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Industry-Research | Revenue

Understanding the three types of news subscribers and how to attract them

The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, LA Times, and others continue to report increases in subscriptions. Undoubtedly, this is a trend that media organizations of all types would like to get in on. It is helpful, then, to understand who these subscribers are as well as why are they willing to pay for their news. A new study, The 3 types of news subscribers: Why they pay and how to convert them, from The American Press Institute and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs identifies the emotional and behavioral factors that affect consumers’ news subscription decisions. The research methodology included the use of in-depth interviews to uncover the values and motivations key to subscription habits.

Three types of subscribers (and how to attract them):

1. Civically Committed: those individuals supporting goals and initiatives that reflect their personal values. The Civically Committed subscribe to a higher-than-average number of subscriptions.

  • High willingness to pay for news content.
  • Views their support of journalism as a moral duty.
  • Subscription decisions are more emotional than practical.
  • Subscribes to a higher-than-average number of publications.
  • Prioritizes organizations whose goals and values align with their own.
  • High loyalty; likely to pay for subscriptions even if they aren’t using them.
  • Low price sensitivity.
Key descriptors
  • Likely a news organization member, or donor.
  • Subscribes and donates to multiple news sources.
  • Likely donates to other causes and/or volunteers.
Strategies to attract
  • Publicize the news brand’s mission, values and community role. Ensure the brand’s mission and agenda is public. The Civically Committed support news organization aligned with their thinking.
  • Partner with civic-minded organizations and brands. Affiliate with causes the Civically Committed are already involved in and become part of their community.
  • Create events where they can meet journalists and get to know one another.
  • Reward them with appreciation. The Civically Committed see their subscription as an extension of themselves. Remember to thank them and be personal.
  • Allow them to donate to a news publication by adding a philanthropic relationship to their subscription. The Civically Committed want to support journalism.

2. Thrifty Transactors: consumers who pay for no-nonsense value and are highly selective in their subscriptions.

  • Moderate willingness to pay for news content.
  • News subscriptions are a combination of utility and relevance.
  • Price sensitive; needs to have high value.
  • Loyal to a small, highly curated number of publications.
  • Specific reasons for subscription such as part of a daily ritual.
Key descriptors
  • Subscribers usually have at least one publication related to hobby or special interest.
  • Fans of coupon clipping.
  • May rely on a news publication for its coverage of one topic (look for digital users with high engagement in one area).
Strategies to attract
  • Provide excellence and ensure content stands out as high value and unique. Thrifty Transactors look to dedicated sources for items that really matter to them. Find these subject areas and serve the Thrifty Transactors.
  • Consider offering subscriptions by verticals or specialty areas. Thrifty Transactors only want to pay for the content they use so make sure they know the details of the publication’s reporting areas.
  • Think of magazine marketing partnerships to promote subscriptions of like content.

3. Elusive Engagers: generally do not like subscriptions. They see news and information as a commodity that should be free.

  • Low willingness to pay for news content.
  • Utility drives subscriptions.
  • Sees news and information as a commodity.
  • Not comfortable with transaction and commitment of subscription.
  • Low loyalty.
Key descriptors
  • Likes free trials.
  • Prefers digital.
  • Likely to find content through search.
Strategies to attract:
  • Offer one-time-payment options with no commitment and include easy cancelation policy. It’s important to avoid monthly payment reminders.
  • Monetize Elusive Engagers outside of subscriptions. Market other products such as books, souvenirs, e-commerce, third-party paid promotions, etc.

The subscriber segments identified in this research are based on behavior, attitudes and beliefs, not demographics. This means an individual’s group will not likely change as they get older. However, further analysis of the segment groups by print and digital usage and demographics are also valuable in establishing marketing and monetization plans. Importantly, pinpoint the key differentiators of the news brand by segments to use in acquisition and renewal strategies.

Advertising | Perspectives | Revenue

Why ads.txt is important to both sellers and buyers

With billions of dollars at stake, the digital advertising industry has attracted bad players who are fraudulently siphoning revenue from our industry, costing both publisher and brands dearly. It is estimated that it could cost the ad business over $16 billion globally in 2017 out of a total $85 billion in spend. As a result, the industry is looking for ways to deal with advertising fraud. Ads.txt is at the top of the agenda as a way to help resolve this problem.

What is ads.txt?

Ads.txt is an initiative driven by the IAB Tech Lab that helps publishers declare who is authorized to sell their inventory therefore helping to prevent profit from counterfeit / fraudulent inventory.

The IAB Tech Lab states that its mission is to “increase transparency in the programmatic advertising ecosystem.” The “ads” in ads.txt, the IAB continues, stands for “authorized digital sellers” and it’s “a simple, flexible and secure method that publishers and distributors can use to publicly declare the companies they authorize to sell their digital inventory.”

The idea is simple: Publishers place a file on their server identifying exactly which companies they sell their inventory through.

Why is important to the buyer?

As publishers adopt ads.txt, buyers will be able to more easily identify the authorized digital sellers for a participating publisher, allowing brands to have confidence that they are buying authentic publisher inventory.

Buyers are also trying to reduce layers of intermediaries — they want to feed more money to the publishers and prefer to work with networks like Sovrn that have a direct relationship with the publisher.

Many key buyers and buying platforms, including Google’s DoubleClick Bid Manager (DBM), are making it clear that they will show a preference to publishers with the ads.txt file installed. The director of programmatic at DigitasLBi said in an open letter: “We will be looking to adopt this protocol in our buying as soon as the fourth quarter of 2017, so we encourage your participation as soon as possible.”

“By the end of October, DoubleClick Bid Manager (DBM) will only buy inventory from sources identified as authorized sellers in a publisher’s ads.txt file when a file is available,” writes Ginny Marvin in Martech Today. “Presumably, at some point, ads.txt will be a requirement for DBM.”

Why is this important to the seller?

Ads.txt gives publishers control over their inventory in the market, making it harder for bad actors to profit from selling counterfeit inventory. This is clearly a big issue for major brands, but the adoption across the industry as a whole is important, as it will deliver an industry standard for everyone going forward.

The actual ads.txt file is extremely small and takes almost no time to load. Implementation is relatively easy, and there’s no cost involved.

Another bit of good news for publishers: the Wall Street Journal recently reported that “the average price of ad space purchased through Google’s ad-buying systems has increased over the past three weeks,” thanks to ads.txt.

What next?

Sovrn fully supports the rollout of ads.txt, and we are keen to help publishers to get up and running immediately. We encourage all our publishers to install an ads.txt file ASAP — this link shows you how.

As more sites adopt ads.txt, buyers will more frequently prefer to buy from sites with the file live. Therefore, we recommend you do this sooner rather than later and make sure you include Sovrn as a trusted source. Also consider familiarizing yourself with the IAB Tech Lab’s spec on ads.txt, a peer-reviewed standard developed with the support of the OpenRTB working group.

Finally, the introduction of OpenRTB 3.0 will bring a new iteration of ads.text in ads.cert, which will endeavor to certify the type of data transferred in an ads.txt file. Note that this is unlikely to see widespread adoption until Q3 2018 or beyond, when most of the major platforms have upgraded to this new version.

Andy Evans has worked on all sides of the media industry from print and digital publishing, in an ad agency and most recently, ad tech. He’s worked with many of the world’s leading global brands and has been in digital media since 1997. Since the acquisition of OnScroll, he joined the executive team of Sovrn to integrate and run its European operations with Sovrn and has more recently taken on the role of Chief Marketing Officer for the brand globally. Andy is also an industry panelist and speaker on all things digital advertising, with key expertise in viewability.

Innovation | Revenue | Video

Behind the YouTube video strategy at The Washington Post, Fusion, and The Atlantic

Video has become an increasingly important delivery medium for media brands. Given the investment, it might seem like they’d want to keep this video traffic firmly on their own sites. However, as with other types of content, most publishers have developed a distribution strategy for multiple platforms. Because YouTube offers such an efficient way for viewers to find, view, and share video content, it has become a de facto video distribution channel for many media outlets.

Undoubtedly, YouTube has become a primary video viewing destination for internet viewers. And media companies need to go where the viewers are. This is true regardless of platform – desktop, mobile, or OTT. It makes little sense to make a significant investment in video exclusively for your site if the video audience is off watching somewhere else.

So, it follows that companies investing in video content are giving YouTube a hard look. Of course, as with every content distribution decision, there are always trade-offs. However, many believe that reaching the sizable YouTube audience is worth the effort. While he described the evolution of their  YouTube strategy as “a work in progress,” Jigar Mehta, SVP, head of video at Fusion Media Group believes it is well worth the effort. Topping the list of priorities is making Fusion’s video more discoverable on what he describes as “the second largest search engine in the world.”

Establishing a YouTube strategy

Each company will need to develop a YouTube strategy that suits its resources and objectives. However, some may want to follow the Washington Post’s lead. They think of YouTube as a distinct content delivery channel that attracts viewers who might not normally visit their website. That provides an opportunity to introduce your brand to an entirely new audience, an exciting prospect for any content producer.

“YouTube is a space with a great deal of audience and revenue potential that we have only begun to tap into. We see it as the primary place to build a diverse audience that will think of The Washington Post as video-first and engage with our visual journalism,” Nadine Ajaka senior producer for video platforms at The Washington Post explained.

She said that they have separate strategies for how they approach video on the Post’s website and what they deliver on YouTube. “The difference between what we choose to publish on washingtonpost.com and what we publish to YouTube is that for YouTube it must stand alone. On the site, there are times when video will lead the story, but often we are plugging in and embedding clips and social video that are meant to add to what has been written,” Ajaka said.

Although they share the Post’s desire to build an audience that might not frequent their site, Kasia Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg executive producer for The Atlantic says her company has taken a different approach. YouTube is central to their video distribution strategy.

“We recently switched to YouTube as our primary video hosting service. Now, we host all our videos on YouTube and integrate the player throughout TheAtlantic.com. This decision was motivated by a desire to build audience beyond our owned and operated platform. YouTube’s subscriber features, search functionality and recommendation algorithm all help us do that,” she said.

Long form anyone?

While audience development seems to be the be a primary driver behind using YouTube, it also offers a place to hone and deliver longer form content. This is because people see it as a destination where they can stay for a while and watch – if the content is compelling enough.

“YouTube emphasizes watch time over clicks and encourages viewers to watch with the sound turned on. We’ve seen amazing engagement. A recent 15-minute documentary has earned an average watch time of eight minutes,” The Atlantic’s Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg said.

Mehta pointed out that this emphasis on watch time correlates with better performance for Fusion’s long form content on YouTube. He said that they approach YouTube as a specific content destination (and not a competing channel for their own sites). As such, they specifically optimize their videos for the platform.

Ajaka from the Post emphasizes that you have to really present video people want to see on YouTube, or you won’t build a subscriber base for your channel. “With YouTube, there’s a real opportunity to hone your video inventory and create a coherent body of work. For some news publishers, video can be a churning out of quick-turn clips. Luckily, we have editors and video journalists who are continually working on long-form reported visual stories, that tell a cohesive story. These are perfect for YouTube as a platform,” she explained.

Monetizing content

YouTube offers more than delivery tools and audience engagement. It also provides a means for monetization, which is certainly welcome given that producing quality video can be expensive.

In fact, Mehta finds that YouTube offers better monetization options than Facebook or Twitter and he  is optimistic about YouTube’s long-term roadmap. “We are currently utilizing AdSense on YouTube which is their programmatic option. YouTube also has other products including YouTube Red and YouTube TV that as they become more mature will be interesting options as well,” he said.

Ajaka said the Post is talking to YouTube about direct-selling of their ads, but it hasn’t yet come to pass.

At The Atlantic, Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg said that they are “primarily focused on direct sold sponsorships and pre-roll, both on our domain and off. Our main challenge month over month is keeping up with the demand,” (which is a good problem to have).

As with any external platform, there are going to be trade-offs, but YouTube offers companies a way to distribute video that puts it in front of an engaged audience with a good search engine and monetization tools. “Our YouTube audience is seeking video first and foremost, and will have an easier time surfacing our videos than someone searching the site,” Ajaka said. That seems like a compelling reason for any media brand to build a YouTube presence.

Advertising | Industry-Research | Revenue

Consumer publishing is changing: Which advertising methods are working best?

With the introduction of new advertising formats, ad types, and methods of buying and selling inventory, consumer publishing is undergoing some big changes. To get a closer look at what’s working,  MediaRadar conducted the “2016 Consumer Advertising Report,” using our data science-powered platform to review these trends for 2016 and Q1 2017.

Here’s a look at some of the most notable findings.

Native advertisers up 74 percent.

High CPM ad placements are surging. Native ad buyers, in particular, are up, rising three-quarters (74%) from Q1 2016 to Q1 2017. This represents the largest growth in buyers for any ad format. Looking back further, we found that demand for native has nearly tripled since January 2015, which had less than 1,000 buyers (981). In January 2017, there were almost 3,000 (2,882). Consumer advertising is shifting as audience consumption patterns evolve. We foresee advertisers will keep spending more on native because it often outperforms traditional ad units.

Print ad spend declined 6 percent.

The number of print ad pages in Q1 2016 was 117,551. Compared to Q1 2017, the number of print ad pages has decreased 8 percent year-over-year to 107,698. Similarly, estimated print ad spend has declined 6 percent from Q1 2016 to Q1 2017. However, even with this decline, there are still a considerable amount of pages being bought. We notice niche and enthusiast titles are on the rise, with some regional titles flourishing.

Programmatic buyers down 12 percent.

According to our data, 45,008 advertisers purchased ads programmatically in Q1 2016. In Q1 2017, however, the number of programmatic advertisers dropped substantially, falling 12 percent year-over-year. On the quarter, more than 5,000 fewer advertisers (39,415) bought programmatically.

After years of growth, the decline in programmatic buyers is likely attributed to concerns around brand safety – especially given the recent problems for companies like YouTube. This form of advertising continues to evolve as brands seek more control over where their ads are running. We expect to see programmatic rise as more brands move to programmatic direct models.

Our report showed that native is surging, and buyers are investing accordingly. Print ad spend is declining as a whole, but is buoyed by vertical subject matter and titles. Publishers can also expect to see programmatic rise as more brands shift to programmatic direct models. It will be interesting to see how these developments play out in the second half of 2017.

Perspectives | Revenue

The subscription discussion we should be having

If 2016 was the year of the platform, 2017 is the year of the subscriber.

Amid a backdrop of political change, wavering trust in government and media, and the rise of fake news, subscriptions are up among the largest U.S. publishers, proving that consumers value high quality journalism. According to Pew Research, the numbers show that in 2016, The New York Times added more than 500,000 digital subscriptions – a 47% year-over-year rise, and The Wall Street Journal added more than 150,000 digital subscriptions, a 23% rise. Even Facebook recently announced that it’s building a feature that would encourage readers to subscribe to news publications, in response to publisher interest.

And this trend isn’t going away. According to WAN-IFRA’s 2017 World Press Trends report, understanding paying commercial models is the number one priority of publishers this year, particularly as audience revenues surpass advertising revenues among global newspapers.

While the industry rightfully focuses on growing new subscribers and experimenting with business models, the discussion should not end there. What we’re not talking enough about is that subscribers are a distinct audience. They engage with your content in a different way and are loyalists in a different way. Understanding these differences is where publishers will build their revenue strategies to take their businesses to the next level.

Subscribers are Unique

No one will pay for content that doesn’t repeatedly engage them.

Loyal readers, which on average account for the majority of pageviews across all channels, have time and time again proven to be your most valuable as they consume more of your content.

And what is that link between loyalty and subscriptions? Active engagement. A recent report by the MIT School of Management, Turning Content Viewers Into Subscribers, presented the Subscriber Ladder of Participation as an illustration of reader lifecycle. Rather than thinking of your reader journey in a passive way, it encourages you to build your strategy around action: moving readers from Anonymous to Subscriber by encouraging them to act.

MIT School of Management’s Subscriber Ladder of Participation

And this active participation is central to Chartbeat as well – our research has shown that analyzing and optimizing the reader experience around engagement patterns as opposed to just empty pageviews drives returning visitors, motivating users to proverbially ascend the ladder towards subscriptions. Subscribers are loyalists who engage with your content in a unique way, and understanding that engagement is key to driving more loyalty.

As Kritsanarat Khunkham from Die Welt put it, “Our whole subscription model is based on returning visitors—they’re essential. You can only turn users to subscribers when they’re returning. I’d rather have 500 returning visitors than 5,000 one-time users. They’re [the ones] who appreciate my work, who trust my brand.”

Besides the simple fact that returning visitors increase ad impressions, they also represent a crucial point in a publisher’s subscription funnel. Every new visitor is a potential subscriber, but — to put it bluntly — no one will pay for content that doesn’t engage them.

Subscribers are Ideal

Once you’ve engaged your subscribing audience, you need to focus on keeping them and getting more. To do this, you need to study how they engage and drive like-behaviors in your loyal/returning audience to turn them into subscribers.

Khunkham notes that often, their consistent eye on data uncovers what topics their audience is truly interested in. This justifies expanding coverage in those areas, often areas they might not have expected. “Sometimes [our audience is] more interested in political news than we expected, and we have such potential for [an audience] who reads seriously,” he says. “When we can prove to [journalists] that readers engage with their meaningful work, it motivates them.”

In other words, publishers need to start thinking about taking their data past the point of conversion. Once a reader has subscribed, are you continuing to dig deeper into their behaviors and deliver the content that they have demonstrated a complex interest in? Discover not only what content your subscriber communities engage with, but think of subscription status as another lens to evaluate all of your editorial strategies — from social media channels and platforms, to devices and portals, and even relationship-building campaigns.

At the end of the day, understanding new visitors and their journey to return is important, but garnering deeper insights around how subscribers engage with your content differently can unlock durable retention and growth strategies for publishers across the board.

Terri Walter, the Chief Marketing Officer of Chartbeat, works every day to ensure that publishers and newsrooms have the tools and insights they need for quality content to thrive. A digital marketing veteran of 20 years, Terri has worked over the course of her career to position high potential brands and spearhead thought leadership in media and analytics at companies including DoubleClick, Razorfish and Microsoft Advertising.

Perspectives | Revenue

Facebook’s support for subscriptions is a double-edged sword

Campbell Brown, the former NBC and CNN broadcaster who is now Facebook’s head of news partnerships, confirmed in a speech at a digital publishing conference that the social network plans to roll out support for subscriptions as part of its mobile Instant Articles platform.

There have been multiple reports that the company was working on such a plan, including a recent piece by Digiday that quoted a number of sources, but Brown’s speech is the first official confirmation. She said testing of the new feature will begin in October.

This plan is likely to cause some cheering in media land, because a number of publishers have been clamoring for paywall support from Facebook. They have also criticized the lackluster performance of the existing Instant Articles format when it comes to generating revenue.

As with most things involving Facebook, however, this deal sounds like a classic Faustian bargain.

What’s the Deal?

According to Brown, subscriptions will work this way: If a publisher chooses to implement support for a paywall, readers will get 10 articles for free — in much the same way they do with the New York Times’ “metered” access plan. After that, they will be prompted to sign up for a subscription. If they already have one, Facebook says it will make it easy for them to log in.

And what about the revenue — will there be some kind of sharing plan, where Facebook takes a percentage, the way Apple does with its 30%? The company isn’t saying, but it seems likely that there will be, although perhaps not to begin with.

Update: In a statement on Wednesday, Brown said “Quality journalism costs money to produce, and we want to make sure it can thrive on Facebook. As part of our test to allow publishers in Instant Articles to implement a paywall, they will link to their own websites to process subscriptions and keep 100% of the revenue.”

Brown did say that the social network would give publishers control over all of the reader and subscription data involved in the process, which is also likely to come as good news to many. At least they don’t have to hand all of that over to Facebook as well as all of their content. But that doesn’t mean this deal is something media companies should leap at.

The context to this offer, as a number of people have pointed out, is that Facebook is taking some sustained fire for its dominance of the advertising industry (along with Google), with the News Media Alliance arguing its members should be exempted from antitrust laws so that they can present a combined front in bargaining with the digital giants. I wrote about that idea in a previous post.

Not only that, but a number of publishers — including the New York Times, an early partner — have talked openly about how Instant Articles has proven to be a bit of a bust revenue-wise. Some have turned their back on the platform completely, despite Facebook’s attempts to improve things.

The Bottom Line

But the bottom line with this subscription offering is the same as it has been with Instant Articles and Facebook video and half a dozen other things the social networking behemoth has come up with: They are fundamentally designed to benefit Facebook, and to centralise control in its hands, and to generate as much content as possible. Any benefits they provide to media companies are ancillary at best.

If you connect your subscription plan to Facebook, will you get increased reach? Probably. Will it help you drive some new sign-ups? Perhaps. But it’s important to remember that the entity in control of every aspect of that relationship is Facebook, not you — Facebook decides who sees what and when, what it looks like, how it functions, and how much revenue you get.

In other words, you are working on land that has been given to you by a feudal lord, and that rarely ends well.

Mathew Ingram covers the evolution of media and the social web. Most recently, he was a senior writer at Fortune magazine. Prior to that, Ingram was a senior writer at Gigaom.com, one of the leading technology blog networks in the United States, based in San Francisco and founded in 2006 by former Forbes and Business 2.0 writer Om Malik. He also served as the first communities editor of The Globe and Mail, a daily national newspaper based in Toronto.

Advertising | Innovation | Revenue

Bringing measurement to podcasts

The lack of metrics and tracking in the world of podcasts has kept many advertisers away from the space. However, podcasting has been a boon for direct response advertisers like Squarespace, BlueApron, and Samantha Bee’s favorite, MeUndies. Apple recently announced that it will finally share analytics on listener behavior in aggregate. This is a tremendous advancement for podcasting. The data will help producers understand what content hooks listeners and where they drop off. But, beyond measuring listener behavior, Slate wants to answer one big question for brand advertisers: Do podcasts work?

To answer this question, Slate Group Studios partnered with Prudential Financial Inc. on a program called Wealth Wits and paired it with the first study of it’s kind to assess the impact of a branded podcast program.

Slate was an early pioneer in podcasting and has been a leading force in the space for more than 12 years. As listeners flock to the medium, brands are keen to experiment. In 2015, Slate created its first branded podcasts with HBO, GE and Prudential. However, the lack of measurement has hampered aspirations to build out robust, long-term podcast marketing strategies.

Our Wealth Wits Investigation

The Prudential Wealth Wits program offered a customized content experience powered by the listener’s own financial behavior. The capstone of the campaign was an interactive self-assessment quiz, promoted on Slate, that served up a personalized podcast. The branded podcast was created in partnership with Prudential and hosted by journalist, comedian, and author Faith Salie. Wealth Wits intended to help people of all walks of life think about their retirement and plan for the future.

Slate Group Studios created a custom methodology in order to understand and assess the overall impact of the Wealth Wits campaign on Prudential’s brand favorability. The study looked at overall brand awareness, favorability and consideration. GFK Research measured the results.

For the study, control survey responses were collected prior to campaign launch to ensure no exposure to branded podcast. Exposed survey respondents were collected via a host-read at the end of the podcast to ensure exposure to branded content. The survey was hosted at an easy-to-remember vanity URL.

Measuring the Results

One positive result was that nearly 20% of survey respondents reported that they were very or somewhat likely to recommend Prudential to their friends and family.

Because this was a cross-platform program with interactive, display and audio elements, the study allowed us to compare the impact of different media types. These comparisons produced the most exciting findings, offering up valuable, statistically significant evidence of podcast advertising’s effectiveness. In short, the study found that podcast units were more than twice as successful than banner ads in driving statistically significant lifts in Brand Awareness (+14%) and Ad Recall (+21%).

In addition to finding that podcast units were more than twice as successful than banner ads in driving statistically significant lifts in Brand Awareness and Ad Recall, the units’ display creative also led to statistically significant lifts of 7% in Favorability and 8% in Consideration.

It was encouraging to see the success of Wealth Wits reflected in meaningful metrics. However, it’s even more exciting that the results offer up much-needed data on the effectiveness of branded podcasts as a medium. While the creativity afforded within the podcast space and the deep engagement have made branded podcasts desirable, the data to support the investment has often been elusive. With our custom methodology, the industry at large now has a model to follow and hard numbers to measure against.

We can now say emphatically that, yes, podcasts do work.

About the authors

Charlie Kammerer is Chief Revenue Officer of Slate, where he focuses on developing ways for brands to tap into Slate‘s audience through editorial content, podcasting, video, and custom programs. Kammerer joined Slate in 2017 after spending twenty years at Time Inc., where he was a brand builder and revenue generator across a diverse portfolio of brands, including Real Simple, Fortune, Food and Wine, Cooking Light, Golf, and This Old House. He’s based out of Slate‘s Brooklyn office.

Jim Lehnhoff is Vice President at Slate Group Studios, Slate’s in-house branded podcast agency. Formerly, Jim was Director of Advertising Strategy at Gawker Media, where he was responsible for overhauling the company’s go-to- market strategy while managing a team of six strategists. Prior to Gawker, Lehnhoff cut his teeth at Serious Eats, Curbed Network, and The Onion.

Industry-Research | Revenue

The data shows it: Article pageviews and their value don’t correlate

Advertisers know that not every view is created equal and that it’s important to understand your brand in context. It’s why ad tech companies created targeting options. It’s why content can be bought by topic. Are the companies creating content thinking about getting the most value out of their audiences in the same way?

To figure out if this is the case, we examined Parse.ly’s publisher data to see how much volume different topics produce. We broke this down by the number of articles written and the average pageviews per article. Then we compared that to how advertisers value different audience segments.

The Data: Audiences by Topic

Examining how people find different topics online revealed that the subject matter of an article has an impact on the likely source of traffic. For example, in a sample of one million articles in the Parse.ly network, Facebook brought in 87% of pageviews to lifestyle content. Google search accounted for 61% of readership to technology stories.

In addition to learning how people found the articles, we looked at how did each topic compared by scale and popularity. Articles that fell cleanly into the lifestyle or U.S. presidential politics categories received the most views, while articles about sports and entertainment were the most common by volume.

A couple of explanations about our methodology are worth noting. For this report, we selected articles that fell cleanly into one category. In other words, we selected articles where at least two thirds of the words were generated by a single topic. This left us with a subset of just over one million articles that we could cleanly assign to a single topic.

For example, imagine that most articles that are written as a mix of two or more topics. Those will be excluded from this analysis. It simply doesn’t make a clear conclusion to say that “mixed-topic articles with a lifestyle slant” tend to get more pageviews. However, we can confidently say that articles that are mostly about lifestyle tend to get more pageviews than articles mostly about business.

Other important data preparation decisions to note are that we included only English-language articles. We also excluded articles whose full text was fewer than 600 characters. (The complete methodology is detailed in the full report.)

Pageviews vs. Audience

The extremes are quite telling. An average article in the lifestyle category gets nine times the pageviews of an average article on business and finance. So, does this mean the lifestyle pageview will bring in nine times as much revenue?

In fact, in some cases, the opposite is true. Digiday recently reported that CNN leverages audience segments by vertical to optimize ad rates. Chris Herbert, CNN’s SVP of digital operations and strategy, explained: “CNN’s finance vertical, CNNMoney, for example, commands higher ad rates than the parent site does because of its upscale audience, which could justify spending more to drive audience to that property.”

So, the really interesting question is how a publisher can match monetization to the potential expected pageview or volume, regardless of scale.

For example, even if the advertising value of certain topics are lower, the high volume of certain content types opens up other monetary opportunities. Lifestyle publishers and Condé Nast brands such as Condé Nast Traveler and Allure are forging partnerships to create branded subscription boxes. Efforts like these allow them to take advantage of the large “top-of-funnel” audience to drive purchase conversions.

Opportunities in High Volume/ Low Pageviews

Our team was surprised that the average views for each sports article ranked so low among topics. Given that the high-volume content was comprised mostly of local and even high school sports means that the average view totals are much lower. This is particularly true when compared to the audience for stories about national leagues. It is also worth noting that a preponderance of extremely short stories—such as those on game stats, syndication or even automated sports reporting—contribute to the high volume.

Taken in aggregate though, readers generally engage well with sports topics. A previous study we did (based on different data, but also looking at topics) found that sites focused on sports had a median engaged time of 51 seconds per article. Thus, sports can offer a strong monetization opportunity beyond pageviews. Engaged and loyal audiences can be monetized more easily through subscriptions, live events, or membership models.

Bring back the Classifieds?

Job postings are an example of a topic with low article volume—the lowest, in fact, of all topics analyzed—and high pageviews per article. From our research, we learned that the majority of traffic to job postings comes from Google search, which drives 84.4% of referral traffic. Facebook drives 11.9% of traffic comes, while the rest comes from other sources. This kind of traffic breakdown makes sense in the context of pageviews. If readers are searching for very specific information, a small subset of articles could generate a high volume of pageviews.

The classifieds are unlikely to return to their status as a primary revenue driver. However, for any scenario where you have a high amount of traffic to a low amount of content, there is likely to be room for revenue growth.

Using Data to See the Full Picture

The data we used for this study identifies ways that audience data should be considered for revenue potential, especially for opportunities outside of traditional display advertising. However, to be fully acted on, audience data must be synced in a way, both culturally and technologically, that connects it to business and monetary objectives.

Perspectives | Revenue

Why the duopoly should help publishers drive subscriptions

A growing number of publishers – non-profit and for-profit – have pushed into subscriptions, memberships and donations. However, it’s been difficult to motivate the big drivers of digital content consumption – namely Facebook and Google – to help push payments for publishers.

There are good reasons for this: The tech giants don’t have an inherent reason to drive subscriptions or put up walls between their unfettered platforms and paid content. But if they truly want to support quality journalism and the good content that delivers so much engagement on their platforms, then it’s important they put time and resources into supporting these publishers.

It is also a matter of principle. If the duopoly in online advertising is going to vacuum up all the online ad growth, then the least they could do is throw publishers a life-line by pushing some people into subscription funnels. And for smaller publishers, the platforms could provide true life support to make sure that news deserts and other underserved areas have thriving news organizations.

Facebook’s Baby Steps

Already, Facebook is developing a way to help people subscribe to news orgs via Instant Articles, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. The feature is being developed for the mobile Facebook app, and Facebook would like to create a metered model where readers get a certain number of articles free before having to pay up.

But the devil is in the details. Facebook might want to take a cut of the purchases if people pay for content on Facebook. And setting up a meter would have to be variable as some sites have more severe paywalls than others. For instance, the Washington Post, and New York Times have more forgiving walls than the Wall Street Journal or Financial Times.

And yet, this is a problem that really must be solved for the small and medium-sized publishers whose life could depend on these subscriptions.

“Helping news publishers get paid for their digital content is arguably the most meaningful help that Facebook could provide to global journalism,” Lenfest Institute CEO Jim Friedlich told the Journal. “If Facebook truly creates a successful platform for the sale of news subscriptions at scale it will be a powerful and historic game changer for the news industry.”

Google’s ‘Funding Choices’ and Roundtable Chat

Google definitely has a head-start on Facebook when it comes to working with publishers of all sizes. Its Google News Lab has been providing training and tools for newsrooms for a few years. But its early efforts in driving payments to publishers have been underwhelming so far.

In 2015, Google launched Contributor to give publishers a way to offer options to visitors. They could either disable your ad-blocker or pay a per-page fee for your visit without ads. But that effort was scuttled for a new version of Contributor this month that includes “Funding Choices,” a similar message crafted by publishers to give people the same choice as before: Pay up or turn off that ad-blocker. Users can buy a $5 pass and then pay as they visit these sites.

But Google can do more. At a recent Platforms + Publishers private roundtable that I produced at Google’s office in Chicago, one of the most popular breakout groups was around driving subscriptions to smaller publishers – including donations to non-profits. Some ideas  discussed include a potential Chrome extension for donations; and a product called “AMP Revenues” or “AMP Donate” that could drive payments from within Google AMP. And with the data that Google has on potential customers, they could partner to help publishers identify future subscribers.

Why It’s Worth the Challenge

Helping publishers drive subscriptions and donations isn’t an impossible challenge for the tech giants, but it is a challenge. Every publisher has its own kind of paywall, its own membership structure, its own tiers of paid content and services. There’s very little that’s standard, and there are a million different small publishers out there. Not to mention the issues that platforms have just identifying who is trustworthy and not polluting the web with spam and fake news.

However, there are associations that can help the tech companies work with small and local players, including the Local Media Consortium, National Association of Broadcasters, Local Independent Online News Publishers, Institute for Nonprofit News and, of course, Digital Content Next, though it skews bigger.

Sound Reasons Why

Here’s a roundup of reasons why this is worth the effort for platforms:

  • Google wants to organize the world’s information, and if it truly wants quality information from all over the country, all over the world, it will have to help identify and help keep the ecosystem of smaller players healthy. Driving revenues to those players, whether through ads or subscriptions, makes sense for everyone’s bottom line.
  • The platforms have already built relationships with the publishers on so many fronts – around ad-blocking and ad quality, mobile speed, fact-checking – that making a bigger investment in subscriptions will only deepen those relationships and build more trust.
  • Even though there’s a feeling that putting up a paywall will only remove the content from platforms, or send them off the social networks, the reality is that subscription sites still depend on engagement, comments and community (think Facebook Groups) on social media.
  • The tech giants in Silicon Valley already have to contend with enough bad PR, and even global anti-trust concerns, so at the very least this will show that they care about the little guy and gal, the non-profit, the hyper-local, the metro daily.

And speaking of PR, we all know that when Facebook and Google talk about developing new ways to help publishers, we all roll our eyes and wonder if it’s all just for show. On the subject of subscriptions and paid content, this is a chance for the platforms to show that they aren’t all talk and no action. Supporting publishers could make a lasting difference.

Perspectives | Revenue | Video

Who’s winning (and losing) the online video boom?

As the NewFronts wrapped up, there was a growing feeling that online video wasn’t just a precursor to the Upfronts and broadcast that were coming next. The NewNew Fronts are becoming the main event.

Traditional TV networks are losing their audiences as competition from non-linear, streaming programming is rising — everything from Netflix and Hulu to Facebook and Snapchat. Digital ad spending overtook TV ad spending for the first time last year ($71.6 billion versus $71.2 billion, respectively), according to eMarketer. A new report commissioned by the IAB found that spending on ads around original digital video programming has doubled in the past two years.

These inescapable trends are creating a new frontier for publishers trying to reap the benefits of the video ad boom. Broadcasters and newspapers are trying to figure out how to allocate more resources for video, while digital-native publishers try to keep up with demand.

With that in mind, here’s a rundown of some of the winners and losers in the online video explosion.

Winners

Comcast

NBCUniversal, the digital offshoot of the traditional broadcast network, earns major points for having invested $500 million in Snap (think long-term, not just the first earnings report!), $400 million in BuzzFeed and $200 million in Vox, thereby creating partnerships that benefit both traditional and new media players. When Conde Nast joined the NBCUniversal and Vox Media advertising network, the digital conglomerate announced it’ll reach 200 million consumers online, including 99% of all millennials in the U.S. And these three entities are together developing two new ad products around mobile video and branded content.

Facebook

If there is a behemoth winner in the house, it’s surely Facebook. The world’s largest social network has pushed its news feed to prioritize video, and publishers have to post videos there if they want to reach Facebook’s nearly 1.3 billion daily users. Recode’s Kurt Wagner reported last month that Facebook is planning to pay publishers to create more produced video on the platform, to help push its new mid-roll ad products (the new deal will replace the one Facebook struck with publishers last year to use Facebook Live).

Facebook will offset the cost of paying publishers by earning the money back from the mid-roll ads, and then splitting whatever revenue remains with the publishers. While some publishers are hesitant to embark on such a deal with unproven benefits — no one knows how the ads will fare yet, and earning returns on Facebook video has long been a frustration for publishers — many others will give it a shot.

YouTube

Like Facebook, Google’s YouTube is riding the benefits of the online video boom. YouTube may have stumbled earlier this year when advertisers found their content showing on extremist videos, but it’s still the world’s most popular video destination. And now the world’s most popular video website is planning to produce six different ad-supported original series and develop more than 40 original shows and films over the next year. It’s also investing more resources into its ad-free subscription service YouTube Red (and the YouTube TV skinny bundle), pushing YouTube into a tier of competition that includes Hulu, Amazon Video and Netflix.

Google earned more than $24 billion in advertising sales in the first quarter — more than that of the entire TV industry – even in the face of boycotts over brand safety. The tech giant is betting on high-profile YouTube stars and celebrities to bring viewers to these advertisers, and has made changes to improve controls for advertisers. If it continues to cultivate a wide audience around its original programming, it can certainly demand higher rates from advertisers even in the face of setbacks.

New York Times

The Gray Lady may have been a late bloomer to the digital boom, but its adaptation strategies are certainly catching up. Its subscriber growth is the highest its been in its history, thanks in large part to the post-election bump — as well as wise investments on digital offerings. If you haven’t noticed, many articles online now feature video content alongside it. In February, the Times announced it’ll feature fresh daily content on Snapchat Discover. Alongside pushing VR video as an editorial decision, it’s also been publishing VR branded content.

And at this year’s NewFronts, the Times announced “Times Story[X],” which will launch this summer and serve as a powerhouse for creating strong visual, technologically forward narrative journalism that both the newsroom and its marketing unit T Brand Studios can use.

Losers

Traditional TV networks

The four major broadcast networks lost 8% of their audiences this TV season, adding to a four-year trend of declining TV ratings. TV networks have also increased their ad prices in these last four years in an effort to offset declining viewership — which doesn’t necessarily bode well for marketers. The ad-buying agency Magna has announced it’s shifting $250 million of its budget originally allocated for TV toward YouTube.

The Walt Disney Company, which owns the ESPN cable network, missed its revenue target this past quarter and announced in April it’s laying off 100 people to cut costs and better adapt itself for digital distribution. Time Warner and Viacom have also reported that second-quarter advertising revenues are likely to decrease. It’s no wonder: Viacom’s MTV, once the go-to network for younger audiences looking for information and entertainment catered to especially for them, is losing its viewers to Snapchat and YouTube.

Advertisers sticking to TV (and not diversifying)

Advertisers know that they can guarantee audience reach with the time they have with television advertising. Traditional TV has also benefited from the brand safety issues marketers have faced when their content has inadvertently popped up against extremist propaganda on YouTube. Networks touted their reach and reliability for serving up mass audiences, in a New York Times story, but they also face tough competition from targeted ads on social platforms and the explosion of choices on streaming services. But it’s still a question of when, not if, those ad dollars will move to digital video.

In the end, the winners of the video boom will be those publishers, platforms and brands who embrace the power of video, but make sure it fits with their mission – and serves their intended audience. Native video publishers like NowThis and Hulu might have an advantage, but legacy publishers and broadcasters still have a chance to shine if they can evolve quickly.

Innovation | Revenue

Email newsletters connect with core audiences

In a time when the email channel is becoming increasingly clogged, you would think email newsletters would take a back seat to other forms of audience interaction. But just the opposite seems to be happening as media outlets see the newsletter as a way to communicate directly with their core audiences. Email newsletters are popular and proliferating.

Perhaps this trend is being driven by the success of newsletters like The Daily Skimm, an email-only news briefing delivered every morning with a colloquial tone that treats the news with a sense of humor and gives you what you need to know in an entertaining fashion. Regardless, every major media outlet seems to offer a variety of newsletters. These are often segmented into subjects like finance, politics and sports, full of links and information, and designed to provide the core audience with details tuned specifically for them.

A little something for everyone

Newsletters remain popular because they deliver value to both the audience and the producer. The audience gets the information they want delivered straight to their in-boxes, often tailored to their specific interests.

The publisher gets something valuable as well. While interacting with people who clearly like your media outlet and the content you produce, you also get to own the information about your readers, says digital strategist, Jacqueline Boltik.

“For newsletter producers, having an email newsletter is smart because it’s the only way to really own your audience online. Ultimately Facebook owns your Facebook fans, Twitter owns your Twitter followers. Building your digital base anywhere other than email is like building a house on rented land,” she said.

She says beyond owning your audience data, there are many other reasons to offer a newsletter. These include driving traffic, monetization, and the ability to leverage your email data to strengthen your digital strategy on other channels.

Building connections to your audience

While the data certainly has value, a newsletter is much more than simply a data collection exercise. It’s also about building a strong connection between your audience and your publication, and in some cases to your journalists or other content creators.

“The best newsletters feel personal. Even though email is one to many, it feels one to one. In general, the more you can make your newsletter feel like it’s from a person while still fitting in with your brand, the better your newsletter will be received by readers,” Boltik said.

Quartz publishes a newsletter called the Daily Brief that it sees as a key way to interact directly with some of its most avid readers. “For audience engagement, it’s immensely valuable. Daily Brief subscribers are among Quartz’s most fervent and dedicated readers, and they’re also what advertisers consider to be a “premium” audience. About half are senior leaders at their companies,” Mia Mabanta, Quartz’s executive director of product and brand marketing explained.

Beyond that, Andrew Golis, general manager of Vox Media’s news brand says that newsletters provide a way to understand the news from a trusted source in a world where social media is bombarding us with stories. “We’re all more and more overwhelmed. As consumers, newsletters allow us to connect to a curator and analyst we trust. We get a finishable wrap-up of what’s important to pay attention to and why.”

The value proposition

You would think that driving traffic back to the site would be another primary goal, but publications don’t necessarily see it that way. Email newsletters build and maintain brand loyalty with core audiences—which is valuable in the long term. If they drive traffic, that’s a bonus, but it’s often not the objective.

In fact, Quartz includes links to other sites besides their own says Mabanta. “We explicitly don’t use the email as a way to drive traffic back to our site. It’s meant to be a self-contained experience. The user can click through if she wants to dive deeper, but she doesn’t have to. And oftentimes that link doesn’t lead her to QZ.com,” Mabanta said.

Vox’s Golis feels the same way. “We don’t approach newsletters as traffic drivers. Instead, they are distributed media experiences valuable in and of themselves. We love them because they give our loyal audiences a way to establish a permanent relationship with Vox. They also give our journalists the opportunity to build that connection and a set of stories and insights with a consistent community over time,” he said.

A valuable proposition

That engaged core audience also draws in sponsors and advertisers, who are willing to pay a premium to get the attention of a known quantity, and because you own your email data, you should have a good sense of who that audience is. “Better leveraging email data is a significant opportunity for many companies and as combining data sources becomes more flexible, digital advertising is going to become much more efficient and effective,” Boltik explained.

You can get those sponsors or premium advertisers on board to directly monetize your newsletters. Or you can simply use them as a way to stay connected with your most ardent readers. Whatever the strategy, newsletters remain a valuable way to understand and interact directly with your core audience. And that, in the era of distributed content, is a valuable connection indeed.

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