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Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of September 29, 2022

Here are some of the best media stories our team has read so far this week:

DCN’s must reads: week of September 22, 2022

Perspectives | Revenue | Supporter Spotlight

Publishers: here’s how to build a resilient audience extension offering

The case for programmatic media buying typically references a common mantra: “Right person. Right time. Right place.” Marketers enjoy the control that programmatic media buying affords them. They have the ability to value each ad impression independently on the basis of the user, the point in time within their purchase journey, and the quality of the media environment, among several other factors.

However, if pressed, many marketers would be willing to sacrifice “right place” in favor of “right person” and “right time”. In other words, they value the user and information about that user more than the location where they find said user.

Brands, and their agents, will frequently make room for strategic partnerships with publishers and content creators. However, the time and resources they have invested in developing audience insights and segmentation practices dwarfs their efforts to manage these strategic relationships. Advertisers have built out CRM databases and partnered with third parties to build robust customer profiles. They have partnered with data on-boarders and identity graph solutions, third party data providers and clean rooms. And yet, there is still an appetite for more targeting information, unique audiences, data points, and triggers – some of which are unique to publishers.

This focus on audience above media environment may represent a risk for publishers that are reliant on sponsorships and page takeovers. Those publishers may see performance media dollars redistributed to a wider swath of publishers where marketers can find their precise audience targets. However, it also creates opportunities that some publishers have already seized.

Audience extension: opportunity and trade-offs

One such opportunity that more publishers should be taking advantage of is the creation of an audience extension practice, in which a publisher makes their audience available to advertisers while those users are outside of their owned and operated domains. This practice can create a valuable stream of incremental revenue. It can be particularly valuable for publishers with access to unique data about their users, whether it’s in-market for products and services, interests, or authentic age and demographic information. However, there are several factors to consider when building an audience extension offering and ensuring that it is resilient in the face of cookie deprecation.

To make this work, publishers must be willing to accept certain trade-offs. Historically, publishers have expressed a few key reservations about launching an audience extension business. They cite concerns that it will detract from their direct sales business and loss control of their audiences among others.

These reservations can be addressed to a certain degree by how the offering is productized. For example, publishers can restrict audience extension to media plans that also include ad placement on owned and operated properties. They can also confine the activation to managed service rather than advertiser self-service, and limit advertiser tracking tools such as DMP tags. Ultimately, publishers will need to balance these tradeoffs in order to develop successful programs and earn recurring business from advertisers.

Getting audience extension right

Beyond the tradeoffs, there is more to consider as publishers look to stand up a successful audience extension operation. First, it will require sales and marketing resources that can effectively connect a publisher’s audience composition to a marketer’s target definition. Demonstrating the uniqueness and integrity of the publisher’s audience segments, as well as the potential scale, is critical to creating demand.

Second, it is important to have the tools to develop and configure audiences that meet buy-side criteria, as well as scale those audiences via sophisticated look-alike models. Third, it’s critical to have skilled and experienced execution teams. While Demand-Side Platforms (DSPs) have become more user-friendly over the years, teams that can execute quickly and flawlessly will have more success in maintaining advertiser relationships.

Finally, publishers need to maintain a focus on measurement and analytics. This approach can position an audience extension offering as more than an add-on audience reach tactic, but rather a performant strategy that drives business outcomes for marketers.

Preparing audience extension for the future

As we look to the future, publishers should be thinking about how existing audience extension offerings need to evolve moving forward. As third-party cookie deprecation continues to erode cross-domain targeting, publishers that execute audience extension programs through Demand-Side Platforms (DSPs) will face the same challenges that marketers face. They will struggle to deliver advertising at scale, particularly on Safari and Firefox, and they will find it difficult to demonstrate performance metrics that advertisers have come to rely upon.

Also, publishers that want to preserve their audience extension revenue streams will need to explore and test alternative methods of targeting, whether it’s an alternative identifier based on e-mail addresses or an anonymized identifier generated by the publisher. A publisher’s audience extension business can act as a solid testing ground for deploying alternative ID solutions, allowing publishers to see the end-to-end process and understand scale and performance.

Although Google recently announced a delay in Chrome’s cookie deprecation timeline, marketers are using this time to do more head-to-head testing between cookie-based buying and alternative IDs. They’re also preparing for measurement and optimization in the absence of third-party cookies. And they’re shoring up first party data and experimenting with clean room solutions.

Likewise, publishers with a vested interest in growing their audience extension business have an opportunity to prepare. Publishers will need to balance trade-offs as they decide which methods they use and who they partner with as third-party cookies continue to dwindle. Now is the perfect time to test and understand the revenue implications of shifting to alternative methods of executing audience extension programs.

Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

Simple data strategies for subscriptions

We live in a world where there is no shortage of data: first-party, third-party, and zero-party. However, most publishing organizations run the risk of boiling the ocean with too much data at their disposal and too little actionable insights to be gleaned from it. In my view, data visibility can bring alignment across multiple departments of a publishing organization and steer the organization towards common goals.

This post is about two specific use cases and actionable insights from first-party data that publishers can use to optimize their editorial and subscription strategies. These tangible use cases can help you seed a solid foundation for a data driven organization.

Using data to optimize editorial strategy

Most publishers rely on last touch attribution to understand which content converts users to subscriptions. No matter what attribution methodology you use, there are gaps in coordination between the editorial and marketing teams at most media organizations – which ultimately results in leaving subscription revenue on the table. Let’s take this 2×2 scatter plot as an example:

The ability to plot each piece of content on a conversions versus pageviews scatter plot can distill strategic outcomes for the entire organization. Each quadrant on the scatter plot leads to actionable insights for different departments:

  1. High Conversions – High Pageviews: This segment of content is being marketed well and is generating high conversions. Maintaining status quo with all departments is recommended with content falling in this quadrant.
  2. High Conversions – Low Pageviews: This segment of content is being marketed poorly but has high conversions. The marketing team should take action to promote this content across all of its channels.
  3. Low Conversions – Low Pageviews: This segment of content is not converting. The action is on the editorial team to reconsider its strategy for this type of content. Alternatively, the subscriptions team can consider trying a lower priced offer for this type of content to test if the conversions go up.
  4. Low Conversions – High Pageviews: This segment of content can be earmarked outside the paywall to maintain a healthy balance of site traffic.

The main takeaway to consider here is not about data collection but more about data representation and the importance of data visibility within the entire organization in near real-time. A simple graphic like this can help editorial and marketing teams understand what actions need to be taken. Still, there needs to be alignment on common goals, constant coordination, and outcome based service level agreements (SLAs) in place to execute on any editorial strategy.

Using simple data points to convert never-subscribers

Almost every publisher has two main types of audiences: ardent fans and casual users. For the sake of simplicity let’s call them subscribers and never-subscribers. To convert never-subscribers, you first have to know who they are. The good news is you don’t necessarily need sophisticated AI to understand who your never-subscribers are. There are many simpler options and proxies at your disposal.

Assuming you track the digital footprint for anonymous users, you can track which users have rejected your subscription paywall once or twice in the last 30 days. It is a clear indication that the user is casual in nature and potentially seeks another offer in order to convert to a paying user. Lowering the hurdle to a bitesize offer might be a prudent move at this stage.

Another proxy to identify never-subscribers would be to dissect the sources of your site traffic. Other than direct traffic, you will have traffic coming from social media, chat apps, content aggregator sites, search, paid media, etc. Attributing a scoring mechanism depending on the source could quickly help decipher if the anonymous user is a potential subscriber or not. For example, you may find Twitter users have a higher propensity to subscribe but Facebook users are very unlikely to subscribe. With this in mind, you should show a lower threshold offer to users landing from Facebook.

If you have global audiences, you could dissect anonymous users by geography. For example, you might say that domestic users are more inclined to take my all-you-can-eat subscription while international users will require a lower entry barrier. With this in mind, I might offer an introductory bitesize subscription option.

Here is an example that publishers can use to segment their audiences from very basic traffic data:

At the end of the day, if you are in the digital subscriptions business, your objective is to maximize your recurring revenue. This requires you to understand the lowest payment threshold an individual user is willing to commit to. With that information in hand, your marketing team must make a concerted effort to re-engage the user to move up your value chain.

About the author

Abhishek Sharma is a Co-Founder and CTO of Fewcents, a plug-and-play solution for publishers and creators to collect small payments in 80+ currencies. He has 18 years of experience in strategic consulting, vendor management, project and delivery management, business analysis, solution design, and application development. He specializes in building high-frequency trading systems, integrating with payment partners such as Paypal, Stripe, etc, and working on regulatory risk engines using big data technologies. Prior to this, Abhishek worked at DBS Bank, Credit Agricole, and MSCI Inc.

Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of September 22, 2022

Here are some of the best media stories our team has read so far this week:

DCN’s must reads: week of September 15, 2022

Perspectives | Revenue | Supporter Spotlight

How to get back to growth in the post-pandemic subscription marketplace

The pandemic marked a period of explosive growth for subscription commerce. However–given the economic situation, easing restrictions, and a shift in lifestyle–the tides have turned.

Subscription brands—especially media organizations—are seeing new challenges arise in both retention and acquisition. Streaming giant Netflix made headlines by losing 200 million and nearly 100 million subscribers in two consecutive quarters this year. A different strategy and renewed attention are required to expertly navigate this next phase of our endemic subscription landscape and beyond.  

In this article, we delve into what’s changing in the subscription landscape and how recurring revenue businesses can adapt and flourish. 

The changing sands in subscription commerce 

The same factors that fueled the subscription explosion during the pandemic seem to now be shifting in the opposite direction. Our research has found a number of factors that are impacting consumer appetite for subscriptions and the overall subscription landscape: 

  • Shrinking expense budgets: Rising inflation and fears of an impending recession are curtailing consumers’ discretionary spending behavior. Just over 90% of subscribers say they are concerned about inflation and its impact on the cost of goods and services.
  • Reduced movement restrictions: As social distancing compulsions ease, people are once again enjoying in-person shopping experiences. This movement shifts several premium-priced subscription categories from “necessities” to convenience-based “luxuries.” The impact is clearly felt in consumers’ increased cost sensitivity towards subscriptions, which has dropped from 2% in October 2021 to 22% in March 2022. 
  • Lifestyle changes: As travel and entertainment options resume, lifestyle shifts are happening. Statistically, 46% of consumers expressed excitement about in-person dining, 45% about domestic travel, and 43% about in-person events. This shifting preference has a natural spillover to weekends dining out instead of dining in, for example. This impacts the different “stay-at-home” subscription bundles like meal kits.
  • Classic subscription fatigue: The impact of subscription fatigue is also becoming apparent. Consumers realize they are spending more on subscriptions than they need or desire. In addition, 22% suggest feeling overwhelmed with the number of subscriptions they currently own. And that clearly feeds into their decision to withdraw.

What to make of this mercurial market? It’s time for merchants to harness the above insights to intervene and adapt.

How to stabilize during this COVID aftermath

Stabilizing through the changing tides requires businesses to pivot their subscription models to increase consumer value perception as a result of their changing interests. 

Here are some actionable ways merchants can adapt to changing consumer preferences:

  • Help people save money: As consumers become more cost-conscious, offering subscriptions that promote saving can be powerful. As found in a Recurly study, only 20% of U.S. subscribers intend to sign up for more subscription services, while 49% plan to keep their subscriptions the same due to the rising prices. Introducing “Subscribe and save options” or providing handsome bargains for “lock-in” subscriptions–for example, securing an annual subscription at a lower monthly rate–can be helpful to reverse price-conscious unsubscribes. 
  • Introduce greater price flexibility: For non-essential subscriptions (the “nice-to-haves”), offering tiered packages can help mitigate churn risks. Allowing users to pay less for reduced features can fuel retention. Netflix has leveraged this by offering lower subscription fees for consumers consenting to watch ads. 
  • Put customers in the driver’s seat: Customers now want greater freedom, personalization, and choices as their lifestyles change and consumption patterns shift. For example, 82% of subscribers state that being able to pay with their preferred payment methods is one of the features they want most from merchants–and that’s up from 69% in October 2021. That said, offering too many options can cause analysis paralysis, so experiment with pricing and packaging to find the right balance for your subscribers. 
  • Help people save their time: Studies suggest 81% of shoppers wouldn’t mind continuing subscriptions if they could save time and enjoy greater convenience, despite surging inflation. Merchants offering pricier subscription bundles that help people save the value of their time can continue to triumph if they can effectively convey that value.
  • Ensure excellent customer experiences: Customer experience remains paramount to successful subscriptions and even more so in the current volatile and maturing market. Allowing customers to pay easily with their preferred payment methods, access flexible renewal and cancellation opportunities, and enjoy prompt support as needed will fuel lasting retention outcomes.
  • Increase win-back chances with pause options: Despite efforts toward retention, some customer segments may still be unwilling or unable to continue.. Offering them a softer alternative of pause can help to retain them in the fold and increase their likelihood to re-subscribe in the future. We’ve seen merchants that use our pause feature experience a 46% reactivation rate, demonstrating the power of this magical button.

While the pandemic accelerated the demand for subscriptions, the current correction demands a pivot to thrive in this evolving market and inflationary climate. 

Subscribers continue to seek value–whether for their money, time, or both. Hitting the sweet spot requires making necessary changes to existing models or subscription bundles to adhere to the reimagined consumers’ preferences. 

About the author

Theresa McEndree is the Chief Marketing Officer at Recurly, a subscription management and billing platform that maximizes subscriber lifetime value with expertise, technology, and insights for global brands.

Innovation | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

It’s time for publishers to leverage AI like social media giants do

The publishing industry has undergone a serious transformation in the past five years. It’s moving away from an all-out push for scale and toward earnest efforts to create meaningful relationships built on trust with online readers. It’s not just about eyes on the page. It’s about loyalty.

A loyal audience is more likely to subscribe, attend events, and engage with relevant ads — ultimately increasing revenue. To succeed, newsrooms will, of course, need to rely on the editorial and ethical foundations that have made journalism a pillar of society. But to truly compete with global powerhouses like Facebook, Google, Apple, and Netflix, news organizations need access to data on the same scale that those tech companies have.

To increase loyalty, journalists and editors need to be armed with data and AI-based tools that guarantee a great experience for each visitor every time. These tools tell publishers what topics their readers are interested in and help writers create engaging headlines. These tools also surface the right content to the right person at the right time, whether it’s editorial, sponsored content, or an ad. It’s a tall order. But this marriage of old and new worlds will undeniably fuel the most powerful newsrooms of the future.

Keeping up without compromising

The algorithms that power the world’s most popular social channels master the art of personalization. They give users a never-ending flow of content and ads they find interesting, relevant, and downright addictive. And, perhaps most importantly, they help social media platforms rake in revenue.

According to Statista, Facebook generated $114 billion in ad revenue in 2021, and that number is expected to reach $200 billion by 2026. TikTok is also poised to triple its ad revenue to almost $12 billion this year. Meanwhile, The New York Times’ advertising revenue has been steadily decreasing for years. In 2021, the publisher earned about $309 million in digital ad revenue.

According to research from Gallup, 45% of respondents said they use social media as their primary way to stay informed on current events, while only 14% said they turn to online news websites. But despite turning to social media the most, respondents also expressed distrust for it. They reported that they’re twice as likely to trust the authenticity and validity of news sites over social media.

This presents the news industry with a monumental task. Publishers need to build sustainable systems that allow them to keep up with the new wave of user experiences ushered in by social media. Thanks to these social platforms, today’s consumers expect personalization from both their editorial and sponsored content. And publishers have to deliver those customized experiences if they want to attract and retain new audiences. But at the same time, they need to maintain the integrity and values that make journalism so important.

The solution to this challenge is strategically designed and applied AI. Publishers can harness the power of massive databases and sophisticated predictive algorithms while maintaining editorial controls.

AI’s role in digital news

Research from Reuters shows that AI’s various use cases are already widely embraced by news industry leaders. A whopping 85% of respondents said AI will play an important role in automated content recommendations and personalization for users, including sponsored content like native advertising. However, it’s not all about content delivery or personalization; 70% think AI plays a significant role in investigating or finding stories through patterns in data. And 81% believe AI can help speed up and automate workflows, like content tagging, interview transcription, and assisted subbing. Meanwhile, 69% believe AI will help with commercial strategies and revenue growth, like identifying “high-propensity” readers or future customers who are more likely to purchase a subscription.

Source: Reuters

5 tips for building the ideal AI-powered newsroom

To meet today’s challenges, publishers need a 360-degree approach. In addition to involving engineering and data science teams, it’s critical to involve editors and journalists every step of the way. Ad ops teams will also play a vital role in the AI-powered newsroom since they have the tools to optimize ad campaigns for increased revenue. This comprehensive approach ensures that every player’s needs and perspectives are suited while designing UX and algorithms.

Plus, the insights and best practices offered by editors and journalists are the secret sauce to ensuring that these tools meet ethical standards. Here are a few guardrails and features that can help build ideal AI tools and workflows for the newsroom:

  1. The ability for editors to influence how algorithms make decisions. This involves reviewing and moderating the logic that “teaches” algorithms how to make automated editorial decisions.
  2. The ability for editors to craft “definitions” that dictate the content mix. This way, personalization isn’t able to hide or remove any content areas, regardless of the user’s interest in them.
  3. Allowing AI to power your website ads. Use AI-powered automation to programmatically deliver targeted, personalized ads in the most relevant placements for your audience.
  4. An interface that allows flexible personalization on certain parts of a website, for example, the homepage. Users can see dynamic and personalized content based on their interests and preferences while still allowing curated content based on the news cycle and current events on a local, regional, and global level.
  5. A focus on original content as opposed to syndicated and aggregated content. This helps to reduce information bubbles while staying in line with consumers’ tendency to trust news over social media and other forms of aggregated content.

Better user experience, better business outcomes

In the face of cold and calculated social media algorithms, many of today’s news sites are struggling to keep user attention, drive engagement, and build loyalty. It may be a hard road ahead, but it’s possible to stay in the game while maintaining your journalistic integrity and building scalable, sustainable models.

The newsroom of the future is powered by strategic teams and comprehensive databases that feed highly-specialized algorithms. The result: personalized experiences that rival those of social media and the business metrics to prove it.

About the author

Tim Ruder is the Principal of Audience Development at Taboola. Tim works with editorial teams at premium news publishers, helping them incorporate data and AI-based engagement and personalization solutions into news operations and workflows. His experience in personalization and audience engagement includes working with publishers like the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Hearst Newspapers and many others.

Featured Post | Perspectives

Get smart, TV: Fix the usability experience

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The multiple remote e-waste factor

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

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

The personalized feature set

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

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

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

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

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

The unfamiliar TV panic

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

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

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

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

Let’s fix the consumer experience

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

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

Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of September 15, 2022

Here are some of the best media stories our team has read so far this week:

Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

How to convert Millennial and Gen Z TikTok users into readers

Although TikTok is widely considered a “Gen Z platform,” the video-sharing app also boasts an extremely high number of Millennial users. With over 100M active users in the U.S. alone, 32% of TikTok’s global users are between the ages of 25-34. With such a large and diverse audience – not to mention the recent revelation that young people are even turning to TikTok as a search engine over Google – there is a unique opportunity for digital publishers to adapt their strategies on the platform to reach critical audiences at scale effectively.

To do so, media companies must consider how best to leverage the viewing trends and the receptiveness these generations have to certain types of media. Below are key insights into how Gen Z and Millennial demographic similarities and differences fit into the larger social landscape, what influences their decision-making when it comes to attention, and ultimately what success looks like for digital publishers on the platform.

Where to find Gen Z and Millennial social media users

The rise of TikTok has significantly shifted the way people consume media. In fact, when surveyed about which sources of digital media they use the most, 37% of Gen Zers revealed TikTok takes up most of their time. While Millennials still skew a bit more towards Facebook (39%) and Instagram (19%), there is still a sizable audience of Millennials on TikTok. Nevertheless, as the preference for engaging short-form content continues to grow in popularity with Gen Z and Millennials, other social platforms are beginning to take note.

With so much buzz around TikTok’s growing user base and platform layout, it’s no surprise that Instagram introduced Reels. And, with 42% of Gen Zers sharing they also use Reels, it’s clear that this demographic jumps at the chance to create and consume short-form content no matter the platform. This insight gives publishers the perfect opportunity to maximize viewership of their short-form content. They can post virtually the same video to several platforms which means that they can cast an even wider net with little to no additional effort.

What’s influential in TikTok users’ decision-making

Though more social media platforms are mimicking TikTok’s strategies, 40% of Gen Z and 32% of Millennial users find advertisements on TikTok to be the most creative and authentic versus other social platforms. And two-thirds of users research products after seeing them on TikTok. This points to the platform’s power in helping to build brand awareness and influence purchase decisions.

This provides a unique opportunity for publishers to capitalize on especially when it comes to branded content. Last year, Buzzfeed signed a first-of-its-kind deal with TikTok, signaling the beginning of media companies leveraging the platform to create innovative deals between publishers and brands. This allows brands to capitalize on a built-in audience and allows publishers to attract new audiences – brand loyalists – to their content.

Branded hashtag challenges are one of many great tactics to attract engagement by enlisting consumers to become active participants in brand campaigns via user-generated content. So, empowering platform users to join campaigns by submitting their own content is the type of word-of-mouth marketing advertisers crave and built for the digital age. Using creative means to get information across results in a higher chance of user recollection and can help to increase follower count (for both publishers and brands), and eventually – readers.

Strategies for digital publishers to try ASAP

There are a few breakout media brands whose success on social platforms like TikTok provides insight into how digital publishers can best approach converting Gen Z and Millennial social media users into subscribers and promote consumer loyalty.

The Washington Post successfully uses TikTok to reach a younger audience and break away from its more traditional, serious tone. Morning Brew, the media company that aims to help professionals of all ages, began to use TikTok to help grow its newsletter subscriber count. The publication partnered with a creator to create authentic TikTok videos while also promoting the Morning Brew message. This enabled Morning Brew to expand its social media footprint as well as gain thousands of quality, engaged newsletter subscribers.

Digital media publishers have an opportunity to extend their reach by using social media platforms focused on short-form video content. Ultimately, TikTok truly allows for and incentivizes creativity that both Gen Zers and Millennials heavily respond to. Digital publishers can use a variety of features and trends to create effective, immersive, and interactive content to reach their target audiences with unprecedented efficiency. Authentically reaching consumers through TikTok will help media properties gather accurate data on consumer interest as well as humanize humanize the company by providing digestible content in a more relatable and accessible way.

Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of September 1, 2022

Here are some of the best media stories our team has read so far this week:

Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

Humans vs. Bots: It pays to find out who is really looking at your content

Digital publishers work hard to create quality content that engages audiences and keeps them coming back for more. When an article or video receives a surge in views, that means mission accomplished, right? Not so fast.

Since invalid traffic (IVT) makes up for nearly 40% of all website traffic, it’s likely that some of these viewers are non-human, or “bots.” And, unfortunately, when bot traffic is included in analytics reports, it can skew data and give an inaccurate look at content performance.

Here are steps publishers can take to achieve more accurate website data, which allows them to make more informed editorial and marketing decisions.

Identify traffic sources and spikes

To understand how content and promotions are truly performing, it’s important to identify and remove invalid traffic from data reports. A first step is to determine traffic sources. If a visitor comes from an unusual website or unfamiliar referral source, it can be an indication that the traffic is not human. This includes traffic from locations beyond the typical readership area. Or it might be a slew of visitors from one city, which could be the site of a datacenter.

Another indicator could be the time of day that visitors view content. If many arrive on the site at an unusual time such as in the middle of the night, it could indicate that the traffic is robotic. Other non-human behavior such as spending zero seconds on a page or achieving a 100% bounce rate are also signs the traffic might be robotic.

Analyzing traffic spikes might also uncover increases in legitimate visitors, which offers insight into why content performed well. For example, an increase in an article’s views could indicate that it was picked up by another news source, shared on a popular website, or received a greater attention on social media. Identifying traffic sources and patterns can reveal what articles are truly performing well. And, of course, that is likely to influence future content decisions.

Filter bot traffic

Not all bot traffic is malicious. Search engines send bots to crawl websites to learn more about them, which helps inform search results. However, bots also visit websites for harmful reasons including scraping content to create fake sites, inserting malware to steal user data and injecting spam. Publishers can also unintentionally invite bots to their website by purchasing website traffic. 

Many analytics platforms have built-in tools to filter bot traffic. Since these tools often must be activated by a site administrator to begin working, it’s helpful to check to make sure the filter is being applied to analytics reports.

While automatic known bot filtering tools are a great start to getting a more accurate look at website data, they might not detect all bots. Publishers should identify traffic patterns of good and bad user behavior to identify unknown robots that are not detected by the analytic partner and create custom filters based on the characteristics of those bots detected. Some of these characteristics may include the location the traffic came from, screen resolution, service provider, time on page and bounce rate.

Identifying traffic patterns and creating custom filters to remove bots from data ensures that publishers are getting the most accurate look possible at their website visitors.

Check site tags

Analytics providers require that publishers install a tag on their website to allow them to collect data. If a tag is inadvertently installed more than once, data analytics will be inflated. Or, if installed incorrectly, it might produce incomplete data. Publishers should check tag containers to ensure there is only one tag for each tracking suite so that data isn’t included twice in reports.

Get a third-party evaluation

Sometimes it helps to get input from a third party that specializes in analyzing website traffic. A digital publisher audit is great way to get an expert’s opinion about site traffic, tagging and creating custom filters. Website auditors keep up with industry trends and platform changes, which saves publishers time and the resources needed to identify new bots or create custom filters.

By taking the steps above, publishers can better identify high performing content, discovering promotions that drive real traffic, and making more informed business decisions. They can also take steps to reduce bot traffic and avoid common missteps that occur when it goes undetected.

Perspectives

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