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Innovation

Q&A: Kamo Asatryan, Primer CEO and Co-Founder

Mobile and apps have combined to do much more than empower consumers to get stuff done on their terms (and in the context they choose). These channels are creating an increasing sense of “entitlement” and the expectation among consumers that content and experiences delivered by apps should also be personal, relevant and literally aligned with “where they’re coming from.”

On the Web, we expect companies and content owners to connect the dots in our data (cookies, search queries, and past patterns of behavior) to deliver us to where we want and need to be in order to continue our own journey.

On mobile apps, consumers expect a personal and streamlined experience— but it has been extremely difficult for companies to tailor the customer experience. Enter Primer, a startup that has developed technology that enables companies to instantly deploy native screens personalized for every new user and where they are in the journey. Peggy Anne Salz — mobile analyst, nine-time author and Content Marketing Strategist at MobileGroove — interviews Kamo Asatryan, Primer CEO and Co-Founder to gain insight into mobile pain points and how his company is addressing them.
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Kamo Asatryan Headshot

With Primer, you pinpoint a key problem in mobile apps — what was the pain point you set out to address and why?

My own personal background is in growth, which has been my focus for about the past 8 years. Before Primer I co-founded a social media startup where I headed the growth team that allowed the company to grow from zero to +100 million users. In that time, we learned a lot and it’s these learnings that are the inspiration for Primer. At first, we were going to be an agency for companies that are looking to help with growth, and with getting and keeping users through engagement.

We spoke with companies and found they were all challenged — across the board — because their mobile apps allowed them to connect with their customers but didn’t make it possible for them to change the user experience to suit that customer. Companies were used to doing this on the Web, where technology and tracking allowed them to check the referring sites and traffic sources and decide the landing page, article or item they needed to show their visitor. On mobile apps these companies felt like they were taking a huge step backwards because it isn’t possible to change experiences depending on the traffic source. As soon as the user goes into the app store, all tracking information is lost.

There is indeed a disconnect. How are you bridging that gap?

Since companies don’t know where users are coming from they are forced to serve the same experience to everyone, and we all know from our experience on the Web that a generic customer experience won’t cut it. Search queries, intent, and other data that is served up when a visitor comes to a website don’t exist in mobile and that has a huge impact on conversion, engagement and growth because you don’t have visibility into intent. With Primer, companies have visibility into intent and context because our technology allows companies to make that connection.

A big part of this is the unique links you generate that effectively fingerprint the consumer as they move from the traffic source to my app. What is the user experience and what’s going on in the background to make this happen?

Primer can personalize new user screens for every traffic source. After a simple SDK integration, we allow the company to automatically show each new user a highly relevant experience in the app depending on whether that user came from a referral, an ad on Facebook, or any other traffic source. It starts with links that we generate and that the company can place in the various places where they expect to get traffic. That can be advertising, blog posts, social media — all the sources where you are and want to engage with your customers. When the user clicks on one of the links, we basically grab some information from that click. We gather the information around the time — so when they clicked on it — as well as the device, the carrier and other information that basically combines to format the fingerprint. The fingerprint allows us to connect the most important dots in the customer journey and experience.

Normally, when a user clicks on the link and is sent to the app store to download the app, that would be the step where you would expect to lose all the information about that user and the traffic source because that’s the precise point where every piece of tracking information is lost. With our SDK, the user opens the app and Primer can then grab information after that click — the same information, the time, device, IP address and so on. Since the time difference is very small between the moment the user clicks on the link in the ad or the blog post, and the time the user opens up the app they downloaded for the first time, we can determine that the user really is the one that came from the blog post where you reviewed a certain product, for example. No that we’ve made that connection — literally— Primer allows the company to welcome that user with native screens containing content that matches that user.

App shares and invites are proving to be effective app marketing tools, driving downloads because people pay more attention to recommendations from friends and peers than outright advertising. How do you personalize that experience?

So let’s imagine a user is invited by their friend to install the app, our server uses the fingerprint information to determine where the user came from and determines it was shared by a friend. The SDK then defines what objects to create, and that is based on the screens the company has designed in our web-based visual editor. But in this case the SDK builds out the native screens ­that include the friend’s photo, name, and a greeting to welcome the user to the app. The friend invited the user to the app, and that user is greeted by that friend. It’s a personal and powerful way to start the app experience.

What about the context of the share? Surely, knowing why someone thinks I should check out an app would be even more powerful…

Sharing is big and we are supporting that. So we aren’t just showing who shared it with you we are also personalizing it with a message from the friend. So they can have a message that shows: Hey I found this post that is really insightful because of this reason, so you need to check out the content. We provide that context and knowing the reason why someone shared something is important context to the reader, information that would otherwise be lost in that exchange. So imagine you see news on CNN about a team and your friend is a big fan. You can share that and add a message to the email or text that says: ‘hey this is I like this article because it’s about your favorite team, so check it out.’ Your friend sees that, clicks on the article link and then goes to the app. She installs the app and he opens it up and instead of just seeing the article, she also sees your picture, or your name and the message that you sent. It’s all right there.

Primer exposes users to content in a way that appears seamless and meets our expectations for some continuity in our experience. What’s the difference with deeplinking, an approach that also helps deliver content from inside the app?

You are right — deeplinking is exposing content in the app. What we are doing is actually building screens into the app that are about that content. It’s about a better user experience because the content matches the user’s exact expectations — because we know the link that triggered them to download the app and from that starting point we are showing them what they appreciate most when they open that app. And then the other key difference is that with Primer you are not just exposing content.

You can also change how you present that content at any time. Today if you want to change that content, you have to submit the app to the app store, wait for two weeks for the review and every change you make means you have to puts your engineers and designers to the task. It makes sense that you are not going to change your content very much — or very quickly — because it means time and money. With Primer you go in and change it yourself — without engineers and without designers — with our code-free visual editor, which takes 10 minutes. And this is important because you can never let your content go stale. Your content and your traffic changes all the time and if your app just stays static and doesn’t change — because the release cycle is so complicated —then you are missing out on growth. .

Of course, we access content and conduct commerce on apps. What are your plans for other platforms like wearables?

At the core, it’s all about user intent. It you don’t know your user intent then you are stuck building out an experience that is a one-size-fits-all type of experience — and that doesn’t work on any platform. Since users are coming from different places and have the intent to do different things with your app, we need to meet that expectation when they come in to the app because that’s how companies can keep users coming back to their app. There is real interest in serving a continuous and consistent experience that meets people’s expectations across all of their devices. We are starting with mobile because it’s where the traffic is and where the problems are right now. But I think as more devices come out and as content starts to live in more places, then it will become crucial for us to continue to connect these experiences and meet user expectations on every platform, not just mobile.

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. 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.

Innovation | Perspectives

Beyond the ‘valleys and alleys’ to find media innovation

History reminds us that often, some of the most impactful ideas in the media industry were inspired and developed not in valleys or alleys, but in ivory towers.
Samuel Morse with his recorder, photograph taken by Mathew Brady in 1857 cc wikicommons 
Samuel Morse with his recorder, photograph taken by Mathew Brady in 1857 cc wikicommons

Today, most of us view Silicon Valley and Alley as the hubs of disruptive technology and the successful start-ups born and raised there as the leaders in a quickly evolving industry that will continue to revolutionize the world. But history reminds us that often, some of the most impactful ideas — specifically, those in the journalism and media industry — were inspired and developed not in valleys or alleys, but in ivory towers (aka universities).

Many of us may know that Samuel Morse pioneered the commercialization of the telegraph in the U.S., but we may not know the inspiration behind his research: the work of his friend, electromagnetism researcher, Charles Jackson.

William Paley, the broadcasting tycoon responsible for the early success of American media staple Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), injected innovation in his business with the introduction of color television — specifically, the field sequential color system — developed by Peter Carl Goldmark, a scholar at University of Vienna who later led CBS Laboratories.

Jonah Peretti, a father of social content, used his research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in tandem with key learnings from the field of network science developed by his friend, then Professor Duncan Watts, to create BuzzFeed.

Jonah Peretti, Photo Courtesy of The Associated Press
Jonah Peretti, Photo Courtesy of The Associated Press

These real-world examples illustrate that innovation is, in some cases, the application of academic research. Morse, Paley and Peretti tapped into the knowledge hub of academia to disrupt the market, launch new businesses and discover creative solutions to existing challenges. For those of us in today’s media industry, these examples should remind us to not simply look toward Silicon Valley for solving tomorrow’s problems, but rather universities that stay grounded with a longer-term approach.

Two types of Innovation

The futures lab can be seen inside the Reynolds Journalism Institute on the campus of the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri. Photo courtesy of the Reynolds Journalism Institute.
The challenge of industry-academia collaborations stems from the existence of two types of innovation: the innovation of media practitioners and firms, and the innovation of academia — one looks for answers to specific problems, the other aims at the creation of knowledge.

The solution is to develop a third approach — a mutually beneficial approach to research and development wherein incentives and timelines are aligned and projects are those that look at exploring high value concepts and challenges on behalf of a media firm, yet outside of the company’s mainstream activities. This challenge is broad enough to appeal to an academic, but still has the real world impact potential a media practitioner and/or firm is looking for. New fields such as virtual reality, artificial intelligence and automation are some of the prime candidates for this model.

For professors, the goal is to prepare their students to be well-equipped for their post-educational careers.

“More than ever, journalism education needs to focus on experiential, project-based learning.”
—Reynolds Journalism Institute futures lab director Mike McKean.

Collaborative research projects require open lines of communication between universities and media organizations so they can better address the challenges faced by both parties.

“Students will be the industry’s future leaders — and consumers — so it’s essential that as news organizations experiment with new formats and techniques, they’re doing so in a way that’s relevant to new generations.”
—AP interactives editor Nathan Griffiths.

Universities gain an avenue to apply insights learned in the classroom while professionals are exposed to new thinking.

“Journalists can learn from students about younger audiences — how they consume news and the best ways to engage them.”
—Berkeley Lovelace Jr., a journalism student who recently worked on project with the Associated Press.

Academic-infused Innovation

Facilitating partnerships do not require significant investments, especially compared to the addition of a new academic department or a new research lab within a company.

One such initiative is an experiment The New York Times run in partnership with NYU and CUNY to study hyper local news. Another is Hearst Corporation’s partnership with students from Parsons New School of Design to develop Glossy.io, a new approach to surfacing archives of digital magazines.

Students at Columbia Journalism School test AP’s latest virtual reality experiment.
Students at Columbia Journalism School test AP’s latest virtual reality experiment.

The Associated Press runs research programs with the Columbia Journalism School and the Missouri School of Journalism to investigate new fields such as virtual reality experiment and automation.

This academic-practitioner partnership approach to research could be a new model for innovation. History and present day initiatives like those above reveal that when academics and practitioners work together to analyze data and apply key findings, impactful insights are formed, innovative strategies are implemented and new businesses are catalyzed.

Indeed, innovating our approach to media innovation — looking beyond valleys and alleys to ivory towers — will be worth our while.

I’m the Strategy Manager for The Associated Press and fellow at Columbia Journalism School. I write about media, storytelling and innovation. Let’s connect. (@fpmarconi)

Accuweather Header Image
Innovation

Inside AccuWeather’s hyper-local, global weather outlook

Weather: The universal conversation starter. Weather may well top the list of daily content go-to’s worldwide. Perhaps because it has global and local implications. In fact, what could be more hyper-local? Deciding whether to plant the tulips or to send the kids to the park this weekend? Figuring out if your Monday work outfit requires you to rock the rain boots or the Manolos? Yet as any content provider knows, the demands of local content are complex.

Steve Smith, president of digital media for AccuWeather knows the challenges presented by the company’s continued global expansion: AccuWeather has a global audience of 1.5 billion and two thirds of them are outside the U.S.  “While a lot of people talk about ‘going global’, we’ve been living it,” says Smith.

Weather information and its related news, editorial and video has to be localized. And to do so, AccuWeather often partners with local media companies to incorporate their content into its product and also to understand the needs and expectations of customers in a given area.

But localization goes well beyond content according to Smith. Delivery, UI and UX all need to be customized for specific audiences as well. For example, in much of Europe, weather content is map-based and employs what would be a dizzying array of icons and symbols to audiences elsewhere. Whereas in Japan, weather animations are extremely popular.

While the company does market research and user surveys to understand specific markets, Smith says that AccuWeather’s longstanding partnerships with global companies like Samsung, LG and Sony have been extremely helpful in enhancing their learning.  Samsung, for example, has many country-specific offices that Smith and his team visit to show them products and concepts and solicit their feedback. “Use the partnerships you have,” Smith advises. Though he also feels that “the digital toolkit available today makes it much easier to test products across audiences.”

The company’s global strategy is not entirely focused on meeting the needs of its diverse audience while they are at home, of course. Smith says that consumers also have an expectation for a personalized experience wherever they are. “In many ways, language and location are big indicators of intent,” says Smith. And AccuWeather looks at these factors to determine whether, for example, your phone is German so that your information is presented in the metric system no matter where you are traveling. There are also subtle language distinctions that contribute to this experience. If you are American, the day might be “partly sunny,” but if you are British that same day will have “cloudy spells” instead.

“We’re living in an age where we all have supercomputers in our pockets equipped with high-powered GPS,” says Smith. As a result, customer expectations are growing more intense. Typing a location, he says, will soon be a thing of the past. Even the notion of location being city-based is also fading. AccuWeather already offers weather on a neighborhood basis in many cities. In New York City, for example, Manhattan isn’t nearly specific enough; the app knows if you are in Chelsea or the Upper West Side. The company is rolling out this level of specificity worldwide on a city-by-city basis and in 100 languages. The investment is a sound one, says Smith. “We have found that if we don’t get the location right, consumers don’t trust anything we tell them.”

Given how personal weather is—no matter where you live—Smith sees a time in the near future when your trusted weather ally has access to your calendar and sends you useful information before you ask. And then, you won’t even need to consider whether or not to pack that umbrella.

Innovation

NewsON: delivering local news anywhere, anytime

A fortuitous result of the ever-proliferating sources for news has been that Americans are consuming more of it than they have in a long time. And the majority of Americans—nine out of ten—follow news about their local area very closely or somewhat closely. However, the proportion of Americans who get news from traditional media platforms—television, radio and print—has been stable or declining in the last few years (though for local news, television still holds its own).

Along with a glut of “news” content we’re also seeing content consumption habits evolve: more and more people consume news on mobile—which is not simply a result of the popularity of mobile devices, but reflective of consumers’ anytime, on-demand expectations. This proliferation of news sources and changing consumption patterns has created issues for content companies and consumers alike. Certainly, it increases competition. But it also causes quality issues, as it can be difficult to find trusted and reliable information, particularly for an audience unlikely to sit down to watch the evening news every night at six.

However, broadcast media veterans are not standing idly by. NewsON—launched by ABC Owned Television Station Group, Cox Media Group, Hearst Television, Media General, Hubbard Broadcasting Inc., and Raycom Media (with Sinclair Broadcast Group joining as a partner)—was founded to provide local news to mobile consumers nationwide. As CEO Louis Gump put it, “In an age where fragmentation is common, we believe creating something that makes it easy for viewers to find trusted news brings great consumer benefit.”

interactiveThe NewsON app provides access to live and on-demand local newscasts and local news clips. The free, ad-supported app features flexible navigation that encourages discovery, offering instant access to broadcast-quality video. It also enables people to search by market via an interactive map and for curated content that links coverage of breaking news events from multiple stations. NewsON is available for Apple iPhone and iPad, Android phone and tablet, and on the Roku platform.

While many of the broadcasters with whom NewsON works have individual apps and make much of their content available digitally, Gump points out that the app has the advantage of offering information from multiple sources within a given local market, which allows consumers to dig in on topics of interest. It also allows people anywhere to find locally-produced video on a given topic, which is likely to offer insights and depth not available from national sources. As examples, Gump sites the New Hampshire Presidential primary and weather events such as the January 2016 blizzard that affected several east coast states, with distinct coverage being offered in local markets.

For the broadcasters that work with NewsON—120 stations in 92 markets, covering 76% of the U.S. population—Gump says NewsON delivers expanded audience reach across all demographics. While Gump would not comment on specific financial terms, he says “the economics at NewsON are weighted heavily in favor of the stations.”

A third benefit, which Gump describes as “kind of extra credit,” is shared learning. “Any TV station group that doesn’t have a strong digital offering and isn’t investing in innovation probably has some big problems,” he said, also pointing out that NewsON provides additional opportunities for experimentation and shared learning among participants. He’s seen confirmation that there’s an increasing desire to time-shift news viewing, but also sees behaviors that debunk the popular notion that people only want to watch short-form video.

NewsON, says Gump, was founded on three main principles: “Do the right thing; serve our customers; and move forward.” As he points out, people are looking for content that meets their needs, on their terms and it is essential to focus on those needs and expectations—with a consistent future-focus. And to that end, he says we can expect to see more partnerships this year, with the goal of increasing local content offerings in existing markets and adding new markets to the mix, as well as significant product updates and evolved advertising capabilities.

Innovation | Perspectives | Revenue

A tale of two legacy brands: The New York Times & Yahoo

We all know the narrative that older media brands are struggling to reinvent themselves for the digital age, while upstarts have the advantage of being “digital natives” with no legacy burden. But what about the older “digital native” brands such as AOL and Yahoo? Looks like they might end up having an even more difficult road ahead.

Take the recent quarterly and year-end earnings reports from the New York Times and Yahoo. While the Times saw strength in digital subscriptions and native advertising, Yahoo struggled to deal with massive layoffs and “digital magazines” that weren’t gaining momentum. While both are considering streamlining their organizations, Yahoo has to take much more drastic measures.

Digital growth at the Times
At the Times, digital-only subscriptions grew 20% from the previous year profits were up nearly 50% from last year’s quarter. Print circulation, meanwhile, decreased by 6.9% for the daily and 4.4% for the Sunday edition, but circulation revenues were up 1.3% in the quarter due to an increase in delivery prices. When it comes to ad revenue, print decreased by 6.6% whereas digital increased by 10.6%. A growing strength, however, is mobile ads, which were up 74% in the quarter, making up 22% of all digital ad revenue (which itself is now 24% of all ad revenues).

CEO Mark Thompson said the Times’ T Brand Studio, which produces sponsored content, has become “a meaningful part of the business,” hinting at its importance in long-term strategic growth plans.

The results came the same day executive editor Dean Baquet sent an internal memo announcing an overhaul of the Times’ structure and strategy. “Does our system of powerful desks help us cover big stories that don’t easily have a home—like climate change and education—or does it sometimes get in the way? We deeply value the craft of editing, but in the digital era should we continue to edit every update of every story at the same level?”

The “desks” he’s referring to are the traditional Metro, National, International and other broadly named desks that help classify Times coverage—and thereby newsroom resources. Baquet revealed in the memo that he had asked David Leaonhardt, a recently named columnist and one of the founding editors of The Upshot, to help him examine the current newsroom structure and any necessary changes.

Yahoo’s retrenchment
Meanwhile, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is feeling an even bigger burden of change, especially in the face of dwindling prospects nearly four years into the job. Yahoo’s loss in the quarter was $4.4 billion because of a write-down from investments that didn’t pay off. Without that charge, the company actually earned 13 cents a share. Compared to Google’s 31.9% profit margin in the fourth quarter, Yahoo’s profit margin was an embarrassing 2%. It’s now planning to close down five offices, and its board announced it was looking at “strategic alternatives” (in other words, a potential sale).

It doesn’t help that one way of streamlining costs—laying off 15% of Yahoo’s workforce—adds to a brain drain already taking place at the company. The New York Times reported in January that more than a third of the workforce has left in the last year, prompting Mayer to approve “hefty retention packages” to prevent people from taking job offers elsewhere. Yet most recently, entrepreneur Arjun Sethi, who helped Yahoo compete in the field of mobile chat apps, announced he was leaving.

Much of the criticism toward Yahoo is that its vision was poor from the start. “It’s very, ‘We’ll try this, we’ll try that, we’ll throw a bunch of money at that thing without a clear, coherent strategy around it,’” Jan Dawson, chief analyst at Jackdaw Research, told the Los Angles Times.

The problem with Yahoo is that its expectations are higher in the digital-native space, having to compete with the likes of Facebook, Google on the platform side and BuzzFeed and Vox on the content side. The New York Times has figured out that an older brand can succeed online with the right revenue mix: mobile ads, native ads, subscriptions and memberships. It’s not going to be easy, but they have certainly built up trust and credibility over the years.

While the ceiling is so much higher for ambitious digital natives, the bottom is so much lower when things go sour.

Advertising | Innovation | Perspectives

The future of media depends on great consumer experiences

With audiences widely dispersed among mobile and social apps – and, soon, virtual reality and augmented reality experiences– publishers who want to thrive must both follow consumers where they want to go and meet them on their own terms.

These were a couple of the themes that emerged from the wide-ranging conversations at Digital Content Next’s annual members-only Summit 2016 in Miami. DCN members met to explore content and business models given that consumption patterns are constantly changing, many consumers are actively avoiding advertising, and digital intermediaries are extracting much of the value out of the publishing economy. Speakers and attendees talked about changing their relationship with programmatic ad marketplaces, seeking alternative sources of revenue from subscriptions and memberships, and aggressively pursuing revenue diversification.

In his opening remarks, DCN CEO Jason Kint noted that although the Interactive Advertising Bureau recently celebrated the milestone of $50 billion in revenue generated by online advertising, more than 50% of the revenue currently goes to two companies: Google and Facebook, with premium publishers collectively garnering about 15%.

“Most of the money doesn’t actually get into your pocket to pay for the professional content, the entertainment and journalism you all do,” Kint said. DCN’s mission is “to make sure the next $50 billion is different.”

Premium publishers need to build on the trust and reputation they enjoy, rather than fighting with consumers over their use of ad blockers, Kint said, pointing out that a blockers are a symptom of consumer dissatisfaction. Smart publishers need to look at the opportunity “in the growth of this audience that is looking for content on new terms.”

“It’s a symptom of a bad user experience – users taking action on their own,” agreed Justen Fox, senior product manager for revenue products at Vox Media. Consumers are weary of pop-up and pop-under ads, not to mention advertising that contains malware. He finds that the use of ad blockers is higher with social and referral traffic, undermining audience acquisition, and said it’s also higher with returning visitors to Vox’s websites. If publishers and advertisers fail to clean up their act, the problem will keep getting worse, he said.

“Focusing on the user experience is actually the long-term solution,” Fox said. However, no publisher can do it alone because consumer impressions are formed by the experience they get across all media sites.

Sarah Frank, executive producer of Now This News, said that killing their website and forgetting about SEO is the best decision they ever made. It gave them the mandate to create content experiences optimized for different social channels so that consumers have a great experience wherever they find Now This content.

Marketers take action
Meanwhile, marketers seeking to distinguish themselves from the bad actors in digital media are increasingly creating their own content to build positive customer relationships—with or without the help of publishers.

marketerpanel
(L-R) Dave Peck, Global Head of Influencer & Social Media Marketing, PayPal; Katrina Craigwell, Director, Global Content & Programming, GE; Christopher G. Laughlin, Client Services Director, SapientNitro; and Laura Henderson, Global Head of Content & Media Monetization, Mondelez International

“We’re trying to figure out, how we stop interrupting the content and become the content,” said Laura Henderson, global head of content and media monetization at Mondelez International.

Her group has gone as far as to decide the content it creates ought to be good enough to make money on its own merits. One of the products from this division of Kraft Foods, the Oreo Twist, Lick, Dunk mobile game, made back 2.5 times the money spent to produce it, with about 5 billion virtual Oreo cookies dunked, Henderson said.

Like publishers, marketers “feel the pain of ad blocking, of our content being skipped, blocked, avoided at all costs – which means we need to figure out a new way,” she said.

Katrina Craigwell, director of global content and programming at GE, leads a team dedicated to connecting with lovers of science and technology on any medium or platform where they can be found. These content creators compare themselves less with their traditional industrial competitors than with media sites that create engaging tech content, be it the SyFy Channel or the people at NASA who produced the “7 Minutes of Terror” Mars lander video.

Asked if she had any use for publishers now that GE can publish its own content, Craigwell said she looks for partners who know how to tell a great story or can help the firm figure out an approach to emerging formats, such as virtual reality.

Building brand strength
Many of the discussions of how publishers adapted concerned how they preserve their brand value while adapting to new business and content delivery models. The Onion Chief Operating Officer Kurt Mueller said that is something the satire site has had to be careful about with its experiments in native advertising: content is sponsored by advertisers but produced by the editorial staff.

The challenge is readers expect a certain attitude from Onion content, “and if we don’t give it to them, it comes off really badly for both us and the brand. You’re just creating ads if it’s not authentic to what you are,” Mueller said.

Laura Evans, VP of audience development and data science at Scripps Networks Interactive pointed out that data offers an excellent way to understand customer preferences, which can be leveraged to create better experiences. The goal, said Evans, is to “turn a visitor into a brand loyalist.”

As Membership Economy author, Robbie Kellman Baxter put it, “you need to love your customer more than your product” in order to create a positive relationship that will last a lifetime. And, as DCN CEO Kint pointed out in his opening remarks, “No business has succeeded, long term, without giving its customers a great experience.”

David F. Carr is a writer, editor, web consultant, and student of digital business. He is a Forbes contributor, a former InformationWeek Editor-at-Large, and the author of Social Collaboration for Dummies.

 

Innovation

Q&A: Gilles Raymond, News Republic Founder and CEO

European-based global news syndicator News Republic has made its mark as a disruptive, ‘mobile-first’ provider of highly personalized, and hyper-relevant news by delivering people what they want, when they want it, to their device or format of choice. With apps for smartphones, tablets and wearables, readers can customize their News Republic news feed from over 1 million topics, drawing from 50,000 articles, 40,000 photos and 1,500 videos that are easily, intuitively and algorithmically nano cast to literally go with the news flow. Peggy Anne Salz — mobile analyst, nine-time author and Content Marketing Strategist at MobileGroove — catches up with Gilles Raymond, News Republic Founder and CEO, to map the developments since 2008, when his company sparked a global news revolution by giving the power of information back to the people — completely ad-supported and enabled by mobile technology.

GRaymondNews Republic has been named the world’s largest news provider with millions of readers and 1,650 licensed publishing partners globally. Please update us on the key stats around partnerships, readership, and what you think is driving your app growth?

Gilles Raymond: Today our partners include AFP, Al Jazeera, Associated Press, BBC, Bloomberg, CNN, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, India Today, Reuters, Russia Times and Tencent. We count 12.5 million active users generating well three billion news views. We purposely made the decision not to crawl the Web and grab RSS feeds because we didn’t feel it was right or fair to the media ecosystem. We took the higher, harder road to syndicate content, signing deals one by one, that has allowed us to grow and be a truly global new provider. We have chosen an approach that benefits the ecosystem — which is how we have sealed deals with more than 1,650 media companies worldwide, content we offer via our app in 40 countries and 37 languages. We publish 50,000 articles a day, full articles, and give our readers all the content on the mobile platform, as well as on a tablet and a smart watch.

News Republic is available on a variety of platforms. How important is it to be ‘mobile-first’ and what platforms are working best for your content?

Gilles Raymond: Mobile is a must — which is why we chose from day one back in 2008, when we set up the company, not to go to desktop. We made the connection that personalized news made the most sense on a personal device, so we bet that mobile would be the number one medium people would use to access content, especially news, and we do not have a presence on desktop to this day. We are also not convinced about the opportunities on smart TV — at least not for accessing news content.

For now, we focus on platforms: smartphone, tablet and, increasingly, on smart watches. The News Republic app was awarded Best Mobile Media Publishing App at Mobile World Congress 2015, and we made that app available for Apple Watch in April 2015. We’re thrilled to be an early pioneer on wearable devices, and to extend our content to the Apple Watch platform. We were one of the first developers invited to Cupertino to create for the Apple watch and we created a unique user experience tailored for it – one that optimizes “Glance Journalism” and seamless connectivity between devices.

You are obviously focused on being on the bleeding-edge of mobile, but you have also begun to unbundle your offer to provide channels of content not just channels of access. How has this progressed to date?

We started by following our readers and reading the data. The average user is reading or viewing 186 pages per month. So, the figures basically show the average user is reading a book of nearly 200 pages dedicated to news that interests them. Then we started to drill down and saw that we had a huge audience for tech news, for example. We decided to provide them an offer and a platform that was more tech oriented. We later did the same with news and reviews about video games. This way the user is in control and decides — and that choice is now between three apps that we publish: News Republic, which is all the news content, filtered to show people what matters to them, and Appy Geek focused on tech news and Appy Gamer that showcases games and gaming news.

You offer all of this content for free. Explain your decision and how you have been able to create and cultivate an ecosystem that brings together both publishers and advertisers to make this possible — while also making sure your content — and advertising — remains relevant, not annoying.

Gilles Raymond: Our mission is to deliver news to each citizen of the world and that to do that we believe that the appropriate business model is to give news for free supported by advertising. Some of the advertising is banner, which has been by default the most successful format. But while the reader might still see a banner, they’ll also see a list of articles of related and recommended reading where the suggestions are mixed with native advertising, which is contextually relevant because it fits with the content.

So, the sponsored post makes a comeback — and a lucrative one at that?

Gilles Raymond: Well, it is clearly marked as “advertising.” We have just formatted it to fit less intrusively into the content flow. The benefit here, for readers and brands, is the relevance of native advertising. It’s highly personalized, which means the advertiser is not shooting into the dark. They are promoting to a target audience and in instances where the additional information makes sense. Another format where we see a significant revenue stream, and as well as usage, is video. We have seen a three times increase in the number of mobile video ad views over the last 12 months, which is why we are convinced of the power of this medium

That’s a great segway to discussing the user and usage trends you are seeing. Last year you surveyed 14,000 app users across six countries. What insights can you share?

Gilles Raymond: We did the survey to find out why readers consume news and the platforms they prefer, but we also gained much more in the process. First, we found out that readers consume news to stay connected to the world. The majority of our respondents, 73%, consume news on apps several times a day — and over one-third check their apps between 30 and 60 minutes during the day to check daily news.

In every country tech news was the most popular. But readers in different countries saw different value in reading new in general. Americans read news to “engage with people” and “feel smarter”; British like to share news to amuse their friends; French are more likely to share news in order to scorn the subject of the news report; Germans access news in order to have interesting conversations and be ‘in-the-know’; Italians are the most averse to people and celebrity news; Spanish and Mexicans appreciate more “shocking news” and Spanish, in particular, are enthusiastic about the possibility to access news on wearables. Meanwhile, Russians are the least likely to share news to support a cause. They also consume news because they believe keeping up with news is the way to make better decisions.

Your global data reveals your users have many diverse views when it comes to value of new content and how to consume it. How do you intend to make sure your content — and how you offer it — is sticky and compelling?

Gilles Raymond: If you look at the big picture you see that there was never a time when so many people were spending so much time reading news — they just want to have it their way. We believe the best editor-in-chief for the news you, Peggy, want to read is you, Peggy. Therefore, we have built in a system where we push and recommend the news on the topics the reader is genuinely interested in, either through a manual filter or through a curated filter.

But, to be fair, you aren’t the only news company offering personalized content…

Gilles Raymond: Yes. But we are the one with such a vast array of content — 50,000 articles, 1 million topics — that we make it possible for people to personalize their news and 60% of them do, even if their interests are at the very end of the Long Tail. I call that a big differentiator. The other is convenience. People don’t need to open a Web browser or mobile web browser or even an encapsulated browser.

First, we created the audience with a great app experience. Since we didn’t have a big, beautiful brand like the New York Times, or the big marketing budget you get when you are VC-funded, we had to say our differentiator will be our focus on quality. Thankfully, the app experience delivered and we have been featured many times in the App Store. That, and the fact that we are in 37 languages and 40 countries, allowed us to approach the OEMs.

Today we have partnered with leading mobile manufacturers including HTC, Samsung and Acer. etc.. They like the fact that they can take our application, put it on the handset and immediately appeal to 90%+ percent of their user base — especially in territories where English isn’t the leading language. Coming from Europe being global and open is in our DNA— and handset makers in countries like China appreciate this. Our partners also appreciate that we have signed deals with media companies for the content, so the level of exposure of liabilities is zero compared to other companies that take feeds without checking on the terms and conditions associated to the feed.

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. 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.

 

Innovation | Perspectives

Can smart TVs get smarter?

The promise of the “smart TV” is that it will do much more than just provide a guide for channels—that it can personalize our experience, serve up the channels we want, connect us to the Internet, add in streaming options and more. And the more connected it becomes, the more chance for advertisers and publishers to target users with messages and content.

While the smart TV hype has outshined reality so far, the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Vegas brought some potential good news for smarter TVs.

The Korean electronics giant LG, for example, is adding more than 50 streaming channels to its latest generation of smart TVs. Switching from cable networks to streaming content from publishers such as BuzzFeed, Wired and the Wall Street Journal is now as easy as the click of a button. LG partnered with the startup Xumo to fuse Internet content into television’s traditional environment, and partnered with Watchmi, a German Internet video startup, to give 300 more international streaming channels to its new TVs.

Samsung also announced new features at CES, positioning its products at the center of the Internet of Things ecosystem. The ability for its smart TVs to recognize add-on boxes such as an Xbox is one such boon. It makes the life of a consumer a lot less complicated because it eliminates the need for any extra remote controls, as the main remote control can commandeer these other devices.

Streaming updates
Sling TV, the live streaming service introduced at last year’s CES, announced this year that it’s planning to overhaul its app entirely. Its new app will allow consumers to easily identify their “must-see TV.” Viewers will also have the option to store their shows for up to three days in the cloud, and navigate recommendations provided by Sling on what to view next. And let’s not forget that streaming behemoth Netflix activated its service in more than 130 countries during a CES keynote address.

But beyond the hype at CES and the positive attributes of smart TV are some of its pitfalls. One big one is that for all the bells and whistles these TVs offer, few people take advantage of them. The market research company NPD estimated in an August report that “roughly a third of smart TVs in the U.S. weren’t actually connected to the Internet.” In comparison, the number of Americans using streaming devices such as Roku, Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV is climbing even faster than the number using smart TVs (and their functions), according to researchers at the Parks Associates.

And that’s because these different devices are solid competition for smart TVs. “If you’re a streaming media box (maker), you’ve got much more ability to push new features out into the market at an affordable price,” Barbara Kraus, Parks Associates’ director of research, told the Associated Press.

Overcoming ambivalence
The influx of more apps on these devices could put a strain on the popularity of smart TVs if they don’t institute them as well. Ali Kani, general manager for Nvidia’s Shield Android TV device, said that while smart TVs satisfy the need to watch video, the future living room will be “revolutionized by apps.”

Underscoring this and the general ambivalence about smart TVs is the simple fact that new technology gets old pretty quickly as even newer technology emerges. If companies such as Samsung put new features only in its latest generation of products and don’t state whether older smart TVs will ever get this new technology, it leaves consumers hanging, and not in a good way.

This applies to the  “so-called ultra high-definition 4K television” as well, according to the New York Times’ personal tech columnist Brian X. Chen. He argues that given its expense and the underwhelming digital enhancements meant to come with this kind of high-definition television, it’s not in the consumer’s best interest to buy. Topping that off is the dearth of quality programming average viewers would want to see, including arguably America’s most popular show, “Game of Thrones.”

“My advice: Wait at least another year or two before buying it,” Chen wrote.

Perhaps that’s a good piece of wisdom all prospective smart TV owners ought to take. Not to mention any publishers hoping to make a splash in the added streaming channels on smart TVs.

Innovation

Content syndication the latest target in The Washington Post’s news-business revamp

The momentum at the post-Bezos Washington Post shows no signs of slowing, starting with a focus on readers that is fueled by a complete technological transformation. From building Arc, a proprietary content management system, to hiring a slew of engineers and embedding them in every area of the business—today’s Washington Post has made its global ambitions clear. The company has just launched an all-new news service and syndication site that is reflective of its focus on internal innovation and ever-widening business plans.

The new news service and syndicate delivery site provides streamlined access to content from The Post, Bloomberg News and Japan News for use in subscribers’ digital publications. Like all things Washington Post these days, the new site emphasizes user experience, and focuses on speed and ease of use to allow clients to quickly identify content of interest and incorporate it into their sites.

Syndication is among the many elements of the newspaper business that are ripe for reinvention according to Alan Shearer, editorial director for The Washington Post News Service and Syndicate. “For many decades, we had a curated news service that was very successful. We sold mainly to newspapers on a subscription basis—but, as you can imagine, that business started to decline.”

Shearer says that the newly-revamped news service and syndication site was not prompted as much by the decline in subscriptions as by the increased opportunity offered by the digital content marketplace. The Washington Post has a much broader range of potential customers than in years past. “We went from a market limited to newsprint publications to an almost unlimited market all over the world.” While their current customer base is dominated by newspapers and new sites, Shearer says they are already starting to see a change, with more interest coming from digital-only niche sites and foreign organizations seeking larger licensing deals.

From the subscriber point of view, the new site offers more granular content and image search. According to Shearer site speed is the number one priority—too many categories can slow site performance. Clients can expect fast access to three times as much news and multimedia content. The next step, says Shearer, is ecommerce which will not only allow clients to more easily track use and pay bills, but also enable anyone, anywhere to buy and use Washington Post content: “the micropayment dream.”

He emphasizes that the newly revamped news and syndication site is indicative of The Washington Post’s broader philosophical approach to technology and business. “We see this as an ecosystem that is going to be continually improved through user suggestions. We have a saying now: If you have to have a meeting or committee to study something, it is already too late. Do it, if it doesn’t work, do something else.”

Innovation

With Lifestyle Studios launch, Scripps makes its multi-platform plans clear

Well known for its stable of popular lifestyle television media channels such as HGTV, Food Network, and Travel Channel, Scripps Network Interactive has been hard at work bolstering its digital presence with ongoing investments in its menu of original programming for Ulive. Now, after what Scripps Lifestyle Studios SVP and GM Vikki Neil describes as a year of intensive reorganization, resourcing and future-centric thinking, the company has debuted Scripps Lifestyle Studios, a new business division designed to drive digital content innovation and advertising solutions.

The full-service editorial unit will spearhead the development of compelling lifestyle experiences across multiple platforms including social media, apps, websites and third-party digital media outlets. According to Neil, television programming is about creating content for a 24-hour day, usually for lean-back experiences. Scripps Lifestyle Studios will do that while also creating content suited for social channels and for audience’s lean-in needs, such as how to make a birthday cake or a holiday cocktail. The formation of the new division “not only increases our capabilities, but emphasizes our dedication to creating the right content for the right platform, delivered at the right time,” says Neil. The goal is to create relevant, shareable content that instantly connects with digital-first consumers.

Upcoming launches from Scripps Lifestyle Studios will feature both linear and digital talent across multiple platforms and include HGTV Happy’s short videos on simple ways to brighten lives; a Facebook Live day-long cookie party; an Alton Brown takeover of the Snapchat channel, with a behind-the-scenes look at his favorite eats; and revealing sabotage secrets from hit Food Network show Cutthroat Kitchen.

With the new division comes “deeper integration of advertisers into storytelling.” As Neil points out, Scripps Networks Interactive has created branded content for many years. However, she says the formation of the new division comes with a philosophical shift: “We are asking our editorial team to think differently. I truly believe that if you do it right, the advertiser enhances the audience experience. What we’ve learned through experimentation is your structure doesn’t need to be church and state; our entire staff can be thinking about when, where and how to best bring a product in.”

It is significant to note that within Scripps Lifestyle Studios, the editorial side has the lead on branded content and product integrations. Neil says that advertisers trust its editors to know their audiences and best create content that will resonate with them.

In fact, Neil believes that Scripps’ editorial strength will be key driver of its digital success. “We hire very creative people across the board, but interestingly most of them are millennials and a huge percentage are women.” The result is that Scripps Lifestyle Studios is creatively fueled by its target audience. She says you can “feel the vibe when you walk our floors…these people are here because they are passionate about food, travel, home.” And this, combined with elements such as The Food Network Test Kitchen—an important hub of the new division—brings with it credibility and trust.

Neil says the formation of Scripps Lifestyle Studios makes it clear that “digital isn’t a side business;” it’s an expression of Scripps’ plan to build a brand that extends well beyond T.V.

Advertising | Innovation | Perspectives

The rise of VR for immersive storytelling and advertising

Bearing witness has been one of the essential boons for journalists when it comes to delivering stories few have access to: “I’m there, you’re not, let me tell you about it,” is one such adage that comes to mind.

But with the rise of cameras that can record a scene in 360-degrees, stereoscopic video (which creates depth) and a new generation of headsets accessible to consumers, the ascent of VR as a new storytelling staple is clear. Coupled with collaborative partnerships across the technological and media landscape, the chance for VR to enable the “presence” of a user — in other words, to make her feel as if she is actually reacting to the environment she is immersed in — is now unprecedented. With this, “bearing witness” is taking on a different meaning.

The bottom line? The chance for VR to encourage empathy can potentially transform journalism and viewers’ understanding of the world. Plus, it might also create the type of immersive advertising and sponsored content that no ad-blocker could deny.

New York Times as Pioneer
The world took notice when the New York Times recently gave away 1.31 million Google Cardboard headsets to its print subscribers, solely to bring them into the VR experience. The simplicity and crudeness of the cardboard is its genius, Wired’s Marcus Wohlsen argued. “It’s cheap enough to be handed out for free; we smartphone users supply the only part that’s expensive,” Wohlsen wrote.

This sort of accessibility is key to the potential for VR to actually reach mass audiences instead of a tiny subset of early adopters. Producing VR work is already an expensive endeavor. While outfits like the New York Times Magazine, Frontline and Vice News — with their stories on the refugee crisis, the Ebola outbreak and last year’s Millions March against police brutality, respectively — have made major dives into VR storytelling, they are part of “the 1 percent” of news organizations that can afford to do so. Headsets like the one from Oculus Rift and other apparatuses for viewing VR are expected to become cheaper and therefore more mainstream, but it’s a far cry from the ubiquity of simply the smartphone. (Although YouTube, for one, has said it wants to bring VR to anyone with a smartphone.)

That’s why the Times’ home delivery of Cardboard units to use with a smartphone was a win in more ways than one. First of all, it delivered the headsets with its newspaper, acknowledging that traditional distribution system — and subscription — as a precursor for this modern news consumption. The Times is also planning to extend its virtual reality endeavors into sponsored content, as Sebastian Tomich, the Times’ senior vice president of advertising and innovation, told Contently. “Any format the newsroom is pursuing, you can assume that we’ll pursue it on the brand side as well,” he said.

Enticing for Brands
It’s not a surprise, then, that other brands and publishers are considering VR’s potential. Writing for TheMediaBriefing, Chris Sutcliffe notes that a VR environment can be enticing to brands and other publishers, as brands are already relying more on “experiential events” to help communicate their brand messages. The “rawness” that VR environments offer and the audiences they attract could potentially provide a new revenue stream, he writes. Designer Rebecca Minkoff, for example, is selling her own cardboard VR viewer for $30 for viewers to see how she filmed her runway show.

All this is not to say VR doesn’t have its hurdles. The recent Tow Center report on virtual reality acknowledged producing such work involves a series of trade-offs, especially around production time, quality and the capacity to reach wide audiences. Tom Kent, the standards editor at the Associated Press (which is also stepping into VR) also wrote a strong statement on Medium of some of the ethical questions that could impact VR journalism in the future, which New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan also discussed.

The Times’ release of its VR documentary “The Displaced” coincided with a range of critiques, from the difficulty of using the Cardboard unit to questions of the authenticity of the story. Michael Oreskes, NPR’s news chief and a former Times editor, cautioned, “Our stories can’t be virtually true. They must be fully real.”

As we ponder how VR fact-checkers would operate, we can also consider the vast potential of what immersive journalism—and advertising—could do to create a whole new dimension in audience engagement.

Innovation | Revenue

Customer-first strategy reflects—and builds—the power of the brand

Revenue diversification has long been a focus of media organizations but lately, the rise of ad blocking has underscored its importance. All trusted media brands have built enduring relationships with their customers—audiences and advertisers alike—however, developing new revenue streams is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. Publishers contemplating  new sources of revenue  must carefully consider options that deepen those customer relationships or fill their new or nascent needs while also protecting the power of their brand.

With that in mind, Digital Content Next added a new members-only event to it mix: Power of the Brand, held December 1st at Conde Nast’s new home at One World Trade. The event featured a wide range of non-advertising-based revenue opportunities being explored by media companies. On the Media co-host Bob Garfield—who admittedly spends much of his time chronicling the failure of media to effectively monetize digital—kicked off the day by outlining the dominate revenue strategies that publishers are using today.

Phil Terry, CEO of Collaborative Gain, Inc. set the tone for the day with the revelation that most consumer and product experiences are mediocre because the vast majority of them are created without actually including the consumer in the creative process. In part, he says this is due to “the arrogance of past success,” which can create dangerous product development blind spots.  Instead, Terry says that those leading innovation strategy—be it the C-suite or product managers—need to get out and see how customers are actually using their products. This allows them to identify pain points and genuine opportunities.

Paying For It
DeniseBobGarfield came back to the stage to interview with Denise Warren, President-Digital & CEO, East Coast Publishing for Tribune Publishing, about one of the toughest revenue streams: subscription models. Warren, who hails from The New York Times (which recently reached the 1 million digital subscriber mark) joined Tribune publishing in May and  has already announced plans to change the way it charges for online content in 2016. The Company will be shifting to the metered model, which Warren said allows customers to decide what sorts of stories are most valuable to them.

However, Warren emphasized that they will also focus on monetizing their most differentiated content—which for many Tribune publications is local investigative journalism. The big challenge in moving customers from free to fee is helping them recognize the value proposition which Warren said requires that they understand the audience. “Then we have to help them understand that we have what satisfies them and scratches their itch.”

Bring the Brand to Life
NPRCertainly, this understanding (and subsequent customer satisfaction) is unique to each brand. NPR listeners become super-fans of on-air personalities and, according to Executive Director of Marketing and Branding Alan Feldenkris, NPR is increasingly exploring ways to “monetize that fandom” through live events. Success at NPR starts with brand love and affinity and, Feldenkris said, live events deepen their customer relationships while providing the potential to develop new revenue opportunities.

Fans of Refinery29 rely on the brand to offer stylish, creative and accessible fashion inspiration. CRO Melissa Goidel said it is essential for Refinery29 to remain true to its audience above all. So when they were thinking about New York’s Fashion Week—one of the most exclusive events in the world—they took a different approach and decided to throw a giant party that everyone could attend. The resulting interactive fashion and art event, 29 Rooms, attracted 6,000 live attendees and reached 1 in 6 Instagram users worldwide. While the event had sponsors, the company viewed it primarily as a way to extend audience engagement into the real world. They recently produced a similar event celebrating #MinnieStyle, demonstrating the ability to monetize that engagement.

Few brands garner as much fan engagement as Time, Inc.’s Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition but, according to Ian Orefice, Time Inc’s Head of Programming, until recently they had “given away” one of the most exciting aspects of the issue: the cover reveal, unveiling it on popular television shows. Orefice said they had an “ah ha moment” this year and created a sponsored original video in which model Hanna Davis learns she’s that she’s made the cover. He said that Time Inc. is now “trying to act more like a TV production company and think about windowing,” so that it takes strategic approach to video that allows the company to make the most of its assets monetizing them through licensing and other partnerships.

Learn as You Go
For Rodale, its assets include a wealth of health and wellness lifestyle brands, which the company leverages through print and digital subscriptions, utility apps, ecommerce and books. The company recognizes that its customer relationships revolve around the deep subject matter expertise of its writers and editors and is currently beta-testing a new way to offer that expertise to those who want to dig into a subject and learn more: Rodale U. Offering courses on topics from running a marathon to clean eating, Diego Sanchez, Executive Director, Digital Business Development says that, based upon internal marketing alone, Rodale has already driven more than a million people into the platform with a paid conversion rate of over 1%. And just this week, Rodale U debuted its first sponsored course.

Clearly, each of these brands is driven to drive revenue beyond traditional advertising opportunities. But they are driving safely. Throughout the day, the recurring theme was deep customer understanding and creating value for these customers in order to build new roads that lead to engagement and revenue.

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