Tags containing: "social distribution"

-Gen Z audience enjoying digital and analog media-

Reaching Gen Z means mastering authenticity and algorithms

November 13, 2025 Jessica Patterson – Independent Media Reporter

Publishers are rethinking how they show up on social platforms in 2025, places where Gen Z and Gen Y increasingly discover content through algorithms. Recent DCN research reveals that these generational audiences’ media diets are dominated by algorithmically surfaced video. Individual creators now outperform traditional media brands on trust, creativity, and entertainment value. This trend challenges publishers to adapt their approaches while maintaining editorial integrity.

The visibility challenge is fundamental: algorithmic feeds surface content based on engagement rather than quality or brand recognition. Publishers are no longer guaranteed an audience simply because someone follows them. Every post competes equally with creators, memes, and friends’ updates, making traditional media brands just another scroll in the feed.

Media leaders from The Guardian, The Verge, Eater, share how they’re maintaining relationships with younger audiences through platform-native content, personality and experimentation.

The creator connection

Andrew Hare, senior vice president of quantitative research at Magid, and co-author of DCN’s report, “Decoding video content engagement: Gen Z and Gen Y in focus,” points out that creators have fundamentally reset audience expectations. “Creators rewrote the playbook: they win on originality, honesty, and personality,” he says.

Hare notes that the definition of quality has shifted. “At one point it was all about the image, professional appearance; it was basically something you would see on television. Now we realize that when we move into these digital spaces, other factors impact trust. Do you believe the creator or brand? Is it an authentic message? Is it real and unfiltered to some degree?”

The nature of engagement with Gen Z and Gen Y is both reactive and participatory. “I think the remixing, commenting and sharing nature of these platforms has been something that brands have been a bit slower to embrace because it means the conversation might be evolving, and they cede some control,” Hare says. “But, as we are seeing, it is this living conversation that creators have innovated upon and the very thing that provides value on social and YouTube.”

Gen Z trust friends and family most at 88%, followed by individual creators at 79%, with brands at only 61%. Hare says younger generations are suspicious of brands when they see them in their digital spaces. “Brands need to build trust in much the same way creators have in order to prove they can be authentic and real and provide relevant value. Otherwise, they are just noise and in the way of more engaging content.”

Kate Scott-Dawkins, global president of business intelligence at WPP Media, notes this aligns with broader shifts. “We have also seen this shift in terms of ad revenue globally, a majority going to creator platforms and UGC platforms rather than legacy media.”

Tuning tone: platform fluency and authenticity

Publishers emphasized they’re not lowering editorial standards to compete on social platforms, Rather, they’re translating their journalism into formats that work in algorithmically-driven spaces. The challenge they outlined was capturing attention in those critical first seconds while staying true to their standards.

In a world where audiences connect with individuals over brands, developing recognizable voices within their own ranks isn’t just a creative choice, it’s a strategic necessity for publishers. Journalists who embody the brand’s values can humanize it, build trust, and compete with the authenticity that individual creators command.

Success, then, depends on how effectively newsrooms and social teams collaborate, from story development to publication.

At The Guardian, Max Benwell, deputy head of audience for The Guardian US, says encountering content off-platform doesn’t preclude building direct relationships. “Because people are encountering our content off platform and maybe without context about the Guardian, it doesn’t mean they can’t build a direct relationship with us over time,” he says. “But the key is all about looking at the data we have and making sure our off-platform content is as engaging as possible. Then, because of how the algorithms work, we can trust that they’ll start seeing more and more of us.”

Benwell identifies short-form video opportunities during newsroom meetings and reaches out to reporters. “We’re also trying to create a mutual relationship where they, when they’re working on a story, can come to us and flag it way ahead of time.”

Flagging stories early means social teams can plan authentic, substantive videos rather than scrambling to repackage finished articles, creating content that competes with creators on engagement while maintaining journalistic standards.

Guardian social content is held to identical standards as the website, from brief to script to final edit. If you’re hearing from a Guardian journalist on Instagram or TikTok, it should feel like meeting them in person: knowledgeable, personable, expert, occasionally funny.

At Eater, the focus is on making internal talent more comfortable on camera, with editing and creating social-first content, according to Kaitlin Bray, senior director of audience development for Eater, Punch, Thrillist at Vox Media. “The medium of telling the story has shifted, but the desire to get their stories in front of as many readers still stands,” she says. “Even though the method has changed, I think there’s a lot of natural interest from staffers in sharpening skills or learning new skills.”

She says that Eater leverages advantages creators lack: built authority, unique access, and deep expertise. The effort has been adapting their voice to be more casual while delivering rigorous reporting.

Format adaptation and audience engagement strategies

Publishers tailor their approach based on each social platform’s audience and culture.

“We often find that our followers there are looking for an immediate and direct entry point into stories,” Benwell says. “On social, we’ve experimented with a lot of different formats. But what really resonates are those specific moments, where you kind of land in with a very specific person.”

He points to a recent success with original illustrations by one of his social producers for Naomi Beinart’s ‘new chill girl’ op-ed. “We did original illustrations for that, which is quite different from what we usually do. It was one of our biggest posts of this year.”

At The Verge, experimentation on social platforms is constant, according to Denise Cervantes, senior social media manager at The Verge. She describes how a recent conversation in a creative meeting about viral Sora videos led to a new video the same day. “We saw that and we’re like, okay, that is like a really good place for The Verge to show up,” Cervantes explains, adding, “The format of the video is just taking the viral AI video and having our host hop in and be like, ‘Hey, this is AI and this is how you can tell.’”

Eater encourages staff-driven experimentation with formats or ideas they’re passionate about. For example, a Gen Z social producer pitched an idea: she’d never tried steak tartare before and wanted to try four in one day, biking around Manhattan and Brooklyn, Bray explains. “That’s not a video concept that I would’ve come up with. It was rooted her in her experience and she ended up making this super fun video.”

Kate Scott-Dawkins notes that highly polished content still has its place, pointing out that massive audiences tune into premium shows like Wednesday. However, she notes that it feels out of place in spaces that started as social platforms. “It feels less genuine in these spaces that started out as social forms, off the cuff pieces of content,” she says.

Perhaps the most critical shift is treating every piece of content as potentially reaching someone who’s never heard of your brand. “Our philosophy really is to treat every Verge video thinking about an audience that doesn’t know who The Verge is,” Cervantes explains. “We can’t always go into it thinking this video is going to get served to all of our followers because of how the algorithm and discovery feeds work.”

Creating quality content for younger audiences and algorithms

While it’s a shift in strategy and fundamental mindset, the publishers we spoke to offered clear guidance for others working to reach younger audiences on social platforms. It requires leaning into personalities and staying on top of trends and algorithmic changes.

Benwell emphasized the importance of being data-informed rather than data-led.

“We have a saying here at The Guardian that we don’t follow the data blindly. We’re data informed, we’re not data led,” he says. “We make a real effort to be aware of the data and know what your key metric is. For us, it’s shares because that’s the metric where our work is being placed in front of more and more people.”

Authenticity remains critical, Cervantes stresses. “Audiences may not always want to connect with a brand, but there will always be that people-to people connection.”

Bray urged publishers not to be afraid of format experimentation while maintaining journalistic rigor. “We still have editors who used to write 1,000-word articles,” she says. “They’re still applying their journalistic skills, they are just figuring out different ways to communicate the information.”

The new landscape is clear: adapt to algorithmic distribution and creator-style content without abandoning your editorial standards. Newsrooms have found that experimentation and staff personality can coexist with rigorous reporting. Meeting younger audiences where they’re at doesn’t mean compromising good journalism.

For publishers, this means the path forward isn’t choosing between authenticity and polish, or between editorial integrity and platform fluency. It’s finding ways to deliver it all, in formats with voices that feel native to the spaces where Gen Z and Y spend their time.

Audiences | Featured Post | Innovation

Here’s what Bloomberg, Yahoo and Reach are doing on WhatsApp Channels

November 14, 2024 Esther Kezia Thorpe – Media Reporter

WhatsApp may be the fourth most popular social network in the world. However, to date it has not been a place publishers have had much success building audiences. Over the last few years though, the Meta-owned messaging app has been building out capabilities for brands to connect with its thousands of millions of users.

One promising component, WhatsApp Channels, was launched globally in September 2023 following a few months of trials. Rather than being a two-way communication tool like Communities or chats, Channels are a broadcast feature; the first time WhatsApp has experimented with this type of one-way communication.

Despite the relative newness of Channels, WhatsApp is an established, trusted and popular platform with audiences. A year on from its official launch, publishers who made the move to launch Channels early on are seeing success. Here’s how Bloomberg, Yahoo Finance and Reach plc are using Channels to connect with global audiences, drive pageviews, and experiment with content sharing.

Bloomberg: leaning into global audiences

Bloomberg was one of a few publishers invited by Meta into a pilot program of WhatsApp Channels 18 months ago. This meant that they were present when Channels was rolled out more widely, which Katie Boyce, Head of Digital Editorial at Bloomberg says was an advantage. “Being there at the start has really helped us grow that audience,” she said.

The main Bloomberg News WhatsApp Channel has 2 million followers. The publisher also has a number of more targeted accounts, from Bloomberg India with 32k followers and Bloomberg Africa with 36k followers, to Spanish and Portuguese language Channels with 9k and 1k followers respectively. They also have a separate Bloomberg Opinion account, to separate out columns from the news shared in their primary channel.

“We have a robust global audience so we’ve been looking for an opportunity to do something with them for a while. And, given WhatsApp’s international user base, they opted to launch region-specific Channels. During the run up to elections in India, they also experimented with offering free articles to audiences who came from newsletters and WhatsApp Channels as a way for them to sample paywalled content.

This was used as a tactic the other way too, as Boyce explained. “In [articles about the] India election, we then promoted following us on WhatsApp and subscribing to the newsletter as a way to get more of an engagement tool to reach those users directly.”

However, Boyce said that the majority of users are finding Bloomberg’s Channels within the app themselves as they’re browsing, searching, or onboarding.

The team receives metrics on traffic and clicks from WhatsApp Channels. And, given that sharing news links is a very strong user behavior on the platform, it makes sense to promote links there. But it’s not just links that work; images and polls also perform particularly well.

“We have been experimenting more with image list posts, to see if we can add variety in the channel,” Boyce said. “Polls have also seen some nice engagement. But generally, we focus on having an image with every post, because those perform best.”

Despite Bloomberg’s success so far, they still view their foray into WhatsApp as an experiment. “For us, our top priority from a distribution perspective is to build direct connections with our audiences,” Boyce emphasized, noting that audience-building on homepages, apps and newsletters is where most effort is focused. “But we see WhatsApp as an experimental platform, particularly in key international markets where we can reach new audiences.”

Yahoo Finance: focused experimentation

Yahoo Finance has also benefited from being early to Channels. They spotted that Meta was leaning into the platform last year, and once Channels were available more widely, they set one up. “We approached it like any new platform where we can go and meet different audiences, and figure out what they like,” said Yahoo Finance’s Head of Distribution, Michael Kelley.

Kelley believes the early mover advantage has helped propel them to 2.6 million followers. “Organic growth is hard to come by on mature platforms,” he said, explaining that from an audience development standpoint, opportunities like this are rare as a rush of people check out new tools, and platforms make it as easy as possible to discover. “From a publisher standpoint, getting in early and posting things consistently that are resonating, you can catch that initial window of organic growth.”

Unlike Bloomberg, Yahoo Finance has decided to concentrate on one Channel and build engagement and growth there. So far, the team is concentrating on posting, building up workflows and best practice, and seeing what works best.

Charts and data visualizations have done especially well, leaning into the publication’s authority in the finance space. He has also noticed increased interest in international stories, with one chart about the Mexican peso performing particularly strongly.

Yahoo Finance is also still in an experimental stage with WhatsApp Channels. “I’m encouraging our editors to experiment, have fun, try to see what the audience is reacting to, and focus on the brand and displaying the quality content,” Kelley emphasized. “Everything else will follow.”

Reach plc: a strategic approach to WhatsAppcommunities and channels

UK regional publisher Reach plc has had a presence on WhatsApp for some time. They were early experimenters with WhatsApp Communities; a unified space for multiple groups with various topics and interests. Audience & Content Director Dan Russell explained that Reach saw an opportunity for a different type of communication with Channels, and they now run both.

“For instance, we’ll have a WhatsApp Community for a local area, but a WhatsApp channel for all our money content. So it’s the same platform, but different mechanisms and results,” he said, noting that many of Reach’s 70+ regional publications will all write about money in one way or another.

However, Russell has noticed some differences between the two tools. Channels, in his experience, grow very, very quickly. But the returns – pageviews in Reach’s case – aren’t nearly as high as Communities. Reach has 2.3 million people following various Channels compared to 270,000 members of Communities. He told the World News Media Congress in May that Channel members only drove around 1 million page views a month, but by contrast, almost every Community user reads at least one thing a month.

The engagement disparity is partly down to the way WhatsApp notifies for new content between the two. But Russell acknowledged that for them, the focus on growing a UK audience on Communities for Reach’s primarily UK-based content makes it more relevant than the more global audiences reached through Channels.

There is an opportunity here for the publisher. “Channels gives us access into different markets, especially for things like sport; Man United, Arsenal – those teams have members from around the world,” Russell said. “Channels in some countries is a lot bigger, massively bigger than they are here. So what that’s allowing us to do, which is very valuable, is to reach those people wherever they are.”

“Say 45% of [a Channel’s] members are from African countries. Do we commission a piece on an African football player specifically for Channels, does that get a better click through rate?”

Like Bloomberg and Yahoo Finance, Reach has found that growth to Channels is rapid without requiring much additional promotion, especially in other countries. Russell noted that their Arsenal Channel has 550,000 followers which have all grown completely organically.

“Polls do very well,” he said, when asked what types of content they were experimenting with. “We want people to click through because at the end of the day, that’s how we make money.

“But the other thing we do is share YouTube videos in there, because YouTube’s videos in Channels work really well. You can watch it [in the app], and get your share of the advertising revenue that YouTube puts on it.”

As Meta continues their work on Channels, building out more detailed analytics, Reach is continuing to invest effort into their presence on the platform. They also use Channels as an opportunity to promote related newsletters, which helps get more first-party data on users.

Challenges with WhatsApp Channels

Despite the positive organic growth all three publishers have seen on WhatsApp Channels, the experience has not been without its challenges. Metrics are still very basic. Publishers aren’t given much of a sense of the demographics or who the users are who follow them, unlike other social media platforms.

“They don’t have established analytics, but that’s not surprising given it’s basically a year old… Even with Instagram and Facebook before that, it takes time for the platform to figure out and build, from a product and engineering standpoint, those robust back-end analytics,” Yahoo Finance’s Kelley pointed out.

He says this has led to a lack of clarity over what the best cadence is for publishing to a Channel. Some publishers post hundreds of updates each week. Yahoo Finance posts once or twice a day to their Channel, with Kelley worrying that too often will turn people off.

Although the broadcast-style nature of Channels can be appealing to publishers, Bloomberg’s Boyce said that the lack of interaction with followers could be a challenge. “We’re able to track what users click on, but we’re not able to engage with them like a traditional social platform,” she said, explaining that users can only respond through emoji reactions.

Reach’s Russell said that it had taken some hoop-jumping to get their Channels verified by Meta. But he believes this has immensely helped growth when people are looking for trusted Channels to follow. He warned other publishers that it can be difficult to get a workflow going that makes it worth it, “because you do have to put a lot of work in to get going. But once you are going, it’s a big benefit to us.”

The elephant in the room when it comes to any Meta-related platforms is the somewhat turbulent relationship they have with publishers, particularly news organizations. Major brands were courted for many years when Facebook prioritized getting quality content into newsfeeds, only to have licensing fees, journalism initiatives and huge followings canceled or reach dialed down when it no longer suited Meta. More recently, there have been regulatory conflicts in Canada which has seen news completely banned on Facebook and Instagram and has had a deep impact on Canadian media.

Russell’s approach to this is pragmatic. “We still get good referral traffic from Facebook,” he said. “It’s nowhere near what it was, but if it’s there, we’ll use it, and if it’s not there, we won’t!”

Yahoo Finance’s Kelley is also unconcerned. “Our approach to social media is more about the brands and audience development, and meeting people where they are with our high quality content,” he explained. “So there’s not as much of a downside or risk of a rug pull, because we’re not dependent on it for that.”For these publishers, riding the wave of growth while WhatsApp offers easy tools to build a following to Channels is a no-brainer. As more Channels are set up, it will be harder for publishers to stand out from the crowd. But any strategy which explores WhatsApp Channels as a component should also build in a way to turn unknown, relatively anonymous followers into known, direct audiences.

Perspectives

The grey zone: Where the media fits into fake news

October 29, 2024 Heidi Gautschi – Associate Professor, Digital Society, Haute école pédagogique Vaud

Change is an inevitable part of journalism. No one would deny the radical – and ongoing – technological shifts impacting the craft over the past three decades. And few (if any) would deny that some things have stayed the same. These include both a steadfast belief in the importance of journalistic ethics and the existence of fake news.

Where there are journalists creating news, there are codes of ethics to guide them. And where there is information widely disseminated to the public, there are those who would use it to communicate falsehoods. Without doubt, the two have intersected time and again throughout history. And today is no different. In fact, the incentives of modern media distribution may well lend themselves to the spread of anything incendiary (if not entirely accurate).

The familiar story about the impact of Orson Welles’ radio play The War of the Worlds is typically cast as a warning about the influence of the media on the public. Legend has it that listeners to the fake news alert truly believed that aliens were invading the country. But that appears to have been only part of the story.

Some scholars speculate that newspapers, acting on their fear that radio would siphon off their audience, planted the story to discredit their upstart competitor. According to Pooley and Saclow, the real fear was rooted in the media business model. Dependent on advertising, newspapers had to prove that they still had what it takes to attract readers. In order to do so, why not use their medium to report on spurious accounts, thus undermining radio and entering the grey area of fake-ish news.

Fast forward a hundred years. The contemporary focus on fake news has been expressed as starkly black and white. There are champions of truth and there are the peddlers of lies – at any point on the political spectrum. However, there is actually a good deal of unexplored grey space in the fake news discussion. And the media is due for a bit of soul searching in where it fits into this space.

Certainly, the premise that social media is solely responsible for the proliferation of mis- and disinformation is one that appeals to media-watchers, scholars and journalists of all stripes. They (social platforms) took audience attention and advertising revenue with their addictive design, algorithmic acumen, and surveillance advertising models. Given the sheer reach of these platforms, it is only natural to assume that they are responsible for the spread of fake news.

Yes, but… While social media platforms can track the number of views, likes and shares, they certainly can’t tell us why a post was shared and how someone reacted to it. Fake news may travel far and fast, but—while a key consideration—spread is only part of the problem.

Reach is something all media platforms and players crave. And as the fight for audience attention intensifies, the pressure is on to compete—which may mean everybody finds themselves playing by the platforms’ rules.

However, as social platforms “distance themselves from the news,” decrease its visibility, or outright block news altogether, the media business is presented with an uncomfortable moment on many levels. The traffic firehose has been kinked. Newsmakers need to rethink how to find, attract and build audiences. And if that’s less from social platforms and a return to direct relationships, it’s a great time to examine the way the message has been skewed to the social medium.

Journalists make good news

During the course of research I’m working on with an international workgroup (funded by the Center for Advanced Internet Studies in Bochum, Germany and which includes DCN’s editorial director, Michelle Manafy), we had the opportunity to speak to 20 U.S.-based news professionals. We asked them what they believed the role of the media is in society, and what they perceive as standing in the way of achieving that objective.

Every single one of them expressed the idea that their responsibility was to inform the public. And nearly all of them said that this was getting harder to do because of journalism’s broken business model, which they pointed out is driven by increased competition for attention, particularly with or on social platforms. Unfortunately, this attention imperative—on a digital playing field where comments and shares have taken on outsized import—incentivizes attention over information.

It feels a bit like “any publicity is good publicity.” Except that, as they adhere to standards of quality that beget trust, journalists should be picky about what kind of publicity they seek to attract.

Today’s distribution channels—social media “public square” —may not afford us the ability to carefully curate the presentation of news as we might like. But just as we might look back and shudder at Yellow Journalism or propaganda-laden news reels, we need to own our place in the history that is unfolding.

Precision is key

If a headline or a soundbite may be the only aspect of the news our audiences are exposed to we must view it as such. Even when we know that a single scintillating fact is likely to get passed around on social, responsible journalistic practices mean we must provide the kind of context that avoids the likelihood of misinterpretation. Journalistic ethics should encourage us to resist the temptation of drifting into the grey zone with misleading hooks.

If research suggests something—and remember, one report rarely “proves” anything—we must avoid blanket statements and absolutes, even if they are going to be much more “engaging” on social. If engaging means fueling the rage cycle with pithy half truths and headlines that highlight the most flame-fanning aspect of a story, the news media becomes complicit in the fake news lifecycle on social. Undoubtedly this approach is frequently rewarded with fierce debate. It might spread like wildfire on the socials. And to some, that will feel like success; who doesn’t want their 15 minutes of fame? Of course, this begs the question as to mission of news media.

But as social media dials down the news, it only gets harder to break through. And by extension, the incentives to find that sick factoid most likely to go viral grows.

Rebuild trust and the value proposition

Informing the public. Holding the powerful accountable. Representing the voices that go unheard. Serving the essential role in American Democracy as the Fourth Estate. These are the things that the news journalists we spoke to see as the role of the media in society.

And as the news seeks to find its way back to the American public; as it seeks to rebuild its crumbling business models, these are the foundational pillars.

Ask yourself what a misleading headline does to trust and your audience relationship because that relationship takes on a whole new meaning when the goal is more than a click, comment, like or follow. As we focus on the post-social distribution model, random clicks fade in importance. Fleeting engagement will be reshaped as loyalty. And loyalty is built on trust; trust that you are making news so valuable it’s worth paying for.

Audiences | Featured Post | Innovation | Perspectives

Is the fediverse the future of news distribution on the social web?

September 19, 2024 Mathew Ingram – Independent Media Reporter

Not that long ago, using the social web as a news distribution platform was a relatively straightforward process: all you had to do was grab the headline and maybe a photo and then post it to Twitter and Facebook — where most news publishers and journalists already had verified accounts with thousands or even tens of thousands of followers — and then watch the pageviews and clicks roll in. Over the past year or so, however, changes to both Twitter and Facebook have made the social-web approach less and less useful; in many ways, both services have gone from being either neutral or somewhat useful as a distribution mechanism to being actively hostile environments.

In the case of Twitter, now known as X, the acquisition by Elon Musk has changed the nature of the service in a number of ways. For one thing, the algorithm that determines who sees what has been altered, based on unknown criteria. So, many publishers and journalists now say they get less engagement from the platform than they were used to in the past. There also seems to be a lot more content that is racist, sexist, or is otherwise disturbing and/or uncomfortable — as a result of what Musk claims is a commitment to freedom of speech. All of this makes the platform seem like a much less hospitable environment for traditional news and journalistic content.

Facebook, meanwhile, has backtracked on some or all of the commitments it made in the past to journalism and the media, by canceling or downsizing funding it used to provide through a variety of programs under the former Facebook Journalism Project. Most of the staff associated with those programs have left or been reassigned, and the platform has made it clear that the newsfeed algorithm will not be promoting or recommending news content in general. Facebook and its parent Meta have removed news from the Canadian version of the service as a protest over a new law designed to force digital platforms to pay publishers for the news content they carry.

What is the fediverse?

Some see the emerging “fediverse” as a potential solution to these issues, or at the very least a workaround. As Rande Price recently wrote for DCN recently, the word fediverse is an umbrella term that covers dozens of different social platforms, from Mastodon (a Twitter alternative) to Lemmy, one of the fediverse’s would-be replacements for Reddit.

Each of these services has different features and a different design, but they all have a few things in common: they are all open source, meaning the source code that powers them is freely available for anyone to download and modify. They are also all “federated,” meaning they can interoperate with each other — posts or content from one service can be easily cross-posted to another platform, or at the very least they can be exported and then imported. This is all powered by an open-source programming system called ActivityPub.

That may not sound like a big deal, but when you think about the way that content is siloed in the current environment, it definitely sounds like an improvement. Twitter or X allows you to download all of your posts and other data in bulk — something that the previous management regime put in place — but it doesn’t make it easy to import it anywhere or do anything with it. Crossposting of tweets or posts can be automated with third-party tools such as Buffer or dlvr.it, but the process inevitably fails at certain points because Twitter and Facebook don’t really want you to crosspost things. Each of them wants your content to live on their platform and nowhere else.

One recent exception to this rule is Threads, the new-ish service from Meta. Launched in July of 2023 as a spin-off from Instagram, Threads grew rapidly — so rapidly that it was one of the fastest-growing social services in history, gaining 100 million users in a matter of days. In another first, Threads also said from the beginning that it wanted to join the fediverse by allowing Threads posts to be federated, so that people using a fediverse client could follow a user on Threads without having to set up their own Threads account. Others are also working on fediverse integration, including Tumblr, Flipboard, and Medium, and so are some individual publishers, including 404 Media and The Verge. While it’s difficult to say exactly how many people are part of the fediverse, one estimate puts the number at almost 12 million.

Meta has kept its Threads promise

It’s probably fair to say that there was a massive amount of skepticism about Meta’s pledge to join the fediverse, since the company is not exactly known for being open to other services. In fact, Facebook is notorious for down-ranking posts that contain external links, and Instagram won’t even let users post links with their content. Instead, they have to use a third-party service to add links to their bio, and then point users there, something that is so user-hostile it’s hard to believe that it still exists. Therefore, it seemed hard to believe that Meta’s hostility to external links would suddenly change.

As difficult as it might have been to believe, however, Meta actually followed through on its promise. In March, the Threads accounts belonging to Threads manager Adam Mosseri and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg joined the fediverse, when the company implemented a sharing or federation mechanism that allowed anyone with a Mastodon account to follow them from the Mastodon app without having to have a Threads account. Meta has said that it is now rolling out this feature across the service.

Why would Threads do this? One possible answer is that, since Threads is the underdog compared to Twitter, Meta is hoping to use integration with the fediverse as a lever to quickly expand its user base. One internet rule of thumb has been that platforms and services that see themselves as the underdog are alway much more interested in interoperability than incumbents or monopolies are. Whether smaller incumbents are willing to look favorably on this behavior is very much an open question. A number of servers have blocked Threads integration because they believe it is going to overwhelm their services, or because they view Facebook and its ilk as a negative element.

The upside of fediverse distribution

That’s one possible downside. However, for publishers and others interested in reaching the broadest cross-section of users, Threads joining the fediverse provides a potential positive solution. One of the problems with the fediverse from an institutional standpoint is that it consists of so many services — Mastodon, PeerTube, Pixelfed, and Friendica to name a few — with so many different terms of service and behavior rules and other criteria that it can be hard to navigate the landscape as a publisher or news outlet interested in distributing content in the most efficient way possible.

If Threads continues its push into the fediverse, that problem could be mitigated. In this case, all a publisher would have to do is post to Threads, and have that content distributed through all of the other services that Threads is federated to. While that may solve one problem, however, doing so could create two new potential problems. One is that posting content indiscriminately to multiple social networks can be seen by users as spam-like activity, and therefore might not be received well. A second problem is that doing this would mean ceding a lot of control over a publisher’s social strategy to Threads, and therefore to Meta, which some might see as a step backwards.

In some senses, it’s a Catch-22: publishers who try to make use of all of these different platforms individually could wind up stretching themselves too thin, producing little return from a social strategy. But those who outsource their distribution to Threads and the fediverse could also wind up getting hit by a backlash, which would blunt the effectiveness of the strategy. The only possible upside is that since the fediverse is still relatively new, it’s not totally clear how it is going to evolve. But those who spend a little time experimenting with it could find themselves ahead of the curve, and wind up learning a lot about social interaction along the way.

Industry-Research | Innovation

Want to build your audience? Consider the fediverse

June 11, 2024 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

The fediverse buzz continues to grow, with articles highlighting the potential to revolutionize the digital landscape. Proponents say it’s similar to the Internet’s early days, before Big Tech platforms built their algorithmic fiefdoms. Instead, the fediverse is about interoperability and flexibility.

Media companies are always on the lookout for ways to attract new audiences and engage more meaningfully with their readers. And – given Google’s experimentation with AI answers and social sites “distancing themselves from news” – finding new routes to audience development has become an increasing imperative.

The decentralized nature of the fediverse offers a compelling alternative to traditional search and social. Importantly, this approach allows media companies to retain their direct relationship with audiences, which removes the dependency on social and big-tech platforms for reaching new people.

Unlike traditional social media platforms that operate within closed ecosystems, fediverse represents a decentralized network of interconnected servers and platforms. It comprises a federation of independent servers, each hosting its social media platform.

These platforms, which range from microblogging to image sharing to video hosting, communicate using standard protocols. Their interoperability allows people on different servers to interact seamlessly. The fediverse decentralizes media companies by enabling them to distribute their content across interconnected servers and platforms rather than relying on a single, centralized platform.

Emphasis on choice and control

Unlike centralized platforms, where a single server owned by the platform provider stores user data and content, fediverse lets people choose their server. This server is selected based on individual preferences regarding privacy, content moderation, and community guidelines. This decentralized approach empowers audiences by putting them in charge of their online experience. It also mitigates concerns about data ownership and platform censorship. For media companies, this translates into an environment where people are more likely to engage with content they trust and have control over.

Encouraging diversity and inclusivity

The fediverse enables people to connect across different platforms and communities within the federation. For example, a user on a microblogging platform can follow and interact with users on a video hosting platform. This functionality breaks down the barriers that typically separate content and conversations on traditional social media platforms. This cross-platform interaction fosters a rich tapestry of ideas, perspectives, and content, creating a more vibrant and dynamic online ecosystem. Media companies can leverage this aspect of fediverse to reach diverse audiences actively seeking varied content.

Organic and community-driven engagement

In contrast to the centralized model, where platform algorithms often dictate content visibility and user interactions, fediverse promotes a more organic and community-driven approach. Users have greater control over their timelines and content visibility, allowing for a more personalized and authentic online experience.

This user-centric design aligns with evolving expectations of digital privacy and autonomy, resonating with individuals seeking alternatives to mainstream social media platforms. Media companies can benefit from this by creating content that naturally finds its way to interested audiences without algorithmic interference.

Media companies test the fediverse

At least two digital media companies are exploring the fediverse to gain more control over their referral traffic and onsite audience engagement. The Verge and 404 Media are building new functions that allow them to simultaneously distribute posts on their sites and federated platforms like Threads, Mastodon, and Bluesky. Replies to those posts on those platforms become comments on their sites.

This functionality means people from different platforms can interact with the content without creating individual accounts for each platform. For media companies, this interoperability can significantly enhance audience reach and engagement.

Advantages for media companies using the fediverse

Usability and interoperability are ideal for enhancing user experience. This approach enables seamless communication between platforms, ensuring autonomy, and providing robust content control.

Interoperability ensures that different platforms can communicate using common protocols like ActivityPub. This allows people to interact with content across various platforms seamlessly, thus creating a unified and interconnected ecosystem.
User autonomy empowers people to select their servers (instances) based on their preferences for privacy, moderation, and community guidelines, offering greater freedom and reducing the dominance of any single platform.
Content control enables media companies to host their servers or collaborate with trusted ones, giving them direct control over content distribution and audience engagement. Therefore, it mitigates risks associated with algorithm changes or policy shifts on major social media platforms.
Cross-platform interaction allows content like a media company’s article shared on one platform to receive comments, likes, and shares from users on other platforms, broadening reach and engagement without being confined to a single platform.
Community-driven moderation decentralizes content moderation, allowing it to occur at the community or server level. Media companies can set moderation policies to ensure their content meets their standards and audience expectations.
Enhanced privacy through decentralization gives media companies more control over their data and privacy settings, protecting user data from being exploited by large platforms.

Although federated platforms have smaller user bases than the larger walled gardens like Facebook and X, they offer significant audiences for media companies. Federating sites allow media companies to tap into the growing demand for decentralized, user-centric platforms, attracting new audiences and fostering a more loyal and engaged user base.

Federated platforms offers the potential for a fundamental shift in how media companies interact with their audiences. Media companies that experiment with the fediverse can initiate engagement and have an opportunity to build stronger, more direct connections with their audiences.

Audiences | Featured Post | Innovation | Marketing

Leveraging LinkedIn: a guide for media companies

March 21, 2024 Damian Radcliffe, Carolyn S. Chambers Professor in Journalism – University of Oregon

n the rapidly evolving digital landscape, content producers constantly seek new ways to engage with audiences and promote their brands. That’s especially important right now as traffic continues to fall from sites such as Facebook and Twitter/X.

One weapon in their arsenal with some powerful potential is LinkedIn, a site that may offer a higher likelihood of referrals and engagement than some publishers have historically considered.

Three reasons why media companies shouldn’t overlook LinkedIn

1. LinkedIn has a bigger user base than you might realize

The site, which was purchased by Microsoft for $26.2 billion in late 2016, has more than one billion users globally, including over 200 million in the USA. (about a third of which are active). The U.S. is comfortably LinkedIn’s biggest single market, although 75% of its audience is outside of the States.

2. LinkedIn users tend to be millennials and professionals

LinkedIn is typically described as a social network for business professionals. As a result, it doesn’t yet attract much of Gen Z, but it is a site they transition to as they enter the workforce. Worldwide, 60% of users are in the advertiser-friendly 25-34 age bracket.

In the USA, a 2023 survey by the Pew Research Center found that 40% of 30-49-year-olds had used the site. That’s on a par with Pinterest (40%), TikTok (39%) and WhatsApp (38%) and some way ahead of Twitter/X (27%) and Snapchat (30%), platforms many publishers continue to invest considerable energies in.

3. Around 1 in 5 American users harness LinkedIn for news

Further data from Pew finds that 17% of U.S. adults using LinkedIn regularly get their news on the platform. Interestingly, in contrast to other social networks, LinkedIn has the greatest gender parity among news consumers.

Its news audience is not huge, c.5% of U.S. adults. However, this is on par with Snapchat (4% of the total adult population) and WhatsApp (3%).

The site also offers a more educated demographic, 60% of regular news consumers on LinkedIn have a college degree, and just over half (53%) of their users enjoy a household income over $100k per annum. For many media companies, these are appealing demographics.

Five fresh ways media companies can use LinkedIn

Many media companies will already be using some of the most obvious functions on LinkedIn. This includes posting job ads, sharing company news and creating business landing pages.

Those functions will continue to be useful. However, they only scratch the surface of some of the wider potential the site potentially affords publishers and creators.

Tactics for publishers to try on LinkedIn:

1. Publish newsletters

Image via The Economist on LinkedIn. Screenshot 3/18/24.

“In the past year, LinkedIn has seen a 150% increase in the number of newsletters being published by publishers and journalists on the platform,” Axios reports.

These newsletters might be native to LinkedIn, offer a remix of content produced elsewhere, or simply be republished on the platform. Audiences can read them on the site, or have them emailed to them. Either way, they can potentially reach large, professional, audiences. Users have more than 450 million newsletter subscriptions on the platform. That’s up 3x year-on-year.

The Wall Street Journal’s Careers & Leadership newsletter, for example, has nearly 3 million subscribers and over 100 editions on LinkedIn. With the WSJ’s company page enjoying 9.7 million followers, that’s a high percentage of users who are digging deeper.

Another LinkedIn behemoth, The Economist, reaches over 3.1 million weekly subscribers with its “week ahead” newsletter, while Harvard Business Review’s Management Tip of the Week reaches over 5 million subscribers with a short article that takes just 1-2 minutes to read.

At the other end of the scale, you can find more niche newsletters related to media news, such as the excellent Muck Rack weekly, a 500-word weekly recap from the Media and Journalism Research Center, as well as countless other topics.

2. Host and stream live events

The pandemic demonstrated the potential for publishers to livestream events. Although we have seen a renewed interest in the ability of in-person events (particularly to diversify revenues), many media companies have retained an online component. Some media providers, like Harvard Business Review, continue to run live events that remain 100% virtual.

The Forbes Sustainability Leaders Summit & sponsor list, via Forbes

Online-only, or hybrid events, are more inclusive, helping to overcome geographic boundaries. But they also present additional income streams.

Forbes, for example, attracted several blue-chip sponsors for their Sustainability Leaders Summit last Fall. If you were unable to attend in person, you could view a live stream on various platforms, including LinkedIn, sponsored by Toyota.

As with other platforms, publishers and creators can host audio and video events live on LinkedIn, using existing tools like Zoom, WebEx or Vimeo. Events can be gated or open to all, as well as promoted to target audiences on the platform.

3. Gather audience insights

Events, newsletters and posts by a company – or its staff – offer multiple means to engage with users on LinkedIn. Aside from blasting them with news and information, they’re also a space to dig beyond the analytics to garner insights from your audience.

As Meredith Turits, the former editor of BBC Worklife – a vertical that includes the Worklife 101 newsletter – explained to Nieman Lab last year “content that does well is, of course, shared and clicked on, but some of our most important insights come from the comments on the newsletter,” she said. “We’re always looking at conversation in the comments or shares.”

These audience insights can shape future editorial efforts. Moreover, by sharing content that stimulates discussion and offers insights from LinkedIn members, publishers can act as a convener for conversation. That’s an approach in line with the goal of many publishers to move beyond scale by developing direct relationships with audiences.

“Don’t treat it as a traffic play, full stop,” Turtis advises. “One of the things that’s most unique about LinkedIn is that people want to talk, and will talk — it’s UX makes that easy and encourages it.”

4. Drive referrals, subscribers and registrations

Posts on company pages, the feeds of the people who work at them, as well as newsletters published on LinkedIn, can all play a role in encouraging audiences to dig deeper.

USA Today’s weekly consumer news newsletter, The Money, breaks down stories from the past week, and includes links to other USA Today stories. It also highlights that you can sign up for a daily newsletter offering more of the same, more often.

Screenshot via USA Today on LinkedIn 3/18/24

Other outlets, like CNN’s PM Plug In, lean into when audiences might be using LinkedIn. In this instance, providing “a weekday newsletter to catch you up on important news you may have missed during your busy day.”

Meanwhile, Business Insider uses the platform to offer a “shorter version of our flagship newsletter,” which they then encourage readers to sign up for.

The Economist ends their newsletter with a registration link offering three free articles a month, as well as linking to their main subscription page.

Collectively, these approaches demonstrate some of the different ways that publishers are using LinkedIn to support their wider engagement and revenue strategies.

5. Humanize your brand and staff

In some instances, LinkedIn may be your first engagement with a company. A good initial impression can matter, therefore, in terms of attracting potential consumers, subscribers and prospective employees.

Because of this, some media companies are making their LinkedIn presence more personal and approachable.

The Editor’s Digest, a newsletter from the Financial Times, sees an editor pick their top stories from the FT that week. Each hyperlinked newsletter is simply signed off by the author using their first name (e.g. Patrick, or Roula). It offers a casualness one might not expect from such an august brand, even if I personally would love to know their surname and job title!

Elsewhere, Nicholas Thompson the CEO of The Atlantic publishes a monthly newsletter that highlights his picks of The Best Things To Read. Most of this content is from places outside of The Atlantic, increasing its usefulness and making it feel much less like a PR exercise. Thompson also posts casual hot-take videos on different topics, which also makes him – and by osmosis his publication – more accessible and relatable.

Moving forward

According to Daniel Roth, LinkedIn’s Editor in Chief, the platform works with 400 preferred news partners to help maximize their work on the site. These efforts, as Axios reports, include sharing trending topics with partners so that they can tap current audience interests, as well as featuring content on LinkedIn News.

However, for content creators not in this club, there are still multiple things you can do to leverage LinkedIn more effectively. Journalists can get free training on how to use the platform, as well as a free premium membership. They can also use the platform to promote their work, and the work of others, as well as engage directly with audiences.

Your digital and social teams can – and should – do that too. Newsletters, events and posts can create high-quality, relevant content that resonates with LinkedIn’s professional user base. In doing this, outlets may reach new audiences as well as serve existing ones. That can drive traffic and engagement, increase subscriptions and take-up of other products.

Image via Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism

As a result, according to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, more media companies are investing in LinkedIn. A survey of 314 media leaders in 56 countries, revealed that four in ten (41%) of executives said they would be putting more effort into the platform in 2024. This is only just behind the proposed prioritization in YouTube and Google Search.

As Sara Fischer the senior media reporter at Axios recently put it, “LinkedIn alone won’t be able to make up for the dramatic reduction in traffic referrals from social media sites to news publishers, but it does offer outlets and journalists a platform to meaningfully grow their audiences amid a broader tech crackdown on news content.”

Put another way, as the tech journalist Ryan Broderick outlined earlier this week, “the traffic firehose days of the 2010s aren’t coming back. And LinkedIn is not the secret to infinite pageviews.” But, he adds, “finding a home for news publishers in 2024 isn’t about finding a perfect fit, but rather finding one that’s close enough.”

For some content creators and media companies, that might just mean leaning more into LinkedIn in the year ahead.

Advertising | Featured Post | Innovation | Video

Condé Nast’s Deborah Brett on the power of partnerships

September 21, 2023 Jessica Patterson – Independent Media Reporter

FKA Twigs joined by members of the Rambert Dance Company at Vogue World. Photo credit Marc Brenner/Vogue.

Condé Nast’s Global Digital Chief Business Officer Deborah Brett has a long history of leveraging the power of partnerships to drive consumer and advertiser growth and implement revenue-generating products. According to Brett, content drives consumer engagement and intent, which in turn delivers value for the reader and improves audience engagement.

“We’ve been doing this long before an advertorial or a branded content post or dark social ever existed,” she explained. “So, candidly, it’s been very easy for us to translate that legacy into all of the different emerging partnership platforms as they’ve presented themselves.”

A world of partnerships

Brett spent last week in London for Vogue World, which began last year as a live fashion show and street fair in New York but became an integral part of Fashion Week 2023. This is an emblematic partnership for the iconic Condé Nast fashion brand. And it’s something that Brett believes Condé Nast is uniquely positioned to do because of the caliber of its content, which drives audience engagement.

“We’re executing Vogue World out of London, which will of course live on our owned and operated platforms. We’ll also engage the broader consumer-base across all of the social platforms,” said Brett.

Celebrities, royals, opera singers, actors, supermodels, fashion designers descended on London’s Theatre Royal Drury Lane for Vogue World London, a theatrical West End production encompassing the best of British culture and fashion. British Vogue teamed up with Italian luxury fashion house Moncler to host a VIP Vogue World party on September 14th at private members club George in Mayfair, which was decked out with Blooming Haus florals.

The star-studded event celebrated iconic British creatives, culture and fashion from Shakespeare to Stormzy, with performances from opera, theater, and film, as well as classical and pop music. The guest list included royals, celebrities, designers and featured music, dance, and a runway extravaganza finale. But the event’s reach was far from limited to the A-listers in attendance.

“Wherever somebody happens to tune in, they’re going to be met with incredible content from Vogue World and the talent that engages in this event,” Brett explained. Audiences will also experience “all of the ways that our advertisers have integrated, activated on the ground–but more importantly–have activated within environments like TikTok, Instagram and X” (formerly known as Twitter).

The event is a calling card for how Condé Nast mirrors culture on the wide range of platforms where they reach consumers. It is also representative of how they bring advertisers along to the party.

The approach illustrates what Pam Drucker Mann, Condé Nast’s global chief revenue officer, says at NewFronts in May: The company isn’t a walled garden. They are creators who meet consumers where they are.

The platforms

Condé Nast operates in 32 markets, among them France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Latin America, the U.K. and U.S. This vast global network consists of about 80 different distribution platforms, including the usual social suspects (Twitter/X, Instagram, Facebook, SnapChat, TikTok, LinkedIn) and YouTube as well as WeChat and Viber internationally. The media company also has a strong presence on Connected TV (Sling, Amazon Fire and Tubi, Roku) and across audio platforms (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocketcast, Google Play).

And as Brett pointed out, “It’s not just the same content everywhere, but tailored content that is going to be native and relevant to what that consumer expects.”

Condé Nast’s biggest platform partner is YouTube, where the company boasts more than 65 million subscribers, a gain of 12% over the previous year.

Earlier this year, Condé Nast announced over 300 new YouTube pilots over 55 brand channels in 11 countries. This included the return of over 230 original series, including Wired’s Autocomplete Interview, Vogue’s Beauty Secrets, GQ’s 10 Essentials and Architectural Digest’s Open Door, which together drove over 700 million views in 2022, Mann told Adweek.

Condé Nast is also expanding its streaming partners to include Sling, Amazon Fire and Tubi. They’ve also got a brand channel for Architectural Digest on Roku, which features the Open Door and Unique Spaces series. These focus on celebrities’ private homes and the world’s most beautiful and architecturally unique homes, respectively.

Condé Nast was also one of TikTok’s initial Pulse Premiere partners – a platform Brett said their audience demands they be part of. She describes TikTok as a platform that is turnkey, low-lift and scalable.

Finding the right partners

Evaluating the perfect partnership involves a lot of considerations including brand image, customer benefits, fit, and value to bottom line.

“For us, performance drives premiumness and premiumness drives performance. It’s a two-way street,” said Brett. “And what Condé Nast does uniquely is maintain a really strict code of elevated consumer engagement and elevated content creation.”

The media company does this by staying brand-consistent. They are driven by journalistic integrity. If they’re not authentic to the voice of that specific brand, the partnership doesn’t work. “If we miss on that authenticity, on the expectation of what Vogue would be or what the New Yorker would be or what Bon Appetit would be on one of these platforms, we’ll get called out.”

Tracking conversion

Given the incredibly diverse platforms Condé Nast brands are on, as well as the global audience, evaluating ROI is a complex undertaking. However, Brett said that one of the most rewarding parts of her job is seeing how these efforts translate into conversions in trackable ways.

“When we work with Meta, for example, when we use their platform, with our intent-driving content, we’re able to track attributable conversion: literal click to purchase, click to buy.”

Condé Nast focuses on intent-driving metrics, like how likely people are to perform a certain action, for example, buying a product or attending an event.

“For so long it felt like we knew we were driving these choices, but we would never have been able to bridge the gap with the click attribution of them actually happening.” Brett said that “the partnerships that we’ve built and the way that we’ve evolved, the way we work with all these different platforms and measurement tools have really proven back to us how direct that connection actually is. And we can see the dollars transact against our recommendations. I think that’s perhaps been–not the most surprising–but certainly the most satisfying.”

Brett said that witnessing the direct connection between the two has been a remarkable evolution of how platforms and capabilities are coming together to close the loop for the advertiser. Through metrics, they can see how it all intersects. For example, they can see how high value integrations convert to high value intents, and keep the funnel full while converting at the bottom of it.

“I think we like to say that content is really the best advertising, and to know that the content that we create for advertisers is driving every different stage of the consumer journey and that we can prove it for them in simple and repeatable ways. It’s just been such an exciting era for us as Condé Nast,” she said.

Premium connects the dots

In the last five years or so, Brett said they’ve been able to move from more siloed strategies to connecting all of the dots.

“I certainly think that the more recent shifts in cookie attribution and all the rest of these things has helped to open everybody to the power of premium content to drive performance and really figuring out how to connect those dots more purposefully.”

For a long time, the digital media industry relied on third-party cookie-based verification to assess and validate the performance and delivery of digital advertising campaigns. Cookies had broad-scale adoption, but that all changed when Google announced it would phase out third-party cookies on Chrome.

“Now without that crutch, we’re really leaning back into what is true, what is fundamental, what speaks to the consumer, and how we come together to capitalize on that, but also to measure that in really meaningful ways.”

Digital media companies are now focusing on privacy, transparency and user consent as they consider alternative strategies for measurement. First-party data is more reliable and privacy-compliant and boosts engagement through personalization, content creation and recommendations and targeted advertising.

“I think everything that we do is calibrated around meaningful engagement for the consumer,” said Brett. “So every single campaign we’ve ever run and every single choice that we’re making would ladder into that ultimate goal. If it’s not delivering value for our audience, it’s not a place where we belong.”

Audiences | Featured Post | Innovation

Great lengths: Optimizing video across platforms

October 14, 2021 Jessica Patterson – Independent Media Reporter

Make it short. Show real stuff. This may seem obvious, but these are best practices in video length and content authenticity for Gen Z audiences.

Gen Z, born between 1998 and 2016, spends a lot of time watching videos on social media. And last year, Gen Z’s video consumption increased: Snapchat reported that Gen Z watched over an hour each day of video content on social media apps alone. They value video more than any other media platform, by a margin of roughly 2-to-1 over social, gaming, music or Google search, according to a recent study by DCN. They prefer video, specifically user-generated content, due to its relatability and personability.

Understanding that Gen Z viewers and consumers have different behaviors, values, and attitudes when it comes to video is important because it can impact your audience of the future, your strategy, and your revenue. It will also help you withstand shifts in viewer tastes and larger shifts in the media landscape. Building relationships with this generation of viewers, readers, consumers, starts now.

Video length on TikTok

Video length varies by platform, and there are a lot of platforms to choose from. Gen Z favors Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok, according to a Pew survey in 2021.

Video content on TikTok must be extremely short. In fact, 50 seconds is long, according to Erin Weaver, Group Nine Media’s Senior Director of Audience Development. For Gen Z-favored platforms Snapchat and TikTok, video length needs to be short and videos need to be fast-paced, according to Weaver. “On TikTok, I consider anything between 30 and 60 seconds to be almost the default. And then slightly longer is over one minute up to three minutes. We’ve seen some success with longer videos, as long as they’re really engaging and interesting.”

#DCYoungFly hitting the #CrankThat at the #HipHopAwards [https://www.tiktok.com/@bet]

Brittiany Cierra Taylor, director of audience development at BET, says she sees similar results. “Our audience development team has been trying out shorts and they’ve seen that they were amazing in getting new views, new viewers and from an ad perspective, we see more ads, more earned views. That shortness really is the key because we noticed that the sweet spot on TikTok is seven seconds where you see that jump that engagement,” she said.

“Our TikTok partners always encourage us to create shorter and more succinct videos, as they do tend to perform well on the platform,” says Kelsey Alpaio, an editor and producer with Harvard Business Review’s Ascend brand for young professionals, “But, that doesn’t mean long videos are off limits. The majority of our top-viewed videos are more than 50 seconds long. If people are interested in the content, they will stick around.”

Video length on YouTube

On YouTube, videos that are 2-4 minutes long work well for Harvard Business Review, but they also see success with videos that are longer, about 10-14 minutes each.

Scott LaPierre, Harvard Business Review’s senior editor for multimedia, says that for YouTube, trends around length are similar. Length is less important than topic and storytelling. LaPierre says HBR’s more authentic and honest videos on YouTube, which are casual, host- and personality-driven, perform about as well in the long run as their more traditional content. “Both have about an even number of breakout successes, and comparable average performers,” he says. “The video’s topic, and how compellingly it delivers on that topic are still the primary factors in the number of views and how long people watch, whether traditional or authentic in style.”

Short and medium-length videos at about two to nine minutes each work best on YouTube, for a broad reach. And longer (10-15 minutes) seems to work to deepen engagement with established fans, LaPierre said. “Shorter videos seem to have broader reach while longer videos seem to have deeper engagement. Long for us is around 10-15 minutes. Short is two to four. Most of our current video lineup is in the middle: six-to-nine-minute range. Anything over about 15 minutes does not perform great on our channel.” (Live video is a different conversation where lengths over 15 are more the norm.)

Optimize for story

“It really depends on the goal of the story and whatever length makes the storytelling complete,” says Zainab Khan, associate director of audience, video at The New York Times. “We might do a months-long investigation that merits a 12-minute video. What we see, because we edit our videos for pacing and storytelling, if a video is longer, we get more overall watch time. But we’re really rigorous about thinking about length so it fits the needs of the story. And in some cases, that means the best way to share a story means to do a quick 30-second snippet, showing viewers what’s happening on the ground.”

All of the digital content companies we spoke to said that storytelling trumps minutes and seconds. Video content should be as long as it needs to be, to tell an engaging story. LaPierre says, “Topic and storytelling generally trump length or style. So, my rule of thumb is: make it as short as possible, but no shorter.”

Content authenticity

Best practices for user-generated content are that video content must be low lit, not super polished, and not have a high production quality.Often, it is a selfie-style cell phone footage. It’s casual, host- and personality-driven. It is concise, engaging, and easy to produce. It shows people talking about what they care passionately about.

Harvard Business Review aims to make some of their videos in that user-generated style, LaPierre says. “For me, the best way to get authentic-feeling video is to have people talk about what they care passionately about,” he says.

Production values

Ascend Multimedia Producer Andy Robinson explains they try to find a sweet spot between having a polished feel and showing the real world. “My rule is, show the real stuff whenever possible. We’ve been leaning heavily on less-overly produced elements in our video content. Audiences can smell something that is highly produced, over scripted, over thought.”

Group Nine makes a point of putting people as the focal point of their UGC content, explains Weaver. “For PopSugar, a tutorial on applying makeup does a lot better than a product review or something that’s mostly focused on beauty products or a workout. You should see people doing the workouts, not so much like a description of the movements.”

At The New York Times, best practice for finding authenticity in a creator’s work is to have a deep understanding of the company’s values and to find common ground with their audience, Khan says. “It’s really important for us, when we want to build trust with our audience, we show our authentic selves. We literally put our reporters on screen in a way that helps the audience understand who is doing the reporting,” Khan says.

Gen Z has a bullshit detector

Gen Z’s desire for authenticity has been well documented. They want brands to be transparent, authentic and trustworthy. Gen Z audiences have spent their lives surrounded by digital technology. They’re incredibly discerning and know how to filter content that lacks the right tone, language, relevance or value. “What I love about Gen Z is that they hold companies more accountable,” Taylor says. “They’re doing the fact-checking, they’re doing the homework, they’re seeing if your staff resembles the world, if your content resembles the world year round. Is your message consistent and congruent in the content that you showed me? That’s actually one thing I love about them because it forces brands to be authentic.”

Authenticity is the way to grow audiences, Taylor explains. “I think that if you want to stay around, that is the basic component that audiences are resonating with. So, if you’re not going to be authentic, you’re not going to meet the KPIs you want, you’re not going to grow your audience, you’re not going to hit your revenue… So, from an audience perspective, a revenue perspective, authenticity is just the way to move forward.”

Be real, not trendy

“In the long term, if your identity and authenticity are dependent on a trend, you only last as long as that trend,” Khan says. “On the other hand, if your company has a handle on its core values, and what sets you apart from your peers and competitors, you can choose which trends to follow. And it means you can withstand shifts in the media and shifts in viewer taste.”

LaPierre says content authenticity connotes honesty, vulnerability, transparency, and relatability, which may not always have been top priorities for publishers. “And, we’ve seen some of the distrust in media that can result,” he says. “Show your flaws, show that your content is made by real people with real concerns that overlap with your audience’s, and show your work–it’s about building a trusting relationship over time.”

For their audience of the future, digital content companies need to put real intention behind the content they create and innovate constantly. As one expert put it, you need to think about who you’re talking to, and create content that is meaningful to them. It’s a lot of effort trying to please Gen Z, but if you’re not putting in the effort, you’re not going to get the results. This is your future audience, after all.

Meredith’s video push centers on diversity and diversification

June 24, 2021 Esther Kezia Thorpe – Media Reporter

As the publishing industry seeks stability in the wake of the pandemic, Meredith Corp is making video an increasingly important part of its long-term content strategy.

Meredith’s newly-appointed Chief Digital Content Officer Amanda Dameron is leading an expansion of the publisher’s video portfolio. The most recent launch is a new Food & Wine show, “Pastries with Paola”.

The series, which stars celebrated pastry chef Paola Velez, debuts with 13 episodes. The videos focus on how to make easy desserts like empanadas and chocolate cake. They also celebrate Paola’s Dominican heritage and culinary traditions.

Collaborating with diverse talent is a vital part of Dameron’s vision for video at Meredith, “as represented by Paola’s show, and every show that we have in development. We are interested in telling stories that are uplifting, that are optimistic…and are told in an inclusive way, in a multicultural way, in a way that truly embraces the world as it is,” she said. “We take tremendous responsibility in that.”

Video as a vehicle for expansion

Long gone are the days of a simple printable recipe card. Increasingly, audiences turn to their social media feeds for food inspiration and helpful information.

Dameron believes that video as a format is more important than ever before. “Rising generations are looking for content that shows them how to do something correctly, how to break down the steps,” she explained. More than that, she sees video as a conversation between content creators and the audience. At Meredith, the tone is informal and intimate, and allows for feedback, especially when distributed via social media.

“When you couple that with a platform in which it’s easy for the audience to share their insight, their questions, and to be able to use that insight to refine the series itself, there is no format better made for that than video,” she emphasized.

However, Food & Wine’s video strategy is not limited to short-form on social media platforms. The video team is experimenting with producing content in a range of styles and lengths, from short how-to’s to longer, documentary-style pieces.

In fact, the brand was recently nominated for an ASME award for “Tasting Home”. The three-part video series follows Chef Kwame Onwuachi who traces his culinary roots by travelling to Trinidad, Jamaica, Louisiana, and Texas.

“We’ve been really gratified to see that our audience responds very passionately to the series that we present, no matter what the format,” Dameron said.

It’s not just video length that varies. In response to evolving viewing habits, many of Meredith’s videos are now produced for both traditional landscape viewing and portrait mobile phone viewing. This means that video content has to be carefully planned for both orientations from the outset.

“We have a lot of different versions of a hero asset or video, and we have to apply a high level of rigor to the way that shots are composed,” Dameron outlined. “You have to be mindful of it every moment of shooting the video itself. Having both landscape and vertical perspectives gives the ability to create the best possible viewing experience, no matter where the audience chooses to find us.”

Active engagement for success

For Dameron, the key success metric for Meredith’s videos are views. However, she also takes a close interest in watch time and active engagement. In particular, she uses these as a way to improve programming.

“I’m really interested in a deeper engagement that shows when we are circulating stories and series. What is the audience saying to us? And more importantly, what is the audience asking us?” she explained. This can often be quite a time-consuming, manual process, but Dameron believes it pays off in terms of quality.

“Comments, questions, those active points of engagement, these are things I’m always looking for. When that symbiotic relationship that exists between audience and content creator happens, you start to see content become better.”

“You must be in the plumbing of it all if you are to understand how to really harness your opportunities in the best way possible and to be able to do so with a quickness and a confidence.”

It’s clear that a multiplatform approach is key to the future of Meredith’s content strategy. Dameron’s role sits centrally at Meredith, and she is planning further video expansion across other brands in Meredith’s portfolio. However, although her position working across brands allows her to apply a framework and resources across titles, she is also keen to emphasize that each video strategy has to be as unique as the brand.

“That centralized approach allows us to have a framework that is strong, but flexible. But that being said, it’s really important to emphasize that each particular brand is at the helm of its own creative manifestation in video.”

A flexible, evergreen future

As Dameron gets her feet under the table at Meredith, she is planning to expand the company’s pool of evergreen video content. The goal is to realize longer-term value. “We’re also very interested in developing a long-form video strategy; one which really focuses on the lifetime value of the video library,” she said.

Crucially, this will involve building flexibility into the process, and anticipating how the videos will be used in the future. From being able to shoot for multiple orientations to distributing across social and OTT, careful planning from the outset is essential.

“We want to give ourselves the flexibility to create content and programming across every distribution channel and every screen that exists here today, or is yet to be built tomorrow,” she explained. “If you have a rigor and a framework for assembling the strongest video library you can, then you’re unfettered in the future from distributing it however you wish.”

Diversity of on-screen talent is firmly on Meredith’s agenda. But to ensure it makes the most of that investment for the future, it is also firmly focused on building a diversified video portfolio that is future-proofed both in format and content.

Australia’s new media bargaining code: What’s really up down under

March 4, 2021 Jason Kint, CEO – DCN

“Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It is already tomorrow in Australia.”

—Charles M. Schultz

For those focused on where the future of the internet media economy is headed, all eyes turned to Australia in recent weeks. And, despite a last-minute PR spin campaign filled with half-truths and outright deception by pundits around the world vying to influence the debate, the end result is a new law, the News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code, which foreshadows the future for Google and Facebook.

We’ve had enough hot takes. It’s time to kill off, once and for all, the disinformation, misinformation, and talking points of the infamous duopoly, which I’ll try to do here by busting 10 myths. (Happy to talk through any of these further. Just reach out: publicly or privately.)

Myth busting

1. The bargaining code resulted from an arbitrary process.

This couldn’t be further from the truth. The Australian government undertook a thorough, multi-year process to establish this new law. Importantly, its competition regulator (ACCC) spent nearly two years investigating the dominance of Google and Facebook. The result was a 600+ page report that clearly demonstrates the imbalanced bargaining power held by the duopoly. At the same time, the Australian government – with support from all political parties – formulated a public policy decision about how to better fund journalism. The only assumption made was that the press is critically important to democracy. This should not be a controversial assumption.

2. The inventor of the web has called this a “link tax” that will break the internet.

Yes, Tim Berners-Lee wrote a letter rightly expressing his concern that if it was possible to require payment for links throughout the web, it could break the internet. In the letter, he often hedged and clearly wasn’t focused on the specifics of the law, which does not require payment for links. We’ve seen this “link tax” talking point high on Google’s list in the past. And it’s a galvanizing force for defenders of the open web – as it should be. The law does mention linking but only in the context of describing what a digital platform does by publishing, curating, and linking to the news. It’s narrowly focused on the two platforms and in no way does it suggest a platform should be required to compensate for its links to news outlets.

3. Facebook won key concessions at the final hour.

The concessions for Facebook were, in fact, relatively minor. When Facebook pulled news off Australian users’ feeds, their goal was to trigger global outrage, shake up the press cycles, and turn the globe against Australia. Then, by throwing its PR might behind some elegant spinning about a great compromise, Facebook saved face. That’s all they did.

The final concessions included the addition of a couple windows of time (measured in months) in which Facebook will lobby and protest about having to pay for news. The “concessions” also included two changes that clarify the mechanics of the code.

4. This law is a gift to Murdoch and hurts everyone else.

Yes, News Limited has a lot of influence in Australia as its leading news company. In fact, as the ACCC Chairman noted, 80-90% of the journalists in Australia work for one of three companies (News, Nine, ABC). However, the idea that Google or Facebook would negotiate with these three companies and hang the other 10% of the market out to dry seems very unlikely considering the modest amount of additional funds it will take to round out the rest of the industry.

Having spent a significant amount of time on Australia’s 600+ page report, I would suggest that the law is much more clearly in the camp of increasing bargaining power for all journalism. It’s hard to argue that any news publisher with more than $150k in revenue per year isn’t better off with this law in place. Moreover, the law also allows for publishers to collectively bargain if they prefer. That does seem likely if they’re not getting what they need from Facebook and Google.

5. News Corp’s global deal with Google will result in settlements of antitrust lawsuits.

This anti-antitrust argument is the silliest thing I’ve heard. There is no greater fallacy in digital media right now than attributing the global antitrust scrutiny on Google and Facebook to one or even just a few parties. The antitrust lawsuits currently filed have the weight of the U.S. government, in 49 out of 50 states, and both parties in Congress.

The cases are robust, particularly the Texas-led advertising tech case against Google (which mirrors some of the work of the ACCC), Congress. Another is from the CMA, which is the UK’s comparable regulator. It also alleges a Section 1 charge of bid rigging between Facebook and Google. No market regulator walks away from these cases based on the whims of one complainant. The work in Australia has only added weight to these cases.

6. Publishers in Europe should be celebrating.

Globally, there is a lot of positive reaction to the work done in Australia. However, it’s also notable that the European market has been working for even longer on better funding professional content. In successfully passing an updated copyright directive, they’ve taken an approach that establishes additional rights for publishers through a publisher’s “neighboring right.”

Importantly, the European approach is not restricted to just news. It covers all content including snippets offered on Facebook and Google. France was first to bake this new right into law. Google responded by trying to avoid paying for anything that they’ve historically taken for free.

They’ve even invented a new product offering, Google News Showcase, to bury their payments and bundle in all rights needed. This minimizes any increased bargaining power for publishers, which has caused even more scrutiny. This opaque bundling of payment for rights by Google and Facebook keeps popping up wherever they face regulatory threats. If payment for snippets isn’t clearly delineated, and the financial terms aren’t transformative, the EU is likely to view Australia’s new law as a missed opportunity.

7. Government will set an arbitrary price for platforms to pay for news content.

The reality is that Australia has come up with a solution that uses market forces by requiring negotiated deals with publishers ahead of a mandatory bargaining code or an arbitration process. It uses a clever “final offer” process (also known as “baseball arbitration”) to finalize deal terms. In both cases, the government recognizes its weaknesses in over regulating a fast-growing digital marketplace. Instead, it leverages its antitrust enforcement to create a carrot and then a stick to get companies benefiting from a gross imbalance in bargaining power to the table to properly and quickly negotiate.

8. A straight platform tax would be a better solution.

The simple problem with a straight tax is all content would need to be “treated equally.” A click on Breitbart would have the same value as a click on The Wall Street Journal. The government would then divvy up a pot of money between everyone. This creates all sorts of uncomfortable government leverage over news. And one can only imagine how they would choose to split the loot. Think about the market incentives if they divided it up based on monthly uniques or page views. Better to push negotiations back into the market where intangibles such as brand, heritage, trust, consumer perception, and scoops have significant value.

9.This is unique to Australia and won’t translate to other countries.

Every lawmaker in Canada, Europe, the U.K., and U.S. who is focused on these issues will draft off Australia. Arguably, this was the biggest concern for Google and Facebook. They hoped to limit discussion to an island on the other side of the world. Our global market no longer works this way. Everyone learns from each other. Despite Facebook and Google’s ability to leverage their global dominance to protect their fortresses through trade deals, lobbying, and ducking lawmakers, the whole world is catching up to them.

Also, there are major allies in these fights to support the free and plural press. Microsoft, one of the few companies larger than Google or Facebook, has aligned with publishers on the new policies in Australia and Europe. (Forgive me, as Microsoft’s support evokes the classic “That’s not a knife” scene in Crocodile Dundee.)

10. Facebook and Google have pledged $1 billion each to news publishers so we should be happy.

Together, these two companies will easily surpass $250 Billion in global advertising revenues in 2021 without even participating in China. As of now, they’ve pledged $1 billion each towards journalism over three years. Thus, Google and Facebook are pledging barely 0.2% of their global advertising revenues towards journalism. Facebook’s protesting of payments was evidence in itself for Representative Cicilline to state that the company “is no longer compatible with democracy.” (And I tip my hat to the publisher that flatly stated that Facebook’s offer was not enough.)

These are two globally-scrutinized companies which pride themselves on moonshots. Yet they have failed to properly address how their algorithms help spread misinformation, disinformation. This has led to genocide in Myanmar, an insurrection on our Capitol, and health misinformation causing untold illness and death worldwide … to name just a few “unintended consequences.”

The future is now

The simple fact is that Facebook prefers to pay into journalism no more than it does for fake news from Macedonia, while continuing to grow its nearly $100 billion per year business of surveilling and microtargeting citizens with ads against the cheapest engagement available. They’ve devalued context. They’ve devalued facts. And they’ve devalued journalism for profits. In Australia, we see democracy fighting back.

Australia’s law has been endorsed by all major political parties in a representative democracy as a means to better fund journalism. Importantly, though this was rarely discussed, the code has a one-year review period to see how it’s working. If you listened too closely to American pundits the last few weeks, you would have thought this was the end of the open Internet – hypocrisy considering the closed platforms of those who shaped it.

The law prevailed. The world didn’t end. In fact, it’s already tomorrow in Australia. They are ahead on this one, and there is a lot we can learn from it.

How three media outlets are taking their own approach to TikTok

March 18, 2020 Corinne Podger—Director, Digital Skills Agency

The TikTok app has now been downloaded nearly two billion times. And a recent surge in new users is being attributed, at least in part, to people escaping the boredom and worry of coronavirus self-isolation and lockdowns. At some point, the pandemic’s tempest will subside, so what long-term strategies can publishers and journalists put in place to get the most from the platform into the future?

In January I wrote a lengthy Medium Post linking to best practice examples and tutorials. In this piece, three very different media outlets share what’s worked, what hasn’t, and their advice to publishers joining TikTok for the first time.

The national paper

Dave Earley, Audience Editor, Guardian Australia

TikTok Account: https://tiktok.com/@guardianaustralia

The extraordinary success of The Washington Post’s account piqued Early’s interest in TikTok early on. But he hung back for a while before signing Guardian Australia up. “I couldn’t make a commitment to a personality-driven approach like the Post,” he says. “After noticing a few other media outlets posting straight news videos, I decided to get started that way in August last year.”

Guardian Australia’s account has two aims. The first is to build brand awareness with young audiences. The second, says Earley, is to “reach young people who share a deep interest with some of our key coverage areas, like the environment.”

Successful early posts paired news clips with popular sounds. More recently, hits have focused on national challenges like the recent floods and bushfires. “Our bushfires explainer did quite well, taking inspiration from a NowThis Politics impeachment explainer on TikTok that went viral,” Earley says.

However, their strongest performing video has been a surprise. Nancy Pelosi’s reaction to an apparent handshake snub by Donald Trump has had 2.2 million views since it was uploaded in February. Earley attributes these numbers to the fact that TikTok showed the video to Indian users as well as Australians.

Guardian Australia’s news differs from the approach many publishers are taking to focus on timeless content, given that TikTok doesn’t display the date a piece of content was posted.

TikTok’s metrics are also quite limited. However, Earley says that’s fine while Guardian Australia continues to find its best voice on the platform. “Our use of the platform is still experimental and not a top priority for maintaining a regular posting schedule,” he says.

“I’m looking at topline followers and likes, not so much as a measure of success, but more to keep an eye on overall growth. I also look at the individual video play counts and number of comments to see what gained traction.”

The online regional

Chiara Rinaldi, Head of Audience, Wales Online

TikTok Account: https://www.tiktok.com/@walesonline

Wales Online’s account also launched in August last year, targeting people under 24 living in Wales.

“For us, the aim isn’t just to grow a large TikTok following. It’s also to learn more about how we serve Generation Z and get a better understanding of the way they express themselves and consume news and media,” Rinaldi says.

“When we started, we were the only UK regional publisher [on TikTok] so we didn’t have anyone to compare to or look up to for good practice.”

Every publisher I spoke to, including Rinaldi, has mentioned The Washington Post as an example of best practice. However, it’s not one they necessarily want or need to duplicate. “I didn’t think emulating [the Post] would achieve what we set out to do, so we’ve just experimented a lot to see what worked for us,” she says.

That has meant actively seeking the right tone and approach for content, and developing new production skills. “Our newsroom is quite confident in producing social videos but we quickly realized that we needed a completely new approach on TikTok, from our ideas process to how we shoot and edit,” Rinaldi says.

For Wales Online, top performing videos have combined “person-led Welsh identity content” with TikTok trends and popular sounds. These include an American pronounces Welsh places and reasons to marry a Welsh person. Videos of beautiful locations have done best of all, like this mid-winter sunrise at Snowdon.

Repurposing user-generated content has been “a mixed bag” in terms of response, Rinaldi says. “We’ve found food, comedy, and climate change content has performed well,” she says. “But we’ve also had videos that bombed, like people singing and a dog that can say hello. It’s [also] a lot harder to get traction for videos that don’t fit with a challenge, like our videos of the South Wales floods.”

Following seven months of trying different things, Wales Online has begun formulating a clear strategy to engage its TikTok followers with more serious news content. And this is a goal Rinaldi says will be challenging given that on-platform metrics consist primarily of video views, follower numbers, and likes on individual posts.

“So far, we’ve found TikTok to be a really receptive and encouraging platform to work with,” she says. “Our audience is very open, provides us with regular updates and they’re happy to answer our questions, which is refreshing!”

The specialist publication

Jake Banas, Social Media Manager, Futurism

TikTok Account: https://www.tiktok.com/@futurismmedia

New York-based publisher Futurism is using TikTok to connect with young science and tech enthusiasts all over the world. “We began by implementing a video strategy we’ve run with on most other platforms – posting our most popular short clips and well-known viral memes to attract attention,” Banas says.

Futurism’s best performing videos have combined educational clips with popular sounds, like this explainer on how astronauts take a bath in space.

Later on, The Washington Post’s runaway success inspired Futurism to expand its uploads to include videos featuring its staff and newsroom more candidly. However, doing this well has turned out to be harder than it looks. “While everyone wants to be Dave Jorgenson, it’s incredibly difficult to do,” he says.

“Most newsrooms don’t have a dedicated TikTok team. The biggest challenge is simply the amount of time it can take to produce quality content, but the good thing is that – unlike traditional video – TikTok has made it easy for many people to utilize powerful video editing tools to create posts for a mobile-first audience.”

Banas says Futurism is learning what it can from TikTok’s limited metrics and whimsical algorithm to achieve specific goals, such as engaging with young women interested in science and technology.

For now, Futurism has “pulled back” from regular posts to focus on other priorities. But Banas says timeless clips posted weeks or months ago still attract fresh audiences – another example of the evident irrelevance of time to the TikTok algorithm.

Thinking of joining TikTok in 2020? Here are some pro tips:

Earley, Rinaldi, and Banas have these tips for newcomers to the platform:

Spend time as a user and watch plenty of content before diving in head-first.
Think about what you want to achieve on the platform
Ask yourself how you’d explain a big story, or what it’s like to be a journalist, to a teenager.
Try some or all of these genres: explainers, vlogs, text on screen to music, lip syncing.
Decide whether you can commit to putting staff on camera and let them do “fun stuff.”
Use the ‘drafts’ function to learn the basics like adding and timing captions.
Read the comments to better understand who you are reaching on the platform.
Don’t feel under pressure to post often.
The ethos of TikTok is authenticity, so embrace it and get the whole newsroom involved.
Be prepared to relax your brand guidelines for an entirely different platform.
Interact with your audience. Creator comments and replies mean a lot to viewers.
Be original and have fun!

How People and Entertainment Weekly grow audiences with video

November 14, 2019 Caitlin Kelly, Independent Journalist

It’s a brand people have known and loved for four and a half decades – as a magazine. Now People is focused on video, determined to grow the brand and bring its content to new, and larger, audiences.

“The most important thing is that the brand has to have a voice to begin with,” said Will Lee, SVP of Digital for the Entertainment Group of Meredith Corp., a role he’s held for two years, which coincides with Meredith’s acquisition of Time, Inc. “People has a very strong brand voice that it’s cultivated over 45 years. We know what the consumer expects from us. We have a very well-developed playbook for how the brand should sound and look.”

People’s emotional DNA

That means sticking to the brand’s core emotional DNA when showing work on Snapchat, for example. “We don’t say snarky, mean things about celebrities. It’s not what we do.” So, even if Snap viewers prefer things a little salty, People stays true to its own style, regardless of medium. “We get a lot of data from Snapchat,” Lee said, “and that audience has evolved. It’s very different from what it was three years ago.”

People’s video content focuses on what Lee called “the three R’s, the content their readers just can’t get enough of: reality TV, the British Royal family, and the red carpet. “Streaming is a different level of engagement. The really passionate audience comes from reality TV.” So, Lee’s team of 60 to 80 staffers produce a reality-based video show four nights a week and a Royals show once a week. “Reality TV is a conversation starter,” said Lee, of the genre’s powerful appeal.

Reality check

The numbers back him up. “We’ve done 100 episodes of ‘Reality Check.’ And after four episodes, we already had the second most viewed show on people.com, with 2 to 3 million views of show clips in a week. That is a pretty good debut for us.”

Pivoting constantly is key and Lee knows how hard his team works to keep up. “All the parts of video work closely together because we’re constantly iterating product on a daily basis. It’s a very special kind of producer who can do three or four formats and keep it all together.”

“What’s interesting about our model is that we’re not tied to 26-week orders so we can adjust. We have a lot of flexibility which differentiates us from cable. We can iterate and improve the product.”

Brand building

But, when deciding which next steps to take, “we have to be very thoughtful, as a media brand with a history and the brand equity we’ve built,” Lee added. “Where is the growth? How do we amplify the brand and move into new markets?” Newer platforms like TikTok , he said, are “the solar power. That’s where the future lies. We have a great brand, but that is no guarantee of future growth.”

However, Lee feels confident that streaming is essential to their success. “That’s why we’ve made such a big bet on it. If we’re not in that space, we’re going to be left behind.”

Lee’s team also partners with Meredith Local Media Group , which has 17 TV stations across the country, which Meredith will leverage when it launches a new daily syndicated television show in September 2020. “That will be the centerpiece of our overall video product.” Lee acknowledged how ambitious this new product is: “Thirty minutes of daily broadcast level TV is a huge amount of work.” The magazine-style show, with “all new and original material really represents a pretty important next step for this iconic brand. It brings us more markets, and more audience. There aren’t a lot of media brands that will have this as part of their media ecosystem. In a company already producing print, digital and video, “this is going to be another evolution of how we all work together,” he said.

Entertaining audiences

When it comes to his other responsibility, Entertainment Weekly, Lee says a new launch is imminent as well. “We’re really trying to amplify the brand. We want to go to where the audience is, in local markets. It’s important for us to reach those audiences.”

EW has announced that it will be working with Jeffrey Katzenberg’s short form mobile video platform Quibi, slated to launch in April 2020. The morning show, which will recap late-night TV, will take a similar strategic approach to the Lee he employs with People. However, he emphasizes that the brands are quite distinct, and that EW is “known as a cultural curator.” That should play well on Quibi, which offers a new audience that Lee is excited to reach.