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Advertising | Perspectives

The Big 10: Media executives call out the industry’s biggest challenges

While it is appealing to start off a New Year with rosy predictions, it is also important to take a clear-eyed look at the road (and roadblocks) ahead. We asked a few of our members what they see as the biggest challenges the digital media industry faces today.

Here’s what leaders at ten diverse media companies see as the biggest challenge in the year to come:

———-

Scott Bailey, President, TEN Automotive Division
@TENenthusiast

Monetizing scaled social audiences and the content made for these channels is a challenge. We see the benefit of being a first mover and building a large social audience. That said, the benefit today lies heavily in the marketing value it provides in driving traffic to our sites and leveraging it to convert fans into paying customers through subscription offerings like Motor Trend OnDemand. We are able to monetize through advertising, but the nature of the monetization on social is more challenging to do at scale, as it requires a more custom approach compared to more traditional, turnkey placements/buys.

Jordan Bitterman, Chief Marketing Officer, The Weather Company, an IBM Business
@JordanBitterman @weathercompany

Our industry must build a parallel world adjacent to the current one dominated by Google and Facebook. This new world must be scaled, intelligent and open. Currently, 85 cents of every new dollar are going to the two biggest players because they have been solving for scaled and intelligent – and have done a great job doing so. But, an open garden is increasingly becoming a requirement for sophisticated advertisers who want partners who are flexible on data and transparent on pricing and performance.

Jim Brady CEO & Founder, Spirited Media
@jimbrady @spiritedmediaco

It’s hard to pick a “biggest” challenge, as there as so many. But, to me, refining user experience remains a crucial one. There are still way too many sites alienating readers for a quick buck by hammering them with pop-ups, unnecessary slideshows, pagination, interstitials and more. Yes, we need to make money. But gouging readers to the point where we drive them away is an abysmal long-term audience strategy. Treat your audience like you don’t care about them, and they will surely return the favor.”

Steven Smith, President of Digital Media, AccuWeather
@accuweather

In 2017, we continue to hurtle toward a ubiquitous global user audience, accessing data from every imaginable kind of device with a greater focus on personalization, localization, service and mobility. Content providers are going to have to step up to meet the needs of an audience that wants fast, relevant, and localized—and provided consistently regardless of device, from smartphones to connected refrigerators. That makes strong partnerships with vendors a necessity, from Cloud storage providers for scaling data to meet demand demands to robust content management solutions to help port news from format to format and device to device. And of course, the audience will continue to demand content that is more timely and relevant than ever.

Joy Jones, Vice President, Global Products, Associated Press
@AssociatedPress

The biggest challenge we face is building diverse streams of revenue that support innovative storytelling. In 2017, digital media companies must bridge the current divide between creating compelling stories that attract interest and attention, and the opportunities for monetization that are increasingly concentrated on just a few of the largest platforms. The industry is not going to be successful if there’s too much focus on trendy stories that spin up on a one-off basis or so-called native ad content that lacks authenticity. We need immersive and captivating high-quality content that engages diverse audiences and creates a wide fan base across emerging media platforms. That diversification of revenue will be critical to building and maintaining a sustainable engine for digital media innovation.

John Kosner, EVP, Digital & Print Media, ESPN
@JKosner @ESPN

Establishing timely and trusted cross-media measurement is an enormous challenge — but a critically important one. People consume media on an ever-growing number of platforms and devices and we must establish accurate ways to measure the total audience we reach and their engagement with content. That means having clear, trusted standards and metrics — which measure across TV, apps, web, OTT and more — and do so both in- and out-of-home. The connection people have with digitally-delivered content and advertising continues to grow enormously. But so does fake content and ad fraud. Trusted and transparently-measured environments will become ever-more valuable.

Beth Lawrence, EVP of Digital Ad Sales, Scripps Networks Interactive
@ScrippsNet

A big challenge in digital in 2017 will be the ability for clients and consumers to separate the wheat from the chaff. We all know digital is here to stay and continues to be a more important revenue driver every year. But the quality of digital content has been under the radar, and in the final analysis, marketers care what brands they associate with. Period. Content matters; quality content rules. It will be a year of cleaning up, properly measuring and delivering great results in digital.

Matt Minoff, SVP, Digital Platforms and Strategy, Meredith Corporation
@mattminoff @MeredithCorp

The biggest challenge will continue to be capturing consumer attention as existing platforms grow and new platforms emerge.

Vikki Neil, SVP/GM of Scripps Lifestyle Studios
@ScrippsNet

In digital, you must stay open to all ideas that come your way, but disciplined enough to say no to many. You must move quickly and not wait for perfection, but perfect what you do daily. There’s not time to develop a long-range plan like a traditional media business offers. From my seat, the biggest challenge is a combination of making the right bets, and moving as fast as humanly possible to understand the space before your competitors, so that you can build the best offering for consumers and advertisers. It’s impossible to be everywhere across all opportunities, so choose wisely, go quickly and iterate daily.

Alex Skatell, Founder and President, Independent Journal Review
@AlexSkatell @TheIJR

The biggest challenge for media is building community. The strategies that have propelled many digital media companies into large audiences are largely commoditized, so you need to figure out how to connect your content and communities together in a deeper and unique way.

Brendan Spain, VP, Advertising – Americas, Financial Times
@spanishbrendan @FT

The biggest challenge for digital media in 2017 will be for quality publishers to cut through the noise – of ad fraud, fake news, and non-human traffic – to command fair market pricing for their trusted brands and influential audiences. Evaluating and leveraging these trusted environments will continue to be both important and difficult as the market weighs chasing scale and audience against quality and transparency.

Domenic Venuto, General Manager, Consumer Division, The Weather Company, an IBM Business
@dvenuto @weathercompany

As we look at the 2017 media landscape, there is potential for a massive upheaval on multiple fronts with the forecasted political uncertainty. The industry is resilient and adaptable, and we must remain focused on building great products for fans. And perhaps anxiety is unwarranted.

Industry-Research | Perspectives

Maybe the internet hasn’t killed our attention spans after all

Remember that study from last year that claimed computers and the internet had transformed human attention span to roughly the equivalent of a goldfish — you’ll be forgiven if you’ve forgotten because after all the internet supposedly has turned your brain to mush. However, a new Pew study on long articles has found we might have longer attention spans than the goldfish study would indicate. (Though actually, studies have shown that the goldfish may have been getting the short end of the attention span myth as well.)

Dueling studies aside, the Pew research team took a long look at people’s smartphone reading habits. Conventional wisdom suggests that we want to just dip in and out on our phones: We might review headlines, but we won’t do much more.

U.S. public show signs of engaging with long-form articles on cellphonesIn fact, the Pew study found the opposite is true. We spend almost twice the amount of time reading long articles — 123 seconds for long form versus 57 for short — and long and short articles get almost the same number of visitors. (For the purpose of the study Pew defined long form as over a 1000 words and short form as 101-999 words. And lest you question the methodology, Pew clearly put in the work.)

“All told, Center researchers spent months digging deeply into the details of 117 million anonymized, complete cellphone interactions with 74,840 articles from 30 news websites in the month of September 2015,” according to the research organization

My gut response to these findings would be, Duh! Of course people spend more time on longer articles than shorter ones — because they’re longer. But the fact we are reading these long articles on our smartphones at all is news in itself because it flies in the face of our preconceived notions of how we interact with content on our phones.

Julia Beizer, who is director of product at The Washington Post told Digital Content Next in a recent article, There‘s more than one way to succeed at digital that research suggests our smartphone usage might vary more than we believe.

“One of the early misplaced assumptions around mobile was that mobile users are standing in line waiting for coffee. A lot of people are doing that, but a lot of people are on their couches at home too. Research shows upwards of 70 percent are at home,” she said.

We are also on long flights and commuter trains and other places where we are captive and have a lot of time to kill with our phones in our hands. It makes sense that we would be using our phones — which are getting bigger and higher resolution screens — to do more reading.

But a single study doesn’t necessarily prove anything, even one as comprehensive as this one appears to be. That said, there are plenty of long form content initiatives that seem to be capturing their share of attention.

Last year the Huffington Post without the benefit of this study took a leap of faith and launched Highline, a long-form article site designed to let writers and readers dig into a story instead of getting a short, high-level view. A year later, while the editors aren’t sharing their numbers, they’re still around and they claim it’s been a huge success and the articles on Highline are among the most read on the Huffington Post site. It suggests that when you produce quality work people will read the articles, no matter how long they might be or on what device they might be reading them.

What this all means is the attention studies could be wrong or at least misguided. Certainly, we lack patience. We won‘t wait around if your content is taking too long to load, but it is important not to confuse that lack of patience (or the expectation of a good mobile experience) for short attention spans.

This is a big lesson for digital content creators, whether writing an article, creating content marketing pieces or writing website copy. If you write good stuff, you can keep people engaged regardless of the length. And given that time spent is increasingly being touted as the true measure of engagement, understanding the value of long form content is essential.

There‘s tons of other data in the Pew study including the impact of social media to drive traffic, the topics people like most (crime is big), the days and times we are more likely to engage with content and so much more. It’s worth digging into, but if your only take-away is that we will read an article whatever the length if it’s good enough, that’s more than enough.

Industry-Research

Attention is a valuable audience attribute

Since the beginning of broadcast television, exposure was the currency of audience measurement. Gradually audience metrics evolved from tuning behavior, to program selection, to page views, to viewable impressions. Interestingly, none of these measures capture the audience’s engagement with media or the advertising. Today’s media companies collect or count on third parties for an abundance of measurement data including page views, expressions of liking and sharing to quantify audience attributes of value to advertisers but again none quantify the audience’s attention.

Jacob L. Nelson and James G. Webster of the International Journal on Media Management at Northwestern University recognized the need to further evolve media measurement. They designed a research study to analyze the relationship between the amount of time visitors spend on sites, news sites in particular, and the number of unique visitors the sites receive.

They used comScore data to analyze 887 news websites in their study “Audience Currencies in the Age of Big Data.”  Through then analysis of this data which measured an individual’s time spent on a news site and the average number of minutes spent on a specific page, Nelson and Webster found that these two variables most accurately represented an individual’s level of engagement. In further probing, they also found no significant correlation between the number users a site reaches and the amount of time visitors spend on that site.  In other words, the number of visitors to a site does not necessarily correlate to the level of engagement. In fact, unique visitors and attention measures are very different measurements, one identifies the quantify of visitors and the other the quality of visits (engagement).

While publishers and advertisers have begun to adopt an attention based metric, there is still research to be conducted. Specifically, for advertisers, confirming the value and predictability of the halo effect of user engagement on ad recall and effectiveness. In programmatic buying, advertisers need further qualification of a time based audience especially since heavy users are often the easiest for advertisers to reach (and cheaper too).  Further, time based metrics should not be a measure of consumption where gimmicks ensure long visits that stimulate engagement. Attention metrics must ensure creative methods to monitor user activity and interest to protect against gaming of this measurement.  Being that attention is a core requisite for retention, both publishers and advertiser stand to benefit using it as a media based currency.

Advertising | Perspectives | Revenue

Time well spent? Inside the FT’s time-based ads sales effort

When it comes to finite resources, perhaps none is so keenly felt as the limited number of hours in the day. And, as more content creators vie for this precious time—across a proliferation of delivery platforms and devices—creators of digital content have steadily seen their online objectives reduced to a frantic race for audience numbers, pageviews and click-throughs. Some leaders in the industry, however, are looking to change the conversation to one where time spent is the metric that matters.

Last fall, the Financial Times began testing ad sales based upon a new cost-per-hour (CPH) metric. Its initial foray went well and in May of this year they announced the official launch of a new time-based measurement system. The FT’s US Commercial Director, Brendan Spain, says the decision to initiate a new method for transacting ad value based upon time was prompted by an increasing sense among marketers that they their digital ad investments might not be as valuable as once thought, given revelations of high bot traffic and ad-viewability limitations.

“We decided that, given our audience, as well as the registration and subscription information we have behind our readership, that we had an opportunity to go the other way to create a very transparent product that marketers could be confident in,” says Spain. Now, a year after this idea was conceived, Spain believes that the need for better metrics is at least as great—if not greater—than it was then.

In part, the need stems from new concerns over agency rebates, which have increased the demand for transparency into the ad-buying landscape. However, Spain says that he’s also seeing an increased desire for brand dollars to be allocated to digital, which requires publishers to deliver more substantive KPIs, beyond the click. Spain notes that “There’s no KPI-uplift for clicking” while CPH measurement, on the other hand, “offers recognition that there are marketers are doing something besides trying to sell a pizza, that there are other KPIs that need to be looked at.”

That said, despite a desire for something better, there’s still a hill to climb in terms of getting any new metric to gain wide acceptance. “There’s not a line for CPH on agency spreadsheets and let’s face it, those spreadsheets are a window into the minds in the middle- and back-office,” Spain says, emphasizing the need for education on both the client and agency sides.

There is also a question of standardizing the time-based metric in order for it to scale. The Economist recently rolled out its own take on selling time-based advertising. Unlike the FT, The Economist opted to cap its attention measurement at 30 seconds. The Wall Street Journal has also reportedly explored a time-based approach that would be based upon incremental blocks of time. Differing models can create confusion in the marketplace, though Spain points out that it is still early days and the FT is among an increasing number of publishers testing out what makes the most sense. The important thing, he says, is that “the vast majority of premium publishers agree that time is transactable.”

To date, the FT has worked with 15 brands on 19 campaigns. Eight percent of their digital inventory is being served through CPH, a number Spain says adds up to a not-insignificant amount of incremental revenue on the FT’s P&L. The positive impact also affects its advertisers who are seeing 10% more active time in view than if they purchased CPM campaign. They are also currently in the process of surveying all of its clients who have tested CPH buying so far to better evaluate and document its effectiveness. “Everything we’re doing is evidence based,” says Spain. “It is really important that we’re not just putting a finger in the air.”

Despite its promise, time-based sales are not right for every campaign. As Spain points out, CPH works best to achieve objectives such as ad recall, brand awareness and recognition, and purchase consideration. He also doesn’t foresee the FT moving entirely away from CPM-based sales, though he points out they’ve never been a CPC environment. By Q1, his goal is for all of the FT’s top clients to be aware of CPH and see its value based upon evidence-based case studies.

There are metrics that can be very easily manipulated, says Spain. “You can buy likes, retweets, followers—all that takes is a five minute Google search to figure out how.” What needs to be emphasized, however, is that there are things you can’t buy. “You can’t add another hour to a CEOs day to read a publication. We need to un-muddy the waters. One of the ways to do that is to focus on metrics that are a lot harder to fudge.”

As he considers the bigger digital advertising picture, Spain has high hopes: He believes that an attention-based approach can bring more brand ad dollars to quality partners; increase marketer confidence that their ads are being seen and are engaging consumers; give publishers a means to value attention at a scaled level rather than a flat rate; and maybe even drive some of the bad inventory out of consideration or drive it out of the market altogether.

Industry-Research

Smartphones can tell when you are bored

Given today’s information and sensory overload, capturing someone’s attention is a high commodity. Researchers at Telefonica Research in Barcelona, Spain recognized that peoples’ attention are available when they are bored. And most often, when people are bored, they turn to their cell phones. This is why the researchers developed a machine-based learning model that detects when mobile phone users are bored and pushes content to them.

The researchers identified usage patterns that were indicative of boredom and confirmed the specific behaviors patterns were related. This data was then used to predict patterns of boredom; the predictions were correct 83% of the time. Interestingly, they also noticed the more bored the participants, the more likely time had passed between the participants sending and receiving phone calls, SMS, or notifications. Importantly, users were significantly more likely to open and engage with content pushed to them on their mobile phones when the model predicted them to be bored.

These findings have major implications for future applications in being able to predict when a user is bored couple and knowing a user’s location could provide content in relation to specific context. New apps are already being developed along these lines. As well boredom detection could be a great way for publishers and marketers to know when to push content or messaging for it to be most receptive.

Perspectives | Revenue

Accounting for Attention Minutes as a Currency

Time-based metrics are of considerable interest to online publishers. There seems little doubt that “attention minutes,” in one form or another, will be a tool used by both marketers and media. DCN has identified many of these possibilities. But it’s far from clear whether these metrics will, or should, displace more conventional measures of audience size. To consider the strengths and weaknesses of time-based metrics as currencies, we explored the relationship between the time people spend with websites and the popularity of those sites.

Do attention and popularity measure different things?
There is a long-standing law of consumer behavior called “Double Jeopardy”  (DJ). It stipulates that popular offerings enjoy more consumer loyalty than unpopular offerings. DJ in television has meant that channels with high ratings have higher levels of time spent and repeat viewing. The only meaningful exception has been the “small-but-loyal” audiences of foreign language channels. So on the web, it’s possible that the most popular sites (as measured by UVs) also rack up the most attention minutes. If popularity and time spent are highly correlated, either metric would produce the same winners and losers.

To see if that’s true, we used comScore data to test the correlations among several metrics. We looked at three-month aggregates from October to December 2014 across 1,067 news sites. The time-spent measures, which included “average minutes per visit,” “average minutes per page,” and “average minutes per visitor,” were highly correlated.

However, there were only weak correlations between time spent and audience size. You can get a sense of this in the chart below. Most outlets with small-but-loyal audiences were, like TV, non-English sites. So there were no DJ effects. More importantly, it seems that time-based metrics are tapping into something quite different from popularity. So which is better suited to be a currency?

What do attention minutes tell us about content?
DCN and several others have suggested that attention minutes might be a good measure of audience engagement and quality. As such, attention minutes could be useful for developing content – which, in turn, could build audience loyalty. But currencies typically reflect the needs of advertisers. Do time-based metrics offer advertisers something of value that they can’t get from measures of popularity?

Source: comScore Media Metrix Key Measures Report, October – December 2014
Source: comScore Media Metrix Key Measures Report, October – December 2014

At a minimum, attention minutes can help authenticate exposure to an ad, serving as an extension of viewability standards. Beyond that, it’s harder to see why an advertiser would put a premium on the audiences’ engagement with a publisher’s content. One possibility is that an ad becomes more effective when it’s surrounded by content that has truly engaged readers. But here, the evidence is mixed. There’s some indication that the benefits of engagement in content bleed over to advertising. For example, a 2012 comScore report concluded that content engagement is more strongly correlated with advertising effectiveness than clicks or total impressions. Additionally, a 2009 experiment found that user engagement and advertising effectiveness are positively associated. On the other hand, consistent definitions of engagement are elusive. What’s more, a 2013 Nielsen report suggests that it’s the medium, rather than the content, that most greatly affects advertising efficacy.

If advertisers are convinced that engaging content benefits their ads, premium publishers might be able to profit from that association. But programmatic buying is gaining ground in online advertising, and that potentially divorces ad placement from its surrounding content (though the number of private marketplaces is growing). Some advertisers don’t care about content apart from its ability to deliver the attention of prospective customers. It’s the characteristics of the people being delivered that are likely to matter most for any currency.

What do attention minutes tell us about visitors?
Advertisers typically use metrics to describe and target audiences. Historically that’s been age and gender, but with all the digital exhaust users leave behind, it now seems the sky’s the limit. You could identify those users who are engaged by time spent measures, then add them to the targeting mix. But it could backfire. Our findings indicated that individuals who spent large amounts of time on news sites tended to be heavy web users. In other words, they spend a lot of time online. In a world that’s driven by programmatic buying, the heaviest users are the easiest for advertisers to reach. The laws of supply demand suggest they’ll be of less value to advertisers. And this just might turn the A in attention minutes into a scarlet letter.

James G. Webster is a professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern University. He’s the author of The Marketplace of Attention and Ratings Analysis: Audience Measurement and Analytics.

Jacob L. Nelson  is a doctoral student in Northwestern University’s Media, Technology, and Society program. A former journalist, his research looks at news consumption and media metrics.

Perspectives

Digging Deep into Attention and Metrics that Matter

I was thrilled to see an industry visionary like Ev Williams tackle the measurement discussion with his post “A mile wide, an inch deep” and advocate the use of a dimension beyond simply unique visitors.

We agree that time is a critical dimension and arguably the most important one as noted in our recent report “How Time-based Measurement is Grabbing Publishers’ Attention.”

In terms of measuring the quality of an audience, Ev’s “rectangle analogy” nails it.

Ask any junior high student which rectangle is bigger, one that is three inches wide or one that is two-and-a-half inches wide, and they’ll tell you it’s a nonsensical question unless they have more information — specifically, the height.

And yet, we literally say one company or service is “bigger” based on a single number — specifically, number of people who have “used” it in the last 30 days. 

rectangle

A site that attracts one million visitors for 30 seconds per month is an entirely different business than one that attracts one million visitors for 3 hours per month. The same holds true for brand advertising. We will continue to urge the industry to debate and discuss a time-based measurement world, what it means to brand advertisers and how it more correctly aligns the incentives for creating great media. As Ev so eloquently puts it: “Most Internet companies would build better things and create more value if they paid more attention to depth than breadth.”

It’s an Attention Economy. Content is everywhere and so are the consumers. We need to be in the business of making the most of their precious and valuable time. We’ll be exploring this topic in depth at the 13rd Annual Digital Content Next Summit later this month. It is members-only but we’ll be reporting on the insights and major themes on InContext after the event.

Perspectives

Defining Bricks to Build the House of Time and Attention

This year may go down as one of the most pivotal years in the digital Jason Kintrevolution as we transition into an AV world (After Viewability).

Vivek Shah, CEO of Ziff-Davis and Chairman of the IAB did a terrific job earlier this month at IAB MIXX and in a WSJ op-ed reinforcing why viewability is critical, while also explaining the important work that still needs to be done. This coincided with the reconvening of the  Blue-Ribbon Committee (which I served on in its first phase to define the standard). It also led to the MRC’s advisory to media, which included these important guidelines:

  • If an impression’s viewability can’t be measured, then it doesn’t mean it’s not viewable or worthless;
  • It is not realistic (or even possible) to expect 100% viewability so there needs to be a more a measured set of expectations during this complex transition. As Vivek stated, no other media has attempted this level of measurement.

Publishers can’t bear the cost of the entire transition and, as such, the agencies using this opportunity as a price-negotiating tactic are doing a great disservice to the industry, their clients and publishers. Additionally, any marketplace confusion is not helpful in establishing this new currency. It’s why a group of advertisers, agencies and media companies agreed on the standard of 50% of a display ad for a minimum of one second.

Let me illustrate why these points are essential in evolving viewability with a personal story: I have a bedtime routine with our two toddler boys where they can ask dad any question they want to. Any parent reading this will realize that dad often doesn’t know the answers to their questions. Last week, our five year old made some significant inquiries into the nature of bricks: What are they made of? Why are they all the same size? Why do they sometimes have holes in them? How are they so strong? And like many parents out there, after a kiss goodnight, I headed straight to Wikipedia so that I could have better informed answers ready at the breakfast table. It turns out bricks are the same size so that they fit in the mason’s hands and are interchangeable. The mason’s craft shapes these bricks into something useful and enduring.

Viewability is our brick. If we–marketers, publishers and everyone who serves their interests–don’t get it right and make it as strong as it can be, then our building will crumble. Our first go at building this digital landscape was built off of impressions defined by pings of ad servers. It turns out that those ads served weren’t viewable as much as 80% of the time. When technology improvements allowed us to see this problem, the need for a different standard for an impression became clear, preferably one not based on clicks and direct response metrics that undervalue the trust and equity of brand marketers and high quality content companies. The good work of the IAB, ANA and AAAAs has now given us a standard for our brick that is fair to everyone. Rolling it out won’t happen overnight and we all need to share equally in that effort.

But if we can agree that viewability is the brick, then what are we going to build? I believe the answer is the house of time and attention.

I was thrilled with all of the discussion and positive reaction to my column during Advertising Week on Why Attention is Worth More than the Click. Transacting on time was something that we discussed early on in 2012 as the natural next step of viewability and it is clear that, in the intervening years, progress has been made on this front. Here at Digital Content Next (formerly the Online Publishers Association), we conducted research among our members to examine time-based measurement and just last week we released a whitepaper “How time-Based Measurement is Grabbing Digital Publishers’ Attention,” which explores the results. We also had the opportunity to discuss the topic with industry leaders at a private member event.

And the evidence is clear: The time is right to build a more robust and resilient digital ecosystem in which we evaluate engagement and measure impact on something sturdier than crumbling clicks. Viewability is the brick from which we can build meaningful time-based measurement. This will require both strategic and technological changes. At DCN, we recommend that organizations reassess their measurement capabilities; implement viewability (if you’ve not already), report the total attention time on campaigns, whether advertisers ask for it or not; and equip ad operations and yield management teams with the tools to understand the value of the time your audience spends with your content. As Mike Donahue, EVP, 4A’s noted to me recently, this isn’t a quick fix but we know the steps: “Once we have the opportunity to see (viewability) nailed as a first step cross-platform currency, the sequential next step currency is engagement. Short of scalable, affordable neuro measures (of emotional response), time is the best surrogate to measure engagement.”

Innovation | Revenue

DCN Panel of Early Movers Sheds Light on the Evolution of Time-based Measurement

From the threat to cookies to inventory-glut, banner advertising was already in enough trouble when the dire statistics about viewability started to come in. In 2012, AdSafe Media found that, on average, 20% or less of all ads were in view for 15 seconds or more prompting the Media Rating Council (MRC) to issue a viewable impression advisory in November of 2012 aong with a call for the industry to develop intelligence around non-viewable ads.  Though momentum was building. In June 2013, comScore still found that 54% of display ads were not seen at all, creating even more pressure on the marketplace to deliver solutions that factored in viewability.

And the industry responded. This March, the MRC lifted its advisory of viewability  and industry interest in buying and selling on this metric began to heat up.advertisers became able to buy and sell display ads based began in earnest. The standard for a viewable online impression was set as 50% of its pixels remaining in-view for one continuous second or two for an online video ad. While there are differing opinions on where this bar should be set, a viewability standard is a solid start in developing digital advertising metrics that demonstrate effectiveness. Seeing an ad is certainly a step in the right direction given that the goal of advertising is to capture the attention of an audience long enough to make an impact.

So while viewability sets a baseline, many believe that that the true measure of ad-effectiveness is time-spent. Our research shows that 60% of premium publishers are already considering transacting based on time and 8% will begin testing it this year. And 4% of those participating in the research are already testing time-based measurement.

Among the early leaders are Gannett and FT.com, both of which participated in a panel on time-based measurement at a Digital Content Next  members-only event on October 22nd. The program featured a panel of experts that included Josh Schwartz, Chief Data Scientist at Chartbeat; Jonah Goodhart, Founder/CEO of MOAT; Daniel Rothman, US Director of Marketing & Insight at the Financial Times; and Steve Ahlberg, Vice President, Advertising Solutions and Product Management at Gannett Co. Inc. Ad Age reporter Michael Sebastian moderated the panel.

Digital Content Next CEO Jason Kint noted in his opening remarks, “I’ve never seen a topic pick up this kind of momentum in the market. Viewability is part of our world going forward but time based measurement will absolutely be part of that future.”

Gannett was early on board for viewability, implementing validated impression measurement and guaranteed viewability in 2012. However, as Ahlberg pointed out, “We still have a long way to go before there’s value to everyone in the ecosystem. This problem has been going on so long that it has caused a lack of trust.” In fact, he predicts that it will be another 18 months before the advertising world is widely transacting on time. “Engagement isn’t something we see in DFP [DoubleClick for Publishers] right now,” he said, making the point that all of the components of forecasting, billing, etc. must be designed to incorporate engagement metrics, of which time-spent is a telling factor.

This summer, the Financial Times began to test a method of buying and selling inventory using time-spent. The company believes that viewability is a positive development, but that it doesn’t go far enough. During the panel, Rothman outlined FT research which found that the tipping point for ad engagement is not one or two seconds. “We can prove that five plus seconds matters,” he said.  Ad recall, familiarity, association and consideration all get between 51% and 58% uplift at the five second mark according to Rothman. Thus, he is piloting a program in the New Year that will guarantee 100% viewability for five seconds.  “We recognize that not all impressions are created equal. The research has proven that this is not opinion. This is fact. We need move the conversation on from quantity metrics.”

The FT works with Chartbeat, which got its start by providing real-time insights on content for editors and reporters. The editorial side of the house, according to Schwartz, “got it immediately. They want people to spend time with their articles; that’s why they write them. And, with the advent of viewability, it starts to matter to the business side of the house.” To his mind, monetizing on time better aligns both sides of the content business.

While Schwartz said he would be “highly surprised if the exact model that companies Gannett and FT are using right now is what we end up with,” he applauds the experimentation so that the industry can move towards metrics that provide value to the entire ecosystem. MOAT’s Goodhart cautions against counting on any publisher’s solution (or any single metric) dominating the industry. “It is a mistake to make it about one nuance of the idea of attention. We believe in attention, but we think it might be a combination of time and other things. We need to move people away from impressions and clicks, but give them options.”

Certainly, this transition away from CPMs will not happen overnight. At the FT, Rothman says that all of the agencies and partners they are working with “find this interesting and exciting” however they also hear that time-based measurement doesn’t fit in with how they are already buying media. “There’s a need for them to look outside their spreadsheets.”

Goodhart reports that, in just a matter of months, he has seen a huge shift in the understanding of viewability and finds CMOs are asking for it and that for 2015, he believes that a large number of agencies will “put a stake in the ground here.” And when that happens, Schwartz predicts that programmatic will take a big hit and that “publishers that redesign their sites around viewability are going to benefit.”

And, referring to the new Digital Content Next Research “How Time-Based Measurement is Grabbing Digital Publishers’ Attention,” Ahlberg said “For the five percent that said viewability that doesn’t matter, go back and tell your business leaders it is here. Educate your sales teams about the metrics that work and be confident in your story.”

 Other coverage of this event and the related research:

Survey: 80% of Premium Publishers Want to Sell Ads Based on Time (Ad Age)
Online Publishers Are Serious About Selling Ads Based on Time (WSJ)
Survey: Publishers embracing shift to time-based metrics (Capital NY)
DCN: 80% Of Pubs Using Time-Based Metrics (NetNewsCheck)
80% of Publishers Interested in Transacting on Time: Digital Content Next Report (Chartbeat)

Innovation

Q&A: Jonathan Hunt, VP, Global Marketing and Partnerships, Vox Media on Media for Millennials

Q: In your opinion and experience, do millennial readers have brand loyalty as a rule? How do you develop brand affinity/loyalty with them?

A: Yes and no. Above all else, young people (and frankly everyone) value quality and honesty. If another media brand can come along and offer a superior product then they have an opportunity to usurp loyalty. The fact is we live in a time when we’re getting our information from hundreds of different sources — publishers, social feeds, mobile apps, our friends and family and coworkers — all day every day. This is referred to as an Attention Economy. So more so now than ever qualities like utility, entertainment, honesty, and personality can easily trump loyalty.

But what happens when you consistently provide premium, honest stories to your readers? You can create loyalty. It’s easier said than done, but that’s our approach to every aspect of our business and why we’ve been on an explosive growth trajectory.

Q: Do you approach the development of user experience or content differently for the millennial audience?

A: We have to, but again I wouldn’t say this is relative to Millennials only–it’s a fundamental shift in how we all discover and share content, it just so happens that young people are quicker to experiment and adopt new ways of getting what they want when they want. At Vox Media, we’re platform and content agnostic. We’re not precious when it comes to how we get in front of as many people as possible; this is how we’ve been able to scale so quickly. So you may experience a Vox Media brand through one of our responsive sites, or on Tumblr, or as a video or a cinemagraph, through Xbox or Yahoo, or on a partner’s mobile app. As long as I can reach you and give you a reason to care about what we have to say, I know I have a better chance of getting you to experience our brand through other more premium experiences that impact our P&L.

Q: When working to attract and retain millennial media consumers, what would you say are the most important things to consider?

A: This is a question with no single answer. You want to cater to consumption habits (you going to them vs. them always coming to you); content formats (speaking to them through the types of content they create and share themselves); and providing them stories or news that have utility, are unique and entertaining, aren’t pandering, and don’t attempt to frame your brand as something that it’s not. This is the smartest generation ever, and they know it, so the best litmus test when building something for this audience is to ask yourself, “Who cares?” If you can’t answer that question unequivocally then there’s a good chance the answer is, “No one.”

jonathan-hunt-vox-headshotJonathan Hunt is the Global VP of Marketing at Vox Media where he leads audience development and distribution, co-sales partnerships, paid media strategy, and comms. Prior to Vox, he was the Global Marketing Director at VICE Media.

Innovation | Perspectives

Time is Money: Right-Sizing Content Strategy

One of the things that never ceases to amaze me is the continual evolution and innovation that happens in the digital content business. An area of particular interest is engagement and how we must continuously adapt to how consumers use their precious time to interact with our content.slateminutestoread

Given that time spent is one of the best engagement metrics, I have found it of particular interest that media companies are starting to annotate approximations of how many minutes a story will take to read, notably on Slate and Medium. This service allows me to quickly skim a headline and decide whether or not I have 4 minutes to devote to the recollections of those who’ve crashed in a plane, 2 minutes to assess the demands of Ferguson protesters, or if I want to dedicate a full 12 minutes to review a gentleman’s guide to rape culture.

This emerging trend suggests an understanding that time is a coveted metric that we should all be focused on. While it might be difficult to put a price tag on time spent consuming media as it relates to one’s overall self- or net-worth, the reality is that there are ever more demands on our attention. Because of this fact, content creators need to ensure that they are providing value to their audiences or risk being perceived a waste of time.GuidetoRC

Some sites “optimize for mobile” by shortening headlines and even body copy. I understand the inclination, but have always wondered about the extra work on the content creation end as well as the myriad assumptions about consumer behavior required to implement this approach. Today’s consumer has the opportunity to consume a single piece of content across multiple devices or to consume multiple pieces of content simultaneously on more than one device. This makes optimizing for device, in itself, a nearly mind-boggling conundrum.

On the other hand, the time-transparency tactic, which estimates the proposed attention investment, has a wonderful side effect of indicating that the content provider understands that my time is valuable. I am not suggesting one is better than the other in terms of mobile content consumption (that would be a gross oversimplification). I am simply admiring the amount of effort and innovation that goes into digital content delivery.

Value is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. Nor is an attention equation one easily formulated. Without a doubt, understanding your audience is the place to start. And certainly an investment in creating quality content that entertains, informs or provokes discussion is an essential piece of the puzzle. Other factors include optimal delivery medium, context and time; appropriate interactive and rich media enhancements; and social sharing and commenting features.

The constant evolution of media, marketing and technology is what makes it exciting to those of us in the trenches doing the work. Here at the OPA, we work with 60 of the most successful digital content companies in the world and I am lucky enough to have conversations with some of them a few times a week. Our members are at the forefront of digital content’s evolution, which is full of both uncertainty and excitement, And, with efforts like this blog—OPA InContext—and our new Content All Stars event (September 18th in New York City), we have opportunities to share their experiences with all those in the business of content – media companies and those in the advertising, marketing and agency communities who are a vital part of the content ecosystem.

Here’s what I know for sure: The digital landscape continuously reshapes itself under our feet as we chart our path forward. Perhaps that’s why the time-to-read idea is so appealing to me. It puts the content consumer in the driver’s seat so that they can make informed decisions about what they want to spend their time on (and where). I look forward to exploring where we go next.

Want to participate in OPA InContext? Email Michelle.

Interested in attending Content All Stars to engage in a high level discussion with the leaders of the digital media and marketing ecosystem? Request an invitation.

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