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Featured Post | Perspectives | Revenue

Confidence can rebuild trust in news media

If you were fortunate enough to have a grandmother like mine, who served as both a protector and a source of wisdom, count yourself among the blessed. Recently, I’ve found myself reminiscing about her, particularly thinking about a bittersweet memory from my teenage years. I spent a few weeks at her Missouri home when I was about 16, seeking a haven from life’s tumult. During the visit, I became fixated on revitalizing her dilapidated basement.

My grandmother’s home was built in the early 1900s and it bore the marks of time, including structural issues and flooding. Amidst the turmoil and events following my parents’ divorce, I yearned for a project to occupy my mind and hands. Armed with carpet, paint, screws, and lumber, I set to work, determined to transform the basement into a sanctuary of sorts. My goal was simple: to bring a smile to my grandmother’s face.

In retrospect, that time holds a mix of emotions. While the project provided a temporary escape and a sense of purpose, I now recognize its limitations. Despite my efforts, the temporary facelift I offered couldn’t mend the home’s deeper issues. Over the following 25 years, the house fell into disrepair, succumbing to floods and neglect after my grandmother’s passing.

Reflecting on this experience, I can’t help but draw parallels to the state of the news media industry. We, too, seem focused on mourning a historic structure that is no longer sound. While it is better to take some action than none, we can’t restore news media revenue through superficial updates. It’s high time we find the confidence to undertake a radical remodel.

The news media’s confidence gap

Despite producing valuable content and abiding by high journalistic standards, trust in the news media has eroded in the face of rampant misinformation. In the wake of this decline, consumer engagement plummets, subscriptions struggle, and advertising revenue dries up. This is underpinned by a stinging irony. We possess the potential to be bastions of truth, yet our message lacks resonance with both subscribers and advertisers because of a fundamental question: Do we truly believe in our own value?

A recent study by the Pew Research Center paints a concerning picture. Public trust in news media is declining, mirroring a broader trend of declining trust in institutions. Several factors contribute to this erosion, including the rise of misinformation online and a shift in news consumption habits. Consumers are bombarded with information from various sources, making it difficult to distinguish fact from fiction.

However, the study also offers a glimmer of hope. People are more likely to trust news outlets they feel a personal connection with. This highlights a crucial strategy for the news media to rebuild trust: fostering a sense of community and focusing on local stories that resonate with readers.

Here’s the crux of the matter as we seek to rebuild news media trust and revenue: confidence is the missing piece. We can’t project strength externally if we doubt it internally. We resemble a once-grand home, its foundation weakened, its purpose in some ways forgotten. It’s time to rediscover our core values and embark on a comprehensive renovation, one built on a foundation of unwavering confidence.

It is time for the news media to take action

Throughout my tenure in the industry, I’ve noticed a pervasive tendency to operate solely on the defensive. However, a recent insight from an editorial leader resonated deeply with me: it’s time to stop playing defense and start playing offense.

This call to action struck a chord because it underscores our urgent need to break free from conventional approaches. Too often, we find ourselves caught in the whirlwind of day-to-day operations, constantly putting out fires and mitigating losses. This reactive mindset inevitably leads to painful layoffs and compromises the quality of our journalism.

My grandmother’s basement would have fallen into dilapidation even faster if I hadn’t taken action. And it helped me regain some of my personal confidence at a challenging time because action breeds confidence. As an industry, going on the offense will help us seize control of our destiny.

This proactive approach requires us to move beyond simply reacting to challenges. It demands we undertake a strategic shift that empowers us to stop only playing defense and start playing offense. We must confront issues head-on and unlock the full potential of revenue strategies that lie dormant within our news media organizations.

Revenue experimentation and diversification

One strategy that has captured my attention in rebuilding revenues is sponsored content. When executed effectively, sponsored content can be a powerful tool that serves audiences and the bottom line. For example, partnering with local businesses to sponsor informative content about financial literacy or health generates revenue and provides valuable, niche content to our audience. That in turn builds trust and strengthens our community focus. Sponsored content should be clearly labeled and adhere to strict editorial guidelines to differentiate it from traditional reporting. This transparency illustrates our commitment to ethical journalism and further builds trust with audiences.

Going on offense also means consistently communicating the narrative of what we represent to our core audiences, to our communities, and to democracy itself. We are the watchdogs, the truth-tellers, the vital link that empowers citizens with the information they need to participate. This is a story we need to tell consistently and with unwavering conviction.

The same proactive approach applies to our role as advertising partners. Sponsors aren’t just a revenue stream – they’re potential partners in progress. By demonstrating the engaged demographics we reach and the lasting impact advertising can have within our platforms, we become trusted allies in achieving their marketing goals. This shift in perspective – from passive recipient to active collaborator – is key to forging mutually beneficial relationships.

This type of strategy should also lead to increased audience engagement, positive feedback on content, and a rise in subscriptions or memberships – all indicators that we’re moving in the right direction to improve news media trust and revenue. Ultimately, we can measure success through our ability to regain public trust, elevate our journalistic standards, and secure a sustainable future for our organization.

Reflecting on my grandmother’s home, I can’t help but feel a sense of regret for what could have been. Yet, I’m reminded that in our industry, we have the chance to make a real impact, to enact change, and to revitalize our role in American society.

Innovation | Marketing | Perspectives

Brand content will explode with AI. Are publishers ready to capitalize?

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to evolve, we see more and more examples of AI-generated content in our daily lives. It is only a matter of time before brands start to adopt these tools to scale their content creation and power their content marketing strategies. This trend will continue to accelerate as AI gets better at producing quality content.

For publishers, this presents a huge opportunity. Brands will need help distributing the influx of new content, and publishers are in a prime position to provide that assistance. But are we ready? Do we have the infrastructure in place to handle the increased demand?

Only time will tell. But one thing is for sure: the world of brand content is about to get a whole lot bigger, and publishers need to prepare by focusing on strategies to scale their sponsored content programs.

Content is about to get a whole lot bigger, thanks to AI creation

Companies will no longer be limited to having just a few people write their content. Instead, with automated content creation, brands can scale their content quickly and easily – and leverage their content resources to refine the messaging. This means less time spent creating individual pieces of quality content, allowing for more ideas and creativity to be explored on a grander scale. Companies may find themselves communicating with consumers in ways they never thought possible before.

This dynamic change in how brands approach content creation will undoubtedly open up new opportunities and heighten engagement between brands and customers. The content marketing problem will shift focus from resources required to generate impactful content to finding distribution partners that can prove a shift in brand consideration. We expect big changes on the horizon as AI-written content takes on an increasing presence in the market.

Brands will need help distributing all this new content to drive consumer consideration

With the ever-increasing influx of content, brands are truly facing a looming challenge. How can they keep up with the speed and quantity of new content while making sure it has an impact and drives consumer consideration? How will they know which content connects most with consumers?

The answer lies in strategic partnerships with publishers. For brands to be successful, they must find reliable partnerships that allow them to reach their target audiences quickly and efficiently.  Brands need experts and strategists who understand how to reach their customers and how to leverage optimization technologies to ensure the right brand content is served to ensure that readers are guided through the buyer’s journey. Reporting will shift from traditional advertising and attribution metrics to content and consideration insights such as lift studies, engagement, and audience insights.

Publishers are uniquely positioned to capitalize on this trend as they have a captive audience

This shift to AI-written content presents an opportunity for publishers to act as mediators between the content and its audience. Publishers have a captive audience and the expertise and experience necessary to ensure that all content reaches the right people in the most efficient manner possible. They can help brands successfully scale their content distribution quickly, efficiently, and accurately so that their message gets out loud and clear. Moreover, leveraging first-party data about their audience enables publishers to provide critical insights into how content is being consumed, as well as its impact on moving readers through their buyers’ journey.

But they’ll need to find innovative ways to scale their operations

We can expect content to explode around us, and for publishers to capitalize on this trend, they need to find effective ways to run their ad operations and make their sponsored content programs scaleable. That means if a publisher relies on manual processes, custom codes, and complex CMSes to run these premium programs they won’t be able to keep up with the sheer volume of sponsored content campaigns thrown at them. To meet the demands of our new digital landscape, organizations must figure out how best to automate their processes to scale sponsored content for brands.

How can publishers prepare for this explosion of content?

To meet the needs of brands adopting AI technology to scale the production of their content, publishers should focus on streamlining in a few key areas:

Campaign setup

Implement their own AI Content tools to suggest variations on existing content that can continually feed into optimization and reporting providing invaluable insight into content performance.

Also, with many publishers running sponsored content through their website CMS, we have found that programs run in this manner cannot meet high demands when sponsored content is sold at scale.

Campaign optimization

Machine learning optimization technology: AI will help draft the content, and publishers can provide content variation recommendations. When you feed this data into an optimization engine, campaign performance will inevitably see a lift and deliver valuable metrics into the type of content that resonates with a brand’s audience.

Opportunity awaits

Taking these steps now can give publishers a major edge in the rapidly changing landscape of brand content distribution. As AI-generated content becomes more prevalent, publishers can capitalize on this trend by finding innovative ways to scale their operations and become strategic mediators between brands and audiences.

Disclaimer: This article was written in part by AI.
Advertising | Marketing | Perspectives | Revenue | Supporter Spotlight

How sponsored content can strengthen revenue in a downturn

Amid growing uncertainty about the economic environment, it is wise for publishers to consider how to thrive and strengthen their revenue during the potential downturn. With economic uncertainty ahead, it is vital to understand how brands look to invest in marketing during 2023 to build a portfolio of offerings that support these strategies.

The situation

Typically marketing budgets decrease during an economic downturn. However, based on research done by Deloitte earlier this year, marketing spend has grown substantially over the last year. And, despite uncertainty at present, some bright spots stand out.

In the same Deloitte study, marketers stated they plan to increase their spending on DEI initiatives by 10.8% on average. And Hubspot reports that 83% of marketers are investing in higher-quality content. They also report that 80% of marketers expect to maintain or grow their budget for various inbound marketing activities – including content marketing, SEO, social media, and more – to reach and influence consumers at every stage of the buyer’s journey.

This data shows us that publishers would be wise to strengthen their content offering. These can include native advertising, sponsored content and even contextual targeting, all of which are ideal to help brands deliver their stories across publisher channels to reach these audiences.

The consumer perspective

Even at a potential downturn, brands seek opportunities to attract, delight, and engage. Therefore, it is essential to consider the reader and consumer preferences to support these efforts. So we must ask ourselves: what do consumers prefer? Ultimately they want to focus on the content they are trying to consume. 

According to an eMarketer report, over 40% of American adults think online ads seem to be aggressively following them. And this has led consumers to take control of their digital experience, with close to 47% of internet users now using ad blockers because they think there are too many ads online, according to GlobalWebIndex. 

However, according to a survey by Time Inc, close to 90% of younger internet audiences from Gen Z, millennials, and Gen X say that they prefer custom content, including native ads online, instead of traditional ads. This is an opportunity. 

This data shows that consumers are actively seeking ways to improve their web browsing experience and limit the distractions from the content they are seeking. We believe this will lead advertisers to start looking for strategies that do not distract from the reader experience to reach these consumers and improve campaign performance. 

A crisis of trust

Unfortunately, these days display ads just aren’t that effective: click-through rates are at just 0.05% across all platforms. This decline started years ago, and it is because consumers have lost trust in display; in fact, over 54% of users say that they don’t click banner ads due to a lack of trust.

Now, let’s look at social media. One reason that platforms like Facebook have come to dominate digital advertising is that they are able to provide advertising experiences that are seamlessly integrated into the consumers’ content. They offer opportunities for long-form editorial engagements, lower funnel activities like click-to-download, and short-form top-of-funnel branding executions, such as Instagram stories. 

But the reviews of social channels are not all bright either. Consumers increasingly distrust social platforms. According to Statista, 66% of consumers express concern about the accuracy of the content they see on social media. 

Even with this in mind, however, marketers are looking to invest more in short-form content. Hubspot found that 33% of B2C Marketers already invest in short-form content. While another 33% have yet to, but plan to do so for the first time in 2022.

What we see is that there is an appetite for this content. And, given growing distrust in social media, brands may be actively seeking ways to scale their efforts on the open web.

What do publishers offer to the industry? Trust

Publishers have built a robust ecosystem and relationship with their audiences. As we have said before, this trust can be utilized as a point of differentiation, especially when competing against programmatic offerings. When ad dollars are invested into more strategic initiatives, publishers must lean into the inherent trust they have built with their user base.

In a study by OpenX, 77% of people say they trust articles they see on open web websites more than those they read on social media channels. Pair this with the fact that 70% of consumers prefer to learn about new products and services through content rather than traditional advertising, publishers have the winning formula to provide high-value solutions to advertisers.

The winning formula

To thrive during any potential downturn, publishers need to create offerings that support the strategies brands are investing in for 2023. At the same time, they must maintain the inherent trust they have built with their audiences. To do that publishers must consider the following:

Privacy First 

Focus on solutions that don’t rely on third-party targeting. Rather than using invasive data practices, use content to attract, delight, and engage. This allows you to provide contextually relevant advertising solutions so brands meet their customers where they are in the purchasing journey.

Prioritize Premium 

Brands will look for unique ways to reach their customers, break through the noise, and remove the blindfolds of banner blindness. For digital publishers, that could mean leaning heavier on executions, such as sponsored content that allows brands to tell their stories, from new products to use cases and any DEI initiatives. Give brands the ability to scale their story beyond their audience and benefit from the trust publishers have built with their readers.

Integrate Short-form Content

As mentioned above, brands seek to invest in short-form content. To build a diverse revenue portfolio, publishers can offer solutions to run executions similar to Facebook and Instagram stories or TikTok’s short-form videos. This will allow advertisers to scale these strategies outside social channels within trusted environments.

With a downturn ahead, or not, aligning to meet brands where they are seeking to invest in 2023, will result in a win for publishers. Understand that content moves the needle for consumers. Advertising that places quality messages within trusted content will rise above the clutter. In particular, short form content offerings will allow publishers to integrate the social environment brands are seeking into the publisher site experience. 

Advertising | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

How publishers can differentiate their sponsored content initiatives

Sponsored content is making a comeback. In fact, according to a recent study conducted by the World Media Group, advertisers plan to increase or maintain their budgets in content-led advertising through trusted digital media channels. The study also revealed that brands are pursuing a “more sophisticated approach to brand integration in content.” 

Publishers are suited to capitalize on this significant change and take more control within the ecosystem resulting in more direct sales revenue. 

The (re)rise of sponsored content

In the new age of privacy-first advertising, leveraging content as part of campaigns will hold an even higher value. With many targeting strategies up in the air, advertisers must shift from seeking customers to attracting them through authentic content.

Many publishers offer sponsored content to deliver high-impact integrated programs through their direct and trusted relationships with readers. In fact, many publishers are in a powerful position because they have the behavioral data, such as time on content and content consumed, to understand their reader’s frame of mind while on their site.  

Empowered with this knowledge, they can build deep partnerships with advertisers by acting as a consultant on how to take their readers through a customer journey that helps tell the brand’s story while delivering on performance. From titles to imagery and ad placement, publishers have the audience intelligence to provide strategic direction for successful content production and execution.

In the end, publishers can deepen their relationships with brands by consulting on sponsored content. The proof can be found in Forbes’ success; the company attributes 40% of their direct revenue to their content solutions.

Future success requires evolution

However, as World Media Group’s research revealed, it isn’t enough to offer sponsored content anymore. Advertisers have become more sophisticated. And they expect more from their partners. 

Publishers must evolve and provide differentiation in these strategic areas:  

  1. Driving audiences to the content 
  2. Tracking beyond the pageview 
  3. Scaling efforts

First point of differentiation: owned and operated traffic

Leveraging 3rd party sources to drive audiences to sponsored content has worked well for years. But as advertiser expectations rise, so will the need to evolve the way publishers attract traffic. 

Publishers will need to scale their audiences and drive traffic from their owned and operated properties in this new era. It is a critical component of a publisher’s differentiation. That’s because consumers trust your brand, and advertisers are inclined to invest more into trusted media sources. 

Publishers that don’t have the scale within their owned and operated properties can create strategic partnerships with other publishers or networks to help drive traffic to sponsored content. And for those who have the means, the best option is to acquire new titles which offer greater control, profit, and scale of 1st party data. 

But getting your audience to the page is only a third of the battle. 

Second point of differentiation: thinking beyond pageviews

The next phase is measuring and optimizing to ensure the content drives engagement. We all know the importance of measurement. However, it has gotten more complex as privacy moves to the forefront of advertising. Pageviews will not suffice. So, onsite conversions offer an opportunity for publishers. 

Integrating elements such as forms for downloadable content, newsletter sign-ups, and calculators (to name a few) are ideal tactics to build an engagement tracking system. By coupling these engagements with content-based metrics such as scroll depth, publishers can optimize the placement of essential design elements to inspire engagement with the brand.  And by maintaining these opportunities within the publisher’s ecosystem and leveraging 1st party data, publishers can provide their advertiser’s deep insight into campaign performance and even attribution with these onsite conversion events. 

Third point of differentiation: scale execution

The final phase is scaling efforts to grow revenue through sponsored content. The tactics outlined traditionally require a hefty investment or impact labor resources. And from what we see, this is often the biggest roadblock to implementing these integrated advertising programs. 

Publishers need to embrace technology to scale these integrated advertising programs considering the full breadth of campaign management. This includes: 

  • Content Creation – strive for simplicity yet flexibility to enable creative, operations, and sales to build an integrated program quickly without sacrificing quality. Simplicity empowers pre-sales efforts and streamlines the content production process.
  • Campaign Management – should be seamless. In the new era of content-led advertising, sponsored content should integrate with publisher CMSs and serve sponsored content seamlessly into the site.
  • Optimization – Beyond DCO, operations will have more elements to optimize. Thus, they will find the tools that can deliver optimization across the integrated program and which will enable operations to focus on campaign and client strategy.

Just as sponsored content evolves, so will the need for strategies and solutions to support its growth. Advertisers expect audience addressability, trusted partnerships, and ultimately an opportunity to tell their story. Today’s publishers need to focus on innovation to capitalize on sponsored content’s renewed opportunity in addressing advertiser expectations. 

Industry-Research

Does sponsored content influence broader news agendas?

Sponsored content plays a sizeable role in publishers’ revenue model. According to eMarketer, ad spend on sponsored content in 2021 neared $57 billion. Advertisers find the high production quality of today’s sponsored content a compelling marketing vehicle. As a result, audiences often find it difficult to differentiate between sponsor content and actual news content. Therefore, the FTC requires publishers to label it as advertising. As the market for it grows, it’s essential to understand how the publishers’ production and reliance on sponsored content affects news content.

An advertising quandary

While sponsored content has been around a long time, it’s grown significantly in the past 10 years in the digital media sector. Marketers value the “halo effect” of a publisher’s editorial integrity offering strong reader engagement. Sponsored content is usually a narrative, which contrasts with display and video ads. It often includes custom video, interactive elements, and high-end graphic designs.

Many premium publishers have content studios dedicated to creating sponsored content. The New York Times (NYT) launched T Brand Studio, The Washington Post (WP) owns BrandStudio, and The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has The Trust. 

A recent article by Michelle Amazeen looks at how sponsored content relates to the coverage news organizations create. She explores whether sponsored content boosts or reduces the amount of media coverage for corporations that invest in it. Amazeen conducted research with Christopher Vargo, Agenda-Cutting Versus Agenda-Building: Does Sponsored Content Influence Corporate News Coverage in U.S. Media, to analyze these questions.

Research methodology

In a two-step process, Amazeen and Vargo identified 27 sponsored content articles in WP, the NYT, and WSJ across five years. They first scraped the content studios’ Twitter accounts to identify sponsored content links. They then used a custom Bing program to search for sponsored content links inside the news websites. The 27 sponsors include Verizon, Airbus, Volvo, American Petroleum Institute, Dow Jones, Qualcomm, Holiday Inn, Huawei, Purdue Pharma, Netflix, Gartner, Subaru, Oracle, Fox Sports, Deloitte, Walmart, Nordstrom, Allergan, Accenture, Lockheed Martin, Samsung, IBM, Wells Fargo, MetLife, Delta Air Lines, Aetna, and Starz.

The researchers then used the Global Database of Events Language and Tone (GDELT), a news article database, to match sponsored content mentions of corporations and brands to articles matching the corporate or brand sponsor. In all, they found 2,707 articles related to the companies and brands sponsoring content. 

Analysis details

The research assessed the relationship of corporate sponsorship to news coverage of the same company across time. The analysis evaluated whether publishers filtered and shaped their news accordingly to accommodate corporate sponsorship. This practice is known as agenda setting. It refers to how the news publishers can influence which issues become the focus of public attention. In the case of sponsored content, publishers can add news coverage of a company and brand or reduce and cut their news coverage.

They divided the news articles into two segments for further analysis:

  • Elite publishers (NYT, WP, and WSJ), and
  • General (non-premium) news media landscape.

Omitting any seasonality mentions (i.e., earning calls), 20 of the 27 sponsored content companies showed at least one instance of agenda cutting or agenda building. 

Further, of the 27 brands analyzed, only three companies showed an agenda-building effect among elite publishers: Huawei, Qualcomm, and Purdue Pharma. Amazeen and Vargo conclude that agenda building is a less likely occurrence with sponsored content companies or brands.

In addition, seven brands showed significant agenda-cutting effects among premium publishers: Netflix, Nordstrom, Starz, Wells Fargo, Aetna, Oracle, and Qualcomm. The researchers also found a significantly higher agenda-cutting effects across the entire U.S. media landscape — 14 companies and brands.

Amazeen and Vargo acknowledge that the news media is not immune to internal and external forces in their newsrooms. Publishers often set guidelines for creative and narrative executions in content studios. Amazeen and Vargo suggest publishers monitor and develop measures to assess the additional news coverage or lack of for companies and brands of sponsored content.

Advertising | Featured Post | Innovation

How USA Today balanced advertiser and consumer expectations in its latest redesign

One of the biggest challenges facing any digital publisher is how to balance the often-competing needs of readers and advertisers. Brands may want visibility, but how do you ensure their presence doesn’t negatively impact the site’s look and feel? And how do you deliver the best possible user experience in a way that continues to deliver results to advertisers?

The product team at USAToday kept these challenges top of mind while working on its slick site overhaul unveiled late last year– its first major redesign since 2012. Among the most noticeable changes are faster speeds, different colored sections, clearer content labeling, more intuitive navigation and a more integrated presentation of sponsored content.

Doing the research

“Over the years we’ve collected a lot of information from both advertisers and users on what they want from us,” says Nicole Dingess, Senior Director of Product Design and User Experience Team at Gannett, USA Today’s parent company. “Our advertising clients had been saying they wanted something that felt special, and they kept using the word ‘premium’. So, we really dug into that and asked what they meant.”

After some questioning, most brands revealed they wanted to feel like a part of the content: “They don’t want a logo slapped on like an afterthought, they wanted something thoughtful that gave them presence.”

At the same time, the team also wanted to better serve their users, whether they came to them through search, social or homepage. “We describe our desktop users as our most loyal users – they’ll read three articles on average. And they’re the kind of folks that will engage with a 200-page photo gallery,” explains Dingess. “When people come from social, they want to know whether the article is what the headline said it was. We needed to meet their expectations and keep them engaged.”

Refined goals

With this in mind, the team set about work with three main goals: transparency, greater personalization for advertisers, and a more respectful user experience featuring faster speeds.

To improve the user experience, the team created new section colors to make it more obvious whether someone is reading a news story, opinion piece, or lifestyle content such as Travel. One of the most noticeable features is that op-eds now feature a ‘virtual highlighter’, clearly differentiating them from news pieces.  “We need to help consumers understand what it is they’re taking in,” says Dingess.

On the homepage the team created “section bundles” to help readers locate the latest content and ensure they’re up to date with the day’s latest news. “We’re doing organization for them. It’s quickly scannable, and then they can go deep into articles if they want,” says Dingess. They also came up with new ways to offer special content to users, such as investigative pieces or a podcast series, by adding pathways in the masthead. “We can catch your eye and reveal USA Today content that you might not otherwise know about.”

A premium experience

In order to satisfy advertisers’ needs, the team developed a page template to present sponsored content in a more natural-feeling way. “If someone sponsors a section, they get the background color as their brand color, so it feels very immersive,” she says. “Their logo is on the masthead, making it feel integrated rather than ‘stuck on’.”

Of course, user and advertiser needs can sometimes clash. Therefore, balancing these two goals at all times was the team’s biggest challenge. “We looked at every decision through those different lenses,” she says. “We needed to make sure we were not over-investing in one at the cost of another.”

A rigorous testing method was applied to ensure that all goals were being hit. “The team often had their own thoughts about what might be tripping people up or what could change, but we wanted to get a sense of how users were interacting,” she says. They used a card sorting exercise to test out the navigation, and each article layout was also put through user testing.

The big reveal

The final redesign was released to 2% of the website’s users. Then, after about a month of refinement, the site was rolled out to everyone.

Thus far, Dingess says the team has gotten “fantastic feedback” on the user experience, the site speed and the new premium look and feel. Advertisers and users alike are also fans of the clearer labeling of content. Overall, she says, “we’re hearing that the site’s much easier to use.”

One of the most discussed aspects of the redesign is the fact that comments on articles have been removed – a move in line with many other publishers, such as Vice and The Guardian. “We’d received feedback over time that people disliked the comments,” says Dingess. “Internally, we need to have an ongoing conversation about the role of commenting and what alternatives we might put out there, or how we might improve the experience.”

Overall, Dingess is confident the team has created an excellent base that will allow for tweaks and improvements as and when necessary. “We’ve built a solid foundation that we can refine over time, and we intend to do that,” she concludes.

Innovation | Revenue

Can brand content help solve a murder?

Sponsored content is not a new thing; paid advertorials have been around for more than a century. But there’s no denying that branded content has become a significant part of the marketing mix and media revenue generation in recent years. Certainly, the deftness with which deep contextual connections can be made in digital has been a driver of demand. Even more interesting is that this desire for context is also driving experimentation and creativity when it comes to branded content storytelling.

Guardian Labs US, the branded content studio of Guardian News and Media, recently launched a brand journalism campaign for Amazon’s Bosch series that colors way outside the lines of the traditional advertorial template. With a nod to the popular cold-case crime genre (notably the stunningly successful podcast series, Serial), the branded content team at Guardian Labs created the series How to Solve a Murder.

Branded content strategist Jill Hilbrenner says that—sponsored or not—this is the type of story The Guardian likes to tell. She cites its coverage of The Grim Sleeper case—which also examined a cold case from the 1980s. “Something we often hear at Guardian Labs is that consumers are looking for authenticity of content and storytelling.” So, when she created How to Solve a Murder (with the financial support of Amazon), she sought to deliver compelling journalism that aligns with The Guardian’s editorial standards.

According to Rachael Post, director of branded content at Guardian Labs, Amazon came to them with clear conceptual guidelines that relate to the premise of its Bosch series, which is about an LAPD homicide detective: They wanted the story to be based upon a cold case that involved Los Angeles or Las Vegas and included a detective. Then they set the Guardian Labs team loose to uncover and deliver a compelling tale.

The series—clearly labeled “Paid for by Bosch-Amazon”—explores the murder of teenaged Kari Lenander through the lens of a LAPD detective who spent years searching for her killer. According to Veronika Cernadas, who handles media and public affairs, The Guardian “is very serious about wanting to be transparent because we stand for open, transparent journalism.” This applies to all aspects of the company’s endeavors. So while How to Solve a Murder was written with a high degree of editorial autonomy, clear labeling was essential.

Hilbrenner points out there are likely to be those who are skeptical of any content that is sponsored, though she is confident that, given the quality of reporting and storytelling, readers will come away satisfied. In fact, she says that reaction to the series thus far has been highly positive, with significant discussion on social media around the forensic techniques used in the investigation, crowdsourcing of clues and tweets by author Michael Connelly, who wrote the books on which the Bosch series is based.

“We were pleased that we were trusted to do what we do best: Tell stories worth telling,” says Hilbrenner. She also says that it is possible that this model of sponsorship could afford coverage opportunities for stories that might not otherwise receive attention.” As Post points out, “we live in a very reactive news climate and investigative doesn’t always get the attention it needs even on the news side.”

While The Guardian Labs may be testing out a means of sponsoring stories worth telling, Post says that they are definitely focused on helping brands tell good stories that align with their marketing objectives “but push the envelope a little bit.”

Innovation | Video

Great Big Story: CNN-backed, newsworthy content that’s not news

Big media companies are investing in content that attracts younger audiences, as evidenced by Time Inc.’s purchase of Hello Giggles this week and NBCUniversal’s recent investment in Vox and Buzzfeed. Now Turner-owned CNN has announce its own bid for this massive and attractive segment with the launch of Great Big Story, an independent video network, focused on “unparalleled and optimistic storytelling.” According to co-founder Chris Berend, CNN’s Vice president for video development, “our internal mantra is ‘humans are capable of incredible things.’”

And that, according to Berend, includes the Great Big Story (GBS) team, who he has tasked with “showing me something I’ve never seen before in terms of the stories themselves and the way the stories are told.” At launch, this will take the form of three to five videos of varying lengths each day (with a short film due out in November). Subjects include: The Untold Story of the Kool-Aid Man, Perfect is Hard, Featuring Misty Copeland, and What it’s Like to Fly Into a Hurricane (On Purpose), and a profile of Lisa Frank, the reclusive creative mind behind iconic rainbow and unicorn-centric designs featured on a slew of familiar products.

GBS launches with a staff of about 30, including recruits from BuzzFeed, Vox, VICE, MTV, ABC, NowThis, Amazon, and Yahoo!. The unit will operate as an independent company inside CNN. Yet, while GBS’s funding comes from CNN, Berend says that they are very clear with themselves and others that they’re not a news brand, though he points out that the type of stories they plan to tell function as news for this audience in many ways.

Berend believes that there is a vast audience that has been given short shrift in terms of appealing and appropriate content: “We have been seeing a huge underserved audience that traditional media is not resonating with and that wants more than the silliness and cynicism that is out there.” Their target audience is 25-35-year-olds who are well-educated, live in cities and, by nature of the way they operate in the world, are globally-savvy. They live on mobile and social and have an affinity for civically-minded, lifestyle, socially-conscious and, yes, entertaining content.

Given this demographic’s content consumption habits, GBS focuses its distribution strategy on mobile and social channels. While the brand debuts with a website—and iOS and Android apps—the primary distribution focus is social so they can find audiences where they are already consuming content. This includes Facebook and plans for YouTube, Apple News, Snapchat and more in starting in November. Connected TVs are also on the near-term roadmap.

GBS launches with a multi-year investment from CNN and a focus on branded content as the primary revenue stream. Eschewing traditional pre-roll advertising, the plan is “to collaborate with brands to figure out what kinds of stories they have to tell.” According to Berend, initial sales calls have been very positive because “we are hitting a very desirable audience,” but also because brands increasingly understand that content helps them forge more meaningful connections with consumers.

For CNN, which green-lit the project in February after quietly testing the concept through its social channels, Berend says this offers a way to engage an audience that “is growing fast and moving quickly.” In turn, CNN offers the GBS team “a lot of advantages that any startup would kill for” including deep video acumen, amplification and traffic driven from its owned and operated properties as well as its strong social presence. The relationship with established parent, CNN, also opens doors, according to Berend. We are able to get people to talk to us because they know we’re affiliated with CNN, which is legitimate and reliable.”

“We have a giant brand that does news, but also an audience that is starving for content in their social feed and on their phones.” And GBS will be there to feed that need with content that is “enjoyable, entertaining, and helps them learn something.” Because that’s what they read and, perhaps even more importantly, “that’s what they share.”

Perspectives | Uncategorized

Lessons Learned from Verizon’s Branded Content Fumble

Over the past week or so, several good pieces have been published about the Verizon-sponsored technology news site SugarString, each offering some excellent insights for organizations seeking to create their own content-centric site or to create sponsored content distributed elsewhere:

Verizon is launching a tech news site that bans stories on U.S. spying
(The Daily Dot, October 28, 2014)

The Daily Dot article focuses on the inherent dilemma created by a purported “news site” that expressly forbids its reporters “from writing about American spying or net neutrality around the world, two of the biggest issues in tech and politics today.”

Verizon fired back at The Daily Dot saying “SugarString is open to all topics that fit its mission and elevate the conversation around technology.”

Takeaway: Brands venturing into developing their own content sites – particularly news-focused ones – must work doubly hard to convince readers they are providing a fair and transparent view.

Is a news site a news site if it’s published by Verizon?
(Washington Post, October 31, 2014)

Washington Post blogger Nancy Scola takes a close look at the “thoughtful, tech-focused stories that track humanity’s climb toward what’s next.” She finds that, “to date, the site’s articles have been focused on simply affirming the mobile tech lifestyle.”

Scola also wisely raises the issue of labeling the content as branded content, pointing out that if this content appeared on a traditional media outlet, it would be labeled something along the lines of “sponsored advertising.” She also finds the small “Presented by Verizon tags” to be of questionable value in terms of transparency.

Takeaway: Clear labeling is unequivocally a best practice for any branded content, but it doesn’t solve the issues around value and transparency. In addition, given the variety of places content is consumed (social, mobile, etc.), creating labeling that works in any context remains a challenge.

Journalism, Independent and Not
(New York Times, November 2, 2014)

In his The Media Equation Column, David Carr writes that he stumbled across SugarString and found its coverage of privacy somewhat baffling…until he noticed some “teeny type that said ‘This article was written by an author contracted by Verizon.’”

Carr calls out a slew of other branded content sites in a variety of subject areas, some better than others, wisely noting that “publishing looks easy, but is filled with peril.” For Carr, the Verizon foray into brand-underwritten news is a cautionary tale about what we may have to do to fund the creation of content now and in the future.

Takeaway: Creating engaging, credible and trustworthy content, particularly news, is challenging even for mature media companies; brands diving in for the first time should check the water’s depth and err on the cautious side

Undoubtedly, others will continue to pick apart Verizon’s foray into creating its own tech news site to drive awareness and build its brand through content. Certainly, experimentation is important, but transparency and delivering valuable information that users can trust must be at the top of the list for any content initiative.

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