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Featured Post | Perspectives

Scott Galloway on Antitrust, election interference, the future of Amazon and more [Video]

Last week, at the DCN Next: Summit, Scott Galloway who is a professor at the NYU Stern School of Business and Author of ”The Four“ and ”The Algebra of Happiness” had a lively conversation with Reuters Breakingviews columnist, Jennifer Saba. DCN’s annual Summit is a closed-door members-only event. However, Saba and Galloway have graciously agreed to allow us to share this session publicly.

Their conversation covers a wide range of topics, in particular antitrust – specifically as it relates to big tech. As Galloway said, historically, “A key step to tyranny [has been] the government being co-opted as opposed to being a countervailing force to corporate power.”

To do its job, “effectively, government has to be bigger and badder than any individual or company – and it isn’t any more.” Amazon now has over 100 full time lobbyists “educating our elected officials … about why they’re not a monopoly.” He points out that “We are in a very dangerous situation in which private power is going unchecked” and in which government resources to regulate growing monopolies is declining while these organizations’ investment in lobbying is their largest area of expenditure growth.

Their discussion also looks at government efforts (largely ineffectual) to rein in the power of big tech as well as to penalize them for their negligence, privacy breaches, role in the spread of misinformation and election interference. They also uncover the source of Galloway’s prescience in predicting the location of Amazon’s HQ2 and he makes some new predictions about shifts in Amazon’s business model.

Watch the full Jen Saba interview with Scott Galloway:

Breakingviews columnist, Jennifer Saba interviews professor and author Scott Galloway at the annual DCN:Next Summit

Featured Post | Perspectives

Rappler CEO Maria Ressa says 2020 is the year that we must fight the battle for truth

The year 2020 will be a tipping point year for media companies. This is the year in which journalists must fight the battle for truth, according to Maria Ressa, CEO of Rappler, a digital news organization based in Manila, the Philippines.

“What we do this year – not just in the Philippines, but all around the world and especially in the United States – will determine whether or not the whole world walks into a cycle of fascism. We’ve been here before. What we do now matters.”

Ressa – who has been the target of persecution in her country – offered these comments as part of a recorded statement presented to attendees of DCN Next: Summit at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Miami, Florida on January 15.

In her statement, Ressa expressed gratitude to DCN CEO Jason Kint, the DCN Board of Directors, and the members of DCN for supporting her cause and helping her to “shine the light” through journalistic endeavors.

“That really is the only weapon that journalists have,” noted Ressa. “What we’ve lived through in the Philippines…our dystopian present is your dystopian future. This is it, the battle for truth.”

The DCN Board of Directors issued a statement (included below) supporting House and Senate Resolutions calling on Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte to end his political persecution of Ressa and Senator Leila de Lima.

“Healthy democracies thrive with vigorous political discourse and a free, independent press,” noted the statement.

On, the question of whether there exists a line between journalism and activism, Ressa said that “in the battle of truth, journalism becomes activism. This is a hard-fought lesson we have learned in the Philippines.”

Popular populist authoritarian-style leaders are getting elected throughout the world. “Just like they had a dictator’s playbook, they lie,” she said. “A lie told a million times becomes a fact. Without facts, you can’t have truth. Without truth, you can’t have trust. Without all three, democracy as we know it is dead.”

Ressa referenced her own experience when in 2018, the Philippine government investigated Rappler in at least 11 cases. “In 2019, I was arrested…not once, but twice,” she said. “I posted bail eight times.”

Ressa – who in 2018 was named by Time magazine as one of several journalists honored as Persons of the Year – spoke of her experiences at the 2019 DCN Summit in Orlando, Florida – just before one of her arrests. She also made the 2019 TIME 100 List as one of the most year’s most influential people.

The relevance of her travails extends to journalists everywhere. Because, as she said, the “the enabler for all of this is technology. And technology is in the hands of American social media companies,” said Ressler.

“Facebook is our internet” she said. “Where Facebook goes, the Philippines goes. The weaponization of social media was followed by the weaponization of the law. This is what’s happened to the gatekeepers, right? And when the gatekeepers move from the journalists to technologists… lies spread faster than facts.”

Official Statement from the
DCN Board of Directors

“We applaud Senators Edward Markey and Marco Rubio along with Senators Marsha Blackburn, Christopher Coons and Richard Durbin who introduced Senate Resolution 142. We also applaud Representative Jackie Speier along with Representatives Henry Johnson, Jamie Raskin, Brad Sherman and Lloyd Doggett who introduced House Resolution 233.

Both resolutions call on Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte to end his political persecution of Senator Leila de Lima and journalist Maria Ressa, founder and CEO of Rappler, a digital news organization based in Manila. Healthy democracies thrive with vigorous political discourse and a free, independent press.” —DCN Board of Directors

To reinforce our support of a free press everywhere, DCN is pleased to share the video of Ressa’s statement:

Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of January 9, 2020

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

Perspectives

Digital media in 2020: What lies ahead?

From the boom of direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands to the introduction of new OTT streaming services such as Disney+, 2019 brought significant innovation to the digital media space. As we begin 2020, it’s time to think about which media trends will shake up the new year. Here’s what the MediaRadar team sees on the horizon.

The year of paradox for linear TV

In 2019, it was estimated that 6.4 million paid subscribers stopped paying for television. In 2020, as OTT streaming services continue to gain control, an almost equal, incremental decline in number of paid subscribers is predicted. However, despite “cord-cutting” in the TV industry, linear cable and broadcasters are poised to have a successful year. This is due in part to several major TV events set to occur throughout 2020.

The 2020 presidential election will have politicians spending significant amounts of ad dollars to get their messages across. Some estimate that spending will approach as much as $10 billion – or almost $6 billion more than the 2010 election. Advertisers are also predicted to allocate heavy ad spend towards the Tokyo Summer Olympics, as well as other large tent-pole sporting events like the Super Bowl. This year’s Super Bowl is expected to deliver strong financial results, as Fox reported in early December 2019. In fact, 80% of the inventory had already sold at a reported $5.6 million per 30 seconds. That marks a 7%  jump from last year.

Amidst the evolving TV landscape, providing viewers with real innovation will become crucial for success. Keeping that in mind, in 2020, it’s believed that nearly all major broadcasters will either reboot or unveil their paid streaming businesses. While this is just the start, this shows broadcasters are committed to re-engaging with their audiences and future proofing subscribers.

Politics’ role in digital media

An exploding ad spend isn’t the only way the presidential election will shape the industry this year. The election is expected to take over much of the news cycle and political ads. Every platform will be scrutinized for accuracy more than ever before. Ahead of the election, digital ad companies are expected to face strong public pressure to ensure their political ad policies are tightly “buttoned up.”

Twitter recently announced they will be opting out of politics, disallowing political ads entirely. Google announced that they are restricting targeting capabilities for political ads and Facebook is predicted to follow suit, despite pressures to go further.

Based on these companies’ decisions, it’s likely that other media will feel the same pressures in 2020. It will be up to these companies’ leadership to navigate this evolving digital landscape during the election cycle. Foremost: an emphasis on clear and ethical business decisions.

OTT remains hot

Over the past few years, investment in the OTT space has been heavy and rapid. It shows no signs of slowing down in 2020. UBS estimates a combination of 16 media firms will spend $100 billion to produce content in 2020. Of that $100 billion, just three firms – Netflix, Disney and WarnerMedia – are projected to account for 25%, producing unique content for their viewers.

For the financial health of the companies competing in the space, it’s likely that this investment cannot last long-term. Bob Iger, Chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Company, has acknowledged that Disney+ will probably not break even for at least the first five years. Meanwhile, AT&T has said the same of upcoming streaming platform, HBO Max.

Eventually, it’s predicted that end user prices will rise, ad-supported models will become more common – SVOD versus AVOD – and spend on content will decrease to ensure profitability. Being in the early days of the streaming wars, however, the major players are willing to gamble with losses now to gain profits later. In the fight to capture the attention, and monthly payments of consumers around the world, and to make the investment worth it, not all can win.

2020 outlook

2020 looks to be both an exciting and transformative year for digital media. The TV industry will shift focus as they seek to re-engage with audiences through paid streaming businesses and offerings. Major TV events, specifically the 2020 presidential election and flagship sporting events, will help sustain linear cable and broadcasters through the year. Investment in OTT is only expected to increase, especially as “cord cutting” continues.

Perhaps the biggest change in 2020, though, will be as a result of the state of politics. With politics playing a larger role in the space than ever before, media companies will begin adjusting their strategies and policies accordingly – a change that could have a lasting impact on the future.

Perspectives

The 8 biggest challenges digital publishers faced in 2019–and what lies ahead for 2020

A year in the life of a digital publisher contains multitudes. Ups to some felt like downs to others. But there were challenges and news that publishers of any size and any vertical faced universally—news and events that defined the entire year.

At Marfeel, we work with 850 global publishing partners, reaching almost one billion sessions every month. That means that we deal with the issues and trends that impact publishers every day. With the knowledge we have in-house, we surveyed our team to collect a list of what we consider to be the biggest publisher trends of 2019 and what they mean for 2020.

Red tape and regulation

Ok, GDPR wasn’t strictly 2019… but it’s effects are still being felt. Users continued to tick pop-ups without reading them. However, in the UK, fines in excess of $300 million were handed out to British Airways and Marriott for failing to ensure information security. A small price, perhaps, to companies of that size. However, they offer a much-needed reminder that nobody is above the law when it comes to GDPR.

The most notable regulation news came from the US, with the passing of the CCPA. This California-wide user privacy policy, touted by some as GDPR-lite, comes into force on January 1st, 2020.

Even if you argue that it’s not effective in protecting user data, it seems more regulation is coming in 2020. And with 50 different states in the US alone, publishers are going to have to find a way to cope with different levels of regulation for different users in 2020.

The great paywall question

To gate, or not to gate, that is the question publishers struggled with for 2019. We saw every variety of paywall tried and tested.

Premium publishers like The New Yorker and The Atlantic opted for soft paywalls, hoping to build consumer loyalty. Others decided to shut out all but paying customers, cleaving their audiences but guaranteeing a source of revenue. Major media groups like The Guardian and The New York Times made news with the success of their subscription models. However, the majority of publishers won’t convert significant audiences into paying customers.

The 2019 headline is that paywalls work, to an extent. Concerns grew about ‘subscription fatigue’ as many worried that audiences would grow tired of paying separately for a variety of different online services. It will be interesting to see whether 2020 crosses that tipping point and, of course, if paywalls work as a long-term proposition.

Content aggregation

Given the booming market for premium content offerings, it seems inevitable that in 2020 a true Netflix for News will emerge. People want to browse around a series of headlines. They want to be able to read stories shared by others and pick based on the story, not the brand.

No one company has managed to crack it definitively yet. But In the United States, Apple News now reaches more iPhone users (27%) than the Washington Post (23%). This is a sign that aggregation is going to gain traction in 2020.

Trust and transparency

In 2019, we learned that people don’t trust the news as much as they used to. This is makes it harder for smaller publishers to break stories and build audiences. Consumers veer towards larger media brands, which are a known commodity. It can be difficult for less well-known entities to break through, or maintain their growth.

And trust runs both ways. Advertisers and publishers both still want more transparency from SSPs and ad networks. Google’s switch to first-price auctions earlier in the year reminded the industry of the long-held last-look advantage that walled-garden exchanges can provide.

The hunt for viewability

Viewability was the hottest term in the industry for advertisers in 2019. Some publishers reacted with surprise that advertisers wanted a guarantee that their ads were actually seen by someone (and not bots). 

They started to set minimum standards and refuse to buy space that couldn’t demonstrate their viewability. These standards now exceed the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s (IAB) definition of a viewable impression, which says that at least 50% of pixels must be in view for at least a second. In 2020, publishers will have to offer as close to 100% viewability and find a way to prove it to advertisers.

The creeping growth of voice tech

Alexa, how do I advertise on you?

The use of smart speakers grew from 7% to 14% in the UK last year. And usage was up +3% (from 9% to 12%) in the United States.

With voice-assistants sprouting into more homes, more content is starting to be delivered by voice. Quick answers to once-Googled questions will possibly draw traffic away from news sites in 2020. This and the growth of podcasts as a content format gave advertisers a new concern in 2020: how to bring their programmatic tech to an audio format.

The rise of Gen Z

Move over Millennials. There’s a new generation here to casually pull apart the framework of the industry.

In addition to formulating the right content to reach them, publishers have struggled to find a payment model that appeals to the younger generation. Digital natives get their news from too many different sources to be tied to a single publisher. As Adweek explains, “52 percent of Gen Z consumers will transfer loyalty from brand to brand if they find product quality to be subpar.”

2020 will see diversified revenue generation models, segregated by the audience and content types.

Cookies crumble

Saving the most worrisome for last, 2019 may be the last year of free and unfettered access to user cookies to inform advertising.

Google confirmed proposals to overhaul targeting in Chrome. And Apple went further with its online tracking restrictions. ITP 2.1 reduces the accessibility and longevity of first-party cookies, allowing them to be stored for only seven days.

Ratko Vidakovic, founder of AdProfs summarized what the move meant, “Given Apple’s aggressive attitude towards this issue, it seems like the idea of persistent cookies in Safari, for cross-site tracking purposes, will eventually be a thing of the past.”

The uncharted territories of 2020

To help paint the picture of 2020’s publishing industry to come, Marfeel is putting together the big publisher trends of 2020 report, with the help of their publisher network. By sharing concerns and challenges, the digital publishing industry can unite to create a more informed industry as a whole and overcome the challenges of 2020 and beyond.

Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of December 19, 2019

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

Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of December 12, 2019

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

Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of December 5, 2019

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

Marketing | Perspectives

Marketers: Here’s how we can ensure that consumers learn to love advertising again

When it comes to digital consumption, I’m about as avid as it gets. While I use my Amazon firestick to find a new show, I simultaneously scroll through Instagram and shop on my laptop. I forego physical books so I can listen to podcasts while playing Candy Crush. I’m not “techy” in any form; I’m simply a product of our highly digital generation.

And, like everyone else, I’ve grown up with various forms of ads. TV, magazine, newspaper, billboards – you name it. However, today’s ad environment is with us even more pervasively. In our digital society, it’s harder to escape screens filled with ads and calls to buy now.

Don’t get me wrong, I recognize the role of advertising. As a marketer, I understand how ads benefit our ecosystem. I know why YouTube runs ads on video, Hulu has commercials, and CNN features personalized article recommendations.

However, I have realized that there’s something that marketers must do in order to restore the value of advertising. We need to change the consumer mindset around advertising. Of course, winning back consumer trust is no easy feat. To do so, we need to examine how the industry changed from enjoyable and glamorous to over-saturated and salacious. And we need to figure out where to go from here.

Advertising’s “Golden Age”

The Golden Age of Advertising (the 1960s to the late 1980s), was a time of big ideas and larger-than-life personalities. From Volkswagen’s “Think Small” and Apple’s “Think Different 1984” to Burger King’s “Have it Your Way,” and innumerable ads in between, the campaigns were engaging, witty, and captured consumer attention. With television making its ascent into every household, magazines catering to every interest, and newspapers as the primary source for getting the word out, advertising thrived. People actually looked forward to seeing pages filled with their glamorous idols touting the latest products and fashions.

So, what changed?

Calculating too much

In the Golden Age, ads thrived because they were vibrant, fun, and intriguing. They offered a creative and engaging experience that made consumers want to learn more and own the products. Today, advertising focuses heavily on data, personalization, and research. Frankly, though the goal is to appeal to consumers, digital advertising’s constant in-your-face tactics are off-putting.

The market is oversaturated, crowded, and cluttered with disjointed marketing messages. Too many times, a popup ad has interrupts and degrades the consumer experience, causing them to close the page altogether and never return. And beyond simply losing advertisings luster, we’ve lost the trust of consumers. They’ve been burned too many times by clickbait and fake news, not to mention unexpected and even unethical uses of their data, which has caused them to ignore or block ads altogether.

However, instead of acknowledging this discomfort, consumer avoidance makes the advertiser push harder to increase engagement. The disconnect is real. As a consumer, I am acutely aware of the ways that ads ruin my experience. And, as a marketer, I focus on ways to get ads in front of consumers. To help heal our unhealthy advertising relationship, I propose a different idea: creating ads that serve a purpose. Ads that help the consumer experience, not hurt it.

A new golden age

Purpose-driven and values-based marketing is a growing area in which brands are reconnecting with consumers on ideas that matter to them — culture, society, politics, etc. Nearly two-thirds (63%) of consumers prefer to purchase products and services from brands that stand for a purpose which reflects their own beliefs.

Nike’s famous “Dream Crazy” campaign, featuring Colin Kaepernick, struck a chord with consumers, both good and bad. But a year after the initial launch, Nike shares have surged 36% over the year, adding nearly $6 billion to the company’s market value. Marketers, the lesson learned here is that consumers don’t mind ads. But they want ads that mean something to them.

Advertising also thrived during its first golden age because of brand loyalty. You could show a consumer a logo — Nike’s Swoosh, McDonald’s Arch, Starbucks’ Siren — and they would instantly recognize the brand. To stay top-of-mind, brands made it a point to circulate their logos on newspapers, TVs, billboards, etc. But today, consumers are too desensitized to care. And data-driven efforts are not the brand-building campaigns of yesterday. Brand loyalty and successful marketing campaigns must be driven by value, so as not to turn off the customer or lose their attention.

A new Golden Age is right around the corner. We can win back consumer trust and show them the value of a smart ad campaign. This will happen as we evolve beyond disruptive nature of the digital ad industry and create well thought out content that focuses on a long-term brand story and excellent user experience.

Perspectives | Revenue

Fostering quality journalism through a brand safe open web

Almost half of comScore’s top 100 Web properties in terms of audience have some news component to their content offering. So, it is clear that news continues to represent a dominant share of online traffic. However, brand safety fiascos for advertisers on platforms such as YouTube and Facebook have swung the pendulum towards a conservative approach to advertising within news. The divisive political climate (and impending 2020 US elections) combined with increasing coverage of violent events, etc. further exacerbate potential risk for brands. It is now critical that publishers work with both advertisers and technology providers to balance their scale with a sound brand safety strategy to maintain and grow advertising monetization.

At Teads, we launched our global brand safety policy earlier this year to foster a sustainable advertising and media ecosystem. And we continue to advocate that publishers adopt constructive philosophies around brand safety. In addition to developing a brand safety policy, we have a few key best practices for every publisher to consider when developing a brand safety strategy.

Brand-safe best practices

1. Standardizing and enforcing brand safety processes

Although brand suitability will always be a subjective interpretation for individual brands based on their values and audiences, the industry first needs to define a lowest common denominator for universal brand safe content in order to develop scalable solutions. For example, most would agree that brands should not appear in or around content describing terrorist attacks or mass shooting events. News publishers have an opportunity to be proactive in defining relevancy standards and implementing a brand safety guarantee for their advertisers and audiences. Publishers can and should join initiatives that meet to evolve industry standards and best practices such as the Global Alliance for Responsible Media.

2. Technology and AI

There are tools available to publishers that allow them to more efficiently guarantee brand safe environments for their advertisers and even block risky content pre-bid. The key to success is seeking technological solutions that can optimally balance scale vs. quality. Keyword blacklists are currently the preferred (though blunt and rudimentary) instruments for many agencies and brands. Let’s call this “Brand Safety v 1.0.” Frankly, these tactics are a necessary evil for the application of brand safety in the absence of more efficient solutions. These days, publishers can also leverage technology tools to better target/anti-target contextual segments or leverage machine learning and natural language processing for their content filtering needs.

3. Educating the ecosystem

News publishers are already seeing advertisers shy away from news content in general and becoming the victims of blocklists applying to the entire news category. The problem with blacklisting hard news is that it eliminates a significant portion of online audience and scale for advertisers.

Publishers need to be proactive and implement solutions and processes to regain the trust of advertisers. It’s clearly more advantageous to block the minority of unsafe content vs. losing monetization on news traffic altogether, which is the current industry trend. We have to work together to advocate and educate brands and agencies that not only do ads perform better in news but also consumers trust premium news outlets (a positive halo that extends to ads on those properties).

If the industry does not coalesce around news publishers and continues to shift advertising budgets away from them, then we are ultimately on a path to defunding quality journalism and jeopardizing a free press. The result will be more disinformation, more advertising in the context of fake news and unsafe environments. It also reduces potentially massive quality audience reach for advertisers given the consumption of online news. That’s a scary proposition. Combining appropriate brand safety enforcement with premium editorial environments can not only effectively connect brands with relevant consumers, but also ensure that we support our democratic society at both a local and national level.

Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of November 21, 2019

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

Featured Post | Perspectives

Platforms, politics, people and sharks

Last week at the 2019 World Media Congress in Las Vegas I had the privilege of being asked to address the weighty topic of “Platforms, Politics, and People.”  At this moment in time, it presents a remarkable challenge to cover the confluence of these topics before a global audience.

I found myself trying illuminate a perilous intersection between the growing distrust of tech platforms (which continue to register record usage) and the growing divisiveness in politics. And, to make things even more challenging, my speaking slot was at 5 p.m. just before cocktails in Las Vegas, of all places.

And so, facing challenges both topical and logistical, I decided to do what had to be done: I cued up “Baby Shark.”

Jumping the shark

As much as this dreaded video is guaranteed to intractably embed itself in the mind of any hapless listener, it also represents the good of these topics. This song impossibly united all of Washington, regardless of politics, as the Nationals won their first ever World Series. It has racked up close to four billion views on Google’s YouTube making it one of the most watched videos of all time. If there is good in the world of platforms and politics, it’s represented in Baby Shark.

Yet, despite the tenaciously peppy and persistent beat of Baby Shark, my mind turned to the bigger, badder sort. After consulting DCN member National Geographic and the Merriam-Webster dictionary, I found the term I was looking for: feeding frenzy.

This wildly aggressive attack of prey by an animal or group of animals provides an accurate description of policy makers’ and the press’ relationship to tech companies right now. Their frenetic scrutiny of tech has been driven primarily by Facebook’s woes over the past 18 months. It took some time but there are already signs of Google’s blood in the water. The alpha predators are under attack.

Boiling the ocean

Tech platforms currently face two issues that are making big waves. The first is a slew of antitrust investigations, which are underway in the Germany, UK, Israel, Australia, and France. Oh, and also in the offices of nearly every one of the United States’ Attorneys General, not to mention by the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and Congress. For perspective, recall the antitrust investigation of Microsoft two decades ago, which many argue provided the oxygen for Facebook and Google to launch. That investigation (which resulted on certain limitations being imposed on the company) involved a mere 20 states as compared with this bipartisan group of nearly 50.

On its own, an antitrust review might not cut too deeply. Significantly, however, this one takes place at the same time as new laws around privacy and data protection are being enacted globally. The business model of devouring personal data to micro-target advertising is at risk. It’s this intersection of data and competition policy which presents significant challenges to this mighty Duopoly.

Google and Facebook would prefer to keep antitrust scrutiny focused on the price of their products. That’s because most of their services are free to the end consumer. But price is not the only factor in an antitrust investigation. And, in an increasingly complex profit-driven data economy, new issues have arisen that raise the stakes. For one, there’s the obvious question of whether Facebook’s dominance allowed it to look the other way while users’ data was abused, and its post-IPO profits soared. 

Shark tank

Significantly, today’s political concerns – and these investigations – are bipartisan. Republicans and Democrats alike are increasingly worried about data privacy and the ability for market entrants to innovate in a world where two companies dominate through data-based surveillance advertising. At the same time, everyone is getting more educated on the issues as we can see in the hearings. And we’re seeing an increasing flow of press coverage and research.

I find no better examples of these two developments – bipartisan concerns and savvy scrutiny – than in the actions of some of our youngest politicians:

The youngest member of the House is the media-friendly Democratic US Representative, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Ahead of Mark Zuckerberg testifying two weeks ago, she went to Twitter to learn more about the issues and asked the public for good lines of questioning. Her engaged constituents dutifully replied with more than 12,000 responses.

With this input, her questions of Zuckerberg captured significant attention and highlights spread through Twitter receiving millions of views. We witnessed a representative using Twitter to gather input to question one of the most powerful people in the world and then to move the discussion further along after the hearing. Simply put, she came of age with the Internet and social media and knows how to use it.

The youngest member of the Senate is Missouri’s Republican Senator, Josh Hawley. I played his grilling of a Google policy executive for attendees of the World Media Congress. The audience was clearly pleased to see a Google executive being expertly questioned about concerns ranging from antitrust to child safety and privacy.

Chumming the water

These matters continue to drive down consumer trust in Facebook and Google. Unfortunately, this is where we confront an uncomfortable dichotomy between the interests of advertisers and the public. To date, advertisers are still drunk on the precision targeting, efficiency, and scale that Facebook brings to the table. 

As such, they’ve been willing to avert their attention from the growing body of research that shows that the perception of environment seeps into advertisements presented there. In the right context, that’s a good thing. In the wrong context, irreparable brand damage can occur.

Shark tale

The sailing is not smooth for publishers right now. While digital offers incredible opportunities for consumer engagement, audience interaction, and innovation, the market is reacting having been driven to the brink by the dominance of a few predatory players.

But it’s time to take the offensive and go on the hunt. There’s blood in the water and a frenzy of scrutiny buoyed along on a tide of changing consumer perspective. We need to focus on the opportunities emerging amidst this political and public scrutiny of the way in which information is being distributed and data is being collected and deployed.

DCN member research shows considerable growth in non-advertising revenues driven primarily by subscriptions and direct-consumer revenues. DCN’s public research, further confirmed by recent News Media Alliance research, also shows that most digital subscribers are happy with the value they’re receiving and at the same time are not concerned about how much they’re spending in any given month. These are two very good things: Consumers are happy with the value and not closely tracking what they’re spending. I smell opportunity in the water. The launch of Disney+ last week for $6.99 per month saw more than 10 million customers sign on in the first 24 hours. That’s a clear testament to this dynamic. 

Open water

With all of this in mind, there are four things I encourage everyone to focus on as we continue to build safe and sustainable businesses. First, know that trust is the currency our industry must capitalize on. Publishers can take their uniquely trust-based consumer relationships and brand safe environments to the bank. Second, premium publisher brands add considerable value to any platform. This is evident in the $100 million Facebook spent to entice publishers to participate into its latest foray into news. Third, media’s revenue mix is changing. Publishers are doubling down on consumer revenues and it’s paying off. And fourth, direct relationships win, and data is very much a part of this equation.

Above all, publishers need to maintain their trust-based relationships with consumers. They must protect their data and ensure that under emerging privacy laws, Facebook and Google don’t find ways to circumvent these protections and continue to vacuum up consumer data outside of their expectations. We must continue to illuminate these behaviors when we see them, and to build the next wave of digital innovation as the tide turns against the Duopoly.