Tags containing: "recruiting"

How America’s top publishers are approaching 2023

January 31, 2023 Peo Persson, Co-Founder and Executive Vice President of Sales – DanAds

It might be a cliche, but this year really is looking like a pivotal moment for the media industry. As we enter 2023, America’s top publishers face a rapidly changing landscape. To survive and thrive through increasingly uncertain times, many publishers are working hard to upskill their talent, reorganize their priorities and teams, and implement new campaign management technologies. In this article we will take a closer look at these strategies, exploring how leading publishers are adapting to the most pressing challenges and opportunities of our time – and whether they will be enough.

Upskilling employees and poaching tech talent

It’s an undeniable reality that media jobs are evolving so that they increasingly resemble tech jobs. The digitalization of publishing has made it increasingly difficult for individuals to succeed without a base level of tech competence—from search engine optimization to content management systems, and analytics to automation.

Publishers can no longer afford to be slow to learn or implement new technology. Market-leading publishers have two options: either upskill their existing workforce or seek out new talent with strong technical credentials.

In our circle of clients and partners, we’ve seen both. And, when it comes to finding new talent, there is a growing trend for traditional publishers to poach from the tech industry. The benefit is that not only do they bring the competences desired, but also a fundamentally different, digital-first mindset that many publishers recognize will be invaluable this year. E-commerce, for instance, is increasingly of interest to publishers who are embracing self-serve ad sales. Understanding the basic mechanics of cart abandonment, checkout optimization, and prospect nurturing are great ways to make ad sales more profitable and reduce manual workload.

Reorganizing priorities and teams

The second strategy we are seeing implemented across leading publisher brands is reorientation across multiple levels of the organization. For a long time, the business model of publishers has supported extensive, high-cost sales teams. With increased competition from everything from new social platforms to streaming television—and an uncertain economy—sales will never be the same. The traditional seller of print ads is quickly becoming a thing of the past. Many digital-first publishers are skipping sales teams altogether, where others are upskilling and redirecting focus to self-serve processes.

We’re already seeing major layoffs from the likes of CNN, NBC, the BBC, Vox Media, and more. But at the same time, publishers cannot afford to sacrifice growth. So, they are looking for new and more efficient ways to bring in revenue, and to design teams and projects that prioritize profitability. Buzzfeed for example, who laid off 12% of their workforce in December, saw their stock rocket upwards by 150% when they announced that they would be integrating AI into their core business, using generative text models to create new content.

New technology and automation

As ad sales teams come under increasing pressure and reduced headcount, publishers are looking for new, more cost-efficient ways to capture ad revenue and streamline their ad operations. At the same time, hyper-localization, made possible by new technologies, is pushing publishers to reconsider how they interact with audiences, and what targeting options to offer to advertisers. One growing area of interest is self-serve campaign platforms. Designed to allow publishers to sell ad inventory directly to advertisers (as opposed to the opaque supply chains of programmatic, and the labor-intensive processes of direct sales), self-serve platforms are on the rise.

Leading publishers that have launched new advertising projects recently include The Wall Street Journal, McClatchy, and Rogers Sports & Media. All of these publishers, regardless of their specific audiences or heritage, share one pressing concern: to re-establish quality publishing as an alternative to Big Tech’s advertising dominance of the past decade.

At the same time, brands like Disney have led the way in developing proprietary ad technology, giving themselves greater flexibility and control over their ads business. Disney’s Audience Graph for example, based on first-party data, offers advertisers access to over 1,800 segments with visibility into 100,000 audience attributes. Having control over that aspect of the process allows the company to have more freedom and command, which enables them to focus on fulfilling the advertising needs of their clients and their own business objectives.

Where do we go from here?

All of this to say that publishers are looking ahead at a year full of uncertainty, rapidly evolving technology, and a shifting landscape that will see many tried and tested revenue models becoming outdated. From our experience with clients and partners, we can only offer this advice: be bold, but not reckless. Experiment, but be cautious not to get swept up in new trends without due diligence. And above all, keep your eyes and ears open – too many publishers are focused on their own internal struggles rather than framing them within the industry at large.

Perspectives

3 ways to sell your big brand to tech talent

December 7, 2015 DCN

I’m not a betting woman. Why, you ask? Well for one thing, I’ve lost enough to know better. I’ve also realized that the reason I continue to lose is because I have trouble making a bet on the long shot. Having spent the last 7 plus years analyzing data, it doesn’t always make sense to me how the underdog comes out on top when the numbers just don’t add up. I haven’t quite figured out the method to the gambling madness and frankly, I don’t have the stomach to keep trying.

That same betting mentality is playing out in today’s recruiting landscape. Well-known brands have traditionally had the upper hand when it comes to hiring. Which makes sense in what was a tumultuous economy where stock prices, interest rates and unemployment fluctuated in ways that produced a generation craving stability. For those in this risk-averse group, the candidate is attracted to brands that have been around for over 50+ years; they feel safe and enjoy the look of admiration from friends and family as they share where they work. They are comfortable making a bet for less risk (which implies less potential reward to those betting types).

However, there’s a different risk-benefit analysis at play today, particularly in tech talent recruitment. Tech talent is quite comfortable with the look of curiosity they receive when naming the stealth-mode startup they’ve just joined. They’ve made a conscious decision to accept this sort of role over one at a Fortune 1000, in hopes of getting their piece of the next billion-dollar valuation. It seems as if suddenly, the exact perception that inspires some to apply is what’s driving away today’s tech candidate. While working at a big company comes with a universal stamp of approval, the new wave of tech talent doesn’t need that stamp, which plays out as they increasingly chase the “unicorn.” This job seeker hopes that their big risk will result in a big reward.

That has left recruiters with a challenge many are not prepared for rebranding to attract tech talent in order to change those perceptions in to battle the Uber’s, Snapchats and AirBnb’s of the world. With little to no training in marketing or public relations, the average recruiter is operating like I do on a casino floor: cautiously. Unfortunately, that bet is a losing one.

Starting your recruitment branding efforts is simple, really. It all comes down to content that convinces candidates by portraying what your job is really like, beyond the perceptions and perks. Here are 3 ways to get started.

Highlight The Path: Tech candidates want to know how they will be rewarded for choosing your company. Showcase how you promote talented team members by showing how other candidates have excelled. Create a section on your jobs website about career paths like NBCUniversal Provide case studies that show where your tech hires started in the company and what role they currently serve. Include videos and images to give an inside view.
Showcase Challenges: One common misconception about big brands is that unicorn companies have more challenging work. To battle this belief, companies like Indeed.com are working with tech leadership to create blogs and social media channels that feature the day-to-day work of their engineering teams. The Indeed.com Engineering Blog for example, includes code samples, business challenges and the internal corporate vocabulary to educate candidates and prepare them for the big challenges that recruits could help overcome, as well as give them a sense of the corporate culture.
Train Hiring Managers to Recruit: The most powerful hiring tool every recruiter has on hand: current employees. For the hiring manager, who is burdened with a heavy workload, finding ways to maximize the number of staff recommendations can be tough, though. And this sort of “social recruiting” isn’t something that should be left to the HR team alone. At Microsoft, recruiters encourage hiring managers to go to networking events and join tech communities to source and engage top tech talent. Remember, though, that engineering hires are not your traditional networking types so take the time to coach hiring managers on networking best practices and follow up with a little something to say thank you for their time.

Now, these are just the beginning. But they are a great place to start as organizations of all kinds face increased competition for top tech talent. It is important that recruiters also use customized, thoughtful outreach. Remember that your tech candidates are contacted constantly and you need to stand out as a challenging, interesting and ultimately very rewarding place to work.

Katrina Kibben is the Director of Marketing for Recruiting Daily, and has served in marketing leadership roles at companies such as Monster Worldwide and Care.com, where she has helped both established and emerging brands develop and deliver world-class content and social media marketing, lead generation and development, marketing automation and online advertising. An expert in marketing analytics and automation, Kibben is an accomplished writer and speaker whose work has been featured on sites like Monster.com, Brazen Careerist and About.com.

You can connect with Katrina on Twitter (@KatrinaKibben) or on LinkedIn.