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With wide-ranging changes pushed within a very short time span, the publishing world had to rapidly transform many workflows and strategies during the pandemic. We saw trends accelerate and tried and true strategies hold strong.

Fastly’s SVP of Engineering Nick Rockwell (the former CTO at the New York Times) sat down with a group of senior technology leaders from four global digital publishers earlier this summer to reflect on this challenging period.

Panelists:

Jorge M. Ibarra, CIO/CTO, El Pais
Mariot Chauvin, Head of Engineering, The Guardian
Marco Kaiser, CTO, Zeit Online
Sacha Morard, CTO, Le Monde

Here are a few of the key takeaways from the discussion that publishers everywhere can leverage as they adapt to the new normal.

Traffic surged and content strategies shifted

Unsurprisingly the four news outlets all saw large traffic spikes at the onset of the pandemic. Traffic records were shattered. What may be a surprise, though, is that though it is tapering off, visitor numbers are higher overall to this day.

A closer look at viewer behavior confirmed that expected content cannibalization took place. Readers flocked to COVID-19 coverage and spent little or no time with other sections of the website. To address this, they decided to expand the coverage of Covid-19 with additional content such as infographics, which are still being referenced by news sources to this day. However, this audience behavior also drove the creation of a “Covid-19-free content” hub, where readers could educate themselves on other world news and topics.

El Pais saw the record traffic extend into other areas such as sports coverage, educational content, and even radio broadcasts.The Guardian observed a similar trend. The site experienced a 25-day streak with more than 20 million visitors. Traffic surpassed 366 million visitors in one month alone – up 50% from the previous record. Like the other participants, they are seeing sustained higher traffic levels with readers being particularly interested in culture, education, food, and crossword puzzles.

Subscriptions numbers are up. Ad revenue, less so

A common thread among the digital publishers on the panel was that they were quick to move Covid-19 news outside their paywalls. (Note: The Guardian does not have a paywall). Therefore, it might be surprising that a news outlet such as Le Monde saw subscriptions jump 3x.

Prior to the pandemic, Le Monde set a long-term goal of reaching one million subscribers by 2025. During the pandemic, they reached 300,000 paying subscribers and found themselves fast-tracked to reach their target.

Still, not all business metrics were positive. Several of the panelists which were already experiencing ad revenue declines saw this trend accelerated by the pandemic. El Pais converted to a subscription model in March of this year, which worked well in terms of timing. However, it’s too early for them to comment on the success of the switch.

Zeit Online also saw a 2-3x increase in online subscriptions during the past 18 months. Interestingly, the uptake extended into the paper version (Die Zeit). In particular, they experienced an increase in non-subscription papers sold at kiosks, train stations, etc.

Strategies remain and are reinforced

One might think the recent 18 months had CTOs and engineering teams rethink strategy. But that was not necessarily the case. All four panelists indicated that the pandemic confirmed some strategies that were already in place. However, it spotlighted outdated technology and workflows and sped-up previously planned changes.

The Guardian, for example, already had a cloud migration underway. So, things like running and maintaining systems remotely were already possible because of the programmable content delivery network (CDN) in use. Currently, they are focusing on three specific areas:

Improving SEO optimization to help secure ranking at news aggregators;
Building a fast and responsive website that can effectively compete; and
Continuing to implement tooling that can help collect data to constantly optimize conversion. They recognize the importance of understanding new audiences to find out what motivates and converts them.

Zeit Online also found that some strategies remained consistent, although acquiring new subscribers and converting trial subscriptions took a backseat. They are planning to catch up on this, though, as there’s obviously a strong desire to capitalize on the additional visitors.

As far as news aggregators and SEO optimizations go, Zeit Online is currently analyzing the long-term effect of stories being picked up. As Kaiser put it, “We saw the sheer power of platforms like Apple News and Google News. If you get your story listed there, you have a strong increase in traffic. That’s great but it’s fly-by traffic. People will read the article but then they are gone again. It’s hard to convert them. It made us look at what’s really a qualified visitor for us – someone we can convert into a subscriber. It’s an interesting question: How do we engage these fly-by visitors”

The changing needs of the newsroom

As with strategy, the pandemic accelerated the switch from legacy and stationary systems to those able to offer remote access. While a portion of these publishers’ workforce already worked remotely, it was the minority. And, for several panelists, the exercise to get hundreds of laptops in very little time was a daunting task. As many newsrooms are built on proprietary content management systems, they offer very few options for remote access at the scale needed, and new systems had to be put in place.

Interestingly, both Zeit Online and The Guardian have seen newsrooms adopt tools from engineering and other parts of the house to increase productivity and bring together dispersed teams. These include things like stand-ups, JIRA tickets, and other agile tools that for years have helped keep track of progress.

The panel offered a rare opportunity for a discussion between four of the largest European news organizations. In addition to the topics I’ve covered here, their discussion touched on topics such as online security, potential negative effects of the changed workflows, and more. (Feel free to check out the whole thing here.)

It’s obvious that the pandemic profoundly impacted digital publishing. However, it looks like the changes it triggered were not all bad. The switch to a cloud-based workflow has proven especially useful for this segment and the media workflow has likely been changed for good. It remains to be seen if the increase in subscribers will remain but with added visitor and subscriber insight as well as an increase in appreciation for quality content, publishers are rightly optimistic.

Advertising | Perspectives | Revenue | Supporter Spotlight

What publishers need to know about the crypto ad market

September 27, 2021 Todd Krizelman, CEO – MediaRadar

While the cryptocurrency market has been growing at a steady rate over the past few years, it has recently exploded – and shows no signs of slowing down. Estimates show the industry will hit $4.94 billion globally by 2030. That’s more than triple its size of $1.49 billion in 2020.

With such a large market, it’s a no-brainer for advertisers whether they be crypto platforms, providers or innovative merchants – to take advantage. There may be no bigger sign that the door is wide open than the fact that Google, just this summer, loosened restrictions on crypto ads after banning them in 2018. As money flows into the category and advertising becomes more accepted and possible, it presents a big opportunity for publishers to capitalize on a growing and lucrative ad market.

Meet the crypto advertisers

According to our own data at MediaRadar, we’re seeing that bear out. In 2020, there were just 27 digital currency companies who purchased ad digital display or print ad space. In 2021 that number increased 159%. New companies include BitYard, Anatha, BitTrust IRA, Phemex Limited, and Gemini. Existing advertisers, like Coin Mobile App, Hex.com, Bakkt Marketplace, Nexo, and Celsius Network, continue to spend. This growth will only continue and to the benefit of the overall ad ecosystem.

Supporting the industry is the increased credibility it has seen in recent years. We know Google has shifted its view on it, but it’s not the only major company.

Tesla invested $1.5 billion in Bitcoin back in February, and that caused the cryptocurrency market cap to surpass Google’s stock. Tesla founder Elon Musk has always been a crypto advocate – despite brief moments of doubt. In fact, his backing of certain currencies has caused them to skyrocket.

Breakthrough business

Beyond bleeding edge players like Tesla and Musk, legacy businesses like McDonald’s are now accepting crypto for payment. So, there’s a more accepting audience for crypto ads. And, with all the different cryptocurrency formats out there, it’s easy for advertisers to try and market one people haven’t tried yet. The same goes for crypto platforms.

However, in such a crowded market, how do crypto brands break through? What are advertisers doing to market crypto to the public, especially when there are plenty of people who still don’t know what crypto is or how it works? And what types of publishers are benefitting?

This year, crypto companies advertised across digital and print formats, with most spent on digital (86%). However, 14% of spend has been in print. In 2020, there was no investment in print, which marks a substantial year-to-year change.

This indicates that the industry is growing and is striving to reach a broader demographic by advertising in The Economist, Bloomberg Businessweek, Car and Driver, and The Globe and Mail. Note, of course, the audiences of these publications. They’re often more business and tech-savvy. Also, they likely follow the crypto category or are more receptive to trading crypto than the average person. Publishers that feature these audiences can win ad dollars from the growing number of crypto brands eager to invest.

Follow the money

Still, while crypto is beginning to mainstream and broaden its outreach, crypto advertisers haven’t shifted to the ultimate mass marketing channel – linear TV. There has been some experimentation, of course. However, according to our research, TV was the least popular channel for cryptocurrency companies. In comparison, the majority of advertising spend from traditional banking services in 2020 and 2021 – think Capital One, Chase Freedom, Chime Bank, and CitiBank – has been on TV ads.

Beyond the channel, the format in which crypto brands deliver their message is similarly important. One way to engage their audience effectively is with contextualized messaging. According to BuySellAds, “those in the cryptocurrency industry are more likely to engage with advertising from contextual advertising networks that display contextualized messaging and is relevant to what they’re viewing, is honest, and doesn’t utilize forms of tracking.” The best crypto ads are native and tightly aligned to the format and content. For publishers seeking to partner with cryptocurrency brands, this is critical intelligence when pitching formats and capabilities.

Moving forward, enterprising publishers can take advantage of the crypto ad explosion. With a growing number of competitors, platforms and players, there is a massive opportunity here to build business and grow revenue.

Advertising | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

Zero-party data is a publisher’s secret weapon against big tech changes

September 21, 2021 Allison Mezzafonte, Media Advisor – Sailthru

Every time there’s a big change in how Apple, Google, or Facebook works with publishers, a touch of panic can be felt in the air. Yet, we’ve all survived seismic shifts from these companies. From Facebook’s deprioritization of publisher content in 2016 to Apple’s recent iOS 14.5 release, we’ve absorbed the shock and made it through. But, as an industry, we always act like the next change might be our last. Now, Apple is specifically coming for email. It’s placing limitations on location and IP targeting that could make it more difficult to use personalization for some iPhone audiences… and the cycle repeats.

Yet, like all of the sky-is-falling fears before it, Apple’s latest move is nothing to panic about. The truth is that these changes are merely a distraction from the real work that publishers do every day to connect with their audiences through great content and great experiences. If change occurs to a specific algorithm or a particular measurement metric, that doesn’t alter the core of the business, which is to deliver value to an audience.

Embrace change for good

The old saying that “change is the only constant” is a well understood truth within the industry. But these changes tend to happen in rapid succession, making it near impossible to keep up if publishers are always in reaction mode. Nearly every year, digital experiences a seismic shift — from GDPR and other privacy regulations to pending cookie deprecation from Google. Rather than cling to what we have, we should be working to create stability from the inside out.

For example, open rate data will become skewed with the Apple iOS 15 release. It’s the core metric used to determine opportunity, in particular for advertisers. When this metric is threatened, fear rears its ugly head. If we can’t effectively track opens, should we begin to track clicks? If we do, does that mean publishers like Axios, who have a product-oriented approach to newsletters, should entirely scrap their email strategy that works? Should they start prompting their readers to “click to read” simply so they can track that user? Of course not. That fear should not determine a course of action.

Audience behavior won’t change. The desire to consume quality content in quality email experiences won’t change. The needs of our audiences must remain at the forefront of everything we do.

As an industry, one way to do that is to collectively accept that KPIs will change — on both the buy and sell side. The sooner we do, the sooner we can collectively move forward. Together, publishers can meet to determine a matrix of KPIs, and discuss with groups like the IAB which metrics are in danger and how to push up more stable metrics so that everyone, including advertisers, can move forward despite industry changes.

Stability through zero-party data

Change might be the only constant, but audiences are the only source of the truth. Both publishers and advertisers rely on audience engagement to hit their goals. Yet few use direct audience insights as a source for measurement and KPIs. The more publishers understand their audiences, the better they are positioned to create stability for the long run.

Zero-party data is the best way to make that happen. Defined as data that publishers explicitly receive from their audience as part of a clear value exchange, zero-party data is more valuable than first-party data such as search or browsing preferences.

More than ever, people are aware of the value of their own data. In a 2021 Merkle survey, 76% noted that they would be willing to fill out a short survey in order to get a better online experience. Taking a page from retail, personalization is proven to lift sales. Thrive Market, an online grocery store, weaves data collection into their entire online experience, using quiz elements to guide shoppers and then shape the content and offers they get in return.

Value remains constant

This focus on the direct value exchange between consumer and brand can be applied in the publishing world to great effect. Rather than just passively observe what readers pay attention to, more brands should be actively asking, engaging, and personalizing. The data that’s collected not only improves content personalization and audience targeting, it creates a foundation of insights that can be used to optimize reader experience. And that data is only as good as the last ask, publishers need to continually ensure they’re up to date on people’s ever-changing preferences.

Zero-party data shows how engaged audiences are, how much they’re willing to share, what they like, and what they want. For example, The Independent collected insights from subscribers in a New Year’s wrap-up newsletter that ended up producing a brand new newsletter focused on climate change. The team asked subscribers about which topics resonated the most in 2020. While the pandemic ranked at the top, they were surprised to see how many also cared about news about the planet.

Publishers have survived so much change in the digital world and we can certainly survive more. But rather than just focus on surviving, let’s actively build out a position of strength and move away from the passive, reactive moves of the past. When given the chance, people want to engage with publishers to make their experience better. Let’s own our own success, once and for all by actively prioritizing that relationship.

About the author

Allison Mezzafonte has worked in the media and publishing industry for 20 years and is currently a growth consultant, as well as a Media Advisor to Sailthru. A former publishing executive for Bauer Media, Dotdash, and Hearst Digital, Allison serves as a strategic partner to media clients.

Advertising | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

3 Digital advertising resources to help publishers optimize sales

September 21, 2021 Steve Guenther, Vice President, Digital Auditing—Alliance for Audited Media

In an advertising ecosystem that often can seem complex and opaque, digital publishers must find ways to stand out from other websites that offer advertising.

The industry has developed several resources to foster greater supply chain transparency and help publishers take greater control of their inventory, stand out for their commitment to quality and earn more revenue. It is important for digital publishers to be aware of these resources and integrate them into the selling process to maximize revenue opportunities.

Here we look at some of these resources and share how they benefit publishers and buyers.

1. Private marketplaces

Programmatic technology has made it easier for marketers to buy advertising at scale. However, not all exchanges provide them with publishers that have been vetted by a trusted organization.

Private marketplaces give buyers access to quality inventory while participating publishers also benefit from higher CPMs and by knowing the ads placed on their sites are from legitimate marketers.

You’re probably aware of TrustX, a premium private marketplace developed by Digital Content Next. It offers buyers access to inventory directly from more than 250 member publishers, bypassing resellers and intermediaries. Similar exchanges are taking hold globally including The Ozone Project in the U.K. and the Maple Network Exchange in Canada. By joining a premium private marketplace, publishers can find strength in numbers and greater exposure to buyers looking to buy inventory from quality publishers.

2. Industry programs

Several organizations have created programs to identify publishers that have taken steps to stand out, whether that’s by providing transparency, offering quality local journalism, or integrating industry standards and best practices into the buying process.

The Alliance for Audited Media’s Digital Publisher Audit is an in-depth, continuous audit of a publisher’s website traffic and business practices to verify that a publisher is effectively minimizing ad fraud risk. This new assurance solution addresses ad fraud at the publisher level and complements other industry initiatives like private marketplaces. We include all AAM-audited digital publishers on the AAM Audited Domain List, which can be downloaded from AAM’s website. It can also be found at the IAB Tech Lab Transparency Center, a resource that buyers can access to learn more about sellers and the compliance programs and industry standards they adhere to.

The Local Media Consortium is an association of local newspapers, broadcasters and online news outlets committed to quality journalism. The LMC Local News Advertising Inclusion List includes thousands of local media advertising opportunities for national brands.

And finally, The Trustworthy Accountability Group sets standards that promote greater supply chain transparency and includes organizations from across the industry including brands, agencies, publishers and tech providers. The TAG Registry lists members that are committed to increasing trust in digital advertising.

By taking part in these programs, publishers can be easily identified by media buyers who access these resources to build inclusion lists and prioritize quality partners.

3. Supply chain validation

Publishers also can use industry tools to easily gain insight into who sells their inventory and discover ways to make the process more efficient.

The IAB Tech Lab develops solutions to bring greater transparency to the supply chain through tools such as ads.txt (app-ads.txt) and sellers.json. The organization recently launched a new service that analyzes publishers’ ads.txt files to validate who is authorized to sell their inventory. Supply Chain Validation allows publishers to verify that their ads.txt file adheres to technical specifications by alerting sellers when issues arise such as an incorrect or missing entry, which can lead to missed revenue or an unauthorized sale. The service also compares the publisher’s ads.txt file to their selling partners’ sellers.json files to determine if there are any inconsistencies between the two. The results are then published in the Transparency Center and are also available from the IAB Tech Lab via an API.

As a premium publisher, it is important to integrate industry solutions into your selling strategy to stand out to advertisers. Putting the right processes in place will give your site — and your ad sales efforts —the best chance for success.

Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

These next-level user experiences lead to more loyal, registered users

September 20, 2021 Joel Bejar, SVP Business Development – OpenWeb

When it comes to the future, increasing user registrations and building robust first-party datasets should be at the forefront of every publisher’s strategy. Building first-party data unlocks a publishers’ ability to increase user loyalty, activate their audience, monetize their content, and improve their editorial strategy.

However, according to a recent survey from Teads, 65.3% of publishers say they are not planning on increasing the usage of logins to gather first party data. Why is that? According to the report, they’re worried about a “potential disruption of user experience.”

It’s a valid concern: 67% of customers say poor user experiences are a reason for churn.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Many leading publishers are leveling-up user experiences on their website by creating social experiences and using personalization to create a seamless registration and log in process. These publishers stand to attract and grow an audience of loyal readers. Let’s take a look at how they’re doing it.

Three tactics to engage loyal audiences

1. Give users a reason to register with immersive social experiences

Stand-out content will always drive readers to a publisher’s website. Increasingly, though, readers are looking for other ways to interact and engage once they’re done reading an article.

Today, the publishers who are creating social experiences on their website see more registrations and greater retention rates. At OpenWeb, we’ve found that publishers who create these experiences have users who spend 35% more time on-site. They are 450% more likely to return month-after-month, and drive 4x the revenue as the average user.

There are a number of ways that publishers can create social experiences. Many are adopting engagement tools like one-click polls where readers can weigh in on the article they just read. Others are producing interactive ask-me-anything style interactive forums (AMAs) with authors or journalists. Another effective social experience is hosting a comments section. When publishers invite readers to interact in quality conversations where they feel valued, they’re more likely to register and return again and again.

2. Use active personalization to provide value and keep users coming back

Users not only crave engaging social experience, they’re loyal to publishers who “get” them.

That’s why more publishers are creating personalized content experiences to drive registrations and loyalty. In fact, 88% of marketers believe that audiences now expect personalization. One of the most effective ways that publishers can provide value to their users is through active personalization, or personalization that allows users to self-select their favorite authors, topics, and more.

Readers who receive targeted content tend to stay on-site longer, return more often, and view more content. They also provide publishers with more information about their content preferences, allowing publishers to take advantage of rich first-party data insights. One of the great things about personalized experiences is that, with the right tools, just about any publisher can create them—even those without a comments section.

3. Optimize your first party data success strategy

First-party datasets will play a pivotal role in every publisher’s future. In fact, they’re absolutely critical for any sustainable strategy, particularly in light of cookie depreciation. Through exceptional user experiences, publishers will drive more registrations. This will, in turn, allow them to collect more robust and accurate first party data which ultimately enables them to provide additional value to their audiences. In other words, all roads lead to a loyal, active community.

Time to interact

So if you’re still contemplating how to navigate the cookieless future, start by evaluating your user experience and ask these questions:

What opportunities are there to create social experiences and build a thriving, active community?
How can we leverage personalization to provide targeted content experiences for readers?

With this approach, publishers stand to see more registered, active users and higher retention rates, like Salon has. Thanks to immersive social experiences on their website (including a comments section), they built a loyal community of active users—and boosted their retention rate 4X.

The bottom line? Give users exceptional experiences and see exceptional results.

About the author

Joel Bejar is the Vice President of Business Development at OpenWeb.

Advertising | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

Two truths and a lie: Why what you think you know about identity will hurt you

September 13, 2021 Mike Woosley, COO – Lotame

Current uncertainty about the tech underpinning digital media has left most of us wondering what happens when cookies disappear on Chrome. It’s easy to forget that Safari and Firefox deprecated cookies a long time ago. This, in turn, created a natural test bed for newer and better post-cookie technologies. The good news is that these changes create opportunity and prospects for a better industry. If you are a publisher, here are two truths and a lie for you to consider, and five ways to ensure your business is not disrupted.

Truth one: Don’t count on FLoCs

Google has said its FLoCs are private and can be used as a proxy for enhancing traffic with data. But, Google has only released the results of a single test on this black box technology, which has murky methodology and opaque applicability. Even Google’s publicized test showed results less effective than cookie-based advertising.

Meanwhile, Google has been hit with criticisms that FLoCs use consumer data without consent. The company postponed its testing in Europe, where the technology may not comply with GDPR. Over the summer, it became evident that Google is becoming mired in uncertainty around the technology. It’s actions also raised concerns around Google’s market dominance. Bottom line: If you were counting on FLoC, you may want to take another look at your options.

Truth two: Don’t count on context

The same can be said for those leaning towards going all in for context. These state-of-the-art circa 2006 solutions don’t just limit the breadth of data you can associate to a profile. However, they almost always curb the concept of identity to a single domain.

Contextual providers are telling you that without cookies, third-party data will vanish (which is not the case). First-party data will be much more valuable, they continue. The thesis is that first-party data is like gold, becoming more valuable when it becomes more scarce. This ignores a fundamental economic truth in marketing: A marketer can afford to pay only her target acquisition cost and not more. A dearth of data means the marketer may need to pay a lower CPM on less-enhanced impressions. If she can afford to pay $5 CPM for “women”, then $2.50 will be the max that can be paid for “people”. Those digital impressions aren’t like gold — they are more like gold-bearing ore. The value depends on the assay.

Lie: Programmatic was/is/forever will be bad

Contrary to what we often hear, programmatic has been good for non-gigantic and independent publishers. Most non-giants don’t have the scale to hire a sales force, or the traffic to attract marketers without aggregation, or enough contextual insights to sell that traffic for what it was worth. Smaller publishers rapidly adopted programmatic five years ago because it gave them the opportunity to be paid based on what their traffic did somewhere else.

Programmatic is often criticized for data leakage in the bidstream and allowing buyers to come in with more insights on traffic than the publisher. But let’s remember the volume of impressions surfaced in the auction gives sellers inherent protection against cherry-picking. If impressions are better characterized via third-party data, bidders can find that auto intender among a “lover-of-cats” crowd that had been relegated to air freshener promos. The publisher selling the cat lover should want that asymmetric knowledge in order to get the best bid.

Five ways you can prepare for a cookieless future

So how in this new and changing landscape, should publishers sustain monetization when cookies are completely gone? Here are my top five recommendations of the very real steps publishers can take to prepare for 2023.

There’s a chance that Google has pushed back the cookie deadline because it needs more time to refine its own tools, with the intent of preventing or abolishing third-party ID interoperability. Take every opportunity to be vocal about your right to bring your own tech to the party.
New identifiers emerging in the marketplace will promise scale and interoperability — but you’ll need to test any solution early. Real interoperability is elusive, but out there, so exercise caution.
The industry may see great value in the 40% share of the browser market that Chrome doesn’t own. You can start testing solutions with Safari and Firefox today.
Delaying the adoption of new identity solutions may simply prolong the headaches from the third-party cookie model. Third-party cookies are costly to sync, carry privacy risks, and take more time to show ROI than newer technologies. Don’t hope for Google to provide another reprieve.
Definitely use context in your strategy. It’s data. You have it. Use it. Context should be part of the monetization equation. However, be realistic that context alone won’t save you. It simply can’t compete with technology that delivers richer information across domains. Don’t get hung up on old solutions just because they’re familiar or wrapped in a sexy new buzzword like “edge computing”.

It’s not all doom and gloom for publishers in the next two years. For independent publishers, the cookieless future is filled with opportunity. Just don’t embrace the false narrative that your traffic is inherently gold. You need the right tools to make sure your assay is strong, realizable, and increasingly lucrative.

Advertising | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

9 criteria for driving business results with analytics in 2022

September 9, 2021 Marie Fenner, Managing Director, Global Accounts – Piano

Even before Google sent brands and publishers slow-walking to wean themselves off third-party cookies back in early 2020, both the buy- and sell-side had a data problem.

The issue has been that publishers and brands have historically managed audience data in siloed systems. Therefore, critical information surrounding ad revenue, subscriptions, content engagement, and customer profiles is all stored separately.

However, to create truly relevant experiences for consumers, any digital businesses must be able to tie all this data together in privacy-compliant ways to achieve a full picture of the customer journey. The IT department no longer governs data and analytics to the degree that it once did. So, commercial teams like marketing, sales and finance now have the opportunity to more heavily influence these areas than ever before.

Time to get your data analytics in order

Next year will be the last full one brands and publishers have before third-party cookies expire. So it is the perfect time to fully get your data analytics in order. Here are nine criteria to consider when rethinking your strategy.

1. The ability to customize your data model

To begin piecing together data from multiple touchpoints, it’s important to first introduce a unified data model approach across the organization. A tailored data model that covers the entirety of a business’s objectives as well as those of the different company stakeholders provides access to a reliable 360-degree view of customer data. This enables any team that needs to tap into the data to create immediate value, improving speed to market and the ability to react to trends faster.

2. Access to live, quality data

Whether you want to integrate with other technologies or enlist your data science team to work on a special project, you want to ensure you have streamlined access to fully denormalized, real-time data. This reduces query time and improves targeting and personalization, while avoiding the costly joining of disparate databases.

3. Enriched data that does deeper

Make sure you can automatically correct, enhance and remove data based on third-party metadata and advanced processing rules, with no retagging necessary. This will allow you to do more with your behavioral data to explore different perspectives that can inform your business decisions.

4. A universal tag for data hygiene and cleanliness

Tag health is critical for proper data cleanliness and consistency. Many businesses have multiple tags running. That increases the number of server calls and overall time spent on tag management. By instead leveraging one universal tag, you can duplicate traffic across various sites to a virtual site with 100% accuracy and for half the cost.

5. No data sampling

Data sampling is the practice of analyzing a subset of your traffic data, which is used to estimate the overall results. Instead of gathering all the data, you only get access to a limited sample. That means that any analysis you carry out after that will be an assumption based on existing patterns. Having a complete set of data to analyze boosts accuracy and can unlock previously undiscovered audiences.

6. Compliance with all privacy regulations

This might seem like a no-brainer, but with evolving and emerging laws, it’s easy to fall into violation when it comes to data privacy. Ensure whatever tool you work with is compliant across all of the global privacy regulations and that you can tweak your consent model as needed.

7. Integration across your stack

Your data is only as good as it is useful. If you are using disparate systems to manage and activate it, there is a chance of data loss, inaccurate customer views and privacy non-compliance. Ensuring interoperability across all systems streamlines execution and management while reducing business risk.

8. Democratization of data

Once you know your data is clean and accurate, make it available to everyone in your business who needs to act on it. You want to keep the end user experience in mind when choosing the right tools. Whether you use dashboards, data exploration tools, smart alerts when anomalies occur or direct API feeds for personalization, make sure they are user-friendly.

9. Professional services help

Even if you have an in-house analytics team, ensuring all of your data flows through your systems well might require additional support. The best technology vendors will have robust professional services teams that can help you implement your analytics strategy. This includes determining your KPIsand measurement approach in addition to best practices that drive both compliance and results.

It’s prime time to harness the true power of all the data at your disposal. With the right technology and talent, you can fast be on your way to turning insights into action that drives additional business value — more website traffic, subscriber, and revenues.

Advertising | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

Trust, walled gardens and a shining new opportunity for publishers

September 8, 2021 Eddie Lee, Head of Publisher Account Management – Nativo

The future of digital advertising might just revolve around the matter of trust. But before publishers take on that question, they should consider this one: Why is Big Tech working so hard to build trust in their respective walled gardens?

Take Amazon (please!). They’re rumored to be creating a universal identifier restricted to their ecosystem. Google’s proposed FLoC targeting, presented as the evolution of 3rd party cookies, might be reimagined before it even launches over privacy concerns. But surely whatever takes its place will only serve to strengthen its monopolistic hold on advertising. Apple is pushing to present their core OS’s as privacy-focused — all while maintaining their typical “advantageous” relationships with the app developers that build and support large parts of their ecosystem. All are effectively fortifying the garden walls while working to convince the public of their respective trustworthiness.

This new-found obsession should come as no surprise to publishers: Trust is a key ingredient in the secret sauce of ad revenue growth.

Anecdotally, we know this to be true, and the numbers don’t lie. Privacy is the #1 driver of influence and engagement on social media platforms. Brands and agencies are cutting advertising budgets due to trust issues: Of those who decreased ad spend on one or more major ad platforms, 35% cited concerns over ethical handling of user data.

A shining opportunity for publishers

In a new trust-based world of content and advertising, publishers start with a few crucial advantages.

First, publishers enjoy implicit goodwill from their audiences, which converts to business. More than two-thirds of consumers are more likely to engage with an ad in the context of a publisher they know and trust. Second, publishers have the advantage of knowing the types of content readers want to engage with. Most notably, publishers own the new “oil” of advertising: 1st party data.

What is the opportunity for publishers? It’s a chance to differentiate themselves from Big Tech as the embodiment of stewardship with regards to consumer data. In short, publishers must buck the status quo and adopt a strategy where the audience is no longer for sale. Sell the site and sell the content. Maybe even leverage audiences on the backend to improve content experiences or implement new rate types. But no matter what, protect audience’s trust in publishers audiences by implementing a privacy-first approach.

Capitalize with balance and control

Successfully seizing this opportunity will take balance and control.

Balance subscription and ad-supported strategy.

A paywall that is too high limits exposure and hamstrings new audience gains. However, too much advertising hurts a brand’s value and, most of all, the audience’s trust (that they won’t be constantly blasted with ads).

Control the quality of the user experience

Ad clutter diminishes trust by reneging on the promise of a good user experience. But control also means an increased cognizance of demand sources. Due to its inherent reliance on 3rd party cookies, programmatic demand should be a last resort. And these demand sources should provide the tools necessary to preserve brand-safe environments.

Trust is the answer (and the question)

How does the industry enable publishers to build and maintain trust? The simplest solution may be to step aside and let publishers create quality content. The role of industry tech platforms, in turn, is to support publishers without adding complexity. All the while, brand safety is table stakes: Any digital distributor should guarantee it (full stop).

Of course, tech platforms must enable publishers to meet their business objectives. They should support multiple pricing models and offer broad customization options for demand sources. Again, this is because publishers know best in a new world of 1st party data and heightened demand for sophisticated content. (Read: the opposite of standard display).

The guiding principle? Trust. The differentiator from Big Tech? Trust. Our final thought? Trust us on this one.

Perspectives | Revenue | Supporter Spotlight

Never-subscribers are hiding in plain sight. What are you doing about it?

September 1, 2021 Abhishek Dadoo, Co-founder & CEO – Fewcents

How many publishers do you have a paid subscription with? While you may be a paid subscriber with one or two digital publishers, you remain a “never-subscriber” from the lens of the next publisher. The 2021 Reuters Digital News Report states that the majority of people pay for one subscription (for content from publishers and local papers), and that the median number of subscriptions for U.S. consumers is two.

To digital publishers, never-subscribers mean lost revenue. But in today’s digital-first world, where ad revenues are unreliable and subscription fatigue is mounting, should never-subscribers remain a lost revenue opportunity? The answer lies in implementing dynamic paywalls.

A typical dynamic paywall journey looks like this: Place a first-party cookie so you can track user visits. Then, give the visitor access to a few pieces of metered content. After a set number of articles, it’s time to show a registration wall. Then, as soon as those views are up, it’s time to show the “all you can eat” subscription paywall/offer.

Many users traverse this journey but for those that don’t subscribe, publishers tend to “rinse and repeat” the same journey. Some publishers might try discount offers for “all you can eat” subscriptions or even suggest custom-bundles at lower price points before allocating dead end users to the “rinse and repeat” pool.

Untapped revenue opportunities

Despite visit recency and frequency metrics, there are users who defy registration, subscription, or custom-bundle offers even after relentless efforts by the publishers. These dead-end users are your never-subscribers. And there are hoards of them. There are also those users who churn after the subscription trial period is over, or sleepers who churn at the beginning of the month when they evaluate their credit card bills. All of these users offer an untapped revenue opportunity.

Putting never-subscribers (dead end users and churned users) back in the “rinse and repeat” bucket is hardly a strategy. However, there are a few questions that needs answers before a real strategy for never-subscribers can evolve:

Who are the dead end users?
What are the additional options available beyond discounting or custom-bundles?
If users were given additional options, would fewer users subscribe?
If users were given additional options, would there be fewer sleepers?
If users were given additional options, would it accelerate subscription churn?

Dead end users could be visitors with high visit frequency who subscribed elsewhere. They might be casual visitors referred via social media. Or perhaps they are low frequency visitors from international geographies. The mix differs for each publisher, but retrospective analysis of user journey data should yield quick segmentation of never-subscribers.

Extending the user journey with discounted subscriptions or custom-bundles are good options for users approaching a dead end. But how do you know how much discounting would suffice? Or what custom-bundle offers will work for the user?

Unbundling solutions

To get this understanding, publishers have to unbundle the existing content pool to evaluate the true worth of each piece of content. Extending to unbundling solutions such pay per content provide insights for custom-bundles. They also provide substantial revenue streams for the long term.

Understanding the direct impact of unbundling solutions on the publisher’s existing subscription business requires sustained experiments and aligned goals between departments. For example, subscriber numbers dominate reader-revenue headlines.

However, they fail to focus on subscriber retention or revenue. Marketing teams could be focusing on increasing pageviews without any consideration about the quality of the audience which converts into subscriptions. The editorial team on the other hand could be working in a silo without any revenue linked objectives.

Playing the long game to win

Improving audience engagement and customer-lifetime-value are high level goals that every department’s KPI should be linked to. For example, changing the KPI to net new subscribers and average revenue per subscriber are better health barometers of the reader-revenue business. New subscribers per-1,000 pageviews focuses the marketing team’s efforts on quality audiences. And, average time spent per page allows editorial teams to focus on quality content for their audience.

No publisher can escape the fact that subscriptions are a long game. The Google News Initiative reader revenue playbook carries an ominous message:

“For some of the [news] organizations we’ve worked with, the transition can take years if not decades. But it’s achievable. For many news organizations, converting just 3-5% of readers into paying subscribers or contributors can support long-term sustainability”.

Therefore, understanding never-subscribers and the monetization opportunities that lie within is a long game too! But why is it that publishers are ever so quick to dismiss the never-subscriber cohort and bring them back into the “rinse and repeat” pool for subscriptions? It turns out that extending the user journey with unbundling options might bear more fruit.

About the author

Abhishek is a Co-founder & CEO of Fewcents, fintech-for-publishers that brings incremental reader revenue from “Never-Subscribers.” He is a seasoned business leader and technology product manager. He has worked in management consulting with PwC and Altman Solon in Boston, USA before moving to Singapore permanently. In Singapore, he started his own venture, Shoffr, a digital marketing solution that provides online to offline attribution for digital marketers. In 2019, Abhishek sold Shoffr to Affle, a publicly listed ad-tech company in India. After solving the advertiser’s offline attribution problem, Abhishek has now set his eyes on solving the content monetization problem for online publishers.

Advertising | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

Connecting more than TVs: Publishers are the key to CTV engagement

August 31, 2021 Laura Carstens, Product Marketing Manager – IAS

Following years of growing adoption, Connected TV (CTV) consumption took center stage in the last year as consumers overwhelmingly shifted toward remote work. In fact, IAS research has shown that 90% of consumers have access to a CTV device. And 66% of them say their CTV consumption increased as a result of the pandemic.

Advertising dollars are also shifting in that direction, too. CTV ad spend for the U.S. is expected to grow nearly 50% in 2021, surpassing $13 Billion, according to eMarketer. And while there remain some hesitations about advertising on CTV, these environments are rich with opportunity.

New horizons create fresh starts and CTV is no exception. CTV environments connect advertisers with highly engaged audiences. They also put publishers, specifically CTV Channels, Virtual MVPDs, and Web/Mobile Publishers, in a strong position to facilitate those connections.

Let’s unpack that.

How publishers can make the most of CTV

Create exceptional ad experiences

From weekly releases to bingeable drops, and ad-free to ad-supported services, the streaming experience comes in various shapes and sizes. With more than 200+ streaming services to choose from globally, consumer attention is easily fragmented yet important to capture. Facilitating meaningful connections between advertisers and viewers starts by creating an exceptional ad experience.

And when it comes to CTV, consumers are already in favor. IAS research found that 90% of consumers think there are features of the CTV ad experience that make it better than linear TV.

Publishers should lean into consumer preferences by optimizing and maximizing the quality of the advertising experience. In particular, publishers should consider working with a partner that helps streamline the delivery process and provides the highest quality experience to the end user. Publica is a great example of one such partner by utilizing Server-Side Ad Insertion (SSAI) technology. SSAI stitches the ad into a single high-quality stream. This minimizes lag time and avoiding content disruption, which allows publishers to foster positive connections between consumers and brands while delivering a seamless streaming experience.

Leverage first party data

Publisher first party data has often been underutilized. When it comes to CTV, publishers have unique insight into what users are watching, when they’re watching, and how often. When leveraged in a privacy-compliant manner, this information is essential for effectively packaging and selling valuable CTV inventory.

Insight into consumer preferences and behaviors allows publishers to create audience segments and streamline the buying process for their advertisers. Additionally, publishers can work directly with advertisers to access advertiser first party data and match it to their own for increased accuracy.

Finally, publishers who work with third party partners with audience management capabilities and integrations, such as Publica, typically see increased yield by having deeper insight into buyer performance metrics and the ability to optimize as needed. This is a win for both viewers and advertisers. That’s because viewers are less likely to skip contextually relevant ads on CTV. IAS research found 42% of CTV users are likely or very likely to view an ad to completion if ads are contextually relevant.

Optimize for programmatic

CTV is still in the early stages of developing efficient optimization for programmatic inventory. This means there’s an opportunity to streamline the process as though it’s (almost) brand new. Working with a partner who can hold a unified auction can help drive efficiency, transparency, and optimization throughout the programmatic buying and delivery process.

Unified auctions allow publishers to offer inventory to multiple ad exchanges, removing the cumbersome need to integrate directly into an ad server and result in increased yield for publishers. Publica, for example, is built for scale and allows publishers to offer inventory to multiple sell side partners at the same time, via a single tag integration, and allows real-time bidding, opening up more demand.

Bottom line

In the last year, CTV has reached ubiquity in U.S. households. Not only do nearly 9 in 10 consumers have access to a CTV device, but most prefer the CTV ad experience to that of linear TV. With nearly 50% of workers planning to continue some remote work, it’s likely that CTV will continue to grow. And it will eventually usurp the role of family hearth once held by linear TV and radio before it. In the meantime, publishers have the rare opportunity to forge a new path and optimize for excellence.

Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

CTV’s peril: Could shared data strengthen platforms and programmers?

August 24, 2021 Joseph Lospalluto, EVP Americas – Smart AdServer

In Greek mythology, Odysseus faced many harrowing close calls, traveling to Hades and back just to find his way home. For many involved in the evolution of ConnectedTV, it has felt very much like a 10-year journey to get to the juncture where the promise of the platform finally meets the commercial needs of the market.

Much like Homer’s Odyssey, there always seems to be one last challenge to face before reaching friendly shores. As video investment continues to surge into CTV, the competing challenges between programmers and CTV platforms are coming into sharp relief. The solution may lie in mutually shared data so that platform and programmer can harness the rising tide of OTT viewership on CTV devices and the revenues that come with it.

Big picture problems

For digital publishers, CTV will mean presenting their content on the big screen for the first time. This represents a big leap into the living room on platforms they don’t really control. Even an owned-and-operated OTT app must adhere to the specific requirements of the CTV platform where it resides. And that often means building multiple variations of the app just to conform to the needs of the platform. Even with native video players for environments like AndroidTV, the specific advertising parameters a publisher must comply with to succeed on a CTV platform vary wildly.

Traditional broadcast and cable networks approach ConnectedTV with a set of assumptions from the legacy world of television. Unfortunately, these do not always translate well into CTV. First, they have windowing restrictions around licensed content that can produce an uneven experience between their linear broadcast, cable VOD, and CTV offerings. Second, without an accepted currency equivalent to Nielsen ratings for CTV viewership, they are missing out on the opportunity to bind all TV viewing of their content into a single, sellable, audience. (Nielsen One – a potential solution – is slated to debut in Q4 2022.)

Add into this the fact that ConnectedTV device platforms are becoming owners of advertising inventory across all of the programmers on their platform, and the situation becomes even more complex for everyone. In the past, a TV network would surrender two minutes per programming hour to their MVPD distribution partner, or roughly 12.5% of total inventory. This was mitigated by the terms of a carriage agreement that permitted the distributor to only sell local ads for insertion into their physical distribution footprint. Today, a CTV platform has rights to 40% of a programmers’ inventory and no restrictions around to whom it can sell.

Transition and targeting

Web publishers had to master new techniques and methods to benefit from the consumer transition to mobile screens. Now these same web publishers that have built strong advertising supported video businesses will need to recalibrate their workflows to ensure that CTV publishing is worthwhile. Ultimately, their ability to represent the full scale and dimension of their audience, across owned and third-party platforms, will have a profound impact on their success.

The value of a programmer’s CTV advertising inventory, despite residing within the same content network and delivery platform, is influenced dramatically by the audience targeting data that each party, owner, and distributor, is able to provide. When a network sells this CTV inventory directly or even programmatically, they can apply a limited amount of first party data to the placement given the lack of unique identifiers provided by the CTV platform. The network falls back on presenting its CTV audience as an extension of its broadcast audience. That is, unfortunately, an imprecise and potentially loss-making approach.

Connected competition

The CTV platform is not so constrained. While publishers may not have the option to sell these networks by name, their aggregation of so many CTV impressions allows them to compete directly with the programmers for the same advertising budgets. And because of the additional first party data they have about the consumer: viewing habits, zip code, and even TV size, they can very often out compete the networks for the same campaign commitments.

So here we have the Scylla and Charybdis of CTV advertising. On the one hand a national brand advertiser can approach multiple networks for their CTV campaigns and craft a schedule that will guarantee distribution and spot delivery. They can be very specific around selected programming and category exclusivity if they so desire.

On the other hand, going to one or several CTV platforms for the same campaign will allow a buyer to define a desired target audience profile to reach. However, they will have limited control around the content adjacency and context of their placements. And the reporting and reconciliation of campaigns is also different in degree and detail, forcing the advertiser to now undertake an analytical effort to assess ROAS from each source.

The route to revenue

Scylla, the six-headed monster in Homer’s The Odyssey ate sailors that passed close enough to be claimed. She sat on one side of the Straits of Messina. Charybdis, a violent whirlpool that would devour entire ships, was at the far shore. Sailing too close to one or the other ensured an unenviable end. Buying impressions from only programmers or only from CTV platforms will leave advertising brands at a disadvantage precisely at the time when CTV can command the enormous share shift of video investment coming from a declining traditional TV audience.

The stakes aren’t quite life and death for CTV advertising. However, it’s worth recognizing that this state of affairs will continue to constrict the growth of the business unless additional progress can be made to harmonize network-sold and platform-sold CTV impressions.

It is incumbent on the industry to coalesce around a shared data set that both platforms and programmers can provide to advertisers programmatically such that they can evaluate and purchase these avails with the same confidence that they used to purchase television. The rising tide of OTT viewership on CTV platforms, on both linear FAST channels and AVOD, suggests that rallying around a common baseline for CTV inventory stands to benefit both the content rights owners and distribution platforms equally, when each will finally have a stake in one another’s success.

Advertising | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

Newsweek and Discovery are ready for the cookieless web. Are you?

August 23, 2021 Travis Clinger, SVP, Head of Addressability And Ecosystem – LiveRamp

We all know that the days of the cookie as the primary means to ad targeting and personalization are coming to an end. From increased legislation to ongoing browser updates, the time has come to put the cookie behind us and move forward. The good news is that there are tried and true methods that ensure the free flow of information and effective advertising.

While brands, publishers, and platforms are likely to leverage cookies for as long as they can, the industry has viable solutions and advertisers should take advantage of them. Those who have gotten a head start already see the benefits of an addressable, cookieless solution that enables authenticated user experiences. Brands and publishers that have already made the transition should use this time to establish stronger relationships based on trust through first-party data strategies. Those who haven’t yet started the journey away from third-party cookies should get started right away by leveraging a trusted, first-party authenticated solution.

Authenticated audiences

Previously, brands looking to reach their audiences have been overcompensating for the lack of a transparent, authenticated solution. Data-driven publishers, with established, first-party relationships can leverage their authenticated data so marketers can target audiences and measure campaign outcomes with people-based identity.

In the past, marketers looking for a measurable solution had to turn to social platforms’ walled gardens, which have enjoyed the benefits of disproportionate media investments. Historically, advertisers spent 60% of their digital advertising budget on reaching audiences in walled gardens, allotting only 40% of the budget to the open web. Yet, consumers spent more than half of their time on the open web (66%), compared to just 34% on closed platforms.

As independent publishers embrace the tactics of walled gardens, they leverage first-party authentications to deliver better, more targeted advertising. Initial campaign results from two publishers, Newsweek and Discovery, illustrate that an authenticated, cookieless solution has proven effective.

People-based solutions

Publishers and brands can now connect identities without the use of cookies or compromising data. For example, Newsweek was able to better plan and execute on advertisers’ marketing campaigns by leveraging a people-based, privacy-safe, cookieless solution that enabled publishers and brands to match identities.

Leveraging solutions independent of third-party cookies, the Newsweek team saw a total lift in eCPM as high as 224%, with an average lift of 52% across all web browsers. The lift in specific browsers — a CPM lift of 55% on Google Chrome, and a 93% and 60% CPM lift on Firefox and Safari, respectively — indicates the significant impact the new, cookieless solution can drive as an alternative to third-party cookies and in cookieless environments.

Although third-party cookies are still a capability in Chrome, Newsweek benefited from an audience lift on the browser by activating on the new cookieless solution. Because both Firefox and Safari no longer enable audience reach with third-party cookies, the lift on both browsers demonstrates how the cookieless solution enables a new, more premium channel based on authentications where marketers and advertisers can reach an audience they were not previously able to.

Newsweek’s COO Alvaro Palacios said, “Newsweek has proven through testing that digital media does not need third-party cookies to increase yields and the value of our inventory. This ID solution provides the infrastructure to match our readers with a brand’s customers, for marketing that could be more effective than with third-party cookies.”

On mobile devices, publishers are also seeing a higher CPM than on cookieless mobile web inventory. Through their new ID solution, Newsweek also achieved a CPM lift of 53% on iOS, compared to those that did not activate on this ID. Discovery Inc., a publisher with sites including HGTV.com, TravelChannel.com, FoodNetwork.com and DIYNetwork.com, also saw an average eCPM increase of 44% when enabling activation on the same ID solution on their cookieless inventory.

A new ecosystem where publishers and brands win

The CPM improvements that benefit Newsweek and Discovery are just an example of the incremental revenue opportunities achieved by leveraging an authenticated solution. As publishers continue to grow their addressable inventory, their revenue will also flourish. Brand marketers can now buy inventory activated by authenticated, first-party data. This enables them to reach more consumers on more channels than ever before. And that’s something third-party cookies were never able to achieve.

While third-party cookies may still exist in the near-term, advertisers should take advantage of the proven, more viable solution already available. Consider the cellular network transition from 4G to 5G. With speeds 100 times faster than 4G and better connectivity for seamless user experiences, 5G is the clear winner for a preferred connection. Yet, 4G still exists. In this same way, having already proven themselves to be more effective, authenticated cookieless solutions have also become the preferred solution while third-party cookies remain.

The digital advertising industry is constantly balancing the interests of publishers, brands, and browsers. The sometimes-competing interests may feel like a three-way tug-of-war at times. However, there are proven viable alternatives to third-party cookies that benefit brands and publishers equally.

To get ahead of impending browser changes, publishers must own their trusted first-party consumer relationships through authenticated solutions. Once publishers succeed in establishing trust with their consumers, they will then be able to develop a relationship that’s independent of cookies. And that will improve the user experience and increase yield for publishers and the brands that work for them.