Tags containing: "mobile"

Univision Ramps Up World Cup Across Digital and Social

June 19, 2014 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

The 2014 FIFA World Cup is well under way and it is proving to be the most digital and social event in the history of Univision Deportes. The first six days of the 2014 FIFA World Cup have been the most visited days for Univision Digital of all time. Moreover, the live stream of the Mexico vs. Brazil game on June 17 received 3.63 million views, making it Univision’s most watched live stream ever.

This does not come as a surprise. Compared to 2010, this World Cup compared shows far greater digital consumption across live streaming, page views and social media interaction and reflects the broader shifts taking place in the consumer media landscape, notably the dramatic shift to mobile.

Our World Cup digital experience is centered around our Univision Deportes app. We partnered with industry leader NeuLion to create the newly-enhanced app to deliver the best possible World Cup digital viewing experience, serving as the official home for all World Cup games and content. The app offers fans access to high-quality live streaming coverage of all the games with in-match, real time highlights and stats, multi-camera angle video highlights, schedules, individual club news, rosters and more. In expectation of the tremendous demand for live streaming that we expected, we worked hard to test and re-test with matches before the World Cup to make sure that the viewing experience was the very best possible.

Additionally, the app offers fans watching live sports on smartphones and tablets a one-of-a-kind interactive live soccer experience that can be personalized to the individual fan, connecting users to each other via their social networks using Twitter and Facebook. U.S. Hispanics over-index on digital video consumption. We took this into account with the creation of this app which has been optimized to work across mobile devices and platforms.

Our audience has most certainly embraced this app in a big way. It has already been downloaded more than 1 million times since June 1, and now 2 million times overall. In fact, since the launch of the World Cup, the Univision Deportes app has ranked among the top three free sports apps in the Apple App Store.

Our objective for this World Cup was to provide a new digital destination for soccer fans that gives them a chance to engage with content, watch games live on the go and receive up-to-the-minute, real time match highlights and updates like they never have before. We want to deliver the ultimate companion for the die-hard soccer fan—regardless of platform. Importantly, from a strategic perspective, we made the decision to not create a separate experience and app just for World Cup. We created the Univision Deportes experience as both the home of our World Cup experience and the home of all of our soccer coverage year-long.

As part of Univision’s FIFA World Cup Brazil 2014 all around digital experience, fans can also follow the action, online in the fully responsive World Cup homepage, or using the hashtag #UDMundial across their social platforms on Twitter via @UnivisionSports, as well as comment and follow all related content Facebook.com/UnivisionDeportes and Instagram/UnivisionDeportes.

The World Cup creates the space for one big conversation across social media. We have seen consistently high engagement on Twitter and Facebook, with viewers engaging with our programs in a big way. Our awards shows consistently have higher social engagement than the GRAMMYs and Oscars. For the World Cup, we have led on Nielsen Twitter TV ratings across some of the matches.

For this World Cup, we will deliver a few interesting new social plays:

First, Univision has created “Por El Futbol,” a documentary for fans around memorable World Cup moments as told by the fans, via Instagram and Vine

Second, Univision is kicking off the longest soccer kick in the world, offering fans to join by participating through Instagram and Vine, which will culminate with the ball landing in Brazil.

Then we want to break from pure sports posts and show more of what fans are experiencing throughout Brazil, fans can experience every moment as if they were there by following hashtag #CelebrandoEnBrasil via their favorite social network.

As for social TV integration, Univision and Facebook have teamed up to deliver the best possible social experience for fans who tune into World Cup coverage, with Facebook and Instagram content integrated into the broadcast. This allows us to continue to work with our viewers as they become partners in the content creation process.

The daily broadcast segments feature a mix of Facebook posts by athletes, teams and public figures, fan comments, various chatter data (such as which players are top talk on Facebook, etc.), along with Instagram photos by teams, players and fans. Univision has committed to running a significant number of social segments daily throughout the tournament.

We welcome one and all to watch fútbol en Español with us!

Kevin Conroy serves as president of Univision Interactive Media and Enterprise Development for Univision Communications Inc.Conroy has more than 20 years of advertising and media experience and has managed a number of popular Web brands, including AOL, AIM, ICQ, Moviefone, Netscape, Truveo and Winamp. Conroy was recognized by Broadcasting & Cable as a 2010 Digital All-Star, and lauded as one of Digital Media Wire’s 25 Executives to Watch. He also serves on the boards of The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), Online Publishers Association (OPA), Newell Rubbermaid (NWL) and RecycleBank. He is a graduate of Bowdoin College.

Innovation

For World Cup 2014, ESPN’s Goal is to Give Fans a Winning Multiplatform Experience

June 13, 2014 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

The buzz around the 2014 World Cup is palpable. And this year, more people can watch it more places than ever before thanks, at least in part, to ESPN’s massive multiplatform push. According to Patrick Stiegman, VP and Editorial Director of ESPN Digital and Print Media, “Strategically, we don’t separate digital from print and broadcast. All parts must be moving together nicely as we produce this incredible event.”

ESPN has a team of 15 people on the ground in Brazil providing coverage that is being leveraged across all of its platforms. The work they do will be used for breaking news, analysis, digital features and shorts, and stories for broadcast and print. “All of our reporters are thinking multiplatform at all times,” says Stiegman. “At the World Cup, they are ESPN reporters, not specific to a delivery platform.” For example, Michael Davies and Roger Bennett, who are well known for their popular Men in Blazers podcasts on Grantland, are contributing daily blog posts to ESPN FC. In turn, segments of broadcast video commentary are available on the website and in ESPN’s apps.

To flesh out this multiplatform approach, ESPN has made significant investments in its digital delivery that will enable viewers to watch all 64 matches live online via an embedded WatchESPN video player on its responsive ESPN FC website, which it relaunched along with the ESPN FC app, earlier this month. Stiegman says that the updated ESPN FC app will be a “game changing service for fans. It will be a mobile home for anyone who wants to follow the ins and outs of the World Cup.”

A “huge step in ESPN’s digital strategy is personalization,” according to Stiegman. “Increasingly, we see the drive toward personalization. In more than a third of our visits, fans spend time in clubhouses and take a team-specific approach. They want the higher level stuff, but also want to follow their teams in depth.” To that end, the ESPN FC app starts with IP-based geolocation, and then prompts users to set which edition they want. Options include regional or specific team-centric coverage as well as language options that include Spanish and Portuguese. All matches will be available online in Portuguese via ESPN Deportes as well.

Another significant piece of the company’s strategy that has allowed ESPN to provide such extensive digital availability of this year’s World Cup is the company’s work over the past several years to improve authentication, particularly ease of use. “With WatchESPN, we’ve been working hard for some time to make it as easy as possible for fans to authenticate as cable subscribers.” ESPN currently has digital authentication deals with Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Dish.

“We really are focused on allowing viewers to access ESPN on the best screen available at any given moment. Maybe that’s mobile on a plane. Or maybe, like it is at my house, you’ll be watching on a tablet while your daughter watches Disney on your 60-inch TV.” While the goal with authentication has been to make signing in as easy as possible, increasing the breadth and depth of offerings via as wide a range of platforms as possible “is all about giving viewers a clear return on investment for taking the time to do so.”

Innovation

Condé Nast Traveler’s New Gold List App Focuses on Social Life and Good Taste

June 6, 2014 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

This week, Condé Nast Traveler launched its new Gold List app, available for iOS and Android, to leverage the usefulness and popularity of its listings of hotels, resorts, restaurants and hotel bars as well as to maximize the social influence of this type of content. According to Creative Services Director Dana Devito, “social is a very big part of our editorial play online and off.”
The app, says Devito, “is a true extension of our brand, not just a guide.” In particular, she cites Condé Nast Traveler’s Tastemakers—something the publication recently introduced as it shifts from its focus on travel to a broader lifestyle perspective. Tastemakers are those the publication deems influential in a wide range of areas, who offer up their distinct view on the most interesting places, things to do, and much more. The app specifically leverages the social footprint of these tastemakers because, as Devito puts it, “the biggest form of ad delivery is word of mouth.” Within the app, each Very Important Tastemaker (including stylist Ann Caruso, gallery owner Blair Voltz Clark, and hotelier Jeff Klien) has their own “VIT” page which highlights their picks (look for more emphasis on these tastemakers in the publication’s website relaunch, coming in August).

The emphasis on social can be seen everywhere in the app but the social strategy is not solely focused on external channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr and Pinterest. They’ve included their own Pinterest-like virtual bookmarking tool which allows users to cut and paste photos and videos to populate their own public or private social stream, which Devito calls “our own Condé Nast Traveler inspiration board. ”Social integration was a key element of The Gold List app, says Devito, “because it creates a two-way platform. We’re not just pushing out information; we want to hear from our users too.”

At launch, the Gold List app includes more than 600 hotels and resorts and 300-plus restaurants and hotel bars, searchable by country, region and city. The top-ranked hotels and resorts were reader-selected in Condé Nast Traveler’s annual Reader’s Choice Survey. The app emphasizes Devito, “delivers on our twin promises of inspiration and service” with its “Stream” function, which provides a running visual archive of anything that users have shared or saved in the app. “The beautiful part of this app,” says Devito, “is that, sure, it is a resource to plan your next trip. But it is also a great tool to find a restaurant or bar at home or whatever city you find yourself in.”

Innovation

Q&A: Ryan Spoon, SVP Digital Product, ESPN on Delivering Compelling Multiscreen Experiences

April 29, 2014 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

This Q&A is part of OPA’s “Three on Three” series where we ask three industry executives the same three questions on a topic to uncover actionable insights… If you want to learn more, keep an eye out on our site for more interviews. Today’s Three on Three interview is with Ryan Spoon, SVP Digital Product, ESPN on Delivering Compelling Multiscreen Experiences.

Q: Where do you start in conceiving of a multiscreen user experience?

A: We think about multiscreen experiences in two primary and important ways: First, we program for the best screen available and optimize the experience and functionality accordingly. For instance, what a fan wants and expects on a mobile phone differs from the tablet which differs yet again from the big screen television.

Second, while the functionality might change based on screen size and capability, the interactions and design should be familiar and cohesive. We almost always conceive of products and experiences as capable of being multiscreen and part of a larger product portfolio / offering.

Q: Describe one of your recent or forthcoming multiscreen initiatives/projects.

A: WatchESPN is a very good example because we have worked hard to make it available on all screens but special for each screen’s platform and use-case. WatchESPN has been released or updated on Apple TV, iOS, Android, Kindle, Roku XBox One and XBox 360−with more to come. We were careful to design the product specifically for each use case and platform and to take advantage of different functionalities and capabilities.

For instance, the iPad application introduced the Live Toolbar which enables fans to watch multiple videos at once and access live scores. This functionality was specifically crafted for that device and platform. With Apple TV, we introduced Airplay integration and a standalone application. For example, you can fling a game from your iPhone to the television using airplay and now use your phone to follow gamecast or fantasy scores. In that case, the screens are interacting but each play a specific, standalone role.

Q: What do you see as the biggest opportunity in developing multiscreen experiences?

A: There are two big opportunities−and challenges−with multiscreen experiences, in my opinion.

First, if you define multiscreen as functional across all devices and platforms, personalization and user familiarity are critical. For instance, if I move from iPhone to desktop and then to tablet, everything should be synced, familiar and painless. Login and personalization are the key.

Second, if you define multiscreen as two screens functioning concurrently, the challenge and opportunity are to eliminate friction. Simply asking users to open multiple devices at once is a logistical and funnel challenge. Making it simple and contextual is very challenging. But ultimately, it is the right way to do it. I think we are making strides through cross-application deep-linking, Airplay integration and improved television integration, as examples. I think Twitter is also doing interesting work with their “See It” button integrations. These are all steps forward.

Ryan Spoon was named Senior Vice President, Product Development in July 2012. In this role, he is responsible for digital product development across all screens, including ESPN.com, ESPN Mobile, WatchESPN, ESPN3, Fantasy, and Social Media. Prior to ESPN, Spoon was a venture capitalist at Polaris Venture Partners and specialized in early-stage consumer internet, social media and e-commerce investments. Previously, Spoon served as Vice President, Marketing and Business Development for Widgetbox (now Flite) — a platform for brands and publishers to create dynamic, shareable ad units. Prior to that, Spoon spent 2003 to 2007 at eBay, focusing on internet marketing, user acquisition and social products, while launching and managing eBay’s U.S. Classifieds business. While he was a collegiate swimmer for Duke University, Spoon founded beRecruited, an online recruiting platform for high school student-athletes and college coaches. beRecruited was acquired in 2007 by RVS Ventures.

Note: This Q&A is part of OPA’s “Three on Three” series where we ask three industry executives the same three questions on a topic to uncover actionable insights.

Also in this series:

Q&A: Rob Hayes, EVP Digital Media, NBCUniversal on Delivering Compelling Multiscreen Experiences

Q&A: Kate Lewis, VP, Hearst Magazines Digital Media on Delivering Compelling Multiscreen Experiences

Innovation

Glamour Reflects on Beauty and Mobile with Launch of Lipstick.com

April 11, 2014 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

Among women’s media brands, Glamour has never been just another pretty face. Striving to reflect and inform the wide range of interests of its 17 million print and digital readers, Glamour takes a 360-degree perspective, covering everything from clothes and culture to careers and celebs. It addresses the woman as “the whole package”—while acknowledging her love for a kitten heel. This week, the brand launched its first ever digital spin-off to better serve the beauty needs of its readers: the mobile-optimized destination Lipstick.com.

The confluence of mobile, beauty and Glamour readers created a perfect storm for the launch of Lipstick.com according to Mike Hofman, Glamour’s Executive Digital Director. “Mobile is such a huge part of the way women, including our readers, discover beauty content,” he points out. The brand sees 52% of its monthly uniques coming from mobile and, according to Hofman, Glamour’s beauty department readers actually over-index for mobile.

Hofman says that they also found that Glamour’s beauty readers were more likely to stay within the beauty section and sample like-minded content. Likening the behavior of this reader segment to viewers who “binge-watch TV,” he says they “visit the site at a very high frequency and stay for a longer session duration. This is a very engaged reader and we said, ‘let’s create a space that really caters to her.’”

While the Glamour.com site has used responsive design since 2012, Lipstick.com was conceived of as a mobile destination first and foremost. Recognizing that women are often seeking inspiration during those found moments on the way to a meeting or while waiting for friends at a coffee shop, the site features a prominent “Ideas” button on the top right of the page. There, the reader can find handy galleries of nail colors, haircuts, makeup and more designed to inspire.

In some ways, Hofman says the site’s design is also reflective of the ways in which women get ideas via social media. “In our demo, social media is an extension of the readers’ personality.” Beauty, he points out, is a particularly rich area for social engagement. This is reflected in the inclusion of an “Instagram-like heart on our pages” so that readers can communicate to others what they love most. They’ve also launched a beauty tip series on Instagram called “InstaBeauty,” which offers how-to’s delivered in 15 seconds or less.

The site uses shorter, snappier headlines and features a “tap-to-load” button for navigation to the next suggested story. Glamour’s beauty readers, says Hofman, have a willingness to try new things and their research showed that “the number of products they buy is through the roof.” Thus, the essential inclusion of a “tap-to- buy” button, which may redirect to third party sites or to Shop Glamour to satisfy readers’ desire for a quick beauty fix.

At Glamour, beauty has always been more than something aspirational and the new Lipstick.com destination will build upon the beauty how-tos the brand is known for while continuing to reflect the adventurous, experimental and increasingly mobile world its readers live in. Hofman says they are also looking at successful aspects of other Condé Nast publications for inspiration, such as Bon Appétit’s recipe box, which could be leveraged to create an idea-store for regular readers. Armed with its close-knit reader relationship and an eye to innovation, Lipstick.com looks picture-perfect for the Glamour brand.

Innovation

Digital First Media Partners with Rumble to Rev Up Mobile Innovation

March 25, 2014 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

With a name like Digital First Media (DFM), one might not think that this is a company with deep roots in the newspaper business. But for DFM, rooted does not mean anchored. With a legacy of quality content at its core (including 48 Pulitzers) and a monthly audience of 67 million Americans who visit through more than 800 multi-platform products, DFM continues to push its business forward to live up to its name. Last week, the company announced a partnership with Rumble to upgrade DFM’s mobile technology, introduce real-time and dynamic content and ad-targeting capabilities, as well as launch an Innovation Lab.

When Head of Mobile and Social Products Dave Elchoness joined DFM nine months ago, he found that the state of its mobile was consistent with what he had seen previously at other digital-centric newspaper companies: “We had apps. We had mobile-optimized websites for the most part. But I felt we needed to position the business toward the future.” And while the company was doing a good job developing in-house, he took a look at some third party solutions to see if they could do even better.

Elchoness, who describes himself as “skeptical by nature” said he saw something “truly unique in Rumble…the ability for the publisher to own the presentation layer and to get at an enormous amount of data so we can direct our business in a much more informed way.” On the revenue side, Rumble’s solution will allow them to experiment and innovate in advertising based upon real-time data. The solution collects information about users’ location, interests, etc. and allows DFM to predict what users are interested in both in terms of content and advertising.

As Rumble’s Founder and CEO Al Azoulay sees it, “Mobile is one big operational headache for publishers.” While third-party solutions ease some of the pain, Azoulay points out that most of these solutions are “template-driven, limiting publishers’ content and advertising flexibility.” In addition, he finds that most publishers must rely on several solutions to contend with the full range of mobile: apps, advertising and website development. His objective is to provide “a single solution, across this incredibly fragmented mobile space, which allows a publisher to easily modify UX, the content mix and the entire ad map with the click of a button.”

For DFM, Elchoness says, the solution goes well beyond cost-effectiveness, ease-of-use and flexibility. “This solution will let us prototype quickly in a way we couldn’t do on our own…A solution like this will allow us to leapfrog others in the market by evolving much more rapidly.”

As DFM and Rumble began to work closely together in examining how the solution could help drive forward mobile content delivery and advertising, they found a shared affinity for innovation and experimentation that led them to partner on the launch of an Innovation Lab. “The problem with so many of these technology partnerships,” says Elchoness “is that you talk about innovation, you talk about a road map but then you get caught up in problems, crises and the work that has to go on every day.” So the two companies have joined together with a commitment to “do something incredible on a regular basis.”

In DFM, Azoulay says he found a partner that “wants to play. One that wants to do, not just talk about innovation.” He says we can expect “data-driven products, m-commerce, native ad solutions and UX-driven products that will continue to drive more and more engagement and loyalty with the users.” For Elchoness, the Innovation Labs will help DFM focus on mobile as “not just about delivering content. This keeps us thinking about how we can experiment, iterate, prototype, fail and quickly course-correct so that we are inventing the future of publishing.”

Innovation

AccuWeather Makes Another Social Connection With Launch of BBM Channel

February 27, 2014 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

AccuWeather has launched a branded BBM Channel to extend its social connection to weather fans. The company, which has a longstanding relationship with Blackberry, has joined the ranks of brands such as Time and Disney in creating its own dedicated BBM Channel. The new AccuWeather BBM Channel will offer a range of breaking weather information, including severe weather updates, breaking stories, local weather images, radar and more, which Blackberry Messaging (BBM) subscribers can access across mobile platforms.

AccuWeather timed its Channel release to coincide with last week’s expansion of BBM when Blackberry announced an update to BBM for all users as well as making Blackberry’s private social network available to iPhone and Android smartphone users. AccuWeather’s Coordinator of Social Media Jesse Ferrell says that the move made sense to extend the brand’s mobile and social reach, “BlackBerry has a huge audience who is always connected and online, and we are thrilled to be able to interact with that audience through this Social channel.”

BBM Channels is Blackberry’s social engagement platform that works within BBM. It allows people to connect with the businesses, brands, celebrities and groups of interest. It also lets users engage in in conversation around content in a similar fashion to Twitter and Facebook while providing brands with integrated monitoring and measurement tools.

“Social Media in general helps AccuWeather inform its audience about inclement weather, while reinforcing the brand,” says Ferrell. Though the audience may overlap with other social channels on which AccuWeather is already active, Ferrell says that delivering content within the context of Blackberry Messaging will extend the reach of its weather related information to an audience that might not yet be as familiar with what the AccuWeather brand offers. And, as Ferrell points out, “Because of its real-time and local nature, weather is always a win on Social Media.”

Innovation | Perspectives | Research

Q&A with Joe D. Weir, VP of Digital, A.H. Belo on Mobile Advertising Innovation

February 14, 2014 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

Q: In mobile advertising, what is the most important thing to consider?

A: I think that it is the ability to reach the consumer where they are. “Where they are” means two things: First, it can mean geolocation. But it can also mean where the consumer is within the buying cycle.

For example, I am going to dinner. So first we need to think about how we play a part in where they are physically. Then we need to think about where they are in their decision making process about dinner. At that point, we factor in our relationships with businesses, grocery, restaurants, to help marry up the consumer and “where they are” with our advertisers.

People are using mobile more often, in more places and more ways; they are using it in line to buy movie tickets or at the grocery story, or pumping gas. But behind all that may be them doing something bigger. For example, maybe they are in the process of buying a car and using mobile to explore and research products.

We need to understand how the consumer is using mobile so we can connect them with content that helps them make better decisions or, as we’ve done through our partnership with cars.com, to bring buyers together with sellers in the marketplace. Another factor to keep in mind is the importance of reviews. An exciting opportunity for us has been matching up consumer reviews with other content.

Mobile helps change the landscape because of its mobility, but also because of its connectivity. It allows for more data points around various topics.

Q: Describe one of your recent or forthcoming mobile ad initiatives that you think is particularly innovative:

A: First let me tell you a bit about our approach. The way we’ve looked at mobile is that we’re trying to build a network of mobile access. We have variations of our content that is HTML5 that can be pulled up and rendered on whatever device consumers are on—mobile or tablet. We also have applications that we’ve launched for iOS and Android and we’re working with Windows right now.

If you look our stuff, you’ll see things like “Dallas’ Best Burgers” and “Dallas Skyline”. Obviously, we also have our core offering like Dallas Morning News as websites, epaper and applications. One of our strengths, as with a lot of newspapers, is sports.

I think one of our most innovative stories is in sports. So it is an understatement to say that High School football is big in Texas. In December, we had a game that broke the national High School attendance record with more than 54 thousand attendees. Needless to say, we’d been creating all this content around High School ball and realized we needed a mobile play in that space.

The way we created the SportsDay High School app, and the way we sold the whole campaign, is a good example for media companies. The app delivers all of the content we were creating, but we also built live score delivery into it, which is really optimal for mobile. It also includes push notifications and alerts for teams you are interested in. So what we did was work hard to create an app experience audiences would really want.

Then we sold a single sponsorship to the app as part of a much larger package, which had print, desktop and mobile components. Albertsons sponsored an entire High School Sports package. It even includes a community element where Albertsons honors top players at a banquet. Mobile, for us, fits into something bigger. It allows us, as publishers, to pull together revenue opportunities that might exist in a range of areas as one larger sale, which delivers more to the advertiser as well.

Q: What is working in mobile advertising, and what do we need more of, in order to drive success in this area?

A: We need a couple of things. First, there needs to be as much standardized delivery of advertising as possible.

We also need the best ease the integration of mobile into our existing business. There are a lot of media companies right now who, with their mobile, are doing ad serving with x company over here and then on desktop, with y company over here. And all of those systems are separate and don’t talk to each other. All media companies need to look at their technology stack and figure out how their technology can support the needs of salespeople. It needs to be very efficient for pre-sales—to understand how big the audience is and what the opportunity is. It also needs to be efficient for post-sales—I’ve closed the business and need to implement the campaign across platforms.

We have this great group of sales people who go out into the market every single day. Their job is to sell audiences and those audiences exist on mobile, print, desktop, tablet. So to make the most of that, we need to create the best technology stack to distribute the ad dollars seamlessly across our different platforms. The easier this is for sales people, the easier it will be to get those dollars in the front door.

Joe D Weir leads sales of all digital offerings of DMNmedia and is responsible for product development and digitally related strategic initiatives. Prior to joining DMNmedia, Joe had been with Belo for 18 years. His most recent position was Vice President of Digital for Belo since 2009. His responsibilities included digital strategies for revenue and audience growth across new media platforms. Weir was named a “Digital All-Star” in 2010 by Broadcasting & Cable magazine. In 2009 he was named “Outstanding Young Alumnus” from his alma mater Hardin-Simmons University and in 2008 he led WFAA.com to be honored with a National Edward R Murrow for online innovation. Weir currently serves on The University of North Texas RTVF (Radio, TV and Film) Executive Board.

Also in this series:

Q&A with Brian Colbert, Chief Revenue Officer, About.com on Mobile Advertising Innovation

Perspectives | Research

Q&A with Brian Colbert, Chief Revenue Officer, About.com on Mobile Advertising Innovation

February 10, 2014 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

Q: In mobile advertising, what is the most important thing to consider?

A: From an ad creative standpoint, there is still a tendency for advertisers to cram too much information into too small of a space on mobile. While phone screen sizes have increased over the years, they still pale in comparison to desktops and always will. The hardest thing for advertisers to accept in mobile advertising is that “less is more”. Be quirky, be relevant, be interesting but most importantly, be concise.

Secondly, it is still baffling the amount of blue-chip national brands that don’t have mobile websites. Consumers have grown to expect mobile-optimized experiences and advertisers risk damaging their brand image if their mobile experiences are not up to par.

Lastly, brands need to realize that mobile is the primary digital platform now. It’s a mobile world and brand strategies need to adapt faster to harness the full capabilities of the mobile platform.

Q: Describe one of your recent or forthcoming mobile campaigns that you think is particularly innovative:

A: We continue to iterate on our mobile platform with new ad executions, but one that has proven to be extremely effective is having our 320×50 ad unit stay fixed on the screen as the user scrolls. Because our content is long-form in nature and requires a lot of scrolling, we felt that having the banner disappear as the user scrolls, which is fairly typical with the mobile web, was not the optimal ad experience. We feel we have achieved a good balance of providing an impactful mobile ad unit for our advertisers yet not disrupting the content experience for our users.

Q: What is working in mobile advertising and what do we need more of in order to drive success in this area?

A: More and more advertisers are beginning to take advantage of mobile rich media and some executions that leverage the functionality of the phone—GPS, accelerometer, touchscreen—have made the ads much more fun and engaging than their desktop counterparts. If done well, mobile ads can actually enhance the user experience.

But the balance that publishers and advertisers need to keep in mind is that there’s fine line between “engaging” and “intrusive”. The use-case for mobile often differs than desktop and users are less inclined to tolerate ads that disrupt their user experience since they are often on-the-go and under greater time constraints.

Brian Colbert is the Chief Revenue Officer for About.com, where he oversees premium and programmatic sales, ad ops, sales development and yield management. Prior to joining About.com in October of 2013, Brian was Vice President of Mobile Advertising Sales at Pandora. Previously, he was the Senior Director of Mobile Advertising Sales and Strategy at ESPN. Brian has a B.A. in Political Science from Duke University and an MBA from New York University’s Stern School of Business in Finance and Strategy.

Note: This Q&A is part of OPA’s “Three on Three” series where we ask three industry executives the same three questions on a topic to uncover actionable insights.

Also in this series:

Q&A with Sol Masch, Director of Mobile Sales & Strategy, Time Inc. on Mobile Ad Innovation

Q&A with Joe D. Weir, VP of Digital, A.H. Belo on Mobile Advertising Innovation

Perspectives | Revenue

Q&A with Sol Masch, Director of Mobile Sales & Strategy, Time Inc. on Mobile Ad Innovation

February 6, 2014 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

This Q&A is part of OPA’s “Three on Three” series where we ask three industry executives the same three questions on a topic to uncover actionable insights… If you want to learn more, keep an eye out on our site for more interviews. Today’s Three on Three is with Sol Masch, Director of Mobile Sales & Strategy, Time Inc.

Q: In mobile advertising, what is the most important thing to consider?

A: The place to begin is always around the KPIs and defining those so we can figure out how to make a campaign a success. On mobile, most clients want engagement. The question is, what does engagement mean? Then you can define the right message, the right user and appropriate data targeting. Often, engagement is defined as getting a user to interact. Then you have to create rich messaging that drives interaction. But the message can also be delivered in the form of content that will prompt interaction. We are definitely getting more requests for native and we’re looking at how it lives on the mobile screen and how it will engage readers.

One of the big differentiating factors for mobile versus desktop or other platforms, is the idea of time spent. This is a big misnomer as a KPI on mobile. Agencies often want to drive campaigns based upon how much time people are spending interacting. We don’t find that time spent is the best KPI. If you can engage a user in five seconds—if they go through the entire experience and you get them to want to share the content—you have engaged them, in a matter of seconds.

We see that it is important to be more sensitive to the issue of time on mobile. Often we see that people use mobile during “found time,” which is a couple of minutes on the bus or waiting for an appointment. Mobile demands quick hits that are just as powerful as longer times spent on other devices. The trick is in designing those experiences that last less than a minute, or even just a few seconds, to deliver impact and engagement.

Q: Describe one of your recent or upcoming mobile campaigns that you think is particularly innovative and why it worked.

A: We recently did a campaign with Infiniti promoting the Q50 vehicle. What’s interesting about the Q50 is its intuitive features: You step into the car and it knows all of the personalized features you like such as seat and mirror position.

Given how personalized the Q50 experience is, we wanted to create a similar ad experience that knew the user and that was intuitive about them as well. With our database targeting we are able to identify our print readers through our partnership with Apple and on Facebook and Twitter, et cetera. We developed an experience that gave users not only content from their favorite brands but also content tailored to their specific taste. So if we identified a mobile user as a Time reader who likes technology, the ad unit would contain a bunch of tech articles. A business enthusiast would get business news articles. We tailored this experience so that it leveraged the right brand with the right reader, but also the exact right content.

This campaign was extremely successful. By delivering the right content through the ad experience, we saw engagement levels lifted three to five times.

Q: What is working in mobile advertising, and what do we need more of, in order to drive success?

A: I think that mobile is getting a lot less clunky and more sophisticated, which is a good thing for users and the industry. A few years ago, there was marketer resistance around investing in mobile because experiences on the desktop, with flash and sexy animations, couldn’t be replicated on mobile. Now we are seeing beautiful, rich experiences on mobile that have excited a lot of marketers. These improvements have fueled their interest in investing in mobile and is making it a larger part of their multimedia platform spend.

However, we still need less fragmentation and more simplicity. Mobile is still a challenging landscape to navigate. With different devices and different operating systems, mobile is a much more complex environment to run a rich media experience in and to format them to work properly. All that device and screen variation is holding us back.

Devices and operating systems will keep on coming and we need to simplify it for the marketing and advertising community. We have made progress over the past year. I’ve seen a lot more publishers and agencies adopting IAB Rising Star units, which has been a big help for the mobile advertising industry. The more we can establish standards, the more it will help everyone. Within the structure of standards, we will be able to innovate even more.

Sol Masch, Director of Corporate Mobile Sales & Strategy for Time Inc., is responsible for mobile ad monetization across Time Inc.’s network of 32 million monthly mobile users – including brands such as People, Entertainment Weekly, InStyle, TIME, Sports Illustrated, Real Simple, Health, Travel & Leisure and Food & Wine. Prior to joining Time Inc., Masch served as the Mobile Advertising Director for Viacom Media Networks. In this role, he built Viacom’s mobile business from $0 into a multimillion dollar business. Previously, Masch was co-owner of Not13, a full service mobile marketing agency and content provider dedicated to providing interactive campaigns and services on mobile devices for Elektra Records and Fuse TV.

Note: This Q&A is part of OPA’s “Three on Three” series where we ask three industry executives the same three questions on a topic to uncover actionable insights.

Also in this series:

Q&A with Brian Colbert, Chief Revenue Officer, About.com on Mobile Advertising Innovation

Q&A with Joe D. Weir, VP of Digital, A.H. Belo on Mobile Advertising Innovation

Innovation

Picture Perfect: Inspiration in Storytelling from Bill Marr’s OPA Summit Keynote

January 23, 2014 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

There is perhaps no more vivid depiction of the OPA slogan “Content People Love” than National Geographic’s iconic photography. So National Geographic creative director Bill Marr’s keynote set the tone at the 12th annual OPA Summit not only by showcasing the publication’s widely-lauded imagery, but also through a demonstration of the brands’ commitment to leveraging digital to embark on a new adventure in storytelling.

The iPad, according to Marr, offered the publication new life and provided a catalyst that is driving National Geographic’s entire team to reconceive of its content creation process and to rethink the ways in which its already visual stories could be told. To do so, Marr says, they had to recognize that “short form video is not television.” For them, “it is an extension of print; it is an extension of storytelling.” While National Geographic has always embraced and supported the work of photographers, now the publication is working with them to evolve their craft using video and a wide range of technologies. The brand is also physically reorganizing its content creation team—down to the office space in which they work—to create a more “open, collaborative environment.”

Marr illustrated the result of these ongoing efforts with a range of stunning examples that had a room full of seasoned media executives mesmerized. One example in particular, the National Geographic’s most popular story of 2013 “The Serengeti Lion,” features the brand’s iconic photography enhanced with audio and video and reveals the technology it used to capture these intimate images, which included infrared photography, micro-drones and a robot.
Now that National Geographic has begun to offer these deep wells of content that go far beyond what it had previously been able to deliver in the pages of its magazine, Marr says they are approaching many other aspects of their content delivery with a new perspective, such as its “The Power of Photography” exhibit on display at the Annenberg Space for Photography. Instead of limiting the exhibit to what could fit on the gallery walls, they created a digital exhibit that uses video walls to showcase 500 photographs and accompanying information from the brand’s 125 year history.

National Geographic, says Marr, has moved away from the notion that a story is “one thing.” Instead, they are working to “envision how any story can come to life in myriad ways.” This approach is generating more powerful storytelling than ever before. It has also created an opportunity to better monetize via digital subscription offerings including iPad and Kindle editions. However National Geographic’s exploration of the frontiers of digital storytelling also demonstrates how delivering these deeper offerings creates a level of engagement—web visitors spent an average of 12 minutes with “The Serengeti Lion”—that the brand believes it can leverage to generate revenue via its site as well. Marr says they are currently beta testing a new iPad-inspired site experience that will offer a premium experience for subscribers and in turn, drive its visual storytelling even further in its next 125 years.

Innovation | Revenue

Q&A with Rob Grimshaw, Managing Director, FT.com on Subscription Model Success

January 23, 2014 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

This Q&A is part of OPA’s “Three on Three” series where we ask three industry executives the same three questions on a topic to uncover actionable insights. Today’s Three on Three is with Rob Grimshaw who is the Financial Times Board member responsible for the commercial development of the FT’s B2C digital business and product portfolio.

Q: When conceiving of a subscription-based model, initiative or product, where should you begin strategically?

A: I think the key things are: First, think about what is unique and different about your product. What are people going to come to you for, as a publisher, that they won’t go to anybody else for? Perhaps it is a particular columnist or topic that few other people do. Identify something that differentiates you in the marketplace and that’s how you’ll approach it from a content point of view.

Second, take advantage of the flexibility that the web environment offers. You don’t have to put up a gigantic blank door on the site that says “pay to enter”. The web offers many ways to do these things: You can build sampling in, you can use these freemium models. Many publishers find that once the paywalls are in, you don’t see advertising suffer at all, which has been our experience.

Thirdly, look to third parties that can help with the task of building your subscription offering. It can be quite challenging technically, certainly more difficult than running a free access site. There is an ecosystem of third party providers that can help you with these projects and help you shortcut some of the processes to get something out to market more quickly.

And one last bit of strategic advice is to consider the wider benefits of having a subscription model and how to take advantage of these. Subscriptions create a direct relationship with your audience. You learn so much about them including demographics, onsite behavior and other information that can be very powerful from a marketing and advertising point of view.

Q: Please describe one of your subscription-based initiatives and the way in which you feel it is particularly innovative.

A: We’ve done many at FT.com. A recent one was fastFT, a feature we launched earlier this year, in May. fastFT is what I would call the FT’s intelligent first response to the news. It provides a continuous stream of content, managed by a team of eight journalists based around the world—in London, New York and Hong Kong—so they can maintain the output 24 hours a day. The goal was to boost engagement on FT.com.

Engagement is absolutely critical to the success of subscription models. We see very clearly that people whose usage of the site drops off are far more likely to cancel and, of course, those who don’t use it in the first place don’t subscribe: a simple equation there.

When we were thinking about increasing engagement, we factored in how competitive the web environment is. We need to communicate to our subscribers that they’ll never miss anything on FT.com so they aren’t tempted to look for information on other sites. This product marked a radical departure for the FT including changes to our newsroom culture and changes to the editorial process. With fastFT, the emphasis on speed-to-page without sacrificing accuracy, authority and all things that make the FT great.

I think that this product offers an excellent example of the commercial needs of the business being creatively translated to a product.

Interestingly, we’ve seen that over half of users come through mobile devices and a third of subscribers who visit fastFT stay longer than 10 minutes on the site.

Q: What advice would you give in terms of approaching subscription models creatively?

A: I would give two tips:

The first one is to look outside of the boundaries of the publishing industry. Think about it: The news publishing experience with pay models and online retail, which is what this is, is relatively new. There are others who have been in this game much longer. You can gain a lot of inspiration by looking at or talking to people from the online retail industry and others pioneering the space. Look at the gaming model and the way they’ve set up things to get you to make in-app purchases. They’ve developed brilliant ways to ease payment and even make you feel like you aren’t paying anything.

The second thing I suggest is to test, test, test. We are in a world where there are a multitude of multivariate testing tools available. These tools allow you to test different page designs and sign-up forms against each other live on line. The insight you gain from those processes is tremendous. Often what you discover can be counter intuitive. The data helps you understand what is really happening and design better offerings as a result.

In his role as Managing Director, FT.com, Rob Grimshaw is the Financial Times Board member responsible for the commercial development of the FT’s B2C digital business and product portfolio.

Note: This Q&A is part of OPA’s “Three on Three” series where we ask three industry executives the same three questions on a topic to uncover actionable insights.

Also in this series:

Q&A with Michael Crosby, Chief Operating Officer, The Deal on Subscription Model Success

Q&A with Interview with Sarah McConville, Vice President of Marketing, Harvard Business Review Group