On Friday, February 26, Jason Kint, CEO of DCN, wrote to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Tom Wheeler to lay out the perspective of premium publishers with regard to their upcoming privacy rules for broadband providers. The letter urges the FCC to require broadband providers to provide consumers with transparency and meaningful choice with regard to the collection and use of personal information especially when this data will be used for purposes that fall outside of a consumer’s expectation and outside of the context of the interaction where the data was collected.
For example, a reasonable consumer would expect a mobile broadband provider to collect data about how a consumer uses their mobile device so the company could make improvements to the broadband service or ensure efficient management of the network. However, consumers would not expect (or even know) if a mobile broadband provider was using this same set of data to tailor advertising to consumers on websites or apps.
As several news outlets reported, at least one mobile broadband provider was inserting a unique identification header every time a consumer’s mobile browser fetched content from a website. This header was used by advertising partners of the mobile broadband provider to identify individual consumers, track their online behavior and target advertising based on that behavior. However, neither the mobile broadband providers nor their partners meaningfully disclosed to consumers’ information about this activity or the ability to opt out. In addition, it was later discovered that the header was being used without the knowledge of the broadband provider by some of their advertising partners to respawn cookies that a consumer had deleted – effectively reversing a consumer’s choice for privacy.
Consumers have different expectations with regard to 1st party, direct relationships versus other types of transactions which are indirect and out of context. The FCC’s privacy rules should account for the differences in these relationships. As our letter points out, greater transparency and choice will help rebuild consumer trust and help the digital economy reach its full potential.
History reminds us that often, some of the most impactful ideas in the media industry were inspired and developed not in valleys or alleys, but in ivory towers.
Samuel Morse with his recorder, photograph taken by Mathew Brady in 1857 cc wikicommons
Today, most of us view Silicon Valley and Alley as the hubs of disruptive technology and the successful start-ups born and raised there as the leaders in a quickly evolving industry that will continue to revolutionize the world. But history reminds us that often, some of the most impactful ideas — specifically, those in the journalism and media industry — were inspired and developed not in valleys or alleys, but in ivory towers (aka universities).
Many of us may know that Samuel Morse pioneered the commercialization of the telegraph in the U.S., but we may not know the inspiration behind his research: the work of his friend, electromagnetism researcher, Charles Jackson.
William Paley, the broadcasting tycoon responsible for the early success of American media staple Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), injected innovation in his business with the introduction of color television — specifically, the field sequential color system — developed by Peter Carl Goldmark, a scholar at University of Vienna who later led CBS Laboratories.
Jonah Peretti, a father of social content, used his research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in tandem with key learnings from the field of network science developed by his friend, then Professor Duncan Watts, to create BuzzFeed.
Jonah Peretti, Photo Courtesy of The Associated Press
These real-world examples illustrate that innovation is, in some cases, the application of academic research. Morse, Paley and Peretti tapped into the knowledge hub of academia to disrupt the market, launch new businesses and discover creative solutions to existing challenges. For those of us in today’s media industry, these examples should remind us to not simply look toward Silicon Valley for solving tomorrow’s problems, but rather universities that stay grounded with a longer-term approach.
Two types of Innovation
The futures lab can be seen inside the Reynolds Journalism Institute on the campus of the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri. Photo courtesy of the Reynolds Journalism Institute.
The challenge of industry-academia collaborations stems from the existence of two types of innovation: the innovation of media practitioners and firms, and the innovation of academia — one looks for answers to specific problems, the other aims at the creation of knowledge.
The solution is to develop a third approach — a mutually beneficial approach to research and development wherein incentives and timelines are aligned and projects are those that look at exploring high value concepts and challenges on behalf of a media firm, yet outside of the company’s mainstream activities. This challenge is broad enough to appeal to an academic, but still has the real world impact potential a media practitioner and/or firm is looking for. New fields such as virtual reality, artificial intelligence and automation are some of the prime candidates for this model.
For professors, the goal is to prepare their students to be well-equipped for their post-educational careers.
“More than ever, journalism education needs to focus on experiential, project-based learning.”
—Reynolds Journalism Institute futures lab director Mike McKean.
Collaborative research projects require open lines of communication between universities and media organizations so they can better address the challenges faced by both parties.
“Students will be the industry’s future leaders — and consumers — so it’s essential that as news organizations experiment with new formats and techniques, they’re doing so in a way that’s relevant to new generations.”
—AP interactives editor Nathan Griffiths.
Universities gain an avenue to apply insights learned in the classroom while professionals are exposed to new thinking.
“Journalists can learn from students about younger audiences — how they consume news and the best ways to engage them.”
—Berkeley Lovelace Jr., a journalism student who recently worked on project with the Associated Press.
Academic-infused Innovation
Facilitating partnerships do not require significant investments, especially compared to the addition of a new academic department or a new research lab within a company.
One such initiative is an experiment The New York Times run in partnership with NYU and CUNY to study hyper local news. Another is Hearst Corporation’s partnership with students from Parsons New School of Design to develop Glossy.io, a new approach to surfacing archives of digital magazines.
Students at Columbia Journalism School test AP’s latest virtual reality experiment.
This academic-practitioner partnership approach to research could be a new model for innovation. History and present day initiatives like those above reveal that when academics and practitioners work together to analyze data and apply key findings, impactful insights are formed, innovative strategies are implemented and new businesses are catalyzed.
Indeed, innovating our approach to media innovation — looking beyond valleys and alleys to ivory towers — will be worth our while.
I’m the Strategy Manager for The Associated Press and fellow at Columbia Journalism School. I write about media, storytelling and innovation. Let’s connect. (@fpmarconi)
Snapchat has gone from being a strange ephemeral video platform for teens to send sexy shots, to a walled garden of content where publishers and brands can reach millions with short-form content. With a user base of 100 million, and video views in the billions, it’s no wonder that Snapchat’s ad business is growing as fast as the company itself. But can Snapchat become a transformative platform for mobile advertising, as Facebook has, or is it just a flash in the pan?
For companies and brands looking to reach a young mobile audience, Snapchat offers a lot: The majority of its users are under the age of 25, it’s slated to improve ad targeting, and it is rumored to be testing longer-form sponsored videos for media channels on its Discover platform. It’s also possibly building its own application programming interface (API) and has recently partnered with Viacom. But these speculations of advertising growth come after the company has long been criticized for unstable pricing on advertising, failing to provide data critical to targeting users, and no guarantee on the ad viewership.
Launching an API? One major indicator that it might have staying power is that Snapchat is reportedly building its own API which would help automate the targeting and delivery of ads to specific users. Snapchat has yet to comment on these endeavors, but an API could also address key concerns among marketers, including ad targeting, tracking visitor browsing and searches outside of the app (which would help it collect data on its users). Better tracking could help publishers and brands figure out how many people are actually watching their ads.
In building its own API, Snapchat is following in the footsteps of platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter — companies that have matured as major ad players in the digital marketplace. An API would also allow for more kinds of ads on Snapchat, including those that include a “call to action” for consumers, such as downloading a new app. This is especially important given that Snapchat has previously been selling ads the so-called “old-fashioned way” — by working directly with brands and agencies. But an API, with its ability to execute effective campaigns and automate different orders, would help measure how successful these advertisements actually are.
The API would also help Snapchat grow out of a closed mindset. “The first thing an API does is allows them to create a partnered ecosystem that is technology driven,” Sean O’Neal, president of the online service platform Adaptly, told Digiday. “There’s only so much that a company is going to be able to develop themselves as it relates to their own native ad solutions.”
Viacom partnership Not only that, but Snapchat and Viacom have also recently struck an advertising deal that allows Viacom to sell ads on Snapchat’s original content. With its mobile video capabilities, Snapchat, after all, is an ideal destination for television and entertainment companies, while Viacom has more experience with larger brands that might not know Snapchat well. The deal wouldn’t just help an aging company like Viacom reach the coveted millennial audience. “Snapchat executives have repeatedly talked up their desire to pull in TV ad dollars, seeing themselves as the video epicenter of smartphones,” the LA Times reports.
However, despite the hype surrounding the potential for advertising on Snapchat, publishers would be right to remain wary as the company sorts out its goals, philosophy and practices. Part of the reason why Snapchat didn’t emerge as a major advertising player to begin with is that its sales team was small, and by some accounts, too old to understand how its digitally native audience would respond to ads on the platform. The fact that it’s most popular among a younger demographic was also a concern for some brands, who feel their core older audiences are more concentrated on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter anyway. And those companies, unlike Snapchat, offer much more data on their users than Snapchat does, which would make it easier to guarantee a return on investment.
Part of the problem is that ad pricing has been erratic on Snapchat. When Snapchat first offered advertising in January 2015, it asked brands to pay at least $750,000 for a one-day ad, according to CNBC. Prices have now dropped far below that threshold, with some saying ads could be had for $50,000 and even others getting ads for free because Snapchat liked the idea. It’s hard for marketers to jump in, when they might figure prices might drop in the near future.
While some folks contend that Snapchat is having its “Facebook moment,” with popular Discover content and attention to ads, it would be wise to proceed with caution until a potential API and more mature ad pricing takes hold.
Rob Norman, Global Chief Digital Officer for GroupM, recently spoke at Industry Preview 2016 in January. He said, “If privacy and the policies that create an advantage for some are reexamined and unbundled the extended ecosystems of targeting, ad deployment and attribution are going to start to look like a Swiss cheese. They will be full of holes with bells on. Real context – and this is good for the publishers and the creators of content – I think will rise in value.”
Given that digital advertising on the wider web is the least trusted form of advertising and that increasing numbers of consumers are boycotting it altogether, Norman’s point is correct: context is key. For advertisers and publishers, delivering relevant advertising within an appropriate context is going to rise in value.
But, just as importantly, context is key to meeting consumer expectations. When a consumer’s data is collected and used only to enhance their experience within a single website or experience, they are much more likely to trust that site. Unfortunately, consumer trust is low today. As noted in TRUSTe’s 2016 Consumer Confidence Index, “74% (of consumers) have limited their online activity due to privacy concerns.”
In recent years, public policymakers have called on industry to give more controls to consumers over how their data is collected and used – in short, to respect context. President Obama’s Privacy Bill of Rights framework noted that “consumers have a right to expect that companies will collect, use, and disclose personal data in ways that are consistent with the context in which consumers provide the data.” To the extent that a consumer’s personal data will be used outside the context where it was collected or for reasons not disclosed at the time of collection, the President called on companies to provide transparency and choice to the consumer.
In 2012, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a report, entitled “Protecting Consumer Privacy in an Era of Rapid Change.” The FTC’s report noted that “whether a practice requires choice turns on the extent to which the practice is consistent with the context of the transaction or the consumer’s existing relationship with the business…”
This much is clear: consumers are not happy. As noted by TRUSTe, they are taking active steps to limit their online activity. And without transparency and meaningful controls, they are downloading ad blocking software in record numbers. Even advertisers are not happy because there is little transparency about where their ads are being shown and whether they are being shown to actual humans.
Our industry needs to do more to provide transparency and meaningful tools for consumers to express choice. By respecting context in this way, we can improve consumer trust in the digital ecosystem.
In kicking off the 2016 Digital Content Next members-only Summit, CEO Jason Kint set the tone for a year marked by customer-driven innovation and a trust-based digital content industry.
“I believe that our brands at DCN are in the best position to shape what is next for digital media. Why? What’s unique about our brands? Well, as you know: We are all content companies. To be a member of DCN, you have to be in the business of creating digital content. Importantly—very importantly—we’re also not tied to one specific revenue stream. We’re not just advertising. We have the ability to adapt, to evolve over time, to test out new models and flow with digital media…”
Watch Kint’s opening remarks from this private, members-only event held February 1-3, 2016 at the Mandarin Oriental in Miami Florida:
Without knowing you very well, I’d be willing to guess you split a majority of leisure time online between two activities: sifting through content and flirting with ordering something online. I know I do…
We’re constantly clicking in and out of content. Just about every search result that isn’t an ad points to an article containing the information we seek. The article itself is surrounded by even more links pointing to more content. Our social feeds are basically news feeds, at this point. The sites we visit out of habit usually include a few blogs. Somehow, at some point during the day, we end up on YouTube. And I haven’t even mentioned “Netflix and chill” or Spotify.
Then there’s Amazon. Should we just designate one tab that’s always open for Amazon so we can get literally whatever our heart desires at the click of a mouse?
We spend so much time doing both, brands are trying to figure out how to leverage one to drive the other (we sometimes refer to this practice as content marketing. Heard of it?). Well doing so first requires an understanding that browsing content and browsing products are very similarly behaviors.
When people are browsing—whether it’s a bookstore, online retail, or their Facebook feed—they’re subconsciously waiting to come across something that catches their attention. Something that makes them stop in their tracks for a second because it’s intriguing. Their curiosity is piqued.
And it turns out the same triggers appear across a range of experiences: the element of surprise and the element of familiarity.
Two sides of the same coin The element of surprise makes sense as a trigger. To be surprised is to be awakened out of our daily slumber by something we deem remarkable.
In the bookstore example, we might stop in our tracks purely because a book cover strikes us as remarkable. Since we didn’t know it existed before we saw it, we’re surprised, and then intrigued. For at least a few seconds, we want to know more.
In digital content, the remarkable often announces itself in a headline. Sometimes, it’s a fraction of a headline, like trending keywords on Twitter. It’s easy to make fun of the kinds of headlines we’re talking about, but then again, we all continue to engage with, laugh at, and share them with our friends.
In fact, the magnet that draws us to the sites that form our daily habits—the Facebooks, Twitters, Buzzfeeds, CNNs—is usually this expectation of surprise. We know we’re going to see different stories or items every time, we just don’t know what they’ll be. The cycle becomes familiar… and it’s one we’re quite happy to repeat.
It turns, out this is an incredibly natural intersection for commerce to enter into.
For what is eCommerce if not the art of piquing curiosity and then removing all barriers to exploration until the clicks turn into a sale?
Inducing curiosity One of the first jobs in eCommerce is to induce curiosity about the product for sale. And one of the best ways to do that is to eliminate any barriers to curiosity.
Those barriers would be things like a site that looks cluttered or disorganized and tends to overwhelm consumers. Or a site that looks 20 years old and turns people off as soon as they enter.
As the business owner, you ensure some basics: You make sure your site is welcoming and modern-looking. You have your products appear against a white background to really make the products pop off the page. You merchandize them in an orderly fashion on a grid. You don’t want them to appear cluttered, so you leave a decent amount of white space around each product. You make the navigation really simple but descriptive so people can browse in an informed way.
eCommerce shares all these principles in common with engaging content; you want it to be welcoming, you want it to look modern, you leave plenty of white space, and you use simple but descriptive navigation to keep people engaged when they’re ready for the next piece of information. That includes “recommended” items as well.
If you think about it, recommendations are really just a way to navigate to the next page in an informed way. In eCommerce, that finds expression in, “You just looked at this item, so you might be even more interested in this similar item you didn’t know I had.” And in the content world, that finds expression in, “Because you watched that on Netflix, you might want to watch this tonight.” The recommendation engine’s job is take what you’ve familiarized yourself with and turn it into the next surprise.
For that reason, just about every page of every eCommerce site should be equipped with this recommendation mechanism. It keeps people interested. It delivers surprise. And it becomes a familiar part of the consumer journey.
If a user lands on your blog, suggest a product relevance (even if there isn’t an obvious one). Point them to an even better blog post. Use your newsletter as a curated cross-section of both your content and your products. Repeatedly. Until it becomes a familiar surprise for your audience.
Given the opportunity, your customers may yet surprise with how they respond.
Brandon Carter is a Content Specialist at Outbrain (@brandedcarter @Outbrain). He began his career as a staff journalist for the Maine weekly ‘The Coastal Journal’ before moving to New York and joining the product licensing divisions of Peanuts Worldwide and Sesame Workshop.
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.
