Recently, a close family friend said “I actually liked getting my news on Facebook. It was relevant for me and easy.” We went on to discuss Facebook’s focus on “time well spent” and how the social network plans to emphasize content shared by family and friends. However, lovers of the News Feed on Facebook have certainly not been the only ones affected. Given that they are on the losing end of Facebook’s algorithmic attention deficit disorder, publishers need to give some thought to the ways in which they will continue to attract high quality audiences.
In fact, publishers should seriously consider working together on this one. An option that isn’t getting enough attention is allocating part of their owned and operated pages for other premium publishers’ content. This would allow publishers to recapture the monetization, brand awareness, and data they’ve lost from Facebook while creating a healthier ecosystem for all. If done properly, publishers will have an audience that is more engaged, something the early data from Outbrain’s Sphere initiative has proven out. Put another way, audiences referred between premium publishers are simply more engaged than folks who come via social referrals.
Facebook audiences were always a challenge, mostly “side-door” with high bounce rates. But, it was a trade-off most publishers accepted until their brand awareness, monetization opportunities, and knowledge about readers were undermined by Facebook’s decision. Rather than relying solely on Facebook, publishers have an opportunity to band together and expand the personalized discovery experience to include other premium publishers. By linking out to other publishers and gaining the benefit of similar inbound audiences, publishers can establish a “flywheel effect” that nets them either referral revenue or engaged inbound audiences. Win, win!
Three important characteristics are needed to ensure such an audience exchange is truly reader-focused. First, transitioning audiences between publishers can’t be based on a ratio, whether 1-to-1 or 1-to-many. The reader wants the best experience possible and by requiring content from a publisher to meet ratio requirements, the reader will get overlooked. Second, publishers must have the controls and input to decide what other publishers are allowed in the club. Third, data must be provided to all participants that clearly shows the number of engaged users in order to prove out the value of the exchange.
While these three characteristics are critical, the biggest concern we hear is “why should I link to a competitor?” Given the changes in the landscape over the last several years should we all rethink our competitive set? Do I compete with publishers or social platforms for readers? In his 2007 article New Rule: Do What You Do Best and Link to the Rest, Jeff Jarvis discusses the benefits of linking to other publishers. Frederic Filloux built on this idea in Why Publishers Should Consider the “Smart Curation” Market, which supports selective linking based on editorial preference. These are great examples for linking to other publishers meant to create a healthy and vibrant ecosystem while establishing trust with readers.
Bottom line: Providing readers the best discovery experience, even linking to other publishers, establishes a deeper level of trust that will pay-off for everyone in the long-run.
It’s been a common theme of mine and this publication for months, but it bears repeating: The Facebook and Google duopoly have never been more vulnerable. So, the time is right for publishers to double down on proven tactics and test new ones in pursuit of gaining market share.
If you still need convincing of market conditions, consider the news of just this week from three of the most influential publications on the planet:
A coalition of 20 consumer groups are about to file a federal complaint against YouTube/Google for violating a children’s privacy law (NY Times)
Facebook’s CEO admitted to a “huge mistake”, and the platform may have leaked info from 87 million users (Wall Street Journal)
A lawmaker said the scandals plaguing the social media giant might be “too big” for it to fix alone, and that he might “be in favor of regulating Facebook” (Washington Post)
This coverage is, of course, in addition to the real whopper involving Russian meddling in the most recent U.S. presidential election. These venerable newspapers – which collectively influence millions directly, and tens of millions indirectly – are singing from the same hymnbook. When it comes to the duopoly, they are on the attack. It’s not so much that Google and Facebook have been consistently bad actors, necessarily. But let’s face it, Congressional hearings and privacy problems make great copy. Or, maybe it’s personal. No matter – this is happening either way.
A Perfect Storm
Several overlapping and intersecting factors, occurring over many years, have lead to today’s market conditions: shifting consumer needs and market demand; thinly-veiled, monopolistic corporate behavior characterized by overreach and insufficient self-governance; and unintended consequences of streamlining the advertising supply chain. To be sure, the past decade has been tumultuous. But the current state of affairs in digital advertising will not come as a surprise to DCN community members.
To wit: Last week, Mark Glaser warned publishers to be careful about gloating in the wake of Facebook’s troubles – sage advice. Last month, DCN CEO Jason Kint addressed Google’s “battle with transparency” when reporting its massive digital advertising revenues. And at the beginning of the year, I offered techniques for publishers to employ to sell more advertising to media buyers via easily digestible sales tools,an emphasis on branding, and formidable client service. Even with all this attention, however, I don’t know that the community expected the situation to get *this hot* for the duopoly.
Having experienced extraordinarily challenging conditions since the late 2000s – and being in the unenviable position of shrinking in the face of a growing, ancillary market –– publishers now have a compelling talking point, a reason to reach out to customers, prospects, partners, and the press. Certainly, behaviors change slowly. Customers are risk-averse, and no one has “gotten fired for buying ads from Google and Facebook” in quite awhile. Now, if only for reasons of diligence, media buyers now have to pick their heads up from Google and Facebook dashboards and assess alternatives.
If Not Now, When?
Last year, and for the first time, companies spent more on digital advertising than TV spots. We all saw this coming, but it actually happened last year, and it signaled an official changing-of-the-guard in the industry. Most professional prognosticators believe digital ad spending will continue to grow for the foreseeable future, to eventually capture 40% or more of the overall marketplace.
Publishers certainly continue to face meaningful growth challenges. However, it’s difficult to imagine conditions being more fertile than today for building market share. The time is right for making aggressive moves.
Facebook has been under fire ever since the revelation that it allowed the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica to harvest user data and use that information as fodder for the Trump campaign. While outrage against the social media giant is warranted, we also ought to be concerned about the entire digital advertising ecosystem, where everyone — including publishers — is on the hunt for data.
Indeed, rather than just pointing at Facebook, feeling smug and a bit of schadenfreude, publishers and advertisers should take a deeper look at their own practices. And how about going even further: Take a leading role in ensuring user privacy. Think about what you can do to make sure data hunger doesn’t comprise user interest.
Walled Garden War
Anger toward Facebook isn’t anything new for media companies and publishers. If anything, the Cambridge Analytica scandal is just one point on a timeline documenting publishers’ tempestuous relationship with Facebook. At a recent Platforms + Publishers roundtable I produced at Facebook, there were plenty of angry small publishers who pointed to a loss of 50% or more of Facebook-referred traffic. Someone even mentioned that going to Facebook was like going back to an abusive partner. You think things are getting better and then, smack! you are hit with an algorithm change and a poisonous political data scandal.
As Axios’ Scott Rosenberg put it, the current fury against Facebook is personal for journalists because they, along with their institutions, blame Facebook (as well as other tech behemoths like Google) “for seducing their readers, impoverishing their employees, and killing off their jobs.” Given the stronghold Facebook and Google have over the digital advertising industry — which has also rendered publishers and advertisers dependent on the duopoly — any backlash that can knock down these tech companies, even a little, stands to make things better for their competitors and the ecosystem at large.
Data Hypocrisy
But there are a couple fallacies with that kind of thinking. First, Facebook has played a crucial role in helping news outlets reach their audiences where their audiences are. And it’s no secret that the micro-targeting of a news item to user — based on the data gathered — worked to help the publisher, even if publishers always felt they were on the losing end of the relationship. And Facebook has certainly made a much bigger effort at helping to drive memberships, donations and subscriptions to publishers; in fact, that was the overarching theme of the roundtable I produced at Facebook.
And secondly: While it’s easy to nurture a grudge against Facebook, it’s harder to understand the complex relationships between publishers and platforms – where there can be collaboration and animosity. National outlets may be more vocal about their criticism around Facebook’s ability to adequately compensate publishers. However, local publishers in particular see Facebook, Google and other major tech platforms as potential allies that can help elevate their standing, and help them compete with national outlets.
Not only that, but consider BuzzFeed’s Mark Di Stefano’s scoop that both The Economist and the Financial Times hired Cambridge Analytica to help them grow their subscriber base in the United States. It’s unclear whether the data benefited the two British companies, but clearly, that’s what they were looking for. As media and tech thinker Doc Searls accurately notes, news publishers are also guilty of using third-party tracking apps that return internet advertising to their users. But, as everyone is now realizing, there’s no guarantee what actually happens to that data. “What will happen when the [New York] Times, the New Yorkerand other pubs own up to the simple fact that they are just as guilty as Facebook of leaking its readers’ data to other parties, for—in many if not most cases—God knows what purposes besides ‘interest-based’ advertising?” Searls wrote on his Harvard blog.
Taking the Lead
To be sure, the momentum against Facebook (and Google) has been piling up for some time, and the latest scandal is unlike any other that has reached Facebook. As the company reels in the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica data leaks, it’s cut third-party data providers out of its ad targeting, added safeguards like an email certification tool for marketers, emphasized its support for local news publishers, and considered more heavily its approach to data collection. Mark Zuckerberg has been forced to discuss the crisis in an apology tour with various news outlets and journalists. It’s safe to say Facebook knows its product (and reputation) is on the line.
But the best reckoning publishers could have right now is not about Facebook, but themselves — and the steps they can take to make sure they have their own data houses in order. As the Association of National Advertisers put it in a statement, “In truth, the Cambridge Analytica controversy is greater than Facebook alone…It’s a brand reputation and data security risk for every ANA member that advertises and monetizes brands on online and mobile outlets.”
One huge step, already started by the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF), is to call for new industry guidelines and standards around data collection that also focuses on prioritizing user protection. The ARF has invited other industry bodies to contribute to the endeavor; now it’s up to the rest of the players in the digital advertising ecosystem, publishers and advertisers included, to do their share to ensure a safer internet. Data is the ultimate feast for everyone, but if the hunger for it leads to toxic consequences, it poisons the entire body.
Mobile is as personal as it gets. That’s why people feel annoyed when mobile ads delivered to their devices and apps are a mismatch with their desires and expectations. To cut out unwanted noise and shut out ads that deliver a poor user experience, consumers are reaching in record numbers to mobile ad-blocking technology. Unfortunately, bad ad experiences don’t only alienate and frustrate consumers; they also deprive publishers of an important chance to monetize their assets and audiences.
So, what is a bad ad experience? Unsurprisingly, ads that disrupt or distort content people are trying to read or enjoy lead the list of most “hated” annoyances, according to research from Nieman Norman Group. Pop-up ads, auto-playing video with sound, interstitial ads that must be viewed before content can be viewed, and postitial ads that obscure the content or just breaking the browsing flow are ad approaches and formats that people want to avoid.
Naturally, in the Age of Personalization—marked by milestone studies that reveal 78% of consumers said they would be happy to receive mobile advertising that is relevant to their interests—mobile ads that are out of sync with people’s interests and context are also a “fail.” However, this doesn’t appear to deter publishers and brand marketers from plowing huge amounts of money into mobile ads that people ignore.
It’s a dynamic that threatens to bankrupt the entire digital ecosystem. At one level, mobile ad spend is rising into the stratosphere. Research firm eMarketer reckons ad spend in the U.S. alone, which accounted for 66% of all digital ad spend in 2017, will increase to 72% (or $65.8 billion) in 2019. At the other end of the spectrum, the vast majority of brands and publishers are wasting budget ads that fail to inspire or influence consumer behavior.
Dangerous Disconnect
New research based on internal data from Verve, a location-based mobile marketing platform that connects advertisers with consumers, puts this dangerous disconnect into perspective. Over half (56%) of respondents surveyed in the U.K. think most ads they see on their mobile phones are “boring or dull.” As a result, the average person in the U.K. ignores 7 mobile ads each day. When looking at the national population, this figure translates to a massive 20 million. “In their current state,” Verve reports, “mobile ads are not making the cut.”
Only one in ten respondents (11%) believed their mobile ads were genuinely helpful. This figure increased significantly with the quality of the mobile ad experience. While just 17% said they were “likely” or “very likely” to interact with a generic ad on their phones, over twice that number (38%) said they would do so it the ad was related to their interests or hobbie. And 34% said they would engage if the ad was related to where they were at that particular time.
Lack of relevancy is part of the problem, lack of imagination is the other. A 2017 survey of 100 advertisers and 1,000 consumers regarding their recent experiences and preferences toward mobile ads conducted by Forrester Consulting and commissioned by digital advertising creative management platform Celtra found that poor creatives may be at the core of bad ad experiences.
The study revealed that more than two-thirds of advertisers believe at least half of their mobile advertising budget is wasted, sunk into the development and deployment of mobile ads that can even harm their brand image. In fact, a whopping 73% of all mobile ads seen in a typical day fail to create a positive user experience. “The overall digital content experience is littered with creatively uninspired ads, irrelevant ads, and intrusive ads with slow load times,” the report states. “The consumer experience has gone terribly wrong.”
The solution is more engaging ad creatives. Companies that crack the code, using creatives that are more relevant and less disruptive are sure to see improved customer response rates and higher brand recognition, the report concludes. As Mihael Mikek, Celtra founder and CEO, put it in a press release at the time: “Smart advertisers have a significant market opportunity to drive high levels of customer engagement and sustained competitive advantage by leveraging strong creative in their mobile ad campaigns.”
Vendor spin aside, the data suggests positive mobile ad experiences promote positive consumer perceptions and influence actions. The findings also support my personal view that the ability to craft and evaluate effective mobile ad and in-app creatives is at the core of what marketers must learn and master to ensure their campaigns move the needle, not miss the mark.
Inspirational and Relatable
Effective marketers follow the data to determine what works. “But it’s not just about amassing Big Data,” Haydon Young, Director of User Acquisition at Dots, writes in an insightful post. “It’s about creating a Big Picture view of your users by blending what you know about them in the digital world of mobile and apps with what you observe about them in the “real world”.
He recalls how a re-think of ad creatives rocketed conversion rates for Covet Fashion – an app for fashionistas and the shopping obsessed. Observing shoppers in real-life, at malls and shops, helped his team architect an ad experience catered to its unique audience demographics (“moms, daughters, sisters, aunts, grandmothers, and everything in-between”). It allowed them to align with their aspirations (“a vast and diverse group of races and body types united by the singular desire to be a part of the fashion and beauty world”). Rather than use ad creatives that depicted super-models, he removed the faces altogether. This encouraged users to picture themselves in the clothes and look they wanted most. The creatives worked because they spoke to the audience ambition to be and look amazing.
The takeaway: Ad creatives succeed when they address audience demographics and desires and encourage people to unlock their real potential. It’s no coincidence that brand creatives “rooted in real life” are crushing it, according to the Global Marketing 2018 Trends study from Freedman International. From fashion brand ASO that refused to photoshop models in its ads to Fitbit that has switched from using professional athletes to showcasing average people working out, companies are winning audiences with imagery that portrays the real world as it really is.
Test for Success
Authenticity is a must across the entire ad experience. Be upfront about what your app offers and choose mobile ad creatives that are descriptive, not deceptive.
“The most important thing to do creatively [in the ad] is to show users what the experience is within the app,” observes Helene Trompeter, Media Manager at The Weather Company and a Mobile Hero recognized for her app marketing accomplishments. “Being straightforward and visualizing the benefit of your app capabilities [in the ad creative] almost always outperforms lifestyle imagery.”
Even the coolest creatives won’t appeal to everyone in your customer base. So, use data to develop effective segmentation and targeting strategies. “Ad copy and images may perform differently depending on user demographics, operating systems, and interests,” Trompeter explains. Choosing the right creative for the right audience is an ongoing task that requires the discipline to test and the courage to innovate. It can be a daunting task, but Trompeter tells me there are some shortcuts. Dynamic ads and creative templates can remove a lot of the heavy-lifting, making it easy for marketers to mix and match hundreds of creative variations to ensure mobile ads are fresh, relevant and engaging.
Trompeter achieves this by applying what she calls the “80/20 rule.” In practice, she runs “about 80% of budget toward historical performers and 20% toward testing.” It’s a smart approach that recognizes the hard truth about effective advertising. Marketers have to focus ad spend on what is proven to work. However, they also need to experiment with ideas and ad elements that take them outside their comfort zone.
Push the Boundaries
Verve Foundry can use part of the screen or all of it to create an animated experience.
Meaningful and effective mobile ads follow the data and demographics to appeal to the target audience. But using the right ad format can also make a huge difference. Walter T. Geer III, VP and Creative Director at Verve, tells me new ad formats that build on existing ways people interact with the mobile Web and apps on their devices are boosting audience engagement. “Scroll, pinch, swipe—it’s all about delivering the best possible ad experience with ad formats that let consumers use their fingers and put them in control.”
The days of using the consumer’s mobile device as a “launching pad” for ads that disrupt and annoy are over, Geer says. “The future is about creating an opportunity that is cohesive to the device and using the data to ensure mobile ads deliver the right opportunity and one that is relevant to the individual.” This is also where ad formats that “augment and enhance user activities” play a major role, enabling a positive brand experience and driving closer customer connection.
A prime example is Canopy Onscroll, a new ad format developed by Verve that combines two engaging experiences into one without interrupting the consumer’s core app experience. Animation beyond the banner activates when scrolling. “It’s one of our highest engaging ad units and a great example of how giving users choices. In this case, showing subtle animation completely activated by scrolling—is capturing people’s attention with advertising that is effective, not intrusive.”
Effective and emotive mobile ad creatives are a huge departure from the annoying screen-takeovers and one-size-fits-all ad experiences that characterized the early days of digital marketing. Stronger creatives, real-life imagery, and innovative formats that push the envelope point the way to positive ad experiences that will engage, motivate, and activate consumers.
Particularly, people debated his proposition that marketers should “do their part to support” quality journalism. Ben Thompson called Rutenberg’s piece a “rather fanciful suggestion” because advertisers “are (rightly) motivated by what is best for their business.” Meanwhile, an anonymous ad buyer told Shareen Pathak at Digiday that it’s particularly difficult to “hold up products that people don’t want. I don’t see corporations getting into that business. And I don’t see my agency recommending they do.”
I’m sympathetic to the point that agencies and brands shouldn’t be responsible for providing philanthropic support of companies running for-profit news organizations. After all, there’s always the option to provide underwriting for non-profit news organizations if we’re talking about patronage. However, Rutenberg’s piece, and the discussion around it, moves us into potentially productive ground for the contemporary debate about a crisis of trust in news organizations.
Successful Self-Interest
Advertisers should care about the plight of for-profit journalism, but not for the sake of altruism. Instead, advertisers should be motivated by their own self-interest to push back against what they’re being sold—the clickbait headlines, incendiary pieces, and partisan chest-thumping that are perpetuated by business models not optimized for long-term vision, and the difficulty publishers have changing what they’re offering as long as they’re still finding ways to recalibrate the machine to bring decent profits in the door.
For-profit newsrooms have continued down these paths in the past few years because advertisers have been buying it, and many advertisers have continued buying it in part because it’s what publishers are hawking. Thus, it is indeed imperative for marketers to be at the table in this conversation about the current state of journalism, if we’re going to break such cycles.
In fact, I’d argue advertisers are currently in the business of frequently propping up broken media business models that aren’t operating in their brands’ self-interest. Changing contemporary advertising practices would be in the service of getting out of supporting bad for-profit journalism practices.
Marketers shouldn’t automatically trust that publishers are acting in the best interest of their own audiences or the long-term viability of their advertising products, since for-profit newsrooms are heavily driven by monthly and quarterly profit goals, and the tactics that can reliably can reach them.
It’s up to brands and their agencies to think carefully about whether the ad units available to them might negatively impact trust in their brands over time, or else how engaging in advertising offerings only hastily strategized by their publishers might diminish the effectiveness of those products over the long term.
Wrestling with Metrics
And that gets us to the need for marketers to recognize the digital publishing industry’s brand of “kayfabe.” In pro wrestling circles, kayfabe refers to all efforts meant to preserve the fiction of the industry—a collective con over the “marks” they sell their performance to. For digital publishers living off venture capital, this is the sort of “investor storytime” Ethan Zuckerman writes about—creating the best story for getting continued investment.
The kayfabe aimed at marketers comes in the form of creating the best possible amalgamation of numbers to emphasize their reach and sell the ad units easiest to monetize. It might include uniques or clicks without getting into specifics about bounce rates. It might include emphasizing video views on social channels while steering clear of video completion rates. It might include packaged traffic numbers that includes ad inventory the brand sells for a network of otherwise unaffiliated publications.
Of course, marketing and communications departments are sometimes complicit in the lies the metrics tell, too. Like the professional wrestling fans who are actually not marks but are instead “in on the con,” ad buyers, agencies, and brand managers are sometimes playing their part to maintain kayfabe as well. It’s easy to accept numbers which—internally—will impress the rest of corporate leadership, shareholders, and others, ensuring that marketing is considered as certain a bet for investment as other corporate functions—no matter how connected to reality they might be.
Business Sense
Responses to Rutenberg’s piece last year pointed out that the ethical duty of marketing professionals lie with making the best investment possible for the organizations whose budgets they oversee. That should involve a healthier skepticism than ever in what’s being sold, and it should also account for a negative calculation in the ROI: the risk that certain ad products/buys might have the effect of slightly eroding the reputation and trust accrued by the brand over time. The efficacy and economy of advertising opportunities on offer sometimes appear appealing only because no room is given in the model for the negative effects they might have.
The unsettling truth is that for-profit digital newsrooms, in many cases, have the same basic business model as partisan commentary sites and fake news publications. And, in that case, journalistic ethics and process just become “cost centers,” because the ad units they sell and the way that they sell them don’t make any use of the premium the publisher’s reputation should afford. In the process, it means they are focusing on business models that are further damaging the trust between publisher and audience.
Marketers who haven’t revisited their approach shouldn’t change their ad-buying practices because of altruism. They should change their practices because what they’re currently doing isn’t sound business.
Sam Ford is a media consultant and research affiliate with MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing, based in Bowling Green, Ky. He is also a Knight News Innovation Fellow with Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism and an instructor in the Popular Culture Studies Program at Western Kentucky University. Follow him on Twitter @Sam_Ford.
If you use Chrome on your phone or tablet, you are probably familiar with the article suggestions that you see when you open your browser. However, as a publishing executive, you may not be thinking of these as a meaningful traffic source. Well, we have news for you. Research by Chartbeat’s data science team reveals that Google Chrome’s Articles for You (also known as “Chrome Content Suggestions” or “Chrome Suggestions”) is one of the fastest growing sources of publisher traffic on the internet. What does this mean for publishers?
Google Chrome’s Articles for You is an under-publicized feature of Chrome on both Android and iOS that is now the 4th most prominent referrer in the Chartbeat network (behind Google Search, Facebook, and Twitter). Even though Chartbeat is currently only tracking Articles for You referrals from Android and not from iOS, its Android referrals alone are now about two-thirds the size of all of Twitter (desktop, Android, iOS) in terms of the volume of traffic sent.
Articles for You grew a shocking 2,100% in 2017, up from driving 15mm to 341mm visits per month to publishers using Chartbeat.
Under the Hood
How? There are a number of factors at play here:
Google Articles for You recommendations in app browser
Mobile traffic continues to grow as users transition away from desktop to mobile devices. Since January 2017, mobile web traffic to Chartbeat clients has grown over 20%, reflecting just how much more time users are spending on their mobile devices.
Articles for You is also a default on the most popular browser in the world. Chrome users contribute 44% of the overall traffic to Chartbeat clients and 42% of the mobile traffic.
A default on Chrome is a great place to capture user attention. Articles for You is on every single “new tab” page in each mobile Chrome Browser and accounts for roughly 12% of site visits on Android Chrome as per Chartbeat’s March data.
Further, Articles for You surfaces predominantly AMP pages (72% are AMP), where visitors are 35% more engaged than on the standard mobile web.
This speaks to the incredible power and influence that Google has over a user’s browsing behavior and, consequently, publisher traffic. Once a user has chosen Chrome as her browser, Articles for You is unavoidable. It is placed prominently within a user’s mobile experience, personalized with the immense knowledge that Google has about one’s browsing behavior and interests, and frequently boosted by the speed of AMP.
Who’s Driving?
Although Articles for You is programmatically driven, the user does have some control over its recommendations. Articles for You takes a user’s browsing behavior from here and turns it into personalized content recommendations. Users can delete specific Chrome visits from their history and they won’t factor into the recommendations. iOS users can turn it off completely; Android users cannot.
One thing that is unclear is how, if at all, publishers can take advantage of this new Google traffic source. Since Google’s mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it accessible and useful,” it has been very proactive in giving publishers clear and (relatively) well documented policies on more “traditional” Google traffic sources like Search or Google News. Those policies have spawned agencies, consultants, and other experts both inside and outside of publishers that help drive results.
Traffic Signals
The signals that drive Articles for You are much less clear. Other than what appears to be a preference for articles that have adopted the AMP format, how exactly are the selections made?
How does my browsing history affect what I see? If I read about Marine LePen on an American news site, will I suddenly start seeing more articles about Marine LePen, about right-wing European parties, from right-wing American sites? From French sites?
Are all Google-crawled pages considered? Is it just a subset (perhaps the Google News corpus of whitelisted sites?). What factors (authenticity, reliability, page-load speed) drive a ranking? In short, how does Articles for You work?
I would encourage Google to reveal some of these answers to the publisher ecosystem. When Articles for You was an insignificant source and a curiosity, this was not necessary. But now that it is meaningful as a referrer source to many publishers, it is in both Google’s and publishers’ interests to understand how to make sense of this traffic. Are these users a potential new source of brand loyalists? Or are they just fly-by users who boost short term traffic, but don’t return or subscribe? More deeply understanding Articles for You is one of the next things on Chartbeat’s research agenda.
As always, we want to hear from you. Have you seen an uptick in this traffic? How are you thinking about it? I’m always available on Twitter @saroff_nyc and our Data team can be reached at insights@chartbeat.com.
For years, publishers have raced to win over new online audiences, wherever those audiences might be — on Facebook, Google and myriad other platforms that readers use every day. The thought process behind this mad chase was simple: To stay relevant, publishers reckoned, they had to reach as wide of an audience as possible, across as many platforms as possible — surely profitability would follow.
This thought process turned out to be partly correct; entire media empires have risen on the backs of digital platforms. But profitability? It turns out that the immense ad revenues associated with larger audiences were not a foregone conclusion. The platforms hosting those audiences, namely Google and Facebook, now guzzle up ad revenue like water at the finish line, taking $.70 of every new dollar spent my marketers, while leaving publishers with ad-supported business models high and dry.
But there is a way forward for those publishers that now find themselves floundering. To get ahead, they need to differentiate themselves ruthlessly.
What’s The Problem?
Ruthless differentiation starts with letting go of the broad missions that guided publishing brands in the past. “Informing and entertaining” is no longer a feasible way to connect with audiences (and, as we’ve seen, it can lead to a publisher’s undoing). To establish a simplified and specific mission, publishers must do what successful brands and businesses have always done: identify problems that people face and try to solve them.
The New York Times got a healthy bump in revenue in 2017 by identifying a very old problem — access to reliable news coverage — and solving it a new way. In the wake of the 2016 presidential election, the 166-year-old publisher doubled down on messaging about one of the things it has always done well: in-depth reporting. Then they sold that message to readers, ruthlessly and with gusto, in the form of digital subscriptions.
Think Again
While not every publisher can be the Gray Lady, solid reporting is far from the only thing that publishers have going for them. Any highly focused publisher with a distinctive brand must find the thing that they do so well that consumers are willing to pay for it. And if a publisher can’t find “the thing” that consumers will pay for, then they must find “the thing” that marketers will pay for — in-market buyers. Creating relevant content for shoppers is valuable not only for the shopper, but for marketers looking to convert shoppers into buyers.
This must lead to one radical change in thinking: All efforts should focus on commerce. Platform dominance means that, realistically, most publishers will have to live off a third of their revenue coming from advertising — not the 60 to 70 percent they’ve grown accustomed to.
In order to develop a commerce mindset, publishers must expand the definition of commerce beyond the narrow legacy definition of “e-commerce stores” or “affiliate links” and re-define commerce within the context of the value they’re offering to marketing partners and the people using their sites.
Focus on Value
A publisher’s ad products and services must evolve to tangibly drive product sales for marketers. That’s one form of commerce. And for a publisher’s readers? A commerce mindset with respect to consumers involves anything and everything that makes money. Subscriptions aren’t the only option.
Many publishers, including The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, now host live events and conferences that tie into their brand missions and help diversify their revenue streams. Other publishers have found success licensing their content (or just selling it) to other sites. And there’s also money to be made in brand-licensing — Meredith’s branded products generated $23 billion in retail sales in 2016, according to Business Insider. Ultimately, the way that a publisher chooses to define commerce will depend on their objectives and on the problems that they are looking to solve for consumers.
Brand differentiation and thinking of new ways to generate money outside of ad sales is Business 101. But for publishers who’ve been brought low by the unfulfilled promises of platforms, the path forward starts with getting back to basics.
G-day is looming! On May 25, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will kick in and – despite the hype – many publishers aren’t ready for it.
Over the course of Advertising Week Europe, held March 19-22 in London, several panels grappled with the issues surrounding GDPR. It became clear that, while marketers are focused on new ways to reach consumers, publishers are faced with the challenge of understanding consumer consent, and if necessary de-personalizing the message, while maintaining trust and keeping revenue streams flowing.
During the Digital Content Next seminar, I had the opportunity to ask DCN CEO Jason Kint, Anthony Hitchings, Digital Advertising Operations Director for the Financial Times, and Jo Coombs CEO of Ogilvy One UK, whether GDPR (referred to in some circles as the God Damn Privacy Rules) represents a massive headache or a huge opportunity.
Headache or Opportunity
Trust is the number one priority explained Kint. “Trusted relationships and transparency become key as publishers work with vendors and with consumers to ensure satisfaction. Premium publishers could see user loyalty rise, if intrusive messages become standard on all other sites. Premium publishers, with trusted and recognizable brands, stand to come out ahead as the industry experiments.”
“It’s certainly keeping us busy, but I wouldn’t say it’s a headache,” said Hitchings. “For months now, we’ve been doing supplier reviews — due diligence with all our suppliers. We’ve been doing system audits, we’ve been practicing system access requests based on our own platform, and looking at the length of time we hold data for.” Even though this might seem like more than a bit of a headache to many, Hitchings said he’s optimistic, because the FT has a “direct relationship with users.”
The Relationship Business
All the panelists agreed that the nature of the relationship with users is key. Publishers need to be open and honest about data collection. However, it poses a serious threat if the industry at large thinks it’s just fine to grab profiles or take surfing data. “When you know how consumers feel, you start to feel slightly more concerned about what the industry does,” Hitchings added.
“Every single piece of data represents a person, and that person obviously needs to be protected and respected by the brands. We are talking to brands about, not just the media they are purchasing and how they are using consumer data. This is every single touchpoint with a customer. It is their data and they need to be in control of it,” said Coombs.
However, she added that while a lot of work is being done on GDPR from the business side, consumers are not being educated. They need to better understand what they are giving up when they click on a box to agree to get rid of a cookie use banner she explained. “We need to help consumers understand what they are ticking and what they are saying yes to,” she added.
Hitchings pointed out that trying to convey the complexities of ad exchanges to users is “not going to be an easy job.”
“The biggest concern that publishers have right now is the actual execution of how to have that very discussion,” said Kint.
“Publishers that have a trusted relationship [with users] can decide what to put in front of that user. Typically, if a user is visiting a site like the Financial Times, or even a search engine like Google, they have a general idea that their data is being collected and used in certain ways. And they are probably okay with their data being used for personalization of the page, or posting on the message board, or fraud protection, etc. But for a data broker to be watching what they’re doing and then reusing their data across the web is probably outside their expectations,” he continued.
Data Dilemma
“Google currently collects data from about 80% of the top one million sites and uses that data however it wants to maximize its own value. The very notion that Google can continue to do that after GDPR is a concern. Users do not want Google watching the web,” Kint continued.
“There’s a fine line between being personalized, useful and relevant, and being a useful value exchange, and actually being just too creepy,” agreed Coombs.
The issue that hasn’t really been addressed by the industry is third-party risk, said Hitchings. “We’re trying to understand what adtech is doing with data and one piece of due diligence took more than a year! So, I don’t think publishers are going to have the bandwidth to assess the risk for more than a handful of partners,” he explained.
This aligned with Kint’s view that only trusted publishers and partners can be successful post-GDPR. And that’s going to be a good thing for consumers as well. Hitchings pointed out a couple of thousand trackers on every page is just daft — and creepy.
Better known as Brusselsgeek, Jennifer Baker has been a journalist for 20 years, the last 8+ specializing in EU tech policy and digital rights. A member of the Expert Council of the Good Technology Collective, Jennifer is on the editorial advisory board of the Journal of Data Protection and Privacy, and was named by Onalytica as one of the world’s Top 100 Influencers on Data Security 2016. She was also listed by Politico as one of the Top 20 Women Shaping Brussels 2017.
Jennifer writes for some of the biggest names in media, including ArsTechnica, Computerweekly, TheNextWeb, Macworld, PCworld, and The Register. She regularly features as an EU policy expert on BBC radio.
During a recent conversation with David Sleight, Design Director at ProPublica, I found myself realizing and saying “we need design that is faster and design that is slower.”
Who are we and what is this thing called design?
When I say “we,” I mean our whole industry, when I say “our whole industry,” I mean design, and when I say “design,” I mean: web design and development; digital product design; digital user experience design; digital user interface design; digital interaction design; “mobile” design (which is the same thing as web design and development); graphic design as part of UX, UI, interactive, digital, and web design; publishing and editorial design; and other design practices specifically empowered by the internet and digital technology and built largely around reading and interacting with words on screens.
A mouthful, isn’t it? Some people mean all the above when they say “UX.” I generally mean all the above when I say “design” and call myself a designer.
I exclude from the category, for this specific discussion, tactile, conversational, and passive design powered by the internet of things. Not because those practices are uninteresting or unimportant — on the contrary, they are fascinating, exciting, and fraught with critical ethical questions — but because they are not specifically screen- and reading-driven. And it’s our screen- and reading-driven design that needs a reset.
Our whole industry, as I’ve just defined it, needs design that is faster for people who are trying to get things done, for they are our customers and should not be burdened by our institutional surrenders. We need design that is slower for people who are trying to comprehend, for they are our only chance of saving the world.
This porridge is too fast
Derek Powazek’s {fray} (1996) was an early site that practiced art direction on the web.
Our news and information sites have succeeded so well, they are failing. We’ve designed them to be quickly scannable — at a glance, I take in the headline, the key visual, and the lead paragraph. But today’s news is anything but simple. The truth cannot be reduced to visual sound bytes. That’s how we got in this mess in the first place.
As a society, we’ve replaced thinking with slogans, listening with wall-building. Our best news publications are doing a better and better job of reporting beyond headlines — getting down to the details that really matter. But we designers have so trained readers to scan and move on — Pacmans scarfing dopamine hits — that they no longer have the instinct to sit back and take their time with what they’re reading.
Our news designs must work to slow down the reader, engage her more deeply, encourage her to lean back and absorb. The good news is, we’ve long had the tools to do it: typography and whitespace.
Imagine that! Typography and whitespace can encourage thoughtful reading.
Larger type — type that actually encourages the reader to sit back in her chair — plus radically uncluttered interfaces and (when budget permits and the story merits it) art direction are the way to do it. Derek Powazek’s late lamented {fray} (1996 — remnant here) and Lance Arthur’s Glassdog were the first sites to do real art direction on the web. Jason Santa Maria’s personal site was a later, brilliant exponent of art direction on the web. (See “Previous/Embarrassing Editions.”)
To a great extent, the ability of news publications to pursue slow design depends on their ability to finance themselves without overly relying on race-to-the-bottom advertising. Not all periodicals can free themselves of this dependency.
On the flip side of the news experience, which must be savored and digested slowly, comes the challenge of our corporate and organizational sites, which must become faster — not just technically, but (even more importantly) in terms of their content’s comprehensibility.
In the beginning, there was shovelware
As the once-vital blogosphererecedes from the equation, and as traditional periodical publications struggle to retain solvency and relevancy (and wrestle with readability), the web becomes the turf of stores like Amazon, powerful networks like Facebook, and traditional corporate brochureware. It’s this brochureware that most needs fixing—most needs to be designed to be faster.
In the 1990s, disgruntled computer buyers coined the word “shovelware” to refer to the second-rate games, fonts, and software that came pre-bundled with many PCs. It wasn’t stuff you had to have, carefully curated by software wizards who cared for you — it was garbage presented as value. Early web designers, including your present author, soon used “shovelware” to refer to the reams of corporate copy that got thoughtlessly dumped into the first corporate sites. The corporate overlords thought of the stuff as content. The readers didn’t think of it at all.
Getting easier to publish and harder to communicate
So we spent years preaching that the web was not print, finding ways to design words on screens so they could be scanned and used. We learned to inventory our old content and develop the will and the sales ability to toss the dross. Only content stringently designed to satisfy both customer and business needs would be permitted onto our excellent corporate websites. At least, that was how we did it when it came time for a major redesign (and only when astute stakeholders permitted it).
But most of the time, and constantly between redesigns, junk still got shoveled into our websites. We even made it easier for the shovelers. We developed CMS systems and gave everyone in the organization the power to use them. It was easier for us to let people publish the stuff their little group cared about than to stop and ask what mattered to the customer. And it was also easier for the organization, as it enabled warring fiefdoms to avoid difficult meetings.
It was easier. But not better.
And the CMS systems multiplied, and the web-savvy middle managers were fruitful, and the corporate site was filled with documents nobody but those who posted them ever read. And the corporate site sucked. It sucked harder than it had even in the earliest shovelware days of the 1990s. It sucked deeper and wider and more frequently and with better algorithms. For all our talk of user journeys and mental models, most corporate sites are mostly pretty garbage.
Shhh! Don’t tell the client. They still owe us a payment.
Ethan Marcotte’s 2010 article, “Responsive Web Design” not only changed web layout, it pointed the way to more meaningful content.
Beyond pretty garbage
Gerry McGovern’s “Top Tasks” method showed how to prioritize the information the customer seeks over the darlings of Management. Ethan Marcotte’s responsive web design and Luke Wroblewski’s mobile-first strategies pointed the way to restoring the focus on what’s most essential. There’s no room for pretty garbage on the small screen. Now, before it’s too late, we must fulfill the promise those visionaries and others have shared with us. If we want to save our brochure sites, we must make them not just faster, but relevant faster.
Designing with the content performance quotient (CPQ) in mind is how we will take the next step. We’ll ruthlessly prune the inessential, cut our sitemaps down to size, slash our bloated pathways, removing page after unloved page, until there’s nothing left but near-neural pathways from the user to the information she seeks.
In short, we will sculpt the design, presentation, and amount of content in our brochure sites with the same scalpel we take to the shopping carts in our e-commerce sites.
Evaluating speed or relevancy for your site’s content
How can we tell which sites should be faster, and which should be slower? It’s easy. If the content is delivered for the good of the general public, the presentation must facilitate slow, careful reading. If it’s designed to promote our business or help a customer get an answer to her question, it must be designed for speed of relevancy.
A conversation with David Sleight – The Big Web Show № 171.
I’ll continue to explore both these themes in future articles . My thanks to ProPublica’s David Sleight for the remarkable conversation that helped give birth to this piece. David is a web designer, creative director, and leader at the intersection of publishing and digital technology. ProPublica is an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces “investigative journalism with moral force.” To hear the complete conversation, don your headphones and listen to Episode № 171: Art Directing the News — with ProPublica Design Director David Sleight on The Big Web Show.
Jeffrey Zeldman is an entrepreneur, web designer, author, podcaster, and speaker on web design. He is the founder of A List Apart Magazine and the design studios Happy Cog and studio.zeldman, and the co-founder of A Book Apart and the design conference An Event Apart. He also co-hosts The Big Web Show, a podcast about the web and online publishing.
