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Perspectives

The case for working with Facebook instead of railing against it

Facebook has become “public enemy number one” for journalists, not to mention a “giant that may eat us.” And that’s just the Facebook business model of accumulating a massive global audience and then serving targeted ads to them in the news feed and videos—while controlling who sees what and deciding which content should be censored.

There’s also Facebook’s well documented missteps with Trending Topics, hiring low-level editors in poor working conditions and then letting them go when the algorithm was “trained” to pick top stories. Then there’s its many run-ins over data collection. And the most recent black eye for Facebook came when it admitted flubbing video metrics on its platform. Facebook acknowledged in its advertiser support page last month that when it came to the “average duration of video viewed,” it had only been counting views that lasted three seconds or longer. This discrepancy between its stated definition of the average duration of the video viewed with its calculation in practice means that Facebook exaggerated its video views for close to two years.

Oops.

And yet, I remain optimistic that Facebook is far from public enemy number one for publishers, journalism or democracy. And it makes absolutely no sense to call out the platform for its errors without also trying to help make it better.

The Google Example
It wasn’t so long ago, about 2010, when we had another primary public enemy for the media and its name was Google. European media companies were up in arms over Google indexing their web pages, and Rupert Murdoch called Google a “parasite” and “content kleptomaniac” then. Mark Cuban called Google and content aggregators “vampires, they just suck on your blood.”

News Corp. took the extraordinary step of removing its content from the Google search engine. But two years later, the company reversed course because of fears that its newspapers were losing influence by not being in Google search. This is instructive because if news publishers believe they can just remove themselves from Facebook, where so many people get their news, then they are going to find themselves on an island.

Positive Steps
Facebook is the current “enemy,” but there’s also Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat, LinkedIn and many, many others—all of which tend to come and go. The reality is that smart publishers realize that they need to distribute their content natively wherever their audience wants to consume it.  Rather than bemoan a loss of gatekeeping power, they need to suck it up and start doing the hard work of collaborating with the platforms to find better ways to work together.

Early on, Google didn’t really understand its power with the media, but eventually it became more open, and has boosted its efforts with news media through Google News Lab and a series of training opportunities for newsrooms. The same thing will happen at Facebook. Why? Because Facebook will lose its place in the media hierarchy if it doesn’t get its act together. People will leave the platform if the experience doesn’t feel right or trustworthy.

At the recent ONA conference in Denver, Facebook dominated the proceedings as the top sponsor, including a large presence in the Midway, with its logo literally up in the rafters. I mentioned that to a top Facebook media person in their booth and he said, “People complained about us being too opaque so here we are!”

He also pointed out that Facebook was hiring for its media partnerships team, with various job openings already posted for New York, including a person who will work specifically with local publishers. This is not the behavior of a platform dedicated to killing journalism and ruining democracy. And let’s face it: There’s a lot in it for Facebook to have good relationships with companies that produce the content people so readily consume on their platform.

The bottom line is that railing against Facebook’s power and clumsy use of it does little to improve the situation.  What makes a lot more sense is turning down the rhetoric, rolling up our sleeves and figuring out how to educate Facebook on its issues, and find ways to open the lines of communication and do better moving forward.

I’ve already begun this work with a private roundtable last May at Bloomberg with top platforms and publishers, which led to a Special Series on MediaShift and a series of online trainings. And I plan to continue producing private gatherings to get publishers of all shapes and sizes and the platforms on the same page. While it’s good to forcefully point out the failings of Facebook and platforms, what will work better in the long run is finding common ground so that both sides can win in the long run.

Advertising | Industry-Research | Perspectives

Brands and agencies struggle with the pros and cons of walled garden advertising strategies

In what seems to be a timely intersection with the furor over rebates, fraud, and lack of transparency in the online advertising community, a recent survey from Deloitte, Industry Index, and Flashtalking “Confined by the Garden Walls” highlights the increasingly volatile but interdependent relationship between the biggest advertisers and walled platforms – namely, Google and Facebook. Its findings “illustrate the disconnect between what clients want from their advertising platforms and what they can expect to get.”

WalledFig1Despite the fact that rebate issue continues to get regular coverage by major media outlets like The Wall Street Journal and Ad Age, few advertisers are rushing to openly join the conversation. In the same vein, conclusions from the study highlight the ongoing struggle to understand the dramatic contradictions at play. To wit: While “only 22% of brands noted discomfort with Google’s data policies,” at the same time, “95% think data transparency at a user level is important or very important.”

While it’s easy to highlight the obvious conflicts at work here, making sense of the situation is more nuanced. Our take:

  • Consolidated Market Conditions Dramatically Favor Digital Giants. In Q1 of this year, Google and Facebook combined to realize 85% of online advertising market share. So it’s not surprising that the two companies don’t have to negotiate terms and conditions much. This situation won’t persist forever – with Bing investing significantly in its platform, and Verizon’s acquisitions of AOL and Yahoo! expected to impact the marketplace – but it’ll continue to be a bumpy couple of years for large digital advertisers, absent of significant regulatory changes, which seem unlikely.
  • The “Lure of Ease” Has Very Strong Appeal. Few brands have been able to construct digital marketing operations over the past decade that can provide the requisite scale. This will happen in due course, as “marketers at top brands have long realized that to own your customers you have to own your data”. And they’re investing furiously in marketing infrastructure to get there. In the meantime, they need to continue to nurture uneasy alliances with the digital behemoths in order to feed their own massive marketing engines.
  • Even With Challenges, Digital Preferable to Alternatives. Sure, brands are forecast to spend a smidge more on digital advertising this year than TV, for the first time, to capture $72 billion (36.8% share) in the U.S. marketplace – which is forecast to total $195 billion in 2016. But that means they will spend more than $120 billion on TV, radio, print, and out-of-home – all of which are generally considered to be inferior when it comes to ROI precision or user data access.
  • Alternatives Do Exist, But Require Work. Without question, Google and Facebook offer incomparable digital advertising scale and targeting – one-stop shopping at previously unimaginable heights. And their brands are of course blue chips, and no one appreciates top brands like marketers do. But taking a scrappy approach to digital marketing can pay dividends. Going off-brand allows advertisers to strike better deals, and not just lower prices, but also much greater transparency and data control. This is approach requires legwork and explanation up-and-across the organization about avoiding the recognizable brands, and might not even perform as well in the final analysis, but in some (possibly many) situations, a beat-up pickup truck can do the job almost as well as a shiny new Cadillac – and for a fraction of the cost.

    BourgeoisTim Bourgeois (@ChiefDigOfficer) is a partner at East Coast Catalyst, a Boston-based digital consulting company specializing in working with clients on strategic roadmaps, digital marketing audits, and online marketing optimization programs.

 

Advertising | Perspectives

Seeing the data for the trees: Overarching themes from Advertising Week

Pictured: (from left to right) Simon Whitcombe, Group Director, Global Marketing Solutions, Facebook | Jen McIsaac, VP, Retail Partnerships, Oracle Data Cloud | Paul Jankauskas, General Manager and Chief Revenue Officer, Verifone Media | Christopher Heine, Technology Editor, Adweek

I won’t lie: My positive experience at Advertising Week wasn’t that different from previous years. But, when you consider the magnitude and impact of an event such as this, that’s really no small feat.

Whether it’s brushing shoulders with some of the greatest minds in the industry, or gaining a pulse for significant topics—be they bubbling under the surface and overflowing within every category in the marketplace—there’s value to be lifted from the experience. Advertising Week is ultimately the place where crucial conversations take place in real-time about the real challenges we’re presented with at this particular moment in digital.

Nothing could be more advantageous.

The live performances weren’t anything to scoff at either, with musical acts from the likes of De La Soul, Common, The Roots, and Sting. Entertainment and networking aside, my focus was getting to the bottom of the massive data explosion in the industry and better understanding its grip on media companies, agencies, publishers, and marketers alike.

Getting on the Right Side of the Data Track
At Outbrain, a growing number of our internal marketing initiatives are being driven by data-supported research. And as a recommendation network that is powered by its own sophisticated algorithms, it has always been important for us to communicate the value of that data on both the brand side and media company side.

While more data is a huge opportunity, it is not without its complexities and challenges. This past week, our own struggles with data were echoed by leaders in the industry and solidified into some key themes:

1. Solving for Too Much Data Involves a Simplified Approach

With this new level of granularity, data is changing the conventions of how many brands have been built up until today. More importantly, it has raised a glaring issue, which was shared across panelists who have represented and worked alongside many legacy brands, including Jon Suarez-Davis, Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer at Krux Digital:

“We’ve put together dumb pipes. And It’s not about putting in smarter dumb pipes, it’s about changing the system entirely.”

First, there needs to be a much deeper understanding of how the data has changed. Second, while data is now far more actionable than ever before, we can’t lose sight of how it drives business. This means applying clear objectives.

That’s because data can mean a lot of different things. From a user ID, to post campaign analysis, or, in our case, the consumption patterns of how audiences are interacting with our content across publisher sites.

The trick, according to Julie Fleischer, Managing Director of OMD, is simplicity and focus:

“The key is keeping an eye on what I’m trying to understand, what the best measurement approach available is, and what that mean in terms of whether it’s a complete or partial view. We need to stop looking at data as an answer, but more as an input to what we do. If we challenge where the flaws in measurement are, we can get to a better understanding of how to fill those gaps.”

When it comes to the data explosion, the challenge—and goal—is to find the metrics which are most indicative of wins and learn to measure what matters.

2. We Need to Put Data in the Hands of the Right People

A multitude of data types means a multitude of applications and outputs for data. And with that, a variety of potential business objectives that impact a variety of different stakeholders—whether it is informing product decisions, leading creative decisions, or driving better customer journey’s within the context of the content funnel.

Yet, currently, organizations struggle with interpreting and communicating all the data they now have at their disposal. Many are noticing a major talent gap when it comes to making their data actionable, due to poor cross-department translation and communication.

Charlie Chappell, Head of Media and Advertising at The Hershey Company, declared, “We need to get much more comfortable with much more data. We have to make that transition.”

Global Director of Business, Jeffrey Rossi shared similar sentiments about how data is used at Spotify, stating, “It’s not about just using data. It’s about living data. For us, the data goes into driving a product, we can market ourselves with data, and have conversations with data. It can’t be some jenky add on.”

So, while the digital advertising ecosystem is currently built to solve individual problems, we all need a much deeper understanding of the big picture to change the entire infrastructure of what we do. That means teaching up current talent and scouting the right new hires.

The only way to do it is to learn it.

3. Targeting for the Entire Dartboard and not Just the Bullseye

It’s easy to get swept up in the promise of reaching the right consumer on the right platform at the right time with the right message through data-enabled microtargeting but these insights don’t always live up to the hype. A real problem has been an over-reliance on these targeting capabilities as we try to lead with precision first. At the end of the day, though, context still matters.

In fact, that’s a large part of why Outbrain has been working with brands to better sequence the experience consumers have with their content. Overall, as an industry, we need to be thinking more holistically. Rather than just considering how we’re going to reach consumers, we need to invest in understanding all of the different touch points within the customer journey and create value for consumers at every point.


In the words of Tamara Alesi, Managing Partner and Integrated Planning Strategy at Mediacom, “You don’t always have to use the data on the front end, but to get smarter on the back end. That’s where you see your ROI.”

Looking Forward
As marketers and brands we sometimes get lost in our own worlds and forget about how our data impacts the customer experience. In order for us to not completely silo ourselves or our data; events like Advertising Week help center our work.

This week and fresh into Q4, we can all take these learnings and focus on innovation as well as better empowering the audiences we cater to online. In the quarter ahead, we will need to discipline ourselves when it comes to our data—focusing on how we want to use it and how it impacts our customers. Otherwise, all our data and tech is ultimately useless.

Eric_Hadley_Outbrain_GlobalMarketingHeadEric Hadley (@erichad) serves as Head of Global Marketing at Outbrain (@outbrain). He joined Outbrain in 2015, and is responsible for the company’s global go-to market strategy and for driving strategic value and large scale opportunities with its premium brand and agency partners. Hadley has over 20 years of experience in marketing leadership positions in consumer, media and technology companies. Previously, he served as Head of Partner Marketing at Pinterest leading the social network’s agency outreach organization. Prior to his work for Pinterest, he held roles at Yahoo, The Weather Channel, and Microsoft. While at Microsoft, he was involved in the launch of its search engine, Bing.

Industry-Research | Perspectives

Making metrics meaningful: Benchmarking engaged time

“What if we stopped focusing so much on traffic, and started focusing on experience?” I’m asked this question frequently. It’s a complex, divisive challenge for newsrooms, one I eagerly indulge.

I work directly with media companies of all shapes and sizes. I offer consultation on everything from using data to support editorial intuition, experimenting with audience development projects and honing tagging strategies. The best newsroom strategies start with someone saying to me: “It would be so interesting if we could…” and “What would happen if we tried…”. Data can provide the foundation for sussing out those new ideas while mitigating risk.

When I start to talk to clients about using engaged time, or any metric for that matter, the key is to set goals. What does success look like? But this prompts new questions: How do we stack up? Is this kind of engagement normal? Is it good? For us? For anyone?

There is no reliable comScore or Alexa rating for attention, thanks in no small part to various ways of measuring “time on site.” So if a publisher is eager to change the way they think about their audience, and their success, where could they start? I tried to find out.

How does Parse.ly measure engaged time?

First, let’s clarify exactly what we’re talking about, because Parse.ly measures engaged time differently than other analytics platforms. On your site, a visitor is considered “engaged” if they 1.) Have a browser tab open, and 2.) take an action (scroll, click, mouse-over) at least once every ten seconds.

For more details, feel free to browse this explainer on Parse.ly engaged time, or for a more technical explanation, read our engaged time technical documentation.

Analysis 1: How do we find an average engaged time for all content?

Weighted engaged time averages from a random sample of posts from 300 domains in our network gives a benchmark for engaged time.
Weighted engaged time averages from a random sample of posts from 300 domains in our network gives a benchmark for engaged time.

I first set up an exploratory analysis across our network, to see if I could identify any clear patterns. Over time, I started to see the same sites consistently outperform other outlets in average engaged time per visitor. What initially struck me though was actually the lack of pattern: each site seemed so diverse in voice and size.

To identify what made them competitive, I needed to understand the bigger picture of engaged time across Parse.ly’s network. To do this, I sampled user experiences at random for content published within one month from 300 anonymized domains to first understand, “how many seconds can you expect a typical reader to remain engaged with a story?”

Here we see how attentiveness is distributed across Parse.ly’s network. This graph shows what we can expect for “normal” attention time from any given reader, to any given article for each of the sampled domains. You can see a majority of our publishers attract an audience willing to invest roughly 40-60 seconds of their time on an article, though plenty of publishers can expect a more invested audience.

Finding engaged time in Parse.ly’s dashboard
Finding engaged time in Parse.ly’s dashboard

This provided a starting point for benchmarking engaged time, especially for my clients. Any Parse.ly user can easily find in their dashboard where their site, section or article falls on this curve. Teams can check to see if their stories and authors fall above or below the norm for their audience.

Understanding the context here is crucial though; not every article needs to outperform the average of the Entire Internet. There are better questions to ask. Where does your article fit in relation to what is expected for its section? How does that section perform in relation to the site as a whole?

Of course, there’s one more comparison that everyone wants to make: how does my site stack to the competition?

Analysis 2: How do we find the averaged engaged time for similar content?

This question helps you contextualize whether your work gets more attention than pieces that are similar to it and potentially predict how other topics, outside of your core competencies, might perform. For example, if you don’t normally write technology feature, it could help to understand the engaged time benchmark for tech publishing leaders. Here, we break down the analysis above further to understand how long a reader could be engaged on similar content.

Parsely3Broken out by publisher type, it’s easy to see how nuanced attentiveness is across different types of content. I found it noteworthy that local news sites command more engagement than major news outlets, even with undoubtedly fewer resources.

I mentioned earlier when I began investigating engagement, I was struck by how, month after month, the same set of publishers kept leading the pack, albeit with no discernible pattern among them. Broadening the analysis to the network, broken down by these categories, most of these names resurfaced at the top of their respective categories. A pattern finally became clear: the most engaging sites within each type of publisher were highly recognizable brand names.

Also, now that we’ve broken out engaged time averages across Parse.ly’s network, it’s easy to see how using homogenized data from a heterogenous group of sites to set benchmarks could do more harm than good. Certainly, the same concept applies within the newsroom; measuring the average engaged time on an article against what is expected for that vertical or topic will provide better context.

What do we know about engaged readers?

We’ll continue to explore other patterns within the most engaging experiences. In the meantime, here’s a reminder of what we do know:

  • Facebook vs Twitter. We already know from a recent study with Pew Research that, in an increasingly mobile ecosystem, referral sources on mobile were an important factor in determining engaged time. Their research found that Tumblr and Twitter generate highly engaged audiences, while Facebook audiences were less engaged.
  • Readers can be highly engaged on mobile, though infrequently. In another section of the same report, we distinguished between long-form articles with 1000+ words and short-form articles. Long-form consistently outperformed short-form, though visitors to either do not frequently go on to other articles.
  • In the analysis conducted for this post, we found no correlation between page views and engaged time. A large audience is not necessarily an attentive one.

How to navigate this brave new world

We’ve found ourselves in somewhat uncharted territory in an effort to shift away from primary traffic metrics like page views and unique visitors. How do we define what makes something “good” anymore? Why should we care about engaged time at all?

As I found in this analysis, the engaged time metric provides us an interesting exploration in how we can set a more relevant benchmark. In clinging to familiar traffic indicators like page views, perhaps we have systematically neglected not only the experience of our readers, but the nuance of our reporting. But coupling traffic metrics with engaged time helps us understand which articles create the most impact.

If your post gets hundreds of thousands of viral views, but no one sticks around to read it, did you really manage to convey anything meaningful? Increasing your newsroom’s dedication to understanding the relevancy of engagement in all its forms will lead to a deeper, better audience strategy.

Kelsey Arendt is a Customer Success Manager at Parse.ly. Previously, she worked with The Guardian’s commercial team where she managed a variety of projects for marketing and sales, including developing analytic support for sponsored campaigns and partner hubs. Kelsey is a Midwestern transplant to New York City, and is a passionate hiker, musician, and homebrewer.

Perspectives Image
Perspectives

DCN’s recommended reading: week of September 29, 2016

Some of the best media industry stories from around the web:

Advertising | Industry-Research | Perspectives

Social media revenue trends register mix results

Top social media platforms registered strong revenue gains in Q2 2016, however, CPM increases varied according to the Salesforce Advertising Index Report for Q2 2016. Further, growth in mobile usage contributed to an overall increase in mobile’s share of revenue among social media platforms.

Facebook, often referred to as the king of social media, reported $6.4 billion in total revenue with a 59% year-over-year increase and $6.2 billion in ad revenue with a 63% increase year-over-year in Q2 2016. Mobile ad revenue for Facebook accounted for 84% of total ad revenue. Further, Facebook’s global CPM at $6.33 for Q2 2016 increased 65% from a year ago. CPM growth ranked highest in France and Canada at 130% followed by the U.S at 70% year-over-year.

InstagramCPMInstagram’s mobile footprint is strong as well. Instagram users identify mobile as their most important device for getting online. In Q2 2016, Instagram’s global CPM registered at $6.30, an increase of 42% quarter-over-quarter.

Twitter reported total revenue of $602 million, a 20% increase year-over-year. Their advertising revenue totaled $535 million, an increase of 18% year-over-year. Twitter’s mobile advertising revenue accounted for 89% of total advertising revenue. Interestingly, while total advertising revenues increased, their global CPM at $4.29 declined by18% compared to a year ago.

LinkedIn’s Global CPM for Q2 2016 was $20.43, a 13% increase year over year.  LinkedIn is known as a strong B2B platform with 60% of its total revenue generated from sponsored content.

Social media delivers a large and dedicated audience for advertisers, especially on mobile devices. Just as social networks drive mobile advertising’s growth, mobile drives advertising on social networks. Social media also continues to evolve with the addition of LIVE and VR playground to further build more immersive content and new opportunities to engage consumers.

Wings and Halo
Industry-Research | Perspectives | Press | Press Release

Video Ads On Premium Publishers’ Sites Yield 68% Higher Brand Lift

New findings build on comScore’s “The Halo Effect” independent research

New York, NY—(September 27, 2016)—Digital Content Next (DCN) today released new findings it commissioned from comScore’s July 2016 research, “The Halo Effect”. The follow-up analysis of the original data found that video ads served on premium sites yielded 68% higher brand lift than video on non-premium sites and drove even higher brand lift when looking at sales funnel brand metrics. Overall, DCN sites outperformed non-DCN sites by 176%.

Additional findings from the follow-up study:

  • Gender: Ads on premium publisher sites had an overall stronger impact on men however women were particularly responsive to ads for mid-funnel metrics including brand consideration, brand loyalty, category usage intent, category favorability, brand favorability and recommendation intent.
  • Household Income: Households with an income of $75K or less showed more brand lift at the mid-funnel phase and households with an income of more than $75K, generated an average lift at one impression over two times the magnitude of a non-premium publisher.
  • Millennials: video ads on premium publisher sites are almost twice as effective with millennials.

“We wanted to dig further into the results of comScore’s ‘The Halo Effect’ research to understand brand lift for different demos and for video advertising in particular,” said DCN CEO Jason Kint. “We now have further proof that advertising on premium publisher sites drives higher brand lift for both display and video advertising.”

Key findings from comScore’s initial “The Halo Effect” research confirmed that the contextual environment in which the ad exposure occurs is an important driver of more than 50% higher effectiveness, and also showed:

  • Display ads on DCN publisher sites had an average of 67% higher brand lift than non-DCN publishers, confirming that premium sites deliver premium performance.
  • Premium publishers are 3x more effective in driving mid-funnel brand lift metrics, such as favorability, consideration and intent to recommend.
  • Premium publisher effectiveness is driven in part by higher viewability rates, which include lower levels of invalid traffic.
Advertising | Perspectives

Publishers need automation, too

Digital advertising has been a boon for brands. Automation technologies allow them to hone in on their exact audiences, and—quite literally—cherry pick the impressions for their campaigns. Want to target East coast moms with high household incomes who’ve visited your site within the past two weeks but only pay for impressions that we in view? No problem! Solutions are available and ready to help. And thanks to their big budgets, VC-funded technologists have rushed in, developing new tools to help brands and agencies optimize every component of their campaigns. Publishers, on the other hand, have been the technologist’s afterthought.

For years, publishers have been at the mercy of advertiser demands, who’ve forced the digital publishing industry to adapt to big changes that dramatically affect their bottom lines. Unfortunately, they’ve done so without the technology or automation to help make it happen (although header-bidding just may be the big exception to this). As a result, they’ve seen serious risks to their yield.

This is an urgent issue. The industry can’t continue to benefit one side of the market—the advertiser—without equally benefiting the other—the publisher. Markets function best when all players benefit equally. It’s fair to say that the digital advertising market isn’t functioning as well as it could be, and that as an industry, we must focus on providing publishers with better automation tools, or face an ecosystem with fewer premium publishers.

Case in point: viewability. There are myriad ways automation will help publishers with viewability, both reactively and proactively. For instance, the publisher ad server and the agency ad server will always report different viewability counts; that’s just a fact of life. For the publisher, reconciling those discrepancies is a time-consuming and manual effort. And that manual labor makes it difficult for publishers to defend their counts, forcing them to accept counts (and revenue) that are lower than they should be.

While advertisers are easily able to target impressions based on viewability, the same isn’t true for publishers. So how do we level the playing field? If publishers had access to accurate and automated measurement and reporting, they’d have a much better sense of which ad units are likely to be in view. Moreover, they could automatically direct to those units for campaigns where viewability is a targeting criteria. Such a capability will allow publishers to meet their viewability guarantees with far less impression waste.

As it stands, challenges like discrepancies represent untold sums of lost revenue, vast amounts of time spent sifting through data to reconcile and invoice campaigns, along with make-goods that take valuable inventory away from future campaigns.

But discrepancies are not the problem per se, they are a symptom of a bigger problem – the imbalance of power between the buy side and the sell side. The former has all of the tools, automation and budgets; the latter is asked to compromise far too often. If more of the publisher workflow was automated, we could begin to level the playing field. And that would do more than just drive higher yields for publishers—it would ensure that advertisers continue to have ample premium and brand-safe environments in which to engage their audiences.

Dave Marquard 2(3)Dave Marquard is currently Vice President of Product Management, Publisher Solutions and RTB Products at Integral Ad Science. For the past 15 years he has held leadership roles in product management, engineering, and marketing at internet technology and enterprise software firms such as Google, IBM, and Lombardi Software.

Advertising | Perspectives

Facebook: When the fox guards the hen house

Facebook: ” We have our own measurement and how we measure.”

Last night, The Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook has been overestimating the time spent on its highly-lucrative video programming for two years. I’ll let you review their report. After reading it, I thought it would be relevant to share the transcript from a panel I moderated on Wednesday at the Conference on Time and Attention in New York City. On the panel were three premium publishers and Facebook’s Head of Sales for North America, Erwin Castellano.

The excerpt below covers a part of our conversation that’s relevant to the WSJ article exchange, highlighting the significant gaps between how Facebook measures time spent and how the rest of our industry does.  As I pointed out before moving on to the rest of our panel discussion, Facebook is able to set its own rules because — together with Google –Facebook captured 90% of the growth in digital advertising in the first quarter of 2016.  Advertisers will have to determine for themselves if or how this information will impact their spending. I’ve already concluded that this type of confusion only does a disservice to our entire industry.

Transcript from
Publisher Panel at Conference  on Time and Attention (Wednesday, Sept 21st)

Note that the following excerpt starts at 2:10:

Erwin Castellano, Head of Sales, Facebook, N.A.: You asked a question. On Facebook, we do not sell on MRC.

Jason Kint, CEO of Digital Content Next: You don’t?

Facebook: We don’t.

Kint: You said your ads are “in view.” So what does that mean?

Facebook: So we have our own measurement and how we measure.

Kint: OK, I don’t want to go down a rathole but…

Facebook: but fortunately the ad has to definitely be in-view. We are later this year going to offer I believe for advertisers the ability to buy 100% in-view so that means both the top and bottom portion of the ads will have to be in view or some portion.

Kint: Both the top and bottom of the ad are in view?

Facebook: Right.

Kint: For a minimum of one second?

Facebook: I don’t know the time measurement. We haven’t said so we’re using our own measurement.

Kint: OK. (sighs).

Facebook: The reason we’re not on MRC is MRC doesn’t break out any sort of guidance on mobile. It’s just based on desktop and today Facebook’s audience is 80% mobile. Look, MRC has stated that they recognize that the value and impact can be extracted earlier in a mobile newsfeed but that they haven’t given guidance yet on what the appropriate measure should be on mobile just yet.

Kint: (sigh). We’re talking about time and attention but I’m on the MRC committee and I think that guidance is out. There is separate guidance for desktop, separate guidance for mobile. I think it’s 50% of the ad for a minimum of one second so maybe you’re just not there yet.

Facebook: (inaudible)

Kint: Or haven’t agreed to it yet. Certainly if you’re Facebook you can decide what the rules are, no disrespect, that’s a respectful comment to your business. You’re capitalists.

Kint: So… I’ll tie it in a bow.  If we’re building the bricks in the house of time everybody has to agree on what the bricks are…hopefully as an industry.  Otherwise we’ll get stuck in stupid discussions for a long time. We’re trying to create consistency and build an industry here…

Perspectives

Slacking with Erin Bakst, Head of People Operations at Vox Media

Vox Media’s Erin Bakst, Head of People Operations, explains what her job title actually means, questions if office spaces need nap nooks and indoor slides, and reminds job hunters to never underestimate the cover letter.

What does the Head of People Operations do?

Erin Bakst: Basically here at Vox Media that’s the head of talent position — so all of what you’d traditionally call Human Resources and Recruiting rolls into me. Although we’ve never had a Recruiting team at Vox Media so I’m in the process of building a Talent Acquisition function.

My team consists of Business Partners, a Programs & Diversity Manager, Total Rewards (AKA Comp & Benefits) and soon Talent Acquisition.

Since we’re pretty lean, I also serve as the Business Partner for our Corporate team which means I support Accounting & Finance, MarComms, Legal and People & Culture from a strategic talent consulting perspective.

I should note that this is all new to us. I started back in November of 2015 and have been building a lot of the framework of HR. As a company, we grew really quickly and in a few instances without some of the processes and programs that you’d normally have for a company of our size. So we’ve recently scaled People Ops to better support the business.

As you work across all of these different, quickly growing teams, is there a common thread you see across them? Something that would help you tell a stranger on the street what Vox Media’s company culture looks like?

Bakst: There are a couple of things that I’d say about Vox Media culture. One is that we’re always changing. That’s not necessarily unique to us because we’re a media company and because we’re a high-growth company. But the other is that we have an amazing commitment to diversity and inclusion that I really haven’t seen anywhere else that I’ve worked. That sounds cliche and I’m not saying we’re perfect at it because we have a long way to go. But the commitment to it is embedded in our culture at all levels, including (and especially) with Jim Bankoff. It’s one of the things I love about running People Ops.

I’d add, too, that the constant change brings about a ton of innovation, which makes this a really exciting place to work. I was just working with our VP of Growth and Analytics on a workshop for the NABJ/NAHJ convention on Monday and we’re focusing it on storytelling across multiple platforms. It just blows me away how our talent can tell stories in ways that really resonate with our audience on things like Snapchat, Facebook Live, and YouTube.

I agree. It’s fun to sit amid teams creating such different and interesting things. I just walked by Racked as they filmed a piece on beauty products and am now eyeing a bouquet of rose-shaped-bacon that was shipped to Eater.

Bakst: OMG I love going to New York and sitting on the 10th floor with Eater! They get the best food! Also, Racked has an entire case of nail polish that I want to raid. This place has some great perks.

And snacks.

Bakst: Truth! It’s fun to get to participate in the creative process here even if you’re not on a content creation team. A couple of months ago I was in New York and Kat Odell was doing a taste-testing for her Drinks column. I got to participate which was really fun. And it was so informal but awesome.

I’d really like to hear more about that — not bacon roses — but keeping employees happy in their physical space. I’ve seen wildly inventive work spaces — nap nooks and fire pits and slides. What is really needed to keep employees happy and productive in the office?

Bakst: Honestly, now that I’ve worked in three different start-ups, I think it depends on the employees. But what I think is true for Vox Media is that they need space to be creative. It doesn’t have to be a slide (and I seriously hope that’s never suggested because I’ll have agita about workers comp claims), it just has to be the right place. For a few of our employees, that’s the communal dining table where they eat their cereal at 8 AM and chat about the articles they’re working on. For some, it’s the comfy couch nook we just put in upstairs. Others like to be standing up jamming to music and in the zone. And many opt to WFH because it fits their lifestyle and they can do their work well from there.

Sometimes I see the crazy office stuff other start-ups do and I think it’s a waste, but ultimately if that’s what makes their employees happy and productive, that’s what they need to do. I just don’t think ours need that. They need to be comfortable and inspired. And of course they need the right resources. We’ve been investing even more in podcasting and video studios lately which is super cool. And our content reflects that.

Right, the flexibility to work in the way that best suits you is really a luxury. And, for me, that will never be mid-slide.

Now, I can’t let you go without discussing hiring.

Bakst: Yes! Hiring is one of my favorite topics these days!

We’re hiring across so many departments, with some openings for completely new roles (an American Ninja Warrior expert just joined us) and some for people who are new to the work force. How can someone with little real-world experience — maybe they’ve just graduated or are in school — demonstrate that they can take on a new role?

Bakst: That’s a somewhat difficult question to answer because every hiring manager has different preferences. I do, however, have some advice that I think can be generally applied.

First, we’re great at telling stories and creating beautiful content, so candidates should do that in their applications. I don’t want to see a resume that looks like a job description — I want to see what they have accomplished that can translate into the role. If a candidate has only one year of work experience, I want to see that they made the most of that year and grew a ton. Send links to your work. Send examples of stuff you’ve done. That’s going to tell the story of YOU so we get a better idea of how you’d be working here at Vox Media.

Second, I think people really underestimate the power of a cover letter. It is absolutely true that some people don’t read them. But when an application asks for it, do it and make it good. That’s where you get to show how excited you are about Vox Media. Do you read SB Nation religiously? Tell me about it! Do you plan your vacations around Eater’s 38 (like I do)? Tell me. We want to see not just that you want the job, but that you’re excited about this company. We have a ton of passionate people here and it’s made us pretty freaking awesome, so we want MORE passionate people.

That can actually really set someone apart and help them demonstrate that they’re a great fit. We like passion and enthusiasm.

That’s really great advice. It’s always clear when an application isn’t specifically meant for one company or one position.

Let’s wrap with just three quick questions:

What is the tool or product that makes your work life better?

Bakst: Evernote! I take so many notes and that allows me to document and search everything. I LOVE it and try to convert everyone to using it. Notebooks don’t work for me.

What have you recently read or watched or listened to that you immediately shared with a friend or just thought: wow.

Bakst: The Ezra Klein Show — it’s Ezra’s podcast and I’m addicted. I listen to it every day on my walk to work and have turned a few friends on to it.

Lastly, we’re Slacking. Can you let us peek into your world by sharing your frequently used emojis?

Voxemoji

Erin Bakst (@EWilsonHR) is Vox Media’s Head of People Operations. She has worked across Talent functions for a decade in the areas of Program Management, International HR, Executive Education, Recruiting, and Talent Engagement. She is based in DC.

Perspectives | Revenue

Mid-roll ads take off in the video boom

A new report from eMarketer found that digital will overtake TV ad spending for the first time this year. By eMarketer’s forecast, digital will represent 36.8% of total media ad spending in the U.S. by the end of this year, whereas TV ad spending will compromise 36.4% of that total.

They might sound like something that was inevitable, but when you look at what’s driving digital growth, the results are clear: Video ad spending is increasing by double-digital percentages, and will comprise 14.3% of all digital ad spending this year. Next year it’s projected to rise to 15.1%. And spending on mobile advertising, including mobile video, will grow by 45% this year to reach $45.95 billion. That’s more than half the amount projected for TV advertising (which eMarketer anticipates will reach $71.29 billion).

Of course, these numbers only underscore what’s already obvious to the industry, which is that monetization from video is a must. The demand for revenues from video prompted Mashable’s round of layoffs earlier this year and BuzzFeed’s recent announcement that it’s splitting into two divisions, one focused on news, the other entertainment — with both divisions pushing even more video.

Mid-Roll Ads More Effective
So it makes sense that advertisers, and advertising platforms like Facebook, are testing the market’s capacity for what they hope will be a better kind of video advertising — mid-roll advertising. That nice “commercial break” in the middle of online videos, pioneered by YouTube, is attracting attention because of the multitude of ways to sell video ads now. Pre-roll may be good for boosting brand awareness, but it runs the risk of annoying the viewer before they have a chance to become invested in the content. Post-roll ads, meanwhile, might be good for calls to action, but are also awkward.

Mid-roll advertising, on the other hand, captures the interest of an invested user who likely has his or her sound on already, which has been a big problem for publishers, since many pre-roll ads run with the volume turned off. Viewers watch to completion 90% of the time, compared with pre-rolls’ 78% completion rate and post-rolls’ 65% completion rate, according to figures from Ooyala, an online video and analytics platform.

Mid-rolls are already in effect as the nice in-between that Snapchat inserts in its Snapchat Stories, and Twitter is inserting them in its live-stream of sports with “sponsored breaks.” Even if Twitter’s inaugural NFL live stream attracted low viewership numbers, it reported a 98% ad completion rate to its sponsors.

‘Ad Breaks’ on Facebook Live
Meanwhile, Facebook’s play in mid-rolls, its “ad breaks,” are attracting particular attention. Facebook started testing the advertising format in August with some of its top publishers — whom they are paying to use live video — and it’s expected to expand to other videos native to the platform as well. It’s one of the ways brands and publishers can make money directly on Facebook, rather than “just from the actions that people take off of Facebook,” the social network’s vice president of partnerships, Dan Rose, told Poynter’s Benjamin Mullin. The ads last up to 15 seconds and are eligible to appear in a live stream after the five-minute mark, according to an agency exec who spoke to AdAge’s Garett Sloane. Facebook also said the video ads would come from within its so-called walled garden, the “promoted video campaigns already running on the platform.” Some brands can opt out of having their ads appear live, however.

But should all Facebook Live videos be considered for monetization, even if they are of the less annoying mid-roll variety? It makes sense for some of the more light-hearted fare that gets posted on the platform, but not necessarily for more serious events, like the live streaming of police brutality that made headlines this summer. Monetizing live also requires a more strategic understanding of audience size, which is pretty inconsistent with Facebook Live videos at this point.

Yet that question may answer itself with this new endeavor into mid-roll. That publishers and brands can reap financial benefits will likely encourage them even more as they continue to test what the “winning formula” is for live video. And that’s something Facebook is gambling its audiences will come to accept, and watch, as they are increasingly confronted with these in news feeds.

“People really understand the concept,” Facebook product director Fidji Simo said at the recent ONA Conference in Denver. If other platforms and advertisers follow suit, it might not be too long before “mid-roll ads” are our de facto “digital commercial breaks.”

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