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.
The most significant opportunity in more than a decade to steer value towards our members is playing out now in Europe.
It is DCN’s role to help shape the future of the digital ecosystem to bend towards the interests of trusted content companies while your team focuses on the day-to-day operations. We work every day to do this and to raise the bar of trust with both advertisers and consumers. Unlike other parts of the web media industry, we’re fortunate these efforts often align. That is, by increasing trust for consumers and advertisers, the brands of DCN will prosper in the long-term. We are starting to see the pendulum swing in our favor – both in consumer subscriptions and the trust and transparency of the advertising market – and are working hard to accelerate it.
Since DCN exclusively represents content companies, we occasionally have a different point of view from other parts of the media ecosystem including intermediaries (e.g. ad tech companies, Google, Facebook). The business model of these intermediaries has for many years relied on harvesting the data generated from advertiser and consumer relationships with our members’ websites and apps. Right now, there is significant debate over how to best participate in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the EU and what the effects of the roll-out of will be. The rules of GDPR, which set a new bar for consumer privacy, were finalized years ago and since that time have inspired a rich amount of misinformation, disagreement and fear, only increasing as the GDPR enforcement date of May 25, 2018 approaches.
The IAB and IAB Europe, which are charged with representing a much broader set of stakeholders including hundreds of ad tech companies, Google, Facebook, Oath, and many others with significant intermediary interests, has released its plan to handle the GDPR roll-out. The IAB framework, which was submitted for industry commenting, was clearly designed by ad tech companies and included endorsement from 23 ad tech companies and, most notably, zero publishers.
Details will be discussed in other forums but can be summarized as it:
relies on cookies which are unreliable in many experiences;
pushes all liability to the publisher without providing any control over the CMPs, SSPs, DSPs, exchanges and how they use this data;
outsources the consent relationship with the user to a “Consent Manager Provider” (CMP) operated by an IAB-friendly;
does not leverage the direct relationship between a publisher and its audience to manage consent and store it persistently in the browser (e.g. DNT);
fails to reduce friction for users giving consent for purposes most important to publishers and most acceptable to users;
unintentionally creates more friction with your audience for editorial and product features for the sake of protecting ad tech vendors.
Thus, it will most likely enable a practical use case where global consent is enacted to protect the status quo of maximum behaviorally-targeted advertising and unbridled data collection. In other words, their goal is to use “free” services to encourage users to click, “Turn All On” and opt back into the status quo.
Please reach out to us directly and make certain your business leaders and partners understand there are serious flaws with the IAB Consent Framework. We strongly urge publishers to hold off signing up with the 23 companies (and Google and Facebook behind the scenes) to support the framework in its current form.
Once again, there is a window here in which publishers can rebuild consumer and advertiser trust. The most significant advertisers in the world are aligned with us on this as they begin to see their pursuit of truly one-to-one advertising across the wider web as economically and legally challenging. GDPR will create opportunity for audience selection based on cohorts and context which is a significant risk to Google and Facebook. GDPR moves advertisers away from their current buying habits supported by the myth they can simply harvest demand through microtargeting personal data. Creating new demand through context and true relevance is the sweet spot of trust and true publishers.
And where there is significant risk to Facebook and Google and opportunity for growing consumer trust, you will come out ahead.
(Note: I work for Mozilla. None of this is secret. None of this is Mozilla policy. Not speaking for Mozilla here.)
A big objection to tracking protection is the idea that the tracker will always get through. Some people suggest that as browsers give users more ability to control how their personal information gets leaked across sites, things won’t get better for users, because third-party tracking will just keep up. On this view, today’s easy-to-block third-party cookies will be replaced by techniques such as passive fingerprinting where it’s hard to tell if the browser is succeeding at protecting the user or not, and users will be stuck in the same place they are now, or worse.
I doubt this is the case because we’re playing a more complex game than just trackers vs. users. The game has at least five sides, and some of the fastest-moving players with the best understanding of the game are the ad fraud hackers. Right now ad fraud is losing in some areas where they had been winning, and the resulting shift in ad fraud is likely to shift the risks and rewards of tracking techniques.
Data center ad fraud
Fraudbots, running in data centers, visit legit sites (with third-party ads and trackers) to pick up a realistic set of third-party cookies to make them look like high-value users. Then the bots visit dedicated fraudulent “cash out” sites (whose operators have the same third-party ads and trackers) to generate valuable ad impressions for those sites.
If you wonder why so many sites made a big deal out of “pivot to video” but can’t remember watching a video ad, this is why. Fraudbots are patient enough to get profiled as, say, a car buyer, and watch those big-money ads. And the money is good enough to motivate fraud hackers to make good bots, usually based on real browser code. When a fraudbot network gets caught and blocked from high-value ads, it gets recycled for lower and lower value forms of advertising. By the time you see traffic for sale on fraud boards, those bots are probably only getting past just enough third-party anti-fraud services to be worth running.
This version of ad fraud has minimal impact on real users. Real users don’t go to fraud sites, and fraudbots do their thing in data centers and don’t touch users’ systems. The companies that pay for it are legit publishers, who not only have to serve pages to fraudbots—remember, a bot needs to visit enough legit sites to look like a real user—but also end up competing with ad fraud for ad revenue. Ad fraud has only really been a problem for legit publishers. The adtech business is fine with it, since they make more money from fraud than the fraud hackers do, and the advertisers are fine with it because fraud is priced in, so they pay the fraud-adjusted price even for real impressions.
What’s new for ad fraud
So what’s changing? More fraudbots in data centers are getting caught, just because the adtech firms have mostly been shamed into filtering out the embarassingly obvious traffic from IP addresses that everyone can tell probably don’t have a human user on them. So where is fraud going now? More fraud is likely to move to a place where a bot can look more realistic but probably not stay up as long—your computer or mobile device. Expect ad fraud concealed within web pages, as a payload for malware, and of course in lots and lots of cheesy native mobile apps. Ad fraud makes way more money than cryptocurrency mining, using less CPU and battery.
So the bad news is that you’re going to have to reformat your uncle’s computer a lot this year, because more client-side fraud is coming. Data center IPs don’t get by the ad networks as well as they once did, so ad fraud is getting personal. The good news, is, hey, you know all that big, scary passive fingerprinting that’s supposed to become the harder-to-beat replacement for the third-party cookie? Client-side fraud has to beat it in order to get paid, so they’ll beat it. As a bonus, client-side bots are way better at attribution fraud (where a fraudulent ad gets credit for a real sale) than data center bots.
Advertisers have two possible responses to ad fraud: either try to out-hack it, or join the “flight to quality” and cut back on trying to follow big-money users to low-reputation sites in the first place. Hard-to-detect client-side bots, by making creepy fingerprinting techniques less trustworthy, tend to increase the uncertainty of the hacking option and make flight to quality relatively more attractive.
The SXSW Interactive festival has expanded beyond its tech-centric past to include panels and discussions on politics, journalism, food, and other cultural conversations of the moment. But among these hot topics is, of course, technology and its influence on the future of these other sectors. From grasping the blockchain to pushing back against tech giants, the festival, in many ways, is media Twitter come to life. (Remember that SXSW brought Twitter to life after the show in 2007.)
But this year certain trends stood out more than others. The show was dominated by politics and ideas – which trumped gadgets and apps. Here are some key takeaways and themes from this year’s festival:
Pushback on Technology
It’s been over a year since the 2016 election, but technology’s role in its outcome, the resulting fallout, and the rise of misinformation and social media warfare has given tech a black eye. Top that off with the outsize influence platforms such as Facebook, Google and Amazon are having over our lives. Those topics and conversations dominated SXSW panels this year.
The back and forth between Facebook director of product Alex Hardiman and CNN media correspondent Brian Stelter during a panel on Facebook and publishers delved deeply into the tricky territory publishers find themselves in, especially with Facebook’s recent algorithmic changes that prioritize friends and family over news outlets. Hardiman, for one, admitted that Facebook has flattened news. However, he insisted that Facebook is not a publisher, much to the chagrin of tech and news experts like Kara Swisher and Christiane Amanpour, who cried foul to these claims during another panel.
SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk’s much talked-about appearance included a depressing take on artificial intelligence: “The danger of AI is much greater than the danger of nuclear warheads,” he said. “If humanity decides that digital super-intelligence is the right move, we should do so very carefully.”
One thing is certain: No longer are we simply enthralled at the latest gadget or the future of tech. Just as the media and tech beat has changed for the journalists who cover them, so too have festivals like SXSW that present the myriad of ways media and technology are intersecting and changing our world.
Hollywood Makes a Scene
When the most-talked about marketing ploy at SXSW is an HBO show come to life, that proves that the convergence of Hollywood and technology is complete. The real-life replica of HBO’s show “Westworld” makes the case for investment in experiential marketing to drive brand attention. Certainly, SXSW attendees will recall the show when it returns for a second season. And with the way the news cycle seems never-ending, brands and shows that draw attention to themselves outside the digital world and in the real world can elicit interest and help ensure audiences won’t scroll past them.
To further reinforce Hollywood’s SXSW impact, look no further than the premiere of Steven Spielberg’s new film, “Ready Player One.” Set in a dystopian future where the characters spend their lives inside a virtual reality system. SXSW is certainly a fitting festival to premiere a movie of this kind. But with the avalanche of shows like “Westworld” and “Black Mirror” that deal with these topics, the movie premiere is simply one of the ways we can see tech’s imprint on our culture.
The Voice Battle Continues
Google Home or Amazon Echo? It’s a huge question among those testing the digital voice assistants revolutionizing the future of search and the mainstreaming of a “smart home.” Amazon may have an initial leg up with Echo over Google and Apple’s HomePod — Alexa hit the market first — but Google is playing catch-up with massive marketing splashes at CES and now SXSW.
The tech giant turned a house in Austin into a huge advertisement for Google Home by connecting everything from blinds to appliances to Google Assistant, and showing people how such a Google home could function. A sign in front of the house, “Make Google Do It,” reinforced the concepts behind the gadgets, which included a sock-sorting robot.
But the battle for the voice is very much at the center of a smart home. With voice technology continuing to evolve (and the stiff competition against Amazon in this market), Google is also testing custom voice commands and working with third-party publishers to keep users engaged. Magazine publisher Hearst, for example, is partnering with Google to support subscriptions that can offer news alerts and daily “wisdom” in whatever areas a user prefers.
This sounds a lot nicer than Alexa laughing at you (a recent tech glitch). But it’s safe to say that Google and Amazon are in a tough battle in this department. And Apple is knocking at the door, which will push all the companies to do better.
SXSW Gets Political
From Russian trolls hacking Facebook to YouTube’s war with misinformation and Trump’s tweets, technology is now tightly intertwined with political life. And the presence of politicians at SXSW and conversations about news and politics were inescapable.
There was Mark Warner, U.S. Senator from Virginia, on “Hacking our Democracy and Discourse.” Discussions on policy and regulation with “Tech Under Trump.” Another panel on curtailing patent trolls, patent regulation, and U.S. Supreme Court cases that are bringing reform. And let’s not forget former presidential nominee and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders — endearing to many for his grouchy take on trends, but who has now made his first appearance at SXSW, in a conversation with CNN’s Jake Tapper. And Ta-Nehisi Coates remarked on the tendency among journalists to still not give Trump supporters credit for knowing what they were doing when voting the president in.
Then there’s the begrudging and critical look at the news cycle and national reckoning over #MeToo. Christiane Amanpour made it clear that the battles she thought she won in the ’90s are still taking place today — like continuing to be the only woman in the room. Amanpour boiled the situation down: “We are at peril and at risk if we don’t know the difference between truth and lies…Truth and lies are the only thing that separates us from democracy and dictatorship.”
It was the perfect underscore for the New York Times’ recent marketing campaign, also present at SXSW. Over social hour and drinks at the bar, attendees could leave with a Times button defining our era: “Truth. It’s more important now than ever.” And at SXSW, the importance of truth, politics and ideas seemed to drown out the newest apps and tech gadgets.
A veritable bonanza of market developments – ranging from pedestrian pricing pressure to international political drama – have conspired to cause the “‘pendulum’ of power in global media to [finally] swing away from Google and Facebook” and “signal that their domination of global media is not guaranteed”. Though by no means a fait accompli, the digital media landscape could very well be undergoing a significant change during this first half of 2018. And the net result could mean that the “duopoly” – Google and Facebook – could be vulnerable to eroding market share for the first time in nearly a decade. Here’s a list of issues that competitors need to attend to in order to take advantage of the opportunity.
Speed
The Google algorithm rewards websites that download quickly – on both desktop and mobile devices – with favorable results placements. This is a constant challenge for publishers that try to cram as many advertisements as possible into a finite amount of real estate. Finding the correct balance is more art than science, and requires constant monitoring and tweaking to maintain the proper balance.
Action Items: Ensure your website is housed in a formidable hosting environment, and configured to run as fast and smoothly as possible.
Keywords
While driving reporters and editors crazy, savvy keyword strategies are the linchpin to healthy inbound traffic volume and exposure to new audiences. Publishers are well-served by building teams that combine data-intensive digital marketing analysts with writers who understand audience needs. This is straightforward in concept, but exceedingly difficult in practice.
Action Items: Formalize a keyword strategy – which could include hundreds of keywords if you’re a midsize or large publication – and make its governance and evolution part of someone’s job description.
Amplification
By now, we all know the value of “viral” content – i.e., the rare but impactful piece of prose (or image, meme, or video clip) that strikes a chord and makes its way around the internet at warp speed, registering hundreds of thousands or even millions of “shares”. Less celebrated, however, is the regular amplification of content by means of a coordinated effort that transforms a typical content asset into one that has meaningful engagement and marketplace impact.
Action Items: Make sure your publication’s content is easy to share, effectively promoted and re-purposed; and make use of your employees’ digital footprints to promote and disseminate content.
Old School Tactics
Considering the mind-blowing pace at which digital tactics take hold, proliferate, and sometimes fizzle –- remember MySpace, AOL, Ask Jeeves, Tumblr, etc.? – it’s easy to forget about the staying power and effectiveness of some of the *old school* tactics. Using the principle of relativity, remember that tactics involving email newsletters, LinkedIn (especially with B2B), and Bing (a Microsoft property that continues to grow steadily, if not remarkably), are the closest things that resemble sure bets in the digital ecosystem.
Action Items: Audit your properties’ promotional tactics, and make sure they incorporate proven (but admittedly, less sexy) initiatives that target audiences use regularly. Note: this may even include things like direct postal mail; given the massive drop-off in DM efforts, it’s easier to stand out as unique through the channel now as a result.
Relentlessly Cross-Promote
One of the most impactful metrics in digital success is “domain authority”, which is generally understood to be the relative value of what the internet (i.e., Google and Bing) assigns to a specific domain URL. For example, one measurement company rates IBM.com and NYTimes.com as scoring in the 95+ range (on a scale of 1-100), which makes sense, considering the value of the brands, and the level of effort they both put into maintaining successful websites.
Action Items: Multi-property publishing outfits can help their titles maximize domain authority through strategic cross-promotion, since a significant criteria in the algorithm is “inbound links”.
Since the category’s inception two decades ago, the digital advertising marketplace has mostly confounded traditional publishers. Only a handful of organizations have been able to incorporate online channels into their operations without residual upheaval and near-debilitating transformation. Far more organizations failed at managing the evolution, and shuttered. For those that survived, there are signs that new opportunities may soon become apparent, and preparing for a market turn would be prudent.
People ask me why I think the “duopoly” conversation resonated so profoundly when DCN began to use the term in 2015. I think it’s because publishers had long-sensed something was wrong with the widely proliferated and utterly misleading growth stats of digital advertising. They were ready for someone to call b.s. and start open conversations about it because many weren’t seeing the purported “growth.”
I’ve been told that executives at Google and Facebook dismiss the term duopoly as a marketing gimmick invented by publishers to go after the two companies. They are dead wrong. This discussion didn’t surface in some public relations brainstorming meeting. Sure, it’s useful if you can describe an entire marketplace in one word. But at the end of the day, the duopoly label resulted from simple number crunching, the results of which challenged conventional wisdom on who was actually benefiting from the growth in digital advertising. Perhaps now is a good time to dig deeper and take a closer look at some Google math.
Google’s battle with transparency
A whopping 50% of the US Digital Advertising Market is recorded as a single line in Google’s financials, deftly titled “Google Properties Revenues.” This single line includes advertising on Google Search, YouTube, Gmail, Google Shopping and more and will surpass $100 billion this year – a number larger than the entire US digital advertising market. Let that sink in for a moment and then consider the fact that we hardly know anything else about it.
While fledging and century-old publishers live and die in the millions of revenues, Google doesn’t even specifically disclose revenues for its flagship growth site, YouTube. Their video business, which seeks to compete with broadcast television, is widely estimated to have revenues approaching $10 billion — a number larger than more than half of the companies in the S&P 500. Last week Bloomberg reported that the SEC had taken issue with Google’s lack of transparency but was sent packing after Google made the astounding claim that YouTube revenues aren’t important enough to hit their CEO’s desk. Say what now?
There is also near zero transparency in how this revenue is shared with the ecosystem. In the case of major cable companies, we know very clearly how much they pay each year, measured in the tens of billions, to the programmers who create valued news and entertainment for their services. This is helpful information, and revenue. Transparency is a hallmark of a healthy ecosystem. On the other hand, we have no idea how much Google spends on news and entertainment because they bury this programming expense in multiple places. In terms of YouTube, we’re left to run our own analysis and we only know the members of DCN see less than $100 million of the billions that YouTube is raking in.
Where have all the billions gone?
We also know that Google is using billions in cash to shore up its monopolies. Google invests heavily to secure the default position over any browser that competes with its “free” web browser, Chrome, including Apple Safari and Mozilla Firefox. It subsidizes its lock on a majority of mobile devices through its “free” operating system, Android. We also know that billions go toward populating the long-tail of the web with Google’s AdSense text links. Once again, all of this undisclosed money is lumped together and buried in a few lines of Google’s financials. This leaves everyone in the dark while making it easy for Google to spin its way around those who question it – in Washington and in the press.
Heck, we even learned that Google pays off ad blockers to whitelist its own ads. But once again: We don’t know how much. This is a distasteful situation considering the leadership position Google has chosen in the future of solutions for ad blocking. Google is literally blocking publishers’ ads while paying an undisclosed amount to have its own ads whitelisted. Say what now?
Numbers don’t lie. The simple, irrefutable (and unacceptable) fact is that the digital advertising landscape is more lopsided in favor of two companies than we’ve seen in any previous media market. This is especially striking when you recognize that neither of these companies contributes directly to the creation of the news and entertainment they so richly capitalize upon. They profit solely by directing and mining attention across the valuable assets others create. Please note I haven’t used the term Alphabet once here. To publishers, their layered corporate structure isn’t anything more than Google fighting tooth and nail to avoid disclosures. If Google and Facebook want to be seen as benefactors to the media world — or better yet, become honest, trustworthy partners in it — they’re going to need to provide a level of transparency that they’ve quite clearly avoided.
Think of it like products in a supermarket. Content companies with mobile apps are locked in a fight for two incredibly scarce resources: consumer attention and shelf space. Unfortunately, on the digital shelves of the app store, discovery is the bottleneck. Consumers can’t download apps they don’t know exist in the first place. (And how can they in a market where the number of apps submitted to the Apple App Store in the month of January alone topped 500 submissions daily?)
To rise above the noise, and drive app installs in the process, app owners compete for a top-notch spot in search results. Smart companies are winning the battle with App Store Optimization (ASO) by tweaking keywords, icons and other assets to make sure their app store landing converts. It takes dedication and budget to get ASO right, which is why companies that succeed and boost downloads in one country or store are leaving money on the table if they don’t publish their apps in more places.
But before you go global with your app, double-check that you have mastered more than the ASO basics. The checklist is much longer than it was just a year ago because ASO has evolved, expanding beyond the app store presence and deeper into the funnel. Looking back, the first wave of ASO was a lot like the early days of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Companies could score quick wins by hacking Google algorithms or focusing on “long tail” keywords. Moving forward targeting “killer” keywords is not enough. ASO is morphing into what I call AMO (App Marketing Optimization) and ready for a rethink.
Rethinking ASO
ASO/AMO tops the agenda at every stage of the app lifecycle. But it’s never a case of set-it-and-forget-it. It requires app owners to monitor and manage a laundry list of elements that starts with keywords and ends with compelling video clips. It’s an ongoing effort, but the pay-off is massive organic growth that every app owner can afford to tap for their app. The key is to take the right steps in the right order.
It all starts with testing, refreshing and optimizing all of the moving parts of your app (titles, descriptions, icons, screenshots, videos, and reviews) on a regular basis. Once you have the processes in place to achieve positive results for your app at home, it’s time to take your app abroad.
Mobile Games companies need little convincing. They were pioneers in aligning app elements, visuals and gameplay with the preferences of a global audience. Consider Candy Crush, a blockbuster app with audiences in nearly 200 countries thanks to a look-and-feel that is a match with local tastes and trends. Now other categories of apps, notably those in the Entertainment category, are following a similar blueprint to attract and acquire more users.
Localization differs from internationalization
But before you embark on a strategy to take your app global, know the difference between localization and internationalization. Think of internationalization as table stakes. It encompasses what you need to adapt your app to different languages, regions and cultures to reach a global market. Your focus in this stage is on the basics: changing time, dates, region format, and other aspects of your app to fit with your target markets and audience.
Localization goes deeper. It starts with translating the language of the app and other elements (keywords, description, and even the name of the app) to be a tight fit with your target audience. If you plan to engage in commerce, be sure to adapt your app to local regulations and payment methods to avoid any legal battles further down the line.
Clearly, localization is not a job you want to leave to Google translator. Amateur efforts rarely pay dividends, and literal translations can do your app brand more harm than good. (Case in point: KFC’s famous finger lickin’ good motto for its fried chicken is a notable example of a bad translation. In Chinese, it urged consumers to bite their fingers off.) It’s also important to resist the temptation to localize every aspect of your app from the get-go just because you can. It pays to pace yourself.
If you don’t know what you’re aiming for, or the countries to target, then start with your app name and keywords and localize these assets for popular countries or languages. As a rule, use your organic app installs as a guide. Pinpointing countries where your app is taking off allows you to prioritize your efforts, starting with keywords. Use tools to check traffic volume for specific keywords and bake the best (yet most relevant) keywords into your app assets. If you see a bump up in your app downloads, then take it as a sure sign you can move on to localize other assets, such as the app description, followed by other marketing collateral including screenshots.
Cater to local cultures
From here on, industry literature tells us localization is just a matter of “wash, rinse, repeat” for every additional country or app store on your list. But is it really that simple? In a word: no.
An effective strategy to go global with your content goes beyond the pure “science” of ASO/AMO to the “art” of understanding how addressing individual cultural preferences and nuances. Pay close attention to other aspects of your app—such as colors, images and user interface—to build a loyal audience for your content.
Do your homework and use common sense.
Primary design considerations:
UI: Does your audience read left to right or right to left? Or is it vertical? Make sure you factor in how the text and images are read. And make doubly sure the use of directional icons in your app are logical and genuinely helpful. It impacts engagement and dictates how users will interact with their device, especially as they swipe left—or right—depending on the app and activity.
IMAGES & CONTENT: Brush up on ethnology (or hire someone with those skills). Adapt the ethnicity of your visual elements to local culture and pay special attention to skin, hair, and eye color. It’s a no-brainer that Asians or Indians might be wary of buying into localized content that displays blonde-haired, blue-eyed models, presenters, or families. Rethink the obvious icons and idioms. Sure, using a piggy bank icon as a metaphor for saving money works well in North America and much of Europe, but it’s a miss in most Middle Eastern countries.
COLOR: First impressions count, and different colors resonate with different cultures. For example, Japanese players like subtlety and pale, softer colors and shades. Chinese users, on the other hand, prefer vivid, strong and bright colors like red and orange. The mobile games industry learned this the hard way, so deep-dive into posts and publications (such as Pocketgamer.biz) where they share their tips and tricks.
From images to music, be prepared to adapt every aspect of your app to match your target markets.
Pay attention to the political spectrum
Done properly, localization engages your audience with content that resonates because it respects their local customs and cultures, not just language. Significantly, the same rules apply to your choice in app marketing and advertising messages and ad creatives. Sure, it’s a must when you take your app global. But the surprise success of SmartNews, the news app that delivers the top trending stories downloaded by over 25 million readers in over 100 countries, suggests the same approach can boost results and user loyalty in your home market as well.
In the case of SmartNews, it started with the realization that readers in North America were divided by political parties but united around one goal: the desire to access to real news, not fake news. “The most effective way to show we understood our audience and their concerns was to adapt our marketing to appeal to all sides,” Fabien-Pierre Nicolas, Head of Global Growth at SmartNews, told me in a recent podcast interview.
SmartNews bet on a simple creative capable of delivering a powerful message that would appeal to a broad political spectrum of users.
A review of app data and demographics revealed that the SmartNews audience was a mirror of American society. “Our readers are mostly between the ages of 35-65, and they range from liberal to moderate conservative in their politics,” Nicolas explained. An effective campaign would have to be objective and emotive. Nicolas, recently named a Mobile Hero for his user acquisition approach and accomplishments, went to work and immediately rejected flashy images and trendy buzzwords. Instead, he worked with his team to develop a simple creative capable of delivering a powerful message.
The approach worked, boosting usage and earning the app positive reviews. Nicolas says the results are still coming in and a focus group will provide the inside track on audience and brand impact. In the meantime, internal data shows the focus on eliminating the filter bubble has allowed SmartNews to increase app appeal to both genders at all levels of society and across the complete political spectrum.
You’ve invested time and resource to make your app a hit at home, and it makes business sense to take your app to global in order to maximize exposure. Yes, that starts off with mastering the fundamentals of global and local design considerations to adapt your app to your audience. But we all know that designing a terrific app is not enough given the glut of products in the market and the increasing consumer requirement for apps that are aligned with local tastes and trends. Discovery is a critical component of conversion, but apps have to strike a chord. Moving from simple App Store Optimization to an effective global app marketing strategy will help you maximize your investment so that your app will be popular with audiences everywhere.
Peggy Anne Salz is the Content Marketing Strategist and Chief Analyst of Mobile Groove, a top 50 influential technology site providing custom research to the global mobile industry and consulting to tech startups. Full disclosure: She is a frequent contributor to Forbes on the topic of mobile marketing, engagement and apps. Her work also regularly appears in a range of publications from Venture Beat to Harvard Business Review. Peggy is a top 30 Mobile Marketing influencer and a nine-time author based in Europe. Follow her @peggyanne.
Facebook’s recent newsfeed algorithm changes have left publishers with a lot of questions. Many who relied heavily on Facebook and other third-party distribution sites find themselves needing to look elsewhere. Now these publishers are focusing on building stronger on-site communities and finding other distribution platforms that are more publisher-friendly. They’re wondering about Facebook’s decision, how they will be affected, and what they should do next.
Since the algorithm change, here are some of the most common questions I’ve encountered in talks with publishers:
Why did Facebook make the decision to de-prioritize publisher content in its Feed?
As many entrepreneurs are, I see Mark Zuckerberg as someone who takes his business personally. While I don’t think he’d act against his own best interests, I do think his decision in some ways was a reaction to the polarization that the news can create. This way, Facebook is not choosing a side, or subjectively deciding which news is ‘appropriate’ and ‘real.’ It looks like they’re disengaging.
Are there specific ad formats/publisher inventory you believe will be hurt the most by Facebook’s decision?
It’s not so much about ad format, in my opinion. Facebook’s big appeal to publishers was the benefit of strong audience development and the convenience of content distribution. These will be the main things that disrupt publishers the most. Facebook actively courted publishers for years on end, promising them audience and shared revenue. This shift could be quite the loss for the publishers who relied heavily on the platform for audience development.
What 2-3 platforms could rise up to support publishers in the absence of Facebook?
I believe that Snapchat and Twitter both have the potential to benefit from Facebook’s shift. That being said, Snapchat is certainly the platform that will benefit the most. Their publisher-focused Discover Channels are central to the platform. Especially with the most recent interface update, Discover Channels are positioned in a way that is meant to drive as much user traffic as possible. Snapchat has certainly jumped into the lead role in providing a solution to publishers who were thrown off by Facebook’s changes. They are a publisher-friendly platform on the market right now.
Should publishers forget about third-party distribution and refocus on building engagement/audience on-site?
Publishers are always working to build on-site audiences. But of course, that’s much easier said than done. These third-party distribution platforms—like Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat—help identify and grab that audience, making it easier to build those communities back on-site. The issue for some publishers is that they become too comfortable with third-party platforms and, in turn, rely too heavily on them. There will always be a happy medium for both, though, as third parties remain a great tool for audience engagement and content distribution.
Facebook’s shift has certainly stirred up some uncertainty among publishers, regarding whether or not third-party distribution platforms are a reliable tool, and if the risk outweighs the rewards. These publishers will ultimately find comfort in the publisher-friendly models of other third parties, specifically Snapchat—but they will also invest more time and resources into building core communities on-site.
