come to National Geographic.
PAS: So, we are back to Content is King…
ME: Yes, and everything we do has to be about making the content king. The content is what drives the experiences that consumers love. That’s fascinating for me because I’ve worked in e-commerce environments where consumer value is very much about utility. At National Geographic, it’s about bringing our brand to life on mobile. The reality is many of our consumers are right now interacting with us through their mobile the way they want, which may be on Instagram or it may be on Facebook. So, what we do need to be complementary to that experience.
Social reach and engagement is important to us. We have 360 million social media fans, and that’s an incredible footprint. However, we also think there’s an opportunity to build upon that and to extend and optimize our mobile experience for that audience that is dedicated and comes directly to National Geographic and wants to get deeper and further into the stories behind the pictures.
PAS: Your mobile app is work in progress. It’s already breaking some exciting new ground when it comes to helping users navigate and personalize content. We can’t all access it yet, so what can you tell me about the user experience you offer?
ME: Right now, we’re redesigning elements of our website to really be optimized for that mobile experience. Around 50% of our traffic comes on mobile, which is no surprise. At the same time, we’re also building a new app strategy, which we’ve launched and tested in one market: Australia. We launched the app with a telco partner, and we’re seeing a great deal of success there and that is informing our wider global mobile strategy.
Content is king in the app and so the experiences that we deliver through our app put the content front and center. We have a 129-year heritage of photos and articles and, more recently, videos. We don’t want the interface to get in the way of that. The interface has to allow our consumers to explore the content and go further. That means moving the navigation into the background so that it really highlights the content. We achieve this by thinking about what the consumer wants to do first, and there are three concepts. Rather than presenting consumers a complex navigation that groups content into pictures, video and articles, we’ve decided to design it the way people to engage with content. We have ‘Read,’ which is where users can engage with the editorial and the magazine; we have ‘Watch,’ which is where they can access to our video content.
Our app approach is about the consumer and the content. For this reason, the app experience also provides a level of personalization, allowing the user to specify what’s most interesting to them. Over time, the app will learn exactly what things are most interesting to that consumer based both on their preferences and on what they’re actually consuming.
PAS: The navigation is invisible and intelligent. What about the platform that powers it?
ME: We want users to log in to the app and experience the content that’s right for them, and we’re applying this same principle to our websites. We’re also looking at how we can, using some advanced techniques like progressive web apps, for example, to create a more personalized experience for consumers. This is why we want to build an intelligent platform to support the ambitions of our business.
So, what we’re exploring and building is what we’re calling a cohesive intelligent platform, codenamed ‘CHIP’. We’re building an innovation lab here in our headquarters in Washington, D.C. and we’re working with lots of technology partners and companies to explore all that. The idea is, as users come into our platform, we want to learn more about them, give them an opportunity to tell us about their preferences so that we can improve that experience, and let them see the content that’s most valuable for them. Offering personalized experiences where content is front and center – this is really the future of mobile.
PAS: It’s an ambitious strategy. But what is really interesting is how you are building the platform to deliver it because you are also orchestrating the best pieces of the other platforms, like social …
ME: I like your choice of the word “orchestrated” because the platform that we envisage is, you could argue, a virtual platform because we aren’t going to build every component of it. We are making it by orchestrating the right content management systems, the right personalization engine, the right distribution system. For some parts of the platform we may work with third parties, and for others we may build it ourselves. It all starts with experimentation; we are iterating in an agile way and building.
We’re unique in that we’ve got unparalleled global reach. We touch over 745 million consumers across 172 countries, and that’s every month. But it’s also across lots of different content types. People watch our TV channel, which is the most widely distributed in the world. People read the magazine, and they also interact with us in social.
As we build out and execute our digital capabilities we want to create a way to allow our consumers to go beyond how they experience our content today. Take consumers who read the magazine. We want them to also be able to consume our digital content on our website and watch our TV channel. It’s all about pivoting away from the different products and channels that we have and bringing it to life for the consumer and giving them new ways to explore National Geographic and the world around them through National Geographic.
PAS: You want to enrich consumers’ lives through content. That also sounds a lot like you may have a new twist on native advertising. Where does monetization fit in and how do you plan to also put content front and center in that experience?
ME: We’re exploring all the ways in which we can create the best experience, including sponsorships and e-commerce opportunities that can become part of that experience. Let’s imagine we have a consumer who absolutely loves penguins and they are on our website where they search for and engage with lots of content about penguins. We see that as an opportunity to maybe share with them details about our products that are related to penguins. It might be a penguin cuddly toy, or it might be a book about penguins, or ultimately, it may be a trip to Antarctica to go and actually see penguins in real-life. This is where we will have delivered on the ultimate promise of digital and making content part of everything that we do.
PAS: You also offer educational content. How does personalization of content and advertising extend to that audience?
ME: Ten years ago, media brands and publishers would’ve expected people to come to the website, do the work, go through the navigation and find the content that’s right to them. The Nirvana, for us, is to create a personalized experience, one that allows us to know enough about those two personas – the consumer and the educator. So, when they interact with our brand, we can give them access to content that is relevant to them, and that meets their needs.
To that point, one of the things that we’re embracing is the Jobs To Be Done paradigm that Clayton Christensen and other academics have proposed. Yes, we look at all the metrics as any media company would, but we’re also deep diving into what consumers really want and why they come to our website. Getting a deeper understanding of those consumers want to do, powered by technology. We need to have the right technology platform in place to do that in the first place. This will allow us to maximize the brand opportunity.
PAS: You can also maximize your opportunity by getting your brand in the hand of all your readers – across all 172 countries. How do you see this global opportunity and what are you doing to grasp it?
ME: There is a real opportunity at distributing apps using alternative channels and app stores. And it’s a cost-effective way to reach and interact with consumers and markets where we haven’t necessarily had a strong proposition. We recently did an audit of app stores globally – of which there are over 200 – to better understand their focus and their audience. We have a good relationship with many telco partners around the world that have their own app stores. Various technology companies have also come to and asked us to publish out app in their app stores as well. So, right now, we’re auditing to make sure that we, in a deliberate way, prioritize which of those app stores are right for us.
PAS: I am researching this alternative app store landscape, which is over 350 stores and counting. In China, for example, alternative Android app stores dominate…
ME: I was quite intrigued to see the range of app stores in China. From WeChat to handset maker, there is a wealth of opportunity. We also want to minimize the cost of being in all these different environments, and that’s why I attach so much importance to orchestrating an intelligent platform so that if our teams in Asia, for example, can identify a new app store and a new partner in the region and be able to embark on a relationship without having to build everything from scratch, and without having to do lots of development work.
The number of app stores is quite remarkable, and as you well know from your research, many of them are quite different – with different audiences and different demographics. So, it’s fair to say that in the short term our priority will remain the best known and most established app stores, but we are exploring all of them.
PAS: Of course, being in app stores – even if it’s just Google Play and iTunes – means investing effort to ensure brand integrity. As a global and iconic brand, how do you ensure this?
ME: On the one hand, protecting your brand online and in apps is incredibly important. One of the things I’m responsible for here at National Geographic is information security. However, I believe if you build the best experiences for your consumers, ultimately, that’s the best way to protect your brand. Consumers will come directly to you to get content because they know your website or app is the right destination – and the only way – to get the most up-to-date content and personalized experience. It’s all about creating a compelling content story and a compelling user experience because that will make sure consumers come to us first.
Peggy Anne Salz is the Content Marketing Strategist and Chief Analyst of Mobile Groove, a top 50 influential technology site providing custom research to the global mobile industry and consulting to tech startups. Full disclosure: She is a frequent contributor to Forbes on the topic of mobile marketing, engagement and apps. Her work also regularly appears in a range of publications from Venture Beat to Harvard Business Review. Peggy is a top 30 Mobile Marketing influencer and a nine-time author based in Europe. Follow her @peggyanne.
Amazon Echo Show, Alexa, and Google Home have been positioned as the next big thing for companies and consumers. Content companies, marketers, and advertisers have scrambled to get up to speed on the technology behind them and are actively trying to figure out how to incorporate them into their planning. Certainly, there are a slew of companies anxious to get in on the Internet of Things (IoT) home automation game. However, they all realize that what will make them the most money is delivering their messages on the home automation system that reaches the most number of households.
Nevertheless, home automation is a new game with a whole new set of rules. The winner of this space will be whomever can master a very different skill set: providing subsidies through tax credits and insurance claims, and developing tight relationships with residential and commercial general contractors.
There are two main obstacles to mass adoption of home automation:
1. It’s too expensive: To get the full effect of the IoT transformation, a homeowner would have to replace every appliance in their house. That includes everything from the garage door, the thermostats, and doorbell to every light bulb, roof, pool pump, possibly even an entire music library, and more. Not many will be able to afford this.To reach mass adoption, someone else will have to pay for it. But who?
Using smartphones as an example, they didn’t hit mainstream until carriers helped subsidize the cost of the phone by rolling it into the service plan. Similarly, broadband effectively crossed the chasm when it started getting bundled by default with TV and phone service. Providers and appliance companies need to figure out a way to subsidize the cost of every upgrade. This can be accomplished through tax credits and subsidies for environmental upgrades or through insurance companies willing to foot the (partial) bill to replace elements of the home due to age and wear-and-tear.
2. Integration is too difficult: Seamless integration is another major obstacle to the adoption of home automation. Setup is prohibitively difficult. Many products won’t work together because they’re made by competing companies. Users often are forced to use separate apps or hubs for each appliance.
Thus, whichever company can offer a full-package solution has the best chance of solving this integration problem. And whichever company has the capacity to work closely with residential and commercial general contractors will have the advantage since selling a “full package” is only financially realistic when rolled into the mortgages of new-build homes. There’s a domino effect here since the solar roof you choose will require a battery store, and that battery store will work best with the related fuse box, which might act as the control hub to the rest of the house. This, in turn, will determine most of the other appliances, such as wall switches, light bulbs, thermostats, ceiling fans, etc.
Who Will Win?
One may argue that there is already a company set up to dominate the home automation market, which already has cachet with consumers, and is both full of shine and substance. Tesla is the only major tech company making it an integral part of their business to embrace the complexities of insurance companies and residential and commercial general contractors. This is necessary for them to drive adoption of their Solar Roof. They are also already masters of helping consumers with government subsidies that come with environmental tax credits from buying their cars. These are the types of moves needed to, gradually over 20 years, deck out a house, top to bottom, with a seamless, consistent, single-vendor solution that was paid for by rolling it into standard maintenance costs or mortgages.
There’s another reason why the winner in home automation won’t be one of the usual giants in consumer tech today. This will be unfamiliar territory for them since they focus on glamorous consumer electronics rather than practical products meant to last a generation of home ownership. Apple will miss the boat by trying to “design” their way to success. But let’s face it: Home appliances are not “objects of desire” like jewelry. Amazon will try to reach success by slashing margins but “cheap” is still more expensive than subsidized. Google will try winning by having smarter devices than their competitors but most devices only need to be smart enough to turn themselves on or off.
For now, it’s a dream state as we wait to see how home automation can work together for an entire household in a way that’s not cost-prohibitive. It must also be seamlessly integrated into the home. Until these hurdles are “solved problems,” home automation—and the opportunities that come with it for content companies of all types—simply cannot cross the chasm.
Rylan Barnes is the co-founder of ShopSavvy, one of the largest shopping/deals apps, that is part of Purch’s portfolio of brands, and Vice President of Software Engineering – Mobile and Emerging Platforms at Purch.
From the advance of AI and bots, to the explosion of mobile and apps, media companies must understand and evaluate a myriad of “hot” technologies. Business outcomes are linked to technology choices. Make the right choices, (and investments in the right platforms) and media companies can send traffic into the stratosphere. Miss a step, or a trend, and media companies can lose their shirt. Either way, the ability of media companies to determine their destiny as publishers is inexplicably intertwined with their willingness to experiment and innovate as technology companies.
Since Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post in 2013, the publication has become a sandbox for digital ideas that span a wide spectrum. At one level, efforts to re-imagine old-school audio podcasts have won the company recognition as a top 10 podcast publisher, according to May 2017 data from podcast measurement company Podtrac. At the other end of the spectrum, experiments with Alexa and Snapchat are breaking new ground, and building new audiences.
Peggy Anne Salz, mobile analyst and Content Marketing Strategist at MobileGroove, spoke with David Merrell, Manager of Product Development at The Washington Post, to discuss how the company is harnessing audio content, exploring voice interfaces, and preparing for the opportunities and challenges of storytelling on new platforms.
Peggy Anne Salz: Podcasts are popular, with almost 20% of U.S. adults ages 18 to 49 listening to them at least once a month. It’s a trend the Washington Post embraced early. Now you have a string of podcasts, several of which hit 1+million downloads as early as a month after launching. Tell me about the chief factors you considered before making your move.
David Merrell, Manager of Product Development at The Washington Post (Photo by Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)
David Merrell: We saw that smartphones are ubiquitous and—because podcasts are now available in everyone’s pocket whenever they want—we saw the opportunity. We then reviewed the studies, did research with our own readers and made the decision to go this route. We saw a fit with our efforts to expand our audio offerings in general across voice platforms such as Alexa and Google Home. But we also knew this was not a core competency. Our traditional competencies in news and storytelling were not what we would need to have a big impact in podcasts since podcasts are not about breaking news. We had to look at storytelling beyond breaking news, and really bring the analysis piece of it, as well as our own perspectives, into the podcast.
Since taking the plunge, we’ve launched several podcasts. There’s the historic focus podcast called Presidential, which was a huge success last year with one episode focused on each president. Now history wasn’t what you could call a core Washington Post product, but we were able to take our expertise and apply current thoughts and questions to historic aspects of the country and create a very compelling podcast that counts more than 9 million listens since it launched in January 2016. We just launched a sequel to Presidential called Constitutional that looks at the history of the Constitution and applies this to current events. With our lineup, we recently cracked the ranks of the top 10 publishers in the U.S. for podcast listens, which given the size of our team and where we were just a year ago is pretty incredible.
Podcasts and traditional news and investigative journalism—both are forms of storytelling delivered by mobile and apps. Some publishers might have been concerned one product would cannibalize the other, but you obviously weren’t…
It is a concern that comes up a lot. But we balance. Our big focus, in terms of business growth, is on digital subscriptions. Sure, it would appear at first glance that podcasts do not drive that since they are also available on iTunes. But we have seen very impressive results from successful marketing campaigns where we will tell people, “This is part of the wide breadth of Washington Post content that your subscription supports.” We’ve also seen huge engagement with our podcasts by our subscribers. So, even though this is a product that is widely available, it’s also a product that is highly engaging – and Washington Post subscribers access and appreciate the content.
Is this important in your efforts to attract new audiences?
When we’re talking about getting in front of new audiences, audio is a component of that. But we’re not limited to one way to get to this goal. Take our presence on Snapchat Discover. It’s also allowing us to get in front of people who wouldn’t necessarily have seen the Washington Post otherwise. Like all traditional media, we have an older audience that is very engaged, like other newspapers, we have had trouble reaching a younger audience and showing them who we are and what we offer in a way they can understand and see value in. And that’s important because don’t have to just get in front of them; we have to demonstrate value and show them why they should make the Washington Post part of their daily lives. Podcasts offer a way to do that, but so does Snapchat.
The Washington Post also launched a Reddit public profile, so another example of being on a platform to reach new audiences and find what a new home for your content. How do you choose and pursue these opportunities, without spreading too thin?
In the case of audio and podcasts, we made up our mind early that it was a boat we wanted to make, not miss. We launched Presidential, and after we were convinced of the success we hired people for audio roles. That’s what’s fueled the explosion is bringing in people with audio experience to help with the recording, to help with the scripting, to give feedback to the folks, internally, who are recording the podcasts. Since then, we’ve hired a product manager, who is almost wholly-focused on audio, and especially on Alexa, and then another hire in the newsroom focused on conversational audio. Now we are at the point where we are figuring out how do we record for new platforms like Alexa and Google Home, and what can we do to create a really sticky voice UI experience?
Frankly, the answer is always part tech and part user experience. What’s your approach?
There are different pieces to our Alexa strategy. The biggest one, is what you just described: the user experience. Right now, it’s like you wake up in the morning, you go to your kitchen where your Alexa likely is, and you say, “Alexa, what’s news?” Alexa cycles through a list of sources that you choose when you first set up your device, and that’s called your flash briefing. Alexa plays the briefing and you hear short bits of news from each of those sources. We’ve determined that this is the the stickiest news experience on Alexa right now because it’s so simple and baked-in to the device itself. It’s one word: news. The user just says news and gets news.
But it’s also a huge learning curve—for us as well as the consumer. As it works right now, people need to install a skill, which you can think of as an app. But there’s no home screen on Echo to remind people to tap on a Washington Post icon. Instead, users have to remember to say, “Alexa, open the ‘Washington Post’” in order to get to our news on the platform. We’ve found that is really difficult. It’s a whole lot easier for people to remember to say, “What’s news?” and then go into their flash briefing.
So, how do you plan to change that behavior or introduce new habits?
We’ve found it starts with marketing. We have to direct people to install our skill, and that means promotions to get our skill in front of people. So, we either need to reach them in exactly the right moment to tell them to enable “Washington Post” on their device, or we need to market to them on other channels away from the device. In which case, the marketing has to also educate them to remember to say, “Alexa, open the ‘Washington Post’” when they are back in front of their Echo. It’s a hurdle for every company with a skill. To encourage habits and get people to remember, we have also introduced a news quiz feature that’s updated fairly frequently to get people to come back in so they can play. They can only access the news quiz by saying, ‘Alexa, open the ‘Washington Post.’
As you said, every company that has a skill, or plans a skill, will struggle with this. What is your advice about how should they approach this?
We have not figured it out, so we don’t have a magic bullet solution. But I would say that content companies should go through the process of building a skill as a way to find out if there is a fit and find what users will value. If you are a smaller newsroom, and you have fewer resources in both engineering and editorial, then I would start with a flash briefing. Direct and educate your audience to add that to their flash briefing lineup, and go on from there since that is really the most engaging way and easiest way to get news on the platform.
Specifically, which channels and formats work to move users from accessing news via mobile apps or whatever platform they are currently using to consider getting news from Alexa.
We are in the very early days of experimenting with that now. To start, use a survey to figure out how many of your users have Echo devices. Then also look at your engaged users and target them. For us it’s our subscribers because they are the “Washington Post” super fans likely to switch. If anyone’s going to remember to say, “Open the ‘Washington Post’” every day, it’s going to be people who are already subscribing to us. As far as the precise channel, we start with email.
The Washington Post is exploring a plethora of platforms and technologies. But it’s also a company that has the resources to do so. What is your advice to companies that can’t be early adopters, but can’t afford to be late to the party either?
First, let me tell you about our approach. We dive in and define a period of time when we’re in all the way. After that, we look at the data to determine if what we are doing is worth further investment, or if we need to pivot. We do this will all the platforms. We go all in with AR, we go all in to test new storytelling format in Facebook Instant Articles, and we did it to create content for Apple News. We do this because we feel like that’s the only way to get enough data. It tells us where these new platforms fit strategically for us, and, it’s not working, we use the data to see how it could work for us and how we could work with these large tech partners to move their roadmaps in a direction that we would want to travel.
The point is I think media companies should be experimenting all the time. The status quo is not going to sustain anyone’s publishing business for very long going forward. So, I would encourage everyone, no matter their size, to experiment. I think it’s the scale of the experimentation that matters, not the company. If you’re a smaller publisher, look at where your audience is. If you have a huge percentage of your audience coming from Facebook, then I think it makes a lot of sense to focus some energy on Facebook products such as Instant Articles.
But don’t just look at your audience; look internally at the skills sets you have. You know, it’s a very low technical bar to start a podcast. I’m not saying that anyone can do it – you need some setup and training – but many companies and even individuals have achieved and engaged huge audiences with podcasts. It’s really a matter of trying it, seeing what resonates, and doubling down on that. And that’s the ethos of experimentation. Doubling down on the success to grow that success is something that any newsroom of any size can tackle.
So, is the post-Bezos Washington Post a publisher or a tech company?
Both. We think of ourselves as a technology company and a publisher at the same time. Our Arc Publishing [software-as-a-service] business continues to expand its client base, and we’re now licensing our tools to other companies including Tronc, which has adopted Arc as its fundamental platform throughout its nine-city metro chain. And there are more clients in the pipeline. Now that isn’t a business for a traditional publisher, but it’s something that we do and that’s all technology that we develop.
I’d say, we defy classification. We are a journalism company, we are a storytelling company and we are a technology company. You know, next to where I sit is a quote on the wall from Jeff Bezos: “What’s dangerous is not to evolve.” And that’s what it feels like to be owned by Jeff: to be constantly evolving and realizing that staying static is not an option. Staying static is the most dangerous thing a publisher can do.
Peggy Anne Salz is the Content Marketing Strategist and Chief Analyst of Mobile Groove, a top 50 influential technology site providing custom research to the global mobile industry and consulting to tech startups. Full disclosure: She is a frequent contributor to Forbes on the topic of mobile marketing, engagement and apps. Her work also regularly appears in a range of publications from Venture Beat to Harvard Business Review. Peggy is a top 30 Mobile Marketing influencer and a nine-time author based in Europe. Follow her @peggyanne.
When you think of The Washington Post, you probably think newspapers, not software company. But the reality is that the company operates a lot more like the latter. Under the influence of owner Jeff Bezos, The Post has been trying innovative approaches to everything it does and is experimenting with new ways of doing business.
That includes running an ad tech startup inside the company, one whose job is to use The Post as a sandbox of sorts to come up with new ways to deliver ads and then market the technology they produce to other publications. It’s not the kind of project you expect to find inside a publication like The Post, but it’s one of the qualities that attracted VP of commercial product and innovation, Jarrod Dicker several years ago.
Dicker says he originally reached out to The Post in 2015 about a job because he was seeing the continuous trend of media companies’ reliance on third-party companies for things core to the business, such as ad technology.
Seeing RED
After he came on board, Dicker helped form the RED team, which stands for research, experimentation and development. The group, which consists of software developers and product managers, began to look at the ways the company did ad tech.
As with any attempt to change the way you do business, Dicker ran into the “that’s just the way the industry works” attitude. His idea was to look at it fresh. What if you didn’t have any preconceived notions about how ad tech was supposed to work, how would you build it from scratch?
What he knew for sure was that users didn’t like the way ads were being delivered to them. So the first thing he decided to do was focus on improving the user experience. When consumers ignored ads—or worse, blocked them—Dicker recognized that the approach the industry had been taking needed to change if publishing was going to survive and thrive moving forward.
Thinking Like a Startup
“My pitch to The Post early on was—and it was me coming in as an individual contributor at the time—how do we take a startup mentality and really think about our focus as a media company and figure out how to differentiate ourselves,” he said. The problem as he saw it was that most media companies were focusing so much on building the content side of the business, they were forgetting about innovating on the revenue side.
So, he said they took the approach: “What if we actually applied an effort to build products that we think would be perfect for user experience, knowing how our consumers engage on The Washington Post and apply those to what we know brands and marketers want.” And that may just have been the key that unlocked the strategy. Dicker and the team he helped form wanted to create products that worked for marketers and brands as well as users who were fed up with online ads.
Getting talent to come in and work on ad tech proved to be a challenge at first precisely because it had such a bad reputation. “People didn’t want to work on ad problems because of the association with fraud, blocking and bad user experience. And the people who could apply [for these positions] and make the change didn’t want to be a part of it. They assumed that things couldn’t change or be better,” he said.
Those were precisely the people Dicker wanted however. Solving these issues requires people who could look at ad tech problems with fresh eyes. One of the problems they found was related to ad load time, so speed became a priority. The result was aproductcalledZeus that has the fastest ad load times in the industry, faster even than Google, according to Dicker.
Revenue Revisited
The RED team developed Zeus and other ad tech products at the Post including PostPulse, FlexPlay, Re–Engage, Fuse, InContext, and PostCards, and then began licensing them to other media companies, such as the Los Angeles Times, Toronto Globe and Mail, and Chicago Tribune. He found that providing a way to potentially improve ad technology across the industry, while producing another revenue source, was a happy side effect.
Dicker isn’t under any illusions that the tools his team has created are going to supplant the content/ad/subscription revenue model. However, he does see it as a viable additional form of revenue for the company, and he finds it exciting that his team is helping the core business grow and thrive.
“We now also have a Software as a Service model where the Washington Post is no longer solely reliant on advertising or subscriptions. We are actually becoming the technology vendor for other publications.” And that not only helps them diversify revenue, but has created an internal culture of innovation, which should help drive long-term success.
You’re half-way through a gaming session and the world is breaking apart around you as you run from attacking aliens. Firing as you go, you turn a corner and suddenly your view is filled with the sight of a brand new sedan. You see a cute dog at your local coffee shop. When you lean down to pet the dog an ad pops up next to your hand inviting you to buy puppy food. Sounds dystopian? No, it’s just the latest in advertising technology guidance from the Interactive Advertising Bureau.
Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) are exciting technologies, but they are far from mature. Early adopters have paid a lot of money for expensive devices but the future of both the hardware and software for AR and VR is still uncertain.
New Advertising Opportunities
This murky future hasn’t stopped the IAB from pushing out guidance in its latest “#IABNewAdPortfolio” on advertising formats for both platforms. The enthusiasm for new advertising opportunities is understandable. However, these new ad formats could easily kill off these infant platforms.
Worse, it is unlikely that early AR and VR advertisers will strictly adhere to the IAB’s guidelines. The reality is most ads have a tendency to step over the already permissive restrictions laid out in IAB documents. It seems likely that will also be the case with AR and VR.
The IAB has specified ad formats that could turn their hosting technologies into a wasteland. Advertisers could display any ad format onto a virtual wall or billboard. Considering the current state of display ads, that alone is a troubling concept. The IAB offers almost no restrictions on interactive objects, only recommending that a branded can of soda shouldn’t take up the whole view. One innovator in VR advertising provided their own horrifying example of a virtual landscape infested by Despicable Me’s Minions.
This image was proudly supplied to MIT’s Technology Review by MediaSpike as an example of just how great VR ads can be.MediaSpike’s website provides the view from inside the Minion blimp, complete with three Minion ad placements and one Pepsi can.
Disruptive, And Not in a Good Way
According to Crunchbase, this mission to create a world where every flat surface and vehicle stares at you through the dead goggled eyes of a Minion garnered over 5 million dollars in funding, surely a sign of the future to come.
The IAB guidance specifies an opportunity for interstitials as well:
360-degree video placed as an interstitial ad between different VR scenes. 360-degree video MUST completely fill the VR scene with video ad.
It is hard to imagine a more disruptive experience than being in one world and turning around into a 360 ad embodying an entirely different one. Such an ad format would be easy for less ethical content providers to exploit, with every virtual head turn or gaze providing a chance to fall into an ad.
I’m Looking at You, AR
Then comes the horror that is the IAB’s ad guidance on Augmented Reality experiences: AI that watches everything you glance at and triggers ads accordingly. Here’s the guidance on what happens when Orwell meets Ad Executive:
For example, a brand may choose to associate a product or service with dogs. When the AI system on a device “sees” a dog using the device lens, the AI system can associate the familiar concept with the previously known concept of a “dog.” The unknown visual of a dog that the AI system scans may be either an image of a dog or the three-dimensional animal. Once recognized, the system can trigger the display of brand content.
This is a terrible concept. First, eager marketers would likely train AI to trigger on even vaguely associated objects. Second, the guidance allows for display ads to be either attached to physical objects or stuck to your viewport until… I don’t know, you go crazy? The concept is so obviously terrible that it was satirized 17 years before the IAB even came up with it.
Tracking the Trackers
This doesn’t even touch on consumers increasing opposition to the tracking currently deployed in display and video ads on the web. Ads run by AIs that track every gaze would only compound that invasion of privacy.
Considering the low-quality technical performance of ad tech and the heavy battery use of AR devices, the platforms themselves would probably not be capable of supporting the ad space effectively. Endless popups assaulting an Augmented Reality user’s view is sure to destroy any chance the technology has to make it into the general consumer market. While current ad tech may have damaged the viability of publishers on the web, this may be the first time ad tech destroys a whole technology category with its urgency to monetize.
Slow Down and Get it Right
If AR and VR are to bring advertising dollars, it isn’t by replaying the mistakes of the last decade on new formats. The first step will be severely limiting the possible locations where—and amount of time when—advertising can appear. The next, in any guideline or best practice we must recommend against the invasive tracking of ‘Advertising Intelligences’. This is not the world we want to build and we cannot open the door for this type of tracking tied to these platforms.
This does not mean that there aren’t opportunities. Product placement is, without a doubt, a clear trade-off that most consumers have already accepted. Another option is that sponsors of VR and AR experiences could provide opening areas before users encounter the content, a more appropriate type of pre-roll. If the technology is given the opportunity to mature, many other opportunities will certainly emerge.
Whatever the future brings, if we wish for it to include AR and VR in our everyday lives—and in the lives of the consumers whose trust is essential to our success—we can’t allow these types of proposals to go unchallenged. If we need ads to fund these platforms, we will have to find more creative options, ones appropriate to the technology and user experience. No matter what business model supports AR and VR, we don’t want to create an untenable experience before these emerging formats have had a chance to develop and capture audiences.
Aram Zucker-Scharff is the Director for Ad Engineering in The Washington Post’s Research, Experimentation and Development group. He is also the lead developer for the open-source tool PressForward and a consultant on content strategy and newsroom workflows. He was one of Folio Magazine’s 15 under 30 in the magazine media industry. He previously worked as Salon.com’s full stack developer. His work has been covered multiple times in journalism.co.uk and he has appeared in The Atlantic, Digiday, Poynter, and Columbia Journalism Review. He has also worked as a journalist, a community manager and a journalism educator.
Some have dismissed VR as yet another overhyped technology category that will never achieve those prized hockey-stick sales projections. And let’s face it: Many consumers ignore it completely as solely for gamers. HPs recent entry into what it calls “commercial VR” may signal a new class of applications that could convince consumers to give VR another look. It should also inspire a raft of experimentation from a wide range of industries. At HP’s announcement at SIGGRAPH, HP’s partners used VR for applications as varied as creating immersive consumer and marketing experiences, to training and simulation, to curing PTSD.
HP’s announcement had three key elements. Most significant is the introduction of the HP Z VR Backpack, which is a battery powered, 10.25-pound backpack that’s driven by an Intel Core i7-7820HQ CPU, with an NVIDIA Quadro P5200 graphics card. Obviously, the main benefit of the wearable solution is the ability to move in a VR world untethered and without tripping over wires. Significantly, the unit features a dock, which allows developers to quickly transition back and forth between their desktop and wearable VR PC for virtual reality content design.
Beyond the backpack, HP is selling the HTC Vive Business Edition head mounted display (HMD). HP also plans to open 13 immersion centers around the globe to help companies experience HP VR technology and learn how to best develop and deploy VR.
Pole Position
An Audi prospect checking out the tires close-up in VR.
One early adopter of HP VR is Audi, which has developed two types of showroom-based systems. One allows potential buyers to walk around the car and peer inside all the nooks and crannies.
The other is a chair-based system that allows potential buyers to use a controller to navigate around and into the car. As they approach doors, trunks, or engine compartments in the VR world, hot spots appear to open and view inside, or sit. Audi plans to rollout the chair-based system to all dealers in the third quarter of 2017.
Magdalena Maczkowski is the Product Owner of Audi’s VR Experience/Immersion. As she explained, most prospects come to the dealership knowing which car they want to buy. Working with a sales consultant, they can configure and visualize the car on a traditional large screen display. When it comes to choosing colors and final options, they may don the VR headset to get a feel for how the panoramic sunroof looks, or the high-end 18” rims, or how the colors look at night under a streetlight. And, since Audi sells more than 50 vehicles, prospects can experience a car that isn’t on the lot.
Training and Entertainment Applications
Another early HP VR partner is Motion Reality, Inc, which develops real-time human motion capture and simulation technologies for the military, law enforcement, entertainment, and sports markets. The interface allows users of Motion Reality products to move within a virtual environment and interact with their fellow actors and surroundings by physically moving around a defined real-world environment equipped with motion capture technology.
Training and entertainment courtesy of VR.
VR for Pain Relief and Therapy
Using VR to help overcome PTSD.
A third company experimenting with HP’s technology is Firsthand Technologies, which uses VR for medical applications ranging from pain relief to helping reduce the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or phobias. Regarding PTSD, VR can provide controllable exposure to a fearful experience, allowing patient to process and ultimately overcome its impact. “People get stuck,” Firsthand CEO Howard Rose commented. “VR unsticks them with gradual, low stress challenges.” Rose also shared that Firsthand started using HP workstations in hospitals, in part, because of their whisper quiet operation.
Over the last 12-18 months, VR has evolved from a technology focused on a small number of use cases to a tool that can be used by any company that needs to market and sell its products, train its workers, or perform any number of other functions—including, of course, delivering information and entertainment. HP’s commitment to VR adds an exclamation point to that pivot. While VR has not yet captured widespread consumer use, the addition of more options and commercial implementations can only help build interest in virtual reality experiences as a whole.
Artificial Intelligence is a term used to describe everything from Apple’s Siri to Google’s Deep Mind and is being leveraged for a wide range of applications from shopping to quantum computing. At its core, AI is the capacity of computing to perform tasks that correspond to decision making and learning by humans. True AI doesn’t just infer or make deductions, it understands natural language, and can develop based upon experience.
Today, AI powers everyday tools used by millions of people. With the rising popularity of voice-based interfaces such as Google Home and Amazon Alexa – and the increasingly-accurate recommendation tools offered by the likes of Netflix and Pandora – AI tools are becoming embedded in people’s everyday activities and expectations.
Meet the Bots
Chatbots are another booming implementation of AI. That said, not all of them are powered by AI. As Trish Mikita, AccuWeather’s VP of Digital Media Strategy points out, “There are plenty of dumb bots out there. Many bots are based upon simple decision trees that use a scripted format to (eventually) deliver answers to common questions. Mikita says AccuWeather experimented with this approach in the past, however its latest chatbot leverages true AI.
The company has just launched AccuWeather for Facebook Messenger. The AI-powered weather assistant handles plain-language questions from users and provides easy weather-related answers. According to Mikita, Facebook Messenger was the natural choice for this launch given its large user base and the fact that AccuWeather fans were already communicating with the company on Messenger. “Messenger is a great platform that extends our conversations with customers in a natural way.”
Natural Language, Real Answers
AccuWeather’s chatbot—which was dubbed Abbi in beta — strives to be natural in its conversation. “The goal with us is for users to be able to ask a question, for our chatbot to come with an intent, and then answer the question in a meaningful way,” says Mikita.
So, while Abbi can answer questions about the weather forecast, she can also advise on appropriate attire for the day. The idea is for the chatbot to provide an accurate response given the context of a run in Cape Cod or a business meeting in Manhattan.
According to Mikita, being able to respond, “no it’s going to be 75 and sunny, no need for a jacket today” is a great first step. However, as the chatbot evolves, she looks forward to answers like “not today, but you’ll need an umbrella if you are going to be out later tonight.” To get there, AccuWeather is logging all of its audience interactions with Abbi. “This helps us with all of our products, so we can better understand users’ intent.”
Evolution of AccuWeather AI
Another step in AccuWeather’s chatbot evolution will be developing a personality. “A bot absolutely needs to have a personality, though it is a big challenge.” First, says Mikita, you must understand intent and get the outputs to be accurate. “The next phase is that personality piece. Natural interactions should have a personality. But having a personality doesn’t mean it has to be irreverent, or jokey. It can be a science nerd. Getting that personality to match our brand voice is a very important aspect.”
Mikita says that in addition to the continued development of Abbi (which may well have a name change in her future as the bot’s personality and functionality evolve), we can expect more AI-based launches coming within the next few months. The long-term roadmap also includes wrapping the intelligence piece into the AccuWeather API and incorporating these functions into its subscription products. AccuWeather’s presence on Alexa – as well as its evolving chatbots and plans for improved and innovative implementations of AI in its premium products – offers what Mikita describes as an “innovation opportunity that helps our other ad supported platforms.”
The company is already seeing efficiency savings with customer service. And they look forward to emerging opportunities to monetize these innovations directly. In the meantime, however, the company’s investment in AI is paying off in its ability to better interact with consumers, to get to know them better and to better serve their needs.
The lack of metrics and tracking in the world of podcasts has kept many advertisers away from the space. However, podcasting has been a boon for direct response advertisers like Squarespace, BlueApron, and Samantha Bee’s favorite, MeUndies. Apple recently announced that it will finally share analytics on listener behavior in aggregate. This is a tremendous advancement for podcasting. The data will help producers understand what content hooks listeners and where they drop off. But, beyond measuring listener behavior, Slate wants to answer one big question for brand advertisers: Do podcasts work?
To answer this question, Slate Group Studios partnered with Prudential Financial Inc. on a program called Wealth Wits and paired it with the first study of it’s kind to assess the impact of a branded podcast program.
Slate was an early pioneer in podcasting and has been a leading force in the space for more than 12 years. As listeners flock to the medium, brands are keen to experiment. In 2015, Slate created its first branded podcasts with HBO, GE and Prudential. However, the lack of measurement has hampered aspirations to build out robust, long-term podcast marketing strategies.
Our Wealth Wits Investigation
The Prudential Wealth Wits program offered a customized content experience powered by the listener’s own financial behavior. The capstone of the campaign was an interactive self-assessment quiz, promoted on Slate, that served up a personalized podcast. The branded podcast was created in partnership with Prudential and hosted by journalist, comedian, and author Faith Salie. Wealth Wits intended to help people of all walks of life think about their retirement and plan for the future.
Slate Group Studios created a custom methodology in order to understand and assess the overall impact of the Wealth Wits campaign on Prudential’s brand favorability. The study looked at overall brand awareness, favorability and consideration. GFK Research measured the results.
For the study, control survey responses were collected prior to campaign launch to ensure no exposure to branded podcast. Exposed survey respondents were collected via a host-read at the end of the podcast to ensure exposure to branded content. The survey was hosted at an easy-to-remember vanity URL.
Measuring the Results
One positive result was that nearly 20% of survey respondents reported that they were very or somewhat likely to recommend Prudential to their friends and family.
Because this was a cross-platform program with interactive, display and audio elements, the study allowed us to compare the impact of different media types. These comparisons produced the most exciting findings, offering up valuable, statistically significant evidence of podcast advertising’s effectiveness. In short, the study found that podcast units were more than twice as successful than banner ads in driving statistically significant lifts in Brand Awareness (+14%) and Ad Recall (+21%).
In addition to finding that podcast units were more than twice as successful than banner ads in driving statistically significant lifts in Brand Awareness and Ad Recall, the units’ display creative also led to statistically significant lifts of 7% in Favorability and 8% in Consideration.
It was encouraging to see the success of Wealth Wits reflected in meaningful metrics. However, it’s even more exciting that the results offer up much-needed data on the effectiveness of branded podcasts as a medium. While the creativity afforded within the podcast space and the deep engagement have made branded podcasts desirable, the data to support the investment has often been elusive. With our custom methodology, the industry at large now has a model to follow and hard numbers to measure against.
We can now say emphatically that, yes, podcasts do work.
About the authors
Charlie Kammerer is Chief Revenue Officer of Slate, where he focuses on developing ways for brands to tap into Slate‘s audience through editorial content, podcasting, video, and custom programs. Kammerer joined Slate in 2017 after spending twenty years at Time Inc., where he was a brand builder and revenue generator across a diverse portfolio of brands, including Real Simple, Fortune, Food and Wine, Cooking Light, Golf, and This Old House. He’s based out of Slate‘s Brooklyn office.
Jim Lehnhoff is Vice President at Slate Group Studios, Slate’s in-house branded podcast agency. Formerly, Jim was Director of Advertising Strategy at Gawker Media, where he was responsible for overhauling the company’s go-to- market strategy while managing a team of six strategists. Prior to Gawker, Lehnhoff cut his teeth at Serious Eats, Curbed Network, and The Onion.
On the web, content fraudsters run sites that generate millions of views, get hundreds of thousands of fans, and even claw their way up to the top of search pages. Some of these sites are nothing but one person. With low-cost cash grabs taking over search and social, how can publishers win? To fix the system, they first must break it.
To beat content fraudsters at their own game publishers have to understand them. At its most dangerous, content fraud dresses itself up like news. It also includes misleading memes, and thinly veiled sales pitches. Some sites may do this for amusement, others may be cause-driven. Many do it to make money by reaping numerous impressions on low cost ad buys, often using content networks like those recommendations you see at the bottom of most news articles, or affiliate marketing.
Fraudsters can succeed using the same systems as news outlets and, occasionally, content stolen from legitimate creators. Despite networks of cheap sites and Facebook pages run by one or a small number of people, fraudsters consistently beat large organizations to trending positions.
If the media is going to improve social networks and regularly duplicate victories there are things publishers can learn and patterns they can emulate while staying ethical.
Trending algorithms on Facebook or Google are trying to understand the relationship between points of data to spot behavior that indicates a pattern of growing strong connections. Think of a cat’s cradle, where every bend increases not just the number of connections, but the complexity of the pattern. The reliability rating of each connecting node is important but sometimes the numbers have greater significance. A Facebook link only needs about 1,000 shares in a close time-frame to trend, according to their tool for journalists, Signal.
Meaningful Connections
The first strategy outlets can reclaim from fraudsters is that it isn’t just about their own content. Successful content fraud pages on Facebook don’t just share their own content, but others’ as well. And some of the links may even be to legitimate sites. Publishers who make their internet presences all about themselves are at a disadvantage.
Second, publishers must simply to be more massive. Some are already starting to figure this out, BuzzFeed’s Food vertical alone has five Facebook pages. Even with huge platforms like Facebook, it doesn’t take much to create a trend. Posting to multiple pages can significantly boost readership numbers for a publication and its social media professionals.
A notable factor in Facebook trends is centering a large number of posts very close to each other with very similar titles. This is another way to apply viral cooperation, in that Facebook uniqueness (in headlines) can actually work against you. Seeking to publish similar headlines (or at least social headlines) between publications can be useful, especially if the topic is important to readers and worth promoting, regardless of which publication gets the clicks. Make massiveness for big important stories easier by coordinating with content partnerships on which big stories to publish when. It seems like it is less competitive, but it elevates all participants.
Narrow with a Focus
A third lesson, gleaned from examining content fraud Facebook pages, is that many of them are focused on small verticals but often share large stories that are related to the central focus. This is a behavior worth emulating: Approach readers via social networks on the smallest slices of their interests, and when there is a big story that affects more than one of those tiny slices, share it massively across all of them.
Go big, go narrow and don’t be afraid to make friends. Publishers have a choice: Complain about the system, or take advantage of it. If media outlets force their way into the flaws of the system, they can compete effectively, and push platforms to build better methodologies.
Aram Zucker-Scharff is the Director for Ad Engineering in The Washington Post’s Research, Experimentation and Development group. He is also the lead developer for the open-source tool PressForward and a consultant on content strategy and newsroom workflows. He was one of Folio Magazine’s 15 under 30 in the magazine media industry. He previously worked as Salon.com’s full stack developer. His work has been covered multiple times in journalism.co.uk and he has appeared in The Atlantic, Digiday, Poynter, and Columbia Journalism Review. He has also worked as a journalist, a community manager and a journalism educator.
With all the moves by brands and publishers to use virtual reality for immersive storytelling, it was only a matter of time before true VR advertising would follow. But this being a relatively new form of advertising means that the rules and standards haven’t been written yet.
While recent VR launches by Google, Adobe, and Nokia show the potential of ads in VR, the momentum has yet to start catching on for audiences. And with current audience limitations — and what’s viable given industry trajectories — it seems that VR advertising remains a niche reality for now, despite exciting new experiments.
Pioneering Ventures into VR Advertising
Google is experimenting with VR advertising.
As part of its Area 120 internal incubator, Google recently announced its foray into VR advertising: Advr, an ad prototype that’s essentially a cube of content. Viewers are able to see an ad by clicking on the cube or staring at it long enough to generate a video ad pop-up. It’s an almost telekinetic use of your eyes to open a jack-in-the-box of advertising. The viewer can then either watch the ad or close the player.
In a blog post announcing the prototype, which is currently in testing with VR game developers, Google stated that VR ad formats — and its work within this space — ought to follow a few key principles:
easy for developers to implement
native to VR
flexible enough to customize
useful and non-intrusive for users
Adobe also has a VR advertising venture that creates a “theater-style experience” for 2-D videos, rather than 3-D or 360 degree video. Think of it as a video clip pausing for an advertisement to take over a whole theater before slowly fading out and the clip starting again.
It’s a bit more intrusive than Google’s effort, but Adobe says it could get this kind of advertising solution out to publishers in the next six to 12 months, and could eventually offer the same attributes of video advertising, including consumer targeting and detailed analytics. Adobe also says it wants to prioritize mobile VR as opposed to higher-end headsets, to make use of what’s more affordable to audiences.
Nokia’s OZO camera
Not to be outdone by competitors, Nokia is boasting a VR advertising experience as well. Technically a 360-degree video , the ad allows people to people virtually walk around a house to see how the its new line of digital health products by are used. It’s also a not-so-subtle way for Nokia to advertise its VR-creating hardware, the OZO camera.
Destination Advertising
While the potential for VR ads to boost retail and e-commerce (as Nokia is doing) is certainly on point, travel is another promising area. Cathay Pacific has partnered with the VR and 360-degree advertising firm OmniVirt to deliver such an ad experience. Marriott Hotels has also used 360-degree video to transport people to exotic destinations.
While these brands are trying to be forward-thinking and innovative in the advertising space, they’re also able to tap into the emotional longing for anyone considering a vacation. It’s no wonder that a recent study by Vibrant Media on VR and AR advertising shows consumers are interested in experiencing travel destinations before buying their tickets.
Niche Footholds = Niche Outcomes
Still, the same study by Vibrant Media lays out the harsh truth to new pioneers in VR advertising: There are tough hurdles to building audiences. The study found that consumers don’t want to have to worry about additional software and hardware. They also worry about getting charged for overages with cellular data.
Given that VR headsets have yet to expand beyond gaming and entertainment, it’s tough to imagine VR advertising expanding beyond these same kinds of consumers in the short term. Data from Forrester Research indicates that 46% of online adults in the U.S. in 2016 didn’t see themselves using VR and 42% of online adults hadn’t even heard of VR headsets. Mass consumer adoption of VR technologies is at least five years away, according to the research.
Meanwhile, a January 2017 report by Yes Lifecycle Marketing found that few advertisers are currently delving into VR or have plans for it. More than half of marketers surveyed said VR or AR advertising didn’t apply to their organizations, and only 8% of them were currently using VR advertising (7% AR advertising). The current marketers in this space are definitely on the cutting edge.
It’s important for publishers and advertisers to experiment with virtual reality and immersive storytelling, because they can truly be awe-inspiring experiences. But so far, the moves into VR advertising are baby steps and the standards and best practices are still a work in progress. While there is a load of potential, we have a long way to go for it to be a reality for the public at large.
