Category results for "Perspectives"

Defining Bricks to Build the House of Time and Attention

October 29, 2014 DCN

This year may go down as one of the most pivotal years in the digital revolution as we transition into an AV world (After Viewability).

Vivek Shah, CEO of Ziff-Davis and Chairman of the IAB did a terrific job earlier this month at IAB MIXX and in a WSJ op-ed reinforcing why viewability is critical, while also explaining the important work that still needs to be done. This coincided with the reconvening of the Blue-Ribbon Committee (which I served on in its first phase to define the standard). It also led to the MRC’s advisory to media, which included these important guidelines:

If an impression’s viewability can’t be measured, then it doesn’t mean it’s not viewable or worthless;
It is not realistic (or even possible) to expect 100% viewability so there needs to be a more a measured set of expectations during this complex transition. As Vivek stated, no other media has attempted this level of measurement.

Publishers can’t bear the cost of the entire transition and, as such, the agencies using this opportunity as a price-negotiating tactic are doing a great disservice to the industry, their clients and publishers. Additionally, any marketplace confusion is not helpful in establishing this new currency. It’s why a group of advertisers, agencies and media companies agreed on the standard of 50% of a display ad for a minimum of one second.

Let me illustrate why these points are essential in evolving viewability with a personal story: I have a bedtime routine with our two toddler boys where they can ask dad any question they want to. Any parent reading this will realize that dad often doesn’t know the answers to their questions. Last week, our five year old made some significant inquiries into the nature of bricks: What are they made of? Why are they all the same size? Why do they sometimes have holes in them? How are they so strong? And like many parents out there, after a kiss goodnight, I headed straight to Wikipedia so that I could have better informed answers ready at the breakfast table. It turns out bricks are the same size so that they fit in the mason’s hands and are interchangeable. The mason’s craft shapes these bricks into something useful and enduring.

Viewability is our brick. If we–marketers, publishers and everyone who serves their interests–don’t get it right and make it as strong as it can be, then our building will crumble. Our first go at building this digital landscape was built off of impressions defined by pings of ad servers. It turns out that those ads served weren’t viewable as much as 80% of the time. When technology improvements allowed us to see this problem, the need for a different standard for an impression became clear, preferably one not based on clicks and direct response metrics that undervalue the trust and equity of brand marketers and high quality content companies. The good work of the IAB, ANA and AAAAs has now given us a standard for our brick that is fair to everyone. Rolling it out won’t happen overnight and we all need to share equally in that effort.

But if we can agree that viewability is the brick, then what are we going to build? I believe the answer is the house of time and attention.

I was thrilled with all of the discussion and positive reaction to my column during Advertising Week on Why Attention is Worth More than the Click. Transacting on time was something that we discussed early on in 2012 as the natural next step of viewability and it is clear that, in the intervening years, progress has been made on this front. Here at Digital Content Next (formerly the Online Publishers Association), we conducted research among our members to examine time-based measurement and just last week we released a whitepaper “How time-Based Measurement is Grabbing Digital Publishers’ Attention,” which explores the results. We also had the opportunity to discuss the topic with industry leaders at a private member event.

And the evidence is clear: The time is right to build a more robust and resilient digital ecosystem in which we evaluate engagement and measure impact on something sturdier than crumbling clicks. Viewability is the brick from which we can build meaningful time-based measurement. This will require both strategic and technological changes. At DCN, we recommend that organizations reassess their measurement capabilities; implement viewability (if you’ve not already), report the total attention time on campaigns, whether advertisers ask for it or not; and equip ad operations and yield management teams with the tools to understand the value of the time your audience spends with your content. As Mike Donahue, EVP, 4A’s noted to me recently, this isn’t a quick fix but we know the steps: “Once we have the opportunity to see (viewability) nailed as a first step cross-platform currency, the sequential next step currency is engagement. Short of scalable, affordable neuro measures (of emotional response), time is the best surrogate to measure engagement.”

Perspectives

New Weather Company Resource Forecasts a Marketing Opportunity

October 28, 2014 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

Today’s digital marketers must be adept at search strategy, social strategy and now it seems they’ll be needing a weather strategy as well. Increasingly, companies of all types are leveraging data to aid in planning and decision making; The Weather Company has been at the forefront of leveraging data and analytics not only to predict the weather, but to anticipate its impact on consumer behavior. This week, Weather launched a blog called Forecast Factor to help marketers better understand how to use the weather as a business advantage.

The Forecast Factor site will provide weather-based consumer forecasts, proprietary insights and real-world best practices to help marketers implement and execute weather-centric media strategies to best promote their products and services. Forecasts and weather impact analysis will be provided by The Weather Channel’s on-air business and weather professional Paul Walsh, a leading expert on the effect of weather–and weather forecasting–on consumer behavior. Walsh, who considers himself an evangelist for the topic, got his start as a meteorologist in the US Air Force where his role was to provide weather-based intelligence support to war fighters and mission planners. While in the Air Force he developed a keen eye for the strategic value of weather information.

It’s big news how much the weather is changing. For marketers, Walsh says this increased weather volatility represents a risk, but it also represents an opportunity. For example, the Polar Vortex in late 2013 and early 2014 initially caused a 2% contraction in the US economy however, as soon as the weather improved, the economy rebounded. The opportunity, says Walsh, is to leverage technological advancements such as big data to understand the impact weather has on consumers.

Not only has the weather changed, but the way in which people consume weather information has also radically shifted. Gone are the days when people watched the evening news for an iffy forecast. Walsh notes that today weather predictions are overwhelmingly reliable but even more significantly, people are connected to the weather more than ever before. According to Walsh most of us check it multiple times a day on our mobile devices and use the information to plan not only whether or not to wear a jacket, but a wide range of decisions such as where to make lunch plans and what to eat, whether or not it is time to buy a new car and whether or not it should be an SUV or a convertible. The effect of weather on retail and spending is greater than people realize, says Walsh who points out that research shows that the impact of weather on the economy every year totals in the billions.

Weather believes that by providing Forecast Factor content they can educate advertisers to proactively adjust their media plans to align with the expected impact of the weather and to execute strategies that are more relevant and effective. “The marketing community has looked at weather as a tactical tool,” says Walsh “We really look at it as a strategic tool and want to help them see it that way as well.” And, as a trusted provider of this useful information, Weather hopes that these same advertisers and marketers will turn to their WeatherFX team to produce campaigns that can leverage these insights with weather-triggered messages to consumers in real time across all screens.

“People consume weather information everyday but they don’t think about the weather the way we do, Walsh says. “We’re pretty confident that we’ve got the audience, reach and technology to do what we’re talking about. There’s lots of people out there that don’t have the same knowledge or understanding.”

Perspectives

Seeing Your Audience Through Big Data

October 22, 2014 DCN

The only way any of us can “see” online audiences is through data. Companies like Nielsen and comScore have traditionally done this by tracking a sample over time. However, increasingly, what we know about audiences comes to us through servers. Servers collect vast amounts of information on what users are doing online every second of every day. To some, these “big data” speak for themselves and offer a crystal clear lens with which to see and manage audiences. But much of the buzz surrounding big data is “irrational exuberance.” To make effective use of these new resources, you should know their strengths and weaknesses. Here are four questions to keep in mind if you find yourself seeing the world through big data:

Census or Sample?
Big data are often thought of as a census. If that were true, it would be great. You wouldn’t have to draw a sample and carefully “weight” individual responses to reflect the population. But frequently big data really means a big sample. For example, some claim that gathering data from digital set-top boxes (STBs) and create a census of the TV audience. But in practice, STB ratings are based on samples that are cobbled together and extensively weighted to resemble the total TV audience. Those samples are large enough to offer a lot more granularity than traditional methods, but they’re not close to a census.

In fact, most big databases are adjusted in some way. You might think that the things trending on Twitter reflect a simple headcount. But trending metrics are tweaked in ways that aren’t widely reported. Providers of “currency” measures are typically audited, so it’s easier to know the recipe behind the numbers. But it’s a mystery how many of the newer metrics are cooked up. If you use them, you should assume you’re not getting an unadulterated look at the audience, you’re probably wearing corrective lenses.

Preference or Behavior?
Social media platforms can capture comments that reflect people’s likes and dislikes, but most big data measure behaviors (e.g., views, downloads, shares, purchases, etc.). It’s tempting to interpret behaviors as an expression of preferences. In fact, economists use choices as a measure of “revealed preferences.” But people do things for all kinds of reasons. Ask yourself: Do people view something because they like it or because they just stumbled into it? Do they share something because they approve, disapprove or want to build their personal “brand?”

Even the meaning of “likes” can be a puzzle. Is it really about liking, or social affirmation, or just plain fraud? Big data are often a by-product of using digital platforms to deliver media or provide services. Their great appeal is that they’re cheap and abundant and seem capable of providing valuable new insights. But there’s also a danger in trying to wring too much out of data that weren’t designed to measure motives or states of mind.

Local or Global?
Any online publisher has a treasure trove of data. They can generally see how many visitors they have, how visitors move from page to page, and how much time they spend on each. But this is local on-site activity. It’s often harder to see what visitors are doing the rest of the time, and that could be important. For example, there’s interest in using “attention minutes” as a measure of engagement and perhaps a kind of currency. But are visitors who spend time on a site loyalists who are otherwise hard to reach or are they just people who spend a lot of time on the web? Without a more global source of data, it’s hard to know. If they’re heavy web users, they’ll be easy pickings for programmatic buyers who don’t care about editorial context.

Insight or Currency?
Even if you can’t necessarily see what your visitors are doing off site, there are plenty of insights to be gained by what a publisher can see. One powerful tool is A/B testing. Among other things, publishers have used it to assess the attention grabbing power of headlines. But using big data for insights and using it for currencies are two entirely different propositions.

Changing currencies – even a modest, commonsense change – is as much about politics as data. Reaching an industry-wide consensus takes time. For example, shifting to “viewable impressions” took IAB well over a year to orchestrate. These negotiated currencies may be less than optimal for any one player. So most online publishers will have to reconcile two sets of metrics, those that provide insights and those that provide money – and they’re not always the same.

Big data offer valuable new ways to see audiences, and we should use them for all they’re worth. But like all data-driven decision making tools, they have biases and blind spots. The best way to use those tools is to know what they can and can’t do for you.

James Webster is a Professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern University. He is the author of The Marketplace of Attention: How Audiences Take Shape in a Digital Age (2014, MIT Press).

Webster studies audience behavior and measurement. He’s on the editorial boards of the Journal of Communication and the Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media. He also works as a consultant to audience measurement and media companies. For more information and copies of selected work see his personal website.

Perspectives

Why Rebranding Is Different For Non-Profits

October 9, 2014 DCN

Pity the folks at Isis Wallet, the mobile payments consortium created in 2010 by Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile. They had no choice but to completely rebrand after the rise of their violent namesake (Islamic State In Syria), which is why they just relaunched as Softcard.

A clash of trademarks will always force one side to rebrand, but rarely is the impetus this dramatic.

More often, a new brand identity emerges at the end of a long-planned merger or restructuring process, as when Bell Atlantic combined with GTE to become Verizon, or when Andersen Consulting was spun off to become Accenture.

And sometimes a rebrand is necessary because of shifts in the marketplace, or changes in industry vernacular that can render a brand name obsolete. You see that most often in fluid categories like information and technology. For example, TV Guide Media is about to rebrand as Pop to shake off its lingering magazine roots, and Clear Channel has just changed its name to iHeartMedia to convey its evolution from terrestrial radio broadcaster to multi-platform media company.

It’s part of a wave of legacy media companies shedding ‘analog’ identities as they move to a digital model. These same forces are influencing non-profits in those sectors, per the recent rebrand by the Online Publishers Association to Digital Content Next, a project that I was involved in.

What’s different about rebranding a non-profit is its flat hierarchy of stakeholders. Change tends to be more challenging in a consensus culture, where executives and board members often have equal says. And when change meets brand, just about everyone weighs in with an opinion!

There’s only one way to channel so many opinions into a common mission: listen. At the Online Publishers Association, we started by holding in-depth interviews with every individual who had a say in the approval process in order to establish shared expectations for the new brand name. There would be no rebrand without nearly every board member and executive being on board.

It had to be an inside-out framework that embraced the consensus culture. Agreement on the specifications of the brief set in motion a very efficient renaming process that took us from Online Publishers Association to Digital Content Next.

Non-profits are ‘people-powered’ organizations, for whom rebranding simply won’t work without taking all leadership stakeholders through these three essential questions at the outset:

• What are the prevailing forces?
Exactly what’s changed in the marketplace that makes the current name less relevant? What are the expectations that drive key stakeholders now and in the coming years?

• How should the new brand name behave?
Define the desired role of the brand and the attitude you want to project. What are the semantic building blocks for the new name? Should it be it futuristic, emotional or functionally descriptive? Should it be a neologism or a real word?

• Who is responsible?
When all is said and done, the new brand direction may require multiple approvals, but someone has to be the final decision maker. The ground rules on who has the final say need to be set loud and clear, or else the project may never make it out of committee.

The strength of a non-profit lies in its humanity of professionals, volunteers and supporters. Done right, the brand should help convey the organization’s mission from the inside out. Which is why, if you’re managing the rebranding of a non-profit, start by engaging the leadership in common purpose around these fundamentals of the brief, or you’ll never get to the creative solution.

Michael Rowland was the marketing consultant who led the rebranding process of Online Publishers Association to Digital Content Next.

Michael is a seasoned “brand safecracker”. As director of brand strategy for ad agencies such as Eisner Communications in Baltimore and Kirshenbaum Bond in New York, he developed highly successful marketing campaigns for Cablevision and the Kingdom of Spain.

MIchael has a particular passion for non-profit brands, with a track record of success for clients like YMCA, Johns Hopkins and JCCs of North America.

Michael has taught marketing courses at Johns Hopkins University and Loyola College, and has been a frequent presenter at marketing conventions around the country. He can be contacted at [email protected].

Advertising | Perspectives

Q&A: Justin Choi, CEO, Nativo on Ad Viewability

October 7, 2014 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

Q: Is “Viewability” ready to be used as a measurement of ad performance?

A: We see Viewability not as a measure of ad performance, but as a measure of ad viability and quality of ad placement. The technology to measure Viewability exists and should be used by marketers to hold digital ad providers to the most basic quality standard for ad placement, i.e. ensuring ad creative renders within the browser and can be seen. Further, as publishers move to feed-based and infinite scroll design layouts, Viewability will become increasingly important to extracting fair value for inventory that exists far below the fold.

Q: How do you work to ensure that ads are viewable and to provide marketers with appropriate and accurate measures for the performance of their digital advertising?

A: As a true native advertising provider, Nativo inventory placements render directly within publisher editorial feeds, exponentially increasing the likelihood of a marketer’s ad creative being viewed. Furthermore, Nativo approaches measurement in three distinct ways:

Nativo provides proprietary analytics for viewability that adhere to MRC standard measures
Nativo supports all third party ad verification for viewability including MOAT, Integral Ad Science, DoubleVerify, etc., and
Nativo has been a pioneer in efficiency, always charging marketers on a viewable CPM (vCPM), which means advertisers are only charged when the native ad unit comes into view of the browser.

Again, our point of view is that Viewability is not a performance metric, but a necessary quality standard for paid media placement. Viewability should be table stakes for paid media. Ensuring ad creative can be viewed enables brand advertisers to better ensure their paid media, at the very least, has a chance to make an impact with consumers. Without viewability, marketers are forced to measure quality in clicks; a challenged metric that works for direct response advertisers but not for brand advertisers.

Q: Is achieving a standardized measure and method for viewability important?

A: Yes, standardized measures for viewability are important for our industry, provided they are not so rigid that they can only be applied to IAB display and video units. Too rigid a standard will only inhibit advertiser adoption of innovative ad creatives, and slow publisher expansion of non-standard inventory placements.

Native is a prime example of non-standard ad creative (content) and placement (in-feed) where marketers are seeing some of the most exciting consumer engagement and KPI performance in years. That said, it is important that industry organizations and governing bodies establish an accepted understanding of what it means for an ad to be viewable, as well as guidelines and definitions for marketers, publishers and ad providers to follow, including accepted technical methodologies for measurement.

Justin Choi is a serial entrepreneur and founder of Nativo, the premier native advertising platform for digital publishers and brand marketers. Nativo works with major brand advertisers and more than 250 premium publishers and was named “Hottest Startup in LA”. Prior to Nativo, Justin was the founder and CEO of Cie Games, a leading producer of top-grossing mobile and social games, which was acquired for $100MM; and founder and Chairman of Cie Studios, a growing and profitable, award-winning interactive agency focused on digital marketing and custom app development for top brands.

Q&A: Michael Friedenberg, CEO IDG Communications Worldwide, on Ad Viewability

Q&A: Jeff Burkett, Sr. Director Ad Innovation & Product Strategy The Washington Post, on Ad Viewability

Perspectives | Revenue

Why Your Attention Is Worth More Than Your Click

October 6, 2014 DCN

Without a doubt, the quantity of content available online is at an all-time high. One hundred hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, and 500 million tweets are sent per day. But human attention is a finite resource. If nothing else, there are only so many waking hours in the day. So as we seek to create a media ecosystem that is vibrant and viable, we must recognize that attention is a true measure of success.

As Jon Slade, commercial director of global digital advertising and insight at the Financial Times, said, “It’s about time we stopped counting quantity and looked instead at quality — specifically for brand campaigns. Attention is what matters, not pings from an ad server. Let’s look at outcomes that matter!”

In a survey conducted for a forthcoming report by Digital Content Next, which represents the top digital publishers, 100 percent of the participating members indicated that they either already use time-based metrics or plan to do so in the future, and 80 percent demonstrated interest in transacting on the basis of time…

Read more on the Huffington Post

Advertising | Perspectives | Revenue

Holistic ad serving will keep native inventory premium

October 1, 2014 DCN

Today, one of the biggest opportunities for publishers are native advertising formats–provided they roll out a native ad stack with caution. Publishers might fail to realize the true potential of native formats if they follow the path of fragmenting their monetization stack between the core ad serving platforms and real time bidding systems like they did for banners.

Centralizing the decision on which campaign/creative to be served will generate the highest revenue for publishers. However, in today’s banner ad-stack, the decision is broken into two systems: DFP/first-party ad server and network optimizers. For premium formats like native inventory, publishers should not break the above decision in the way that they did for banners because this will fail to achieve the full revenue potential offered by native advertising.

Let’s take a look at why with a little bit of history and math:

How did banner ad technology evolve for publishers?
First there were ad-servers for managing campaigns directly sold to advertisers. Publishers quickly realized they couldn’t sell 100% of their inventory so they started building relationships with networks.

Running a network isn’t rocket science (after all, it’s just media arbitrage) and, consequently, hundreds of networks popped up. It became one hell of a job to manage multiple networks until SSPs (network optimizers) came along to rescue publishers.

While publishers were optimizing their inventory, advertisers started to buy publisher’s inventory through Real Time Bidding (RTB) exchanges in addition to the old school process of cutting manual IOs and RFPs. In the process, publishers fragmented the final decision of which ad creative should be served into two completely separate silos.

Publishers would first use their own ad server to fill inventory with direct campaigns and then let the exchanges try to fill the remnant inventory. They assumed that the yield from exchanges would never exceed the yield from their direct business. If that’s always true, it makes sense to serve direct sold campaigns over indirect campaigns. Unfortunately, it’s not always true.

Where do native formats fit in?
Native inventory is premium. Assuming direct campaigns are always more lucrative could be costly and require a new ad serving model. Native formats need a modern ad stack that lays the foundation to ensure publishers make premium eCPMs irrespective whether they are selling it direct or indirect.

The ad stack should allow publishers to run direct campaigns but also auction every impression (to multiple demand sources) to compete with direct campaigns. This holistic ad serving approach optimizes a publisher’s yield by serving the right creative for every impression.

Here’s an example:

Let us assume a Publisher A has 100,000 impressions for her native formats and she can directly sell 25% of them. She wants to backfill the rest from networks & exchanges with a backfill CPM floor of $2.

1. Silo Ad-Server

The first ad-server runs through 25,000 impressions with an eCPM of $10.50 and the indirect backfill is given an opportunity to fill 75,000 impressions. The backfill exchanges monetizes at a $3.40 eCPM with 80% fill-rate.

See the revenue and breakdown below:

2. Holistic Ad-Server

But if both direct & indirect were served from the same system — a “holistic ad serving” approach — they could realize that the fill at any given price level is a direct function of how much inventory is made available, rather than the absolute impressions.

Let’s imagine the indirect backfill could monetize the publisher’s inventory at $6 CPMs. That could end up being 15% of the overall inventory they can make available. In other words, the publisher would fill more impressions at this price from indirect campaigns than direct campaigns.

Now that the system knows the eCPM from every source for every impression, it can prioritize to serve $6CPM in-direct demand than $5 direct demand.

Note: Indirect demand still has a $3.40 eCPM as in the previous case, but the publisher could realize an overall lift of 10% in this example.

Conclusion
The ecosystem around native formats is evolving very fast. It is a wonderful time to be a publisher: Advertisers want to buy direct from publishers and the number of native networks (backfill partners) are growing. Publishers should maximize revenue by executing strategies to roll out an ad stack which helps them integrate the first party ad serving with programmatic for these premium ad experiences. And it’s going to be big!

Satish Polisetti is cofounder of AdsNative. He previously worked at mobile advertising startups Amobee and MdotM and received a Mayfield Fund fellowship in 2010.

Perspectives | Revenue

Is Digital Advertising Ready to Ditch the Click?

September 29, 2014 DCN

Views Have Long Been Digital Advertising’s Currency. Those Days May Be Numbered.

It was a was a throwaway line on the 50th slide in a PowerPoint deck. But that seemingly innocuous bullet point — “Time as a currency to trade?” — stands to upend the digital-advertising industry.

In March 2013, Jon Slade, commercial director of digital advertising and insight at the Financial Times, presented the idea to the paper’s Asia sales staff. Next month, the London-based paper will roll out ad rates based on time rather than impressions, charging some advertisers by the number of hours their ads appear in front of targeted groups of readers. The measurement — cost per hour, or CPH — shatters a decades-old media pricing model that values volume above all else…

“We’re definitely challenging the status quo. No one has come up with
a new currency in digital advertising in — a while.”

This moment matters for publishers like the FT, according to Jason Kint, CEO of Digital Content Next, formerly the Online Publishers Association. “We’re in a medium that’s fast changing and evolving,” he said.

“I’m hoping we’ll look back a decade from now and see this
as a critical milestone.”

Read more at Advertising Age.

Perspectives

Inspiration and Insight at Inaugural Content All Stars Event

September 25, 2014 DCN

Digital Content Next hosted more than 300 marketers, members and agency guests at the inaugural Content All Stars event, held on September, 18, 2014 in New York City. Highlights from the agenda are below. Some of the recurring themes from the day’s program included:

Measuring engagement isn’t as simple as counting likes and shares;
The power of content marketing and branded content;
The importance of context in marketing and editorial content;
Technology as an editorial tool;
How to build and maintain trust; and
The power of great storytelling.

Awe-Inspiring Creativity
Jason Silva, Futurist, Epiphany Addict & TV Host
Jason Silva likes to think about content as a way to disseminate big ideas. “We are the species that transforms and transcends,” he said, calling biology a new form of information technology. He told the audience that “disruption is an opportunity to reinvent ourselves”— which is something that smart publishers already know. Good marketing shows you something you’ve never seen before, he said, bringing his ideas about creativity and possibility back to subject at hand. “If you give somebody the chills, they’re going to want to share it,” which underscores the power of the storytelling —a theme that would come up many times throughout the day.

Building Your Content Engine: How to Rev it like Red Bull
Werner Brell, Managing Director, Red Bull Media House
Red Bull is the Gold Standard when it comes to content marketing. “At Red Bull, our mission has always been to inspire and fascinate,” said Brell. Red Bull does this through relevant content connected with an authentic brand. Their connection with athletes began when in the company’s early days when, to market the beverage, the company started giving the energy drink away to skiers, windsurfers, and skateboarders. Brell said, “It’s all about finding the right story for your brand and engaging the consumer in a way that he doesn’t know he’s being marketed to. Consumer engagement is the key…But none of this will work if you don’t know your brand.” Red Bull’s success with Content Marketing is so great that it formed its own Media House. Over the past 3.5 years, Red Bull has released 11 feature films. Serializing YouTube content immediately tripled the duration of viewing and engagement. At first, Brell said, people just bought the energy drink, but now brand loyalists buy movie tickets, watch television shoes, buy event tickets, and more. He closed by sharing Red Bulls rules for great content:

Be relevant and authentic
Surprise and innovate
Be consistent
Be the story
Inspire sharing

Content Marketing: A Sound Investment by Goldman Sachs
Amanda Rubin, Global Co-head Brand & Content Strategy, Goldman Sachs;
Sebastian Tomich, VP, Advertising, Branded Content, The New York Times
This conversation between Rubin and Tomich was about the potential of branded content, native advertising, and content marketing. It focused largely on the ethics and concerns about trust that these raise — especially for media brands. Both sides agreed that clear labeling was key and that these tactics work best for everyone involved — including the audience — when the content is not promotional and adds value. The panelists also addressed the complicated question of measuring engagement. Tomich joked, “I have one metric–and that’s a renewal.” He also said that “when it comes to branded content, we know audiences like it, we just don’t know how to quantify the ROI yet.”

Are You The Marrying Kind? Audience Engagement Takes Commitment
Mike Kisseberth, Chief Revenue Officer, Purch;
Paul Marcum, Global Head of Digital Video, Bloomberg Media;
Patrick Stiegman, VP & Editorial Director, Digital & Print Media, ESPN;
Moderator: Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director, DCN
One of the big themes of this session, and the conference as a whole, was that measuring engagement isn’t easy, and is different for everyone. The same goes for building engagement. In this panel we learned about the challenges facing three very different publishers. Much of ESPN’s time and attention goes to creating more engaging mobile experiences around live games, and hyper-local sports teams. Meanwhile, Bloomberg’s Marcum says that the great data and reporting that Bloomberg is famous for will win over new audiences. Purch has a different approach, in large part because it has a variety of brands and focuses on enabling commerce. Because many of its sites cater to very niche interests, its community of users are often what bring people back. Purch also finds that it has valuable engagement metrics that come out of the sales process as well.

Data Storm: Mindshare and The Weather Company Turn Insights into Action
Vikram Somaya, GM, WeatherFX;
Bob Ivins, Chief Data Officer, Mindshare
This session may go down as one of the most memorable, if for no other reason than Vikram Somaya kicked it off with a Shakespearean monologue. The session itself focused mostly on the predictive capabilities of WeatherFX “the weather-intelligent marketing platform.” WeatherFX uses billions of weather data points, combined with consumer behavior data to help its customers create better, more predictive advertising campaigns. “If you shop on Friday you will make decisions differently if you know the weekend will be beautiful,” Somaya said. And the company helps clients — such as Mindshare — to create dynamic and adaptive marketing and media campaigns.

How Vox Made Media Tech Sexy
Jim Bankoff, Chairman and CEO, Vox Media;
Melissa Bell, Co-founder & Executive Editor, Vox Media;
Lockhart Steele, VP, Editorial, Vox
This session could have easily been titled “What We Can Learn from Digital Native Publishers”— and what you might have learned is that technology is becoming increasingly important to great editorial experiences. Perhaps the biggest example of this were the Vox Card Stacks, which are a sort of digital version of flash cards that help readers get quickly up to speed on almost any topic. But even digital natives struggle to keep up with technology at times. As Bell pointed out, “The card stacks look great on mobile, now we need to make them look great on a watch.” The company emphasizes integrating technology, from inception, into all editorial and advertising processes and infrastructure as well as being fast and responsive to new demands.

Painting the Picture of Diversity: The Power of Storytelling
Soledad O’Brien, Founder, Starfish Media Group
O’Brien was one of the highlights of the day, and there was, perhaps, no greater example of the power of storytelling than her keynote, which left hardly a dry eye in the house. Examples from O’Brien’s own documentaries, like Black in America, illustrated one of her main points: “There is value in difference.” She urged the crowd to find new ways to tell stories, but also touched on one of the recurring themes of the day: how to create sponsored content without compromising editorial integrity. O’Brien pointed to a new documentary she is working on about girls that happens to be sponsored by Cover Girl. As she puts it, “You have to four-wall it.” In other words, make it very clear from the beginning that the sponsor is simply underwriting the content and that editorial control is up to you.

Trust: Will the Gatekeepers of the Future Rise to the Challenge?
John Borthwick, founder & CEO, betaworks;
Anil Dash, cofounder & CEO, ThinkUp;
Steve Rubel, Chief Content Strategist, Edelman
A wide-ranging discussion which often pushed the limits of the topic with a very upfront takeaway: Let your bias be known, otherwise no one will trust you. “To pretend that we don’t have values baked into the algorithms is absurd,” Dash said, talking about social media sites like Facebook. But the conversation also worked its way around to the topic of native advertising and other editorial hot button issues. Borthwick even took editors to task, calling out a dubiously sourced Vox story that claimed one in six French people support ISIS. Borthwick found the claim suspicious and hunted down the source of the info which turned out to be commissioned by Vladimir Putin’s media agency. Dash pointed out, “You can mortgage trust and reputation, but you can only do it once.”

Content Marketing at IBM: A Story of Transformation
Ann Rubin, VP, Branded Content and Global Creative, IBM
IBM has a unique problem: there isn’t a product, per se. “What we sell is very complicated, so we try to talk about it in a very simple way,” Rubin said. This forces the company to think about its content strategy a bit differently, and leads to what Rubin describes as content that breaks new ground, experiential content, and content made with customers. One of the most interesting examples Rubin gave was a food truck at SXSW which relied on celebrity chefs to create food thought up by Watson, and voted on by the public. Ultimately, the brand focuses on content that demonstrates the power of its technology to achieve given objectives or goals, rather than focusing on the tech itself.

Get the Bug: Making Content Viral
Allison Kingsley, VP, Digital Development, Comedy Central
The name of this session is a bit misleading, because what one really took away from Kingsley’s presentation is just how well suited the digital space is to experimenting with new content. “My focus is using the digital environment to incubate and birth new shows,” she said. And she’s done this with some success as two of her web series will be making their way to television soon. Kingsley leverages social for more than one-off viral success. Rather, she tests programs digitally and uses social to evaluate their potential and build audiences. Then, if a program is deemed worthy, it launches with a built-in audience that are its social advocates as well.

How Consumer Engagement Online Drives Quantifiable Results
Claire Tavernier, Managing Director, Channel Flip Media
This session could have been alternately titled “The Power of YouTube Personality.” Tavernier’s video examples of You Tube campaigns for the likes of Kellogg’s and Tesco were among the most entertaining examples of content marketing of the day. But the most important takeaway was this: “Don’t make a TV ad for online.” If you want to make a commercial go ahead and make one, but put it on TV where it belongs. When it comes to reaching your audience on a medium like YouTube, you have to be more creative and work with the existing talent. And when it comes to marketing to millennials, don’t. Market with them to succeed.

On the Right Track: Messages that Move the Right Audience
Kristin Smith, Assistant Vice President, Communications, Association of American Railroads;
Kelly Andresen, Director of Advertising Innovations & Product Strategy, The Washington Post;
Dianne Riddle Mikeska, Account Director, Home Front Communications
It’s always interesting to see examples of great content from unexpected places. The AAR example was especially interesting because of its need to target very specific Washington D.C. policy makers. “Freight rail’s message is multi-faceted and nuanced…it needs more than a banner ad,” said Smith. As such, the organization teamed up with The Washington Post, creating an ambitious 26 pieces of content for the month-long campaign. Like so many other companies employing content marketing and native advertising techniques, Mikeska said, “We had to reframe our message to make it editorial.” Refreshingly, Mikeska also alluded to changes they would have made if they had to do it over again, but ultimately felt that content marketing was the right approach to reach its very specific target audience of D.C. policy makers.

Creativity and the Next Big Idea
Sarah Lewis, Author: The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery
The day ended on an inspiring, if quiet, note, as Lewis talked to the audience about the difference between success and mastery, failure, and the importance of grit. She said, “Mastery is knowing that it means nothing if you can’t do it again and again.” Perhaps most relevant for publishers in the audience was her discussion of grit and the importance of knowing when to pivot. In the changing media landscape, companies need to know when to abandon their old strategies and embrace something new.

Perspectives

Jason Silva Kicks off Content All Stars with a Shot of Awe

Video September 25, 2014 DCN

Jason Silva, host of National Geographic’s Brain Games, started off Content All Stars by pushing the audience out of their comfort zone so that they were ready to gain a fresh perspective on the power of awe to prompt innovation.

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Content All Stars Takeaway: 3 Ways to Create Branded Content That Readers Love

September 24, 2014 DCN

The saying goes, all good things in life are difficult to achieve – running a marathon, making a cheesy, puffy soufflé and, in the world of digital media, content marketing. The art of brands advertising through content is not new. But in the past year, the adoption of this strategy has hit critical mass with more than 90% of B2C brands and 95% of B2B companies using it to educate consumers about their brands. It’s playing a central role in many marketing strategies, yet nearly all marketers are struggling with every aspect of it – from curation, discovery and measurement. Brands know they should be doing it, but need help.

Last week, Digital Content Next hosted its’ inaugural Content All Stars event, which brought together some of the worlds most effective content marketers across nearly every business channel – Goldman Sachs, IBM, and the poster child of successful branded content: Red Bull. Here are some of the top lessons that we’ve learned on how to take your branded content from meh to must-read.

1. Always provide value. Never sell.

Consumers don’t want to be sold to – that’s why banner ads have not been terribly effective. Any piece of good content needs to educate, inform or entertain. Great content does all three. The easiest way to do this is to always produce from the perspective of the reader. Are they going to walk away glad they just spent time with your content? Have an honest dialogue with yourself, and with your team: Would you want to sit down on a Sunday morning, pumpkin spice latte in hand, and read what you’ve just created? If the answer is anything but yes, go back to the drawing board.

2. Don’t assume ‘if you build it, they will come.’

Chances are, your target audience is not waiting with baited breath for your next blog post or whitepaper. What are they waiting for is a relevant, enjoyable online experience that provides value. If your content is good enough (see #1), they won’t mind if the article, infographic, listacle or Vine was created by a brand. In order for consumers to experience all of the compelling content you’re creating, you need to make it find them. It’s not enough to only post to your owned media properties anymore – you must make targeted distribution a key component to your overall content marketing strategy. A three pronged approach across owned media, paid media and earned media channels will help ensure the content you spend a lot of time and money creating gets the traffic and engagement it deserves.

3. Be very specific about what you want to achieve – and then measure against it.

This sounds obvious, but the most successful marketing programs have extremely clear objectives and success metrics. One could argue that the higher you go up the funnel, which is often where content marketing tactics sit, the harder it is to measure performance. Not anymore. Today’s technology and automation tools are making it much easier to track, measure and optimize against branding campaigns in the same way that we have been able to track direct response campaigns.

The often ambiguous ‘page view’ has been replaced with more accountable metrics like time spent, scroll depth, scroll velocity and hover rates to better gauge consumer engagement. Be scrupulous about applying the same analytics and optimization strategies you practice with standard paid media campaigns like display and search with your content marketing. You’ll gain invaluable insight into what your audience is really responding to and be able to adjust your strategy accordingly.

The key to effective content marketing is delivering an authentic, memorable experience your audience will appreciate. This may be easier said than done, but the extra effort is worth it – and with the right strategy and execution tools – entirely possible.

Lindsay Boesen is the Director of Marketing at PulsePoint, a global advertising technology platform focused on fusing the efficiency of programmatic technology with the engagement of content marketing. At PulsePoint she oversees the companies marketing, communications, and creative team. Lindsay has over 10 years experience as a B2B digital marketer and was previously Senior Global Marketing Manager for Vibrant, the pioneer in to contextually relevant native advertising. She has also held marketing & creative roles at media companies like Select NY and Condé Nast. Trained in brand strategy, copywriting and art direction at NYC’s Adhouse, Lindsay holds a B.A in Communications & Advertising from Loyola College in Maryland.

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