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Research

Publishers are focused on revenue and time on site

Due to recent trends in news related to the Covid-19 outbreak, publisher traffic is booming. Not only are people visiting publisher sites more, they’re also sticking around longer and reading more content.

Last month, we surveyed publishers, agencies, and brands to ask them about their top priorities for the year. We uncovered insights related to revenue and engagement in 2020, which are more relevant now than ever.

Ninety online publishers responded to our survey—a mix of representatives from both small and large businesses from a variety of different verticals. We’ll share the results we uncovered, indicating a focus on revenue and engagement, and strategies for tackling those goals.

Whose goals are they?

When we took a look at survey respondents by job function, we saw a mix of representation from sales, business development, revenue and ad operations, product, editorial and executive management. The majority of respondents came from revenue, ad operations, and business development. This is probably why revenue made it to the top of the priority pile.

This mix of survey respondents came from publisher businesses of a variety of sizes. They included everyone from large publishing houses in the global news sphere to smaller niche-based publishers looking to reach their audiences more effectively.

These publishers cover a variety of topics. The most heavily represented were business, entertainment, news, and technology. Some of these publishers span more than one news vertical and we allowed each respondent to select all of the verticals that were most relevant to their operations.

All of this to say that a wide range of people from publishers of all types revealed their top KPIs for their businesses across the board.

Top KPIs: revenue and time on site

Respondents were given a list of potential KPIs to choose from. Most respondents selected revenue and time on site as their top KPI for the year.

Not far behind these KPIs was direct advertising revenue, returning visitors, sponsored content click-through-rate (CTR) and reader revenue and/or subscriptions.

The focus on time on site and returning visitors indicates high interest in user engagement. Publishers don’t want visitors to come around once and then leave. They’re looking for people to stay, consume more content and come back again.

Other top KPIs are a clear support of revenue-driving efforts.

Tips for increasing revenue and time on site

The best way to increase both revenue and engagement metrics like time on site is easier said than done. It is important to reach the right person, with the right content, at the right time. In reality, doing so requires a holistic strategy behind the content itself, your site’s design, and exactly what monetization efforts you’re deploying for each user.

Valuable content

You know your site visitors better than anyone out there, including their definition of valuable and entertaining content. On top of this know-how, recent events have proven that publishers can do a lot to act on current events to stay relevant for their users.

We’ve seen publishers do the following:

  • Take down their paywalls for Covid-19 related content.
  • Replace in-person events with virtual events to encourage people staying inside and possibly recoup revenue lost from cancelled live events.
  • Curate lists of entertainment ideas, products, and services related to their niche to inspire people while they stay inside.

These strategies can expand beyond issues related to the current global pandemic. For example, providing sporadic free content related to holidays, current events, and cultural milestones is a good strategy for publishers looking to engage new readers.

Pleasing to read, watch or browse

Having the valuable content is half the battle. You also need to make sure your content is easy to consume on all types of platforms, is pleasing to the eye, and easy to access.

Here are some tips inspired by advanced publishers:

  • Consider segmenting your user experience by loyalty. Users that return to your site to consume content more often might see more organic content or more opportunities to subscribe. (Side note: Defining exactly what loyalty means for you can be tough. We’ve spoken to publishers who define it using everything from pageviews in a set number of days to breadth of interest on site.)
  • Change your paywall depending on who’s looking at it. There’s more than one way to put up a paywall, and provide options like free trials, complimentary access with a purchase or exclusive access to certain pieces of coverage might be a good option depending on the user.
  • All content should be responsive, keeping various types of mobile audiences in mind.

The right mix of content initiatives and monetization efforts is the best medicine for hitting your KPI goals this year, no matter the landscape. Staying authentic, valuable and top of mind for your site visitors is the best way to keep them engaged and drive revenue.

DCN-Research | Research

New DCN research explores consumer appetite and satisfaction for digital subscriptions

Digital Content Next (DCN) has released findings from its new research, DCN Digital Subscription Economy*, that indicate a healthy and rapidly-growing digital subscription marketplace. The DCN study surveyed 1,000 U.S. consumers regarding the array of direct-to-consumer paid digital subscription offerings across numerous media sectors and genre.

On average, digital media subscribers are paying for more than four unique subscription services. And two-thirds of subscribers (64%) perceive high value in connection with their subscription(s). Consumer value is high no matter how much they spend, how many services they have or how much they earn.

The market is transitioning with several big-brand entrants like Disney+, Apple TV+ and HBO Max joining the booming marketplace. However, it doesn’t appear that consumers are anywhere near reaching a tipping point of “too much” spending or “too many” services.

Streaming subscription value is driven more by video streaming services than by live TV streaming, digital audio or digital print subscriptions. This is fueled, in part, by big-budget original productions, significant media publicity, “must have” status and consumer’s attraction to bingeing content.

Value also appears to be driven more by consumers enjoying the ability to choose from among a variety of streaming services than by desire to shed their cable service. For those who continue to subscribe to cable, their driving reason is that they’ve always had it and are “used to it.”

Subscription spending

A majority of digital media subscribers are not immediately sure how much they spend on their digital subscriptions each month. This is another indicator that they have not yet reached a sense of over-spending. When asked to think about and to calculate their monthly spend, their $54/month average expense suggests a willingness to add to their news and entertainment budget. In other words, pricing of many of the most popular digital streaming subscriptions – particularly video subscriptions – seems to be perceived as reasonable and affordable, at least for the time being.

Drivers of subscriptions

Across the board, subscribers of all digital media types (video, audio, print) prize their control(direct, personalized, anywhere/anytime access) above everything else. Propensity for show bingeing, a manifestation of control, also means consumers are frustrated when complete seasons of what they want to watch aren’t available. Content discovery appears to be a non-issue with just one-quarter of video streamers (28%) reporting difficulty with discovering video content worthwhile to view.

DCN will continue to track this dynamic and shifting marketplace of digital assets consumed à la carte to provide publishers with insight into the dimensions of consumer value and to help inform their subscription strategies, offerings and messaging.

* An abridged version of the findings from the DCN Digital Subscription Economy Study is accessible to the public. Please note the full 48-page DCN Digital Subscription Economy Study is only available to DCN members. If you are a DCN publisher member, please be sure to log in or register to access this special members-only research, which will appear below this notice once you have logged in.

Research

Hiding in plain sight: The HTML5 security conundrum

In recent years, as a growing number of security woes plagued Flash users, browser vendors and developers began to flee Flash for the more secure HTML5 and other open standards. Between 2014 and 2018, the percentage of people viewing a page in Chrome with Flash slid from 28% to 8%. Meanwhile, the percentage of websites that use HTML5 has grown to 70%.

In 2015, when the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) updated its digital advertising guide with best practices for using HTML5, they cited security as the chief reason behind publishers’ adoption of HTML5. While the IAB was right that HTML5 offers far better security than Flash, it has a critical weakness. Hackers now use HTML5’s security functionality to hide malware. This should give pause to HTML5 devotees.

First identified in April, this malware appears to be part of a coordinated campaign that targets iOS devices. This is partly because they are popular, partly because they make detection even more challenging. It has produced at least 21 separate incidents affecting dozens of globally recognized online media publishers and at least 15 ad networks. Ironically, the malware by no means exploits an HTML5 vulnerability. Rather, it uses functionality that not only secures software from malicious attacks by making code difficult to understand, but also helps to deliver a rich experience.

Exploiting Weaknesses

In 2015, just as the exodus from Flash began in earnest, university researchers discovered several techniques to convert HTML5 into a safe haven for malware. The researchers found that if malware were written using the techniques to make code hard to read, it would avoid detection regardless of which browser web visitors used. When used to hide malware, these techniques were coupled with a drive-by download attack that followed these steps:

  1. Redirection and Cloaking: The victim goes through a series of redirects that effectively hide attack’s source. The victim’s browser information is gathered and sent to a remote server. If the browser has any vulnerabilities commonly, a malware code is sent back to the client.
  2. De-obfuscation: The malware code is obfuscated (broken into chunks) in order to prevent detection. Once vulnerabilities are found in the browser, the code is de-obfuscated (converted into clear-text and reassembled).
  3. Environment Preparation: The malware puts together code that will exploit the vulnerabilities.
  4. Exploitation: The malware injects the harmful code.

2015 HTML5 Malware Anatomy

A Growing Problem

Over the course of the two years that immediately followed the publication of the research, malware developers appeared to make little use of HTML5. In 2016, they used a bug in HTML5 to freeze computers and obtain unsuspecting users’ phone numbers. Then, in 2017, The Media Trust malware team identified a small number of random HTML5 malware that made little to no impact on the broader digital ecosystem. It is possible that bad actors behind the malware were simply experimenting before staging a more coordinated attack in a larger scale.

What distinguishes this year’s HTML5 malware from earlier versions is the underlying campaign’s level of coordination and the style of attack. More specifically, the campaign reflects the malware developers’ understanding of the display advertising supply chain. In particular, they recognized the thousands of potential victims. They stage the attack without user interaction, relying instead on auto-redirection. The result is a quicker, much more widespread attack on numerous unsuspecting users.

2018 HTML5 Malware Anatomy

The Malware Technique

  1. Delivery:  When a user visits a targeted online publication, an ad network delivers the malicious ad to the webpage.
  2. Checking Criteria: As the user’s device meets each criterion—namely, whether it’s iOS and whether it’s connected to the user’s carrier—the code serving the HTML5 creative checks the criteria. Once the criteria are met, the malware is reassembled in a way that allows the malicious code to execute.
  3. Auto-redirection: The redirect is executed. The user is taken to another page that requests their input of personal information.

Preventing the HTML5 Malware Spread Through Campaigns

Should advertisers and marketers stop using HTML5? The answer is no. HTML5 is still far more secure than Flash. However, the HTML5 malware, along with a burgeoning number of malware, are proving more difficult to detect and will require marketers to change how they secure their digital supply chain.

HTML5 malware fly under the radar of traditional security measures like antivirus. Thwarting it requires a more holistic approach where organizations collaborate with their digital partners and third parties on improving the security of their digital ecosystem. It also requires marketers to work with a cross section of teams outside of marketing — cybersecurity, compliance, etc. — in order to improve the security of their creatives and digital assets.

In the digital marketing and media world, hackers prefer easy targets like third parties because they often have weaker security postures than their clients. Once hackers break through a third party’s security measures, they can enter the client’s secure networks undetected through a trusted connection. Another easy target are online ads, which let hackers spread malware to thousands of users without having to compromise or infect a website.

Organizations can avoid third-party and online ad risks by putting in place a robust digital vendor risk management program to police every actor and every code that executes in their digital ecosystem. Such a program enables organizations to develop and continuously update their inventory of direct and indirect vendors.

In today’s complex, dynamic digital ecosystem, an organization’s mix of vendors can change daily. Keeping track of these vendors will require continuous, real-time scanning of digital assets. Second, it helps assess and document the risks from each of these vendors. Third, it enables organizations to share policies and work with vendors and digital partners on resolving issues. Finally, it enables organizations to terminate vendors who continue to violate policy after they have been put on notice.

About the Author

Patrick Ciavolella is Digital Security & Operations Director at The Media Trust. He has been working at the company for over 11 years, protecting clients’ digital ecosystems from the ever-evolving threat landscape. His experience gives him a unique perspective on how companies can defend against rapid, sophisticated and targeted malware attacks.

Research

73% of site visitors get there via mobile. Here’s your guided tour through the mobile landscape.

There’s a good chance that you have a cell phone within arm’s reach right now, maybe in a pocket, next to you on your desk, or even in your hand as you read this post.

Even so, when you imagine a reader interacting with your site, do you tend to picture a person browsing on a laptop or do you see a commuter reading on her phone? Getting a clearer picture of how readers discover content via devices starts with checking in with the data.

As recently as 2013, peak daily mobile usage only accounted for 20% of traffic. Parse.ly network data shows that on average over 65% of traffic to publisher and brand sites in 2017 was “pure mobile.” Now, at the beginning of 2018, mobile and tablets drive 73% of traffic to our network.

With the mobile audience growing faster and bigger than ever before, it’s essential to understand the media habits unique to those readers. Here’s what the data suggests about people’s habits when it comes to when, where, and why we’re on our phones.

When: Desktop during workdays, mobile all the time

The times that people are more likely to browse on mobile vs. desktop vary. Desktop still has a weekday cadence (following peoples’ work schedules), whereas mobile is “all day every day,” including some morning and night-time peaks. People also tend to use tablets on weekends.

We also consistently see a drop-off in desktop traffic between 5:00 pm and 5:30 pm in every local timezone in the U.S.. Of course, this makes sense because many people head home from work around 5:00 pm.

Desktop ended 2017 at only 25% of total traffic across all our publishers, and kicked off 2018 at only 23% of traffic. This does vary quite a bit on a publisher-by-publisher basis. For example, some international publishers are almost all mobile traffic, and some subscription or workday reads lean desktop. However, overall, it’s a safe bet that mobile and tablet have firmly overtaken desktop for “casual” news reading.

Where: Five big movers of mobile traffic in 2017

When you break down the services or referrers that drove mobile growth in 2017, five bigs ones stand out. People are discovering content on mobile devices via:

1. Plain old Google Search

Google experimented a lot with highlighting premium publishers in their mobile search experiences, and unifying Google Search with Google News, which drove more traffic back to publishers’ sites.

Traffic from Google AMP increased by 87% in 2017. Not only that, but making AMP available to other platforms contributed to mobile growth. AMP drove 3% of visitors to our network by way of non-Google platforms, including Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.

2. Google’s non-search connected services

These services include Google Now and Google Play Newsstand, mostly on Android. Though these services did not grow the most out of the five listed here, the absolute number of visits delivered was substantial, and contributed to Google overtaking Facebook as a primary source of traffic. AMP and Android platform dominance propelled Google’s shift from news search to content discovery.

3. Flipboard

Flipboard was the big independent (read: not Google or Facebook) traffic source growth story of 2017. Especially in the latter half of the year, as they launched their formal partnerships with major publishers, Flipboard grew over 300% over the year in mobile.

4. Twitter

Twitter and Flipboard are now sending similar levels of mobile visits to publisher sites. Twitter has reinvested in news partnerships, mobile speed, and their mobile apps. Notable changes to the app include the shift to the 280 character limit, AMP embeds, and algorithm changes.

5. Instagram

Instagram also cracked our top-10 list for traffic sources overall for publishers, driven by the platform’s move this year to allow linking to external web-based content from Instagram stories. With the copycat stories feature, Instagram ultimately took the wind out of Snapchat’s sails.

Why: We feel the need, the need for speed on mobile

Speed heavily factors into why people are browsing the way they do on mobile.

With people using their phones everywhere—in transit, waiting in line, you name it—it’s likely that they’ll be off wifi and on a network. The speedier the network connection, the better the experience. This resonates with a finding from a recent Pew Research survey: half of Americans say an unlimited cell data plan would help them get information to make decisions.

People also trust content that loads quickly, according to the  American Press Institute:

“A majority of digital news consumers report it is very important to them that ads not interfere with the news (63 percent); that the site or app loads fast (63 percent); that the content works well on their mobile phones (60 percent).” — American Press Institute

Facebook, Google, Twitter, Flipboard, and others were right, we think, to focus so aggressively on mobile page speed improvements. For example, Google recently re-emphasized the fact that their search algorithms would penalize slow sites on mobile.

It’s worth noting that just because people want content to load quickly, that doesn’t mean they want to move on from content quickly. Long-form articles get more than twice the engaged time of short-form articles on cellphones, according to a 2016 study from Pew Research.

Keeping up with the pace of mobile growth

With the fast growth of mobile, and especially now that Facebook referrals are declining, building direct mobile channels allows publishers to meet readers where they are.

People still spend a lot of time checking email, and having a “daily read” newsletter is a great way to drive traffic to your mobile site, without requiring a native iOS or Android app strategy. According to a study by Campaign Monitor, 41% of email opens happen on mobile devices, exceeding the amount of opens on both desktop and tablets. If you can’t build your own app, integrate your content into users’ habitual engagement with their email app.

However, it’s also important to keep in mind that readers are less likely to click through on mobile. Campaign Monitor reports, “As more people consume email on mobile devices, the standard for compelling content is higher than ever.”

As mobile grows, checking back in with the data helps ensure that you’re connecting with readers when and where they are on mobile, and delivering content that resonates with them.

Perspectives | Research

Google referrals are up: Why that’s good and how to make the most of it

Since January 2017, we’ve watched with interest as traffic from Google Search to publisher sites globally has risen by more than 25%, more than outpacing the much-publicized decline in Facebook referrals over the same time period.  We’ve spent some time digging into our data and today, we conclude that this is driven by a 100% increase in mobile search traffic from Google on sites using Accelerated Mobile Pages (“AMP”).

Below is Chartbeat’s early analysis of the trend, why it’s a good thing for publishers, and some initial recommendations on how to take advantage of this growth.

The Trend

Google Search has always been the largest referrer to Chartbeat clients, who represent a large majority of leading news media sites in the U.S. and globally.  From January 2017 through August 2017, Google Search steadily drove approximately 1.3 billion visits per week, representing 40% of external traffic referrals and 21% of total page views.

In late August, Chartbeat data scientists noticed that Google Search referrals across our client base were trending up. The sheer force of nature drove initial bumps: on August 17, much of the United States saw a total solar eclipse, accounting for the first peak in the above chart. In early September, Hurricane Irma made landfall in Florida, resulting in the second peak.

We initially assumed that after these events, traffic would fall back to normal levels. Instead, as these events receded in the news cycle, we were surprised to see that Google Search continued to drive increased traffic to our clients, hitting approximately 1.65 billion visits per week by early February, an increase of over 25% since July.

Chartbeat’s Data Science team began an investigation in partnership with our clients to understand what drove this change. Initially, our team checked if this was either a bug or the un-darkening of previously dark social traffic. In both cases, it was not. We also looked to see if Apple’s switch on iOS (from using Bing to Google as the default on Siri and Spotlight) was the key factor. It wasn’t. The growth is visible on both iOS and Android, and we have not seen a corresponding drop in Bing traffic.

We then looked specifically at search traffic by device and the answer was clear from our data set. Mobile Google Search referrals were up significantly while Desktop Google Search referrals were flat.

We then looked specifically at Mobile Google Search to compare sites that are using AMP versus those that are not. The difference was stark. While Mobile Google Search traffic to our AMP-enabled publishers is up 100% over the same time-frame, traffic to publishers not using AMP is flat.

This is stunning news. The data shows that Google Mobile Search referrals have grown so much in the last six months that they now outpace all Facebook referrals (mobile and desktop).

Why This Is A Good Thing

At the same time that publishers are seeing increased traffic from Google, the industry and the search giant, long at odds, are reaching a kind of detente. In a recent survey by the Reuters Institute, Google ranked as the platform that publishers [felt] “the most positively about.”(Full Disclosure, I worked for Google from 2007-2011). It’s true that Google is far from perfect — not to mention that the Reuters survey may be the only popularity contest where a score of 3.47 out of 5 can win — but there are real reasons to feel positive about the warming relationship between the two parties.

For one, there’s the cause: the underlying business models of each are pushing them closer together.

Google’s business depends on an open web that is searchable and contains as much of the world’s information as possible. The biggest threat to Google is a world in which essential information remains inside the walled gardens of platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, where its crawlers cannot go. In fact the AMP Project, although independent and open-source by design, was spearheaded by Google from the outset to “make the web better for all.” The roots of AMP clearly lie in Google’s need for, and corresponding commitment to, the open web.

This strategy aligns well with the vast majority of publishers, who also depend on an open web. Few, if any, have the intent to create meaningful walled gardens. Instead, they’re focused on an open web for discovery, monetization, and distribution.

Lost in the discussion about platforms and publishers is how the business model of Google differs from other platforms. Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat depend on capturing as much of an individual’s attention as possible, and keeping it within that platform. Users only have so much time to spend with media, and a minute spent on The Washington Post is a minute that a user can’t be spending on a platform. Google, on the other hand, is primarily interested (with YouTube being the biggest exception) in getting users off of Google Search and onto another page as quickly as possible.

Google also sends traffic to publishers directly, where they can monetize using their own ad sales team and infrastructure. Google’s DoubleClick business remains the ad server of choice for publishers, and Google’s Ad Exchange is in almost every programmatic publisher stack.

Listen and Learn

Perhaps most importantly, they’ve also listened to publishers and made changes. In October, Google provided more support for publishers with subscription-based businesses by no longer requiring them to use the “First-Click-Free” program to be fully indexed in Google Search. Upon abandoning this policy, Google earned positive feedback from publisher partners around the globe.

That said, Chartbeat clients still have a long list of important — and, in my view, valid — criticisms of Google. Publishers share with us their frustrations around Google monetization, ad blocking in the Chrome browser, the Google “Answer Boxes,” and the proliferation of inappropriate content and “fake news” on YouTube in particular. We know that AMP not only has benefits in referral traffic, but that it also boosts engagement by up to 35%. Our clients continue to tell us anecdotally that AMP-formatted pages do not monetize as well as their own pages, yet they continue to experiment.

Perhaps most importantly, we should remember that Google and Facebook still capture 80% of every new advertising dollar in the world. The duopoly represents an existential threat to ad-supported media, pushing media stakeholders to work towards new business models like subscriptions, affiliate revenue, and commerce. Still, there’s a thaw in the relationship. Now, the question is what to do about it.

The Importance of a Search Strategy

Informed by the new data, it’s clear that leveraging Google and AMP effectively is more important now than ever.

First, we encourage all those who have not already done so to take a long look at “AMP-ing” their pages. The growing prominence of AMP, combined with the fact that AMP was already found to be more engaging for users than the mobile web, should make the ROI calculation even more compelling for publishers.

Second, it is important for all content teams to revisit their overall search strategies, particularly on mobile. SEO may feel like an acronym from another time, but these data trends make it clear that SEO and AMP strategies are as relevant as ever.

Chartbeat clients who publish evergreen content never lost the SEO muscle. Using tried-and-true techniques around keywords, authenticity, and swift page-load times on both mobile and desktop, they continue to drive audience traffic effectively through Search.

In news, entertainment, and sports, savvy publishers know to take advantage of Google around big events like elections and sporting events. The results can be tremendous. While most U.S. Chartbeat clients saw some increase during the 2016 U.S. Election, and many saw increases of 20x, those with the best SEO (who ranked in the top 2 or 3 for key searches like “Election Map,” for example) saw peaks of up to 100 times their nightly average on election night. 2018 promises to be a huge year in events: The Winter Olympics, the World Cup, and the 2018 U.S. Congressional Elections. All should drive global traffic, and dozens of elections and sporting events will drive outsized results regionally.

Readers and Revenue

All of this traffic can be used  to generate incremental advertising dollars. More importantly, it can drive new readers to publishers where they can be converted from fly-by searchers to loyal, direct visitors to revenue-generating customers no matter the business model.

We will continue to analyze and examine the data for insights and underlying causes. If you have any hypotheses, see interesting things in your own data, or just want to talk, please reach out to us.

We’d also love to hear some contrarian views on Google. Are there ways in which their growth could be hurting publishers, in addition to what I’ve outlined here? Let us know. Same goes for sharing best practices around search.

John Saroff is Chief Executive Officer of Chartbeat, a leading content intelligence platform used by more than 50,000 of the world’s top media properties in over 60 countries. He has worked on the cutting-edge of media and technology for 17+ years, setting the daily operations and business development agendas of companies as diverse as Google, NBC-Universal, and vente-privee. John received his undergraduate degree in History from Haverford College and a joint degree in Law and Business from Columbia University.

 

Research

Content marketing, ad blocking and other trends that rocked digital publishing in 2015

2015 was as existential as they come for digital media and advertising. Some of the biggest stories that captivated the industry represented tough questions that have been brewing for years but are no longer avoidable.

So which of these stories captivated the industry? We analyzed 5,600 articles from industry trades that were published between Jan. 01 — Nov. 11, and the approximately 4 million resulting page views to determine which topics resonated most, and when.

General Findings

  • Content Marketing accounted for the most overall page views of the trends analyzed in 2015.
  • Mobilegeddon generated the most page views/story (which we can use as a measure of “degree of interest” in a topic), then effectively vanished from people’s minds.
  • After its initial splash in May, Facebook Instant Articles seemed to vanish from the radar until Fall, when it wasrolled out to more publishers and more users.
  • News that Programmatic accounted for 20% of all 2014 digital ad spend got the industry’s attention in July.

The Ad Block Problem
The conversation about ad blockers reached fever pitch in September, as news broke that Apple’s iOS would let users install ad blockers and that some ads could avoid being blocked… for a price. Advertising Week Sept 28 — Oct 2, was essentially an unofficial summit on how to deal with the rise of ad blockers.

The Mobilegeddon That Wasn’t?
After the initial news about Google changing its algorithm to reward more mobile-friendly pages in its search engine results, interest in Mobilegeddon quickly died down as people realized its impact was minimal or indeterminate on their business.

Fig1Mobilegeddon

Content Marketing Becoming the Norm?
Content marketing is now a routine part of industry coverage, and has been for the last couple of years. Unlike the other trends in this analysis, interest in content marketing was less subject to dramatic spikes and dips, growing steadily throughout the year as marketers focused on tips for doing it better, planning for 2016, and its overall growth in the industry.

Native Interests
Native advertising generated its interest in relation to two developments: Snapchat announcing the creation of a native ad agency with a handful of media companies at Cannes Lions, and Advertising Week, where Ad Blocking dominated the conversation. Native advertising began to resurface as an alternative for brands and publishers.

Facebook Instant Articles
After making waves with its initial announcement and launch of Instant Articles — which hosts a publisher’s content directly in the News Feed — radio silence ensued for the duration of the summer, leaving many to wonder if it was getting off to a slow start. Then in September, Facebook added more publishers to Instant Articles, and in October, rolled it out to all iPhone users, which re-ignited interest.

The spike in intrigue over Facebook Instant Articles perfectly embodies a tough question publishers have been mulling for years but is no longer avoidable in 2015: at what point do I pull back on trying to pool audiences on my own site and invest more heavily in reaching new audiences where they already congregate?

Naturally, the reaction to Facebook’s offer varied, as some wondered how far Facebook would go in using publisher content to fuel their growing media empire, while others urged caution in how much content should be Instant vs. Owned.

But perhaps lost in the shuffle was Facebook’s own justification for presenting a publisher’s content to users in this way, the same justification Google used in its push Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) push.

Fig2FBInstant

A Better User Experience
It almost always comes down to the user.

From the ongoing discussion on what native advertising should look like, to the initial panic over “mobilegeddon,” at heart is how to work towards an Internet consumers are almost uniformly pleased with. In a way, the popularity of both ad blockers and content marketing are symptoms of that ideal.

Brandon Carter is a Content Specialist at Outbrain (@brandedcarter @Outbrain). He began his career as a staff journalist for the Maine weekly ‘The Coastal Journal’ before moving to New York and joining the product licensing divisions of Peanuts Worldwide and Sesame Workshop.

Perspectives | Research

Preparing for 2020: Getting to Know the Millennial Woman

Are we ready for the year 2020? In only five short years, the millennial generation will be the largest, most influential generation we’ve encountered. They will represent the majority of the work force, account for two-thirds of all first-time home buyers and represent over $2.5 trillion in spending. While leading millennials have already embraced this “adult” life, trailing millennials will be following in their footsteps by the year 2020. What will this mean to publishers and marketers? Will millennial women follow their Gen-X and Boomer parents in their buying behavior and decision-making? Or will the advancement of technology – including smartphones, social media in the ‘always on’ world – dramatically change how we engage with them?

This is an important question for Meredith where our cornerstone content has been home, health, family, food and lifestyle for women inspired by our brands. For generations – including the Boomer’s sexual revolution of the sixties to the excess of the eighties and the Gen X generation who grew up alongside the progression of the online world as a mass media – Meredith content has evolved to meet her needs for the milestones and moments in between. We are constantly seeking new ways to help them search our recipes, get inspired by our home decoration ideas and share our parenting tips. Our “Women 2020” research initiative was designed to deliver targeted, data-driven insight on key audiences for both us and our marketing partners and brands through the lens of life stages and the influence of technology.

Here are a few key takeaways from this year’s Women 2020 report:

The Millennial Mindset
Millennial women are optimistic about their futures and, not surprisingly, are focused on issues close to home, i.e., themselves. The majority feel they will be happier, more fortunate and have more opportunities in five years. According to these millennial women, the most pressing issues facing women today are weight acceptance (27%) and wage equality (25%), very different than the more worldly boomers who see wage equality and domestic violence as the top issues facing women, with weight acceptance of much less importance (9%).

The Mobile Generation
Given the technology at their fingertips – literally – it’s only logical that smartphones and laptops are the millennial women’s chosen device to access the internet. Gen-Xers and Boomers also choose laptops as their #1 go-to device, but less than half of Boomers claim that their smartphone is the primary device to connect. This is especially evident when it comes to shopping. More and more women – led by millennials – are going online prior to shopping to look for sales, coupons and price comparisons and staying on line in the store. Specifically, when shopping for food, more than a quarter of millennial women are looking for coupons and using a grocery list app. Clearly, engagement with women as they prepare to shop is uniquely different than the Boomer’s we have helped navigate for years. Meredith’s recent acquisition of Qponix (a Grocery Server technology) allows us to serve her all of the content she is looking for in one place on our sites. We will be rolling this out to other categories, including beauty, as a result of this growing trend.

Media Sources & Roles
The list of media options and information and entertainment sources seems to have no limit, but that’s not an issue for millennial women (concurring with recent MomTrak research from Meredith’s Parents Network) who continue to add to the list of sources they turn to. No wonder it’s hard to get their attention! Each media fills a unique role. The primary reason women turn to online sources is as “a good source of learning” and a way to get “detailed information.” However, when focusing on millennial women, the #1 reason they go online is to keep them “informed and up-to-date”, in other words online is a key information source. When it comes to TV, all generations agree: it’s “pure entertainment” and TV “relaxes them.”

Women of all ages also agree on the main reason they rely on magazines. Magazines offer a sense of control (“can glance through quickly or read through thoroughly) and allow them to “unplug and disconnect from technology.” Perhaps the fear of missing out (FOMO) is being replaced with JOMO (the joy of missing out) and printed magazines are the solution.

Social media continues to grow as an integral part of women’s lives with nearly all women visiting Facebook at least once a week. Millennials and Gen-Xers also rely regularly on YouTube, Instagram and Pinterest, offering a constant reminder to marketers to be sure to share relevant content everywhere she is, when she wants it. Trailing millennials are always on the lookout for the next new social sharing platform, with video-based offerings, such as Vine and Snapchat, playing a starring role. Blurring the line between content and marketing is accepted by these younger women, but authenticity and transparency is key – they will be skeptical otherwise (in fact 65% of millennials told us that they believe their friends & family have lied on social media – brands, watch out).

In line with their optimistic focus, they appreciate a playful tone and are more likely to share when the content is delivered with humor and a realistic reflection of themselves. Women in general are known to be “sharers” but due to the growth of social networking, sharing, recommending, reviewing and posting is a natural next step for millennials after buying or using a product. But social networks aren’t the only place where women share – in person or on the phone remains the dominant mode of sharing in the three categories covered in this study (beauty, food and home). Meredith takes this eagerness about sharing to heart. In fact, it’s the driving reason behind the relaunch of Allrecipes.com as a social media network for foodies, rolling out this fall.

Are we ready for 2020? We are already using insights from “Women 2020” continue to inform our editorial content strategy, our acquisitions and the products and programs we bring to market. As a company with over a century of engagement with women on what matters most to them, we know that it is critical to continually evolve to meet the next generation’s needs.

Britta Cleveland (@minibcw) is the Senior Vice President of Meredith’s Research Solutions group, a position she has held since 2004. She is responsible for all of Meredith’s National Media Brands, including three of America’s top 10 in terms of circulation: Better Homes & Gardens, Family Circle and Parents and the Meredith Digital network which includes leading women’s websites, such as allrecipes.com and parents.com Prior to joining Meredith, Britta was the Director for Advertising Research at Reader’s Digest, and for the 15 years prior she worked on the advertising agency side of the business in the NY offices of Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising and held media planning positions in the San Francisco offices of Foote, Cone & Belding and Dancer, Fitzgerald, Sample.

Perspectives | Research

3 steps you can take now to make the digital ecosystem safer

We’ve all seen the headlines and statistics:

Advertisers will lose $6-10 billion to bots in 2015.

More than half of ad impressions are not seen.

A quarter of all video impressions are fraudulent.

Brands are not safe from bots and invalid traffic.

As an experienced digital auditor, the Alliance for Audited Media goes behind the scenes to examine the sources and systems of the underlying issues plaguing the digital advertising ecosystem. In a new  white paper series, we delve into the issues of viewability, fraudulent and invalid traffic, and brand safety and transparency. All from a side you might not have read yet—the auditor’s perspective.

Based on our research, there are steps that all industry players – media buyers, vendors and publishers – can immediately take to make the digital ecosystem a safer place. Here are three takeaways that you can put to work today:

1. Prepare for 100 percent viewability
eyeOn the surface, viewability is a logical goal that seems readily attainable. Publishers should serve ads that can be seen by a human. Reality is far more complicated, of course. Different publishers work with different vendors. And different vendors—even those that are accredited—can use different measurement methodologies. Add in issues with browsers, screen sizes, ad delivery mechanisms and things quickly get very complicated. The industry is working toward solutions, but in the meantime, here’s what you can do now to prepare for 100 percent viewability:

Media Buyers: Know where your ads are going and where they ran: Work with reputable publishers and networks. Talk with vendors about measurement methodologies to better understand discrepancies. Demand audited systems and data to ensure you’re able to transact with trust and transparency.

Vendors: If you’re considering an MRC accreditation against the viewability standards, schedule a pre-audit engagement – now required by the MRC – with an independent third party to cost-effectively prepare your technology and processes for compliance with industry standards.

Publishers: Evaluate the advertising real estate on your pages and optimize placement for the best opportunity to be measured and seen. Disclose to clients which viewability solutions you employ and prepare them for possible discrepancies and reconciliation methods.

2. Recognize that not all invalid traffic is fraudulent but all fraud is invalid
spiderThere are several very good reasons a website may have for generating invalid traffic including internal traffic or test environments. But there are many more ways a site can generate fraudulent traffic, here’s what you can do to combat it:

Media Buyers: Ask your media partners how they detect invalid traffic. Only use vendors and technology partners certified to industry guidelines. Agencies should take the additional step of following the IAB’s best practices for workflow, campaign set-up, site tagging and measurement processes.

Ad Networks and Exchanges: Vet your inventory and continuously monitor it for changes. Provide advertisers with site-level information about where ads are running and who is seeing them. Become certified to IAB guidelines. Build brand safety technology into the ad server or domain engines that participate in RTB.

Publishers: Use internal controls to monitor traffic increases and implement ad tech solutions that are certified to industry standards. Perhaps most importantly, become certified against the IAB Quality Assurance Guidelines, which offer a framework for brand safety and trust throughout the industry.

3. Eliminate the bad players hiding behind good technology
lockProgrammatic media buying has allowed advertisers to more precisely target audiences while helping publishers sell more inventory. It’s also created another avenue for potential fraud in the digital ad supply chain. Here’s what you can do to stop fraud:

Media Buyers: Only use exchanges that work with legitimate, validated publishers and take steps to refuse buying low-quality inventory. If the price seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Vendors: Get audited to IAB guidelines. Those vendors that comply with IAB measurement guidelines believe in providing accurate, reliable and consistent measurements every day.

Publishers: Avoid the temptation of buying undesirable traffic to fulfill commitments to advertisers. “Cheap” and “quality” traffic rarely go together.

The fact is that there’s no single answer to the issues facing digital advertising—but accountability and transparency are the foundation of any solution. Know your vendors and media buyers beyond just a name on a screen. Have a conversation and reach an understanding before a campaign begins. Support the work of the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) to add background checks and weed out the bad actors before they gain entrance. 

Each of us can and must play a role in bringing transparency to the digital media ecosystem. If all sides of the industry come together against those that are infecting the system, we’ve got a real chance of creating a safe marketplace where everyone can transact with trust. Read AAM’s entire  digital white paper series to learn more about the industry initiatives at play and find your role.

Guenther is vice president of digital auditing services at AAM. As a founding partner and vice president of ImServices Group—an Alliance for Audited Media company—he has more than 25 years of experience in digital technology auditing. Guenther has been instrumental in helping develop many of today’s key standards and practices for the interactive advertising marketplace including the IAB’s Quality Assurance Guidelines, various IAB Measurement Guidelines (including the MRC Viewable Impression Guidelines) and the IAB’s Ad Campaign Measurement Process Guidelines to name a few.

In 2014 AAM and ImServices merged. Guenther leads the integrated digital audit team in helping clients address fraud detection and prevention, ad delivery verification, viewability and brand safety through platform certification audits, independent validation through the IAB’s Quality Assurance Program (QAG) and MRC accreditation support that includes pre-audit assessments, a step now required by the MRC.

Perspectives | Research | Revenue

Bad Ads: Research Shows They May Cost More Than They’re Worth

No one likes to click a link on a tantalizing bit of content only to be assaulted by a barrage of intrusive and annoying advertising. That fact is as in your face as a blinking pop-up ad prompting you to punch a monkey to win an iPad. And unless it’s the result of fat fingers, you aren’t clicking these annoying ads; you are hitting the back button as fast as you can to find a more pleasant place to consume content. And here’s the part that should send a chill down the spine of premium content publishers: Microsoft research has found that they’re not just bad in customers’ eyes; there’s also a high cost to be paid by the publishers that run them.

The research, The Economic and Cognitive Costs of Annoying Display Advertisements, set out to better understand the cognitive impact of annoying ads on users, and also to quantify the economic cost of annoying ads for publishers. Let’s just say their findings are more than a little jarring. The research shows the economic cost of “annoying” ads is about .153 cents each (for the revenue wonks, this works out to a $1.53CPM). Given that Turn reports that more than 53% of all online ads sell for between $.10 and $.80CPM and we know premium publishers typically earn around $1.35CPM from open exchanges, a little math paints a disturbing picture. We’ve always known digital ads can impact users and the bottom-line but not in the wrong direction.

If you believe the research—undertaken by an impressive team of researchers whose experience includes work for Yahoo, Google and Microsoft—then publishers need to know that running ads which site visitors find to be irritating, annoying, inappropriate or offensive has a significant net cost, both to brand value and the bottom line.  Private marketplaces reinforce this need for brand safety for all.  Chasing page-views and impressions at scale has diminishing returns and makes a sites more vulnerable to bad ads. What this means is that by running these ads, often to maximize sell-thru rate of your inventory, you’re actually chasing short-term revenue rabbits without understanding where that rabbit hole leads.

The Microsoft researchers conclude that “the practice of running annoying ads can cost more money than it earns.” That’s right: a site might be better off not running ads at all because of the net loss they will incur if some or all of their ads are perceived as bad by their users. A site or app actually needs more quality content and premium ads to make up for the economic loss from bad ads.

As is the case with bad advertising, we all know great ads when we see them. And research shows that there is a “halo effect” to advertising that is positioned within the context of a strong media brand with quality content, so it only stands to reason that the reverse would be true: that there would be a negative effect to a media brand associated with bad advertising. Microsoft’s research confirms this, finding not only that people notice annoying ads and complain about them, they are more likely to abandon sites on which they were present. Interestingly, in the presence of annoying ads, people had to work harder to understand content that contains annoying ads. In other words, they’re distracting and a general nuisance to user experience.

 

Again, it’s very important to note this isn’t simply about low-quality dating ads, yellow-teeth and belly-fat ads. Media companies need to consider the subtle and long-term effects that any ad running on their sites may have on user retention and revenue. The alarming rise of Adblocking software adoption makes clear that customers are fed up with poor advertising experiences. And once customers are driven to this extreme, they are taken out of the ecosystem for everyone, good and bad advertisers alike. Already 41% of 18-29 year-olds in America have opted-out of digital advertising altogether by installing an adblocker.

But we can’t simply take the lazy position that “people just hate ads.” It simply isn’t true. And the Microsoft research backs that up. We can also clearly see examples of superior advertising and content experiences on Vox and Conde Nast sites, among many others. Premium publishers like the members of DCN who focus on high-quality content, premium, well-lit experiences and brand-safe environments should be well-served as this all shakes out because they are laser focused on creating great customer experiences that are only enhanced by the relevant, quality advertising experiences that support all of the terrific content that they enjoy.

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DCN-Research | Research

Practical Tips for a Programmatic Future

Digital Content Next (DCN) released insights into the future of programmatic advertising based on in-depth interviews with executives at 10 digital content companies from DCN’s membership including Vox, The Weather Company, Business Insider and CBS Interactive. “Practical Tips for a Programmatic Future” offers a behind-the-scenes peek at these organizations and details how they have prepared for a future with an expected continued rise in programmatic spend. DCN’s key takeaway—that programmatic is not a channel but a broad set of automation and efficiency tactics that can be employed across a range of inventory—is one of the valuable insights from the white paper.

Vendor partnerships are important

  • Integration with constantly-evolving players in the ad tech stack is what makes building ad technology in-house prohibitive; all interview participants said they are not pursuing internal solutions and will instead rely on vendors.

Learn and grow with the buy side

  • Most executives interviewed stressed the need to proactively talk to clients about their programmatic capabilities, as they are often unaware of them or how they can benefit their marketing campaigns.

Enable and incentivize your sales team to embrace programmatic

  • Automation will not diminish the importance of sales relationships. Half of those interviewed said they are starting to see large buys that include some programmatic component; therefore, it is important to educate and enable account executives to have conversations about programmatic with clients.

Designate programmatic expert(s) on your team

  • Digital content companies interviewed have created new roles for programmatic specialists. Broadly there are two types of functions that programmatic specialists will have to perform: (1) supporting the direct sales team; and (2) managing vendor and platform relationships.

Leverage first-party data and other organizational resources

  • Programmatic specialists will need to work closely with engineering, analytics and data science teams to build out data capabilities and products.

To view the White Paper, click here.

To view the Press Release with a longer summary, click here.

Marketing | Research | Revenue

comScore Versus the Bots: New Booklet Tackles Non-Human Traffic

As the digital ad spend rises, so does the amount of non-human traffic online. That is no surprise to Brian Pugh, comScore’s SVP of Audience, who has been tracking the issue for about 15 years. In those early days, says Pugh, no one wanted to talk about it; non-human traffic was one of the internet’s dirty little secrets. The bad news is that has grown a lot since then. The good news is that today people are discussing it openly and solutions are emerging to address the problem.

To fuel on-going discussion around these issues comScore recently released a booklet on Non-Human Traffic, which provides a clear overview of the issue as well as how a failure to address the problem causes inaccurate audience measurement, which negatively impacts the entire value chain. “Over the last 18 months, the issue has been talked about much more openly,” says Pugh, “because brands are becoming more sophisticated and aware.” And while viewability has been in the spotlight for a while, Pugh sees issues of fraud moving to the fore “because before you can judge if an ad is really viewable, you need to know if the viewer is human.”

comScore has been working to address the issue of fraud since the launch of its Media Metrix product in 2001, and the company’s acquisition of MdotLabs last summer signaled a significant push to weed out fraudulent traffic in order to accurately measure and report on audiences. MdotLabs co-founder Timur Yarnall joined comScore as SVP and anti-fraud evangelist, to help educate the industry and marketers, many of whom still think viewability is all they have to worry about.

The reality is that non-human traffic undermines the integrity of every performance and effectiveness metric. And this is not just a buy-side issue, at least in part because the growth of the digital advertising industry must be predicated on trust. Yarnall points to comScore’s recent launch of Industry Trust as another effort to increase transparency around problems in digital advertising, but also “to highlight the good things happening in the industry and not just provide fodder for the next shocking story.”

PercentNHTcomScoreIndustry Trust is intended to enable trustworthy programmatic transactions by providing a rating of ad inventory quality. Pugh says that the popularity of programmatic ad buying has further escalated fraud with bad actors delivering non-premium inventory by “claiming to be another site.” Low-quality sites impersonating a high quality publisher in order to steal ad sales is known as Domain Laundering and is one of the issues covered in the new comScore booklet. “This sort of thing is much too easy right now,” according to Pugh, who believes that more transparency and accountability are essential to strengthen the ecosystem. “Content is still king,” says Pugh. “The best audiences are going to be around great content so of course there are going to be fraudsters out there trying to impersonate the best publishers.”

The Non-Human Traffic booklet doesn’t touch upon the issue of third-party traffic sourcing, an area of much concern to publishers that was raised in the ANA White Ops report “The Bot Baseline: Fraud in Digital Advertising, which found that sourced traffic display inventory was almost five times more likely to be fraudulent.  While Pugh says he has seen cases of publishers trying to hide that sort of traffic in the past, these days they are becoming increasingly aware of the negative effects and are working hard to ensure that third-party traffic comes from reputable sources, thanks in part to vocal industry leaders such as AdWeek’s Mike Shields. Ultimately, he encourages publishers to continue to place a premium on building quality audiences, “If you are a publisher, you have to get traffic to your site. No, all sourced traffic isn’t bad, but the old saying you get what you pay for applies here.”

While both Yarnall and Pugh note that scammers continue to change their tactics in order to counteract the anti-fraud measures put in place by publishers, they also highlight the creativity coming from the media, marketing and measurement side of the equation in addressing these issues.  What’s key to staying ahead of what’s sure to be an on-going issue is the sharing of information and continued efforts by leaders in the industry to shine a light on the problems as well as the victories in combatting fraud and non-human traffic. And while fraud will never be entirely eliminated, Yarnall’s goal is to make it much harder and more expensive for fraudsters to exist.

Industry-Research | Marketing | Research

Sharethrough Takes A Neuroscience Perspective to Look at Mobile Native Advertising

Sharethrough, a software company that enables leading websites and apps to manage their in-feed, native ads, commissioned a study “A Neuroscience Perspective: Asessing Visual Focus, Message Processing & The Ability To Strengthen Associations Through Mobile Native Advertising” from Nielsen to determine how consumers visually process mobile ads. What’s interesting about this particular study is that instead of the usual survey-based research, it applied eye tracking and neuroscience—the study of subconscious reactions in the brain—to mobile advertising.

According to Sharethrough:

Unlike survey-based mobile measurement, which evaluates a consumer’s conscious reactions to ads, neuroscience taps into the brain’s subconscious reactions as well. This is critical: the subconscious is the motivating force behind many of our actions, including which brands we buy from.

To understand the effectiveness of mobile advertising, the study (conducted in accordance with Nielsen’s proprietary methodology) compared native ads and banners, both placed in-feed. Nielsen worked with five premium advertisers, including Boeing, creating mock ads from similar creative elements that were optimized for each format. Study participants were shown a video simulating the experience of scrolling through an editorial feed. The feed is paused and the participant is shown either a native ad or an in-feed banner. Using a combination of EEG data— measurements of neural activity in the brain—and eye tracking, Nielsen quantified where and how the participants’ focus was being directed.

Among the key findings, which Sharethrough explores in more detail, are:NativeAdBrain

  • Native Ads Appear to Receive Two Times More Visual Focus than Banners
  • Banners Are Processed Peripherally
  • Native Ads Are Being Read
  • Native Ad Headlines Can Be Optimized to Trigger Associations
  • Brand Assets Impact Brand Resonance Lift

Quartz’ Alice Truong takes a look at the research in her article:
Scientific proof that no one pays attention to banner ads