Tags containing: "mobile"

Removing the friction from content access to ignite engagement at Forbes

January 3, 2017 Peggy Anne Salz, Founder and Lead Analyst – Mobile Groove

While the creation of quality content remains at the fore of premium publishers’ priorities, these days, they also need to double down improving the user experience, streamlining how audiences access and engage with content wherever they opt to consume it. This puts companies under pressure experiment with new formats and technologies in search of new ways to meet consumer demand for snackable and relatable content delivered how, when and where they want it.

According to, Lewis D’Vorkin the company’s Chief Product Officer, Forbes is pursuing a comprehensive strategy to accomplish both. Peggy Anne Salz—mobile analyst and Content Marketing Strategist at MobileGroove—catches up with D’Vorkin to discuss how the company is reinventing the mobile app user experience with the help of new technology that removes friction, increases engagement and opens up additional opportunities for monetization.

Peggy Ann Salz: You have overseen a wave of change that includes the introduction of a new content-creation engine, the launch of an innovative digital publishing platform, and—most recently—a complete rethink of the mobile app experience. Why choose Progressive Web Apps over ordinary native mobile apps?

Lewis D’Vorkin: I don’t believe traditional apps will be successful in the news space. Moreover, I think most of them are likely to end up as revenue failures—for several reasons. One, you don’t get the scale required to be able to monetize mobile apps, unless, of course, they’re paid apps. Two, there’s a lot of friction tied to the traditional mobile app experience. People have to go to the app store. They have to find your app and they have to download it.

The Progressive Web App is a lot like a traditional native app experience, but without the hassle and the friction. The reader basically bookmarks it on their home screen, and they have it just like that (!) No going to the Apple App Store. No going to Google Play. No downloading it. No searching it. No installing it. And, once the user gives us their permission, we can send alerts, push notifications and re-engage in all the ways you can on native apps do. It’s just faster and simpler to do all this on Progressive Web Apps.

I don’t believe in native apps. In fact, I didn’t believe in news apps from the start. Now, there are countries like the U.K. where news apps have been successful. But, for the most part, when you look at the apps you have on your phone you’ll see you have utility apps—banking, maps, productivity apps. The appeal of the news apps was a dream.

Your web app is in beta and slated to launch by the end of Q1/early Q2. What is the user journey and experience as they explore the content you offer?

On top of the Progressive Web App comes a new experience based on cards. We began launching Forbes’ new mobile card-like experience in June, starting off with Forbes’ Self-Made Women list. Forbes has been testing two elements of our new mobile card-based experience— lists and articles—allowing readers to engage with bursts of information. And I say engagement because the consumption or usage of card-based lists is extraordinary. In the case of the Forbes 400 [list] average session duration was 45% longer on the new mobile list compared to the current mobile list and engagement, specifically pageviews per session, almost tripled.

The card-like experience is obviously engaging. What will the impact be on how you create the content to match?

There is much more engagement and much more opportunity to create a different kind of navigational construct. For the user, it’s more mobile-centric, allowing them to swipe and tap, and that also creates opportunities for new advertising revenue formats. We are starting to educate our newsroom around how to create new kinds of mobile content that is shorter and much more visual.

It’s why we’re also embarking on creating a new content management system. Today you go into a system like WordPress where the default position is write a headline and write a story. Well, what if the default position had several defaults, allowing you to choose a story format, a photo format, a graphic format, or pick some other format? We’re building a content management system to allow this freedom and choice so that the default of writing a story is no longer the instant thing to do. Of course, it also means reorienting the staff reporters and contributors and getting them to understand and accept that the 800-word story is not the be all and end all of everything. But, after 40 years in this business, that’s what I find the most exciting.

What about advertising? How you going to align this with your chosen format, Progressive Web Apps, and with your audience?

This format is as exciting as it is engaging because we will be able to develop and deploy new kinds of ad formats and ad strategies around time-based advertising versus just pushing impressions. The user experience will also be very beneficial to our BrandVoice platform, which is our native ad platform. Overall, it gives us new and unique ways to integrate native advertising. Imagine our card-like experience, and then imagine if we flipped some of the cards every 5 or 10 seconds, for example. It would also be a very smooth way to time-based advertising. The point is the card format layered on top of the Progressive Web App technology allows us to experiment with new formats, including advertising that is time-based, learn what works. We really don’t know what works yet. But we do know there are many different ways in which different kinds of ad formats will play in here.

How might that help in the delivery of contextually relevant advertising?

It’s simple and it fits with our model that makes us the only brand that enables native advertisers and brands to publish content in the same CMS as our contributors and journalists. In the new content management system that we’re building it will be much easier for us to make connections between what the user is reading and serve up related content, as well as a BrandVoice piece of content in a card perhaps, that complements the user experience, without interrupting it.

Today we get our content from many sources, and social networks top the list of referral sites for some audiences, such as Millennials. What are you going to do to ensure your Progressive Web Apps and card-like content don’t lose steam?

Within the content management system, it’s not just about presenting our contributors and journalists with different options on how to create content, such as a graphic or a photo. It’s about understanding that a particular format may be far more suitable not just to publish on Forbes, but to publish on Instagram or somewhere else. In other words, it’s about creating content once for publication across Forbes.com and whatever social network is appropriate. We’re finding ways to be part of those ecosystems. I believe that what wins at the end of the day are new models, new content creation models, new ad models and new distribution models.

Peggy Anne Salz is the Content Marketing Strategist and Chief Analyst of Mobile Groove, a top 50 influential technology site providing custom research to the global mobile industry and consulting to tech startups. Full disclosure: She is a frequent contributor to Forbes on the topic of mobile marketing, engagement and apps. Her work also regularly appears in a range of publications from Venture Beat to Harvard Business Review. Peggy is a top 30 Mobile Marketing influencer and a nine-time author based in Europe. Follow her @peggyanne.

Advertising | Perspectives

The banner ad won’t die – and three other predictions for 2017

December 22, 2016 DCN

The sell-side of the advertising industry is always evolving – and 2016 saw major changes for publishers that will influence their business in the New Year, as well as years to come. But what are the key trends that will shape strategy in 2017?

As the SVP of Publisher Platforms at AOL, these are the types of conversations I have every single day. From those, I’ve come up with four trends in particular that will likely be focus areas next year.

1. The banner ad won’t die.
Traditional display and banners ads aren’t dead. But they have been challenged this year more than ever. For example, ad blocking grew by 41% globally in 2015. And digital-first millennials in particular are more likely to ignore traditional banner ads. Because of these challenges, spend in areas like native, video, and social ads has ballooned.

But banner ads, given their inherent scale and ability to measure performance unlike alternative approaches, still possess enormous potential. The true roadblock, however, has always been about creative. Tune-out can occur because of poor targeting, and creative that may not always resonate with the end-user.

New programmatic-oriented platforms have emerged enabling creative and media agencies, advertisers and publishers to create, optimize and execute dynamically targeted ad experiences across all formats, screens and media types. They’re providing creative development and management tools tied with automation and data that allow for more personal connections with end-users. This will help audiences ‘tune-in’ and put traditional display and banners in a much better position to succeed – which is great news for publishers.

2. New vehicles for app discovery will emerge.
The app marketplace is more cluttered than ever. Worldwide mobile app store downloads are projected to grow 33% from 111 billion last year to 147 billion in 2016, eventually reaching 284 billion in 2020. For publishers and advertisers, finding attention in an increasingly chaotic mobile category is hard. Pokémon Go and Musical.ly managed to find large audiences in a hurry with their viral success.

But, not every app finds success virally. Fortunately, the number of relevant digital advertising and marketing channels has exploded, offering new and unique vehicles for app discovery. Programmatic mobile growth, chatbots, paid social, SMS, paid search, video, and the app stores themselves have all expanded to enable brands and publishers to run more app discovery campaigns and drive downloads via paid media. Simply put – more channels mean more opportunities. This will dramatically boost discovery in 2017. The challenge, then, becomes how publishers and advertisers can drive sustained app usage post-adoption, and increase customer lifetime value through the same marketing mix.

3. Header bidding will continue to drive change.
Header bidding adoption has increased considerably among publishers this year. According to our own survey of 300 premium publishers, 50% have already implemented header bidding. There is no denying the massive revenue increases publishers have experienced since adopting header bidding solutions. In fact, many of our publisher customers see five figures worth of incremental revenue every day since signing on with the AOL header bidding solution.

The next frontier here is mobile – and not just mobile web but in-app. As publishers have seen success across their desktop inventory, they want to see that play out similarly across mobile. But the technology is still evolving to meet the opportunity. Expect platforms, like our own, to evolve in 2017 to deliver there.

4. Header bidding containers will see more adoption.
The real challenge in header bidding is that as adoption has exploded – and though each new header bidding partner can increase yield – adding multiple header bidding partner code to a website introduces a lot complexity across the site. This can slow the load time and impact the end-user experience. And 75% of publishers use at least 5 header bidding partners.

In 2017, with adoption surging, expect publishers to shift thinking towards header bidding optimization. That means a greater focus on header bidding containers that can organize the programmatic process to prevent slow load times and latency. Containers help publishers add, manage and organize potential buyers as they enter an ad server. They basically build in a set of rules and guidelines for programmatic auctions.

Containers can significantly simplify your bidder relationships, give you flexible controls to maximize demand opportunities while preventing latency, and provide transparency into performance across all partners.

As 2016 winds down, digital publishers need to keep these trends in mind when considering next year’s advertising strategies. Banner ads, app discovery and header bidding will all prove directional next year.

As Senior Vice President, Publisher Platforms of AOL, Matt Gillis (@gillisusa) leads the company’s publisher and third-party sales through its programmatic and monetization tools and services. Previously, he served as Senior Vice President, Mobile Publisher Platforms and oversaw that company’s mobile publisher development and growth.

Industry-Research | Video

People are watching more video on mobile, but not on the go

December 19, 2016 Research Team

The Streaming Video Alliance (SVA) examines the role of the smartphone in the transition of television viewing experience in its study The Mobile Video: Exposed. According to their research, consumers are using their smartphones consistently to watch more video content. Whether it’s user-generated content (YouTube), how-tos, or news, consumers seem to enjoy watching on their pocket-sized computers.

The dominant location for watching video on the phone is at home. It is interesting to note that consumers are opting to watch video on their phones rather than watching it on TV. This might suggest a time constraint or it might be a conscious decision to watch content that isn’t available on broadcast channels. Whatever the case, SVA suggests that the mobile phone is becoming a surrogate for broadcast television most likely because of the kind of content it can provide.

However, the SVA has not found the smartphone to displace other, larger screens. That said, they report that it is playing an increasingly important role in how people consume video content. Not only are people watching more video on their phones while at home (displacing attention from the television), they are also using the smartphone to watch video more because of the ease in being able to share the experience with others.

The Mobile Video: Exposed study is part of the Streaming Video Alliance’s series of annual surveys that explore consumer perceptions and behaviors around watching video on mobile phones.

Key findings of this report include:

25% of consumers watch more than 2 hours of video on their smartphone each week.
iOS is the dominant mobile operating system through which consumers watch video, but Android is a close second.
When it comes to watching video on their phones, consumers opt for web streaming versus using an app.
Consumers are most often watching video on their phones at home.
Despite the growth of premium OTT providers, YouTube is the dominant source for video on mobile phones.
When watching video through social networks, Facebook is crushing the competition.
Buffering and data usage top the frustrations for mobile video watching.
Consumers love the convenience of mobile video,
Despite growing in popularity, mobile video still plays second fiddle to most other video sources.
Although broadcast television still holds its sway, the mobile phone is encroaching on the experience.
On mobile, consumers like to watch on their mobile phones? UGC, How-Tos, and News most.
Consumers prefer to watch video over WiFi but will use cellular data to get the content they want when WiFi is not available.
With more data, consumers would watch more video on their phones but they won’t pay for it.

Advertising | Industry-Research | Revenue

Mobile now accounts for almost half of all digital ad revenue

November 9, 2016 DCN

Digital advertising revenue increased to $32.7 billion in the first half of 2016, increasing 19% from the same time period a year ago, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Internet Advertising Revenue Report. The shift to mobile advertising was a key driver in the increase of digital ad spend. In fact, mobile advertising revenue totaled $1.6 billion, a 178% increase from the same period in 2015. Mobile advertising now account for 47% of all online ad revenues for the first half of 2016, up from 30% the prior year whereas desktop video ads remained the same at 13% of total revenue.

Among the key trends reported:

Display

Total display-related advertising (mobile + desktop) is up 26% to $13.9 billion and accounts for 43% of all internet ad revenue.
Display-dollars are also shifting to mobile: Mobile display is up 78% to $7.6 billion while desktop display is down 7% to $6.3 billion.

Video

Total digital video ad revenue (mobile + desktop) is up 51% to $3.9 billion.
Video now accounts for 12% of internet ad revenue for the first half of 2016, up from 9% in HY 2015.

Social media

Ad spend on a whole for social media increased to $7 billion, up 57% from one ago.

Other key findings

In terms of pricing models, performance-based pricing, defined as cost-per-click, sale, lead, acquisition, or application (e.g., credit card application) or straight revenue share (e.g., percentage of commission paid upon sale), continues to lead although slightly declined to 65% of total revenue in HY 2016.

CPM/impression-based pricing increased up to 34% of revenues in the first six months of 2016 from 32% in HY 2015.

Hybrid pricing, defined as any mix of impression-based pricing plus performance-based compensation within an ad campaign, declined to 1% of total revenues in HY 2016, down from the 2% reported in HY 2015.

The report also stated that digital ad spending is becoming more concentrated with the top 10 digital ad-selling companies accounting for 74% of online advertising revenues in Q2 2016. The 10 companies were not disclosed in the report.

Many are forecasting that digital advertising will continue to be a larger and larger share of overall revenue generation for businesses. The question is who is capturing the increased profits? In an article in the Financial Times, Anna Nicolaou notes that “Google and Facebook have capitalised on the rise of the smartphone, swallowing the lion’s share of digital advertising revenues. In the US, 85 cents of every new dollar spent on digital went to the two companies in the first quarter of 2016, according to Morgan Stanley.”

Peter Kafta of Recode also offered insight the companies capturing the profit margins. Kafta’s shared the individual analyses done by Jason Kint’s, CEO of Digital Content Next, and Brian Wieser’s, an analyst at Pivotal Research, each illustrating that Google and Facebook account for 85% and 90%, respectively, of every dollar spent on digital. Their analyses also indicated that while Google’s and Facebook’s captured significant growth of ad revenues, the rest of the digital marketplace is diminishing.

Advertising | Innovation | Revenue

Inside the mobile-first, digital always strategy at The Dallas Morning News

October 28, 2016 DCN

Most content companies have come to terms with the hard truth that vast majority of their audience is using a mix of mobile apps and devices to access and enjoy news and multimedia. But there are still a whole lot of companies are just beginning to grasp what the shift to “mobile-first” means for their digital strategy. At one level, it’s about adapting information for smaller screens. At the other end of the spectrum, it’s about striking a balance between a presentation for occasional readers who like to dip in and out of stories and loyal brand fans who desire long-form content and coverage.

Here, Peggy Anne Salz, analyst at MobileGroove, catches up with Chris Williams, Digital Strategist & Senior Director of Digital Portfolio at The Dallas Morning News. They discuss the organization-wide rethink that has allowed the company to revamp its mobile apps, reimagine its brand and recharge advertising by harnessing mobile audience context.

The Dallas Morning News is clearly in a period of transition, going from being a newspaper company with a website to being a mobile-first digital media company. Please recount some of the recent changes.

It’s a complete overhaul from newsroom and technology outward to be mobile-first and digital-always. With our new look and approach we have a new mantra: Time is the new inches. It used to be we measured attention and loyalty in inches. It was all about how many inches in a newspaper we were trying to get people to stare at. Now we are getting away from that without alienating our print audience: It’s about driving a balance with a blended product offering, without driving away our core audience of newspaper readers. We want to offer up the right things to people at the right time. We launched a new DallasNews.com this year, plus GuideLive.com and SportsDayDFW.com in recent history.

We see a lot of our audience comes in through social media, and we see that the vast majority of our mobile audience comes in at different times of day. For that reason, much of the mobile-first design is focused on people coming in the ‘side door” instead of getting to the news from the homepage. We’ve had to ask and answer some tough questions to get this right: How do we navigate people that come in from referring sources such as social media? How do we navigate them from article to article, or keep them in a stream of headlines that they’re interested in at that exact moment? The new DallasNews.com website is responsive for all devices and times of day—and with it we have been building our content management system to match modern needs.

We did a cleanup of our apps, including one we offer in partnership with a popular local sports radio station that includes streaming audio as well as our own sports content and a DVR-like functionality. It was getting a little long in the tooth when it came to supporting new rich media assets, so we’re re-launching the iOS version of that app in the coming weeks, and following that with a launch of the Android version later in the year. Our primary brand app, “The Dallas Morning News” app, is also on a cycle of continuous improvement, so we update it regularly.

You have reduced your portfolio of apps. But at the same time you have grown your portfolio of brands to a national level and increased your curation of content. Normally, companies worry about diluting their brand, but you seem to embrace it…

Some big name brands in news insist on having a branded house, where all the content is essentially branded the same in shape or form. We decided we didn’t want to be a branded house because we’re not about the singular name; we’re about building products that resonate with the modern—and mobile—users that make up the majority of the audience out there.

Instead, we go with an approach that allows us to be a house of brands, some that are linked to Dallas where our audience is highly engaged and loyal to our news. But being digital forces us to think beyond our arrival on someone’s doorstep. We have to think about how we reach people on their devices, wherever they are. Being a house of brands allows us to be flexible and roll out coverage that can relevant to people everywhere.

Let’s say I launch the best horse racing coverage in the entire nation as an example. If I brand it “The Dallas Morning News,” then there’s the potential that I’m fighting an uphill brand battle with readers in North Dakota who love horse racing thinking, “Well, what does Dallas really know about what I’m looking for?” People think of content by topics, and not necessarily the source until the source is something they don’t identify with. That’s why our brands, like GuideLive or SportsDay, are powered by The Dallas Morning News, but they stand on their own as brands and products.

Tell me about your spin-off brands and the content focus.

GuideLive is a destination for a general entertainment and events audience and is one that’s focused on very specific things not tied only to “Dallas” or “Morning News.” When we rolled that out, it was launched as a digital pure play. We took the approach of a startup, separating people from most enterprise ties; with a small cross functional team we did an entirely new audience and product build and it’s been a steady growth plan ever since.

SportsDay is another where we wanted to build a wider audience (not start from scratch), realizing that the core audience of Cowboy and Mavericks fans, two of our sports teams here, have national appeal with that audience coming from outside Dallas. Although it is a separate brand and product with its own feature set, it’s firmly in the foundation on which we have built our house of brands.

In a way it’s reminiscent of TV or music where channels are organized in channels and address target audiences, or satisfy Long Tail tastes…

Exactly. That’s precisely the approach we take because we believe that content, in order to survive and thrive, has to be agnostic. It can’t be limited to formats, like print, or only appeal to a specific audience defined by geography. We want to reach every audience out there, and we start with what you could call it a top-down and bottoms-up approach. The top-down part is the more traditional study of the market that answers the key question: “Is there a market gap, or a growing trend out there, that we can capitalize on whether by growing audience or growing revenues?”

At the same time, we do a bottom-up approach, where we focus on pulling together the consumer insight to understand and address the opportunity. That’s when we might also do our own focus groups or build rapid prototypes to get a sense of how people feel, what their interests are, and help us decide if we want to go in with a new brand or content to serve that audience. No matter what we decide, it’s goal driven and data-driven.

Let’s discuss the user journey through your apps and destinations. How do you make the match between the audience you want to engage and the content you want them to engage with?

We start by looking at the audience and map the journey to what we know about the audience segment and what our data about the users tells us. In the case of DallasNews.com, we went from a very click-heavy site to an infinite scroll site, one where readers can click to read an article and then quickly drop back into a stream of our content options, or stubs as we call them, and be presented with new opportunities to click and read new articles. This is a huge departure from the old thinking that was all about stuffing related links into a single article and sending people down a rabbit hole to find out more.

Apps have a different use case. People aren’t coming in from social or Google. They are accessing your content because they are “content loyal.” What we’re finding is that we are serving two audience personas in our apps. One is the “Leisure Browser,” people who just skim everything, and do lots of scroll activity as they move in and out of the content. The other is “The Researcher,” people who are engrossed in the content and will spend minutes reading long-form articles. Our new design caters to both.

Digiday reports that your latest app revamp also appeals to Millennials. Of your 40,000 monthly users, 60% are Millennials…

This is an audience that typically returns to the app multiple times throughout the day to check for the latest developments. They also want choices—which is why we show 10 to 20 list of top articles. This list is curated, so it’s straight out of our newsroom, not a list of trending topics Millennials can get elsewhere. They appreciate news that is thoughtfully curated because it’s one less thing they have to filter. Sometimes too much choice is also stress.

Other Millennials want control of the content and there the My Feed section of the app allows them a ton of customization. Instead of seeing what is important in the area, for example. readers can dip into the app and check out all the headlines that they care about based on topics. My Feed is a success, but we also notice that users have a large hump to climb over when it comes to self-customization. Not everyone wants to make the decisions and spend time setting their preferences. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don’t—so one of our next big tasks will be to use the data around what people are reading to make suggestions. We want to be able to say “Hey, we’ve preselected these items and boosted their importance in My Feed for you to check out because you’re sure to appreciate them.” That way we’re helping to populate the feed automatically, instead of making people go in and twist a bunch of knobs themselves.

Data helps you deliver content, but a data-driven approach can also help advertisers target relevant audiences with relevant messages. At a time when we read that 75 cents of every ad dollar spent is spent on Google or Facebook, how do you compete?

As an industry, we’re going from printed dollars to digital dimes to mobile pennies. Advertising dollars were very much driven by having a captive audience. And then, as digital and mobile have grown, so, too, has the pricing and sizing of advertising changed. Our approach is to be unafraid of organic opportunities that apply to our business and be bold in identifying new revenue streams.

One example is affiliate revenue. For example, if we do a product review, then it may make sense to do an adjacent product click that goes over to a provider like Amazon or eBay to let consumers make a purchase there and we potentially get a commission. Or consumer might be reading a story about a new release GuideLive and want to go see the movie. We’ve been talking to car hire services like Uber and Lyft, and ticket sales vendors and aggregators to find out how we can work together to make an engaging experience: people read a movie review, buy tickets online, and then jump in a car to head there and we can empower them, supporting other businesses, and making some additional revenue ourselves.

The aim is to come up with a blend that is good for business and good for consumers. It used to be advertising was all about how do you tie content to ads. Now we are a point where we are using data to define audiences and influence decisions when they are engaging with content. We see great performance from retargeting campaigns and audience-based campaigns. But we see even better performance when we manage to match the content and the person’s intent at the same time in the same place. In the end, our goals are excellent digital-first and people-focused products; ones that blend all the user and business needs, like amazing content, fun advertising experiences, and modern organic revenue growth.

Peggy Anne Salz is the Content Marketing Strategist and Chief Analyst of Mobile Groove, a top 50 influential technology site providing custom research to the global mobile industry and consulting to tech startups. She is a frequent contributor to Forbes on the topic of mobile marketing, engagement and apps. Her work also regularly appears in a range of publications from Venture Beat to Harvard Business Review. Peggy is a top 30 Mobile Marketing influencer and a nine-time author based in Europe. Follow her @peggyanne.

Industry-Research

Why mobile apps are important to a publisher’s digital strategy

September 14, 2016 DCN

Mobile usage now represents almost two out of every three digital media minutes as we continue to see more and more consumer usage shift from desktop to mobile. In all, time spent in digital media grew 53% over the past three years, attributed to the surge in usage of mobile apps (+111%) and of mobile web (+62%) reports comScore’s newly released 2016 U.S. Mobile App Report.

Interestingly, the smartphone app is the biggest driver of digital media engagement, resulting in an 80% increase in mobile’s share of time spent over the past three years. However, while the mobile app audience spends more time on apps, comparing users of Top 1000 Apps vs. users of Top 1000 Mobile Web Properties, the mobile web audience is almost three times bigger than the app audience. Intriguingly, almost half of all smartphone users do not download any apps. Among the half of smartphone users that do download apps, they average 3.5 downloads per person per month. Industry experts forecast that by 2017, there will be 268 billion apps downloaded.

It’s difficult to build to build a mobile app audience. However, once the app users are engaged, they are an extremely loyal audience. To illustrate this point, app users spend more than three hours per month on the Top 1000 apps on average whereas mobile web visitors spend less than 10 minutes per month on the Top 1000 web properties. Males 18-44 tend to be the heavy app downloaders with approximately 5 new apps each month.

While all demographics are using their smartphones apps more now, persons 55-64 registered the greatest year-over-year increase at 37%. Further, all U.S. consumers, especially persons 18-24, spend the largest share of their web time on smartphone apps except for adults 65-plus, where screen size mostly likely acts as an inhibitor. In contrast, tablet app usage is down across all demographics.

Facebook and Google are a strong hold in the app marketplace; 7 of the Top 25 apps, based on unique visitors, are owned by these two companies. Of the Top 25 apps, the three leading categories, based on unique visitors, are Utilities (9), Social (6) and Entertainment (6 – tied). Facebook, the largest social platform accounts for 76% of all time spent on social apps. App position on smartphone correlates to usage. Not surprisingly, apps with easy access on the home screen showed strong audience reach. Smartphone users spend approximately 45% of their app time on their #1 most used app, and about 73% on of that time of their Top 3 apps.

Mobile devices are consumers’ constant companions. It’s where audiences are spending most of their time online. Since mobile users are spending more time on their apps, it’s important for digital publishers to continue to develop a platform strategy to attract and transition their large web audiences to loyal app users. Further, as the app market continues to expand “smart” device utilization (think loT like exercise trackers, home and car alarm systems, etc.) expands, it will only become more difficult to break through to the consumer’s screen.

Advertising | Industry-Research

Publishers increase mobile investment

August 10, 2016 DCN

Mobile is an ever-increasingly important platform in digital publishing as consumers spend more time on their devices. In fact, three-quarter of publishers (75%) stated they will increase their mobile investment in the next 12 months, reported AOL’s 2016 Publisher Outlook Report, which surveyed 300 publishers in the U.S.

Further, nearly half of the publishers plan on increasing their mobile investment up to 25% more and 10% plan on increasing their investment from 50-100% more in the next 12 months. Publishers also anticipate video ad sales to be the top revenue performer of the year.

Ad blockers, quality creative and quality experiences are top challenges publishers face today, while better audience metrics, interactive and engaging ad units, mobile-first video and faster ad loads offer big opportunities.

Publishers rank their biggest mobile opportunities as:

Better audience metrics – 43%
Interactive, engaging ad units – 43%
Mobile-first video (creative and formatting) – 42%
Faster ad loads – 42%
More mobile web-based content – 42%
Cross-screen tracking and measurement – 40%
Customized / personalized creative – 39%
More app offerings – 38%
Mobile commerce – 38%
Gamification of content – 27%

And rank their primary challenges as:

Ad blockers – 49%
Quality of consumer experience – 44%
Quality of content/creative – 42%
App installations – 38%
Measurement deficits – 31%
Platform and service costs – 30%
Off platform monetization – 30%
Off network traffic / audience – 27%
Lagging advertising spend – 27%
Inadequate revenue/ROI – 24%

Distribution platforms for content have also emerged this year. Companies like Facebook, Apple, Twitter and Snapchat are all trying to attract readers to keep using their platforms while consuming publisher’s content. Over 90% of publishers believe distributed media has had a positive effect; 53% report it’s “extremely positive.” By and large, publishers also said that syndication is vital with approximately 25-50% of their traffic coming via syndication referrals.

More and more publishers are increasingly assessing new and alternative monetization strategies beyond advertising. For now, more than 75% of publishers pursue subscription and ad supported business models. Of those focused on subscriptions, over 75% expect to grow their subscription choices in the next 12 months.

While publishers are still very dependent on advertising revenue, the way of doing business has changed. Seven in 10 publishers (71%) sell inventory via programmatic with many using a private marketplace. Private marketplaces allow publishers to offer their own inventory to buyers in a more transparent and controlled environment. More than half of publishers (56%) depend on at least one private marketplace and 28% use multiple PMPs.

Publishers continue to evolve with the times, building new technologies, developing new revenue sources and even creating internal agencies to develop new creative. Publishers must continue to re-think how people are consuming content, how to deliver it, how it lives across platform and how to monetize it beyond advertising dollars.

Innovation | Video

Forecasting the future of mobile video with The Weather Company

July 20, 2016 DCN

If mobile is “eating the world” (to borrow from milestone presentation given by mobile analyst and authority Benedict Evans), then mobile video is crushing it, already accounting for the lion’s share of views and shares across social media networks. By 2020, tech giant Cisco forecasts it would take the average consumer more than 5 million years to watch the amount of video that will cross the global Internet to all the networks and platforms people prefer (mobile, web and tablet and wearables, to name a few).

Sensing a seismic shift in how people will want to access and experience breaking news about weather and related topics The Weather Company, an IBM Business, is betting on mobile video content — even going so far as to ensure the cameras in the studio film in both horizontal and vertical formats (depending on the platform). The effort — and expense — has paid off, with the company wrapping up its best quarter ever with 1.1 billion across all platforms. Significantly, the second quarter saw the company’s digital video team alone garner 340M mobile video views (which represents 30% YOY growth) and generate 640M Facebook video views, over double the compound annual growth rate over the past 12 months.

Mobile analyst at MobileGroove Peggy Anne Salz caught up with Greg Gilderman, Senior Executive Producer at The Weather Company, to discuss how he made the fit between the medium and the message, and learn his top tips for companies eager to make their mark with compelling video content.

You launched your first mobile morning show, The Lift in October 2015, and launched a second mobile show, The Ari Effect, in June. Obviously, you’ve observed that your viewers have an appetite for this type of snackable video content. What else have you learned about your audience?

Throughout, we have been able ask and answer new questions around video consumption across devices. What makes a person complete watching a video? What makes them want to watch multiple videos? How do we tell a story when people are watching with sound off? And, finally, how do we use those insights to create terrific narratives, even if those narratives are only 35 seconds packed with really great information and amazing footage. Our insights allow us to be really aggressive in finding the footage our viewers appreciate.

We’ve learned how powerful and important compelling visual content is. But that’s just a part of it. We’re also seeing how people like to connect and engage with video content — and we see that consumers like to connect with a human being whom they find credible, likeable, and smart. Ari Sarsalari, who hosts The Ari Effect, is a young, severe weather expert who’s really able to really dive in and give in-depth explanations at a very high level. This combined with visually driven, short form video content, is the approach we see works.

And we’re pleasantly surprised to find that people are not just watching videos several times a day – beginning with the first thing in the morning. We also have a large audience watching in the evenings and on weekend mornings. The audience might be not quite the size it is on a Monday morning, but we are finding we need to think a lot about what we produce for Saturday mornings, which is really significant since most news organizations aren’t really having to look beyond prime time.

But it’s also the mobile medium, which means it’s a two-way conversation from the get-go. How do you “listen” to viewer feedback and funnel it back into the content?

We listen and learn from audience comments. But I also think editors and producers everywhere need to be a little bit careful about how much weight they give to consumer comments. It’s important to remember that, generally speaking, only a tiny portion of the audience is actually going to comment or take the time to write feedback.

However, their behavior can tell us a ton. For example, we present our stories in a vertical stack as a playlist, and how people react to stories in their positions helps us make decisions around that content. So, if we see a story performing off the charts, it’s a signal to us to focus attention there and perhaps get an interview with someone who’s on the ground, or just get additional footage.

Footage is at the core of what allows you to grab audience attention and advances of augmented and virtual reality coming to mobile and offer a way to excite and engage. What is your opinion of these technologies and where do they fit in your overall mobile and social strategy?

When we think about crafting a story – and keeping viewers engaged – we start with riveting footage and run the voice, or text or captions underneath it. We’re excited about the technologies you mentioned and we have already started posting 360 videos to Facebook. We’re in the early stages and we’re lucky to have a fairly large Facebook audience. Right now we’re testing the waters, and we’re also investing in it for some of our long-form production. For example, we’re doing an investigative story about a polluted body of water and we actually found a diver who can, with the right equipment, literally dive into it. For the viewer it’s really going to interesting to see what this looks like on the inside, and we’re going to be excited to see the response.

We’ve just seen Vine videos extend past the 6-second limit, and there is a lot of discussion about the appropriate length for short-form content. What is your advice to content companies trying to find the right answer for themselves and their audiences?

I can share what our approach is, but I’m not certain it’s right for everyone. The low-cost of entry means content creation is democratized – and that is a great story. But we’re also seeing that the mass audience gravitates to where there is a differentiated level of quality. It’s why we are moving in the direction of more original reporting, more exclusive footage and more reporters doing things like 360, which is not easy to produce or edit. All this takes thinking about how you tell a story, and not just through up a cool video for the sake of having a cool video. All of this takes resources.

The more we’ve invested and made an effort to increase the quality of our video journalism, even if it’s for lighter stories, the better results we’ve seen. But we’ve also made sure we think about all the pieces, all steps in the process, in order to reach and engage the audience. This includes making it possible for our article writers and our video producers work together so there isn’t a situation where a video is a distinct unit from the text reporters.

It’s also important to ‘think’ video primarily and not as an adjunct to writing. This was a really big step, one that some text-based organizations still need to think of. If an organization is thinking “Well, the main story is a text story and then we’ll figure out how to make a video for it” – then that organization is probably a little late to the game because the audience interest in the article will peak and by the time the video team has made it, the moment’s been missed.

As you point out, it’s about getting the writers and the video makers together in the same news meeting and letting them generate ideas together. But it’s also about technology, isn’t it?

We think in terms of mobile and social first. It’s also why the cameras in the mobile studio are set up to film video in both horizontal and vertical formats. Mobile and social first is the way the world is and what our audience demands. Take people in their early 20s. Have they ever really turned their phone sideways to watch video except when they are forced to? Probably not. Does it mean TVs in the living room will be vertical? Probably not – but maybe. In any case, we built the studio with vertical in mind. Our app is not vertical yet, but we’re thinking in terms of vertically orienting everything. And we built a studio recognizing that trying tell people to turn their phone on its side to view video is like fighting gravity.

Peggy Anne Salz is the Content Marketing Strategist and Chief Analyst of Mobile Groove, a top 50 influential technology site providing custom research to the global mobile industry and consulting to tech startups. She is a frequent contributor to Forbes on the topic of mobile marketing, engagement and apps. Her work also regularly appears in a range of publications from Venture Beat to Harvard Business Review. Peggy is a top 30 Mobile Marketing influencer and a nine-time author based in Europe. Follow her @peggyanne.

Industry-Research

Consumers crave news, but what satisfies their appetite?

July 13, 2016 DCN

Both the immediacy and the mobility of news has anchored it as an important part of today’s life. In fact, more than seven in ten adults follow national and local news somewhat or very closely and 65% follow international news with similar regularity. Digital access appears to fuel American’s hunger for news, according to a new report from Pew Research Center, which conducted a study in association with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. For example, at least a full 81% get at least some news through websites, apps or social networking sites.

Some key Findings:

Friends and family are important sources for news, even though consumers still rely on news organizations as their primary source. Trust in news reporting is an overarching problem however today’s online news consumers tend to place as much trust in the information they get from news organizations as they do in information coming from family and friends. Still, online news organizations play the larger role: 36% of online news consumers often get news from news organizations compared with about half as many who do so from people with whom they are close (15%).

Consumers are more cautious about news coming through social media. Close to two-thirds of U.S adults (62%) get news on these social platforms, however just more than one-third (34%) trust the information a lot/some.

Just as many consumers are loyal as are not loyal to their news sources. Just over three-quarter of respondents (76%) reported turning to the same sources over and over again. Importantly, consumers do pay attention to their digital sources. Among those who got their news three or more times from a link in a given week, at least 70% remembered the source half the time.

Consumer believe strong media bias exists in news reporting. Close to three-quarters of consumers (74%) feel that the news media favors one side. Another 75% of consumers credit the news organization for keeping leaders accountable and honest.

The majority of consumers prefer to watch news on TV. When asked where consumers get their news, 57% reported TV, 38% stated online and only 20% said they get their news from newspapers. As one would expect, only 5% of younger consumers, ages 18-29s, often got news from a print newspaper in contrast to close to half (48%) of adults, age 65.

News remains an important part of public life with digital news consumption becoming increasingly mobile. As more people get their news online, it’s important to distinguish between those who seek out the news online versus those who stumble upon it. This is an important consumer distinction as news sites look to market to the news consumer.

Industry-Research

News sites face strong market challenges

June 22, 2016 DCN

Digital publishers face three market challenges today that are triggering the re-examination of business strategies: 1) an increase in consumption of distributed content, 2) a surge in mobile traffic, and 3) growth in adoption of of ad blocking software. In order to better understand these market shifts and their impact on news consumption the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism commissioned a multi-country study, the Reuters Institute Digital News Report, in February 2016.

Digital news publishers, in particular, are rethinking business models as social platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, are now viewed as major news resources for consumers, especially among millennials. In fact, half (51%) reported they use social media as a source of news each week. Around one in ten (12%) stated it is their main source. Further, the percentage of U.S. consumers subscribing to online news outlets has declined from 11% in 2015 vs. 9% in 2016. Many companies are thinking about taking down their paywalls in an effort to attract more users.

While personalization is often a positive experience, consumers are concerned with the personalization of their news content. Personalized content and social media applications often select news stories built on algorithms which are based on a consumer’s reading history, what his/her friends are reading and the sharing, the popularity and recency of an article. Respondents raised concerns with the algorithms selecting their news stories. In fact, six in 10 worry that personalized news applications change the nature of story selection and that they miss challenging viewpoints (60% and 59%, respectively). And half (49%) are concerned their privacy may be compromised.

In addition, the shift to mobile directly attributed to the increased use of smartphones to access news and the decreased use of desktops. Demographically, younger consumers prefer mobile for news access while older consumers look to desktop and tablet. Across multiple countries, over half (53%) reported that they use a smartphone to access news. Interestingly, consumers who report mainly using their smartphones to access news stories, do so by entering social media sites versus a branded website or app. Apps have become an impactful tool to send alerts and notifications to attract consumers and to bring them more regularly to the branded website.

The consumer adoption of ad blocking software is a most challenging problem for digital publishers, especially for those heavily dependent on advertising revenue. Of those that currently use an ad-blocker, the majority do so on a desktop with only about 8% do so on mobile. In addition, about one-third of consumers in Germany, UK, and the U.S. plan to install an ad-blocker on their smartphones in the next 12 months.

In the U.S. the key reasons for consumers using ad blocking software included:

I was fed up with the volume and distracting nature of advertisements in general, 68%
I dislike ads that follow me around from one site to another (privacy concerns, 55%
To improve the speed at which pages load, 50%
To save battery life, 13%
So I don’t use as much data on my mobile phone plan, 10%

As digital news publishers adapt to the changing marketplace, it’s important to note that consumers still want and value traditional news brands. The Reuters Institute Digital News Report speaks to digital news brands needing to clearly brand their high-quality content and provide a positive audience experience. Further, news brands need to find a balance between destination and distribution and continue to build their brand equity in order to evolve and continue to monetize their content.

Advertising | Industry-Research

Entertainment and media revenues continue to grow

June 15, 2016 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

The media environment still presents numerous growth opportunities despite the competitive marketplace and the struggle for consumer attention. Importantly, PwC’s Annual Global Entertainment and Media Outlook Report projects the U.S. media and entertainment revenue will increase and account for $632 billion, or 29.4% of the worldwide total of over $2.1 trillion. Further, the entertainment and media revenues are expected to grow at a compound rate (CAGR) of 4.4% from $1.7 trillion in 2015 to $2.1 trillion in 2020. In order to provide this forecast for 2016 to 2020, PwC analyzed historical and projection data for advertising and consumer spending in 13 major industry segments across 54 countries.

U.S. highlights:

Internet advertising in the U.S. continues as the largest market in internet advertising revenue, projected to grow from $59.6 billion in 2015 to $93.5 billion by 2020 with a 9.4% CAGR. Important to note, internet advertising ($75.3 billion) is expected to surpass broadcast TV advertising ($70.4 billion) in 2017.
Mobile has been a key driver of digital advertising revenue comprising 34.7% or $20.7 billion in 2015 of U.S. total internet revenue. PwC projects mobile video advertising revenue will grow from $3.5 billion in 2015 to $13.3 billion in 2020 for an increase of 30.3% CAGR.
Video on Demand (VOD) and over-the-top services (OTT) will drive TV and video revenue from $121.4 billion to $124.2 billion in 2020 (0.5% CAGR). In addition, TV advertising revenue is expected to rise from $69.9 billion to $81.7 billion in 2020 (3.2%CAGR).
Continued declines are anticipated for newspaper publishing, declines of 2.9% CAGR by 2020. Further publisher consolidations are expected. As well, magazine publishing revenue is not expected to decline but register a fractional increase, from $30.5 billion in 2015 to $30.7 billion in 2020. In addition, radio is predicted to increase from $21.4 billion to $23.1 billion in 2020 (1.6% CAGR).

Virtual reality devices and games will be the impetus for rising video games revenue from $17.0 billion to $20.3 billion by 2020 (3.6% CAGR). Virtual reality devices and games will be the impetus for rising video games revenue from $17.0 billion to $20.3 billion by 2020 (3.6% CAGR).

Overall, PwC projects that consumers will look for less expensive content bundles, streaming offers and less commercial interruptions. As a result, consumers’ share of time for ad-supported media will not increase. For advertisers and content providers, this means a detailed examination of the consumer experience to identify drivers of engagement and understand their impact on time spent and their influence on advertising effectiveness.

Industry-Research

Mobile ad blocking on the rise. What’s that mean for digital publishers?

June 14, 2016 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

Ad blocking on desktop has been a thorn in the side of publishers for years, but it’s the advance of ad blocking on mobile and built into browsers – and the stunning growth trajectory of ad blocking usage across markets including China and India – that poses the greatest threat to digital media companies that depend on advertising for revenue.

This is the key takeaway of Adblocking Goes Mobile, a recent report published by Page Fair, a company working to mitigate ad blocking with the help of technology it claims addresses the speed, privacy, and UX issues that cause ad blocking in the first place. Drawing from research and analysis of ad blocking browsers and capabilities conducted in collaboration with app intelligence firm Priori Data, the report sheds important light on the factors driving the meteoric growth ad blocking around the globe.

To date the report points out that “at least 419 million people are blocking ads on smartphones.” That’s nearly twice the number of consumers blocking ads on desktops and PCs. Do the math, and 22% of the world’s 1.9 billion smartphone users are blocking ads on the mobile Web.

While mobile ad blocking browsers have become a mainstream technology, there are important differences in how and where consumers block ads in their content and news.

In fact, mobile ad blocking usage and mobile data infrastructure appear to be inextricably linked, with consumers in Asia-Pacific adopting ad blocking browsers as a way to curb bandwidth-eating ads, improve page load speeds and ultimately keep a lid on mobile data costs. Overall, over one-third (33%) of smartphone users in the region are blocking ads with the help of an ad blocking browser. The report estimates that as of March 2016, the region contained a whopping 55% of global smartphone users, but “93% of ad blocking browser usage.”

The mass adoption of ad blocking browsers in markets including China, India, Indonesia and Pakistan means massive problems for digital media serving those markets. As the report puts it: “Mobile ad is a serious threat to the future of media and journalism in emerging markets, where people are coming online

for the first time via relatively expensive or slow mobile connections.”

Ad blocking usage in North America and Europe is not as widespread, thanks to developed mobile data infrastructure and affordable data plans. But there are also distinct differences. Ad blocking browsers are popular in Europe, while content blocking apps (apps that block ads in web pages viewed via a Safari browser on Apple’s iOS 9 Apple devices, for example) are 3x more popular in North America than in Europe.

In total (as of March 2016) the report reckons there were 14 million monthly active users of ad blocking browsers in Europe and North America. In total, 4.9 million content blocking and in-app ad blocking apps were downloaded from app stores in Europe and North America since September 2014.

The mature mobile markets of North America and Europe are marked by slow, but steady adoption of ad blocking browsers and content blocking apps. It’s the calm before the storm as the range of ad blocking tech continues on an impressive growth trajectory. The report identified an incredible 229 different content blocking apps on Apple iOS alone. Expect the numbers to skyrocket now that Samsung will make good on its promise that the default browser on its Android devices will support its version of content blocking. Growth of ad blocking tech will also see a huge boost as more browsers (not just operating systems) add ad blocking support and make it easier for consumers to configure their preferences.

It’s important to have a report that draws from empirical data, not user surveys, to understand the increasingly complex landscape of mobile ad blocking technology. Now it’s up to the media and publishing industry to use this report as a starting point to address the root causes and issues that are convincing consumer to use adblockers in the first place.

Fortunately, the report takes the first steps, inviting industry leaders and associations – including Digital Content Next – to weigh in with their opinions on the rise of ad blocking technology and why a focus on delivering a better user/reader advertising experience should be top of mind with all digital media companies and brands.

But the elephant in the room is not the quality of ads but the disconnect between how the industry approaches monetization and what they should really value. Perhaps David Chavern, CEO, Newspaper Association of America, sums it up best: “We [also] measure digital ads by a metric — “impressions” — that has no real meaning or value. If we don’t fix these problems, and we allow ad blockers to take over, then we will be left with small, subscription models that will exclude large portions of the public. Not being able to afford HBO is one thing. Not being able to afford quality news would be a much more serious problem.”