We all know the narrative that older media brands are struggling to reinvent themselves for the digital age, while upstarts have the advantage of being “digital natives” with no legacy burden. But what about the older “digital native” brands such as AOL and Yahoo? Looks like they might end up having an even more difficult road ahead.
Take the recent quarterly and year-end earnings reports from the New York Times and Yahoo. While the Times saw strength in digital subscriptions and native advertising, Yahoo struggled to deal with massive layoffs and “digital magazines” that weren’t gaining momentum. While both are considering streamlining their organizations, Yahoo has to take much more drastic measures.
Digital growth at the Times At the Times, digital-only subscriptions grew 20% from the previous year profits were up nearly 50% from last year’s quarter. Print circulation, meanwhile, decreased by 6.9% for the daily and 4.4% for the Sunday edition, but circulation revenues were up 1.3% in the quarter due to an increase in delivery prices. When it comes to ad revenue, print decreased by 6.6% whereas digital increased by 10.6%. A growing strength, however, is mobile ads, which were up 74% in the quarter, making up 22% of all digital ad revenue (which itself is now 24% of all ad revenues).
CEO Mark Thompson said the Times’ T Brand Studio, which produces sponsored content, has become “a meaningful part of the business,” hinting at its importance in long-term strategic growth plans.
The results came the same day executive editor Dean Baquet sent an internal memo announcing an overhaul of the Times’ structure and strategy. “Does our system of powerful desks help us cover big stories that don’t easily have a home—like climate change and education—or does it sometimes get in the way? We deeply value the craft of editing, but in the digital era should we continue to edit every update of every story at the same level?”
The “desks” he’s referring to are the traditional Metro, National, International and other broadly named desks that help classify Times coverage—and thereby newsroom resources. Baquet revealed in the memo that he had asked David Leaonhardt, a recently named columnist and one of the founding editors of The Upshot, to help him examine the current newsroom structure and any necessary changes.
Yahoo’s retrenchment Meanwhile, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is feeling an even bigger burden of change, especially in the face of dwindling prospects nearly four years into the job. Yahoo’s loss in the quarter was $4.4 billion because of a write-down from investments that didn’t pay off. Without that charge, the company actually earned 13 cents a share. Compared to Google’s 31.9% profit margin in the fourth quarter, Yahoo’s profit margin was an embarrassing 2%. It’s now planning to close down five offices, and its board announced it was looking at “strategic alternatives” (in other words, a potential sale).
It doesn’t help that one way of streamlining costs—laying off 15% of Yahoo’s workforce—adds to a brain drain already taking place at the company. The New York Times reported in January that more than a third of the workforce has left in the last year, prompting Mayer to approve “hefty retention packages” to prevent people from taking job offers elsewhere. Yet most recently, entrepreneur Arjun Sethi, who helped Yahoo compete in the field of mobile chat apps, announced he was leaving.
Much of the criticism toward Yahoo is that its vision was poor from the start. “It’s very, ‘We’ll try this, we’ll try that, we’ll throw a bunch of money at that thing without a clear, coherent strategy around it,’” Jan Dawson, chief analyst at Jackdaw Research, told the Los Angles Times.
The problem with Yahoo is that its expectations are higher in the digital-native space, having to compete with the likes of Facebook, Google on the platform side and BuzzFeed and Vox on the content side. The New York Times has figured out that an older brand can succeed online with the right revenue mix: mobile ads, native ads, subscriptions and memberships. It’s not going to be easy, but they have certainly built up trust and credibility over the years.
While the ceiling is so much higher for ambitious digital natives, the bottom is so much lower when things go sour.
Ad blocking has forced the publishing industry to rethink its reliance on advertising, and several digital publishers have incorporated ecommerce and affiliate links as a way to diversify their revenue streams. Now, those same ecommerce links, previously considered immune to ad blockers, are the “latest unlikely casualty of ad blocking,” according to a recent article from Digiday.
While Purch’s ecommerce or facilitated ecommerce links haven’t been tangibly impacted, ad blocking – and this particular type – is forcing all publishers to rethink monetization strategy and user experience.
The Digiday article quotes Sean Blanchfield, CEO of PageFair, a startup that sells anti-ad blocking tech to publishers as stating, “There are no privacy or usability implications to e-commerce attribution; it is a simple practice that helps websites get paid for honest recommendations of products….it causes unnecessary financial damage to thousands of independent websites.”
There is a valid point here. The impetus behind ad blocking was to prevent disruption and irrelevant noise on a page so the user could focus on the content. Yet, unlike most ads, ecommerce links are often directly correlated to the content provided on the page – and in the best cases enhance the user’s experience. Ad blockers have gone too far with targeting these ecommerce links, but this doesn’t mean digital publishers should panic. It means they should pivot – diversifying even further and providing additional value to users.
Increase loyalty by improving the user experience Publishers should concentrate on building the lifetime value of a user (the total future potential) by exploring other ways to provide a better experience to keep them coming back. Creating valuable and relevant services, tools and content that serves the overall relationship is what will ultimately sustain the industry. Publishers who take a longer view by focusing on increasing the number of loyal users instead of increasing the number of page views and maximizing the yield of every interaction will not only end up winning against ad blockers; they will end up winning over users.
Some publishers are doing this in the most simplistic way – creating a highly-engaged and loyal audience by providing real value through highly specialized content. Focusing less on scale and more on quality can engage users for the long-term, while staying true to the sentiment behind “content is king.”
Another way to increase the lifetime value of a user is to design a loyalty program that recognizes and rewards the most engaged, frequent and long-term users, who often drive a large percentage of overall revenue. Some of the more experimental publishers may even offer an ad-free or ad-reduced experience to their most loyal users – or as an incentive to share their email address. This could persuade users to turn off ad blockers, especially as they become increasingly non-discriminative in discerning what’s true content and what’s not.
Engineer an ecosystem of services to regain control of audience interactions With ad blockers ultimately dictating how a user experiences a publisher’s site, we’re likely to see the industry test new ways to regain control of how their audiences are interacting with content. Publishers specializing in travel have also excelled at this. TripAdvisor, Kayak and Bookings.com offer reviews and advice to aid their users during the research phase and when the consumer is ready, they can book everything they need, all within the confines of a single site and in a way that is untouchable to ad blockers. This model is not only diverse, but also encourages loyalty by providing a truly “sticky” service to users.
Not all of this has to be built organically. Resourceful publishers will also look for complimentary technologies or services and integrate those with their sites – or their mobile apps. Mobile apps are also a great way to re-claim control over the user experience and how ecommerce links and ads are integrated. The best part? Ad blocking apps that block ads within mobile apps have been rejected by app stores which means publishers are likely to retain control of their mobile experiences for the foreseeable future.
The future of digital publishing Our peer group – the digital influencers coming up today – are likely to redefine the industry, and probably won’t even see ourselves as just “publishers” in the years to come as focus shifts to revenue augmentation through services and alternate models.
Unfortunately, it seems likely that 2016 will be an arms race between ad blockers and blockers of ad blockers. There will be no clear winner with one clear loser: the user. Users lose as ad blockers continue to take away the very control that attracted them to their tools in the first place. The important thing is to keep our focus on the customer relationship and move toward a future where a better user experience trumps short-term monetary gains.
Phil Barrett is a Digital Marketing and eCommerce Executive with experience managing cross-channel programs where he has helped companies and brands use technology and new media to drive measurable results across the marketing mix. He currently serves as Senior Vice President & GM at Purch, where he leads the Marketing & Shopper Services teams.
With audiences widely dispersed among mobile and social apps – and, soon, virtual reality and augmented reality experiences– publishers who want to thrive must both follow consumers where they want to go and meet them on their own terms.
These were a couple of the themes that emerged from the wide-ranging conversations at Digital Content Next’s annual members-only Summit 2016 in Miami. DCN members met to explore content and business models given that consumption patterns are constantly changing, many consumers are actively avoiding advertising, and digital intermediaries are extracting much of the value out of the publishing economy. Speakers and attendees talked about changing their relationship with programmatic ad marketplaces, seeking alternative sources of revenue from subscriptions and memberships, and aggressively pursuing revenue diversification.
In his opening remarks, DCN CEO Jason Kint noted that although the Interactive Advertising Bureau recently celebrated the milestone of $50 billion in revenue generated by online advertising, more than 50% of the revenue currently goes to two companies: Google and Facebook, with premium publishers collectively garnering about 15%.
“Most of the money doesn’t actually get into your pocket to pay for the professional content, the entertainment and journalism you all do,” Kint said. DCN’s mission is “to make sure the next $50 billion is different.”
Premium publishers need to build on the trust and reputation they enjoy, rather than fighting with consumers over their use of ad blockers, Kint said, pointing out that a blockers are a symptom of consumer dissatisfaction. Smart publishers need to look at the opportunity “in the growth of this audience that is looking for content on new terms.”
“It’s a symptom of a bad user experience – users taking action on their own,” agreed Justen Fox, senior product manager for revenue products at Vox Media. Consumers are weary of pop-up and pop-under ads, not to mention advertising that contains malware. He finds that the use of ad blockers is higher with social and referral traffic, undermining audience acquisition, and said it’s also higher with returning visitors to Vox’s websites. If publishers and advertisers fail to clean up their act, the problem will keep getting worse, he said.
“Focusing on the user experience is actually the long-term solution,” Fox said. However, no publisher can do it alone because consumer impressions are formed by the experience they get across all media sites.
Sarah Frank, executive producer of Now This News, said that killing their website and forgetting about SEO is the best decision they ever made. It gave them the mandate to create content experiences optimized for different social channels so that consumers have a great experience wherever they find Now This content.
Marketers take action Meanwhile, marketers seeking to distinguish themselves from the bad actors in digital media are increasingly creating their own content to build positive customer relationships—with or without the help of publishers.
(L-R) Dave Peck, Global Head of Influencer & Social Media Marketing, PayPal; Katrina Craigwell, Director, Global Content & Programming, GE; Christopher G. Laughlin, Client Services Director, SapientNitro; and Laura Henderson, Global Head of Content & Media Monetization, Mondelez International
“We’re trying to figure out, how we stop interrupting the content and become the content,” said Laura Henderson, global head of content and media monetization at Mondelez International.
Her group has gone as far as to decide the content it creates ought to be good enough to make money on its own merits. One of the products from this division of Kraft Foods, the Oreo Twist, Lick, Dunk mobile game, made back 2.5 times the money spent to produce it, with about 5 billion virtual Oreo cookies dunked, Henderson said.
Like publishers, marketers “feel the pain of ad blocking, of our content being skipped, blocked, avoided at all costs – which means we need to figure out a new way,” she said.
Katrina Craigwell, director of global content and programming at GE, leads a team dedicated to connecting with lovers of science and technology on any medium or platform where they can be found. These content creators compare themselves less with their traditional industrial competitors than with media sites that create engaging tech content, be it the SyFy Channel or the people at NASA who produced the “7 Minutes of Terror” Mars lander video.
Asked if she had any use for publishers now that GE can publish its own content, Craigwell said she looks for partners who know how to tell a great story or can help the firm figure out an approach to emerging formats, such as virtual reality.
Building brand strength Many of the discussions of how publishers adapted concerned how they preserve their brand value while adapting to new business and content delivery models. The Onion Chief Operating Officer Kurt Mueller said that is something the satire site has had to be careful about with its experiments in native advertising: content is sponsored by advertisers but produced by the editorial staff.
The challenge is readers expect a certain attitude from Onion content, “and if we don’t give it to them, it comes off really badly for both us and the brand. You’re just creating ads if it’s not authentic to what you are,” Mueller said.
Laura Evans, VP of audience development and data science at Scripps Networks Interactive pointed out that data offers an excellent way to understand customer preferences, which can be leveraged to create better experiences. The goal, said Evans, is to “turn a visitor into a brand loyalist.”
As Membership Economy author, Robbie Kellman Baxter put it, “you need to love your customer more than your product” in order to create a positive relationship that will last a lifetime. And, as DCN CEO Kint pointed out in his opening remarks, “No business has succeeded, long term, without giving its customers a great experience.”
David F. Carr is a writer, editor, web consultant, and student of digital business. He is a Forbes contributor, a former InformationWeek Editor-at-Large, and the author of Social Collaboration for Dummies.
Back in the 1990s in the early days of the World Wide Web, media companies created websites, sensing that distribution was changing, even if they didn’t completely understand it. At the time that meant creating content for print or broadcast and then after some period of time dumping it onto the website. Today, those delivery silos are gone and editorial and product work side by side in a symbiotic relationship, moving the content wherever it needs to be in whatever format makes most sense.
That sounds obvious enough, but in reality even the most successful digital media companies haven’t figured it all out. It’s hard to do when new delivery methods turn up all the time. That’s why organizations that have made a successful transition to digital like CNN, The Washington Post and the New York Times are constantly experimenting.
They understand that none of this is fixed in time, and whatever you think you know about digital delivery, it’s probably going to change.
Giving the user control Understanding that change is constant, media companies strive to deliver that content wherever the user happens to be. That could be a SnapChat story, SMS headline alert, sharing a story on Facebook or the new Facebook Instant, accessing content on the company’s mobile website or via a company app.
“My sense is that we’ve optimized operations so that news is the driver and then we distribute it to where and how people are consuming the news,” says Alex Wellen, chief product officer at CNN. The tech and editorial voice needs to meet consumers where they are, he explained.
Julia Beizer, who is director of product at The Washington Post says for her publication, it’s a marriage of technology and content including embedding 100 engineers in their building and bringing on new writers over the last couple of years who understand the cadence of online writing. After that, it’s a matter of developing those products and services alongside editorial to deliver content to multiple delivery channels.
Putting the content in context The Post must be doing something right. comScore reported that it had an all-time high of 76 million monthly digital users in December. Beizer says one of the reasons for that success is that they have been paying attention to what people want in their digital content, and it’s not always bite-sized chunks.
“One of the early misplaced assumptions around mobile was that mobile users are standing in line waiting for coffee. A lot of people are doing that, but a lot of people are on their couches at home too. Research shows upwards of 70 percent are at home,” she said. She adds that in that context the idea that people only want snackable content doesn’t hold true.
Then there’s the on-going battle of developing apps versus building a good mobile website. As with everything else, there is room for both and it depends on your goals — engagement or views.
Consider that in its study of apps versus mobile websites between June 2014 and June 2015, comScore found people used mobile websites twice as often as mobile apps. While both boasted impressive year over year growth, apps were growing at 21% year over year with the mobile web showing 42% growth.
The important thing to remember is that this isn’t about rigid choices: Each channel has its own purpose. Mobile web is about single engagements, while a consumer using a mobile app tends to be constantly engaged with the brand. Wellen points out that they see four times the engagement on mobile apps, but the mobile web has six times the audience of their apps, so you can’t choose one over the other.
What the app demonstrates is loyalty to your media brand. As a brand, you can learn what the consumer likes and there is an explicit relationship between the two that you don’t necessarily have on the mobile web, comScore’s VP for marketing and insights, Andrew Lipman explained.
The desktop lives on Yet even while we have all of these new digital delivery channels, the oldest one, the desktop, still lives, even as PC sales are plunging. The most recent IDC numbers for the 2015 fourth quarter show PC sales down over 10%, but Lipman says it’s a mistake to think of the various channels as a zero sum game. He points out that lots of people access content on their PCs at work or laptops wherever they happen to be (and those are still technically PCs).
“This is one of the biggest misconceptions I see out there. Often in the media, it gets framed as a zero sum game. Since the clear winner in recent term is mobile, then desktop must be the loser,” he said. In reality, they both have importance and it depends on what the audience needs to access your content at any given moment in any particular channel.
It’s clear that companies that have successful digital strategies are always looking for new ways to engage with the audience, even while continuing to develop the older ones. As Beizer points out, when she started at the Washington Post 40% of the people on mobile were accessing their content on a BlackBerry. That’s obviously changed and it’s constantly changed.
That keeps things interesting for folks working on digital products inside media companies. “It would be boring if we had it all figured out,” she said.
Ron Miller is a Freelance Technology Journalist and blogger. He is enterprise reporter at TechCrunch and Contributing Editor at EContent Magazine.
I am not a millennial. But, I can’t escape them as a marketer.
The lion’s share of my co-workers are millennials, and every brand I touch wants to figure out how to “engage millennials.” So, irrespective of the hundreds of articles, surveys, polls and white papers I’ve collected and read on how to engage with millennials, you can imagine my shock when I begrudgingly shook it off at the Taylor Swift concert this summer and unexpectedly found my “aha.”
I went into Taylor Swift’s concert kicking and screaming. I knew one song, and even that wasn’t on my playlist. Yet from the moment I walked through the turnstiles, Taylor offered up a truly engaging experience.
We talk a lot about driving fanaticism with our clients and how fanaticism is the ultimate form of engagement. But it can only happen when the right storytelling tactics are put into play to make the listener (aka your target consumer) want to continue the conversation.
What Taylor Swift taught me is that there are really three simple rules of engagement:
1. Make them ask, “What’s next?” – A glow-in-the-dark bracelet was slapped on my wrist when my ticket was scanned—ooh, mystery; I was intrigued! I took my seat and was surrounded by screaming fans (of all ages, surprisingly) that were talking about whom Taylor’s surprise guests would be that night. Boom—I was even more intrigued (turned out to be Nick Jonas and her “squad” of Super Models). Then the stadium went dark, the crowd erupted, and suddenly there were twinkly lights as far as the eye could see. It was magical. I quickly realized they were coming from the bracelets, and I couldn’t help it…I started cheering, too. I couldn’t wait to see what happened next. And that’s when it hit me—I was truly engaged.
How can this translate to your media property? Look at your programming calendar and figure out how you can create suspense around upcoming content, a series launch or new digital initiative. For example, if you plan to unveil a new content strategy this year, figure out a way to tease the theme and involve your audience via social conversations, tweets, use of hashtags, etc. In the past we’ve launched new season offerings using a “look book” strategy that hints at what is to come—sparking speculation and fan-driven conversation This tactic builds a groundswell of buzz and helps generate interest pre-launch.
2. Let go – While Taylor’s set may have been the same night after night across her world tour, you can tell from her Instagram (62 million followers strong) just how different each concert was. Crowd interaction, audience response and the volume of cheers led to how she revealed and brought her special guest stars to the stage. Surprise and delight layers fueled real-time social sharing; I saw fans posting feverishly to Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook in the moment. Taylor framed the narrative, but then let the story unfold in a participatory, two-way format. It was living proof that if you allow your target to contribute to the story versus just asking them to listen, you end up with a much richer, more generative story.
How can this translate to your media property? If your brand isn’t currently leveraging user-generated content, figure out ways to involve your audience through contests and rewards-based initiatives that are more than simply offering free product. Reward your audience with experiences, like access to upfronts or sneak previews, at which your brand sits in the center.
3. Be a part of their life, not just a brand –Taylor’s diatribes between sets were a bit much for this GenXer; however, I watched in amazement as she waxed philosophical about owning independence and self-validation. As many around me were crying and laughing or screaming, “I love you, Taylor!” I thought, “Wow, how can a brand harness this power?” Then I realized that she commanded this reaction because most of the audience felt like they knew Taylor on a personal level—that she was truly a part of their lives because of the media and her social footprint.
How can this translate to your media property? Craft your property narrative and then support that story with content and social posts that reinforce the role you play in your audience’s lifestyle. For example, in our work for Bugaboo strollers, all of our key messages ladder back to the emotional pull between a mother and wanting to do what is best for her baby. We tug at her heartstrings by positioning Bugaboo not just as a stroller, but as a baby’s first set of wheels.
Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought Taylor Swift could impact my thinking around engagement. Where I netted out is that it’s not something you can dictate or force. You can strategize and plan and put a smart offering in place that has all the makings to stir engagement. But real engagement happens where the head meets the heart.
A senior-level strategist with over 20 years of experience, Jarrod Walpert has overseen strategic communications, brand planning and creative ideation for some of today’s most influential brands including Kashi, Newcastle/Heineken, SodaStream, Honest Tea, Pottery Barn, 16 Handles and Black & Decker.
In addition to developing multichannel strategies that merge digital, PR, content and experiential programming, he helps brands develop their master narrative and build engaging marketing/comms plans.
The promise of the “smart TV” is that it will do much more than just provide a guide for channels—that it can personalize our experience, serve up the channels we want, connect us to the Internet, add in streaming options and more. And the more connected it becomes, the more chance for advertisers and publishers to target users with messages and content.
While the smart TV hype has outshined reality so far, the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Vegas brought some potential good news for smarter TVs.
The Korean electronics giant LG, for example, is adding more than 50 streaming channels to its latest generation of smart TVs. Switching from cable networks to streaming content from publishers such as BuzzFeed, Wired and the Wall Street Journal is now as easy as the click of a button. LG partnered with the startup Xumo to fuse Internet content into television’s traditional environment, and partnered with Watchmi, a German Internet video startup, to give 300 more international streaming channels to its new TVs.
Samsung also announced new features at CES, positioning its products at the center of the Internet of Things ecosystem. The ability for its smart TVs to recognize add-on boxes such as an Xbox is one such boon. It makes the life of a consumer a lot less complicated because it eliminates the need for any extra remote controls, as the main remote control can commandeer these other devices.
Streaming updates Sling TV, the live streaming service introduced at last year’s CES, announced this year that it’s planning to overhaul its app entirely. Its new app will allow consumers to easily identify their “must-see TV.” Viewers will also have the option to store their shows for up to three days in the cloud, and navigate recommendations provided by Sling on what to view next. And let’s not forget that streaming behemoth Netflix activated its service in more than 130 countries during a CES keynote address.
But beyond the hype at CES and the positive attributes of smart TV are some of its pitfalls. One big one is that for all the bells and whistles these TVs offer, few people take advantage of them. The market research company NPD estimated in an August report that “roughly a third of smart TVs in the U.S. weren’t actually connected to the Internet.” In comparison, the number of Americans using streaming devices such as Roku, Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV is climbing even faster than the number using smart TVs (and their functions), according to researchers at the Parks Associates.
And that’s because these different devices are solid competition for smart TVs. “If you’re a streaming media box (maker), you’ve got much more ability to push new features out into the market at an affordable price,” Barbara Kraus, Parks Associates’ director of research, told the Associated Press.
Overcoming ambivalence The influx of more apps on these devices could put a strain on the popularity of smart TVs if they don’t institute them as well. Ali Kani, general manager for Nvidia’s Shield Android TV device, said that while smart TVs satisfy the need to watch video, the future living room will be “revolutionized by apps.”
Underscoring this and the general ambivalence about smart TVs is the simple fact that new technology gets old pretty quickly as even newer technology emerges. If companies such as Samsung put new features only in its latest generation of products and don’t state whether older smart TVs will ever get this new technology, it leaves consumers hanging, and not in a good way.
This applies to the “so-called ultra high-definition 4K television” as well, according to the New York Times’ personal tech columnist Brian X. Chen. He argues that given its expense and the underwhelming digital enhancements meant to come with this kind of high-definition television, it’s not in the consumer’s best interest to buy. Topping that off is the dearth of quality programming average viewers would want to see, including arguably America’s most popular show, “Game of Thrones.”
“My advice: Wait at least another year or two before buying it,” Chen wrote.
Perhaps that’s a good piece of wisdom all prospective smart TV owners ought to take. Not to mention any publishers hoping to make a splash in the added streaming channels on smart TVs.
The latest report on Twitter’s efforts to reinvigorate its platform included the long-rumored project to break loose from the 140 character limit. Like all newsfeed changes, this triggered a polarizing debate about people’s preferred experience of the almighty feed. Lost in the fray was a more important development, that Slate’s Will Oremus astutely captured: “Twitter isn’t raising the character limit, it’s building a wall.”
So while the fundamental user experience of seeing 140 characters is likely to remain the same, a story can be expanded and be read in full, without linking back to (and delivering traffic to) the site of origin. This comes as we just wrapped up a year in our industry that saw the “platformization of content” with Facebook, Snapchat, Apple and Google rolling out proprietary experiences to seduce content creators. (Yes, AMP is proprietary until proven otherwise.)
I’m on record as a fan of these platforms. I think any new distribution channel that meets consumer demands is fertile ground for the trusted content of our membership. Some of the greatest innovation in content creation has come as a result of these platforms. Consider the power of the social graph (Facebook), real-time (Twitter), user-created video (Google), anytime/anywhere (Apple). As long as the open web and competition remain in force then it’s a win-win for consumers. It’s why we made this the first point in our DCN Trust Principles.
Yes, a virtual elimination of the character limit in Tweets allows content to be embedded on Twitter. It will enable text to travel in a way that is more native to the Twitter experience, similar to what Twitter has done with images and video. A better in-Tweet text experience will mean less text screen grabs, which will serve all parties better by opening up improvements to search, discovery and sharing. But most importantly—if properly executed—it creates an opportunity to improve the consumer experience by making it faster and easier to read interesting content. I have no doubt that, with Jack Dorsey at the helm, Twitter will do this the right way so that it first delivers consumer value and then creates business value.
So given Twitter’s plans to go “Beyond 140” and speculation on what this will mean in terms of content delivery and consumption, what are the big issues we should be thinking about? First off, we need to remember that this is nothing new. As each of these closed distribution points emerge, people suggest we are facing something radically new. But, before there was the open web, there were proprietary platforms (Compuserve, AOL, Prodigy). They ultimately lost because of the open web and the innovation it enables.
However we also passed through a phase dominated by portals, which were essentially platforms that allowed for content to be natively distributed on them. I recall fierce debates in the late 90s when I argued to embed Times Mirror content directly on Yahoo! as they rolled out channels. Right or wrong, it’s where the eyeballs were seeking the content.
So if we accept that content is going to live on platforms, there are some basic requirements: Trusted content creators need to be able to maintain brand identity, measure audience and make the financials work. What this means is that…
Yes, GroupM’s fight to have market-maker Facebook play by the same rules and measure their ad impressions like the rest of the Web were important. The fox can’t guard the hen house.
Yes, the WSJ report that Apple News has no idea how large your audience is should be concerning. Actually, it’s even worse than not knowing: They were miscounting. It’s good to see the transparency on the problem and I hope it gets fixed if the platform is going to be meaningful.
No, Google can’t develop its own controlling markup language and be the arbiter of which companies can play ball. Well, they actually can, as long as competition exists. But again, please don’t try to pass this off as “open.”
Finally: Snapchat. Dear Snapchat. The world is moving towards a measurement based on time. Your video views are a nice press release but as Nielsen recently pointed out, they will soon rightly be a measurement of the past.
Here at DCN, we’re focused on advancing the future of trusted content. The positives and negatives of these new platforms are top of mind for us. We’re keeping a close eye on both the competition they do (or don’t) foster and—most importantly—how they continue to bring back value to the vital information, entertainment and news that our members plant in their gardens.
I encourage our members to continue to experiment on emerging platforms as it makes business sense for each of them. And I look forward to the many ways they will continue to share the insights and lessons among our trusted forums. The future of content will flourish on the open web and in carefully tended gardens, as long as we all remain focused on the customer.
Take on 2016 by capitalizing on high-value sales opportunities, including leveraging programmatic to new heights and, of course, improving interpersonal relationships with prospects and customers. As the sales, and revenue generators, of our firms, locking in the fundamental habits below will allow us to remain successful even as the bumpy digital landscape continues to evolve.
Let’s take a closer look at how all of this possible:
1. Understand advertisers’ buying trends
Wouldn’t it be great to have a crystal ball so you could see what your prospects want and when? If only ad sales was that easy. Yet, there are other instructive ways to give your prospects what they want. Before you pitch, get to know which product lines they are focused on, what type of advertising they value and understand the goals of their campaigns. Once you have this information, it is important to document it. Whether you put this information in your CRM, notebook or Excel document doesn’t really matter. What’s important is to be able to easily reference this as you build out your individual account plans. Just watch the effectiveness of your next pitch soar.
2. Adopt high-CPM ad units
Choose high-CPM ad units that are most valuable to you and your digital business. This means adopting native, whole-page takeovers and online video. Given that video ad prices are capable of commanding 10x higher than the price of display ads, web publishers should leap at the opportunity. The bottom line is that high-CPM ad units are the most profitable sources for publishers, but also more valuable to the advertiser—and that’s how you should approach it in your pitch.
Among these high-CPM options, native ads probably stand out the most. It has attracted a ton of hype, and yet, only 4% of total online advertisers placed native ads from January-November last year (a total of 7,220 brands across the sites MediaRadar tracks).
3. Take advantage of programmatic
Ninety-five percent of all national consumer magazine media companies have already started selling programmatic, according to MediaRadar data.* Programmatic advertising has made it much easier for marketers to purchase advertising and expand reach. Publishers can also manipulate programmatic advertising to their advantage to leverage their audience and grow profit.
4. Identify up-selling opportunities
The probability of closing a new prospect is 5-20%, while the probability of selling to an existing customer is 60%-70%! Yet, upselling is something that reps sometimes lose focus on as they want to hunt and close a new account. As sales leaders, it is important that we focus on helping reps identify upsell opportunities and set goals for each account. By inspecting what we expect in weekly meetings, we can coach our reps to get stickier with our clients and become a more integral part of their business and success.
5. Increase client engagement (also known as “Old Faithful”)
No matter what changes happen this year in the industry, focusing on continuing to earn our client’s business is how we create lasting partnerships. People buy from people. Statistically, 38% of clients don’t renew due to lack of relationship. Make sure to engage with your clients before, during and after the sale. Proactively reach out to clients so you can get a better idea of their needs and address concerns. This will help you build confidence, show them that you are there to help and excel in the above mentioned four tips.
Jen Wilga (@JenniferWilga) is a dynamic sales champion who is leading MediaRadar’s global expansion efforts. She joins the team with over 20 years of experience in SaaS solutions. Prior to joining MediaRadar, Jen played a critical role in developing and executing the sales strategy for Careerbuilder’s HR SaaS solutions. Jen received her BA from Misericordia University.