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Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

It is time for publishers to take back control

The adtech ecosystem hasn’t always been easy for publishers to navigate. Managing complexity around data privacy, dealing with opaque fees, and working around anti-competitive behavior has become standard operating procedure. And 2021 brought no relief with more change than ever introduced into the ecosystem.

Big players have caused big waves

Last year, publishers had to deal with Apple implementing their ATT framework under iOS 14.5, which changed the way apps collected data about end-users and shared it with other companies for tracking purposes. This major move had a strong impact on IDFA tracking. It resulted in lower opt-in rates, less ability to serve personalized ads, and a shift in spending from iOS to Android where lower CPMs were available. All of this led to a decrease in revenue from iOS users.

Google followed with their announcement to postpone cookie deprecation after they were challenged by both the UK competition authority and GDPR to release their privacy sandbox. And, revenue was further impacted with European authorities taking a stronger approach to enforcing GDPR. We saw consent rates drop from 94% to 85% after the French data privacy authority (CNIL) required websites to ask users to accept or decline consent at the same level.

With each of these changes, publishers were forced to relinquish more control and adapt. In this climate of uncertainty, publishers are left questioning who they should trust. But that may be about to change. 

The tipping point 

As the industry awaits the resolution of ongoing legal battles—such as the Google antitrust lawsuit filed in Texas—we’re set to reach a tipping point. While any outcomes are impossible to anticipate, we can look to what’s happening in Europe for hints of what to expect. 

Last year’s ruling by the French Anticompetitive Authority resulted in Google sharing a set of commitments focused on increased access to data and transparency. This opened the door for publishers to partly regain their choice of tech partners without compromising revenue. Google also agreed to a test run with a select group of French publishers to validate their commitments. These tests are currently underway and the proof points are expected to be released soon. This could provide additional confidence in the increased level of control they have promised. However, we will have to wait and see.

In addition, publishers have historically innovated to create solutions when faced with roadblocks. A perfect example is the evolution of header bidding as an industry standard in response to pain points imposed by Google. As publishers began looking for additional ways to make the most of their non-consented traffic last year, we saw new targeting solutions emerge. We expect these to become more widely adopted in the year ahead as they allow for even greater revenue and control over content, data, and audience relationships. 


What’s a publisher to do? 

There’s still a lot of uncertainty around what lies ahead when it comes to the industry as a whole. But those who are ready to embrace change have never been in a better position to thrive with all of the independent players and options available to help take ownership of first-party data or content, their most critical assets.

Curation is a great start for reducing reliance on a big tech walled garden. In addition to offering better brand safety, it streamlines the value chain through a more transparent deal process to offer enhanced accountability and efficiency. This means fewer intermediaries and fees. It also allows you to avoid data leakage and provides more control over your inventory through direct deals with buyers.

From there, another big step is protecting yourself from data leakage. By partnering with an independent SSP, you will be able to input first-party data in clean rooms. This safe and secure environment can serve as a basis for privacy-safe targeting with no risk of data leakage. And it can also be leveraged for audience extension and creating direct deals and PMPs. This way you will be able to leverage the full value of your first-party data and generate a new revenue stream.

Then, once you are ready to embrace large-scale change, the independent players can help you replace your full-stack to create your own private garden. This approach gives you full control of your data and revenue while opening the door for the creation of publisher networks or alliances to increase scale and better identify audiences. Independent providers can offer more innovation than the big tech player solutions. In instances where the walled gardens act as an adblocker and do not monetize non-consented traffic, an independent player allows you to provide buyers a path to targeting this traffic through performance and contextual targeting.

Change takes time. But, as the landscape finally begins evolving in their favor and more transparent solutions emerge, publishers are well-positioned to be in the driver’s seat as we enter this new era. 

Featured Post | Innovation | Perspectives

Exploring the potential – and threat – of the media metaverse

The metaverse doesn’t exist. The term is a framework for discussions around Web 3, NFTs, decentralized virtual spaces, and the gaming landscape. Despite the fact that it does not yet exist, there has been a huge amount of money invested into the metaverse, from people purchasing virtual real estate adjacent to celebrities to building out festivals within platforms like Roblox. Despite its hypothetical state, it’s already lucrative.  

There’s an early mover advantage for news and magazine publishers to launch on new platforms. While only 8% of news publishers currently say they intend to invest in metaverse products, the need to discover younger audiences and to discover new revenue sources is a powerful lure. But as we saw with the overreliance on platforms in the era of Web 2.0 — and the terrible consequences that wrought — there is enormous danger for publishers when it comes to building strategies around platforms they don’t own. 

So how can publishers take advantage of the potential of the metaverse without making the same mistakes around platform over-reliance? More importantly, to what extent can media companies help define the metaverse, and take a leading role in its development? 

The lure of new platforms 

The appeal for news publishers is obvious. We know from recent forays into NFTs that they are hungry for new sources of digital revenue, particularly those that do not just replicate non-digital revenue strategies online. Much of the early pitch to brands of the metaverse is around selling persistent virtual products, which are being marketed as a new form of social status for particularly younger consumers. 

Andrew Kiguel is CEO and co-founder of Tokens.com, which builds and sells services and real estate within the metaverse. He says, “The metaverse is the next iteration not just of gaming, but of social media. Right now, the status symbol on Facebook or Instagram is posting a picture of the restaurant or whichever resort you’re at. What’s going to be the status symbol soon in the metaverse [is] you walk around with your NFT Gucci bag or your Nike running shoes.” 

The bigger draw, however, is that of creating touchpoints for new audiences. We’ve seen newspapers experiment with virtual reality spaces before, from The Wall Street Journal’s 2016 foray into VR real estate to the virtual town halls run ahead of the 2016 elections.  Persistent and long-lasting communities are being built in those unreal spaces, based in no small part on lessons learned from social media and gaming. Friends lists, followers and gaming clans have formed the basis of how we will keep track of and communicate with friends and co-workers in the metaverse space.  

That’s an opportunity for the news publishers who are making access to a community a big part of their offering. Start-ups like Tortoise make its community “Think-Ins” part and parcel of its marketing. And legacy titles, including The Telegraph, organize exclusive events for subscribers. The ability to open those events up to audiences who wouldn’t otherwise be able to attend is a big opportunity. We’ve already seen them experiment with these in Twitter Spaces and other remote meeting tools during the pandemic. 

In addition, we’ve already seen early examples of news outlets within metaverse platforms. The Second Life Enquirer, for example, maintains a newsroom on Second Life. And other titles and magazines create their own communities from audiences already on metaverse platforms. 

Decentralizing the threat 

So, if the benefits for entering the metaverse space early are obvious, how do we go about building those spaces without becoming over reliant on the platforms? One of the criticisms already being levied about platforms like Roblox is that its publisher, Roblox Corporation, controls both a portion of any sale and the data of its users. That’s not tenable for media companies in 2022, who are only just rediscovering the value of their first-party data. 

Instead, the media industry could look to spaces like Decentraland, which aim to build upon the promise of Web 3 by taking the power away from any one platform or owner. That, in theory, would allow them to control not just the look and feel of their own virtual environment, but also the sale and revenue options of any virtual products (or subscriptions!) sold in those spaces. As Matthew Lines writes, news is inherently linked to crypto payments already: 

“Real world cryptocurrency analytics companies like Messari and Coincheckup are starting to display ‘news’ sections. These amalgamate different articles which address a specific metaverse platform and its associated crypto token. In a similar vein, websites like NFT Plazas also display an individual ‘news’ page, showcasing all the latest stories occurring in specific metaverse platforms like Decentraland.” 

Dream or reality? 

It’s a utopian idea, one that potentially extends a newspaper or magazines’ community far beyond geographic bounds. It also allows them to monetize audiences directly through crypto payments. 

However, there are huge questions around the extent to which these decentralized platforms actually are immune to the bottleneck of control that plagued Web 2 for publishers. Between the countless current rug-pulls, crypto scams, lack of interoperability and the funnelling of funds to a handful of big players, the promise of that decentralization is under threat already. 

That utopian ideal also relies on companies like Meta – whose relationship with media companies is already fraught – not seizing control of the metaverse through the scale of its investment alone. By inserting itself into the conversation as forcefully as it has, it raises the possibility that it will also try to control payments and data on its metaverse platforms as well. 

Years of uncertainty 

While virtual real estate is relatively cheap (and potentially comparable to the purchase of Manhattan according to Time), it is still an outlay for publishers already stretched to cover existing platforms. The BBC was recently criticized for ignoring TikTok, despite the fact that it admitted to lacking resources to do so effectively. If even the BBC can’t spread itself across the biggest social networks, can we expect most publishers to invest in an untested space like the metaverse? 

Building offices in the metaverse is a nice stunt for marketing companies. But without the surety of return on investment and a lack of time to maintain it, many newspapers and magazines are adopting a wait-and-see attitude to the metaverse.  

There may be huge opportunities for community development and creating audience touchpoints, but the revenue model is currently unclear. And it is likely to remain so for years.  As tech giants struggle to control it, the metaverse might never even live up to its initial promise.  

It is incumbent on newspapers, broadcasters and magazine companies to ensure that any forays they make into the metaverse are shored up by solid revenue and data strategies. Otherwise, it’s just a gimmick, and one that risks the industry repeating its platform-dependency from web2.0. 

That said, if nothing else, writing about the metaverse is a valuable and lucrative new vertical. So there’s that.  

Advertising | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

What 2021’s CPG ad trends tell us about the 2022 forecast

The last two years have been unpredictable for consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands. In 2020, Covid-19 and pandemic-induced shortages realigned consumer shopping behavior and caused marketers to pull or pause campaigns. These unprecedented changes had a cascading impact on publishers with millions of ad dollars lost and considerable resources exhausted to cater to the shifts.  

Unfortunately, the coronavirus continued to wreak havoc on CPG well into 2021. The second half of the year — and the holiday period, in particular — was hurt by supply chain challenges. Long, unpredictable delivery times, and low inventory left brands and consumers scrambling. To complicate the situation even further, all of this occurred while overall consumer spending was on the rise, widening the gap between supply and demand.  

As we embark on what is sure to be another challenging year, MediaRadar wants to understand market headwinds for publishers who rely on ad dollars from CPG brands. So, we looked at our U.S. data, and here’s what we found.  

How did the CPG market shift in 2021? 

As a result of the pandemic, online shopping for groceries and toiletries — staples of brick-and-mortar convenience stores and drug chains — has normalized. Significantly, an impressive 45% of consumers report shopping online for groceries. That trend will only continue, driven by convenience and safety on the consumer side. 

“Ecommerce will be the key battleground for CPG brand growth over the coming years,” says Jonathan Barnard, head of forecasting at Zenith, and the numbers are bearing this prediction out. Another driver of increased online shopping is CPG brands getting into more direct online sales. Clorox, Nestle, Ocean Spray, and others are launching or investing in web-based DTC offerings amid the pandemic. These same CPGs are also increasing their social activations with live streaming and live shopping options in the U.S., to build direct relationships with a growing cohort of online shoppers.  

Where are the ad dollars going?  

With more CPG brands shifting focus to ecommerce sales versus brick-and-mortar channels, our analysis reveals that ad spend is following. Comparing media spend in 2019 to 2021 through November, here is what we saw:  

Print spending is down by over half (53%), totaling $970 million in 2021 versus 2.08 billion in 2019. TV is also down by 16%. Spend totals topped $3.1 billion in 2021 compared to roughly $3.7 billion in 2019.  

Digital, however, grew like gangbusters and is up an eye-popping 742% over the last two years. Spending last year approached $1.6 billion ($1.59 billion) while 2019 saw investments sit at just $189 million. The growth speaks to changing strategies for CPGs, who are investing more and more in online sales.  

CPG ad spend has fallen 

Even with the exploding online spend, CPG ad spend has steadily decreased since 2019, and is now down 6%. Digging deeper, we see that 2021 CPG ad spend is down ~1% from 2020 to $5.7 billion, while 2020 dropped 5% from the previous, pre-COVID year. Pandemic-driven sensitivities and supply chain challenges are likely the causes of this downshift, as advertising adjusts to stay in line with available supply — or adapts to mitigate shortages. 

Unsurprisingly, TV stays on top 

Overall, spendings on TV ads still tops other media and remains hugely popular among CPGs for brand lift. Even as consumers spent more time with entertainment apps, TV still owned 55% of all ad spend in 2021 at $3.1 billion. However, digital overtook print as the second most popular medium, with spend at $1.6 billion.  

Changes in monthly ad spending 

Note the month-to-month changes as there were decreases with ad spend in February (-16%) and November (-18%) and increases in April (+16%) and May (+13%) as a result of CPG companies reacting to supply chain challenges and leveraging data to react to consumers’ needs. 

The top CPG advertisers 

According to our analysis over the last three years, the number of CPG advertisers grew annually: 9,329 in 2019; 9,666 in 2020; 12,300 in 2021. This rise was due, in part, to companies who didn’t advertise previously starting to advertising in 2021. (Such as Beautcella offering DERM iNSTITUTE and The Naked Bee.) 

Top spenders remained unchanged from pre-pandemic all the way through 2021: L’Oreal, The Hershey Co, Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, and Unilever. These companies account for more than a quarter (28%) of the overall 2021 category spend. While each brand’s total spend is down YoY, they all experienced growth in digital. L’Oreal, Hershey and Unilever saw increased digital advertising more than 100% YoY. With each, we witnessed large video and Facebook buys adjusting to consumer buying patterns.  

What’s next for CPG in 2022? 

We believe that CPG companies will continue to reshape portfolios with DTC offerings and investment. They’ll also continue to zero in on health-conscious lines to support changing consumer demands. Ad spend distribution will likely shift in tandem, with more budget allocated to digital and social media. To win those open web dollars and compete with the walled gardens of Meta, Google, Snapchat, Pinterest, and TikTok, publishers should emphasize in-demand formats like video and OTT.  As livestreaming continues to grow, advertisers are reconsidering how they can approach their marketing efforts through this medium to help create brand awareness and increase sales. 

Overall, there have been many changes within the CPG advertising space. These include navigating external factors like supply chain issues as well as a changing marketplace. Ecommerce and digital advertising are a necessity within this space as consumers shop online more than ever before. While top CPG advertisers remain the same as in previous years, their tactics are shifting. Publishers need to keep a close eye on these trends to understand how to best serve the changing needs of these potential advertisers.  

Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

How to convince your unknown audience to let you get to know them

Online news organizations have had a rough go of swaying audience behavior. First you had to get them to click. Then you had to convince them to stay. Now you have to keep them coming back. And with any luck, they’ll tell you who they are while they hang out. But the question that needs to be answered to get them past any of these thresholds is: Why should they?

The biggest barrier in converting anonymous users to known community members isn’t a reluctance to hand over data. Because despite waning trust in Facebook following the Cambridge Analytica scandal of 2018, social media platform still counted 1.93 billion daily active users in its third quarter of 2021. Elsewhere, a study conducted by data privacy company Entrust shows that almost 64% of consumers are quite willing to let companies know who they are if they feel they’re going to get “relevant, personalized, and convenient services” out of it.

Experience matters

There’s the rub: relevance, personalization, and convenience. Relevance can cut both ways. It can be about the content you produce, but it’s also about the interactive environment you create and how essential it is for your user base to get the most out of your platform. Personalization can be a provision for registration. (If you sign up, we’ll make sure you only see the things that interest you.) Convenience is about having fewer hoops to jump through to get to the things you’re interested in. All three are experiential conditions.

So, what does it look like to provide an experience that leads to registrations? First, tackle convenience with a simple sign-up process. Then, start hosting engaging, community-led features on your owned platform that make sense not just for the content you produce, but for the types of interactions people want to have around that content.

A perfect example is The Independent, the national U.K. publication that went fully digital in 2016. It implemented different engagement solutions, including live blogs for breaking news, live AMA series on current events, and automated comment moderation. One popular AMA series is hosted by travel correspondent Simon Calder, who answers questions about ever-changing travel restrictions due to Covid-19. Part of a recent strategy was to make the UI of their engagement solutions simpler for users.

Otherwise, users who want to participate in any discussion on The Independent’s platform have to sign up, and boy, have they ever! Over 12 months, The Independent reported a 100% increase in registrations, with over 2,000 monthly registrations driven just by the comments section. The newspaper attributes 1 million article views from AMA content, and reports 15 times more time spent on the site after a user registers.

Gametime

Meantime, the Philadelphia Inquirer ushered in Gameday Central in September 2021. Its goal is to create excitement around Philadelphia Eagles games. From the Gameday Central hub on the Inquirer’s website, viewers can watch a live pre-game video that’s also streamed on social media. During a game, users can interact on the Inquirer’s platform with a live blog, polls, comments and pinned comments. Managing editor of sports Michael Huang recently told Digiday that Gameday Central has attracted thousands of users.

It’s not surprising that a major sporting event would attract this much attention. But what’s interesting is that the Inquirer combined several experiences at once to keep users hooked.

Engaging solutions

Our own research shows that it only takes a few engagement solutions to make your users spend more time on your website, and when they do that, they’re 25.4 times more likely to register. Features like sharebars, email notifications, trending carousels, and personalized newsfeeds generate more page views and considerably increase dwell times. In fact, a user that clicks on a personalized newsfeed profile spends on average 42 minutes more per month on a news website than an anonymous user.

It also can’t be understated just how significant a well moderated comments section can be, because when it’s safe and generates civil discussions, even users who don’t necessarily contribute will spend time reading the comments. When we culled the data from 5 of our media clients, we found that both registered and unregistered users spent an average of over 1.6 million minutes in the comments.

So, you can try to convince your audience verbally that registering is a good idea, or you can incentivize them with a rich experience they won’t want to miss out on. A live blog during a major sporting event, an AMA about a hugely unpopular policy: these are things people are talking about on social media already. What if they were talking about it on your troll-free platform instead?

Advertising | Industry-Research | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

Prospering in the increasingly dangerous open programmatic market

It was a fourth quarter to remember…and a fourth quarter to forget. The main reason to remember is so other Q4s will look positively luminous in comparison. I’m not just talking about the wrath of Omicron, which ruined holidays for countless families and continues to cause illness, death, and emotional distress across the globe. I’m talking about an alarming rise in malvertising that endangers publisher revenue and consumers’ online safety.  

As publishers struggle more than ever to balance user experience and monetization, the perils of the open programmatic marketplace require higher levels of vigilance, lest audiences be lost in a storm of malware. Let’s explore the factors behind the rise in malvertising and what publishers can do to combat its impact. 

Malware incidents on the rise 

While malvertising typically subsides in the fourth quarter with higher inventory prices, Q4 2021 malware levels were disturbingly high.

In the digital ecosystem, The Media Trust detected a 64% increase in malware incidents during the final quarter of 2021 — which can account for thousands of impressions or hits — as compared to the same time period in 2020. And 2020 levels were already high as the programmatic marketplace struggled to snap back during the early days of the pandemic. 

Malvertising levels this high at the end of the year are unusual. It typically subsides a bit in the fourth quarter. Because increased advertiser demand enables publishers to increase CPMs and raise programmatic floors most malvertisers are priced out of the market.

However, Q4 2021’s record malware numbers weren’t the result of a few blanket attacks. The industry was assaulted by a wide variety of malicious code and content: 

  • Redirects peaked in October, growing 170% over the course of the year. 
  • In November, Digital media was awash in FizzCore, a notorious form of malicious clickbait that employs cloaking technology to hide its devious content. The amount of FizzCore detected grew 9X over two months. 
  • An outbreak of fake antivirus/software update ads also hit hard in November, marking a 50% rise since the beginning of the year. 
  • E-skimming typically increases in Q4 as bad actors hunt for consumer credit cards, but the amount detected in Q4 2021 was 63% higher than the year prior.  
  • Scam ads, which surged in 2021 and made up nearly a third of malware in the space, stayed high and ticked up an extra 9% in December — nearly exceeding the summer peak. 

A most malicious year 

While 2020 saw a surge in malvertising caused by advertisers’ pandemic pullback, the amount of malware in the digital ecosystem in 2021 has been dramatically higher. 

Unfortunately, these numbers are representative of  2021 as whole, where malware simply exploded. The Media Trust’s Digital Security and Operations team managed an average 2,210 malware incidents daily. That’s a 64% increase over 2020 and well above the ~1,000 historical average. During the summer — the height of the 2021 malware blitz — average daily malware incidents stayed above 3,000. 

Overall, The Media Trust identified 26,664 new malware incidents in 2021, a ~30% increase over the number cataloged in 2020. And our creative blocker, Media Filter, halted four times more malware than in the year prior.  

The proliferation of malvertising is simply breathtaking. 

What’s behind the rise in malvertising 

Certainly the 2020 surge in malvertising followed advertisers’ pause in spend; bad ads flooded the programmatic advertising space as publishers lowered floors to grab whatever revenue they could. But even as the pandemic drags on and on, programmatic markets seem to have rebounded. So, what’s behind this incredible 2021 surge in malware? 

First, from a programming perspective, the malvertising barrier to entry is very low. The dark web is full of malware kits for sale including turnkey phishing solutions and the ever-popular ransomware-as-a-service. There’s a whole black market ecosystem for selling pilfered data and access to infected devices — and often no legal repercussions for bad actors (though there were some impressive arrests in 2021). 

Secondly, research from eMarketer found that private marketplaces account for more RTB spend than the open programmatic marketplace. With $15.4 billion in advertiser spend in 2021, private marketplaces made up 56% of all RTB-transacted dollars. The open marketplace sat at $12.3 billion and had a 44% share.

According to eMarketer, the shift to private marketplaces is only going to accelerate in 2022. Spend is predicted to increase another 21% and make up 59% of all RTB spending. However, the open marketplace will only grow 5% and dwindle to a 41% share of RTB spend. 

We also see premium advertisers are investing heavily in connected TV (CTV) — although they’re struggling with campaign measurement — direct, and programmatic. These advertisers shifting their buying power away from the open marketplace is likely depressing CPMs. It is also making more room for bad actors to spread a variety of malicious wares.  

Is it time to give up on open programmatic? 

So, if the open marketplace is suffering from a rapidly growing malware infestation, am I suggesting publishers turn off their open programmatic pipes post-haste? Heavens, no! That’s not really an option for most digital publishers. Can you imagine the amount of revenue left on the table? All the unfilled inventory?  

It’s obvious why private marketplaces are increasingly attracting advertiser dollars: high viewability, actually engaged human beings rather than bots, and impressions on well-respected publications. We’ll see top-tier publishers layering in high-impact audience segments that will likely outperform third-party cookies.

But the challenge with private marketplaces has always been getting them to scale. I still hear publishers lament long-lingering Deal IDs with laughable fill rates. Truly getting private marketplaces to hum requires time and resources, something many publishers in the “fat middle” struggle with. 

Premium advertisers will keep buying in the open market. This may be to cherry-pick super-cheap inventory on premium publishers or for prospecting purposes. Smaller advertisers may find it easier to reach target audiences across a wider crop of publishers. Publishers also use the open marketplace to find new advertiser prospects and evaluate the market value of various types of inventory and audience segments. 

Your best defense against malvertisers is high quality data 

The open programmatic marketplace may be getting seedier but diligent publishers can still drive a ton of revenue. It’s just going to take more work to keep audiences safe from all the fraudsters spread across the programmatic pipes. 

Having a page/app-level creative blocker to bat away malware before it hits your property is table stakes. But with this massive expansion of malware in open programmatic, the quality of data fueling your blocker is more important than ever. Publishers can’t go cut-rate. Their ad-quality provider should be pumping data into the blocker in real-time from an in-house team of malware analysts. Third-party malware data isn’t going to be fresh enough. It may also lead to revenue-bleeding false positives. 

And finally, publishers need to be a lot more discriminating when it comes to their open marketplace partners — and by extension, those partners’ partners. Especially during the pandemic, publishers have been willing to install most demand sources that might give them an edge with bid density. But open programmatic is getting too dangerous to be carefree about the companies you monetize with. Ensure all your demand partners are scrutinizing both tags and landing pages (preferably from a variety of device and geographic profiles). And if a high percentage of the ads they bring you get shot down by your malware blocker, maybe they’re not the right fit for you. 

Open programmatic is definitely becoming a more dangerous place for monetization. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth the revenue. With the right tools and policies, publishers can make bank — and keep their audiences safe and happy. 

Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of January 20, 2022

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

DCN’s must reads: week of January 13, 2022

Advertising | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

How publishers can benefit from the rise of attention analytics

Americans spend nearly 8 hours a day on digital devices, according to a new report from eMarketer. Yes, that means time spent on devices now rivals how long people sleep. However, according to Harvard Business Review, for consumers to be affected by advertising messages, they need to be paying attention. This may seem obvious but capturing consumer attention can be challenging.

User attention has become more fleeting in the internet age. A Microsoft study states that the human attention span has dropped to just 8 seconds – shrinking 25% in just a few years. With users seeing thousands of ads per day, and privacy changes affecting how we measure performance, how can the industry determine whether an ad was seen by someone who is actually paying attention?

The opportunity in attention measurement

The rise of the internet set up the reach and quality metrics that everyone is familiar with today, but a lot has changed since then. In pursuit of optimal performance, advertisers gained interest in additional ways to measure and categorize impressions using brand suitability, contextual relevance, viewability and fraud. While these metrics have improved advertising performance immensely, none of them effectively measure attention.

Specific, industry-accepted metrics to measure attention are still being defined. They are also impacted by increased pressure to ensure privacy-friendly measurement. Some solutions rely on eye tracking and other technologies that are based on sampling.

Pay attention to measurement criteria

Our approach to attention measurement is a more complex endeavor that includes a combination of over 50 exposure and engagement signals that help us understand whether a user’s attention is or isn’t captured by an ad. Exposure signals include an ad’s entire presentation, such as viewable time, share of screen, audibility and more. The engagement side focuses on user-initiated events while the ad creative is displayed, including user touches, screen orientation, video playback and volume control, among others. These signals give advertisers and publishers helpful information about ad performance for both campaign and inventory optimization.

Rising use of attention metrics comes at a time when performance is getting harder to measure directly due to privacy changes across the industry. Behavioral targeting enabled by third-party cookies is giving way to other methods for measuring ad performance. For many advertisers, combining attention and quality metrics is a way to utilize new KPIs that can effectively improve performance over time.

People have grown increasingly savvy, avoiding or ignoring intrusive and non-relevant ad placements, so publishers and marketers must evolve to improve experiences and performance. Attention is a way to use privacy-friendly data to measure ad impact without using third-party cookies to track or measure data from the user.

How publishers benefit from analyzing attention

These insights enable more effective media buying, but how can publishers better understand attention as it relates to their inventory? First, we need to understand how attention is measured.

Attention is understood through a mix of exposure and engagement. Exposure is measured by looking at how long an ad was viewed by a user, how it was presented and what share of the screen did the ad take up. Engagement is measured by checking if a user is present and looking at whether they interacted with the ad. This includes actions such as clicks, hovers, volume adjustments, screen orientation, etc.

Key attention themes to watch for in 2022

  • Exposure: Brand awareness can be driven by measuring exposure to better understand how insights such as time-in-view, share of screen or quartile completion correlate with brand favorability and recall improvements over time.
  • Engagement: Metrics such as hover, click and mute rates show how optimized engagement can directly lead to increased conversions.
  • Cost-Benefit: Publishers that use attention to increase ad engagement can demand higher pricing from existing placements.
  • Understand Creative Impact: Advertisers can begin building better creatives based on knowing when and where to place messaging for maximum impact.

Analyzing attention gives publishers an opportunity to better understand how to package premium inventory in new ways. Advertisers value the increased conversions and brand awareness that comes with placements that result in higher attention rates. Similar to packaging inventory based on quality, this inventory can garner higher CPMs. With the right analytical tech stack, attention measurement enables publishers to understand their inventory in new ways, helping to drive yield.

It’s still early days for attention measurement, but signs are growing that it’s here to stay. Like any new set of metrics, the industry must come together to agree on standards that allow for interoperability and simple communication between buyers and sellers. Ultimately, it’s important to remember that attention is a way to better understand users and the impact of advertising, which is why the industry must evolve alongside new behaviors with the help of new data and analysis.

Perspectives | Revenue | Supporter Spotlight

Why premium video is media’s new monetization moonshot

In May 1961, President John F Kennedy declared that America would put a man on the Moon and return him safely to the Earth and his vision took the world to new heights. Sixty thousand companies in 70 countries invented five million parts and 400,000 of the world’s greatest minds collaborated to achieve a giant leap for mankind. That’s what you call a moonshot. 

There is a rising groundswell that the time is now right for a Media Moonshot: one that recasts the industry to blend trust with technology and a new commercial model that can last. The good news is that for those willing to embrace change, it’s not that hard.

A billion dollar opportunity

I have spent the past 15 years working in premium publisher video. I believe a relevant video in the right place in the right article lifts the quality of reporting, and improves the news experience for readers. This is now being recognized by ad agencies who are increasing spend in this sector.

To measure this, we at Oovvuu have been working with the Tribune Content Agency over the past year to match videos to articles from hundreds from America’s largest publishers. Those articles are read 93 billion times a month. Significantly, our data showed only 7% featured video, even when it was available.

Unfortunately, just 1% of the videos that were embedded were relevant. And, unfortunately, the least relevant videos of all were the most likely to be autoplay and contain low yielding bottom of the funnel programmatic advertising. However, our research showed that putting the contextual videos in priority positions, and making them click to play, was popular with news consumers and advertisers who would pay premium CPMs.

We used journalists, along with our own matching tech, with 100 global wires and broadcasters in the TCA project to ensure the highest levels of contextuality. The evidence was compelling according to Wayne Lown, Vice President of Tribune Content Agency, part of Tribune Publishing.

The Tribune News Service syndicates hundreds of daily articles read by millions and across the most trusted brands from Los Angeles Times, Dallas Morning News, Denver Post, St. Louis Post Dispatch, and Chicago Tribune. 

“We were able to match 86% of articles in the Tribune News Service with relevant video across news, sport, lifestyle and multiple other genres,” Lown said. “It proved relevant video was there and could be simply matched, revealing a major new revenue stream for publishers who get it right.”

A timely solution

Display advertising is in freefall and subscriptions nearing saturation. The good news is that premium video – which fetches $40 CPMs – offers a way to capitalize on billions of page views and reset publishers’ earnings.

Last month, the world’s largest ad agency GroupM released a report that showed global ad spend was predicted to exceed $1 trillion in 2025. Of that, premium video will account for 19.6% of spend in 2022. 

Mark Lollback who served GroupM CEO in Australia and New Zealand before joining Oovvuu believes that “Publishers are perfectly placed as they have massive engaged audiences. And the big global agency groups are openly talking about supporting publishing.”

At the same time, he pointed out that the biggest spending brands are looking for trusted locations for their messaging. Premium publisher video opens a whole new marketing channel for them, but it needs to be done right.

“Publisher video must be click to play, sound on, highly contextual and get premium positions in premium brands. When it does, it taps into users’ attention and delivers the high performance metrics that marketers are demanding,” according to Lollback. 

He recently presented research to the IAB showing publisher video delivered double digit performance boosts compared to YouTube on viewability, completion rates and click throughs. 

Publishers must act now

The benefits to publishers to grow revenue couldn’t be clearer. Unfortunately, 99% of US articles today feature machine-matched autoplay video with low relevance that attracts low yielding programmatic $7 CPMs. However, The TCA trial has proven that relevant video is available for 86% of articles and premium pre-rolls command $40 CPMs when they are click to play, sound on and highly contextual.

Autoplay should now be outmoded by the smart publishers so they can tap into the opportunity to shift ad spend from YouTube back to publishing. That is the Media Moonshot

Undoubtedly, the emergence of large video syndicators, powerful matching technologies and premium advertising support means it will play an increasingly important role in publisher earnings going forward. The good news is that publishers who do this will be poised to meet customer demand for video, increase engagement and performance metrics across their sites and open access to the largest premium advertising budgets on offer.

Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of January 13, 2022

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

DCN’s must reads: week of December 16, 2021

Advertising | Perspectives

Can automated advertising save America’s newspapers?

The steady decline of print and exponential growth of digital media has turned many industries on their heads. Few have been hit harder than traditional news media. The combined advertising revenues of U.S. newspapers peaked in 2006, at around $50 billion. Less than 15 years later, in 2020, they were estimated below $9 billion – an 80% drop. In that same period, the total number of newsroom employees more than halved from 75,000 to 30,000. And in 2020 something interesting happened: newspaper advertising revenue dipped below circulation revenue for the first time in recorded history.

The unavoidable takeaway is that newspapers are losing the battle for ad spend. The clear winners are big tech providers. From 2008 to 2018, Facebook’s ad revenue increased by 7000%—from $764 million to $55 billion. In other words, the ad revenue of a single company is now higher than the combined ad revenue of all U.S. newspapers at their historical peak. As one local journalist interviewed by The Tow Center for Digital Journalism put it, “The advertising dollars are going away and not coming back. Google and Facebook have just eviscerated the business.”

With these staggering numbers in mind, the prognosis for newspapers looks bleak. Can anything halt the attrition of ad spend?

Innovation hesitation

Arguably, one of the failures of traditional media has been their reticence towards adapting to new technologies. In a recent Tow Center study, researchers found a marked contrast between the way that editors and reporters use technology in their own lives and how they implement it in their work. Only a small minority of respondents (15%) had undertaken training in new tools or platforms paid for by their employers.

From the report: “half of respondents indicated low levels of interest in learning about chat apps such as WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger. Only a small minority (3.4%) are “very interested” in this technology. This comes at a surprise given that WhatsApp has two billion users around the world and Facebook Messenger reaches more than 133 million people in the U.S. and 1.3 billion globally.

Furthermore, more than four in ten respondents indicated a low level of interest for learning more about tools such as automation. This seems to be a particularly egregious oversight given that automation is one of the most powerful tools in big tech’s arsenal. Automation allows them to scale revenue-generating activities exponentially.

Automation education

This brings us to an age-old question: Does automation kill or create jobs? It might seem logical to assume that automating tasks removes the need for a human employee and thus contributes to a removal of jobs. In the short-term and in certain industries this may well be true.

In news media, however, it may be that the unwillingness to embrace automation has had the opposite effect. We see clearly that the number of newsroom employees has more than halved while the tech companies that have embraced automation keep growing.Editors and journalists may fear new technology. However, they should really be more concerned about the ongoing impact of relying on old technology.

One powerful way in which newspapers may find salvation in automation is in the sale of their ad inventory. Historically, newspapers established tight and long-lasting relationships with large, corporate advertisers. These relationships were maintained over lunches, cocktails, and many hours of manual work and negotiation. Think Mad Men. Of course, the Golden Age of Advertising has long since passed. Today, the name of the game is ease of access, efficiency, and iteration.

One of the reasons that companies like Facebook have been able to snatch ad revenue away from news media is that their main ad sales model is entirely automated. Although not the first to do so, Facebook set the standard for an e-commerce approach to selling advertising.

Self-service adoption

Today, most social platforms offer some type of campaign manager inspired by the Facebook for Business marketing platform. LinkedIn, Instagram, Google, TikTok, Snapchat, and Reddit are just some of the tech companies that have fully adopted self-serve advertising as their primary model. While the phrase is beyond cliched, self-serve platforms really do cut out the middleman.

That’s not to say that the news media has entirely missed the bus on self-serve. The Washington Post, Bloomberg, The Atlantic, News Corp, New York Post, and Mail Metro Media are some of the publishers that have built or are building their own self-serve ad platforms. At present, most of them channel only a very small proportion of their ad sales through their self-serve platforms.

As the benefits of scale, speed and automation become impossible to ignore, however, I predict a wholesale self-serve revolution in the newsrooms of the world. Perhaps the age of newspaper advertising isn’t over. Rather, it is entering a promising new phase.

close of of hand ready to use tablet resting on persons leg
Marketing | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

Why prioritizing personalization can build trust between consumers and brands

The pandemic era has altered consumer behavior like never before. With lockdown restrictions mandating stay-at-home orders and closing physical stores, every company — big and small — had to rethink its customer engagement strategies. This digital transformation and the mobile shift were quicker than expected. But consumers’ expectations have also radically changed in that time frame.

In an instant, consumers wanted brands to offer an enhanced user experience, especially when it came to mobile usage and ecommerce. To meet this demand, they expect companies to know who they are, what they like, and everything in between, regardless of which channel they came from. This anticipation of a more value-added exchange will only continue to rise. It’s therefore paramount that brands are ready to deliver a more personalized experience — and that publishers are empowered to help them deliver.

Start with first-party data

With first-party data, a more personalized experience can become a reality. The average buyer is becoming increasingly aware of how companies collect and use their personal data. However, they’re also demanding the highest level of privacy and security. And this trust is crucial in maintaining customer loyalty and retention.

When deciding on which brand to choose, 55% of consumers say trustworthiness and transparency are the most critical factor. Finding the sweet spot between convenience and privacy is therefore important to nurturing that relationship for a long-term future. After all, 48% of consumers appreciate the convenience of personalization as long as their data isn’t compromised.

We know that third-party cookies and comprehensive third-party data collection will most likely become obsolete. As a result, the businesses that invest and implement first-party data strategies will stay ahead of the pack.

But this isn’t necessarily straightforward. The average person touches their smartphone 2,617 times a day. They switch between an average of three devices to finish a task. And, 86% of shoppers regularly hop between two channels.  However, with data silos and poor infrastructure, the necessary context to bridge these channels and build a more complete picture is missing.

Personalization for omnichannel experiences

Fuelled by the pandemic, omnichannel shopping grew by 50% in 2020. This means that consumers have become more savvy about where and how they shop online than ever before.

Nielsen also found that consumers use online channels to purchase goods, research and identify physical stores. When examining levels of engagement across channels, 56% of online shoppers put careful consideration into each purchase at the point of sale in September 2020, compared with 51% of brick-and-mortar shoppers. In addition, the average buyer is now more used to going between the physical and digital world.

Consumers now expect a seamless transition across every touchpoint they have with a company. Therefore, prioritising creation of an omnichannel experience will help increase overall ROI. This is especially true when behavioral data is used. Behavioural data provides a more personalized experience online and offline, as well as giving a boost to brand loyalty and engagement. By tracking online data and leveraging it across all channels, a better user experience is entirely possible.

Enter data management platforms

In an increasingly privacy-driven and restrictive data collection environment, the proper data infrastructure can supercharge a company’s first-party data, all while staying privacy compliant.

This is where marketing needs to get deeper into single properties. For example, richer, more granular profiles for audience targeting allows for better personalization. So often, when we do a data interview with customers at 1plusX, we realize that typically they only have robust, deterministic data or attributes that are targetable for a fraction of their use. A data infrastructure with intelligent AI and predictive capabilities can enable brands to enrich and enhance their first-party data.

By expanding their dataset, companies can better personalize services and experiences. They can offer better advertising. They can understand which user might want a subscription or be more inclined to add a product to the cart. This behavior then feeds back to brands to better understand their customers. These data insights will prove valuable to optimize and enhance their marketing efforts.

Prioritizing personalization for the future

When companies use a data management platform that puts the control of user data in their own hands, they empower the consumer. This helps build the trust and transparency needed to maintain loyalty and engagement.

As a result, companies that can bring a more personalized experience to their customers without compromising privacy will thrive. Those that don’t will inevitably fall behind.

Perspectives

Media tech execs reveal their 2022 playbook

As we head into 2022, we find ourselves living in that mixed blessing: interesting times. Like every industry, we’re rocking in the wake of pandemic-era changes. From staffing challenges and workplace transformation to a consumer base whose priorities and expectations have profoundly shifted, media executives have plenty to manage. Needless to say, it is important that we enter the new year with an informed perspective to be ready for the challenges and opportunities ahead.

We reached out to some of our supporter partners here at DCN and asked about the biggest challenges and opportunities they see as we start off the new year. (DCN supporter partners are companies that do business with premium publishers and are aligned with principles of quality and trust.) Many of them echoed the big trends we’ve been watching. They also offered insights that should prove useful to anyone in the business of digital media.

Industry trends to watch in 2022

Innovation and diversification will accelerate  

As we move into 2022, one significant trend that started this year, and will continue, is finding the balance between subscriptions and advertising in order to maximize revenue.    

The next step for publishers in 2022 is looking at their business models holistically. Every business will need to find the right balance between subscriptions and advertising to maximize revenue.

—Matt Broad, Director of Optimization Services, Piano

Diversifying revenue streams is the mantra for 2022. This necessitates quick experiments, risk optimization, and data literacy; the precursor to which is an iterative mindset.

—Abhishek, Dadoo, CEO, Fewcents 

Recognizing the full potential of video as a primary format is one of the biggest opportunities we see for digital media companies as we head into the new year. This strategic move will not only allow publishers to reinforce their brands and diversify their revenues but build even more valuable and durable relationships with existing and new audiences.

—Andrew Rosenman, Global Product Marketing Lead CTV/Video, Smart AdServer

The biggest opportunity is to harvest advertising from segments of the market that are not just healthy, but those that are lurching forward in leaps-and-bounds.  The biggest threat is still running your Before Times playbook, assuming (wrongly) the market has rebounded in mostly same way that you remember.  The ad market is like a chameleon. Some parts do look the same shape, but the colors have changed quite significantly.    

—Todd Krizelman, CEO, MediaRadar

New strategies and technologies will help publishers navigate the shifting data flow

One of the biggest challenges for publishers heading into the new year is the continual evolution and tightening of data privacy policies. Consumers are also becoming more mindful of their data. Therefore, we predict that new privacy regulations will follow the lead of the GDPR and require publishers and their partners to provide consumers with more transparency and control on how their data is used.

By adopting technologies like privacy-focused universal identifiers, publishers can solve different challenges, including privacy compliance, with one solution. Privacy-first IDs ensure compliance with the latest regulations, protect media owner’s data from leakage – and consequent audience depreciation – while enabling them to monetize their traffic effectively when traditional identification methods will be phased out.

—Jessica Werner, Senior Director of Publisher Development, ID5

The challenge is moving an entire industry to a new way of buying media. Advertisers have over 100 ‘post-cookie’ solutions to choose from – not all are equal. There will also be more consolidation and growth in CTV.

The opportunity lies in education, publishers need to encourage testing and learning as we head into 2022. The chaos we’ve seen over the past year is about more than third-party cookies, it’s about how we use data ethically and responsibly in all aspects of digital advertising. Advertisers and agencies will move out of the testing phase and begin to select partners and solutions that are sustainable and use data ethically.

—Michael Ogunjobi, Customer Success Lead, Americas, Permutive              

Going into 2022, one of the key challenges remains the fragmentation of the ecosystem and the difficulties of measuring cross-platform TV viewing and campaign performance.

By leveraging new data and technology capabilities, such as linear addressable, media companies will be able to scale up and facilitate access to their CTV and VOD inventory. This will bring benefits to both sides of the transaction – return on ad spend for brands and optimized yield for broadcasters and other media providers. It is truly an exciting time for premium video and advanced TV.

—Stefanie Briec, Director – Demand Sales, UK & International, FreeWheel

In a market where most publishers are looking to monetize an increasing number of consent-less impressions and with increasing pressure on privacy enforcement, the future belongs to publishers who will find ways to maintain their revenues without collecting personally identifiable information.

This future must be anticipated right now, and our industry should stop holding onto the old world. So, the main focus for publishers should be to find solutions that do not rely on cookies or IDs, but that are still able to qualify 100% of their inventory.

—Fabien Magalon, Chief Supply Officer, Ogury

As the digital advertising industry continues to look ahead to a world with fewer shared personal identifiers, we can expect publishers and brands to turn more and more to AI-powered predictive insights as a way to get to know their audiences next year. As user-level targeting shrinks, and audience-level and contextual targeting grows, AI-powered predictive technologies will help to drive a new age of privacy-compliant targeting.

—Jürgen Galler, CEO and Co-Founder, 1plusX

Heading into 2022, audience, identity, and the challenge around associated data ownership and execution will remain at the forefront of media owner’s minds. Media companies will be navigating a complex and evolving landscape of regulation and regional policies, along with a diverse set of audience, contextual, and identity solutions.

—Leon Gurevich Head of Product & Client Services, IPONWEB

As we look toward 2022, a big challenge within the media industry will be continuing to refine and advance the way we approach audience creation. With challenge, of course, comes opportunity. There is a tremendous amount of opportunity to combine traditional audience approaches with advanced contextual strategies that support quality reach and empower publishers and advertisers to value supply appropriately. The ability to then verify reach and measure the success of those audiences is a critical step for both advertisers seeking ROI and publishers showcasing value in the efforts to further optimize yield.

—Dave Constantino, VP Client Development, Oracle Advertising

Media companies will focus on excellent experiences for the win

Publishers shoot themselves in the collective foot, because horrid ad experiences mean less consumer engagement: less homepage visits, less sharing of emails, fewer pageviews per session, fewer session, etc. At a time when publishers need to build tighter relationships with their audiences, we’re pushing them away with giant piles of junk ads (as well as constant prods to enable push notifications, sign up for newsletters, etc.). There’s a huge opportunity in the ad quality arena.

—Gavin Dunaway, Product Marketing Lead, The Media Trust

The biggest challenge is the acceleration of digital from linear channels and the ability for brands to manage a fragmented media environment. Our mixed reality future—part digital, part physical—will change the way business is done from now on. The opportunity for brands, agencies, and publishers is to smooth chaotic user experiences, by embedding insight into every media exchange.

—Laurel Rossi, CMO, true[X] + Gimbal           

Over the past years, we’ve seen non-traditional publishers start to double down on advertising, and it’s a trend we expect to accelerate in 2022.  Non-traditional publishers take any number of forms, [which] include retail and commerce companies and utility-based sites and apps such as rideshare. Many of these have enormous volumes of traffic, deep customer engagement and the golden goose: first-party data. With non-traditional publishers, it’s vital that it’s vital that ad experiences do not take users out of their walled gardens or detract from the primary experience.

—Justin Choi, CEO, Nativo

The word of the year is quality, which presents both a challenge and opportunity. Brands are increasingly aware of the impact of their media spend, not just on society at large but on the attention that high quality environments can deliver.

—Eric Shih, Chief Supply Officer, Teads

Automation will help level the playing field

We will continue to see self-serve technology impact advertising as we move into 2022. Self-service allows advertisers to manage every aspect of their campaign whenever they need, without talking to a salesperson. Not only does this give users more control, but it also saves time and resources. Self-service generally uses a low-cost technical automated platform to replace the manual tasks in the ad booking process, and that automation allows sales teams to work more efficiently and focus efforts on growing their bigger accounts.             

—Peo Persson, Co-Founder and EVP Sales, DanAds

The biggest opportunity for digital media companies is to boldly tackle customer churn across the entire customer journey. Strategic partnerships and subscription bundles are an excellent place to start. Consumers today are ready for easier, more convenient ways to get all the digital content they love in one place.

Digital media companies need a complete retention approach. Start by getting smarter and more creative with subscription partnerships and bundles. And ensure you get the revenue you deserve by using subscription intelligence, automation, and revenue recovery.

—Roy Barak, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer, Vindicia

Scaling ad revenues by increasing bandwidth via automation integration. Digital media companies will need to leverage automation to streamline their Order-to-Cash workflows and digital processes. This will enable scale while greatly reducing error margins, increasing internal bandwidth and, of course, increase ROI.

—Jay Kulkarni, CEO and Founder, Theorem Inc.

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