Category results for "Innovation"

Three Tech Day Takeaways

April 6, 2015 DCN

At our Digital Content Next members-only Tech Day, held April 2 at the Time and Life building in NYC, topics included dealing with cyber security threats, how to make decisions about moving into the Hybrid Cloud and how to respond to the challenges brought on by viewability and ad blocking.

This event brought together senior-level technology executives from our member companies to learn, network and share common experiences from their respective – and sometimes very different – businesses among them Slate, CBS Interactive, AP, Forbes, About.com, Everyday Health, and Hearst. We also hosted a special interview with Co-founder and President of Power to Fly Katharine Zaleski. Three takeaways from the event:

Flexibility is key

“Different groups needed to interact with content in very different ways.” By decoupling the schema from its CMS About.com “Created a content schema that could grow and change as business needs do.”

— Nabil Ahmad, CTO, About.com

“Moving to the cloud has allowed us to cut the order processing time but even more importantly, it allows us to move from concept to deployment much more quickly.”

— Lorraine Cichowski, SVP, CIO, Associated Press

“Flexibility is a bad word to a lot of people… but allowing people to work remotely and be focused on outcomes actually allows them to work longer and harder.”

— Katharine Zaleski, Co-Founder & President, Power to Fly

Building its CMS using Google Polymer Web Components allows Atavist’s CMS to quickly and flexibly produce interoperable custom elements. The result “encourages unique and creative stories” that include “easily assembled blocks of images, sound, video and interactive charts.”

— Jefferson Rabb, CTO and
Thomas Rhiel, Director of Reader Experience, Atavist

Integrated Tech Is Integral to the Business

“It is essential to be a technology-enabled company…technology can enable better monetization. You need your tech team to be tied into revenue goals. If they are in the loop, they can make ad delivery better or faster and make you, as a publisher, able to perform better than anybody else.”

— Dan Check, Vice Chairman & VP, Engineering/Product, Slate

“You must have a security strategy from the top down. The reality is that employees are often the weakest link it any company’s security…it is essential to not only inform employees, but also to enable security to be everyone’s business, not just the tech department.

— David Hahn, CISO, Hearst

“Today’s audience wants to easily transition across devices: 40% of users run the same app in multiple devices, many switch between devices to complete a task. We need content and UX to work together to maintain a seamless experience.”

—Deepak Chokkadi, VP, Software Development and
Premal Parikh, CTO, Everyday Health

Invest in Tech Talent

“For me the whole thing is culture. You want people who will fit in and inspire others around them…you can do a lot to train them and get them fully up to speed.

—Nabil Ahmad, CTO, About.com

“The numbers speak for themselves, we don’t have enough people in tech so we can’t afford not to have women in these careers…I think we have to give up this idea of being valued by the amount of time you sit at a desk and evaluate our tech performance based on outcomes.”

—Katharine Zaleski, Co-Founder & President, Power to Fly

“As we work on our strategic cloud planning, we find that tech staff needs new skill sets so we are doing cloud training for some of the staff.”

—Lorraine Cichowski, SVP, CIO, AP

Click here to see the full agenda with speakers and sessions.

Innovation | Perspectives

Data-driven design: informing readers’ deeper desires

April 1, 2015 DCN

So much of digital publishing is now focused on the post-mortem: What happened on my site? Which stories performed well? Which stories did my audience share? Are those two things equivocal? How can we do better next time?

The emergence of data as a publisher’s new best friend in answering those questions is a compelling development, provided publishers have the tools and teams to act on this new information. Understanding audience behavior and patterns can inform everything from the way that editors plan and program content to the new products publishers build (or, just as importantly, don’t build).

Unfortunately, the constituent who consistently gets left out of the post-mortem is the most important one: the reader. Maybe it’s time to reconsider.

A while back, my colleague Elizabeth thought her HuffPo app was actually including her in the postmortem – by telling her how she was doing as a reader.

More than most people I know, Elizabeth is acutely aware of the kinds of stories she typically reads and makes no apology if they skew towards, say, “lighter” categories in Entertainment. (She is, for the record, a whip-smart graphic designer.)

So it was with great delight she observed that News and Tech & Innovation appeared foremost in her category navigation, ahead of even Comedy (which she’s constantly trying to get me to appreciate more as a pastime). The order of these Categories, she insisted, was moving periodically according to her recent reading habits. The fact that, at that moment, News and Tech were ahead of her self-described favorites, was evidence that she was blossoming into the well-rounded reader she aspired to be.

Neither of us was entirely sure her HuffPo app was actually playing back this data to her, but in a way it didn’t matter because it provided an interesting perspective: What if publishers explicitly reflected back our current regimen of content? What could that do for our relationship with publishers – and engagement with their content?

Most of us would like to think we’re relatively informed readers, even if we’re not up on the very latest in global politics or other proxies we use for “being informed.” And most of us would admit we have some guilty pleasures mixed in there too — from listicles to cat videos to celebrity gossip, few of us are completely immune to the appeal of these stories, no matter how frivolous or motivated by schadenfreude.

To stretch the nutrition metaphor a bit, maybe some sort of “content pyramid” would help us identify and organize the optimal consumption of each “content group” specific to our needs.

Theoretically, this is a utility publishers could provide with their growing data fluency. Opting in to an interaction like this could fulfill a need – not too far removed from why we share content on our social networks – in the form of validation; it could serve as a measure of reassurance, encouragement, or simply well-defined information on what kinds of readers we are (kind of like a less cynical Buzzfeed quiz), and by extension, the people we aspire to be. At its most basic function, a utility like this would communicate that the publisher and the reader had in fact entered into a relationship predicated on consideration and appreciation of the reader’s time and habits.

For publishers it could even be used to incentivize audiences to step up their engagement with certain categories or products e.g. rewarding users who hit a certain threshold with access to exclusive content. It might even be a service worth paying for.

We’re starting to see signs that publishers are moving towards more relationship-building cues via reader utilities. The Pool, a new site from 6 Music presenter Lauren Lavern and former Cosmopolitan and Red Magazine editor Sam Baker joins the likes of Medium in telling readers right up front how long it will take to consume each story. The Pool goes a step further and lets users search for content based on how much time they have.

A logical next step in this more personal approach to publishing would be to not just reflect what users should read based on their habits, but to let them know what they are in fact reading, acting as the mirror that journalism has always purported to be, albeit on a larger cultural scale. In digital, publishers have the opportunity to project that responsibility down to an individual level.

Brandon Carter is a Content Specialist at Outbrain (@brandedcarter @Outbrain). He began his career as a staff journalist for the Maine weekly ‘The Coastal Journal’ before moving to New York and joining the product licensing divisions of Peanuts Worldwide and Sesame Workshop.

Innovation

All You and Health Partner with eMeals to Do the Meal Planning For You

March 27, 2015 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

Time Inc.’s All You and Health brands have partnered with eMeals to deliver weekly meal plans. Clare McHugh, Group Editor, All You and Health says that her team is always on the lookout for new ways to provide content that their audiences will find useful. They were familiar with eMeals’ reputation for delivering customized meal plans to more than 1 million subscribers so when eMeals approached them to launch its first-ever branded meal offering, McHugh says they immediately saw an opportunity to deliver something the readers of All You and Health would find truly beneficial.

McHugh describes the Health audience as busy people who are focused on making small changes that help them live happier lives: “They are doers; they take tips and put them to work.” Fans of All You, she says, are women trying to make the most of their time and money. While both audiences increasingly engage with the brands digitally, the All You reader “does everything on her smartphone—it’s her camera, travel planner, newsstand…her total life organizer.” Both groups are pressed for time, but want to make healthy decisions about what to eat and how to feed their families, so these brands were ideal for developing eMeal plans.

The All You– and Health-branded meal plans are delivered by email or through the free eMeals mobile app and provide main dish recipes for seven dinners per week designed for a family of four. The Health recipes are made with whole foods and loaded with good nutrition. The All You recipes are balanced, designed to please the entire family and cost less than $3.50 per serving. The All You plan also offers a bonus dessert recipe and a cost-per-serving breakdown for each meal. Subscribers to both plans also receive interactive shopping lists and a nutritional analysis of each recipe.

Both All You and Health have a long history of providing recipes suited to readers’ lifestyles and expectations. In addition to nutritional information, it is noteworthy that recipes feature “regular, not obscure or intimidating, ingredients.” At the same time, they can be relied on to offer healthy, easy-to-prepare and, in the case of All You, affordable meals for the whole family. “We’ve tested all of our recipes, so people know you can trust them.”

Maintaining that trust was important as the All You and Health eMeals offerings were being developed. In fact, McHugh tested the plans out herself, “I went to the store on Sunday with the weekly plan and made all of the recipes during the week. I experienced such a sense of relief that all of the meal planning and grocery lists were already done…I love the eMeals approach. It does so much of the hard work for you.”

McHugh points out that women’s magazines have been in the business of helping women run their lives more efficiently “as long as there has been a republic. Though the mediums continue to evolve, the fundamental needs don’t change,” she says. Thus, this latest offering is a natural extension of what women’s magazines have always done. “We’ve taken a print expectation—cutting out great recipes and putting them in a recipe box—and brought it to the digital age.”

Innovation

Investigation Discovery Debut Podcast Goes Deeper into the Mind of a Murderer

March 25, 2015 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

It’s a great time to launch a podcast given the proliferation of mobile devices and a consumers who are hungry for audio content. But the timing could not be better to launch a true crime podcast, as evidenced by the massive audiences that tuned in to the Serial podcast from the creators of This American Life. Investigation Discovery (ID), a go-to destination for fans of mystery and suspense, had several podcasts in development and was even exploring the possibility of radio programming when Serial exploded, setting a slew of records for podcast downloads.

“I wouldn’t be telling the truth if I said Serial had nothing to do with our decision to start with this podcast,” says Kevin Bennett, general manager for Investigation Discovery of the channel’s first foray into podcasting. To coincide with the release of its new series, Mind of a Murderer this month, ID has released a companion podcast narrated by the television show’s host, renowned criminal psychologist and trial consultant Dr. Michelle Ward. While the podcast had been in development since the show’s conception, the unprecedented success of Serial “proved there was a big audience for this genre,” prompting Information Discovery to maintain an aggressive timeline for the release.

Bennett says he was not surprised that a podcast in the crime, mystery and suspense genre is one of the best and most successful to date. “There’s no shortage of really compelling stories in this genre. These are dramatic real stories, with real human stakes, well told,” says Bennett who is confident that Mind of a Murderer fits the bill. In it, Ward interviews violent murderers, hoping to gain insight into the reasons people kill. Bennett says that while the television program focuses a bit more on the backstories of the interview subjects and victims, the podcast provides an opportunity for Ward to delve deeper into her reactions to what she discovered during her interviews and research.

The podcast was planned as an integral part of the Mind of a Murder project from the outset For each episode, Ward and the producers take “a different editorial bent” to deliver a compelling audio experience for an audience that seeks to understand the underlying psychology driving murderers. Some content will be extras, which have been edited out of the television program for time. But Ward and the producers also identify additional information better suited to audio-only delivery.

Bennett says he has aspirations for Investigation Discovery to be “the mystery and suspense brand, like ESPN is to sports.” To achieve that, he says they work hard to “reach our audience through a wide range of digital platforms from our main website and Crimefeed.com to social media. Podcasts are a natural extension of that approach. Now we can be with audiences wherever they are.”

While the podcast does not currently contain advertising, Bennett says that they are exploring the possibility of cross-platform advertising deals. Right now, however, the primary objective is to continue to expose the ID brand to a broader range of people and give existing audiences more. In other words, he’s not measuring the success of this podcasting imitative in revenue alone. “We monitor not just how many people are listening and watching but also talking about us. And, more importantly, what they are saying. We want people to feel like they are getting something more from ID.”

Innovation

Virtual Reality Gives Saturday Night Live Viewers—and NBC—a New Perspective

March 24, 2015 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

When the producers of Saturday Night Live think your idea is a bit crazy, maybe you should think again. On the other hand, maybe you should just agree that it is crazy—but in a good way. Vice President of Digital NBC Entertainment, Michael Scogin has been interested in the potential of virtual reality for quite some time and was looking for an opportunity to create a VR experience with televised content. Like many in the industry, he’s had the opportunity to test different headsets and devices at industry events and check out some of gaming demos. But at Sundance this year, Scogin saw some of the first truly compelling examples of cinematic applications of VR. He was particularly taken with the work of the team at VRSE.works, which debuted its VR film, Evolution of Verse.

“With all of that to back me up,” Scogin says, “I was ready to convince the team at Saturday Night Live that the time was right for VR.” At the time, the SNL team was working on plans for the 40^th anniversary event, which Scogin felt was a one of a kind opportunity to deliver a brand new experience. “When I heard who they were inviting and what they were planning… in particular, how they were formatting the event, I knew that it would be a singular moment in time, something that would never happen again that we needed to capture.”

Scogin also feels that virtual reality is offering the media industry a one of a kind opportunity to experiment with a brand new medium, which he likens to the birth of television itself. However, he points out that even in those early days, many producers simply took radio programing and put it on TV, which was far from the best use of the medium. So he knew that not just any experience was going to be compelling in virtual reality.

Thus, Scogin reached out to the team at VRSE.works, led by Chris Milk, who Scogin knew from his work as the producer of music videos for artists such as Beck, Kanye West and Arcade Fire, and whose VR work had really impressed him at Sundance. Scogin says that, “having them on board helped so much because this is such a nascent medium and they already have such a good sense of what is going to work in VR and what isn’t.” He also cited the fact that VRSE.works is working on every available VR platform at the moment (the VRSE app for iOS and Android, Google Cardboard, Oculus VR, and Samsung Gear VR), which gives the content flexibility and accessibility. It also makes them highly informed about the intricacies of this emerging platform.

With the right technical and creative pieces in place, Scogin returned to SNL’s producers to again pitch the idea of leveraging VR for the 40^th Anniversary Special. This time, he says they embraced the idea “in the spirit of innovation and experimentation SNL is known for. It is a testament to them and to Lorne Michaels, who approved it, that they helped make it happen.”

SNLCandid — Photo Credits: NBC Universal

To achieve 360 degree footage from the event, VRSE team mounted a VR camera, which Scogin describes as “essentially eight different cameras capturing different perspectives,” on top of the primary broadcast camera. They also recorded footage from backstage and as the star-studded crowd was leaving after the evening concluded to capture candid moments.

The 40^th Anniversary Saturday Night Live Special is being released as a series of virtual reality “experiences,” the first of which—an audience Q&A hosted by Jerry Seinfeld—was released March 13. Scogin says this segment works particularly well in VR because of the interplay between Seinfeld on stage and the slew of celebrities in the audience. The VRSE team employed directional audio so that viewers are provided with cues to turn their head to hear the question and then the response, which helps guide them to take full advantage of the virtual reality experience. “Most people will never get to come to New York and experience the show live, much less the 40^th anniversary show,” says Scogin. “But now they can put a headset on and have a hundred different experiences of being there because of what we did.”

NBC plans to release several other virtual reality experiences from the SNL Special in the months to come, in part to extend the life of this one-of-a-kind event, but also because post-production work stitching together the many perspectives is lengthy and both NBC and VRSE.workare still figuring out what will work best. It is essential, says Scogin, they take the time to get it right. “We need to ensure that audiences have great first experiences with virtual reality so that they are excited about it.”

And he is excited about having an opportunity to shape the virtual reality television experience. “There are very few times in media when you have the opportunity to be there early and help define the direction a new medium will take. I think it is great that NBC is experimenting in the space and helping define what virtual reality will be.”

Innovation

Forbes Pictures a Social Future for its Apps with Camerama Acquisition

March 17, 2015 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

Forbes Media has announced the acquisition of the private photo sharing app Camerama. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Effective immediately, the founder of Camerama Salah Akram Zalatimo will join the company as VP of Mobile Products, reporting to Forbes Media Chief Product Officer Lewis D’Vorkin. According to D’Vorkin the move does not signify an interest by Forbes to be in the photo sharing app business. Rather, Zalatimo will assume the responsibility of building on Forbes’ mobile strategy by developing a platform of apps for the company that leverages their core technology and feature set—such as profiling, notification, and sharing–which served as the foundation of Camerama.

According to D’Vorkin, “We have a vision for a platform of niche, or vertical, social apps where we build an experience around passionate members of communities, which is very different from a strategy to develop just another distribution channel for what we already have.” That strategy, says D’Vorkin includes creating an opportunity for like-minded groups of professionals to “discover each other, communicate, and be part of each other’s professional lives under the Forbes umbrella.”

He and Zalatimo discovered that they were like minded when they met socially last year and found that they were interested in each other’s businesses and in exploring the possibility of working on the future of mobile together. D’Vorkin points out that, given its DNA, Forbes is always interested in those with entrepreneurial vision and he admires both Zalatimo’s technological acumen, but also his business savvy and background, which includes stints at McKinsey & Company, Sony Music Entertainment and Bain.

That business savvy will come into play as he develops the Forbes mobile strategy D’Vorkin alluded to. “Advertisers like scale and reach,” he says. “They also like to reach targeted audiences.” With this acquisition, and with the addition of Zalatimo to the Forbes team, D’Vorkin sees a future that will allow his company “the ability to provide scale as well as targeted audiences in a social app setting.”

Innovation

Behind the Scenes of National Geographic’s Killing Jesus Digital Strategy

March 16, 2015 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

For better or worse, history does have a way of repeating itself. In the case of National Geographic’s “Killing” documentary series—based upon Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard’s books Killing Lincoln and Killing Kennedy—creating a robust complementary digital experience is a strategy that has worked well in the past, and one National Geographic plans to repeat with the latest addition to the series: Killing Jesus.

The Killing Jesus microsite was created by the Emmy-winning team behind the network’s Live From Space digital experience, the Emmy-nominated team behind Killing Lincoln and the multi-Cannes-Lion-winning team behind Killing Kennedy. National Geographic learned a great deal from creating companion sites for its Kennedy and Lincoln projects—both positive and negative—which factored into the creation of the new site. Besides, as Matt Zymet, executive director of digital media and digital content for National Geographic points out “we don’t want to be a one trick pony.”

In every case, the digital strategy was part of the overall content and marketing planning from inception. “The idea with all of these is to build buzz ahead of time, extend the viewing experience, and create a long tail effect that generates traffic well after the show has aired,” says Zymet. However with the first two in the Killing series, they’d emphasized creating a synchronized second-screen experience during viewing, which they are not doing for Killing Jesus. While National Geographic has been successful with this type of experience for other programming, the sync experience didn’t work nearly as well for these deep historical documentaries, which people wanted to sit back and watch.

That said, as with the earlier documentaries, there were ample opportunities to enhance the audience experience around the subject matter online. The Killing Jesus companion site is designed to give viewers an even deeper dive into the time of Jesus from three key perspectives, each symbolized by a different crown: a crown of thorns representing Jesus and his followers, a crown of laurels representing the Romans led by Pontius Pilate, and a headdress representing the Jewish high priests of the time. This allows visitors to explore every element of the story through each perspective. The site is broken into eight chapters, reflecting pivotal moments in the story of Jesus. Each chapter contains three or four key scenes that can be explored through the three different viewpoints.

Unlike the Kennedy and Lincoln sites, which Zymet points out had the luxury of access to archival photos and footage, the Jesus site required a bit of a rethink on the content approach. Like its predecessors, it includes information about making the film. But “short of building a time machine, we knew we couldn’t do the same thing here.” Besides, through his experience working on other sites for National Geographic programming, such as Brain Games and Live from Space, Zymet knows that a digital experience needs to be reflective of both the programming content, but also the experience that the given audience expects. For Killing Jesus, Zymet says they took a sort of “graphic novel approach” to produce something he thinks of as “The greatest story ever told, through the lens of Rashomon.”

It’s essential, says Zymet, to be authentic to your identity when creating digital experiences. Unlike other networks, which might focus on scripted drama or science fiction, he says “National Geographic it is about packing in a lot of information, folks look to us for that.” So whether it is a question of fascinating “cocktail party facts to discuss or uncovering the amazing hidden parts of the world, we focus on finding the most interesting stuff for our audience.” And the digital experience is an extension of that. In the case of Killing Jesus, the site allows the viewer to explore a wealth of complementary content of interest such as Jesus in popular culture, what Jesus may have looked like as seen through world art, and what happened to the apostles.

This maximizes National Geographic’s investment by creating what Zymet calls “engagement engines.” In this case, the site was designed for the type of people who “stop and read every placard when they visit the Museum of Natural History.” Given that both the Killing Lincoln and Killing sites have generated some of National Geographic’s most remarkable traffic to date, Zymet is confident that Killing Jesus will be successful in building audience for the documentary as well as providing the sort of ongoing education, info-taining experience that National Geographic audiences expect and enjoy.

Killing Jesus premieres on Palm Sunday, March 29, at 8 p.m. ET/PT on National Geographic Channel in the United States, globally in 171 countries in 45 languages and in Spanish on Nat Geo Mundo.

Innovation

AccuWeather Predicts a Sunny Future for Wearables and the IOT

March 11, 2015 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

It seems quaint to remember when mobile-first was considered radically forward thinking. Now, given the Internet of Things, not only does “mobile” mean so much more than phones, the places content can (and will) go are boundless. Daunting? Yes. But also exciting.

When David Mitchell joined AccuWeather eight years ago, he had responsibility for all of the company’s digital platforms, which at the time meant anemphasis on mobile. Now, as the Vice President of Digital Media, Emerging Platforms, he’s heading up a team focused on the (new) future. , Mitchell and his team are exploring the myriad opportunities presented by the ability to connect current and historical weather data to all of the rich contextual data that is now being collected through wearables and the Internet of Things.

Mitchell describes it as early days in terms of what is possible. “We’re launching some 101 stuff that goes beyond simply providing the weather on another device” he says, pointing to the company’s work with partners such as Garmin, for which it developed an app that gives users air quality and allergy information. He describes AccuWeather’s first-generation wearable apps as “one size fits all, based on location.”

However he is very enthusiastic about what the next generation or two of applications will bring. His team is beginning to look at what is possible when AccuWeather’s data—which was recently enhanced by the acquisition of WeatherBank—is combined with the data collected by internet-connected devices themselves. He looks forward to seeing what his team can come up with when, for example AccuWeather.com’s Lifestyle Forecasts, which offer localized insights into things like flu, skiing, lawn and garden and snow days, can be combined with device data for use in other areas.

The second stage of development, he believes, will be the tailoring content by general categories such as gender and age, eventually leading to truly personalized content experiences if people opt-in to providing more specific information about themselves.. This might mean that your watch notifies you on days when you’re most likely to perform your personal best, according to your vital signs and recent eating habits. The goal, he says, would be for devices to be helpful and even save you time and money: “Right now, you can adjust your thermostat remotely with your phone, but wouldn’t it be great if it would auto-adjust based on your habits and preferences to save you money—and be the perfect temperature when you walk in the door?”

Of course there are potentially lucrative advertising opportunities that come with an informed universe of connected devices. (Setting out for a new personal best today? Perhaps these shoes would help…) While Mitchell concedes that advertising will likely be a part of funding AccuWeather’s wearable future, he says that right now he’s not focused on it. “We need to build this ecosystem. If we worry too much about the business models, we aren’t going to focus enough on getting stuff right.”

Mitchell believes that this week’s news about the introduction of the Apple Watch is good news for the future of wearables. In particular, he believes that Apple’s Open Source Resource Kit will encourage a fresh round of development in the space, noting that “Apple can make wearables more mainstream.”

In a recent panel at Mobile World Congress, Mitchell had an opportunity to give his opinion on what needs to happen for wearables and Internet of Things to build that mainstream momentum. “On top of the things the other panelists pointed to, such as a need for standards and a business model, the big thing I see that we need is trust between organizations. We are at the very beginning of this stuff, but the potential is phenomenal.” That potential, says Mitchell, is not just to earn money for organizations, but to “positively affect people’s lives.”

Innovation | Perspectives | Revenue

Collective Patents its Cross-platform Targeting Technology

March 10, 2015 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

Collective, Inc. has been granted a patent for its technology that targets online advertisements to consumers based on their TV viewing habits by anonymously linking linear television data to digital across multiple screens. They filed for the patent in 2011 when they launched TV Accelerator, and CEO Joe Apprendi describes the four years since as “pretty interesting” given the industry’s increasing desire for cross-platform measurement in that time.

While Collective has been successful deploying its own solution, Apprendi says “now that we’ve got the patent, we’re excited about trying to make this as the standard in the market and establishing a licensing model around it.” Their U.S. Patent 8,949,890 protects the company’s offering and reinforces Collective’s expertise in multiscreen advertising.

Certainly, as audiences increasingly consume content across multiple devices, media companies and marketers are interested in understanding their behavior and, of course, the impact of advertising in various contexts. Interestingly, Apprendi says the origins of Collective’s TV Accelerator solution can be traced to Nielsen research that showed the remarkable lift in ad recall when consumers were exposed to a television commercial and online video. With the Nielsen process, however, this could only be measured when it “randomly happened.” Apprendi says his team realized that “Collective was in a unique position to make this happen intentionally.”

Nielsen’s recent acquisition of Exelate, a company that connects identities across all channels and devices, signals that others would also like to be in that position. Apprendi notes that Nielsen was in the “ad effectiveness and audience measurement business, which they are good at. Now it looks like they are moving into targeting, using data to target, not just measure.”

Collective, says Apprendi, has a head start given that they’ve been doing this for a decade already and have core capabilities focused on data-driven programmatic advertising and on providing audience contextual data to deliver targeted ads across platforms.

Apprendi believes that most marketers are buying publishers’ channels as a proxy to reach a target audience but they should actually flip that thinking in order to make better decisions about where to make big direct investments. “Let’s not make those decisions until I buy programmatically across platforms, screens and media brands to see which avenues and media brands perform the best.” Then, he says, marketers can make better decisions about where to make a significant direct investment.

And, while he sees signs of progress with more and more agencies having a unified video buying practice across screens, he says that “The Holy Grail is that eventually, we’ll see marketers start with audience first, rather than ‘this is what I did on TV now what should I do to support that.’”

At a minimum, Apprendi encourages marketers to use data and analytics to determine which media outlets make the most sense for their objectives. And on the publisher side, that data can help them respond or optimize their content strategy. “Data makes everyone smarter at the end of the day.”

The long term goal, however, is “full transparency,” says Apprendi. This is not just cost transparency, but includes issues of inventory quality and viewability. “We need transparent relationships if we want to help marketers make smarter media decisions.”

Innovation | Revenue

Podcasting Sounds Like a Big Opportunity to Slate

March 2, 2015 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

For a while there, it looked like Podcasting was fated to be little more than a format road-fork in the ever-expanding digital media landscape. Though a slew of individuals and media brands initially jumped on board, many just as quickly abandoned podcasting in favor of other digital formats. Slate, however, stayed the course. The company continued to invest in podcasting over the years and just announced the launch of Panoply, its new podcast network for media brands, authors, personalities, and premier organizations.

When Andy Bowers, Chief Content Officer and co-founder of Panoply left NPR to join Slate more than a decade ago, podcasting was in its infancy. A little over a year later, podcasting was named the 2005 word of the year by the editors of the Oxford American Dictionary. However that same year, Bowers recalls that YouTube entered the scene. “And then all eyes turned to video,” Bowers observed. Well, not all eyes. Slate was among those that continued to invest in the format and, says Bowers, witnessed podcasting’s quiet but a steady audience growth—an audience that, for Slate, currently generates about 6.5 million downloads a month.

That growth isn’t so quiet anymore. With the much lauded success of This American Life’s record-setting Serial podcast, the format has re-entered the spotlight. And while the success of Serial is certainly a boon for the launch of Panoply, Bowers said that even a year before its release, “the buzz was coming back and many of us in the podcasting space felt it.” According to Matt Turk, Slate’s former publisher who now serves as Chief Revenue officer of Panoply, “Yes, Serial was a game changer, but technology and changing consumer behavior are also playing a massive role here.” He cites Slate research that finds two thirds of its podcast listeners using mobile devices to listen to programming of interest whenever and wherever it suits them. And, as it becomes increasingly easy to listen to podcasts in cars, Bowers and Turk predict an even steeper audience growth trajectory.

It also seems that once someone discovers podcasts, they develop a robust appetite for them. Bowers says that the average podcast listener regularly consumes seven or more. Given the potential audience, the Slate team felt there was an opportunity to improve content discovery mechanisms and to foster the growth of the overall podcasting market with the launch of a new network. While there are a number of podcasting networks already in the market, Bowers says that “each has its own specialty and we fit an important niche. We’re a place for premium brands, thinkers and authors. These are brand-safe environments and that is an important point of differentiation.”

At launch, Panoply holds commitments for programming from: The New York Times Magazine; HBO Documentary Films, Inc.; New York magazine/Vulture; The Huffington Post; WBUR radio; Real Simple; Popular Science; Gretchen Rubin, author of the No. 1 New York Times best-seller The Happiness Project; Food52; FX’s The Americans; and the National Constitution Center.

In addition to focusing on fueling podcast discovery for media brands, Panoply will also distinguish itself from existing networks by offering “a compelling combination of production, audience-building and sales,” according to Brendan Monaghan, Slate General Manager of Slate and Panoply co-creator. He says that Panoply has plans to create and acquire programs in audience- and advertiser-friendly categories such as news and politics, culture and lifestyle, sports, and women’s issues—an area he describes as underserved within podcasting to date. “We’re starting out with brands and publications in a similar space to us, those we knew were interested in podcasting, but that also represented categories that are ripe to grow,” says Monaghan.

Audiences aren’t the only ones increasingly attracted to podcasts. According to Turk, advertiser receptivity to podcasts is markedly on the rise and he reports that “year to date we already have more ad revenue in podcasts than in all of 2014.” These podcast advertisers include Prudential, Delta, Acura and Nissan.

In Monaghan’s role as GM, he is charged with incubating and launching new opportunities. Given the way the stars—or market forces—are aligning for podcasting, and the company’s track record of podcast performance, he is confident that Panoply provides an opportunity for growth for his organization and for podcasting as a whole.

Innovation

With its Prevention.com Relaunch, Rodale Shows Off its New Flexible Core

February 26, 2015 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

Readers of Prevention.com know that improving your flexibility offers wide-ranging and long-term benefits to one’s health. And according to Beth Buehler, SVP of Digital Operations for Prevention parent Rodale, flexibility is also important for the vitality of their websites. The 85-year-old company is transitioning its many sites to a Drupal-based architecture and unified CMS. Buehler says there are definite short term benefits to this overhaul, such as meeting increased demand for mobile content consumption. But even more important are the long-term opportunities that result from improving her digital flexibility.

This week, Rodale relaunched Prevention.com the first of its revamped sites based upon the new architecture. The new responsive site offers a cleaner experience that is optimized for cross-platform reading and aimed at serving the increasingly mobile content consumer. Rodale has take work on its mobile sites in-house because, as Buehler points out, “consumers want a seamless experience across different platforms. The way we were doing things, we had to code twice—every time we wanted to add features or satisfy new requirements. It was just about double the work.”

With the new architecture, Buehler says we can expect more than responsive sites from Rodale. “In the next six to nine months, you are likely to see more mobile apps from our brands. In particular, we’re looking at utility apps, as opposed to pure content consumption.” Rodale has a good track record with this approach with brands like Men’s Health and Women’s Health, as well as with creating enhanced e-books that offer a utility app experience in addition to offering the content of Rodale’s book titles.

Another key component of the Prevention.com redesign (which is likely to figure into Rodale’s overall website strategy going forward) was an expanded relationship with Outbrain to increase the opportunities for content personalization. While there is a revenue component to the deal, Buehler describes Rodale’s work with Outbrain as going beyond the recommended links at the bottom of an article. She says they’ll be doing a great deal of experimentation on what’s recommended and the way in which it is presented. While there will be some of those “notorious Outbrain links,” there will also be links to Rodale content and, given what Buehler describes as Outbrain’s “constant work on its recommendation algorithms,” she believes that site visitors will find increasingly relevant content.

For example, Buehler says that they are focused on serving up recommendations not only for subject matter that a user will find of interest, but also for content types they are more likely to consume. “If someone tends to watch videos, we’ll suggest more video content. But we won’t do that for someone who exclusively reads articles.”

Buehler and her team will also be keeping a close eye on traffic and continuously experimenting with personalization and recommendations. In fact, continuous experimentation is a hallmark of her approach to the platform migration and site re-launch strategy. Rodale, says Buehler, will be much more agile moving forward and able to more quickly react to consumer and advertiser demands. “What has me most excited,” says Buehler, “is how we are better able to try new ideas, add new features and launch new products with this flexible environment.”

She says that her primary KPI’s for the site rollouts are engagement (pageviews per visitor) but also what she describes as “commerce conversion,” which drives sales of Rodale books, magazine subscriptions and the sales of goods through the company’s ecommerce initiatives. This year, we can expect to see redesigned Rodale sites released at a rate of about one a month as well as the release of more mobile products, videos and ecommerce initiatives–as part of a larger strategy to test new monetization strategies. Buehler and her team are taking the basic tenant that their fitness experts recommend – to build a strong, flexible core – and applying it to their website platform to fuel more experimentation and new opportunities for their trusted brands.

Innovation | Revenue

The AP and PodcastOne Partner to Offer Dynamic News Via Podcasts

February 23, 2015 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

Podcasting is definitely making a comeback. But like so many things digital, podcasting isn’t a one-size-fits-all opportunity. While many individuals and organizations are posting podcasts on their own sites, others opt to participate in podcast networks. The Associated Press is taking the latter route, getting into the resurgent podcasting game while remaining true to its brand: a trusted source of independent news and information licensed by media outlets of all kinds.

When Norm Pattiz, founder and CEO of PodcastOne, approached the AP about licensing their content for podcasts, they were interested. According to Ebony Reed, AP’s director of business development for local markets, the AP is often approached by those who are looking to fill an information need and they are always excited to figure out ways to ways to creatively meet those needs. “We want to grow and continue to be at the forefront of providing information to the world,” said Reed. “When Norm came to us, we were interested to hear what he was doing and how we could work together.”

Pattiz who has a long and storied history in radio syndication (notably as the founder of Westwood One) admits that he’s always been a big believer in news and knows that advertisers are too. He founded his latest venture in February, 2013 when he noticed that news had been in decline on broadcast radio and wanted to find a way to incorporate it into his content mix (PodcastOne hosts approximately 200 podcasts, including those by Adam Carolla, Steve Austin and Jillian Michaels.) The trick, of course, was that podcasting is an on-demand medium, while news is up-to-the-minute content. Pattiz decided to leverage PodcastOne’s dynamic ad insertion technology to solve this problem. “With dynamic insertion, you can insert the ad regardless of when a podcast is downloaded. So I thought, ‘why couldn’t we do the same thing to provide the most up-to- date newscast for consumers?’” Problem solved. (And an opportunity created.)

While this model presents a content-licensing deal (with revenue sharing) for the AP, Reed said that it was also appealing to be a part of the PodcastOne effort particularly because of Norm’s involvement and his innovative broadcast approaches. ”We are always looking for ways to help with new digital products and this is a great way to reinforce the brand by being affiliated with this new and exciting venture.”

Pattiz licenses the AP’s audio clips service which offers hundreds of cuts each day, including sound bites, correspondent reports, news headlines, wraps and more. The AP’s 60-second news headlines are featured at the end of PodcastOne’s diverse podcasts as “AP Up-To-The-Minute Newscasts.” The goal is to integrate news into the PodCast one content, while also creating additional advertising inventory to sell in the post roll and extending listener engagement beyond the formal end of the podcast episodes.

While Reed says the AP didn’t set out to be in the podcast business, she emphasizes that “The AP tries to stay on the cutting edge of digital and we are exploring a wide range of different initiatives. We are open to experimentation and pushing to be a part of new ventures and opportunities.” Ultimately, though, while the digital team at AP is focused on finding new channels for its content and creative ways to increase its footprint, the AP isn’t looking to build its own podcast network. “You read us in newspapers, you hear us on TV but we don’t own a newspaper and we don’t own a television network.” With the PodcastOne partnership, the AP continues its long tradition of offering its information through a wide range of outlets and meeting the information needs of its partners and consumers alike.