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Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight | Video

3 tips for driving more video output

A well-produced video can expand your audience, drive loyalty, and increase the value of your digital content. Because audience demand and expectations are so high, digital publishers are now forced to produce engaging video content faster than ever before and in much more significant quantities.

But accelerating video production doesn’t have to come at the cost of quality. A streamlined approach to creating compelling video content can be easy if you follow three steps.

1. Simplify your production

The barrier to entry with video production used to be enormous. The tools to create the content required special training and a steep learning curve. Today, new video product solutions are designed with intuitive tools and user-friendly interfaces that empower users with no specialized training to generate and air studio-quality content much more quickly.

Although sophisticated content should still have a place in your content calendar, breaking news waits for no one, and being the first to air with critical information can be a valuable advantage for grabbing viewers’ attention. In addition, you can go live quickly when severe weather strikes or threats to public safety. Finally, equipping your team with tools to create these videos will remove bottlenecks when posting content.

Also, be sure to find a tool that enables your teams to create videos using their laptops or mobile phones from virtually anywhere with an internet connection. Think of these solutions not as a replacement for professional production workstations but as a way to extend their capabilities. The tools often use a browser-based interface and cloud capabilities to access content, graphics, and production tools remotely, allowing users to report on breaking news and weather stories immediately.

2. Use pre-created templates

A repository of professional and pre-created templates can help you quickly publish updates using high-quality videos that engage audiences and build trust. Simply populate these pre-made templates with essential information so you can be the first to air when news breaks.

Consider templates that embed a customizable lower-third or brand logo. Also, look for templates that leverage a two-box format showing two speakers or one speaker alongside associated video footage or B-roll.

Alternatively, you can place the speaker in the bottom left corner, as vital information is displayed more prominently in the middle of the screen. Some solutions also offer map templates if your story relates to a specific location or geographical area.

Experiment with different templates to determine what works best across your digital platforms. You can find which templates will extend watch time or increase engagement by testing different kinds of content and formats. This information will help your team as they decide which templates to use when news breaks.

3. Add more voices to the screen

Fake news is an increasing concern for viewers in the U.S., particularly on social media. Adding expert opinions from inside and outside your organization can improve the credibility of your content while increasing overall productivity and driving new monetization opportunities.

Remote broadcasting capabilities make the process of creating meaningful content with new and diverse voices to your content far simpler. With the right tools, you can incorporate experts, thought leaders, and sponsors with the click of a button, regardless of their location.

This approach is effective across content categories. For weather, feature experts from impacted and adjacent areas to help viewers understand the extent of a weather event and respond accordingly. For sports or elections, interview local correspondents to add more context and relevance. You can also offer digital sponsorship packages such as native ads that include sponsor interviews, improve campaign effectiveness, and increase viewer satisfaction. For example, you may include a technician from a local heating and air-services sponsor to share tips on reducing energy usage in the summer.

Adding these new perspectives and insights will also help you produce unique content that may be reformatted and repurposed for different audiences and platforms, generating further revenue opportunities.

Better video starts here

Exceptional video content is essential to any good digital content strategy.

By leveraging these tips when choosing a video storytelling tool, you can accelerate your output without adding resources and attract a bigger audience and more advertisers.

About the author

Jim Politis is part of the Max Weather solutions product management team at The Weather Company, where he focuses on Max Velocity, Max Engage, and Max Social. He was first part of the Max Quality Assurance team, and over the last decade at The Weather Company, Jim has been involved with nearly every product within the Max ecosystem. Prior to joining The Weather Company, Jim served as a broadcast meteorologist in Iowa. He has a Bachelor of Science degree in meteorology and an associate’s degree in computer science from Northern Vermont University-Lyndon.

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 take advantage of the holiday spending boom

Despite a looming recession, this holiday season looks bright for marketers and consumers alike. And there are definitely opportunities for publishers. A third of marketers plan to ramp up promotional efforts between now and December. On the consumer side, forecasts point toward spending upwards of $150 billion worldwide on Black Friday alone, with holiday online sales climbing 3% year over year. For publishers eager to sell valuable holiday inventory, Q4 2022 presents an opportunity to capitalize on retail’s biggest season.

2022 has also seen the continued expansion of Universal Identifiers, data clean rooms, and other cookieless targeting solutions that support privacy-compliant identity-driven advertising. Privacy concerns have led marketers to embrace these technologies to keep consumers’ information safe while ensuring they have access to the latest targeted product offerings. 

At the forefront of these developments is cookie-less advertising. As much as 40% of mobile web traffic is unaddressable without cookie-less solutions, making their adoption an urgent opportunity to expand the impact of marketing efforts. 

To take advantage of strong consumer tailwinds building up to Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and beyond, now is the time for publishers to amplify their marketing efforts with the latest in privacy-friendly, identity-driven targeting. 

Strike deals to capitalize on high demand

Q4 is the time of year when advertisers will be most eager to buy, and publishers most eager to sell. In addition, the quarter offers a unique opportunity for publishers to leverage their inventory to meet the pent-up demand of a post-pandemic economy. These circumstances come with benefits for both parties.

Brand marketers will be looking to hit their annual goals during a quarter when a large percentage of their sales are expected to come through. Retailers will have valuable inventory they need to offload before the season ends. These pressures incentivize deal-making and could help publishers snag highly valuable direct deals that could turn into lasting relationships with advertisers.

Publishers can accelerate deals and stand out from the competition by taking measures to capitalize on higher ad spend during the holiday season. For example, they may try out media formats that they would generally avoid, such as sticky ad footers that better capture audience attention. Publishers may also consider packaging custom audiences, day parts, or ad products to lure brands. By laying out how they can help advertisers hit their year-end goals, publishers can benefit from this holiday season and beyond. 

Use first-party data and transparent metrics to stand out

Some marketers are facing tighter budgets given uncertain economic conditions. On the positive side, challenging times shine a light on measurable, cost-effective and privacy-friendly marketing tactics and channels. Digital media companies with first-party audience relationships and metrics have the opportunity to make the case that they offer this channel — in which case, concerns about marketing spend could become a business driver and competitive differentiator.

The key to standing out in the ad market is for publishers to make the most of the information available to them. Equip advertisers with the tools to accurately analyze results, proving to their CFO and other internal stakeholders that spending with your company is part of a strategy that drives meaningful ROI. Also, make the case that effective advertising is not just about reaching audiences at scale; it’s about reaching them in the high-quality, trusted environments that publishers provide.

Plus, if economic conditions do lead to a decrease in ad spend, there are benefits to some brands pulling back. In the past, aggressive organizations have gained lasting market share by getting in front of customers when rivals fled. In the event of mixed economic messages this holiday season, publishers who can make this case to advertisers will be the most prepared to succeed.

Experiment with cookieless audience targeting 

New anti-tracking rules and regulations are an opportunity for publishers to get ahead in digital advertising. First-party data sets them up to provide audience targeting and analytics around content themes. Solutions like creative data partnerships, data clean rooms, and identity recognition can help scale offerings. These tools can allow publishers to be their own best advocates, helping advertisers target audiences in the market for their products, consensually measure impact across channels, and prove ROI. 

Importantly, these solutions are not only available to digital media companies that focus on fulfilling programmatic demand. Organizations that focus on direct sales – which are enjoying a resurgence given the increased value of first-party audiences – can also incorporate identity-driven targeting and cross-platform measurement into their ad products. 

With regulations like the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) taking effect in the new year, now is the time to start testing solutions and take advantage of the forecasted spending boom in Q4. Publishers can prepare by arming themselves with the tools to help advertisers understand the impact of their dollars. If they do that, they’ll be able to maximize the value of their rich content and first-party audiences while earning the Q4 budgets advertisers are eager to spend. And they’ll get ahead of competitors who will be scrambling to get compliant for the CPRA in January.

photo at table level of open laptop on table displaying data dashboard with charts
Innovation | Perspectives | Revenue | Supporter Spotlight

Five ways publishers are reducing costs with automation

Faced with challenging economic realities, more publishers are looking to artificial intelligence to improve content performance and ensure that each cent invested generates the maximum return. AI can increase ROI in many ways — two stand out for publishers: optimizing decisions at scale using real-time and granular data, thus leading to better performance and yield, and automating tedious, repetitive tasks, thus reducing expenditures of time and cost required for these processes.

There is a perception that only larger publishers can successfully integrate AI and automation, given their greater financial resources to invest in developing and implementing AI systems. But advances in AI technology mean this is no longer the case. Ready-made, third-party AI solutions require far fewer resources and can be implemented within the existing framework of a publisher’s workflow, producing great benefits for publishers of all sizes.

Let’s examine how AI benefits content distribution strategies in particular and outline five ways publishers are incorporating AI to reduce costs and boost ROI.

AI in action

Newsweek adopted automation to save time on curating and sharing content to social media while boosting reach and performance. By integrating artificial intelligence into its workflow, Newsweek saves over 20 hours per week while doubling referral traffic from Facebook. 

“It takes a lot of time out of the day to post new content, recycle a ton of content, and everything else you’re supposed to do in an 8-hour workday,” Adam Silvers, Newsweek’s Associate Director of Strategy explained, highlighting why the team initially turned to automation, and why AI has become indispensable to Newsweek’s workflows: “There’s no question about the benefit.”

Five ways automation can reduce costs for publishers

  1. Scale and enhance teams’ output at no additional cost: Not all publishers have the resources to dedicate staff to managing and optimizing content distribution. For these small teams, AI can be a cost-effective solution to ensure coverage without additional staff investments. 

    Publishers can automate the entire workflow of distributing content — from selecting content to writing and posting messages at the optimal time — without requiring human involvement. Email — another key distribution channel for publishers — can also benefit heavily from AI, allowing publishers to fully automate the entire process of curating, personalizing, and sending newsletters. 

    Non-profit news outlet San Antonio Report takes advantage of intelligent automation to power its social media presence without a single staff member dedicated to social media, saving on people costs while generating important online engagement with its content.
  1. Automate to extend coverage without requiring more resources: Large and small newsrooms alike use automation to fill gaps and supplement their existing structures. Publishers such as the South China Morning Post (SCMP) augment their social media teams with automation to save time and cover unsociable hours. With a global audience, SCMP uses automation to ensure 24/7 coverage and remain responsive to trends or stories that break overnight or on the weekend without needing to invest in out-of-hours staff.
  1. Use AI to maintain referral traffic and revenue despite algorithm changes: Facebook is the most important social media platform for publishers by a long shot. Despite news of slowing user growth, Facebook generates the most traffic for publishers from the largest global audience.

    Understanding the intricacies of Facebook’s algorithm is therefore vital, especially as the company makes fundamental changes to the way in which content is surfaced. Social media algorithms are constantly changing, from slight tweaks to substantial overhauls. By employing AI technology, publishers can stay responsive to these changes with software that monitors vast datasets to discern patterns and trends. They can react quickly to the findings. Publishers using AI in this way ensure constant and automatic protection against platforms’ algorithm changes that can severely impact referral traffic and, therefore, ad revenue. 
  1. Use AI to extend content’s lifespan and value: Every story requires a significant investment to produce, and AI is helping publishers ensure they extract maximum value from each piece by optimizing reach and exposure. 

    One example comes from social media. Reposting stories on social platforms is a highly cost-effective means of maintaining a robust supply of social content, leveraging a publisher’s archives, and increasing engagement. Our research shows that reposted content offers significant value, gaining an average of 67% of the clicks a piece generated the first time around. 

    But it is more complex than just reposting the best-performing articles. AI constantly calculates the right time to post (an aspect as important as the content itself in generating engagement) and reshares posts automatically, earning additional exposure at no extra cost.
  1. Use AI to avoid costly guesswork and gain new insights: Understanding your audience is perhaps the single most important element of a social media strategy that drives ROI. AI has a few important uses in this regard. 

    Publishers like Hello! and The Telegraph run A/B tests on Facebook posts, not only to increase performance but, in the case of The Telegraph, to demonstrate the efficacy of certain stylistic choices, such as a shorter headline.

    AI-powered testing can work hand-in-hand with journalists, editorial and social media staff to generate greater ROI from audience development by automating the process or even suggesting subjects to test based on algorithmic analysis. 

    Publishers are also using AI in a similar way with their email newsletters. AI solutions can run continuous and complex multivariate tests to better optimize emails for individual subscribers, testing everything from the ordering of content to layouts and fonts. In this way, publishers are increasing engagement with their newsletter campaigns — a key aspect of keeping subscription numbers high — without needing to invest more time.

The bottom line

As their cost decreases and use cases multiply, AI solutions will become only more prominent within the industry. 

AI technology can fulfill multiple roles: data analyst, social media manager, and audience development manager, to name but a few. By leveraging its power, publishers can generate significant efficiency gains, reduce costs, and free up vital human resources to focus on activities that elaborate their distinct value proposition and ultimately drive ROI.

About the author

Antoine Amann is the Founder and CEO of Echobox, the leading solution for publishing automation used by 1,500 brands worldwide to automate and optimize content curation and distribution.

Marketing | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

How to resource your team for effective subscription marketing

As we approach the end of 2022, it’s never too early to plan promotions and set an end-of-year calendar for your organization.

These initiatives often require buy-in from the whole company. While editorial and marketing teams often lead the effort, product, technology, ad sales and senior leaders all play important roles. That’s especially true when an organization is shifting from an advertising-first strategy, focused on pageviews and engagement, to a user-centered strategy. The entire team will need to be aligned on KPIs and work together to execute the digital subscription strategy.

Key roles for successful subscription marketing

The most successful subscription publishers have dedicated resources for their digital subscription business that allow them to market their offerings nimbly, and continuously optimize their efforts. For those building or growing their teams, the following roles are foundational for success:

Head of consumer revenue

A senior revenue leader directly influences the future of the company and its business model, focusing on sales and everything that drives them, like marketing campaigns and product pricing.

This individual sets group goals and KPIs and typically is not executing day-to-day efforts, but does ensure campaigns are focused on the proper channels and customers, using the most impactful messaging. The head of consumer revenue usually has product knowledge and understands what makes the product unique and valuable to users in order to monetize it.

Marketing manager

A marketing manager is typically the person who oversees day-to-day marketing campaigns.

They possess experience identifying target audiences and executing campaigns that target, engage, and convert users throughout the customer journey.

This person should have a background in digital marketing or audience engagement to be most successful at understanding the audience and how to serve them with the right message at the right time in the most impactful way. Their goals are to enhance sales and remind existing users of their benefits. Subscriptions aren’t a set-it-and-forget-it business, so the marketing manager is also important for testing different aspects of the user experience to constantly be iterating and improving campaigns.

Creative team

Every publisher needs a resource with a creative mindset to help provide a frictionless UX while adhering to company brand guidelines. In many organizations, copy comes from the marketing manager and then designers ensure the look, feel and messaging of the campaign are aligned.

When design and copy are complete, a front-end developer may build templates to use with the software that’s serving promotions. Developers are often shared resources, so we always recommend creating templates with content fields whenever possible so that others on the marketing team can create variations—updating messaging, changing headlines, moving forward with new tests or promotions, etc.—without that technical background.

Data team

It’s helpful to have data analysts working closely across functions to help marketers understand what audience segments they are looking at and what information they have about them. Based on this performance, data experts can then help enhance segmentation and build out additional campaigns. They can answer questions like, where are the low-hanging fruit? Where can you drive business? How are campaigns performing among specific audience segments? Where is there an opportunity to iterate and improve results?

As a subscription business grows, the data team ultimately plays a critical role in benchmarking KPIs like cost of acquisition, customer lifetime value, retention rates and more. More sophisticated data scientists can also provide attribution models, revenue forecasting, or even come up with creative algorithms to segment your audience.

Tech team

Although they might not be needed on a daily basis, having a technical team that can support your business is very important. This group is aware and understands the technical objectives and gains knowledge of systems and processes, learning how relevant data is leveraged throughout the organization. They can also make sure integrations are functional and that data is passed correctly between systems, which is important for making strategic recommendations around price, revenue, etc.

If there’s a single most important factor in successfully marketing a subscription program, it’s having a top leader in the newsroom and someone on the business side engaged and in agreement that subscriptions are the priority. The group can build a marketing team to be responsible for executing this strategy.

How trials & promotions can help

Depending on how complex your organization’s audience segmentation is, trials and promotions can be worthwhile for all segments if they’re well-planned and used appropriately. How can you plan now to offer the right trials and promotions in the coming months?

Trials are a way to offer sampling; in other words, trying the product before a user makes a long-term and possibly expensive commitment. In subscription, these can have a big impact on conversion rate: At Piano, we’ve seen between a 20% and 150% lift in conversions after users enter a trial period.

However, free trials on annual subscriptions are not recommended. These typically result in very low retention rates and negate much of the benefit of offering a trial in the first place. One exception is to offer introductory pricing for annual subscribers. This can be an effective way to incentivise choosing a longer subscription.

Nonetheless, promotions are a way to encourage conversion among users who might otherwise consider a product too expensive, or who previously passed on an offer to subscribe. Through pricing research, you should be able to map out a revenue curve that helps you understand what different user segments might be willing to pay and how that impacts your overall revenue projections.

Running promotions creates a sense of urgency and pushes users to convert: At Piano, we’ve seen a 64% lift in revenue during a month with promotional offers, relative to the month prior. But the key is making these promotions targeted, temporary and irregular. Keep the offers in the market for a week or two at most, allowing the most motivated, price-sensitive users to respond.

The right team will help guide you on the effectiveness and performance of trials and promotions. With strong leadership, there’s still time to put in place a strong subscription marketing plan for the rest of the year and beyond.

Innovation | Revenue | Supporter Spotlight

3 lessons from National Journal’s digital transformation

Uncertain market dynamics are forcing many businesses to shift course. But how many publishers can actually point to hard data to say that they’ve not only radically altered their business practices, but those changes have made a material impact in how they drive revenue?

That’s exactly what Kevin Turpin and his team have done at National Journal. They’ve engineered a complete overhaul of the company’s business model. From a traditional media advertising model, to an information services company with an ever-growing number of digital products and services, they’re helping government affairs professionals navigate policy, politics, and people. 

Over the course of that evolution, the share of National Journal’s revenue from advertising went from 50% to 3% in just five years as the company shifted its business model to membership subscriptions and custom research engagements.

Turpin joined 3Pillar Global’s Innovation Engine podcast to talk about this remarkable digital transformation and share some learnings that can help anyone looking to spark digital innovation at their own organizations.

1. Invest to differentiate, not just improve

Tighter competition makes digital transformation a necessity. But that transformation needs to have a purpose. National Journal knew that it had to “buckle down” and invest in being competitive. But the company first had to step back and decide who it was competing against.

Turpin recalled a direct quote from National Journal’s chairman David Bradley, “Always make the investment to be different in kind, not degree.” So rather than try to be faster or better than their media competitors, the National Journal team looked at the bigger picture. Google and Facebook were altering the market, making it “harder and harder to be successful in that ecosystem, especially if you’re producing something that was only different in degree,” Turpin said.

“Our decision was, let’s choose the hard road and let’s recreate. Let’s create anew what National Journal is and that really pushed us to certainly the more aggressive approach, which was totally transforming what our business was,” he said.

2. Failure to evolve opens the door to disruption

Digital transformation isn’t a one-time decision. It requires constant evolution to keep pace with other competitors. Once National Journal realized that its transformation would move it away from a traditional ad-supported media company to an information company, it began looking at the kinds of services that it could provide its member clients.

Once again, Turpin and his team did this with a great deal of intentionality. Customers’ market challenges do not stay the same year after year, and the future of the company depends on keeping up to date with what its members need to succeed.

“You can get shifted out of a budget line if you’re not sure what challenges are driving your members at a given time,” Turpin said.

To develop the products that have become National Journal’s main revenue driver, Turpin’s team always starts by listening to member needs. They want to know where the puck is going so they can help their members now and in the future.

“We always start with asking our members questions like, ‘What’s keeping you awake at night this year? What new things are you investing in that you didn’t invest in a year ago, that you didn’t invest in five years ago? What’s the number one priority that your boss is asking you to complete this year?” Turpin explained.

3. Transformation is only possible with accountability

Sustainable transformation can be challenging with limited resources. National Journal’s process is to make sure that its products are actually meeting the needs of its customers, and that requires the discipline to see each product launch all the way through, but also to admit when something’s not working.

New solutions that come under consideration must be additive, rather than stretching the market. National Journal never launches new products “just to do new.”

Another critical component is sticking with products to ensure that products scale and are set up for long-term success. Turpin advises companies to avoid leaving a launch product too early, as well as admit when they’re wrong if it’s quickly clear that a product just isn’t meeting the market’s needs.

“I found it’s a lot better if you get to that answer earlier in the process by sticking with it than letting it languish for two years and then coming back in and having to make sure it fits your decisions,” Turpin said.

Not every company will follow the same trajectory as National Journal. However, any publisher can undergo a digital transformation that sets it apart from the competition and positions the brand for growth.

Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight | Video

How video, and a champion, can transform newsrooms

There are no two ways about it: video storytelling is the future of news. 

However, it is currently being used as a secondary source to illustrate the written word, almost as an afterthought.

As highlighted in the 2022 Digital News Report from the Reuters Institute and the University of Oxford, you only need to look at Gen Zers and Gen Alphas to see the growing prominence and relevance of video. Practically everything these under 30s consume is done through video. And there’s no delineation between news content versus social content etc. for them. It’s all content. It’s all news. It’s everything. 

Couple this with the continuing shoe-horning of TikTok trends and viral videos as news from online publishers, and you’ve got an up-and-coming audience with an appetite for video content before anything else. They’re always connected and they’re ready to scroll. 

Why, then, are newsrooms the world over not adopting a video-first strategy? Worldwide, just 0.7% of articles have a video in them. 

A video strategy isn’t enough 

Having worked in newsrooms for nearly my entire career, I know that many publishers have a video strategy in place.

That strategy could take many forms, from creating in-article video galleries, to targeting social media as a video distribution channel to trawling the internet for the best viral content. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has sat in a news conference and debated the merits of making a viral video (a true contradiction in terms). 

So, to clarify: At least on paper, newsrooms have a video strategy. But things aren’t going according to plan. 

They know video is important and it’s something their audience wants. And it’s the most profitable medium newsrooms can utilize. There’s an audience that wants video and there are advertisers who want to run their ads against video. So why has video success been so elusive for so many publishers around the world? 

Quite simply, it’s all in the execution. 

A publisher can have the most innovative video strategy the publishing world has ever seen, but if they don’t have someone dedicated to enacting that strategy, it’s never going to reach its full potential. Commonly, publishers KPI their newsrooms on embedding video and think this will solve the problem. My experience is that it does not. Newsrooms are frenetic, and video is rarely a priority. 

Ownership makes all the difference 

Independent Online, known to readers as IOL, is one of South Africa’s leading news and information websites with over two million monthly readers. In early 2022 its video numbers had become stagnant despite video being highlighted by the editor as a priority for all staff. 

As with most newsrooms, there were competing priorities and adoption was slow. Indeed, feedback from the editorial team around the video priority was: “It’s kind of a lack of focus,” “I’m super busy” and “To be honest, I really thought someone else was doing it.” 

When it’s everyone’s job, it’s no one’s job. 

In August 2022, IOL made the decision to hire a dedicated video embedder. An experienced journalist, she knows what makes a good story, what is meaningful to audiences and can work at the speed required for a hectic newsroom. She was given access to the CMS and permission to add videos to articles herself, working hand in hand with her boss and reporting up to an existing executive in the newsroom who volunteered to be video’s champion. 

The benefits were immediate and nothing short of excellent. 

“We are extremely happy with the deployment of an embedder across IOL. The positive impact is clear to see for all. Our streams are up 3x and user engagement is at an all-time high. It really does pay to have a team focused on driving our video strategy.”

–Faheem Khota, Content Manager: Video & Audio, IOL News

 The results speak for themselves: 

  • 370% increase in video streams since she joined the newsroom 
  • The percentage of articles with video (saturation) has risen from 8% to 48% 
  • Play rate has risen from 3.9% to 8.5% due to more considered video choices 
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Due to this huge upswing in all video metrics for IOL, video advertising inventory is sold out and video consumption is at record levels. That means video is working for all facets of the organization: editorial and commercial. 

But they’re not stopping there. IOL is now seeking to take the next step in video growth. 

To date, the embedder has only fulfilled a reactive role – adding videos to the existing stories. IOL has now initiated a new focus with them on two key growth opportunities: 

  1. Watch stories. The embedder will work with the video champion and Oovvuu’s extensive video catalog to create video-first stories which will get homepage exposure 
  2.  Fast video hubs. The embedder will use Oovvuu tech to quickly create video-only collections in big and fast moving and recurring stories: 
    a. The Ukraine and Russia conflict 
    b. The impact of big tech 
    c. Manned exploration of space etc.

Oovvuu’s Africa lead Myles Brown has led the relationship with IOL. He said: “In truth, it wasn’t easy getting IOL to take the first step. It took months. But now it’s done, there’s no looking back and they are highly motivated to grow. We have shared the numbers with other publishers in the market and now they are asking for embedders too. It means we are giving new jobs and training to journalists, which is very satisfying to be honest.” 

This seismic shift in the IOL newsroom is not unique to one publisher or region. In fact, it could and should be replicated around the world. IOL’s proactive tackling of a problem that is endemic in publishing everywhere, with hindsight, is so simple. If you aren’t in a position to create large quantities of video, you can start by working with a provider (like Oovvuu) to get the video assets.

Then, to be successful with video:

  • Make a person or a distinct set of people accountable. 
  • Make them subject matter experts. 
  • Harness the passion for what they do by empowering them to do the work.

In the end, it’s about delivering a world class end-to-end experience for our audiences. Today’s audiences, particularly younger ones – who are your growth opportunity – want video. Not every organization has the capacity or ability to create the quality and quantity of video that will be required to move the needle. But, if they are able to outsource that component, they can easily leverage their longstanding ability to employ subject matter experts to manage their content in a way that incorporates video to better engage and serve audiences. 

Advertising | Supporter Spotlight

How not to lose your audience: build community 

There’s bad and then there’s intentionally-bad. Know this: intentionally-bad backfires. 

Partners in blame

While fraudsters are primarily to blame for the rise in deceptive advertising, publishers’ desire to fill inventory during times of economic uncertainty also contributes to the problem of bad ad experiences. GeoEdge research revealed that 54% of publishers feel pressured to run poor quality ads to meet quarterly revenue goals. According to our survey, 47% of publishers’ AdOps teams were told to leave an ad up that they would have preferred to take down.

Yes, they bring in revenue. But those fill rates come at a high cost. Bad ads damage publishers’ reputation, prompt user churn, and impair publishers’ ability to enhance user experience. It is critical that publishers take steps to ensure that they can combat economic volatility without compromising their integrity. 

Optimize value exchange

Since the widespread adoption of programmatic, much of the media industry has chased short-term profits, often at the cost of hard-won audience trust. Programmatic channels regularly serve users clickbait, inappropriate ads, and brands that poorly align with audience preferences. 

In 2022, 76% of publishers revealed that their users reported clickbait ads on their sites. And 24% shared that their users were scammed due those ads. 

These deceptive and off-brand ad experiences cause users to question where publishers’ values really lie. And to many, the modern value exchange is insufficient. Publishers must redefine reciprocity or risk losing their audience. 

When media professionals think revenue-first rather than user-first, they alienate their audience, fail to transform readers into subscribers or grow relationships with new readers. The ensuing loss of trust leads to user churn and a tarnished reputation. The solution is to create a better value exchange and uphold standards. 

Ask your audience 

Publishers have done nearly everything to understand their audiences’ ad quality preferences except for the one thing that makes the most sense of all – asking them. Creating positive ad experiences is often based on guesswork. Publishers assume audiences’ preferences and set their ad quality policies accordingly. 

Optimizing the value exchange demands new technologies to pinpoint which ad experiences audiences enjoy and requires automation to reinforce those standards. 

When it comes to bad ads, publishers can’t expect users to seek out an email address and send a complaint. The ad unit itself must include a functionality that lets both readers and editorial teams report bad ads directly to AdOps teams, and not to Google or third-party ad platforms.

Allowing users to directly report inappropriate ads differentiates a publisher from the competition, It also builds connections with audiences. This is especially vital in an era where audiences expect publishers to share their values and respect their preferences. 

Engaging your community 

Audience preferences change over time. User ad reporting provides a listening channel that’s always open. It creates a direct line of communication that’s far better than finding out about bad ad experiences on social media where a negative call-out can go viral in minutes. Actionable data allows publishers to fine-tune their ad quality policies, and to adapt ad experiences as preferences evolve.

A “Report by the User” social listening tool provides publishers the chance to reclaim audience relationships and build a positive, involved community. When readers feel they’re part of a community, they naturally share and engage more. 

The more users interact with the ad reporting tools, the more publishers learn about what their readers like and don’t like. This data informs both the ad strategy and editorial decisions alike.Every click further refines publishers’ understanding of what ads interest their audiences, creating increasing engagement. 

Stop ignoring your audience and they’ll start engaging with you.

Advertising | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

3 learnings from the world’s first self-serve advertising conference

The digital advertising industry is in a very interesting place right now. We’re coming off the back of a record-breaking year (2021 saw roughly $490b in digital ad spend) and we’re heading into an uncertain period with record inflation and advertising layoffs. At the same time, the digital landscape is undergoing transformation: while the cookie’s death has been slow, it is inevitable. We’ve also seen major streamers like Netflix and Disney embrace ad-supported streaming, which amplifies the booming trend of an increasing number  of industries seeking out new revenue streams through advertising.

Against this complicated and dynamic backdrop, digital leaders of some of the world’s foremost publishers gathered in New York City for our first Self-Serve Advertising Summit in October.

Self-serve is a revenue model whereby the publisher sells their own inventory directly to the advertiser via an automated marketplace or campaign manager, similar to how Facebook sells its inventory.

Representatives from Disney Advertising, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, DISH Media, and more spent a day in Chelsea discussing the transition from programmatic to self-serve, the growth of small business advertising, and the transformation of OTT and linear TV. There was an abundance of takeaways from the Summit. Below, however, I have summarized what I found to be the most urgent and fascinating themes and learnings that emerged from the event.

Efficiency and accessibility

Out of all the potential benefits of embracing self-serve advertising technology, the one which speakers and attendees most universally agreed upon was the need to create efficiencies.

Andrew Grillo, Director of New Product Revenue at Boston Globe Media, said: “Priority one for us is to create efficiency. About 40% of our accounts are SMBs [small to medium sized businesses] but they only make up about 10% of our revenue. They spend between $5000 and $10,000 with us annually… We want to make a platform that lets them buy in a more streamlined way so our reps can focus on larger deals.”

The sentiment was echoed by Stephen Jutras, General Manager, Products and Programs at DISH Media: “We started with creating efficiencies internally – everything from report automation to relieve our data science teams, and let sales teams go to market faster, to audience segmentation. Internal efficiencies lead to external efficiencies.”

The takeaway? Publishers want tools that reduce manual work and create a baseline of efficiency from which to seek out new revenue streams, such as being able to serve the growing SME (small to medium enterprise) advertiser segment. Sylvester Phifer, Vice President, Self Service Platform – Hulu Ad Manager, Disney Advertising, agreed. He said, “We built self-serve with the goal of giving small and medium-sized businesses the chance to advertise within a streaming environment.”

Alternative to search and social

Another topic that came up again and again was the standoff between traditional publishers and big tech. It’s no secret that platforms like Facebook and Google have eroded the advertising revenues of news media over the past 15 years. At the summit, many publishers conceded that news media had been slow to learn the lessons of search and social. Affordability and ease of access are the way to win over smaller advertisers.

Julia Belanger, General Manager at The Washington Post’s Zeus Technology, laid out her thoughts: “We’re trying to give publishers an alternative to search and social. If you’re going to search and social just because it’s easy and fast, we want to give you a way to do that with us.”
If publishers can match the accessibility offered by big Tech, with the added value of trusted brand contexts, it might shift the current power balance. More on the topic of brand value in the next section…

Support journalism and reach real audiences

In recent years, everything from government subsidies to newsletter subscriptions have been touted as ways for journalism to survive financially. One of the most interesting points of discussion was the way in which self-serve advertising can support quality journalism.

Touching upon the need for quality, well-funded journalism, Andrew Grillo said: “We want to create the association that buying with The Globe is supporting journalism. It’s in a trusted environment, and it’s a very real audience. We’re a subscription-based online property so it is a real audience, not just scrolling in a feed.” There was agreement that when news publishers control their inventory with self-serve, their ability to leverage that trust and reputation are much stronger than with programmatic.

The theme of audience quality was also covered by keynote speaker and ad fraud researcher Dr. Augustine Fou. Highlighting the myriad of ways in which advertisers are duped into buying fake audiences through programmatic loopholes, he stated succinctly: “real publishers have real audiences.” He continued: “Self-serve is a great way to bring advertisers back to the publishers, because for the last 10 years, I’ve seen too many middlemen take too big a cut of the pie.”

Final thoughts

It’s hard to draw one overarching conclusion from an event with many varying and insightful perspectives. But if there was one area on which consensus could clearly be found, it was the need for industry standardization. Self-serve is still in its infancy, and each publisher approaches it differently. This is an exciting phase, but ultimately a resource-heavy process – one which will itself benefit from efficiency.

When publishers start to find those best practices, and make advertisers more comfortable with their platforms, it will be a lot easier for others to get started. Everything from audience segmentation to creative formats are features that can be streamlined and standardized. The fewer looming question marks and the more successful use cases are out there, the easier it will be to get other publishers, brands and agencies onboard.

The flipside is that those early first-movers who are already integrating self-serve into their revenue model have the opportunity to set the standards that they want to see. Whether that means an always-on, fully automated marketplace, or a consultative, managed-service process, it is up to them to find the balance that best suits their business, their audience, and their customers. Ultimately, the beneficiaries will be publishers and the advertisers who work with them.

Advertising | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

How publishers can build visitor relationships to drive more revenue

Over the years, technology has enabled many in the digital advertising ecosystem to sit behind the proverbial curtain and collect visitor data to drive everything from monetization to UX. Oftentimes these interactions are conducted without the user’s knowledge or permission, which for years has been par for the course. One advantage that publishers have over others is that they already have a direct, trust-based relationship with their audiences. 

And, without a doubt, relationships are key to navigating this new ecosystem. Relationships matter. Building and managing relationships with visitors will lead to revenue continuity and growth for publishers. Based upon our experience working with thousands of publishers, we see distinct advantages for publishers who build relationships with their audiences. Following are insights and best practices every publisher can employ to drive more revenue per visitor through better relationships.

Identify and build valuable audience segments

Publishers should recognize that site visitors are not homogeneous. They must work to identify segments of traffic to better understand and leverage the potential value of specific cohorts and how to engage and communicate with them. 

For example, if you don’t have an email newsletter, now’s the time to invest in one. If you do, focus on growing it and leverage it as a marketing tool to sell paid subscriptions and memberships, or solicit donations. Users of Admiral’s Transact subscriptions module have found, email newsletter subscribers are two to three times more likely than non-subscribers to purchase a paid subscription. 

Here’s a possibly surprising example: adblock users may be your most valuable visitor. Publishers who are empowered to ask users to turn off an ad blocker to support the content actually deepen their relationship with audiences. Users that elect to allowlist consume three to four times more pageviews than standard visitors of the site. The act of allowlisting is a purely altruistic show of affinity and a big thumbs up for your content and brand. 

Communication is key

It’s often said that the basis of a healthy relationship is good communication. If you have a great article worth sharing with your audience you don’t bury it at the bottom of the page. Rather, you place it on the homepage, top-of-fold, and amplify it on every social channel. The same goes for every value exchange that you’re putting in front of your visitors. 

This becomes abundantly clear when looking at results from engagement based adblock recovery (asking users to allowlist) vs. ad-reinsertion based recovery (serving an ad-lite experience). One of our publishers was already using Acceptable Ads reinsertion, however they realized that running engagement based recovery in tandem with AA would yield a significant increase in recovered revenue and achieve the added benefits of full-stack recovery.

Unlike Acceptable Ads, which is limited by the AA’s ad-lite standards, engagement based recovery unlocks the publisher’s entire ad stack including high-value ad units. For example, engagement is the only way to unlock video ads as there is no AA standard for video ads. Adblock users who allowlist are monetized at 100% CPMs, and for publishers who spend time, resources, and effort to maximize yield, this is a critical point of difference. Acceptable Ads is also limited to users of AA supported blockers and among this audience, only users that have agreed to see Acceptable Ads. 

Most importantly, engagement relies on trust and transparency through building relationships to achieve the end goal of monetizing adblock users.

Start engaging 

We worked with the publisher to employ an engagement strategy that targeted adblock users with a configured CTA to allowlist the site to show support. The Engage message offered a continue-path for users who elected not to allowlist at the time. For any users that decided not to allowlist (and were using an AA compliant blocker + agreed to being served AA), Acceptable Ads was enabled.

  • The combo of Admiral + AA monetized 200% more impressions per day than AA alone 
  • Engagement recovered 55% more revenue per day than AA
  • Engagement delivered 1,500% higher RPMs than AA

Frequency of engagement is another question often asked by our customers when deciding how often they should be asking a visitor to take action. 

Another client who was reluctant to engage their adblock users, built their user journey to ask adblock visitors to allowlist the site every 30 days (not recommended). Once they became comfortable with the idea of making the ask, by simply increasing the frequency to every seven days resulted in tripling the recovered revenue. Emboldened by the results they increased the frequency to once a day (which is still an ultra conservative time interval) resulting in a 5x revenue recovery increase from the initial settings.

As we head into Q4 during uncertain economic times, publishers are carefully evaluating both near and long term monetization strategies. Converting relationships into revenue can start immediately or pay dividends far into the future. The first step is to come out from behind the curtain. It is essential that publishers step up their communication with visitors, which allows them to establish and improve the value exchange.

Advertising | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

How clean rooms can avoid the hype – and stop over-promising

Many industry insiders believe the honeymoon phase is over for data clean rooms. In the face of third-party cookie deprecation, clean rooms were supposed to solve the data scale issues brands and publishers predicted. If your first-party data is limited, just combine it with your business partners’ data, in a secure and privacy-compliant environment. That makes sense, right?

In reality, it’s never been quite so simple. And it certainly hasn’t helped the reputation of clean rooms that so many vendors positioned them as a cure-all for a smattering of issues the industry is contending with – identity, targeting, measurement, attribution, analytics, and so on. The results brands and publishers are seeing generally don’t, and can’t, match the hype.

The hype and the backlash threaten to diminish the role data clean rooms can and should play in today’s digital ecosystem. They have a purpose, but the industry could use some clarity on that purpose, and the value clean rooms deliver, so stakeholders don’t get taken in and disillusioned by snake oil peddlers.

The reality of data clean rooms

First, let’s clear up what clean rooms are not. They are not a comprehensive replacement for third-party cookies. They are not a data solution. What they are is a tool – or, more specifically, an environment. They are a place for two or more trusted business partners to compare data sets, without entirely sharing their data – each business ultimately retains ownership of its data, and contributes only the data it wants to contribute. The data is scrambled to keep personally identifiable information private, and the partners in the clean room need to comply with each other’s policies for consent.

A potluck dinner only works if enough guests bring enough food to satisfy everyone’s appetite, and it’s best when the food is good, and there’s an interesting variety. A clean room works the same way. Every participant must take care to make sure they’re bringing what others need and to remember the best data provides the best leverage.

A data clean room will not somehow clean anyone’s bad data. It’s a “clean” room because the data is supposed to go in clean — with personally identifiable information (PII) and sensitive data scrubbed, parameters for comparing data sets established ahead of time, and identity solutions highlighted. This makes the data actionable and helps give it value. If the data can’t be used to follow consumers or audiences across the buyer’s path, across datasets provided by different clean room participants, it won’t be able to replace the cross-channel tracking capabilities currently enabled by third-party cookies.

But if participants embrace the spirit of collaboration, and bring data to the table that can connect the dots and help to meet each other’s business objectives, the possibilities are endless. Two or more publishers, for example, can bring together data that strengthens their audience profiles and collectively raises the value of their inventory. Or, an e-commerce site and a publisher can compare data sets to track customer journeys and understand the performance of referral programs.

The different data clean room environments

Several high-profile launches of clean rooms — from the likes of Google, Amazon, Disney, and NBCUniversal — have added to the hype. But we need to remember that the term “clean room” describes multiple types of environments:

  • Walled garden clean rooms deliver their value by allowing a business to layer additional data onto the data of what already sits within the owner’s walls.
  • Clean rooms within independent environments deliver the most mutual value for participants.
  • Centralized clean rooms, where the terms are set by the platform’s owner, are less collaborative and are more of a means to make the data within walled gardens available to the clean room owner.

Stakeholders exploring the possibilities of clean rooms need to ask: Does entering this particular environment enhance the value of our own data sets, or would we simply be handing our data over to a platform’s owner?

Ensuring interoperability across stakeholders won’t be a cut-and-dry process. It will likely call for industry-wide initiatives. For a precedent of what that might look like, consider the state of customer data platforms (CDPs). CDPs also went through a similar hype-followed-by-reputation-management cycle, until the CDP Institute was established to ensure the CDPs delivered what they promised.

Before industry-wide trust and satisfaction in clean rooms overall drops further, the legitimate, trustworthy clean room providers should get in front of the issue, highlight the technology’s intended use cases, and decry the trend of dubbing any privacy-compliant data platform a clean room.

Clean rooms — with the right combination of participants — bring too much potential value to risk becoming victims of their own hype. They need to be marketed and promoted appropriately, promising only what they can deliver. And industry stakeholders need to seek out those unbiased, independent environments and interoperable solutions that will drive toward a collaborative, privacy-forward digital future.

About the author

Eliza Nevers drives Lotame’s global strategy and product roadmap to serve the evolving data enrichment needs of marketers, agencies, and publishers. Fluent in the full product life cycle, from strategy to development and build, she brings nearly two decades of hands-on experience in tech to her role as Chief Product Officer at Lotame. Prior to her tenure, Eliza served as VP of Product for Verizon Media. During her 12+ years there, she steered the development and launch of AOL’s first DSP, SSP, and DMP, driving the evaluation and product integration of multiple strategic acquisitions as well as developing and launching AOL’s unified Advertising platform, ONE by AOL for Advertisers. Most recently, Eliza launched her own consulting business where she defined product strategy and product development agile processes for various companies in and out of adtech.

Advertising | Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

TV advertising has evolved. It’s time to think like a viewer

The advanced TV landscape—including video-on-demand (VOD), connected TV (CTV), OTT and addressable linear TV—has experienced rapid growth and change. We’re also seeing the rise of ad-supported video-on-demand (AVOD) and free ad-supported streaming services (FAST). As a result, more premium video inventory is becoming available to ad buyers. Luckily, innovation within the advertising ecosystem is beginning to make this more accessible. So, what’s up next for this evolving space?

Seven in 10 UK marketers believe their advanced TV budgets will increase in the coming 12 months, according to the latest survey from AudienceXpress, FreeWheel’s premium video sales house. What’s more, almost nine in 10 respondents intend to spend more on AVOD and FAST.

Ad buyers are investing in the channels where the eyeballs are. But now the industry must go a step further and truly think as audiences do. Content, quality, and connectivity appear to be front of mind for viewers. So, how can marketers also make these a priority?

Audiences only have eyes for content, so ad buyers should too

When viewers tune in to TV and premium video content, they can now access it through a diverse selection of platforms, channels, and devices. The fact that audiences have become more and more fragmented proves that what they watch is significantly more important than how they watch it. 

If ad buyers plan to succeed in the TV advertising landscape, they need to adopt this attitude. By taking a unified approach to advanced TV and premium video, they can shift their focus away from fragmented endpoints and towards what matters most: the audience and what they enjoy watching. To help buyers achieve this, the advertising ecosystem is refining its tools for unified campaign planning, ad buying, and performance measurement. 

New technologies and best practices, such as ad podding, are improving both efficiencies for buyers and the premium video experience for viewers. Advanced contextual advertising, meanwhile, is allowing buyers to connect with audiences through specific topics and genres, as well as combine semantic analysis and keyword targeting to maximize ad relevance. 

While further collaboration is required to accelerate this progress, advanced TV is enabling advertisers to engage typically hard-to-reach audiences through quality content.

Why aggregation is the answer to precise ad targeting

The key drivers of advanced TV spend emphasize marketers’ goal of reaching the best viewers however they consume TV and premium video content. Our AudienceXpress survey found that respondents considered sophisticated audience targeting capabilities as the top growth accelerator for advanced TV, followed by the opportunity to reach viewers across screens. 

Enabling precise ad targeting and allowing buyers to be agile as their audiences move between platforms and devices are therefore highly important for capturing investment. While it may seem paradoxical, aggregation is necessary for this to happen. By aggregating a bigger pool of premium video inventory, the advertising ecosystem can facilitate efficient, streamlined ad buying and deliver desired audiences at scale. 

This again requires buyers and sellers to treat advanced TV channels as viewers do—that is, equally—as they unify their approach to TV advertising. 

Joining the measurement dots

Consolidating measurement across endpoints is as critical to the future of TV advertising as consolidating inventory and audiences. Buyers need a single view of how impactful their ad campaigns are, both while they are running and after they are wrapped up, much like any great TV show. 

Unfortunately, legacy measurement tools and newer alternatives currently struggle with capturing performance across screens and providing ad buyers with a full understanding of campaign impact. Buyers need this to pinpoint the elements of their strategies that are generating the best results and carry out informed campaign optimizations. Additionally, accurate measurement solutions are necessary for effective frequency management, which safeguards against ad fatigue and maintains the quality viewing experience for audiences. 

Greater standardization of advertising metrics is a crucial next step towards unifying measurement. This provides clarity between buyers and sellers, allowing the former to plan, purchase, and optimize all forms of TV inventory and the latter to better communicate the value of their offerings. 

Connectivity will solve complexity 

Speaking the same language across the ecosystem also lays the foundation for better interconnectivity between all players. In turn, this will help tackle complexity, which has become a concern in the rapidly evolving advanced TV landscape. 

Alongside building a shared language, interoperability must be a priority in the year ahead. Technological innovation is critical for overcoming the challenges buyers face with planning, executing, and monitoring advanced TV campaigns. But ensuring these innovative solutions are widely compatible will help make TV and premium video advertising available to all. This will drive growth and progress throughout the ecosystem, letting buyers purchase from bigger pools of aggregated inventory, increase efficiency, and extend their reach, while also allowing publishers to streamline their advertising business models and maximize yield. 

Connectivity is enabling viewers to consume TV and premium video content how they want, when they want. It is also the key to enabling ad buyers to purchase the inventory they want, how they want. Not only is this beneficial to the future of advanced TV advertising, but also to audiences by ensuring they receive the most relevant ads and a quality viewing experience.

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