In conversation with Digital Content Next’s Michelle Manafy, Flipboard founder and CEO Mike McCue and Washington Post managing editor Kat Downs Mulder explore the evolution of digital media, serving the audience “where they are,” and leveraging emerging technologies to better meet their needs. Their talk, which was part of Collision Conference 2021, covers the challenges and opportunities of social media news distribution and consumption and the rise of Substack. They also talk about the challenges facing local news in particular. Their discussion explores AI and other technologies that increasingly impact news creation, delivery, consumption, and user experiences.
Tags containing: "content delivery"
Substack reminds publishers to focus on email as a product
In the publishing world, Substack has grown into a bit of a phenomenon. It’s a somewhat low-tech, self-publishing newsletter platform. However, it’s gotten outsized media coverage from top brands, including The New Yorker and The New York Times. Substack has also managed to attract a number of high-profile journalists from the industry.
So why does this relatively no-frills newcomer – along with its emerging competitors like Buttondown, TinyLetter, and Revue – get so much buzz? Substack and others like it offer a bit of a twist on the typical software offering: They encourage writers to monetize their newsletters through a revenue share agreement. The company is poaching top writers with upfront incentives in order to build their footprint. This is nerve wracking for premier editors and publishers. Will their own star writers get the bug and make the switch?
The rise in popularity of self-publish newsletter platforms is now forcing media brands to consider whether they’re keeping star writers and reporters happy. It is also forcing them to reckon with their own email programs.
Newsletters are often an under-developed product. However, they have major potential to give writers a platform on which they can build a profile for themselves. They can also drive a lot of revenue. In traditional terms, it’s not much different than a writer having her own “FOB” column. These days, it’s not much different than a reporter’s active Twitter or Instagram profile. Rather than fear these emerging players, publishers should think about how to tap into their ability to retain top talent and make money doing so.
Publishers, make writers and readers happy…
First and foremost, the problem isn’t Substack. Email is a channel with enormous potential for many publishers. Substack, however, is a blaring wake-up call.
Some writers may leave for the big advance that they were promised. But many others are leaving because they want more creative control and a more direct connection to their readers. They also want the ability to directly profit from that connection.
There are publishers who have newsletters written by individual reporters, creating a more personal voice and a lighter touch in editing. CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” run by Brian Stelter, is a great example of this. Often writing late at night, Stelter confides in his readers and shares a bit about his personal life in a way that wouldn’t make sense on the website. He has a huge following. And it’s not just for a faceless roundup of the day’s headlines.
Email is an intimate, low-risk channel with which publishers can experiment to give key reporters a more visible persona. Axios has built a loyal readership by allowing reporters to publish emails under their name, encouraging them to create a human connection. Axios’ Sara Fischer is just one example.
Often, newsletters are templates that provide a list of links. Or they recycle content based on verticals of interest like travel or automotive, but with very little personality. Instead, give your travel editor the chance to write an intro paragraph. Or allow a field reporter to provide real-life snippets of what life is like on the job. These elements create more engaged readers and more differentiation from generic pubs.
Despite this proven approach, publishers are likely worried about giving it a go. They have successfully built reputable names for themselves by holding their identity close and in doing so, ensuring brand integrity and quality. Loosening the grip on the brand by allowing individuals to forge direct relationship with audiences sounds risky.
However, not doing so also creates risk. Stifle the creative potential of individuals who attract loyal followings and suddenly, publishing your own newsletter becomes enticing. Empower those same individuals to help grow the brand and tap into new revenue potential.
…And earn revenue doing it
Speaking of improving email performance, newsletters like Morning Brew, The Hustle, and The Skimm show that entire media businesses can be launched and expanded within the channel with a lot of revenue potential. Individual writers see that. They read these titles and want that same opportunity. The good news is that publishers can give it to them.
Revenue comes from a combination of factors. The first is to create a product that attracts brands. This requires scale, quality content and an engaged audience. Then, the publisher needs to have the tools to optimize advertising with flexible templates, reliable data collection, and good testing capabilities. To maximize engagement and conversion, publishers must incorporate elements like personalization and dynamic content.
Across all of these components, publishers already have major advantages over the upstart platforms. First is the benefit of scale. Even the worst newsletter program at a major publisher is competitive against the entire volume of the independent platforms. (Substack was recently estimated at only 250k total readers.) That scale means that audiences can be segmented. Content can be targeted for more relevance, which provides another major advantage with higher chances of success.
Publishers also tend to have key software capabilities in email like personalization (often tied to customer data from the website, subscriptions, events, and the like). This allows writers to get creative with their content development, offering different elements to readers based on past behavior and content preference, for example. They also probably have tools to create dynamic elements in email. Not every writer wants to pen 1,000 words of prose. Some may be talented producers and want to share videos, TikToks, or snippets of a podcast they recently hosted. Publishers have the tools for them to play with these capabilities, and more.
Substack isn’t a threat if publishers commit to improving their newsletter program. And writers will stay if given the chance. Not only do newsletters provide writers with a relatively low-risk venue for building connections between a brand and its audience, but it’s a revenue machine in the making.
Providing the incentive for writers to make their newsletters successful doesn’t require a jump to a self-publishing platform. In fact, most publishers can provide a much more robust set of email tools for writers with what they already have. This approach just takes a publisher that’s willing to ease up on creative control and allow their reporters’ personalities and names to become a part of the product.
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.
Why POPSUGAR is doubling down on fitness even as gyms reopen
When the Covid-19 pandemic shut down gyms across the United States last year, people were forced to get creative with their workouts. POPSUGAR met the moment by bulking up its fitness content. However, even as gyms open up, the women-focused digital lifestyle brand is betting at-home workouts are here to stay. They’ve also seen that fitness serves as part of an overall content and monetization strategy that is good for audiences, and the brand’s bottom line.
Fitness was a core part of POPSUGAR’s video strategy long before the pandemic upended lives around the world. POPSUGAR got into fitness content in 2006. It launched a signature video franchise, dubbed Class Fitsugar, in 2012, which now sees an average of 1 million views per video.
Fitness content helped propel POPSUGAR’s rapid growth on Facebook in 2015. By January 2020, the brand launched a curated 4 Week Full-Body Fusion program. The collection of 25 workouts, each under 45 minutes, carries a one-time fee of $19.99.
As the Covid-19 pandemic spread in 2020, POPSUGAR released more than 200 workouts across social media platforms and its own website. It amassed more than 3 million new subscribers on YouTube in 2020 alone, where its total audience now stands above 5.5 million.
The brand, which is part of Group Nine Media, now hosts live workouts with top trainers on Instagram stories and YouTube. It launches Snapchat popups, and posts on-demand workouts to Facebook, Twitter, and the POPSUGAR website. “This year, we’re continuing to see growth and audience attention on these workouts,” POPSUGAR GM Angelica Marden said.
Bite-sized multiplatform content isn’t just for news
Have just a few minutes to spare? No problem. POPSUGAR created a series of short workouts that require nothing more than a phone.
Unlike going to the gym, working out at home is about fitting fitness into your life wherever you can, according to Jennifer Fields, a new deputy editor hired from WebMD to oversee POPSUGAR’s fitness content. That could mean sliping a 5-minute ab workout in between zoom meetings or a 3-minute BTS cardio workout whenever you can carve out 270 seconds for yourself. Or it could be making a 15-minute HIIT class on YouTube part of your morning routine.
POPSUGAR’s goal is to “meet audiences wherever people spend their time,” Fields said. “So many people are looking for ways to exercise at home. There’s a freedom that comes with at-home workouts.”
The rise of at home fitness over the course of the pandemic has made it possible for friends to workout with one another despite geographic separations and differing time zones. It’s also made it easy for audiences to take classes from the farthest flung of their favorite fitness instructors.
Free is key
In early 2020, the company was exploring audience-supported models, such as it’s flat fee Full-Body Fusion program. In fact, it had plans to release a subscription app with a recurring monthly fee last spring. However, in March 2020, the company shifted gears to better serve their audience in need. They released the app as a free, ad-supported product and – with hundreds of thousands of downloads to date – have opted to keep it free.
POPSUGAR’s free online workouts are far more affordable than even a bargain gym membership and certainly cheaper than a new Peloton. In addition to amassing audiences across platforms, the strategy serves as a bridge between popular fitness experts and people who may not otherwise be able to afford or access their services. And now that audiences are acclimated to the flexibility and cost savings, the company thinks they’ll stick with the POPSUGAR plan in the long term.
The strategy aligns with that of parent company Group Nine Media, which traditionally monetizes video content through sponsorships and advertising on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, and its website. It also licenses content to OTT services including Discovery+ and Xumo and syndicates some content to linear TV. Group Nine also generates revenue through affiliate product sales.
It’s about more than exercise videos
Nowadays, the lines between fitness, wellness, and health are blurring. That’s a theme Fields plans to surface more this year in POPSUGAR’s content. “Fitness isn’t a separate bucket adjacent to your health anymore,” she said. “It is your health.”
Fields takes a broad view of what fitness and health content can be, one that includes mental health, particularly among women of color. That view is one that’s already begun to emerge in POPSUGAR’s content strategy.
In fact, last May, POPSUGAR launched a mental health content hub. At the time, POPSUGAR Founder and President Lisa Sugar described the project as a way “to help readers feel connected and less alone in their daily battle.”
More recently, POPSUGAR launched a Snapchat show aimed at helping Gen Z audiences answer their questions about things like anxiety and depression. The show aims to provide practical, actionable advice to viewers.
“We feel this is really an important conversation for us to be a part of,” Marden said. “Our goal across everything that we create and all of our programming is to offer an inclusive positive safe space for our audience and to help them live their best lives.”
5 trends that will make you rethink your content delivery platform
Digital publishers face serious competition for readers at a time when customer loyalty is eroding. More than ever, readers want fast, personalized digital content regardless of device, platform, or location. Visitors are quick to abandon slow and mediocre online experiences in favor of outlets that deliver fresh content at the speed of breaking news. Unfortunately, many publishers find themselves unprepared and without a firm strategy.
Recent months have shown some progress when it comes to publishers and news aggregators. At the end of 2020, Australia was one of the first countries to require news aggregators to pay publishers for their content. Still, social networks and top-tier news aggregators dominate digital media.
Traditional publishers are responding with subscription-based services that drive predictable revenue streams and viewership. And, while not all readers are willing or able to pay for gated content, those who do have even higher expectations for a seamless experience when it comes to both accessing and viewing this content. For video content, consumers will set the bar even higher.
The key to customer retention is serving the most up-to-date content instantly, personalizing that content for readers, and ensuring online experiences are fast, safe, and secure. Let’s look a little closer at the top five challenges digital publishers currently face:
Speed matters
Today, milliseconds matter more than ever. Workflows and procedures must continuously be optimized and fine-tuned. Success often depends on editors being empowered to make content available the instant an article or video is approved for publication. Inherent delays, even for a few minutes, are almost certain to result in missed opportunity.
Thus, low-latency delivery is required to attract viewers and keep them engaged. Highly dynamic digital content, is more efficiently and quickly processed at and served from the edge of the network. However, that is often far from where the content is stored in a content management system (CMS).
Seen from the point of the subscriber, responsive systems that allow repeated and immediate access to gated and premium content are expected. Authentication and paywalls should be as unobtrusive as possible, as there is a significant risk of abandonment if the process takes too long for each request.
Personalization drives loyalty
With a plethora of news content, the competition for viewers and their loyalty has moved from pure availability and uptime to responsiveness and with that, personalization. Today, many digital publishers tailor news stories using variables such as viewing platform, location, and subscription status to deliver highly personalized content. However, not all CDN offerings have the needed visibility and configurability to support these efforts. This compromises customer loyalty initiatives and risks a loss of audience in both the near and long term.
Growing privacy and security concerns at every level
Strict privacy laws are placing new limits on traditional digital publishing approaches. And deploying cookies and other IP tracking methods is proving increasingly difficult. Within the European Union, GDPR enforcement requires publishers to explicitly define their tracking systems and limits any kind of data gathering unless the viewer accepts opts-in. And let’s not forget that similar privacy laws are emerging in the U.S. In order to enable compliance, digital publishers increasingly seek to control where content is viewed. To do this, many opt to partner with a content delivery vendor that can block access based on location and IP address as well as identify virtual private network (VPN) traffic.
Bots also continue to be a security concern for digital publishers. They can scrape and republish content illegally. This greatly diminishes the content’s value for the original publisher. It also poses a significant threat to both content quality and ad revenue. Advertisers are expected to lose an estimated $19 Billion to fraudulent activities this year—equivalent to $51 million daily (Juniper Research).
Political affiliations, opinion pieces, and other controversial content make digital publishers a frequent target for distributed disruption of service (DDoS) attacks. The mere exposure a hacker can get from disrupting major news sites is often incentive enough. Digital publishers wanting to build their online protection plans should be cautious of legacy CDNs that often lack visibility to detect online attacks and distinguish them from a flood of legitimate traffic when news breaks (not to mention the ability to react and mitigate).
Video content comes at a cost
Increasingly, customer demand is driving a pivot from static content to video. Snackable video is easy to consume. And, in the context of news, video usually conveys a higher level of perceived trust. Support for video can also bring additional revenue, as advertisers typically pay significantly more for video ads, especially those that can support dynamic ad insertion to target viewers.
The shift by traditional digital publishers to embed video into their news stories and feature articles is blurring the competitive landscape between video-only and video-first outlets. However, video content and delivery bring their own set of unique challenges. The amount of data needing to be transported increases exponentially. Therefore, it can put a heavy burden on infrastructure typically designed to accommodate much smaller payloads. Also, successful video delivery requires systems that can scale with audience and demand. This includes predictable demand for local news segments and purpose-built videos to unpredictable demand during significant news events such as breaking news or when video content goes viral.
Technical debt slows the pace of innovation
As digital publishers evolve their businesses to reach more customers with higher bandwidth content, they often encounter technical constraints created by legacy CDNs. Inflexible architectures fail to address fundamental content delivery requirements, including real-time visibility and control, as well as the ability to scale on demand.
Often, publishing workflows are complex and contain custom-developed technology stacks. Thus, modifying deployments for better scale and performance while maintaining uninterrupted workflows is fraught with risk and can feel daunting, if not insurmountable. Traditional CDNs routinely lack full API support, granular control, and real-time configuration changes. This flexibility is necessary in order to integrate with custom tech stacks, as well as other emerging technologies, and thus impede digital transformation efforts.
Don’t let outdated technology stand in your way
In a highly competitive market, often with thin margins, digital publishers striving to stay relevant must have modern systems in place that deliver content to readers and aggregators the moment it is ready. As you set out to architect and build your next delivery platform, be sure to evaluate the practical challenges a legacy CDN will impose when it comes to meeting the expectations of your audience.
Publishers know that competition for audience time and attention is fierce. Given increasing challenges, and rising consumer expectations, it is critical to make smart investments in order to deliver fast, excellent audience experiences.
Multiplatform playbook: delivering for today’s sports fans
With restaurants, bars and clubs closed, you might assume that Covid has created a surge in live TV viewing, but it has not. If you compared U.S. TV audiences in September 2020 with the previous year, all television watching was actually down 10% during prime time. This may seem counter intuitive considering that the average time spent interacting with media has shot up 17% to a whopping 12 hours, 21 minutes a day according to Nielsen’s Total Audience Report for August. However, digging into the reasons why reveals important opportunities to re-engage audiences.
There has long been a simplistic narrative that live sports viewership is declining. Yet the reality is that huge amounts of sports content is still being consumed. And that number is growing, especially in international markets. The change is predominantly around two axes. The first is that sport is no longer “the only game in town.” It must co-exist within a much wider array of activities. The second shift is that fans are redefining what “sport” content means to them – along with how they want to consume it.
Feeding frenzy
This diversity of content is highlighted by 2020 offering up another landmark. As the year when time spent using an app and/or web via a smartphone or tablet finally overtook live and time-shifted TV. This cross-over has undoubtedly accelerated due to Covid, given increased home working, less travel, and more screen time. However, the data has been moving that way for a few years. Nielsen also points out that 25% of total TV consumption is via streaming. This includes the rise of highlights and “instant” sports news services that are the equivalent of fast food compared to the three-hour banquet of a typical NFL game.
Highlights packages are not new but what has changed is the way in which they are delivered. The big networks have jumped onboard. Fox, ESPN, and others have now added more content available via the web. Yet the mindset for many is still around the “big game” and reporting that fits into a traditional schedule.
In a generation, Netflix transitioned from renting a million DVDs through the mail to touching 200 million monthly global subscribers. However, sports media still trails behind the curve when it comes to the model of instant access.
Bleacher gets it right
However, sports publications like Bleacher Report highlight one possible direction. The Turner owned brand has always delivered exquisite reportage but its rapid diversification into video and social has been striking.
Its “House of Highlights,” an Instagram feed offering highlight clips across several sports, now reaches over 20 million subscribers. Their viewership that has grown 150% in just two years. Highlights describes itself as “Everything you need to see in sports and youth culture.” It offers huge amounts of user generated content. And, while this content is still sports themed, it has much broader in its appeal – especially to younger audiences.
Bleacher is joined by a growing cohort of app and clip-based ways to consume sports content including CBS Sports and Fotmob – with the latter particularly good at notifications. If done well, personalized mobile app notifications, can drive customers into full game viewing as well as scores and highlights.
These brands and others recognize that it’s not all about the game. They help people get their highlights and sports fix from following athletes, teams, leagues, and media companies via social on the go. They also feed the growing sports engagement around fantasy and sports betting. However, these data points do not necessarily translate into full game viewing.
Breaking bread
The fear of cannibalizing traditional TV audiences through online offerings is still deeply ingrained in the psyche of TV executives. But instant gratification culture means that failure to offer a wider buffet of visual sport experiences will make decline inevitable.
And it’s not just creating a like-for-like facsimile. The audience expectation of TV watching versus engaging with on-demand via smartphone, embedded highlights on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, or the cacophony of social-led platforms requires producers to rethink program formats.
This raises several challenges. It starts with nurturing a new generation of creatives that are digital natives, with the ability to engage with fans of today. There’s also a need for technical retooling to simplify the production and distribution process. This enables content to be disseminated easily across multiple platforms. It needs to be done efficiently and with the controls in place to ensure that rights obligations are enforced as demanded by contract terms. Last, but no means least, is the ability to monetize multiple platforms by spreading CPM across a wider reach and unlocking far more targeted advertising models.
Innovation zone
A great example of innovation in action is NFL RedZone, an all-in-one channel that when a team reaches the 20-yard line, (i.e. the “red zone”) cuts to the local broadcast of that game. The channel also offers the option to watch any turnovers, game-changing plays and scoring plays outside of the designated area. RedZone also has an “octabox” mode with simultaneous 8 game highlights designed for fantasy football fans.
This ability to deliver “highlight packages on the fly” uses dynamic playlists. It is is part of a surge in Cloud based technologies that are leading the charge to build streaming platforms that can pivot output to match the increasingly diverse audience profile.
The long-term issue is more cultural than technical. Live sport is still a huge deal in terms of direct and ad-related revenue. Messing with a successful formula is certainly a hard call to make. However, the Bleacher report and its siblings illustrate ways to respond to a shift in audience demand. Ignoring the opportunity makes the prospect of an empty dinner table much more likely.
The next step in engaging audiences: personalized news content delivery
Legacy news outlets have traditionally tried to be all things to all people. They’ve broadly served up content in a shotgun approach that has them competing in increasingly crowded spaces. Unfortunately, this had led to increasingly diminishing returns.
Especially considering the consolidation of ownership of newspaper chains and TV networks, many media websites serve the same stories. With little differentiation, there’s little incentive for audiences to choose one over the other.
The lesson that media outlets could learn from the marketing world is to offer greater personalization of experiences in serving up content. Personalization, backed by quality customer data, isn’t the future. It’s the now in a rapidly accelerating digital world.
Opportunities since Covid
Research has shown that online audiences have been voracious for content since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. News publishers have not only seen a rise in online audiences, but a rise in subscriptions – and less churn.
That doesn’t necessarily equate to increased revenue, though. Newspapers and magazines are still hemorrhaging dollars. However, an investment in transformative digital experiences could be the key to drive growth.
According to McKinsey, the digital transformation has only accelerated since the start of the pandemic. And it’s the companies ready for big strategic change that have the best chance at thriving.
What personalization could look like
Marketers use data and analytics to understand their buyers and buyer journeys and to personalize digital experiences to inspire brand loyalty. News media websites could be doing the same thing.
Many media websites are already asking users to create accounts to read stories, whether or not they’re behind paywalls. These sites ask users to subscribe to email newsletters about a wide range of topics like cooking, politics, sports, or news of the day. And along the way, they collect information about these users and their interests.
However, instead of asking users to sign up for a newsletter, media companies could use marketing tools and technology like intent data. This would provide them with information about a visitor. Then, with the right platform, it would allow AI-driven personalization using a content hub.
Users could see personalized homepages with content tailored to their interests. These would feature key spaces reserved for breaking and important news that would always be included.
Five tips for driving engagement
Some tips for putting a personalization strategy in place include:
- Know your audience: This is where quality data is critical. You have to thoroughly understand who you’re targeting and what they care about for personalization to be effective.
- Define clear objectives: Understand what you really want from personalization. Do you want to drive engagement with your content? Sell more ads? Make sure your goals are clear and measurable.
- Have a data and privacy strategy: Know what kind of data you’ll be collecting, where you’ll be collecting it from, and how you’ll be using it about your visitors. Set rules about data use and privacy and communicate clear expectations to your visitors.
- Don’t be overly creepy: There can be a temptation to over-personalize, but that can make your audience feel “watched” and drive them away. A good tactic can be to use their preferences to populate a content block with stories labeled something like “Other readers enjoy.” That gives them the targeted content they want to see without rotating to over-personalization.
- Start small, see what works, scale fast: Know what metrics you’ll track so that you can quickly pivot.
Some tools for success
Personalization will be successful when based upon a thorough, data-driven understanding of the target audience. Again, media outlets can learn from techniques used by marketing and customer experience leaders to gain a deep understanding of how to engage with audiences.
- Research-based journey maps can illuminate the touchpoints your audience has with your digital channels and how you can meet their needs at each stage of their journey.
- High-quality data paired with a customer data platform can give you a 360-degree view of your customer, their behaviors, and their intent.
- You can segment your audience, and track and measure their site visits, which will help define the success of personalization strategy.
However, most important to the success of a personalization strategy will be depth and breadth of content that is relevant to your audience’s needs and journey.
Stay on mission
News websites can adopt marketing techniques and methodologies for delivering and personalizing content. At the same time, they can remain true to their core mission of reporting and delivering the facts without bias.
Analytics can drive personalization of how stories might appear in something like a “suggested stories” widget. That said, they shouldn’t necessarily drive decisions about what stories get covered. The important news of the day remains the important news of the day. City council meetings still need to be covered. As the Washington Post eloquently describes on its masthead: “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”
However, by better engaging audiences through personalization, media outlets may find an opportunity to capitalize on ongoing digital transformation and appetite for content that has accelerated during the pandemic. Those willing to make the investment in personalization have an opportunity to grow and thrive.
The information provided in articles are suggestions only and based on best practices. Dun & Bradstreet is not liable for the outcome or results of specific programs or tactics. Please contact an attorney or tax professional if you are in need of legal or tax advice.
Text-to-speech is the audio opportunity no one’s talking about
Audio articles are making quite a noise in publishing. Podcasting may be hogging the headlines. But creating features and news that your audience can listen to is an audio opportunity that should not be ignored.
While offering articles in an audible format is nothing new, this type of content is currently enjoying a massive boom, as time-strapped audiences look for convenient ways to consume online media.
A boom
In the U.S. alone, spoken word’s share of audio listening has increased 30% over the last six years and 8% in the last year alone. And when multi Pulitzer Prize-winning titles jump on-board, you know that audio content is a serious business. In July, The Washington Post announced plans to make audio versions of all of its articles. And a few months earlier, the New York Times acquired Audm, a platform that turns longform journalism into audio content.
Other big brands using Audm’s audio services include The Atlantic, BuzzFeed, Wired, and Rolling Stone. Similar platforms Curio and Noa – which are based in the UK and Ireland respectively – have signed up the likes of the Financial Times, The Telegraph, The Economist, and The Guardian.
What’s even more interesting is that listener numbers have risen since Covid-19. In fact, 75% of the U.S. population has listened to spoken word audio in the past month.
The Washington Post began testing text-to-speech capabilities on its Android app in early 2020, assuming the feature would appeal to readers on their daily commute. But Leila Siddique, senior product manager, said they have been surprised to see steady adoption rates, despite people working from home.
“What we’ve learned from users is that they listen to the news while doing other things. And they are consuming far more content than they would normally,” she says.
It’s not just the U.S. that has seen a boom in audio articles during the pandemic. England’s The Economist has offered audio editions of its weekly magazine since 2007. However, according deputy editor Tom Standage they are currently enjoying “record numbers of streams/downloads and unique listeners.”
Engagement
Listener figures are still way below the numbers of people who read text online, with the New York Times enjoying in excess of five million subscribers across its print and digital content. However, audio content isn’t just about numbers, it’s about audience engagement.
Reading takes time and focus – which is in short supply with modern audiences. According to Chartbeat, even the top stories only engage readers for around two-and-a-half minutes, while 45% of readers leave within 15 seconds. In contrast, Noa cites an 84% average completion rate for stories
“Completion rates are higher because people are generally busy doing other things while listening. So, it’s less convenient to switch away from something,” says Standage.
Basic value
Despite the fact that these platforms use professional narrators, audio content is still fairly simplistic compared to podcasts, which often require dramatic story-telling and high production values. The key to audio articles’ success is convenience – and quality journalism.
“We know that readers are time-pressed and feel guilty that they have not read enough of a given week’s edition before the next one arrives,” says Standage. “Offering audio content sends the message: we know you are busy and are willing to pay for high-quality information. So, here’s a handy feature that will help you ensure that you get value from our journalism.”
Publishers, in turn, get more value from their audience. While The Economist hasn’t shared numbers for the performance of their audio content, Standage says figures suggests the audio edition is an effective retention tool. “Once you come to rely on it, you won’t unsubscribe.”
The Washington Post’s managing editor Kat Downs Mulder agrees the convenience of audio is a “huge benefit” to both their subscribers and their subscription numbers.
“We know people love listening to news – our podcasts show that,” she comments. “Opening up more audio content and making it easier for them engage with The Post helps draw them into our ecosystem even further. That improves retention rates.”
Offer more
Interestingly, while most publishers create a limited number of long-form, analytical audio articles, The Post is using the text-to-speech features on Android and iOS to offer audio versions of all its articles. The 143-year-old paper has been experimenting with audio since 2017. However, Downs Mulder explains that they decided to offer automated storytelling across all its content.
“We are excited about the habit-forming nature of audio. But it’s
hard to build those habits if you only offer a limited number of articles,” she says. “Our readers know they always have an audio option, across all articles, which really reinforces its availability.”
Feedback from users is positive so far. Downs Mulder says subscribers who listen to audio articles spend three times as much time in Post apps.
Niche and personal
It’s not just the big brands getting onboard. Audio is a great way for niche brands to engage with their audience and create loyalty. Danish startup, Zetland, launched its audio model in early 2017 and has since grown an incredible 650%.
Just like The Post, all Zetland articles are available as audio. However, they only produce about three longform articles a day. This means they can offer a far more personalized audio experience, with each article read out by the journalist that wrote it.
“The personal voice of the journalists is quite important to the success of our audio products,” explains Zetland CEO, Tav Klitgaard. “We originally tried using professional voice actors, but it sounded too perfect. We like to build what we call a ‘human product’, including all the glitches and quirks of human beings. It is important for us that our content conveys honest passion and curiosity, and we’ve found that to be done best when the journalist narrates.”
This personalized approach certainly seems to be working. They now have more than 18,500 paid members, whose consumer habits are around 75% audio. What’s more, engagement levels are impressive, with close to a 90% listen-through rate.
“We’ve learned that once we get people to hit play on that first piece of content, chances are they listen to the end,” says Klitgaard. “They also have a higher usage frequency and subsequently membership retention, than those who do not listen.”
Audience appeal
In addition to increased retention, audio is also a great way to reach out to new audiences, as it is traditionally consumed by a younger demographic. According to Klitgaard, more than 30% of their paying members are under age 30. And The Post says their audio audience is “generally younger” than their average reader.
As with all content, creating a successful audio model is all about knowing your audience. You need to recognize their needs and match the user experience accordingly. Whether that’s long-form analytical content, or easy-to-access daily news, audio is proving to be a highly effective way to engage, retain and attract audiences.
“Audio isn’t about changing user habits, it’s about embracing their habits,” states Downs Mulder. “Our goal is to convert causal listeners into dedicated listeners, by opening them up to getting news from us in other ways. And audio is proving to have an enormous importance to the news-interested public.”
Pandemic parenting: How Parents.com is pivoting its digital strategy to serve readers in a time of crisis
As schools close around the world and a growing number of people are having to juggle home working and childcare, parents face unique challenges in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. As a result, the Meredith Corp. brand Parents.com has responded with a radical shift to serve their audience.
Julia Dennison is the Executive Editor at Parents.com. She and her now fully-remote team have pivoted their digital strategy to provide advice and resources to parents during the coronavirus crisis.
The crisis has come on so quickly that just four weeks ago, the team were debating whether to even cover coronavirus. “We try to stay in our beat. We have a sister site Health.com that we syndicate content from,” Dennison explained. But it quickly became apparent that this would need Parents.com’s own input.
“Our initial thinking was that this was going to affect a lot of people. So we looked at search trends to see what terms we could answer from a parenting-resource point of view.”
The content pivot
Looking at search trends and responding is something the Parents.com team are well-practiced in doing. It has helped form a more strategic response to the content they have now produced, which has three primary areas.
The first is a comprehensive guide to coronavirus for parents, covering everything from how the virus is affecting pregnant women, to basic tips around sterilizing thermometers. This was the initial content strategy the editorial team focused on, and have been updating ever since.
“We’ve been really trying to just watch the trends and respond to them with informative content,” Dennison explained. “More than ever, parents need a reliable, trustworthy, and relatable source. We’re really trying to lean into our specialty.”
The second area is creating content that is supportive to parents. “Parents are going through the hardest test of parenthood they’ve probably ever gone through,” said Dennison. “It’s testing everything about parenthood to its limits.” In response, Parents.com have been working to create resources to help parents feel less isolated. This ranges from tips to how to cope with childcare to how to discuss the crisis with younger children.
As part of this, Dennison has been documenting her own experiences as a daily video blog on YouTube. Like many parents today, Dennison is juggling childcare with working from home. “I wanted to document that and show the world that I might be the Executive Editor of Parents.com, but I’m finding this just as hard as everybody else is.”
As video rises in popularity during the pandemic, the Parents.com team are looking out for ways to produce more content remotely, including having Editor in Chief Julia Edelstein read stories over Instagram Live.
The final strategic area involves creating entertaining content for both parents and children. “We’re trying to focus on heartwarming stories to lift people’s mood, and to keep them positive,” Dennison said. From a neighborhood drive-by to celebrate a birthday, to more practical resources around the best educational apps for children, the aim is to both help parents keep their children entertained, and also uplift the parents themselves.
Driving online growth
The swift digital pivot is paying off. By the end of March, views of articles in Parents.com’s ‘Fun’ section were up 40% week on week. There was particular growth within the section of articles on activities and printables (up 89% and 88% respectively). And entertainment content has seen a massive 110% spike in views.
The video blog has also had a “tremendous response, according to Dennison. “People are just grateful to see that other people are going through what they’re going through. I’m a mom, and we have a few moms on our team. I know how hard it is.”
This relatability, coupled with keeping a close eye on search terms has helped the digital team avoid some obvious topic traps. “We could easily have leaned into creating elaborate schedules for parents to put their kids on, and that homeschool setup,” she said. But that wasn’t the right approach for their audience.
This has resulted in a surge in positive responses to the brand on social media. “People appreciate just being told that they’re doing the best job they ca. And we’re here to help them do that,” said Dennison. “Parents are having to step up and perform the impossible. And so how, as a brand, can we be there for them?”
A post-pandemic lens
Many of Parents.com’s plans for upcoming content have had to be adjusted. They are shifting perspectives on a planned spotlight digital issue for the International Day of Maternal Health and Rights in April, looking at how America can improve birthing.
“We’ve been planning that for months. All of a sudden we’re having to pivot and see everything through this post-pandemic lens,” Dennison explained. “We’re seeing hospitals banning partners from being in the delivery room due to Covid-19. It’s a really scary time to be giving birth, and in this context it’s only going to get worse, so we have a bigger duty than ever to produce this content.”
In the longer term, Dennison is particularly interested in the crossover between parenting and education. She’s also thinking about what the impact will be for parents who have to continue working full time while also looking after their children. “We’re looking at what we can do in terms of resources to lean into the educational side of things, and how parents can keep their kids going even if they can’t go to school,” she said.
But for now, the team is keeping a sharp eye on the search terms and listening out for what their audience want. “It’s a matter of seeing how this goes, and responding to it,” Dennison concluded. “On the digital side, it’s easy as we can be pretty responsive.”
“Life will be different after this. All these things we thought mattered at one point don’t. And then all of these new topics matter, so it’s recalibrating what we’re covering, and putting it through a post-pandemic lens.”
What Chartbeat’s loyalty research says about the future of device, channel strategies
In recent years, global publishers have shifted their focus on the ties that bind loyal readers and their propensity to become subscribers. Therefore, we wanted to better understand loyal reader behaviors, starting with an analysis across devices and distribution channels. Here’s what we found.
Loyal readers no longer tethered to desktops
Believe it or not, loyalty is actually higher on mobile than desktop when we analyze our global publisher data.
Across the board, mobile visitors show more loyalty. We see the accessibility of these devices — a 24/7 window into what’s going on at any moment — driving this trend. This does not mean desktop traffic is going away, it’s just often tethered to a single place (e.g., work or home), whereas your mobile device moves with you all day long.
When looking at weekly visits by traffic sources across mobile and desktop experiences, we saw that app direct visitors are nearly 6x more loyal than platform visitors.
This finding begins to make more sense when you think about publishers’ renewed focus on mobile experiences. Particularly when you consider the fact that the overall number of visits taking place on mobile increased by more than 20%.
Where visitors are finding apps and how it impacts loyalty
Visitors coming to apps via deep links or direct traffic on the web do so three times more often than platform visitors, as we see below. That said, our research found that at this point loyalty is roughly the same when it comes to the major platforms (i.e., Facebook and Google Search).
What our channel loyal findings mean for content creators
“Subscription is an act of loyalty, and readers need some way of developing that loyalty and affinity for a publication before they’re likely to pay,” Josh Schwartz, our Chief of Product, Engineering and Data Science, recently told Nieman Lab on the topic of reader revenue and loyalty. The data we outlined in this piece suggests that publishers are increasingly aware of this journey to develop loyalty, using multiple channels (and increasingly, mobile-first experiences) to grow these relationships over time.
A few other takeaways from the research:
Shift in app experiences suggests new paths to loyalty
The data suggests that loyal readers want a direct path to publishers — a huge indicator that there’s value in improving app and direct to mobile experiences. That being said, friction along the mobile journey poses a massive hurdle in getting even loyal readers to move closer to subscription.
Platforms still have a prominent role in loyal readership
Yes, we’re seeing an interesting shift in visitor patterns that favor direct visits to apps. Yet, loyal readers are still coming from Google or Facebook. Our recent research shows that there’s still a case to keep your platform presence top of mind.
Movement matters when it comes to device-based loyalty
Loyalty among mobile visitors is growing rapidly. This finding makes sense when you think about today’s mobile-first readers. Don’t go abandoning your investments in desktop, especially since we still depend on this experience every day.
Overall, we see that loyalty among mobile visitors is growing rapidly, which makes more sense as we think about today’s mobile-first readers. Moreover, it points to an important shift in audience behavior — loyal readers want a direct path to publishers. This tells us there’s still a massive opportunity to improve app and direct to mobile experiences.
Audience expectations are critical in DCN’s 2020 vision
We’ve just returned from our annual summit where a couple hundred senior executives gather in a closed-door meeting to discuss the most pressing issues and exciting opportunities that we, as an industry, have before us. It was my sixth year of having the honor of setting the table to open the executive summit, after more than a dozen years listening from the audience.
Everyone in the room is a premium publisher – with the exception of a handful of supporting sponsors, speakers, and invited guests. The attendees at the DCN Next: Summit are among the most knowledgeable people in the business of digital media anywhere. It is a daunting task to capture the proper sentiment for the direction of our industry at a gathering of such key leaders. That said, here are the main points from my kickoff remarks this year.
This new year also marks the start of a new decade, 2020.
2020. Yes, perfect vision. Optimal focus. As we begin this decade, I believe that DCN’s members are uniquely positioned. As a group focused on creating premium content experiences, we have never lost sight of the importance of our audiences. We’ve remained steadfast in their trust and our direct relationships.
I see three key facets to this 2020 vision:
First, we find ourselves rightly renewing our resolution to put the expectations of our audiences first. To meet, to exceed, their expectations. To be their trusted ally.
Second, we’ve defeated the myth content has to be free and finally defined what it means to be premium. It simply means to have real value worth paying for whether by distributors or consumers.
Third, given too many years of platform dominance – in which they have indiscriminately hidden the real costs to their services and vacuumed up as much consumer data as possible while, at times abusing trust – we find ourselves in the best position to align with new user expectations. To believe that data is the lifeblood of the Internet is to look past the trust and audience expectations which underpin it now, and in the future.
Audience first
Unlike some of those who seek to cravenly capitalize on consumer attention merely to collect data and target ads, we celebrate an unwavering focus on the wants, needs, and expectations of our audiences. The experience across platforms can be rich and elegant. But even more importantly, digital allows us to use multimedia to tell stories in ever more engaging ways, better informing the public – something that has never been more important.
In this case bringing it altogether, I’d like to point to the brilliant Wall Street Journal report on Google’s ad tech business. It informed a public conversation and made its way not just across the industry but into meetings of regulators investigating Google – this is true impact in journalism.
Storytelling at its best
As technology enables us to better tell our stories, it also becomes more deeply embedded and entwined with every aspect of our audiences’ lives. The New York Times 1619 Project was one amazing example featured at a DCN Storytelling Member Day. It not only brilliantly told the story; it reexamined the legacy of slavery and made its way into other media – not just audio and video but it also found its rightful place in classrooms and libraries as educational material – this is true impact in journalism.
Revenue revived
The past couple of years have been particularly promising around subscription-based and other Direct-to-consumer (DTC) models. While ad vendors chase “DTC”, the latest acronym in their alphabet soup, DCN’s members have always focused on direct, trusted relationships with their audiences.
While concerns have loomed around subscription fatigue, recent DCN research found the opposite. In fact, consumers aren’t even aware how much they are spending on subscription products. (DCN’s research shows an average of $54 per month across 4.3 products). So, it’s clear there’s room for more! And we now see that younger audiences who grew up in digital are willing to pay for satisfying experiences. The DCN research backs this up showing that they see value well beyond their cost.
As we build our subscription-based offerings, and optimize ad experiences across platforms, we must keep these audience experiences top of mind. We serve neither our audiences, nor advertising partners, if we do any less.
Video views
Our members – and the industry as a whole – are seeing a hearty appetite for audio and video content. We see robust revenue around licensing of our content and IP, which also allows us to impact ever widening audiences. This is backed up by a renewed effort to preserve copyright over their art, notably including last year in the EU.
We are also seeing true diversification in our busiess models.
Where desktop display eroded over the past years, mobile display has offset it. And other forms of advertising including native, sponsored content and leads have helped drive growth. Video advertising, where inventory can be created, continues to carry the highest price and growth in advertising. And arguably the most important growth of all, we’re seeing direct audience revenues grow more than 20% per year where content companies are being paid directly for their content recognizing its premium value.
UBS estimates that a combination of 16 media firms will spend $100 billion to produce content in 2020. In fact, it has been predicted that more than $35 billion will be spent on streaming video content alone. And with over 60 media companies among the DCN membership, we know that the total investment will be much higher. And rightly so. Hulu has been investing in premium content for its streaming video platform. So is CBS All Access. Disney+ launched in the last few months with an absolutely gorgeous experience. Peacock will launch in April and then HBO MAX a month later. And those are only a few examples.
Engaging experiences
While we continue to monitor the power of platforms, their own investment in content demonstrates that information and entertainment are the lifeblood of social experiences online. And now the platforms are starting to pay for it. No DCN member is surprised that film, television, news, sports and other topics engage audiences and ignite conversation, debate, and discussion across platforms.
Be it delivered on the big screen, small screens, smart speakers, or the myriad delivery channels in the digital content ecosystem, the work our members do forms a nexus of cultural impact. We have reached new heights of digital storytelling. And, undoubtedly our craft, the art of storytelling, will continue to surprise and delight as its evolution continues in the decade to come.
And, while we face challenges like broad-swath and blunt keyword blacklisting masquerading as “brand safety” and the ease of data-driven scale, we also see signs that marketers too are shifting their focus to quality contexts and making genuine customer connections.
Yes, it is “easier” to pull a series of data-driven levers and reach purportedly targeted audiences with generic messaging. However, as a growing number of consumers opt out of advertising and intro tracking prevention, savvy marketers too are reviving the art of storytelling. They have a renewed understanding of the power of delivering compelling messages in trusted, engaging, inspiring environments and an appreciation for the cost to their brand when it’s associated with experiences that abuse customers’ expectations. They see that being part of exceptional experiences creates the kind of cultural resonance and relevance that a click cannot compare to.
Data diligence
Don’t get me wrong. Certainly, data is a powerful tool for understanding audiences. It is also critical for storytelling and we see it leveraged in stunning executions to create vivid narratives built on numbers.
But user expectations around data collection and use are of critical concern. With increasing consumer awareness around data practices online and looming enforcement when they’re abused, we must continue to focus in on what’s best for our audiences and only then for our marketing partners. The ability to micro-target, to force an action with a digital ad is not the same as engaging audiences around trusted content. It is not the way to build long-term customer relationships.
Fans and friction
It up to us to keep our customer focus razor sharp as we embark on this 2020 vision. We need to minimize complexity and reduce friction while continuing to innovate and enhance experiences for our audiences. Certainly, challenges abound including news deserts impacting local communities, anti-press rhetoric from none other than our own President which sends dangerous signals globally, and continued platform competition and unequitable marketplace control now under investigation by Congress, FTC, DOJ, states, the EU among others.
I’m feeling good this year about where things are headed. I’m feeling really good. And I’m thrilled at the programming lineup we assembled for our annual summit to talk about it.
What I’ve seen in my time in digital, particularly the years I’ve been fortunate enough to spend on the team at DCN, has taught me is that we are at the forefront of something great here. We are on the frontlines of storytelling and communication. We have the power to shape minds, to touch hearts, to fill the world with laughter and tears. Here’s to 2020 bringing the roar of the crowd as we focus on what matters most: the audiences we serve.
The snack is back: How messaging will satisfy audience appetite for bite-sized content
A decade ago, The Power Of Pull described the amazing outcomes possible when we have the tools to find and access the people, content, information, and resources we need. Pull was seen as the mechanism that would put people in control. It would give them more choices and more information to make those choices.
Today, pull has been turbo-charged by mobile, a transformative technology (the impact of which the authors could not address in their book, so I will here). Mobile has become our collective default state. It eclipses all other digital technology and enables us to do exactly what the authors hoped we would: “collaborate in a complete re-imagination” of our experiences. From content to commerce, and from advertising to advocacy, mobile has left an indelible mark.
You could even say that, thanks to mobile, the Power of Pull has finally arrived. But it’s the advance of messaging apps and platforms that takes this to a new level. Pull brought us the toolset and the mindset to take charge of our content and experiences. Mobile amplified this ability exponentially. And messaging is giving us a new environment to experience both.
A new wave
The first wave of messaging saw the emergence of what I will call pull content, delivered primarily via app notifications. In this scenario, individuals granted permission and volunteered preferences (the choice of news categories, the frequency of alerts and notifications, the level of personalization). And that they opt-in is a must for audiences increasingly concerned about personal privacy. For this reason, content companies that delivered pull content could build trust and brand. In retrospect, it was this reach and impact that allowed the first wave to deliver scalable efficiency.
The second wave of pull, powered by mobile messaging apps and platforms, is destined to be even more transformative because it promises scalable connectivity. Messaging is a platform where companies can deliver interactive, personalized, and conversational experiences. And they can do it affordably at scale.
Messaging is also free to consumers. It also vastly reduces the blight of unsolicited communication. That’s because, as a rule, messaging platforms do not permit companies to send bulk messages as they can via SMS. And it’s growing in popularity. Analysts forecast that the volume of messages sent via the major messaging platforms is expected to exceed the number of SMS text messages by as much as 10x in 2020.
Pull and pictures
Messaging apps and platforms provide an ideal space for companies to forge relationships with audiences and drive connection with brand fans. They have also become the epicenter of our most frequent digital activity: messaging. In August 2018, app market intelligence provider Apptopia reported users globally spent a whopping 85 billion hours in WhatsApp over a period of just three months. (Compare that to 31 billion hours spent on Facebook).
Messaging platforms have experienced explosive growth in users and usage, outpacing some of the biggest social media channels. Together, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger alone have nearly three billion daily active users– that’s almost half the planet. In 2018 the Big Four messaging apps (WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat and Viber) had 4.1 billion combined users. A whopping 72 trillion messages were sent across these platforms (compared to 1.6 trillion searches on Google).
However, people aren’t just messaging more or more often. Empowered by pull, are using the universal language of pictures. People share more than 4.5 billion photos, 1 billion videos, and 80 million GIFs per day on WhatsApp alone. A comprehensive analysis of people’s messaging behaviors on Facebook Messenger (conducted by Facebook) reveals that nearly 60% of respondents have sent emoji-only messages to communicate a concept. What’s more, over half indicated that messaging has replaced all other forms of communication.
United by their passions and interests (supported by a shared visual language), this audience craves instant access to what matters. There’s no room for trial and error. Content must be hyper-personalized, highly visual, and always to the point. Against this backdrop, messaging platforms offer the perfect petri dish to experiment with new approaches around content design and distribution.
Bite-size is back
Messaging platforms also unlock the potential of content companies to satisfy our appetite for bite-sized content. That means short videos, short-form content, graphics, and memes. Content that might feel out-of-place in-app or online is at home on messaging platforms. Media companies and publishers need no convincing. In fact, some new organizations are encouraging audiences to visually enhance the conversation.
The Washington Post, which distributes snackable news content via Viber, a messaging app used by more than one billion people worldwide, has had remarkable success with a series of news-related stickers. The packs count more than 2 million downloads since they were first launched in 2016. “The stickers we’ve created allow users to say what they want about news without having to type a complete thought and simply add delight and character to their conversation,” Amy King, Design Director of Emerging News Products at The Washington Post said in a recent interview.
The Washington Post is just one of a long line of news organizations — including the BBC, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, HuffPost, and Financial Times — that are experimenting with messaging apps as an additional distribution channel. For many, the primary focus has been on providing short news updates and links to related and relevant content. However, some companies have zeroed in on the interactive nature of messaging platforms. They’re adding a new dimension to bite-sized news and leveraging yet another aspect of pull: two-way conversation.
Micro-newsletters for mass audiences
Bloomberg has harnessed WhatsApp to send messages every day and hear back from users directly, Katie Boyce, Managing Editor, Digital, Bloomberg, stated in an email interview. “After big news would break, we started to ask our WhatsApp audience what they want to know. We would get such thoughtful feedback that we could then incorporate it into our reporting and send back updates,” she explains. “It was a much different conversation than what we get on our public social channels. We built up a very highly engaged audience.”
It also paved the way for Bloomberg to bundle bite-sized content into personalized packages that balance depth with the demand for distilled information. The outcome was a new format it calls the “micro newsletter.” The content is longer than a push alert but shorter than a typical newsletter.
Boyce describes the content as a “very conversational update three times a day at the end of each region’s news day, summarizing the big stories of the day.” It has been so popular with the audience that it prompted Bloomberg to “create multiple sub-groups around topics like markets or the Middle East so that we could send more targeted messages.”
Using this approach, which was nominated for a SOPA (Society of Publishers in Asia), a benchmark for world-class journalism, Bloomberg has done more than grow its numbers. It has recruited and audience of advocates eager to follow the discussion no matter where it takes them.
In December Bloomberg moved its distribution to Telegram, a messaging platform projected to hit 1 billion users by 2022. (Admittedly, Bloomberg’s move was driven more by necessity than inspiration as Facebook, which owns WhatsApp, made good on its promise to crack down on what it considers “non-personal” use on the platform. In December efforts turned to the gray area of newsletters. And it ruled that publishers will no longer be allowed to send out newsletters on WhatsApp.)
Within two weeks of moving the micro-newsletter messages over to Telegram, Boyce reports that Bloomberg “gained over 25,000 followers” on the new platform many of whom migrated from WhatsApp. But efforts to leverage the popularity of messaging platforms doesn’t stop there. Bloomberg is “continuously evaluating other ways to meet users where they are,” Boyce says. It’s a smart approach in the age of pull.
Messaging is the new frontier
As we kick off a new decade, it’s critical that content creators — be they media companies or marketers — understand consumers’ growing appetite for concentrated content on their terms and in the spaces where they choose to congregate. It’s a global phenomenon that sees audiences flocking to messaging apps, drawn by the simplicity of snackable content.
It also offers audiences the opportunity to “share and discuss news, away from the toxicity of political debate that threatens more open spaces,” according to the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2019. Based on data from almost 40 countries across six continents, the report highlights this mega-trend. It notes that WhatsApp has already become a primary network for discussing and sharing news in western countries (where WhatsApp has a strong presence) as well as non-western countries including Brazil (53%), Malaysia (50%) and South Africa (49%). The upshot: “as more people use messaging services, news usage has also risen.”
Now that news organizations and media companies have an audience on these platforms, they must adopt the culture and language of these communities and capture the Zeitgeist to deliver on the promise of pull. A decade ago, companies were just beginning to develop this mindset, with the understanding that constant and instant accessibility of information was an audience demand and responding with models that would rebalance businesses and organizations to be powered by pull.
But there was a catch. We had the message, to borrow a concept from the visionary Marshall McLuhan. But without messaging platforms, we lacked the medium to deliver at scale. Today we have both. Mobile — messaging in particular — is where people spend their time. And content companies who build experiences that are right-sized and optimized can leverage this behavior to engage highly-receptive audiences.
Inside Quartz’ obsessive approach to email newsletters
With so many new and immersive ways to reach audiences on their mobile devices, it’s natural to wonder if email, now nearly 50 years old, has lost its luster. But before you make a call consider reams of research that show email rules as the most reliable way to reach consumers everywhere on the planet. Granted, email took a hit in the wake of the European Union’s May 25 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), legislation that raised opt-in standards for email campaigns. However, the cleanse that followed also produced audiences that are genuinely interested in receiving communications and content from companies that have their express consent. It raises the question: Can companies do more with email newsletters to drive deeper engagement with their content?
The answer is a resounding “yes.” That is if they move beyond offering collections of links to offering content that has a distinct voice, format and style all its own. This is the strategy championed by Quartz, a six-year-old mobile-first publisher widely credited with helping reinvent the email newsletter. The company, which was recently acquired from Atlantic Media by Uzabase, a Japanese business intelligence and media company, broke new ground in 2017 with the launch of Quartz Obsession. The edgy email deep dives into topics that have “seismic importance to the global economy” and reports an open rate of 78%, much higher than the industry average of 22%.
Peggy Anne Salz – mobile analyst and Content Marketing Strategist at MobileGroove – catches up with Adam Pasick, a senior editor at Quartz who oversees Quartz’s push team, which includes email newsletters, apps, and bots. Pasick discusses how Quartz looks beyond the newsroom for content that inspires and engages audiences, and why it pays to publish newsletters with a “sense of purpose and cohesiveness.”
PAS: Katie Weber, VP of client partnerships for Quartz, is quoted as calling the inbox “the new homepage for executives.” How do you choose and craft newsletter content that will consistently appeal to this high-value audience?
AP: I think we’ve certainly struck a chord with an audience that is more than the sum of the numbers. We have bespoke editorial and news coverage that we tailor for our products including the Quartz Daily Brief, Quartz Obsession, as well as the Quartz app for iOS and Android. Each has their own content and their own voice.
Sometimes we adapt articles from the main Quartz site, but most of the time we are writing the content from scratch. It’s the best way to treat each of those products as their own thing, with their own audience, their own appeal and their own writing staff to make the package complete. Quartz Obsession is a great example of this. We looked at just piping regular Quartz content into these products, but we found it to be an unfulfilling experience. It just fell flat.
PAS: I’m hearing that your audience is a demographic that values an element of serendipity and rejects content that feels stale. How do you keep your content fresh?
AP: We are constantly testing and rolling out new products, and the Quartz Obsession email is a great example. It’s had a hugely positive response out of the gate because it invites readers to go down a rabbit hole every day on one very kind of narrow topic. Then it opens your world by giving you a big-picture view of the topic in the context of the wider world.
PAS: You call it the daily “digression.” But is the starting point the daily news?
AP: The content is inspired by topics that are in the news. But we go a step further delivering more evergreen content that sheds light on the weird and wild tangents. In this way we fill a need that people have to be delighted and surprised with content that touches on the issues of the day but also takes some unexpected turns to inspire them to see and experience what is beyond the news.
Across all Quartz stories and products there’s kind of a common editorial DNA that should run through them. But we don’t only use Quartz stories as a starting point. We are agnostic in terms of where our stories start off. It can start with a Quartz story, we are also happy to use stories from other sources for the app and the emails. It’s not about driving traffic back to the Quartz mothership; it’s about finding the best stories for our audience no matter where they started off or where they may have originated.
PAS: You oversee several products, including apps and chatbots. What are the content offers and audience preferences across these platforms?
AP: Each of those products has its own advertising format, one that is appropriate and native to that platform. This ensures that we are not reliant on driving people back to Quartz.com. This is why we feature stories from other news outlet and then adapt it and tell it in our own way. Across all these formats it’s about channeling the news into a more casual conversational style, while keeping it very tight and concise. The tone that we are aiming for is one that is how you would write if you were describing the story to your friends.
The chatbot on Facebook Messenger presents content in a conversational format, so we use different tools to kind of mimic having a conversation with a real person. There are real people writing the responses, but it takes place in an automated algorithmic fashion. The starting point is often a push notification. Then the experience can go beyond what’s happening in the world to sharing ways you can enhance your world. For example, we’ve taken people through lifestyle ideas and inspiration like how to bake your own soda bread. We’ve experimented with different experiences and see audiences spend the most time on content around the news. But for chatbots, as well as apps, it’s also important to mix serious stories and with topics that are off-beat or lighthearted. You want to have a diverse story mix that doesn’t kind of beat people over the head with one kind of story. It should feel more eclectic.
Our app is available on the watch, so we know we touch reader’s lives in ways that are immediate. It’s about developing innovative ways to be valuable and offer value throughout the day and across platforms. So, you start the morning reaching for your smartphone and you scan the news on what happened while you were sleeping. The Daily Brief provides a kind of editorial intelligence service and it has a very loyal audience. With the app, that’s where readers dip in and out to learn something or be delighted with content and then get on with your day. Obsession comes in when your day is wrapping up, when you’re a little exhausted and you just need something to kind of take you out of your world and into an unexpected direction.
PAS: You provide me the news and experiences you think I want. Why don’t you ask me?
AP: We are assuming that if you found your way to us you that you also like the Quartz editorial. That’s why we purposely pick, curate, and write stories that fit in with our kind of Quartziness. And that’s our goal. It’s not about the capability to write something different for every individual person. It’s about having a purpose and approach to telling the story that resonates with our audience.