Tags containing: "supporter"

3 data-based opportunities publishers should be tracking in 2019

December 10, 2018 Megan McKenna, VP Marketing—Lotame

Publishers and marketers are increasingly investing in data collection. Some are becoming incredibly sophisticated with their data use but there is still a reservoir of untapped opportunities and many obstacles to overcome. So how will the data scene change for publishers and marketers in 2019?

1. Outsource versus In-House

Many headlines declare a tsunami of in-housing data capabilities but that’s just not the case. Rather, pieces of the stack are starting to reside in-house. In fact, recent research found that almost 80% of publishers and marketers say they would prefer to outsource data strategy and execution. Overall, data strategy development, management and execution require sizable investments in talent and technology – and many organizations simply don’t have the in-house capabilities or infrastructure.

For those we surveyed who don’t collect their own data (31%), a lack of resources and education were the biggest hurdles. One-third (33%) said that they did not “have the internal resources in place to do so,” while 31% said “I don’t know where to even begin.” Another 21% said “I don’t have the tools or technology needed.” Although, we’re seeing outsourcing trend outside of the U.S., the transition to in-house will be slower than everyone says. Given the obstacles, it’s not realistic to believe otherwise.

2. Successful Measurement

When asked how they benchmark data strategy success, more than half (56%) of publishers said an “increase in returning visitors, uniques, and pageviews” was key. This was followed by “optimization of ad inventory” (49%); “increase in advertising spend” (46%); “overall ROI and monetization opportunities” (38%); and “increase in winning non-endemic advertisers” (33%). Publishers are focused on driving traffic and growing audience which has a cascade effect on their ad success and the value they can claim for partners. This year, we’ll continue to see a focus on using data to drive users traffic to the site but also to inform strategies to keep them on the site for longer. Data can help publishers determine what keeps eyeballs on their page. And that understanding, and success, will lead to increase ad revenue.

3. Data Quality

Our research found that one-third of brands and publishers are creating new monetization opportunities by becoming second-party data providers. This speaks to a demand for data quality. This requires organizations to understand where the data is coming from and how reliable it is from the beginning. In the transparency and GDPR era, this is incredibly powerful. In 2019, we expect to see this trend continue. Quality, safe second party data “fills gaps” and addresses campaign opportunities, yielding significant benefits for brands and publishers.

Given publishers’ close customer relationships, they are in a position to collect a great deal of first-party data. Of course, they should use to deliver great experiences. However, when used wisely, data can also support a healthy revenue stream for publishers, big and small. By taking a few additional steps and watching trends, publishers are poised to reap the benefits of data in 2019.

Industry-Research | Perspectives

Native advertising: Is there still room to grow?

December 4, 2018 Todd Krizelman, CEO – MediaRadar

Seventy five percent of consumers report that, if content piques their interest, they’ll engage with it, regardless of whether it’s branded or not, according to Reuters. That’s the beauty of native advertising. Unlike display ads or banner ads, native ads don’t have to look like ads. They are non-disruptive and introduce the reader to advertising content without sticking out like a sore thumb.

Native was once one of the hottest trends in online ads. However, the total number of advertisers has stagnated, starting around the beginning of 2017. Only about 11% of online advertisers use native formats these days. And brands that buy native ads only run them across 10% of the sites where they advertise. What caused this shift?

Certainly, online ads should be fair, clear, and engaging. Unfortunately, at times, native ads can be almost too inconspicuous, as they weave seamlessly into the platform where they appear. Additionally, the process of crafting a native ad or campaign is a costly, multistep process involving a lot of collaboration and time. And, without unified standards, it’s especially hard to gauge performance metrics like return on investment (ROI), impact, and effectiveness. For these reasons, some advertisers see too many challenges with creating an effective native advertising program.

On the flip side, many would argue that the benefits of native advertising outweigh the negatives. Native display ads receive a higher click-through-rate (CTR) than typical display ads. According to an AppNexus whitepaper, CTR is actually 8.8x higher with native display ads. Moreover, two out of three GenZ, Millennials, and GenX consumers trust branded content more than traditional advertising, finding it more entertaining, thought-provoking, and impactful, according to a Time Inc. study. Furthermore, a Collective Bias survey found that one-third of Millennials say that they’ve purchased something as a result of a sponsored post and nearly 37% agree that useful and high-quality posts offset any objections they may have to branded content.

Based on these findings, it’s not surprising that the industry investing most in native advertising is Media & Entertainment with over $269mm. Top spenders include Comcast Corporation, Hulu, and Cox Communications. The Finance & Real Estate and Technology sectors tie for second place, both investing $75mm, with Professional Services and Retail not far behind, spending $57mm and $46mm respectively.

Overall, MediaRadar’s study found that, while the native market is maturing, there is still room for growth. In North America, where users have become accustomed to branded content, brand advertisers must differentiate themselves from competitors. They can do this by focusing on their most profitable products, reworking existing products that underperform, or refreshing their offerings with new innovations. While publishers must continue to perfect their offerings for native to reach its full potential, the advertising format still has plenty of opportunity for growth in the future.

Perspectives

The cookie conundrum: Complexity for publishers in the age of ecommerce and cybercrime rings

December 3, 2018 Chris Olson, CEO & Co-Founder—The Media Trust

Media publishers in 2018 are at a historical juncture as they face new pressures from many directions. These pressures included competing content providers who provide a wider array of products to draw site users; readers with changing habits, expectations, and preferences; and a growing number of data privacy regulations that are forcing businesses, in general, to change how they operate.

Publishers in the increasingly diversified digital media landscape have had to revise their business models along with the introduction of paywalls, multi-tiered subscription packages, and merchandise. Not only are they content providers but full-blown ecommerce businesses, a change that comes with its own set of challenges.

Cookies and commerce

That fact is that, if a website accepts any form of payment, it is running an ecommerce platform. Actually, media companies are unique in that they can have three disparate revenue channels all tied to their digital environment: advertising/sponsorships, subscriptions and merchandise. More likely than not, these three channels are managed by various internal groups with different objectives. The absence of a single throat to choke for the digital environment at a time when the latter is under mounting cyberattacks and a growing number of data privacy regulations raise these companies’ exposure to a host of digital risks.

The most significant challenge is managing all the third parties and digital partners who help make the ecommerce websites’ user experience a success. That experience involves providing content to users based on their subscription level and enabling payment for subscriptions and—for a growing number of publishers—merchandise.

The problem is, most of these third parties, and the cookies they use to identify visitors/users, are unknown to publishers. On average, the cookies they drop into an ecommerce site can account for anywhere between 50-95% of all cookies on that site. Left unmonitored and unchecked by publishers’ digital policies, those largely unknown cookies can degrade the user experience by driving up latency, collecting information from unsuspecting users, or both.

Regulation ups the stakes

While latency might not break any laws, collecting information without users’ informed, specific consent violates a rising number of data privacy regulations. We have seen the impact of changes to the legislative landscape on publishers. Privacy laws such as the EU’s GDPR and the state of California’s Consumer Privacy Act have created an increasingly dangerous environment for data processors who fail to adhere to them.

In May of this year, after GDPR came into effect, large US based publishers such as The Chicago Tribune became unavailable to EU readers, due to the mismatch in privacy laws in the European Union, and the code operating on these sites. At the time of writing, the Tribune remains offline in the EU, highlighting how seriously even the largest publishers are taking the legislative changes we have witnessed this year. The proposal of a U.S. federal Consumer Data Privacy Act, which would jail CEOs for misleading regulators makes compliance even more urgent, especially for large companies.

The mood of publishers’ audiences is also changing. As the Cambridge Analytica scandal has proven, users of all types of platforms are increasingly aware and suspicious of how their own data is collected and used. The last year’s mega breaches such as Equifax have only escalated consumer wariness of the security and use of the data they willingly provide to publishers.

Bad actors

To further muddy the waters, we have seen the exponential growth of malicious campaigns targeting publishers. Increasingly sophisticated cybercrime groups such as Magecart, widely believed to be responsible for the British Airways breach, and, more recently, 3ve, are exploiting vulnerabilities around payment pages, capitalizing on digital advertising’s obscure processes, and targeting users of digital wallets.

As if all of this wasn’t enough, publishers also have to contend with upstream partners who process or use the data harvested on their platform whose consent management process, or lack thereof, could put publishers at risk of infringing data privacy laws.

Digital cookies are routinely dropped on with 65% of cookies collecting personal data, and 28% of cookies lasting longer than a year. While they allow publishers to provide a better experience for readership, it can also mean that they are in direct conflict with the latest data privacy laws.

Getting cookies right

Publishers can take proactive measures to stay compliant by ensuring that executives in charge of the various ecommerce revenue streams align their goals, objectives and policies in order to safeguard and enhance the user experience. Understanding the landscape of your digital ecosystem is essential. Make sure that you are monitoring your website for the code being run, and proactively question why it is running. Furthermore, the third parties running code, and the companies in their own supply chain who process data need to understand the players and activities in their own digital landscapes.

However, taking these steps are just the start. Publishers must also prove such measures are being taken. Therefore, publishers, their third-party partners and any other relevant parties should undertake rigorous audit trails to retain proof of regulatory compliance. This allows you to make the case for your overall legislative posture, if it is called into question.

In addition to this, there are industry organizations which aim to create a set of standardized compliance-related practices in order to create a more transparent culture around cookies. The International Advertising Bureau have attempted to deliver and enforce a framework via their CMP Validator. The AOP (Association for Online Publishing) UK has engaged in similar activities with their Cookie Consortium. Involvement of as many publishers and technology vendors as possible in these industry initiatives is crucial to the continued success of publishers and other players along the digital supply chain.

Why it matters

It’s important to establish that the running of cookies on web pages is a fundamental part of how the internet functions in 2018. It makes life significantly easier for both publishers hoping to keep users happy, even working to turn this hope into an actionable reality. It also benefits users hoping to access content, and marketers hoping to build a strategy.

However, they can only provide these useful functions if the organizations that use them do so with the appropriate regard for any regulations that govern them, as well as for the users whose data is stored in them. In fact, publishers stand to gain the most from the changing regulatory environment, which provides an opportunity to collaborate more closely with third parties and digital partners, and ultimately build customer trust by improving their user experience.

About the Author

Chris Olson co-founded The Media Trust with a goal to transform the internet experience by creating better digital ecosystems to govern assets, connect partners and enable Digital Risk Management. Chris has more than 15 years of experience leading high tech and ad technology start-ups and managing international software development, product and sales teams. Prior to The Media Trust, Chris created an Internet-based transaction system to research, buy and sell media for TV, radio, cable, and online channels. He started his career managing equity and fixed income electronic trading desks for Salomon Brothers, Citibank and Commerzbank AG.

Perspectives

Three internet privacy acts every publisher should know

November 28, 2018 Trish Manrique, Content Marketing Partner—Sortable

Online, it can seem like the geographic borders of information and e-commerce are becoming more and more blurred. But as a digital publisher, if you’re serving ads to audiences in the US, Canada, or the European Economic Area (EEA), it’s good to be aware of regional privacy and data collection, processing, and disclosure laws, and how each change with different countries.

According to our data, publishers are seeing an average split of 40% US, 15% EEA, and 8% Canada traffic. So we’ve rounded up some information privacy laws and personal information-handling practices that you should keep in mind, whether you’re based in those countries, see visitors from them, or want to to grow your traffic from these regions.

On a serious note, complying with privacy laws and understanding the impending updates could help protect you from everything from fines and class action lawsuits to protecting your consumer confidence from a damaged brand reputation.

1. EEA: General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for Publishers

What is it?

GDPR came into effect May 25, 2018 and applies across the EEA. GDPR is considered the data processing standard. It takes a proactive, consent-first approach to the collection of data and analytics.

Why should it matter to publishers?

GDPR ensures that companies can’t collect data without a lawful basis and a reason for processing. GDPR has the broadest definition of the personal data that it protects of any major privacy law. So, if you collect any information from EEA-based users, GDPR should be on your mind. Sites offering goods or services to EEA buyers, or tracking their online activities, are now required to obtain consent from users on the data they collect and with whom they share it with. Consent Management Platforms, or CMPs, are used by many publishers to manage consent. (View trends in publisher decisions when it came time to implement GDPR).

If you’re found to be in breach of GDPR, you could see big fines, between 2 to 4% of your annual global revenue, in addition to €10 million to 20 million, depending on the severity of the offense. You can be found to be non-compliant with GDPR if you use data in a way that you do not have consent for, or in the event of data breaches—losing consumer information in a cyber attack.

2. US: California Consumer Privacy Act for Publishers

What is it?

Scheduled to come into effect in January 2020, California’s new privacy law AB 375 was signed in by unanimous votes in the summer of 2018. As the world’s fifth largest economy at $2.7 trillion GDP, it’s likely that businesses targeting US visitors will encounter California residents. Consequently, California could become the de facto approach for the US. While California’s privacy law has passed, the Internet Association (a lobbying group that represents companies like Facebook, Google, Uber, Amazon, and Microsoft), the US Chamber of Commerce (the country’s largest lobbying organization), and the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) are encouraging US federal lawmakers to enact a federal privacy law. They want to avoid the confusion and complications of having to navigate a separate privacy law for every state in the US.

Why should it matter to publishers?

The California Act gives consumers the right to decide which personal data is collected and for what purpose. It also allows them to opt out of having their data sold.

Personal information as defined by the California Act are standard identifiers in the physical world (like driver’s license or social security numbers), digital identifiers (like email addresses or demographic data), online behaviors (like IP, search, browsing history, purchases, and interactions), and any inferred data.

The California Act isn’t quite as rigorous as GDPR. The California Act doesn’t require consent or permissions in the first place, instead focusing on a consumer’s control of who sees their data. Where it significantly differs from GDPR is the lack of a stop mechanism—companies can still collect information—and no initial consent is required.

Publishers who use ad tech that track visitors around the web with cookies and mobile advertising IDs should be aware that the California Act requires that publishers have an option to give people a way to ask for deletion of the information collected. If that personal information is sold or shared, the company must disclose the purpose.

3. Canada: Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) for Publishers

What is it?

Canada’s PIPEDA came into effect in June 2015, with updates scheduled for January 2019. PIPEDA protects personal information entrusted to commercial organizations. Personal information includes a person’s age, name, ID numbers, income, ethnicity, blood type, comments, opinions, and employee records.

Why should it matter to publishers?

Targeting Canadians? Publishers will need to obtain their consent when they collect, use, or disclose the Canadian individual’s personal information in the course of any commercial activity. The federal-level PIPEDA gives the user the right to access any personal information gathered, and be informed if that information is used for any other purpose than the original communicated intent.

Like GDPR and the California Act, PIPEDA charges the publisher with protecting the personal information gathered, regardless of whether that is handled directly or by third parties. Interestingly, PIPEDA doesn’t cover any business contact information that an organization collects, uses, or discloses for the purpose of communicating. Note that PIPEDA is one of several laws in Canada that relate to privacy rights.

There are 10 principles for publishers to follow, which outline: accountability: identifying purposes; consent; limiting collection; limiting use, disclosure, and retention; accuracy; safeguards; openness; individual access; and challenging compliance.

Any publisher that breaches PIPEDA could face fines of up to $100,000 CAD.

Privacy Matters

There you have it, three major privacy acts you need to know about as a publisher in high economic demand areas. Privacy laws are complex and this article is meant as an overview, not a replacement for legal advice. The reality is that with increasing legislative and consumer focus on data breaches and digital privacy and protection, scrutiny and guidance is likely to increase. As such, we plan to keep a close eye on these important issues and think you should too.

About the Author

Trish Manrique is a Content Marketing Partner at Sortable, a Canadian customer-focused, data-driven ad tech company.

Footnote: What is the European Union (EU) and the European Economic Area (EEA)?

There’s some confusion as to what the EEA is, versus the EU. The European Union (EU) is a union of 28 member countries and both a political and economic grouping. (Source: https://www.gov.uk/eu-eea)

The European Economic Area includes EU member countries and includes countries from the Scandinavian region. We’ve listed it in a handy table below.

The European Economic Area (EEA) includes EU countries and also:
Iceland	(IS)
Liechtenstein	(LI)
Norway	(NO)
**Switzerland (Confederation of Helvetia) - Swiss nationals living in the UK are applicable	(CH)
The 28 EU countries and their country codes are: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Republic of Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and the UK.
Austria	(AT)
Belgium	(BE)
Bulgaria	(BG)
Croatia (Hrvatska)	(HR)
Republic of Cyprus	(CY)
Czech Republic	(CZ)
Denmark	(DK)
Estonia	(EE)
Finland	(FI)
France	(FR)
Germany	(DE)
Greece	(GR)
Hungary	(HU)
Ireland	(IE)
Italy	(IT)
Latvia	(LV)
Lithuania	(LT)
Luxembourg	(LU)
Malta	(MT)
Netherlands	(NL)
Poland	(PL)
Portugal	(PT)
Romania	(RO)
Slovakia (Slovak Republic)	(SK)
Slovenia	(SI)
Spain	(ES)
Sweden	(SE)
The United Kingdom	(UK)

**though neither an EU nor EEA member, Swiss citizens may reside and work in the UK, like other EEA nations.

Recklessness, a reckoning, and the road forward

November 15, 2018 Jarrod Dicker, CEO – Po.et

Two cars travel down a two lane road approaching one another from opposite directions. A solid white line sits painted in-between them as they approach each other. One car swerves, crossing the line, then cuts back. 65 MPH and climbing, and the only thing preventing the car from crossing into the other’s lane again is a theoretical barrier painted on pavement. These guiding lines are not a guarantee. They’re more of a social contract, a legal rule that we abide by because it is for the betterment of ourselves, others, and the rest of society. However, this driver chose not to follow the rule and crossed into the wrong lane. What happened? Recklessness.

The media and information industry is in an age of recklessness. Fueled by misinformation, lines are being crossed. And this reckless behavior is taking a serious toll on the trust in and value of the media.

We want to believe in societal norms that govern the free flow of trustworthy information. There are standards that should apply across platforms, publishers, and consumer domains. There is an assumed integrity that applies not only to the words we write, but the videos we produce, and how they are spread throughout the web. But this recklessness has led to a reckoning; and now we must forge a new path forward.

Post-Truth, True Story

Unfortunately, this is clearly no longer the case (‘That’s not altered. That’s sped up. They do it all the time in sports.’). There are now separate narratives, cultures, and communities built around the rhetorics of truth, information and more dangerously, misinformation. Reputation is no longer a default to “trusted” media brands at the domain level. It needs to be re-focused, re-earned, and re-defined.

The role of media institutions today is more important than ever. In the age of recklessness, we need to continue to provide our communities and readers with the knowledge they need to inform their lives, societies, and governments. And it’s the responsibility of the rest of society to process this information and re-paint those lines that define to bring awareness to what is real and what is not. Today it’s more important than ever to understand the information that is being put in front of you. And that understanding runs deeper than images and text, to the source, the context, the delivery channel, and much more.

The revolution will not be qualified; it will be quantified. The media business is positioned better than ever to expose the value of their work and drive their business forward. Putting an emphasis on trust, the value of a media brand is in its operation and its reputation.

Media business leaders need to keep their eye on the road. How can they secure and deliver information that is validated, honest and objective? And through that, expose that their organizations differentiate from other less reputable players in the space.

To emphasize this value, media must prove its worth. That seems frustrating, especially because many of these institutions have been in business for decades, even centuries. However, when you ask someone to pay for something, you must give them a reason why. In order to be successful, the media business must be subscribed to, not just supported. That means creating a product market fit that is both helpful and necessary. To do this, we must expose our practices, and how we seek provenance, validation, truth and every other value that’s standard to the media industry.

Proof of Effort

Building value means exposing the underlying components for all to see. To severely oversimplify: The greatest value of the media industry is in its effort. The practices behind media, and the process by which information is researched, created, edited, and published is what drives its purpose and differentiation from imitators.

However currently, the only way to quantify media’s value is in generalities. How many page views, referrals, visits, and shares does a piece of information garner? This is the opposite of what drives reputation and an institutions’ value, which has everything to do with the actions before a piece of information is published. Because of this, and how information is distributed (social platforms, search, applications), information has become commoditized. The value of a viral video is measured the same as an investigative expose, even though the investment in each is severely different. And gaming that system is how we continue to not just commoditize our worth, but blur the value between information and misinformation.

Media’s recklessness is fueled by misinformation. And because of this, not all media can be valued equally. But how did we get here? The value attributed to media-at-large is dictated by the returns of where it is being distributed. Facebook, Google, and other major platforms have rewarded content based on output mechanics. This has little to do with how the information is created, edited, and published prior to distribution. Because of this, everything appears to be created equal; even though the efforts behind different types of media work and the investments tied to them are all different. We need to refactor the economics of the web and better reward and expose the value in the efforts of creating the good, while in parallel demoting the bad. This starts with quantifying elements of effort as it relates to truth.

A Valuable Proposition

Quantifying the next era of media can be associated in a few sets: attribution, provenance and the effort behind the work. What’s clear is that we know that there is value in a creator’s work. And we, as an industry, recognize what it is but do a terrible job conveying it to our audience and consumers. Building a way to expose the efforts in media and put the value on that input instead of the output will get us there. This is the key differentiation between what can and cannot be trusted; is the way that we got to this information accurate? If so, show it.

This information exposure is the first step towards a path away from misdirection and recklessness. In today’s society, the lines in the road are meant to be abided by because there an understanding how they got there and why they exist. As long as that narrative continues, they will continue to do their job governing the way we as a society move around. The same goes for media. We must remind the world why these practices and principals exist, and how they came to be in the first place. They are the lines that govern information and most importantly, democracy. This must be exposed for the betterment of our world.

All of this adds up to a world in which quality media, information exposure, and great creative translate into good business. It’s the key component to wresting control over news from misinformers, manipulators, “clickbaiters,” and social media hubs and placing it back into the hands of media organizations that want to produce quality information about issues that really matter. We must put value on our effort to build a transparent and healthy newfound ecosystem.

Media is undervalued. It’s undervalued financially but especially undervalued in its role in maintaining a free and open society. Acknowledging and emphasizing its purpose through ubiquitous effort points solves for both. It will enable us to build new platforms, value systems and economies based on our true value and starve misinformers in its wake.

We know why the work that we do is so important. Now it’s time for us to let the world know exactly what goes into it.

Industry-Research

YouTube outage drives 20% increase in traffic

November 12, 2018 Su Hang, Data Scientist–Chartbeat

Last month, YouTube experienced an outage for about an hour and the internet got a taste of what would happen if the platform disappeared. The results were surprising: Internet behaviors shifted immediately and fiercely. There was a huge overall traffic surge, with some of the largest increases seen on app and search traffic.

Chartbeat analyzed the YouTube outage using global traffic data across a sample of more than 4,000 sites. Overall, this outage resulted in a 20% net increase in traffic to publisher sites. Just over half of this increase (11% of overall traffic) went to general articles on publisher sites, while articles about the YouTube outage comprised a 9% lift.

Huge surges in search and app Traffic

It makes sense that since 45% of the traffic lift came from articles about the outage, we saw a large boost in search traffic, with readers likely searching for answers regarding the outage.

Specifically, we saw a 59% increase in search traffic. Across other referrers types, we saw a consistent lift—notably also from platforms within the Google ecosystem:

Direct +9%
Links +28% – of total link traffic during the outage, Google Chrome Suggestions made up 19% and Google News 14%
Internal +13%
Social +11%

As we look at how and where people read during this outage, we saw app and Google AMP traffic seeing the largest surges, with 78% and 67% lifts respectively. We also saw boosts across desktop, but mobile and tablet saw even larger increases.

Web +15%
Facebook Instant Articles +6%
Desktop +13%
Mobile +26%
Tablet +26%

Not all platforms are created equal

We compared this traffic boost to the Facebook outage on August 3rd, 2018, which brought a 2.3% net increase to publisher traffic in the 45-minute outage window. Similarly, the late August Reddit outage didn’t even make a blip to overall publisher traffic. In the Facebook case, only a negligible amount of that traffic went to articles about the outage.

There are a couple potential reasons for the vast difference in traffic increase in the YouTube outage vs. the Facebook outage.

YouTube is not normally a traffic driver to publishers: Unlike Facebook, YouTube does not refer a great deal of traffic to publishers. Thus, the effect of people moving from YouTube to publisher sites during the outage had a dramatic impact and was purely additive.
Day and time difference: Facebook’s outage occured on a Friday afternoon (US time) / evening (Europe/Asia time). Thus, the majority of people were likely at work or out for the evening. It wasn’t prime news-reading time. The YouTube outage, on the other hand, was on a Tuesday evening (US), which is prime couch time.

So far, we’ve seen there’s no single reaction when a platform goes down. Sometimes people are more apt to search for answers, sometimes they go directly to a news source they trust. The one thing we do see is that when Facebook or YouTube goes dark, the rest of the internet comes alive.

Perspectives

How one publisher won the brand safety battle

November 5, 2018 Alynn Beyder, Senior Product Marketing Manager – IAS

You only have to open your Twitter feed or scan the latest headlines to know that it’s a perilous online climate for brands. A volatile news cycle means it’s increasingly hard for marketers to find brand safe inventory to carry their ads. Even premium publishers are running news content that some audiences may find controversial with increasing public pressure on brands to display social responsibility.

For publishers who traffic in newsworthy, attention-grabbing, informative content this presents a challenge and an opportunity. Every brand has different sensitivities, and content that could be anathema to one might be pure gold to another. However, in this complex climate, publishers need to carefully consider how to grow their revenue and maximize the value of their inventory while delivering the news their readers expect along with the brand safety marketers need. New research points to a solution.

Finding an Optimal Balance

A new study from Integral Ad Science and a major media publisher found that IAS publisher data could be used to manually optimize placements to target inventory that met advertisers’ strict brand safety standards. This tactic allowed the publisher to secure inventory suitable to a major technology advertiser and unlock the value of its young tech-savvy audience. To make the process scalable to other advertising partners the publisher used IAS’ publisher optimization tools to target desirable inventory without increasing the size or workload of its publisher-optimization team.

Automating delivery and prioritizing serving ads adjacent to content that matched the advertiser’s specific brand safety needs resulted ina dramatic decrease in wasted impressions. Previously nearly 7% of all campaign impressions had been deemed too risky for this specific brand. After implementing and inventory optimization strategy guided by IAS verification data, that result fell to just 0.2% of all campaign impressions, allowing the publisher to recover substantial revenue, meet advertiser expectations more efficiently, and increase the total value of its premium inventory.

Publisher Priorities

Although brand safety is an industry-wide problem, it has fallen heavily on the shoulders of publishers alone to solve. Increased attention to the issue, driven by the tumultuous news cycle and a tense political climate, comes at a time when many publishers are seeing their revenue squeezed in other ways, leaving little margin for error.

With the duopoly consuming an ever-larger share of total digital advertising dollars, it’s become critical for publishers to maximize the value of their inventory to ensure a healthy bottom line. More importantly, the long-term health of a media publishing business depends on securing the trust of major advertising partners and meeting their inventory quality needs consistently and efficiently.

For some publishers, meeting the challenges of brand safety has meant sanitizing content or allowing advertiser demand to override editorial judgment. This remediation has created unnecessary tension between sales and editorial teams forcing publishers to choose between quality and revenue. Optimization tools can help publishers to better understand their own inventory by mapping impression delivery to ensure that unique advertiser needs are met without compromising content quality. For publishers to succeed, a resolution that benefits both advertisers and the end consumers is key.

Advertising | Perspectives

The Google monopoly that no one Is talking about

November 2, 2018 Justin Choi, Founder and CEO—Nativo

Most publishers are well aware of the control that Google has long wielded over the digital advertising industry, ever since Google’s acquisition of the now-rebranded DoubleClick back in 2008. The damages caused by Google’s anticompetitive effects are difficult to quantify. However, one of the most concrete manifestations of Google’s monopoly lies in the rise of header bidding — which is literally a hack that the industry has devised to circumvent Google’s powerful position in auctions.

With header bidding, rival exchanges like AppNexus worked with publishers to increase competition for their ads — competition that was previously suppressed by Google. The higher yield that publishers have seen by implementing header bidding represents the quantifiable damages of Google’s hegemony.

The rise in header bidding was heralded as a win for publishers when it came to taking back some control for themselves. Unfortunately, header bidding represented merely a temporary victory. And, ironically, the latency that header bidding introduced may be the leverage Google will use to deliver its next blow against publisher independence. Unless publishers do something about it, that is.

Innovation Stifled, Control Lost

Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick set the stage for its monopoly in the realm of digital advertising. In order to maintain control over each ad impression, Google set up two moats around this business: It made ad serving a low- to no-cost proposition, and it ultimately tightly coupled the use of its ad server and Google’s AdX demand. The ability to even consider adoption of another ad-serving platform was virtually eliminated for the majority of online publishers, which could not afford to lose a steady stream of AdX revenue.

OK, so Google gave publishers a free ad-serving tool and a revenue stream to go along with it. What’s the problem?

The problem, as with all monopolies, is that Google gained an inordinate amount of control. In this case, that control is wielded over the independent publishing landscape. Google’s power stifles innovation and restricts publishers’ options for controlling their own destiny.

Google’s “Solutions” Represent More Control Over Publishers

Prior to header bidding, publishers loaded third-party JavaScript tags in a very slow waterfall after loading DoubleClick. With header bidding, third-party bids arrive beforehand and compete against other line items inside DFP. Unfortunately, this hack of implementing bidding outside of the ad server slows down publisher sites, introducing more latency on top of an already not-so-fast DFP.

Many in the industry (like Amazon) are championing server-side bidding as the antidote to header bidding’s latency. But there are problems: Server-side bidding — no matter whose solution — isn’t a comprehensive cure for header bidding’s latency. It still represents a slow two-step process: retrieving the bid and calling the ad server.

Google’s “answer to header bidding” is Exchange Bidding, which integrates the auction and ad serving so the two-step process is eliminated. This truly is a solution from a technology standpoint, but Exchange Bidding puts publishers right back under Google’s thumb.

Forward-looking publishers are skeptical of Exchange Bidding, as they should be. But they face a tough choice: Give in to Google and forfeit control. Or don’t give in and risk Google seizing control under the guise of solving the site latency problems for them. That’s because Google’s monopoly empire also includes Chrome and search. Google can and will enforce ad format and latency rules in Chrome and press its search monopoly on publishers via Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). Via Chrome and AMP, Google has the tools to keep tweaking its approach until it becomes just good enough and easy enough to drive capitulation among publishers. Over the long term, it’s a no-win situation.

Time to Put Up or Shut Up

Publishers must not give up the ground they’ve gained in breaking with Google through header bidding. But to keep moving forward, they must solve for user experience issues caused by the site latency they’ve introduced in a way that decreases their reliance on Google.

Publishers must seek and place value in alternative solutions. No longer can they embrace every potential cure that Google offers for their ills no matter how much easier that path may appear to be. Publishers must solve their user experience problems on their own — before Google steps in and solves them for them, again at the expense of publisher independence. There are alternatives, and there are paths forward that don’t rely on putting all of a publisher’s eggs in the Google basket.

It’s time for publishers to take control of their own destinies, once and for all.

Industry-Research

Are mobile news aggregators on the rise as referral traffic sources?

October 30, 2018 Clare Carr, Vice President of Marketing—Parse.ly

Often top referrers to articles in our network include a mix of the usual suspects: Google search, Google News, Facebook, Twitter, Flipboard, Drudge Report. But one day at the beginning of October I was looking at a story in Currents and noticed another referrer in the mix: SmartNews.

SmartNews is an app that aggregates and serves “impartial, trending and trustworthy” news through machine learning algorithms. And for the story I was looking at, about the FDA and e-cigarettes, SmartNews was the second highest external traffic referrer, right after Google Search.

Then later this month, another colleague was keeping up with the Mega Millions lottery news (she didn’t win) and noticed another unusual referring domain: discover.google.com. We’ve written about trends in non-search Google referrers before, including non-search AMP traffic and Google Quick Search Box, but this was a whole other domain.

We couldn’t help but wonder what was going on with these mobile referrers, and how they affecting were traffic to publishers. I took a closer look at the traffic trends to find out.

SmartNews revs up traffic

My colleague who owns an Android phone said she’s used to seeing SmartNews alerts pop up.

However, she didn’t realize how many people had the app pre-installed on their devices or were opting in to the same experience.

SmartNews has been growing as a referrer, with VentureBeat reporting 200% growth year-over-year in the U.S. and 10 million monthly active users. Looking at page views to articles since April, it’s clear that there’s an uptick.

The highest peak in referral traffic from SmartNews happened this month. In fact, SmartNews has even edged its way into the top fifteen overall referrers so far in October. Though it drove under 1% of traffic, SmartNews ranked 11th, right behind Yahoo and ahead of Apple News.

The Percentage of all network views referred from October 1 – October 26, 2018.

The top stories with traffic from SmartNews this month are about Law, Government, and Politics, News, Business, Health & Fitness, and Science.

Google Discover makes an appearance

Though the referring domain discover.google.com didn’t make it into the top overall traffic sources in October, it appeared seemingly out-of-the blue. Traffic from the referrer to our network begins suddenly on October 18.

So where exactly is this mysterious traffic coming from? Turns out it’s coming from the artist formerly known as Google Feed. In September, Google Feed rebranded as Google Discover.

Google reports that more than 800 million people use Discover every day. From Google’s blog: “Think of it as your new mobile homepage where you can not only search, but also discover useful, relevant information and inspiration from across the web for the topics you care about most.”

So far according to our nine days of network data, the information Google Discover users cared about most included these top five categories: Law, Government, and Politics, Technology & Computing, Business, Sports, and Science.

News aggregators appeal to a younger demographic

Given that U.S. adults are spending an average of 3 hours, 25 minutes a day on mobile devices in 2018, according to eMarketer, it may be no surprise that more and more readers are finding news through mobile news aggregators.

In their 2018 digital news report, Reuters Institute found that over half of respondents got news through interfaces that use ranking algorithms, including search, social media, and news aggregators. The same amount of respondents (6%) treated email, mobile alerts, and news aggregators as their respective main gateways to news.

What does this mean for publishers? It might be worthwhile to keep your eye on growing news aggregator referrers, especially if you’re trying to reach a younger demographic. According to Reuters, aggregators are most popular among 25 – 34 year olds and 18 – 24 year olds. Compare that to email and direct access, which are most popular among 45 – 54 year olds and people aged 55+.

Have you noticed any mobile referrers take off lately? Let us know—we’re keeping our eyes peeled.

Advertising | Perspectives | Revenue

The next frontier in digital ad fraud: local markets

October 29, 2018 Kevin Rehberg, Vice President, Client Development – Alliance for Audited Media

Digital advertising fraud continues to be an industry-wide problem. Estimates of dollars lost to fraud range from $6 billion to $16 billion annually. Much of the conversation has been on preventing fraud in open ad exchanges on a national level. But digital ad fraud can affect anyone who buys and sells digital advertising, including local and national publishers and advertisers.

With local markets becoming a target, the ad fraud crisis might seem to be spiraling out of control. But there is hope. The war on ad fraud is winnable. National and local marketers have the power to steer their budgets toward legitimate websites with human audiences. But how do we get there?

Here we unravel this often confusing and complicated topic to uncover how ad fraud is affecting local markets and what publishers can do to minimize its impact.

Why local markets?

Fraudsters go where the money is. This year in the U.S., mobile ad spending is expected to surpass television advertising. Pair this influx of money with a platform where anti-malware and ad fraud detection is immature or non-existent, and mobile advertising platforms and local markets become prime targets for ad fraud.

How does local ad fraud happen?

Bad actors exploit one of the strengths of local markets: local audiences. Recent research from BIA/Kelsey estimates that out of $76 billion in local ad spending, almost $3 billion is lost to geotargeting ad fraud annually. Marketers want to reach their audiences on their mobile devices when they are in specific locations. Fraudsters take advantage of the appeal of geotargeted advertising by faking a device’s location. This means ads run on “devices” that declare GPS coordinates, but that data can be easily faked, allowing fraudsters to steal from locally targeted ad budgets.

Dr. Augustine Fou, cybersecurity and ad fraud researcher, in partnership with BIA/Kelsey, conducted an experiment that compared mobile ad performance in programmatic campaigns targeting Houston during a hurricane and arbitrary market with a very targeted audience: Butte-Bozeman, Montana.

The ad campaigns specifying these two geographic areas were successfully executed by the programmatic exchanges, but the results were not logical. For example, 100 percent of the ads were loaded on Android devices and all ad impressions were generated at 5 a.m. Houston time and 4 a.m. Bozeman time. These findings, among others, show that the app usage in these campaigns did not follow the patterns of typical human behavior and were the result of fraudulent activity.

This initial test was expanded to include the geotargeting of 16 DMAs through programmatic media buying. While there were variations in the levels of fraud between DMAs, the results showed similar rates of ad fraud (shown in dark red on the following chart) throughout all 16 markets.

“Local publishers have real audiences—the people who live and work in the communities and consume the content they create,” explained Fou. “Marketers need to understand the risks of ad fraud in geotargeted campaigns and consider spending their ad budgets directly with local publishers to avoid those risks.”

What can publishers do?

Legitimate local publishers work hard to create quality content that attracts real human audiences. Publishers who can prove that they have quality, human audiences will be the winners as marketers look to reward those who proactively combat fraud.

Knowledge is power. As more money is spent to reach local audiences, publishers must pay attention to how ad fraud is occurring in their markets and demonstrate that their sites are safe places for advertisers. Understanding how ad fraud occurs and explaining to marketers the issues that make them vulnerable is an important first step, but more action must be taken.

Here are a few steps publishers can take to bring us closer to minimizing ad fraud in the buying/selling process:

1. Follow Best Practices

Know your business practices for monetizing your site, sourcing traffic and choosing vendors, and educate your staff on best practices. Steps to providing transparency include implementing Ads.txt and having a third-party audit.

2. Use Accredited Vendors

Implement tech to prohibit ads from being served to known bots.

3. Actively Manage Media Monetization

Dedicate staff to review traffic patterns and sources.

4. Understand Traffic Sources

Revisit and scrutinize current traffic sourcing practices.

If you want to learn more about what you can do to help, download the AAM white paper Three Truths to Confront the Digital Ad Fraud Crisis. By looking deeper into ad fraud and how transactions take place within the ecosystem, it’s clear that ad fraud – on both national and local levels – is conquerable.

Revenue

5 Steps to acquire, upsell, and retain subscribers using customer data

October 22, 2018 Michel Benjamin, Director of Marketing—Lotame

Advertising and subscriptions are two of the main focal points when it comes to driving revenue as a publisher. If you, like many publishers, are looking to driving subscriptions as a way to bolster revenue and not be so reliant on ad revenue, you may want to consider a few strategies based on existing customer data. Customer data, which you collect from multiple sources, can be combined into a data management platform (DMP) to drive insights about your readers, which your team can use to acquire, upsell, and retain loyal subscribers. Here are just a few strategies to consider.

1. Adjust Paywalls by Audience Type

Let’s say you already have a healthy chunk of subscribers, but you want to grow that loyal customer base. The first step to growing your subscription base is understanding who your current site visitors are.

Using your DMP, you could segment overall visitors into groups, such as:

Fly-bys
Loyal users
Users that natively come to site (not from social or search)
Newsletter readers
Subscribers

Once you have different audience segments created, you can test different paywall meters against the different segments. For example, you could offer your die-hard loyal segment seven free pageviews per month before a paywall, whereas you can offer your lukewarm segment three free page views per month before the paywall.

2. Use AI to Find More Subscribers

Now that you have segmented your site visitors, you can take a closer look at who your subscribers are to help guide you to find more of those valuable subscribers. The audience profile reports available in your DMP offer insights into each audience broken down into a few main sections: Demographics, Behaviors, Actions, and Interests. You can use this information to learn more about your subscribers and how they overlap with one another, or what they have in common.

The next step is finding more of those subscribers using artificial intelligence (AI) to help identify more of that target audience. The specific tool you use may vary, but the concept remains the same. You start with a “seed” audience, i.e. the audience you want to find more of, which in this case is subscribers. For the purpose of building your subscriber seed list, you might consider segmenting visitors who are already subscribed to your newsletter, as newsletter subscribers often have the highest conversion rate to become subscribers. The AI will help find more prospective subscribers who look and act like your original seed group. This is an efficient method of building larger pools of prospective subscribers with less manual work for you.

3. Onboard Subscriber Data and Retarget Them Online

For publishers who have a solid offline base of subscribers, you may be focused on remaining top-of-mind and relevant to current subscribers via online touchpoints. Data onboarding brings your CRM, subscription or other offline data sources online, to be combined with other data from websites, apps, social, search, and more, for a complete view of your audience across screens.

What types of data can you bring online? All the most valuable data that publishers have coveted for decades, including email and street address data, where you mail the print copies of your publication directly to your subscribers. With all of your data online and in the same place, you can use it to create the most effective ad campaigns, compelling content, and insightful reporting and analytics — efficiently and cost-effectively. Retargeting your offline audience on a digital platform is another opportunity to engage with your loyal readers.

4. Highlight Premium/Paid Content

Your free newsletter subscribers or social media followers are an excellent option for upselling, since you know they are already interested in your content. They might just be waiting for the right offer to come along to convert to a paid subscriber, or maybe they don’t even know that there is a paid/premium option. The regular communications you have with these readers are an ideal platform to mention the availability of premium content. You can still deliver free content, but you should highlight your premium content. Make people see what they are missing and give them an opportunity right there to subscribe.

5. Conversion Rate Optimization on Your Subscription Page

The last and sometimes overlooked strategy to increase subscriptions is to take a closer look at your subscription page. Is it easy to find? Is it easy to navigate? Does it offer a good user experience? If the goal is to make people convert here, this should be a simple, streamlined process. The subscription page is also an opportunity for you to sell your premium content. Consider adding more meat to the page beyond just a form to be filled out with a price.

Acquiring, upselling and retaining subscribers is not impossible. These five strategies are not a comprehensive list, as marketing tactics and strategies are almost limitless. But if you’re looking to grow your subscriber base in 2019, you may want to give these a try.

Innovation

The Facebook effect: What real-time marketing means for online publishers in the digital age

October 16, 2018 Jon Shalowitz, CEO—LiftIgniter

Earlier in my career, about 10-15 years ago, digital experiences (at that time, just webpages) had what was known as the “eight-second rule,” meaning an eight-second load-time max per webpage.

At the time, eight seconds was about as fast as you could get. But today, the aspirational load time is more like one sub-second. Anything that takes longer is going to drive users elsewhere. Immediacy is the new normal.

Part of the reason for this shift is obvious: Technology is more advanced, and we now have the ability to reach more consumers on more devices than we previously could.

But the other part of this equation may be less readily-apparent. Consumer expectations have evolved. Immediacy isn’t a nice to have. It is a must-have. So, retailers, publishers, and brands must now provide content in real time.

This shift has largely been driven by social media. Today’s internet users are accustomed to opening their Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram feeds and seeing fresh, personalized content updated moment-to-moment. In light of this, decisioning engines now need to decide what to show a customer or reader in less than one second.

Real-time marketing is no longer on its way—it’s a fact of the digital age. To keep up, online publishers must assess readers’ preferences moment-to-moment and provide the most relevant content available. And they need to try to keep users on their own sites, rather than driving users off to third-party sites.

Here’s what online publishers need to know:

Machine learning helps ensure that your content adapts to reader preferences in the blink of an eye.

The other day I took my son to see the Marvel movie Venom. In the movie, a space alien arrives on Earth and can only survive by combining with a human host. The alien unites with a human and creates this amazing fusion: The human is only powerful with the alien’s power and the alien can only survive on Earth with the human.

Similarly, savvy tech leaders are partnering with machine learning technology to enhance customer experiences across a range of platforms. Real-time marketing is a departure from the status quo approach to personalization, which involves making suggestions based on a users’ declared preferences and/or on privacy-intrusive profiling.

For example, when you sign up for a media site, you’ll likely be asked what topics you’re interested in. (This might be politics, business, or pop culture, for example.)

But often, what people actually click on ends up being vastly different from their stated preferences. This means that publishers need to be aware of the disconnect and suggest content accordingly. This is the user’s observed preferences which are perfect for a machine learning system to detect and make content decisions based upon.

Readers’ preferences change moment-to-moment. This is unlike an online store where the user is typically going to buy something and may look at a related product. In the case of online media, the reader will be a target for a wide range of content. Picking up on various signals that the user gives off in the moment to determine their interests is critical, while also leveraging external factors such as stock trends, weather, news events, or trending articles can also help generate relevant recommendations.

The future of online publishing is all about understanding what readers want in the moment. If you don’t have a super-responsive site that can pick up on trends, you should consider implementing technology that picks up on readers’ individual preferences in real time. Otherwise, you’ll lose them.

Send readers to native content on your site—but do it in real time.

If you’re able to capture a reader’s interest and suggest trending articles at the bottom or side of the page, that’s a solid start.

But any recommendation service that’s sending readers to a different site has several flaws. First, while the publisher might perhaps make some ad revenue, they will be losing that user for at least a moment—maybe that day, or even forever. From a customer service standpoint, it’s always preferable to drive users to more content on your site as opposed to someone else’s.

On a recent trip to New York, I met with a major news media company who confided that they’d been losing website viewers since they can’t effectively respond to real-time trends across their entire site.

Here’s what happened: They got a scoop on a story and published it on their main site. As expected, the main site was getting a lot of clicks and was driving traffic from search engines to their site to find the article. But they still had a problem with getting that hot content recommended at all locations across their site to aid in recirculation.

Their existing system could not react in time to put the scoop on the other pages of their site. And you can’t capitalize on a trend if you’re not making sure it’s not just prevalent on your homepage but everywhere on your site. To do this, you need to have a way to make sure your site is fully dynamic and responsive.

If you aren’t, you’re missing out on a major business opportunity.

If nothing else, make sure your company values align with the content you’re linking to.

When you drive traffic to another site you have no control over the quality of that content. It could be good content, or it could be horrible. Either way, that experience will reflect on the brand of the referring site.

And if that content doesn’t align with your core values, you’re losing brand affinity. And that will hurt you in the long-term. When you leverage a real-time marketing solution on your site, you can showcase your brand’s ideals and values by aligning your brand with certain causes valued by your customer-base.

Nike is a great example. This fall, Nike designed a campaign around Colin Kaepernick, the NFL player famous for refusing to kneel during the national anthem at games. Despite a major boycott, the campaign earned Nike $6 million dollars in additional revenue.

When you know what your readers are seeing, it’s easiest to deliver content you can vouch for. Anything else is a risk for your brand.

In the real-time age, publisher sites need to keep up with the customer expectation that the content is going to be just as relevant and immediate as what they are accustomed to on their social media feeds.

Pretty soon, readers won’t settle for less.

About the Author

As CEO of LiftIgniter, Jon Shalowitz brings a wealth of experience in building innovative, fast-growth companies. Jon has deep roots in Enterprise SaaS products, especially in the areas of digital transformation and user engagement. Most recently, he was CEO of Badgeville, an Enterprise SaaS company that analyzed and optimized over 1 billion consumer actions per month for leading brands.