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Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of March 16, 2023

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

DCN’s must reads: week of March 9, 2023

Featured Post | Perspectives

Succession: 5 ways to ensure a smooth leadership transition

This month sees the return of one of my favorite TV shows: Succession. The HBO series focuses on the internal battles at a fictional media organization as the children of its aging patriarch jostle to take over. Though imaginary, its characters and storylines could be ripped directly from the headlines, and numerous media and business dynasties have been cited as inspiration. Showrunner Jesse Armstrong refuses to name names, though, telling Variety, “there’s loads of succession stories to draw on.”

That’s the truth. Changes in leadership, and the departure of long-standing founders, are definitely not just the stuff of Emmy-winning dramas. Everyone has experience with this. Unfortunately, this experience is often “shit-tastic,” says Amy L. Kovac-Ashley, author of the News Executive Leadership Transition Guide, which was published last week by the Reynolds Journalism Institute. 

Because changes in leadership are inevitable, it’s an area all media companies need to face head-on. So, how can they improve their succession planning and processes for organizational change? With that in mind, we spoke to Kovac-Ashley – Head of National Programs at the Lenfest Institute for Journalism, – about her research and some of the transferable lessons from it. 

5 principles for smooth leadership succession

Here are five principles and behaviors that media leaders and organizations should put into practice. 

1. Take time to reflect 

The best leaders are self-aware, says Kovac-Ashley. They know what they want and what their organization needs. Ideally the two are aligned. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. Pace of change, and the speed of day-to-day operations, means that individual and organizational priorities evolve and shift. 

Yet it can be hard to recognize this, given the constant “urgency and crisis” that many media leaders contend with. “We don’t take enough time to reflect and think and sit in the quiet to really make good decisions,” Kovac-Ashley says. 

As a result, it’s important to make time to step-back and evaluate. “I think that a lot of individuals have a hard time doing that. [So] you get founders or others not providing what the organization needs, because they haven’t had the time to reflect on their own contributions.”

Once they carve out the time, there are several mechanisms to help leaders tackle these big personal and organizational questions. These instruments include reflecting on your own drive and motivations, harnessing performance evaluations and checking in with trusted friends and advisors. Executive coaches can also play a valuable role.

2. Acknowledge leadership needs can change

The continued transformation of the media landscape means that the best leader for a company at one point in time is not necessarily the right one for the future. You might need new skills. Or a leader might find they are no longer firing on all cylinders. 

Again, this is an area where self-awareness is a strength good leaders possess. In this case, that means “knowing whether what they are offering, and doing, is what the organization needs at this point in time and [in] its development,” Kovac-Ashley says.

Operational health and organizational longevity require this type of reflection and analysis. On occasion, leaders must accept they may not be the best fit for their company anymore. After all, as Kovac-Ashley reminds us, in a lesson applicable to leaders everywhere, “no one wants to tell the founder, it’s past time for you to be here, right?” 

In those circumstances, “people have to kind of get out of their own way and out of the way of the organization when they realize it’s time to go,” she says. Whatever happens, “the best outcome here is that you have a smooth transition,” Kovac-Ashley contends. 

3. Start by planning for emergencies

It doesn’t matter what your business model is, leaders will always come and go. The universality of this reality means that Fortune 500 companies, family owned, non-profit, legacy and alt-media outlets alike all need to be thinking about this issue and taking steps to prepare for whenever change comes.

Knowing where to start may seem daunting, so Kovac-Ashley recommends planning for emergencies. “Because an emergency can happen at any time,” she says, “as we all experienced during Covid.”

This means preparing for the unpredictable: a sudden death or health crisis (either of a leader or a member of their family), and “because somebody is being removed because of poor behavior.” 

“Emergencies can come in a lot of different packages,” Kovac-Ashley explains. To help organizations prepare for these types of unforeseen circumstances, her guide features a detailed list of worksheets. These cover areas such as designating a temporary success, and operational areas such as personnel, governance and finance. She’s also “eager to know what’s missing,” and encourages DCN readers to reach out with suggestions and recommendations for improvement.

The need to capture this type of information is particularly important at a time of increased remote working, she notes. It’s especially valuable in the early days of a company when systems and processes can be embryonic and often only understood by one or two people. Transparently breaking down – and sharing – workflows, ownership and processes can also break down organizational silos, Kovac-Ashley says, as well as enable systems to work better. 

4. Don’t rush to find a replacement 

Too often people want to rush to find a new CEO or other leader, and that may be a mistake. “Scrambling isn’t going to get you the best outcome,” Kovac-Ashley says, instead urging organizations to pause, rather than hiring too hastily. 

The board – and the organization – require time to evaluate their needs and explore a range of options. That might mean hiring an interim head, or exploring opportunities to implement a co-leadership model – approaches that are typically underutilized across the media industry.

It might also mean ascertaining if a leader really needs to leave at all, or if some “time out” is what’s needed, rather than a departure. Sabbaticals aren’t common in the media industry, and they’re not a panacea, but they are an effective part of academic or religious professions. These are fields Kovac-Ashley believes that the media can learn a lot more from. 

Avoiding dashing headlong into hiring also matters when organizations are trying to diversify their leadership too. Failure to do so may make it harder for these new, more diverse, leaders (such as women and people of color) to succeed. Pausing can avoid “essentially giving them an organization that’s broken and saying ‘you fix it’,” Kovac-Ashley says, “when that’s completely unfair.”

5. Involve your staff throughout

To help leaders see the full organizational picture, Kovac-Ashley recommends performance evaluations incorporate 360-degree feedback. These “can be really helpful for people who are willing to actually listen to their staff,” she says. “Hopefully, they have created an environment in which their staff feel they can be honest about what’s working and what’s not.”

And when leaders depart, she advises that personnel from across the organization are involved. “I have a very strong point of view about this, that maybe others won’t share, which is fine,” she says.

As part of this, Kovac-Ashley advocates listening sessions with staff and incorporating them in the interview process. That doesn’t mean giving them veto power over an appointment, but ensuring they have input. 

“Once you start to get into finalist candidates, I think one or two people from the staff, depending on the size of the organization, of course, need to be part of that process,” she advocates. And “I also think staff need to be more involved in the onboarding of new executives, because a top-down approach in onboarding does not bode well, for good culture.”

Looking Ahead: why everyone must start preparing for change

The need for succession planning will only grow, Kovac-Ashley believes. Just as the Great Resignation has seen many people re-evaluating what they want from the world of work, it’s also triggered a spike in similar reflections at the C-Suite level. 

Kovac-Ashley notes how leaders at organizations founded at the start of the Great Recession (such as Politico, The Texas Tribune, and award-winning local site VT Digger) have recently stepped aside. Many of these founders have moved on to new opportunities or decided to retire. The Covid crisis was often cited as the tipping point for making these life-changing decisions. 

These moves have been accompanied by further personnel transformations across other parts of the industry. Mergers and acquisitions, for example, have meant leadership changes in multiple media organizations. Alongside this, founders frequently discover that their passion lies in the start-up phase rather than managing a more mature business. That can be especially true for younger leaders. 

“A lot of younger founders don’t necessarily want to be there for 30-40 years,” Kovac-Ashley says. “They’re really excited about starting something… and getting it on to a good footing, but… they might want to go on and do something else.” 

This issue is not going to go away, either. “Every single organization that’s launching today is going to have the same issue going forward,” Kovac-Ashley reminds us. “And because of the way the industry is changing, there’s going to be more and more smaller entrants trying to figure out how to sustain themselves beyond their founding stage.” 

Leadership transitions can be tumultuous times for organizations. However, change is inevitable and succession planning is a critical process for all publishers. From emergency planning to encouraging leaders check in with “their personal board of directors,” there are clear tips and guidance to help media companies prepare and to ensure they don’t need to start from scratch.

This matters, because many of the factors that prompted Kovac-Ashley to explore this topic look set to continue. Covid has refocused many people’s work-life priorities, and leadership changes will only be further triggered by continued M&A activity, lay-offs, (overdue) conversations about burnout, and a greater focus on issues of mental health and well-being. 

As a result, the need to plan for leadership changes and manage effective transitions, are areas that no media organization – large or small, new or established – can afford to overlook. 

Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of March 9, 2023

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

Advertising | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight | Video

It’s time to modernize Advanced TV. Here’s how

Online video offers tremendous reach and growth potential for advertisers and publishers alike. But disparate technologies and fragmented metrics have been longtime pain points. There’s a clear need for a solution that can bring standardization, interoperability and improved efficiency to the industry.

That solution might finally be on its way with the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s unveiling of their ambitious Advanced TV initiative. Built alongside standards that have already been approved by the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC), the IAB’s work could prove to be a significant step toward universal addressability, both for the myriad of devices and online services that make up the ATV ecosystem, and for the elusive bridge to linear TV measurement as well.

Standardizing and unifying all these different outlets of buying and selling ads in a way that allows everyone to compete means that everyone can win, including consumers. We have seen in the past that these types of issues are resolvable when the industry comes together and comes up with a solution that works for everyone. This could be the start of something truly transformational.

Advanced TV explained

Before diving into the IAB’s plan, it’s important to understand what Advanced TV is.Namely,Advanced TV is an umbrella term that refers to any TV device or service that isn’t part of traditional broadcast channels (or Linear TV, with some exceptions). Those products and services are often distinct from one another in subcategory, but they’re all considered a part of Advanced TV as a whole.

From an advertising perspective, the key divide between Advanced TV and traditional broadcast is addressability, which isthe ability to serve targeted ads to viewers based on their individual data, and track the success of whole campaigns based on various observable metrics. Standardizing and streamlining that process across Linear and Advanced TV is the crux of IAB’s initiative.

The grand plan for Advanced TV

The IAB released a three-year roadmap that outlines the implementation of their vision. In it, they listed five key objectives that they will use to chart its success:

  • Interoperability for frame accurate ad delivery and ad break management
  • Universal addressability and reconciliation for audience measurement
  • Full auditability for advertising campaigns delivery
  • Ad measurement for delivery and viewability verification
  • Omnichannel sales management for programmatic buying and selling of upfronts as well as spot buys

To accomplish these objectives, the IAB outlined the technologies that they will be deploying over the next three years to modernize the medium.

Standardized Video Watermark Signal Utilizing OM SDK

Working within digital standards like OM SDK, the IAB’s open watermark signal will collect vital measurements like viewability verification across the breadth of ATV’s services and devices. It will also allow for universal ad break management and frame-accurate ad insertion or replacement for video publishers. This is all in hopes of achieving a better ad experience for consumers who are otherwise forced to view the same ad many times over due to poor targeting capabilities.

Universal Asset Identification (Ad-ID)

In conjunction with IAB’s watermark, a universal ad identification system will be key to auditing campaigns and creatives. This will provide the much-needed ability to track both throughout the supply chain, so any ad can be identified and attached to its respective campaign. Ad-ID will also be a crucial component of bridging the tracking gap to linear channels.

2+ Impression Currency

This technology and methodology will reconcile audience measurement based on data from multiple delivery channels, including linear ones. In the future, this will standardize tokenization and reconciliation, improving universal addressability.

Programmatic Upgrades via OpenRTB

To ensure scalability on a programmatic level, IAB’s watermark will integrate with OpenRTB signaling over the next three years. This will also include developing live streaming ad break management and publisher safety guidance.

Conclusion

If IAB’s initiative can deliver on its objectives, the Advanced TV landscape could be on the verge of a sweeping evolution. One that will turn the current disparate jumble of technologies and metrics into an interconnected, holistic, and truly universal measurement system across both linear and non-linear channels. The task is great and the days are early. But it’s hard not to be excited about the possibilities, and we’ll be among those watching the IAB’s progress – and the evolution of Advanced TV – with keen interest over the next few years.

Featured Post | Innovation | Perspectives

Spilled ink: How to prevent AI from vacuuming up your business model

The many profound possibilities for creators leveraging artificial intelligence have been quietly heating up over the last decade. So, what really changed in the past few months? Certainly, the clever roll-out of ChatGPT only months after DALL-E 2 has thrown gas on the burner. Right now, press coverage and industry chatter are mostly focused on uncovering real-world applications offered by generative AI, which are exciting to be sure. However, wise publishers will heed lessons learned from past experiences in which their data were scraped and take an active role in preserving their business value.

“Scraping the web” is a term as old as the web itself. It’s no secret that Google’s core business was built by crawling companies’ servers to train its search engine to find and deliver satisfying results across the vast world wide web with speed and precision. The result: Google now plays the role of gatekeeper for much of the web.

The reality is that any publisher who made the radical decision not to allow Google’s crawler to do its thing would quickly become almost impossible to find online. Giving Google the free right to crawl your site is the cost of business to exist on the open web today.

Just last week Google began testing blocking news properties in Canada. As Campbell Clark wrote for the Globe and Mail earlier this week, “It’s not a threat, of course. Sometimes people just wake up with a horse’s head in their bed.”

This is yet another stark example of Google’s power. No individual publisher has the bargaining power to opt out and impact Google’s business. So no one does.

It’s not actually that different from the way in which Facebook built its social media platform into a digital advertising juggernaut. After many years scraping and collecting user data across the web and its partners – from far beyond the walls of its garden – Facebook began using AI to leverage its massive data warehouse appropriately named “The Hive” in a manner that is irreversible. Publishers are only now learning how all of this data was used, and abused,  through lawsuit discovery and leaked documents.

Importantly, as was uncovered through one of these leaked documents, Facebook engineers used the metaphor of ink spilled into a lake to describe what happens to a person’s data once it makes its way into the Facebook’s data warehouse:

“We’ve built systems with open borders. The result of these open systems and open culture is well described with an analogy:

Imagine you hold a bottle of ink in your hand. This bottle of ink is a mixture of all kinds of user data (3PD, 1PD, SCD, Europe, etc.) You pour that ink into a lake of water (our open data systems; our open culture) … and it flows … everywhere. How do you put that ink back in the bottle? How do you organize it again, such that it only flows to the allowed places in the lake?”

This brings us to generative AI – 2023’s hot topic. It’s unequivocal that the Large Language Models are being trained by ingesting the work of newsrooms across the web. To better understand this fact, consider that Google disclosed that a whopping 15% of Google’s daily searches are completely new searches.

Now think about that for a moment: The most likely trigger for a novel search is an unfolding news event. That means the simple fact that these searches occur was triggered by the work of news media. And, as we know, Google monetizes answers. Particularly when confronted by a new query, Google’s machine learning algorithms lean into authority brands – those deemed likely to provide a trustworthy response. Guess who those are? You can see by looking at the top results presented by a search around breaking news: the results are called “top stories” and you guessed it: they come from media brands.

No one should doubt that a similar level of interest, intelligence, and impact on generative AI will be instigated—and answered—because of the work product of the news media, particularly given the role of Large Language Models in their training and operation.

So, if the output of newsrooms, writers, artists, and media companies were not available to scrape, what would happen to the quality of 2023’s much-hyped generative AI?

Copious effort and investment go into the creation of premium content. The use of premium content to train AI models is akin to fueling your machine with gasoline you “found” in someone else’s garage. It doesn’t inherently mean that the machine is not powerful, or useful. But that fuel was not free to create. If your machine can’t run without it, something is not quite right with the system.

Given Facebook’s metaphor, the publishing world may need to serve notice to OpenAI and its ilk before they can make the claim that the ink flow can no longer be reverse engineered. Let’s hope it is not already too late.

In November, DeviantArt rolled out an HTML tag so that an artist can inform web robots not to crawl their images to train art-generating AI. Media companies need to consider whether the right course of action is to launch a similar tag, which tells bots not to crawl and train their AI with publishers’ work. Of course, like many technical issues on the open web, this would only rein in the good robots and would not solve for bad bots.

But it is important that we make a start, before too much ink has spilled.

Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of March 2, 2023

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

DCN’s must reads: week of February 23, 2023

Advertising | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

How media companies can protect addressability

As we look toward the rest of 2023 and beyond, it’s clear that respect for consumer privacy will continue to greatly impact digital advertising as a whole. But this shift does not need to negatively impact publisher revenue.

Platforms blocking third-party tracking and new data privacy regulations give users the tools, awareness and the choice to protect their information by opting out of data sharing. With this, when we look at the open web as a whole, addressability has collapsed to 30%. But while big tech solutions continue to threaten to commoditize publishers, consumer privacy actually gives publishers an opportunity to reclaim data ownership.

Traditional adtech and legacy platforms aren’t equipped to solve this addressability crisis.  And without addressability, publishers aren’t able to effectively monetize their audience. The good news is that media companies have the power to identify and solve addressability issues. Here’s how publishers can check their own addressability, step-by-step.

Step one: cookie-blocked platforms

The first step in assessing overall addressability is to determine where your users are. In the U.S. alone, nearly half of all of users are browsing in Safari, Edge, Firefox, or other cookie-blocked browsers. Further, about half of all iOS users have opted into Apple’s App Tracking Transparency framework, which also impacts audience monetization in fast-growing environments such as streaming apps. When consumers use these platforms, publishers lose the ability to target these audiences with traditional programmatic advertising.

Ad impressions that don’t have a cookie or identifier attached can signal a problem for marketers. It might even cause them to pay less for these impressions or spend elsewhere. Publishers who don’t have the ability to retain audience addressability and become a data source that advertisers need will run the risk of losing budgets.

By starting with determining how much traffic originates from one of these environments, publishers can begin to understand what percentage of addressability is lost. If we take the U.S. national average and apply it here, a publisher would be left with approximately 55% audience addressability after step one.

Step two: user-disabled cookies in Chrome

Despite Google delaying third-party cookie deprecation in Chrome until 2024, 40% of Chrome users are already browsing in incognito windows or disabling tracking cookies on their own. In the U.S., more than half of users are browsing in Chrome.

Continuing with our example, the combination of audiences choosing cookie blocking-platforms and users opting out of tracking on Chrome means that only 30% of publisher audiences are addressable. Today, 70% of the internet is effectively invisible to adtech.

As user choice increasingly becomes the default, this number will continue to grow. Google’s prominent “reject all” cookies button in the Chrome consent banner is scheduled to be implemented in more countries, as directed by GDPR. In the U.S., lawmakers are mulling over the American Data Privacy and Protection Act (ADPPA), which would have all users opted-out by default. The result is a future where users will have to take minimal action, if any, to opt out of sharing their data for advertising purposes.

Step three: first-page-view targeting

The next step in determining total addressability is evaluating publishers’ ability to target users on the first page view. Passer-by traffic varies greatly by publisher, but it stands that publishers who can’t serve an ad on the first page view then lose the ability to monetize that bounced audience.

Adtech solutions that rely on cloud-based data processing are handicapped in their ability to target an ad on first page view. However, by processing data at or near the source, media companies are equipped to capture this crucial audience. To continue our example, if a bounce rate is 30%, a publisher’s total addressability is now only 21%.

Step four: data longevity

Finally, publishers need to assess their ability to store data against particular cohorts via unlimited lookback windows. The average cloud-based platform (e.g. traditional DMPs, CDPs) relies on cookie-based lookback windows. This means that publishers can only lookback 30 days on a particular cohort, inherently capping the scale of the audience.

A longer lookback window enables publishers to build cohorts for users over an extended period of time. By building user profiles over a longer period of time, publishers can create cohorts that are reflective of seasonality, for example back-to-school shopping. This allows publishers to provide advertisers with highly relevant audience segments that rely on specific time pegs.

Maximizing addressability

Media companies that build a direct-sold business built on the unique relationships and trust they have with their users will command advertiser media spend and be well-positioned to succeed in this new era of digital advertising.

As evidence of this, Penske Media Corporation was able to realize a 46% increase in revenue from first-party data in 2022. Further, their rich audience data insights were able to deliver advertisers a 5x increase in performance (CTR) in campaigns that only used only first-party data.

As we look toward a future of digital advertising where publishers have control and users have a choice, adtech built for marketers and based on third-party data will no longer be sufficient. Publishers who take action to maximize their addressability with first-party data are able to differentiate their data offerings, prove value to buyers via insights, win RFPs, and ultimately grow revenue.

Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of February 23, 2023

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

DCN’s must reads: week of February 9, 2023

Almar Latour, CEO, Dow Jones and Jason Kint, CEO of Digital Content Next in conversation at the 2023 DCN: Next Summit
Featured Post | Innovation | Perspectives | Policy | Video

Brand-true omnichannel strategy dominates the 2023 DCN: Next Summit

While evergreen issues around trust and a focus on the audience experience peppered the first in-person DCN Next: Summit since 2020, emerging opportunities – and concerns – around generative AI were also focal at the event. Held at the Fort Lauderdale beachfront Conrad Hotel, the 2023 summit hosted a wide range of speakers from inside and outside the DCN membership to discuss the business and future of media, brand mission, omnichannel strategy, consumer preferences, and the impact of the challenging economic and regulatory climate.

Surveying the regulatory landscape

DCN CEO Jason Kint kicked off the event with a focus on current key regulatory issues that impact digital media. He emphasized that the focus must remain on aligning content experiences, advertising behavior, and data usage with consumer expectations. He also looked at the current state of antitrust regulation.

As Kat Downs Mulder, SVP and GM of Yahoo News put it: media brands have a responsibility, in asking consumers for their information through sign-ons, “to be protective of our asks and thoughtful about what we request.”

Shoshana Zuboff, Harvard Business School professor and author of the book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism at the DCN: Next Summit 2023
Shoshana Zuboff, author of the book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

Kint’s points were hammered home by Shoshana Zuboff, Harvard Business School professor and author of the book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. Zuboff delineated the history of privacy erosion leading to tech companies’ engagement in a “secret massive scale extraction of human data” and how regulation is a driving factor in reining it in.

The current drive towards antitrust and reining in the dominance a few players have over the ad market was a focal point for Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee, who addressed attendees via Zoom. He discussed a bill he is reintroducing “in a few weeks with bipartisan support,” which is designed to restore and protect competition in digital advertising and improve advertising transparency.

“Unfortunately, big tech behemoths like Google have inserted themselves as middlemen into this relationship, extracting monopoly rents not just on their own properties, but from every corner of the entire internet ecosystem.”

How brand focus empowers growth

The impact of emerging regulation is far from the only challenge media executives currently face. Speakers touched on inflation, supply chain disruption, European conflict, U.S.-China tensions, the ongoing impact of Covid, climate concerns, labor challenges, the erosion of trust in institutions, and the fight for free speech.

However, Almar Latour, CEO, Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal publisher (pictured at top) said that challenges like these actually drive brands closer to their mission. For his brands, that mission is to go deep with products to provide truth relevant to different aspects of the business world, he added. This strategy is one he believes will lead to subscription growth.

Producing great products consumers love and return to over and over is indeed a driving factor in subscription strategy, as illustrated in a discussion between Julia Beizer, Bloomberg Media CEO and chief digital officer and Mulder. She noted that consumers value connecting with authoritative voices in brand podcasts and newsletters.

Bloomberg Media CEO and chief digital officer Julia Beizer, & SVP and GM of Yahoo News Kat Downs Mulder in conversation with Axios' media reporter Sara Fischer at the 2023 DCN Next:Summit
Bloomberg Media CEO and chief digital officer Julia Beizer, & SVP and GM of Yahoo News Kat Downs Mulder in conversation with Axios’ media reporter Sara Fischer.

Indeed, building an infrastructure on the foundation of staying true to one’s brand is key to success, according to Bonin Bough, Group Black co-founder and chief strategy officer.

Brand, however, is not some vague marketing tool. Scott Mills, BET president and CEO said that maximizing brand requires a comprehensive data-driven ecosystem encompassing linear, streaming, and digital platforms.

Advocating for truth and accuracy

Maximizing brand value requires providing consumers with a source of much-needed, trustworthy information – particularly when others seek to tamp it down and create a void that is often filled with dis- or misinformation.

Scott Mills, BET president at the 2023 DCN: Next Summit
Scott Mills, president of BET

Addressing Florida’s Department of Education rejection of the AP African American History course, Mills noted that such actions will “drive us to allocate more of our resources or more of our attention to ensuring that our community—and people who value and respect our community—have access to accurate information.”

Clearly, the need for accurate information is a global one, though journalistic approaches and press freedoms vary widely. In his work as the manager for East and Southern Africa at the organization Journalists for Human Rights, Dr. Siyabulela Mandela has found that offering training to local journalists not only empowers them, but helps their work better serve local communities. He said that improving journalism’s role of providing checks to those in power is critical at a time when “there seems to be a shift from more democratic ways of doing things towards more totalitarian ways.”

Dr. Siyabulela Mandela, manager for East and Southern Africa at the organization Journalists for Human Rights, speaking at the 2023 DCN: Next Summit
Dr. Siyabulela Mandela, Journalists for Human Rights

Mandela advocates for an approach that enables Western journalists to reframe stories in East and Southern Africa and the Middle East with a more contextual focus on human rights by leveraging his organization’s local knowledge base. He favors the idea of a collaborative exchange program for mutual training with journalists from East and Southern Africa. Each, he pointed out, has much to learn from each other.

Evolving with the times

In addition to providing content that continues to address the needs of audiences, speakers discussed how innovation in storytelling provides creative and impactful ways to engage and inform audiences.

For Emblematic founder and CEO Nonny de la Pena, that means finding new ways to use virtual reality. Nicknamed “the godmother of VR” de la Pena illustrated techniques and showed behind the scenes insights into how some of the most powerful VR stories have been created. However, despite her enthusiasm, she said that given the fact that creators of misinformation often leverage powerful tech, it is essential to establish immutable provenance for footage to make it difficult to manipulate.

Alice McKown, publisher and CRO of The Atlantic speaking at the 2023 DCN: Next Summit
Alice McKown, publisher and CRO of The Atlantic

Encompassing non-traditional strategies to engage new audiences requires portfolio diversification, noted Alice McKown, publisher and CRO of The Atlantic. While the company has digitized its entire archive of 30,000 articles from its 165 years, it also has expanded efforts into creating new ways to leverage its IP, including immersive art exhibits, video, podcasts, book publishing, and events.

Hannah Yang, Chief Growth Officer of The New York Times Speaking at the 2023 DCN: Next Summit
Hannah Yang, Chief Growth Officer, New York Times

The National Geographic also has instituted strategies to evolve with the times while staying true to the brand’s core attributes. The magazine still attracts a relatively small, but incredibly loyal following, according to editor-in-chief Nathan Lump. These days, however, National Geographic brand reaches millions of people via social media, the National Geographic Channel on Disney Plus, virtual reality, live events, a travel business, consumer products, books.

Given the many ways that the brand now reaches audiences, Lump pointed out that National Geographic is the biggest it’s ever been in its 135 years. National Geographic boasts 714 million global followers across the major social platforms alone.

For The New York Times, Chief Growth Officer, Hannah Yang told the audience that its impressive subscription growth is achieved through three well-defined missions: a subscription growth mission to meet financial goals; consumer-facing mission offering desired options such as games and cooking; and platform mission to ensure that all parts of the business have the technology and data perspective they need to thrive.

What’s next

“There’s never been a better time to monetize audiences,” noted Alex Michael, managing director of LionTree Group. He stressed the value of omnichannel strategy and bundling while discussing the investment opportunities his company is leaning into this year.

Richard Plepler, founder, EDEN Productions and former HBO chairman and CEO speaking at the 2023 DCN: Next Summit
Richard Plepler, founder, EDEN Productions

The power of omnichannel was echoed by a number of speakers, including board member Robin Thurston, Outside Interactive founder and CEO.  He said, “The concept of single sign-on omnichannel helps connect the dots and create value.”

Richard Plepler, founder, EDEN Productions and former HBO chairman and CEO, reminded attendees of something he’s advocated for many years: quality over quantity. “More is not better; only better is better. I am not of the belief that tonnage gets you more subscribers – what gets you more subscribers is when brands deliver on their promise.”

As DCN members map out strategies for 2023, innovation and audience focus remain constant. However, to win amidst contemporary challenges developing a seamless omnichannel strategy, while staying to brand mission, will be key to attracting new consumers and retaining existing ones.

Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of February 9, 2023

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

DCN’s must reads: week of February 2, 2023

Innovation | Perspectives

How to transform content distribution with AI

Any publisher will tell you how costly it can be to create innovative, attention-grabbing content that resonates with audiences and moves them to engage. But the stakes are even higher when it comes to distributing this content: failing to deliver content effectively can mean depriving it of the attention it deserves, undermining the utility of your initial content investment.

Distributing content is a critical step for publishers and media organizations of all types in delivering quality news and entertainment to audiences and driving revenue through advertising or subscriptions. Yet the channels most often used are noisy environments where user attention is limited and competition is boundless. When not approached strategically, using data as a guide, content distribution can be a laborious, frustratingly inexact science with erratic results.

But publishers are increasingly adopting an effective solution: Artificial Intelligence (AI). Providing immense value in many operational aspects of the newsroom, AI is also transforming how publishers distribute content to maximize reach and performance. Below we’ll look at four key ways in which AI is driving this transformation.

1. Automate content delivery workflows to save time

Frequent and repetitive processes can often be broken down into discreet actions which can be automated to save time. 

Consider the example of social media publishing:

Despite the significant changes underway at social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter in recent times, social media is still one of the preeminent means for publishers to distribute content to audiences, offering an efficient way to reach billions of people of all ages across the globe. 

Publishing content to different social platforms is a manual, time-consuming process. It involves selecting the best content to share, creating posts, writing adapted share messages, selecting hashtags, choosing images, analyzing performance and extracting insights for your publication’s social media content strategy. And, of course, all this should be done with specific social platforms in mind (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and a growing list of newer platforms). By applying AI, publishers are able to automate this entire process, saving immense time while ensuring content is optimally delivered to audiences across social media platforms. 

Another increasingly common example is with email newsletters, a burgeoning area of investment for many publishers. Where applications of AI were previously restricted to send time recommendations, AI is now transforming the entire process of delivering content via email by fully automating the creation, sending and optimization of emails. Publishers are now employing AI to automatically curate, build, send, test and optimize their newsletters, all without requiring human input. The time gained from this level of automation is evident, and can be reinvested into the creation of new, engaging content.  

2. Optimize content performance with powerful machine learning

Determining which content will perform best at any given moment, in any given channel, is something that arguably exceeds human ability. But unprecedentedly powerful algorithms can now integrate audience data and real-time trends. This offers the ability to pinpoint which content will attract attention and engagement, and the best time to publish to capture this attention.

By applying AI in this way across key channels, publishers are maximizing their content’s performance: 

  • Machine learning algorithms deliver newsletters with personalized content, sent at optimal times determined by machine learning, to achieve higher open rates and click rates.
  • AI determines which content is most likely to go viral on social media, and determines the precise optimal post time to gain higher visibility and more user engagement.
  • Machine learning systems identify which creative elements are likely to generate the most advertising clicks, and tailor ads to viewers on the fly.
  • AI understands visitor behaviors and personalizes website content for a tailored user experience. 

There are many other examples of how AI is transforming the content distribution strategies of publishers and media groups, with exciting new applications of AI surfacing every day.

3. Automatically maximize your content’s lifetime value

A key aspect of any content distribution strategy is knowing when, on which channels, and how often to redistribute existing content. In addition to planning and managing the distribution of new pieces, publishers must also constantly think about opportunities to recycle and redeploy content from their archives, whether these are evergreen pieces or seasonal features that can be reused each year. Republishing content in this way is an effective strategy for maximizing the value it can drive across its lifetime. 

Publishers can use AI to fully automate this republishing process and ensure that relevant content is reused at the opportune time. One example is the automated resharing of content on social media: AI algorithms monitor current social audience data and trends on each platform, then check a publisher’s content archives to determine which existing pieces should be republished, and the precise moment to generate a new wave of traffic and engagement. Leveraging AI to effectively and automatically manage content redistribution can help publishers squeeze the most return from content over its entire lifespan.

4. Test and learn with AI-driven insights  

Running tests is a critical practice to optimize performance over time. But planning and executing tests, collecting and cleaning data, and analyzing results, then transforming them into action has traditionally been laborious. Publishers are now using AI to gain efficiencies with the testing process on various content distribution channels. 

Email newsletters are a prime example, given that they have multiple elements available to test such as layout, font, colors, image size, content order, subject line and more. Implementing tests on each email blast, then collating data and identifying trends and larger patterns can be expertly handled by a machine. And in most use cases, AI can be employed to not only collect and analyze test data, but also to automatically iterate and implement improvements based on test results, ensuring content achieves continuous increases in performance.

Unlock content’s full potential with AI-powered delivery

Distribution is a decisive stage of the content life cycle, with the potential to make or break the performance of a piece of journalism. Getting distribution right – and across an increasing number of channels – is time-consuming and requires data and strategy to execute properly. 

Fortunately, with AI technology, publishers and media organizations can bypass much of the cumbersome, manual work involved in delivering content at scale. Adopting AI for content distribution can mean more accuracy and consistency than a human can provide, and this enhanced intelligence can have a significant impact on your  publication’s bottom line.

About the author

Ashley Kibler is the Marketing Director at Echobox, the leading solution for publishing automation used by 1,500 publishers and media groups worldwide to automate and optimize content curation and distribution.

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