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Industry-Research

Research finds that publishers rely on autoplay, but not without risk

Thanks to the increasing popularity of digital video, autoplay ads have become one of the most common forms of online video advertising. But that could change if Google and Apple have their way.

In recent months, both companies have hinted at browser-based features that will potentially curtail autoplay video’s impact. In April, for example, Google teased an ad-blocking feature in both the mobile and desktop versions of Chrome that would limit auto-start content. And in June, Apple unveiled an upcoming autoplay-video-blocking feature for its Safari browser. How might this impact proliferation and adoption of autoplay among publishers? To answer this question, we first need to know how many publishers rely on auto-start video inventory.

The Big Picture

At MediaRadar, we examined nearly 63,000 video ads from January to June of this year to get a better sense of how the industry is reacting. Here’s what we found:

  • Nearly one-third (31%) of publishers auto-start 75% or more of their on-site video ad inventory.
  • Roughly another third (30%) of publishers auto-start between 50 and 75% of their video ads.
  • Just under 40% of publishers are less reliant on autoplay video ads, auto-starting 50% or less of their inventory.

So what do these findings mean for digital publishing/advertising? Here’s a closer look.

Websites that use auto-start ads stick with them.

Among our study’s three segments that embrace autoplay video ads, there’s no broad shift in websites reducing their dependency on auto-start video inventory. In fact, we see exceptionally low variance month-to-month. Most sites have chosen a model and stayed with it consistently in 2017. It’s also worth noting that there isn’t one singular type of media company that supports autostart ads – they can be seen practically everywhere.

There are some commonalities across the types of publishers using auto-play.

Publishers that use auto-start video ads the most have some commonalities. Smaller websites – think niche, regional, enthusiast, business-to-business, as examples – have fewer overall impressions. This likely drives the need for video inventory, which is sold at a higher cost per impression. These same websites have the highest incidence of autoplay video advertising. This shouldn’t necessarily be interpreted as bad news. Presumably, video ads running on these sites are highly-targeted and likely to be well-received. Sites reliant on programmatic advertising were also more likely to employ auto-start video.

How might Google and Apple shake things up here?

While the threat of Google Chrome stripping out auto-start videos is real, it’s not imminent — at least not yet. Based on past experience – like with Google AMP, for example – we found that most publishers have taken a wait-and-see approach before making a change in their business practices. Apple could be a more interesting company to watch as their advertising interests are limited. They have no dog in the auto-play fight, so to speak, and could dramatically disrupt things for publishers and advertisers if they decide to block these units more aggressively via pre-installed software or hardware.

Perspectives | Video

Pivoting to video: It’s not one size fits all

With more than one media company laying off staff to “pivot to video,” the move bears some scrutiny. Understandably, those in the “text” camp emphasize the power and speed that written content brings, while the other side sees dollar signs behind video advertisers. But these opposing storylines hide nuances that need to be considered, if you’re considering video at all.

First, the data. Yes, average time spent watching digital video is expected to keep growing and the prospect of television ad dollars ripe for the picking seems too good to not consider how digital sites can grab a piece of it. However, our research has also shown that video on media sites underperforms when it comes to content types: people spend, on average, 30% less with video posts than a non-video post.

Video is Not for Everyone

But all of that data ignores a crucial, but somewhat basic point: not all video is the same.

This summer, Parse.ly hosted a series of events in New York City asking publishers about this issue. Ryan Sager, Editorial Director of the Ladders, and Time Magazine, WSJ, and NYPost alum, took a stand against the pivot to video. He pointed to Facebook sharing inflated metrics and the uninspiring push for live video, but more broadly pointed out that the actual content of the videos people want to create matters. “What do people want to watch?” Sager asked the audience, “If you are a food brand, great. But if you are in a news space, it’s a much tougher sell.”

Even for publishers that fit into one of those spaces, like the home decor and DIY site Domino, the number show that video does better when paired with text. “Our video needs to come in tandem with content. There needs to also be text with it,” Tracy Cho, Executive Director of Marketing, Growth and Analytics at Domino told the audience.

The attendees agreed. We polled attendees and found 76% of them supported using a mix of content formats, while only 13% wanted to see a more sites pivot to video.

Video is Content Too

Some even questioned thinking about video in such a bifurcated way. “It feels foolish to categorize video as separate content,” said Andrew Littlefield, Managing Editor at Ceros. “If you examine your own habits, you don’t go on the internet and think, “Time to look at some videos,” or “Time to read some words.” It’s just all one hodgepodge.”

Sachin Kamdar, CEO of Parse.ly, emphasized that any company making a pivot to video out of desperation would face challenges unrelated to the format itself, including poor internal communication and a culture unaccustomed to producing this type of content. However, he also noted that the opportunity that video presents needs to be taken seriously in an industry struggling for monetization options. The intersection of consumer intention, market dynamics, the added incentives of the tech platforms, and the ability to monetize means that any company not considering what video could mean for their business out of sentimental value to the written word could be missing out.

So, what does make sense for publishers as the video conversation progresses? “Understand your audience and decide what products are going to best serve them, and potentially make you money,” Kamdar said. Melissa Gilkey, Vice President of Growth at Upworthy agreed, noting that when considering any choice that affected content that “data is a huge component of that. It’s a non-negotiable if you’re building a strategy.”

Perspectives

How the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation drives data quality

The regulatory burdens of Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) have the advertising industry in a flurry. The industry press is rife with doomsday scenarios predicting the end of online advertising.

Is the regulation complex and in some instances, onerous? Yes.

Does it signal the end of online advertising? No.

GDPR does, however, force companies to examine the costs of collecting and using online behavioral data. Because GDPR increases the compliance costs associated with the collection of data, it becomes necessary to examine whether the collected data is worth the added compliance expense. Why absorb compliance costs for data that may or may not be valuable to clients and partners? While the industry has been talking about a “flight to quality” for years, GDPR has cemented Lotame’s commitment to data quality initiatives.

The Personal Approach

“Personal data” under the GDPR is broadly defined to include personally identifiable data points like name and email address, as well as less precise data points like cookies, device IDs, and IP address. The rationale is that modern technology allows marketers to identify individuals with one or more data points, even if those data points do not refer to each individual by name.

The problem with this broad definition of “personal information” is that GDPR treats anonymous data and personally identifiable information as similarly situated. A company that collects and uses cookie data has nearly the same compliance obligations as a bank that collects and stores highly sensitive financial data. The bank, and the consumers it serves, are all well aware of the risks inherent to the storage and processing of financial data. A breach has significant consequences for both the bank and the consumer. For this reason, the bank is able to pass some portion of its high compliance costs along to the consumer in the form of fees. These fees help to make banking one of the world’s most enduring, and lucrative, industries.

How the Cookie Crumbles

The potential loss or unauthorized disclosure of cookie data did not, until relatively recently, raise the ire of consumers or regulators. But now, with GDPR, cookie data is placed in the same category as financial data – meaning that a company like Lotame has the same compliance obligations with respect to its cookie data as does a bank that transacts in highly sensitive financial data. While regulators may view cookie data as having equal footing with consumer names and addresses, marketers do not, and they have not been willing to pay premium dollars for data that is viewed as less precise than personally identifiable information.

On the one hand, GDPR validates what Lotame has known and proselytized for years – that data is tremendously valuable – even when that data is not tied to personal information like name, email address, street address, or telephone number. On the other hand, GDPR makes it costly to collect, store and push large volumes of cookie and device data. There is substantial risk that compliance costs, relative to the earning potential of this data, are being driven too high. In order to drive revenue in the face of mounting regulatory burdens, Lotame and other players in online advertising must focus on quality.

Quality Over Quantity

Over the past year, we have invested heavily in technology and partnerships that emphasize quality over scale. Earlier this year, for example, we announced a partnership with Are You a Human, to provide advertisers and their agencies the ability to quickly and easily identify non-human traffic and create new bot-free audiences for ad targeting, analysis, content personalization, and more. This allows our clients to remove all profiles identified as bots, to reduce wasted ad spend, decrease bot traffic, and increase conversions. For Lotame, it also ensures that we are not absorbing compliance costs for data that offers minimal value to our clients and partners.

GDPR is a game changer for the online advertising industry, but it is not the death knell that many fear. With its emphasis on consumer transparency and consent, Lotame expects GDPR to produce higher quality data assets from more engaged consumers. We have embraced the regulations as an opportunity to review our business practices with fresh eyes and have encouraged our clients and partners to share in this approach.

Tiffany Morris is General Counsel & Vice President of Global Privacy at Lotame, overseeing all aspects of the company’s global legal strategy and operations. She brings more than 10 years of legal and business experience in the advertising, sports, and entertainment industries. Prior to joining Lotame, Tiffany held legal and business development roles at Vox Media, Inc., during a period of significant growth and acquisition activity. She previously served as Legal Counsel for The Kraft Group, where she handled a full range of legal matters for a private portfolio of companies, including the New England Patriots, Gillette Stadium, and Patriot Place. Tiffany started her career with the consulting firm McKinsey & Company. Tiffany has a BA from Wellesley College and a JD from Boston College Law School.

Perspectives | Revenue

The subscription discussion we should be having

If 2016 was the year of the platform, 2017 is the year of the subscriber.

Amid a backdrop of political change, wavering trust in government and media, and the rise of fake news, subscriptions are up among the largest U.S. publishers, proving that consumers value high quality journalism. According to Pew Research, the numbers show that in 2016, The New York Times added more than 500,000 digital subscriptions – a 47% year-over-year rise, and The Wall Street Journal added more than 150,000 digital subscriptions, a 23% rise. Even Facebook recently announced that it’s building a feature that would encourage readers to subscribe to news publications, in response to publisher interest.

And this trend isn’t going away. According to WAN-IFRA’s 2017 World Press Trends report, understanding paying commercial models is the number one priority of publishers this year, particularly as audience revenues surpass advertising revenues among global newspapers.

While the industry rightfully focuses on growing new subscribers and experimenting with business models, the discussion should not end there. What we’re not talking enough about is that subscribers are a distinct audience. They engage with your content in a different way and are loyalists in a different way. Understanding these differences is where publishers will build their revenue strategies to take their businesses to the next level.

Subscribers are Unique

No one will pay for content that doesn’t repeatedly engage them.

Loyal readers, which on average account for the majority of pageviews across all channels, have time and time again proven to be your most valuable as they consume more of your content.

And what is that link between loyalty and subscriptions? Active engagement. A recent report by the MIT School of Management, Turning Content Viewers Into Subscribers, presented the Subscriber Ladder of Participation as an illustration of reader lifecycle. Rather than thinking of your reader journey in a passive way, it encourages you to build your strategy around action: moving readers from Anonymous to Subscriber by encouraging them to act.

MIT School of Management’s Subscriber Ladder of Participation

And this active participation is central to Chartbeat as well – our research has shown that analyzing and optimizing the reader experience around engagement patterns as opposed to just empty pageviews drives returning visitors, motivating users to proverbially ascend the ladder towards subscriptions. Subscribers are loyalists who engage with your content in a unique way, and understanding that engagement is key to driving more loyalty.

As Kritsanarat Khunkham from Die Welt put it, “Our whole subscription model is based on returning visitors—they’re essential. You can only turn users to subscribers when they’re returning. I’d rather have 500 returning visitors than 5,000 one-time users. They’re [the ones] who appreciate my work, who trust my brand.”

Besides the simple fact that returning visitors increase ad impressions, they also represent a crucial point in a publisher’s subscription funnel. Every new visitor is a potential subscriber, but — to put it bluntly — no one will pay for content that doesn’t engage them.

Subscribers are Ideal

Once you’ve engaged your subscribing audience, you need to focus on keeping them and getting more. To do this, you need to study how they engage and drive like-behaviors in your loyal/returning audience to turn them into subscribers.

Khunkham notes that often, their consistent eye on data uncovers what topics their audience is truly interested in. This justifies expanding coverage in those areas, often areas they might not have expected. “Sometimes [our audience is] more interested in political news than we expected, and we have such potential for [an audience] who reads seriously,” he says. “When we can prove to [journalists] that readers engage with their meaningful work, it motivates them.”

In other words, publishers need to start thinking about taking their data past the point of conversion. Once a reader has subscribed, are you continuing to dig deeper into their behaviors and deliver the content that they have demonstrated a complex interest in? Discover not only what content your subscriber communities engage with, but think of subscription status as another lens to evaluate all of your editorial strategies — from social media channels and platforms, to devices and portals, and even relationship-building campaigns.

At the end of the day, understanding new visitors and their journey to return is important, but garnering deeper insights around how subscribers engage with your content differently can unlock durable retention and growth strategies for publishers across the board.

Terri Walter, the Chief Marketing Officer of Chartbeat, works every day to ensure that publishers and newsrooms have the tools and insights they need for quality content to thrive. A digital marketing veteran of 20 years, Terri has worked over the course of her career to position high potential brands and spearhead thought leadership in media and analytics at companies including DoubleClick, Razorfish and Microsoft Advertising.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion | Perspectives

Six fearless female executives weigh in on their greatest challenges and opportunities

If you haven’t heard already, more than 40 years after women entered the workplace, we’re still having trouble climbing the ladder. The percentage of female chief executives of Fortune 500 companies only recently passed six percent. Meanwhile, some of the biggest headlines to come from the tech space lately are not about positive earnings, but rather a culture of sexual harassment. And the issue isn’t just regulated to the tech industry. Last year, 54% of the women surveyed in the advertising industry by the 4A’s also reported that they experienced sexual harassment at work.

I spoke to five talented and successful women leaders in advertising and tech to get their opinions on some of the greatest challenges and opportunities for women in their field right now. Here are some of their insightful – and inspiring – words.

1. Yao Huang, Founder, The Hatchery

There is a rising tide of opportunity to change the way things are. There is a swell of activism, unrest, and willingness to do something if there was leadership that showed the way to results. Words are hollow. Actions are deep. I’m not saying people are not doing anything, I’m saying it’s not actionable enough. For example, we’ve been talking about the pay gap for decades. Half the population should have the leverage to change that. There is a need for a united front at tables of decision making and negotiation. Around a shared vision of going forward by saying YES. Yes to helping your coworker up. Yes to mentoring. Yes to giving another woman an opportunity. Yes to support and organizations that are making moves forward. How does half the population not have a voice with votes? How does 80% of consumer spending power not have a voice in products and the companies that make them? How is there still sexual harassment at work? And bias to women for funding? Leadership needs to rise to unify around people powerful enough to rally a gender together. The challenge is finding people willing to step all the way up. Not just enough for good PR.

2. Anita Schillhorn van Veen, Founding Partner, Frame Strategy Co

Wonder Woman has just blown up the box office. The Fearless Girl statue (and the lady creative team behind it) just slayed at Cannes. And as tough as the last American election was, we can’t forget that a woman won the popular vote.

On the flip side, Uber is getting decimated in large part because of its internal misogyny. And the latest attempt at a health care bill, written solely by men, does not mention women at all.

We’re seeing the juxtaposition of women’s power and powerlessness everywhere we look. We need women to be role models, and we also need women behind the scenes to build a culture of inclusivity.

Advertising is one of the myriad media that seed culture. One of the reasons I’m in this industry is because we have the opportunity to create narratives and experiences that can make a difference.

I’m a fan of the Bechdel rule for movies: at least two women talk to each other about something other than a man. This rule calls attention to gender inequality in the film industry, and many dedicated viewers compile lists of films that comply and don’t. The more films that follow the Bechdel rule, the more women are represented as fleshed out human beings and not as stereotype.

I want this rule to hold true for every cultural artifact, including advertising. Data tells us that women hold much of the purchasing power in categories traditionally considered “masculine,” like automotive, financial services, electronics. The stories we tell as advertisers need to reflect the power that women have in society.

The Bechdel rule can also hold true for leadership. The token woman isn’t good enough anymore. Having one woman at the helm isn’t a guarantee for more inclusive storytelling, or a more compassionate or collaborative work environment. It takes networks of women to champion each other and grow a non-patriarchal perspective.

And I must caveat, the Bechdel rule should also be applied to people of color. We’ve seen acquittal after acquittal after acquittal of police who have shot black boys and men. ICE agents are deporting plenty of Latina mothers and even a boy on his way to prom. Partially to blame is a media landscape that does little to tell human stories by and about people of color. In advertising we must examine the stories we tell to make sure we are telling stories that aren’t perpetuating the stereotypes. We must have people in power that can champion diverse perspectives – and not just one lonely black or brown face in the group office photo, but enough to support and encourage each other. Every win is a door opening a little wider for more women and more women’s stories. We have a great opportunity to build on it.

3. Rhea Hanges, Creative Director, Periscope

As simple as it sounds, I would like to see more focus on women as great talent. Lately, there’s been so much conversation about women and diversity, that it has started to burn me out a little bit. I want to see less talk and more action. Good news, I have been noticing a positive shift recently. I now see agencies wanting to bring in different types of creative talent on different types of projects, not because they are women but to get the best kind of breakthrough thinking. For me, this is the big opportunity for smart, diverse talent proving their value simply through great work. This shift comes from a whole new crew of amazing women being groomed by great organizations like SheSays, proving there’s an undeniable wealth of talent out there right now. My hope is the conversation will continue to shift from who you are to the incredible work you’re doing.

4. Stephanie Himoff, Northern Europe Managing Director, Outbrain

While I’m still always surprised by how few women there are in senior roles in tech and advertising, what I find promising is that we’re making an effort to shift how we think about global gender issues and the subjects of gender disparity and identity. On one level, as evidenced at Cannes this year, we’ve become more aware of the influence we have on culture and we’re taking more responsibility for what we create. On another level, we’re addressing organizational gaps, namely the small (but increasing!) amount of women in leadership roles within the industry. The fact that we’re talking about these issues demonstrates to me that there continues to be positive movement in our industry – though we still have a ways to go.

5. Vanessa Romann, Executive Strategy Director, Havas

We are moving from a physical hours game to a digital access game. This has allowed us to look beyond the consecutive 10 hour work day and into a model of looking at the day as 24 hours where you can ebb and flow between work and life. They feed each other. I find this particularly important for women who know what it means to be in a dual working household. I believe this change in paradigm is lending itself to a huge shift in opportunities for women. They are not as fearful to take on new roles, bigger roles, with more responsibility—if they can work in the way they want to.

Workplaces are also being more feminized—skills like empathy, supportiveness, and collaboration are the attributes shaping many thriving company cultures today. It’s giving women the chance to unmask their feminine qualities without having to fit into the traditional corporate structure.

Our industry had always been ahead of its time. The only thing that stands in the way of our industry’s progress is fear and insecurity. When we can embrace our individuality and bring those gifts to our work, our people and our business, we can contribute to a larger cultural conversation.

6. Sarita Bhatt, Global Head of Digital Marketing, Sonos

Perhaps one of the greatest challenges is overcoming the usual status quo – and actually be given the chance to lead. Due to unconscious bias, this opportunity is often harder for women to grab. But once you, as a woman, cross that chasm – after repeatedly proving to have the knowledge and experience required – the opportunities to grow and build future teams, leaders, products, and services that are awesome and innovative are endless … and that’s where it gets exciting in tech.

Jennifer Bassett (@Jabers) is Outbrain’s Managing Editor. She has 10+ years of experience in the content strategy and editorial space. She began her career as a book editor and has consulted for top agencies, non-profits, and media companies including Memorial Sloan Kettering, Havas Worldwide New York, and Interbrand. When she’s not talking content, she’s playing music with her bands The Missing Footage and The Living Kills. You can read more of her writing at Outbrain.com and jennifer-bassett.com.

Industry-Research | Revenue

The data shows it: Article pageviews and their value don’t correlate

Advertisers know that not every view is created equal and that it’s important to understand your brand in context. It’s why ad tech companies created targeting options. It’s why content can be bought by topic. Are the companies creating content thinking about getting the most value out of their audiences in the same way?

To figure out if this is the case, we examined Parse.ly’s publisher data to see how much volume different topics produce. We broke this down by the number of articles written and the average pageviews per article. Then we compared that to how advertisers value different audience segments.

The Data: Audiences by Topic

Examining how people find different topics online revealed that the subject matter of an article has an impact on the likely source of traffic. For example, in a sample of one million articles in the Parse.ly network, Facebook brought in 87% of pageviews to lifestyle content. Google search accounted for 61% of readership to technology stories.

In addition to learning how people found the articles, we looked at how did each topic compared by scale and popularity. Articles that fell cleanly into the lifestyle or U.S. presidential politics categories received the most views, while articles about sports and entertainment were the most common by volume.

A couple of explanations about our methodology are worth noting. For this report, we selected articles that fell cleanly into one category. In other words, we selected articles where at least two thirds of the words were generated by a single topic. This left us with a subset of just over one million articles that we could cleanly assign to a single topic.

For example, imagine that most articles that are written as a mix of two or more topics. Those will be excluded from this analysis. It simply doesn’t make a clear conclusion to say that “mixed-topic articles with a lifestyle slant” tend to get more pageviews. However, we can confidently say that articles that are mostly about lifestyle tend to get more pageviews than articles mostly about business.

Other important data preparation decisions to note are that we included only English-language articles. We also excluded articles whose full text was fewer than 600 characters. (The complete methodology is detailed in the full report.)

Pageviews vs. Audience

The extremes are quite telling. An average article in the lifestyle category gets nine times the pageviews of an average article on business and finance. So, does this mean the lifestyle pageview will bring in nine times as much revenue?

In fact, in some cases, the opposite is true. Digiday recently reported that CNN leverages audience segments by vertical to optimize ad rates. Chris Herbert, CNN’s SVP of digital operations and strategy, explained: “CNN’s finance vertical, CNNMoney, for example, commands higher ad rates than the parent site does because of its upscale audience, which could justify spending more to drive audience to that property.”

So, the really interesting question is how a publisher can match monetization to the potential expected pageview or volume, regardless of scale.

For example, even if the advertising value of certain topics are lower, the high volume of certain content types opens up other monetary opportunities. Lifestyle publishers and Condé Nast brands such as Condé Nast Traveler and Allure are forging partnerships to create branded subscription boxes. Efforts like these allow them to take advantage of the large “top-of-funnel” audience to drive purchase conversions.

Opportunities in High Volume/ Low Pageviews

Our team was surprised that the average views for each sports article ranked so low among topics. Given that the high-volume content was comprised mostly of local and even high school sports means that the average view totals are much lower. This is particularly true when compared to the audience for stories about national leagues. It is also worth noting that a preponderance of extremely short stories—such as those on game stats, syndication or even automated sports reporting—contribute to the high volume.

Taken in aggregate though, readers generally engage well with sports topics. A previous study we did (based on different data, but also looking at topics) found that sites focused on sports had a median engaged time of 51 seconds per article. Thus, sports can offer a strong monetization opportunity beyond pageviews. Engaged and loyal audiences can be monetized more easily through subscriptions, live events, or membership models.

Bring back the Classifieds?

Job postings are an example of a topic with low article volume—the lowest, in fact, of all topics analyzed—and high pageviews per article. From our research, we learned that the majority of traffic to job postings comes from Google search, which drives 84.4% of referral traffic. Facebook drives 11.9% of traffic comes, while the rest comes from other sources. This kind of traffic breakdown makes sense in the context of pageviews. If readers are searching for very specific information, a small subset of articles could generate a high volume of pageviews.

The classifieds are unlikely to return to their status as a primary revenue driver. However, for any scenario where you have a high amount of traffic to a low amount of content, there is likely to be room for revenue growth.

Using Data to See the Full Picture

The data we used for this study identifies ways that audience data should be considered for revenue potential, especially for opportunities outside of traditional display advertising. However, to be fully acted on, audience data must be synced in a way, both culturally and technologically, that connects it to business and monetary objectives.

Perspectives

Direct buys and non-blind programmatic need context to solve brand safety

The dust has largely settled after March’s brand safety scandal – however the problem hasn’t gone away. Although some brands are reported to have returned to Google advertising by May, others – including Pepsi, Tesco, and Marks & Spencer – were still waiting for solid guarantees from Google over and above what has already been promised.

The changes Google says it has already taken to improve brand safety haven’t been bedded in, aren’t sufficient for some brands, and still lack a vital component – third party verification. Google has promised to deliver such verification in the future, but before it’s implemented, marketers refusing to risk their brand reputation are opting for ad providers who can make promises on where their ads will appear as well as delivering third party verified monitoring and reporting on where ad creative actually did appear.

Third party monitoring, reporting and verification is imperative, of course, but it can really only help brands, publishers and ad tech companies to react to any concerning ad placement. Many brands would prefer a zero tolerance for any ad misplacement rather than an acceptance that misplacement will happen from time to time. Those marketers are likely to be the ones who focus their ad buying and planning on ad campaigns bought directly from ad inventory providers or, at very least, non-blind programmatic ad campaigns.

An incredibly insightful analysis by MediaPost’s Sean Hargrave identified this very issue. He suggested a correlation between the mere one in four media buyers who feel informed of their ad suppliers’ brand safety measures and the 28% who say they know where all their ads are going. He recognized quite reasonably that these buyers most likely focus on direct, non-blind programmatic buys. That means that they receive assurances of the quality of the ads. However, lumping blame on the blind buys alone fails to consider how some of the most sophisticated targeting technologies are the contemporary causes of even more catastrophically compromised ad placement.

Consider the Context

In fact, a Financial Times’ report on the aftermath of the scandal serves as a perfect case study. Their journalists’ research identified ads for Huawei, wix and even the Advertising Week Europe event displayed before a YouTube video from a UK-banned preacher. My strong hunch is that the European technology correspondent was researching those brands online for that article, other articles or other valid reasons, and the ads were behaviourally or re-targeted.

This one instance shows how dangerous it is for ad campaigns to rely on behaviourally and retargeting technology in isolation. They can be great at targeting brands’ biggest and established fans, but if those very consumers are presented with targeted ads for their favorite brands whilst browsing shocking content – which they are more likely to do because they fear it than agreement with it – then the damage is huge. Yes, that consumer might well be the right fit for the brand’s latest product. But that won’t matter if they are connecting within the most brand-damaging environment and state-of-mind. Here, the fundamental failure is one of context. Ad campaigns that do not include analysis and targeting of ad campaigns to the context of the content will always be at far higher risk of damaging their brand.

Need to Know

Being transparent about the publications which display campaigns’ ad creative, and backing that up with brand safety technology as well as independent third-party monitoring are essential qualities of any decent ad supplier. Yet even the most premium, brand safe media titles can carry compromising content. They have to. There are bad things in the world that people have a right to know. That’s why assessment of context – both its safety and relevance to campaigns – must be at a granular level, assessing not just the articles, but the keywords and phrases used within those articles.

Let’s be clear: categorization of content into buckets for advertisers to choose where to advertise is not contextual targeting. Content categorization alone is wildly insufficient, especially when users categorize their own content. Extremists don’t consider themselves “extremists”, so they might categorize revolting content as “current affairs”, “culture”, or “sex and relationships”. True contextual targeting understands the actual words used to identify content as both relevant and brand safe for advertisers.

Get the Signals Straight

Incorporating contextual does not mean abandoning other forms of targeting, such as behaviorally, demographic, or re-targeting, even when purchasing ads programmatically. There’s great ad tech available programmatically that can combine contextual signals with audience data to target campaigns to relevant consumers in brand safe environments. That said, pure reliance on computers to assess both audience and contextual appropriateness for ads will always be more risky than involving humans, even with the introduction of artificial intelligence. Ad buyers and planners know this, as nearly three-quarters of them (74.2%) say it’s more difficult to ensure brand safe environments when buying programmatically on open exchanges.

Hence managing brand safety must involve human beings. Computers just cannot match our abilities to identify the contextual appropriateness and relevance of content for advertisers. People are needed to vet publishers’ operations and content to ensure they meet advertisers’ stated quality standards. They’re needed to monitor and react to the news agenda which may introduce brand damaging content into campaigns. People are needed to operate the targeting and brand safety tech and to make sure things are going right for advertisers, publishers and consumers. Of course some ad providers rely on consumers rather than professionals to perform such functions. Not only is that an abdication of responsibility, but the horse has bolted by that point.

Doug Stevenson is the Co-CEO of contextual advertising platform Vibrant Media, and based in San Francisco. As the co-founder of Vibrant, Doug has co-led the company’s expansion with Craig Gooding from when the company began operations in 2000. Doug was awarded ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’ from Ernst and Young and was a Distinguished Honoree for the International Business Awards, Executive of the Year in North America. Prior to founding Vibrant, Doug worked at AOL Europe as Head of E-commerce and has 25 years of publishing, media and Internet experience with AOL, CompuServe, Netscape, Haymarket Publishing, and BBC Magazines/Redwood Publishing.

Industry-Research | Perspectives

The real measure of native success is higher renewal rates

The sale of sponsored editorial is up significantly, across almost all big name publishers. BI Intelligence predicts that the native spend will hit $21 billion next year and account for nearly three-quarters of all digital ad revenue by 2021. Similarly, according to our own MediaRadar analysis, native adoption and demand are extremely high. An average of 610 new advertisers use custom content each month. Demand is exploding as native’s impact among consumers – providing a unique ad experience compared to traditional display – has also grown considerably.

Despite this success, there are visible cracks in the foundation. Competition and unsuccessful campaigns are driving unusually low renewal rates. The average advertiser renews only 33% of the time.

Real Results

We analyzed the native ad success of a prominent publisher which doubled their sponsored editorial sales in one year. This represents a major success. However, if we look a bit deeper, the results are sobering. In a year over year analysis, while 71% of advertisers did buy sponsored editorial again, only 43% returned to the original publisher, and 29% stopped buying the format entirely.

The takeaway: As the market matures and becomes more saturated, emphasis must be placed on winning the renewal. The best publishers today enjoy 90% renewal rates, creating a cash machine. There are several reasons for their success.

  • Clear Objectives: Publishers that see higher renewal rates establish and demand partner campaign objectives in advance. They also test that the objectives are met.
  • Campaign Duration: Additionally, we observe that those publishers with the longest campaign flights (more than 6 months) have much higher renewal rates. This enables for better testing and adapting, as well as provides a greater sample size of data.
  • Native Investment: Those winning renewals have also invested in technology and additional personnel for their solutions. They typically see a 49% renewal rate.

Native is a massive opportunity for publishers. However, a lot of work still needs to be done to optimize success and strengthen results. Without the expansion of successful native offerings, demand will outweigh supply, and the bubble could burst.

Industry-Research

The new speed of mobile engagement

Does improving page load time positively impact readership?

Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) project was launched in February 2016 to address both the increasing bloat of web pages and the subsequent consequences of a diminished user experience for readers, publishers, and advertisers. By creating a platform from which media companies could publish clean, streamlined versions of their articles, AMP promised to speed up the average page load time and make it easier for visitors to stick around and read their content.

But how does it deliver on this promise, and what is the impact on consumer engagement?

The Effect on Publisher Traffic

Chartbeat pulled actual consumer behavior data across 360 sites using AMP and FIA from June 2016 to May 2017. Our research shows that, while usage rates and the subsequent number of articles consumed on each platform differs, it turns out that both AMP and FIA content have been receiving larger and larger shares of publishers’ mobile traffic, and at fairly equal rates. As of mid-May 2017, a typical publisher who implemented AMP saw 16% of all mobile traffic on their AMP content. Comparatively, publishers with FIA saw 14.8% of all mobile traffic on FIA content.

The Need for Speed

These days, web experiences are all about speed. Almost half (47%) of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less. Even more significantly, 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load, meaning they never reach the published content at all.  So how are AMP and IA optimizing page load times?

Chartbeat analysis shows that AMP loads roughly four times faster than the standard mobile site experience, and Instant Articles load even more quickly. In fact, 88% of Instant Articles load too quickly for us to even register a load time. Now that’s fast.

This is a big deal, and proves that both initiatives are delivering on the promise of providing a much quicker load time to improve reader experience. And publishers are seeing the effects — with less time spent waiting for pages to load, consumers have more time freed up for engaging with content.

Better User Experience, More Engaged Readers

With so many distributed ways of finding content and such short consumer attention spans, every second counts. So how does AMP stack up?

Chartbeat’s data shows that readers engage with AMP content for 35% longer than standard mobile web content. They spend an average of 48 seconds with AMP content vs. 36 seconds with mobile web content when coming from search. The fact that readers are engaging for so much longer than they normally would suggests that user experience really does matter in catching and holding attention.

The Future of High Speed Mobile 

One big question still remains: Will publishers continue to scale their efforts and should these high speed platforms become the mobile industry norm?

While the increase in engaged time for publishers who have adopted both AMP and FIA are compelling, the jury is still out on whether the end justifies the means. The numbers here demonstrate that consumers clearly value these optimized mobile experiences and this may just be the evidence we need to validate their potential. However, larger questions still remain around each on both publisher value and quality.

As publishers continue to use these platforms and readers continue to react, it will be interesting to see how AMP and Facebook IA evolve in the future – possibly in two completely different directions.

At the end of the day, visitors deserve a fast, clean, enjoyable reading experience where they spend most of their time – on mobile. And publishers can benefit from a more effective mobile environment where they can distribute and monetize content and scale their success. But at what cost? How can we make this win-win?

John Saroff is Chief Executive Officer of Chartbeat, a leading content intelligence platform used by more than 50,000 of the world’s top media properties in over 60 countries. He has worked on the cutting-edge of media and technology for 17+ years, setting the daily operations and business development agendas of companies as diverse as Google, NBC-Universal and vente-privee. John received his undergraduate degree in History from Haverford College and a joint degree in Law and Business from Columbia University.

Advertising | Perspectives

Agencies and the ad quality quandary

There’s no denying that two major phenomena are actively reshaping the existing digital advertising supply chain:

  1. Accountability is being pushed upstream

    Not long ago, digital publishers bore the brunt of the blame, shame and liability (financial and legal) for ad-related problems such as performance issues, unauthorized collection of audience data, and security concerns (malvertising). Today, armed with more public awareness (in the form of ad blocking, among others), industry best practices (e.g., TAG, IAB LEAN) and regulations (GDPR anyone?), publishers are finally pushing back on upstream partners when policy-flouting ads are served to their digital environments. And many partners are listening. Now, several other ad tech players on the buy side of the digital supply chain are joining this publisher revolt and to direct accountability for creative issues to their upstream partners.

  2. Advertisers have spoken

    Earlier this month, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, P&G’s chief brand officer, Marc Pritchard didn’t mince words when it came to expressing his irritation with everyone’s acceptance of serious flaws with the digital advertising supply chain. He highlighted the complexities of digital advertising and confusing agency contracts. However, what stood out were his comments on the quality of the digital ad experience for consumers:

“Sometimes we deliver a high-quality media experience, but all too often the experience is, well, crappy. We bombard consumers with thousands of ads a day, subject them to endless ad load times, interrupt them with pop-ups and overpopulate their screens and feeds…” Marc Pritchard, CMO, P&G

This comment from the world’s biggest advertiser underscores the importance of digital ad quality in regards to what is being “presented” to audiences today and rightfully so. According to recent research, the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry spends almost 20% of their $225 billion annual marketing budget on digital advertising. Yet retailers and shoppers alike gave digital advertising low marks for effectiveness.

This provides further impetus for more advertisers to focus on improving the digital ad experience, thus putting the sell-side is under immense pressure to not just launch high-quality ads into the digital supply chain but to prove that those are high-quality ads.

New priorities, New challenges

As the digital ad ecosystem evolves, agencies and media buyers need to re-establish trust with both consumers and advertisers. The first step is adopting industry best practices and standards for ad quality and security. This includes being judicious about audience data collection activity and keeping abreast of the ever-evolving guidelines for a plethora of ad formats.

Agencies have a lot of work to do. As depicted here, most media buyers today need to take a more farsighted approach to campaign development and scanning. The assumption that an ad, upon entrance into the digital ecosystem, is exactly the same when it renders on a website showcases this ignorance.

To meet changing advertiser demands for a better digital ad experience, agencies need to adopt a more comprehensive view of the entire ad experience: Creative + ad (the actual creative with all the corresponding analytics code) + landing page, not just the creative.

A paradigm shift in agency priorities is required. Agencies and media buyers are under unprecedented scrutiny to address ad quality as they are where creatives originate. Their inability to meet the changing demands of both advertisers and publishers directly impact the following areas:

Ability to Launch and Serve Ads

As ad formats and standards continue to evolve, meeting these specs across publishers, platforms, and networks impact your ability to serve ads

Ad Spend and Campaigns

Delays in launching campaigns jeopardize ad spend and campaign metrics. Also, the inability to verify the campaign and its success – is the ad getting served the way it should be and to the target audience – could damage relationships with advertisers.

Brand Image

Noncompliance with complex and changing regulations damage brand image and lead to penalties potentially for the advertiser, publisher and the agency itself.

Pressure changes the status quo 

The brief to media buyers about what to do and what is expected is clear.  But it will be interesting to see how agencies actually adapt to the changing digital advertising landscape. Balancing advertiser demands while trying to achieve operational efficiencies and scale and trying to win a turf war against big consulting firms will likely prove to be a heavy lift for agencies. These bi-directional pressures coming from advertisers on one end and published on the other end of the digital ad supply chain will force revolutionary change. If done right, the end result is a transformed digital advertising ecosystem. Positive UX via an optimized and profitably monetized channel.

Chris Olson founded The Media Trust (@themediatrust) with Dave Crane in 2005. He currently serves as CEO, where he drives the company’s vision, direction and growth plans. Prior to establishing The Media Trust Company, he spent four years as the chief operating officer and board member at Spheric Media. From 1998 until 2000, he was the vice president, global equities at Commerzbank; and from 1993 until 1998, he was the vice president of electronic trading at Salomon Brothers, Inc.

Perspectives | Revenue

What if publishers could see the revenue value of their content in real-time?

More content is being produced and consumed than ever before. However, one of the biggest obstacles to success for publishers today is the inability to fully understand the value of their content. Yes, publishers are getting more and more data. But with so many different types of ads, targeting, and decision-engines running on a publisher’s site, the revenue generated from a piece of content has become impossible to retrieve beyond general averages.

In fact, as we have previously noted, most publishers merely settle for what’s available (averages) rather than what’s needed (real-time values). However, as we all know, a data-driven business cannot run on averages. That would be like trading stocks based on the average over the past week while someone else is trading based on precise real-time values.

Add to this the silos between the editorial and ad ops and you have an ad stack and content stack that don’t talk to one another.

The Opportunity

So, how can publishers harness bridge these gaps and work smarter? There are three significant opportunities for publishers in this challenging landscape. Those that tap into these will be empowered to do more than simply survive. They’ll have a competitive advantage.

1. Use Data to Fuel Audience Insights

Data should be the glue that connects publishers to their audience. It should enable them to serve more personalized content and enhanced user experiences, so they can better compete with social media platforms. Data should flow between publisher Data Management Platforms, network insights, and 3rd party data providers via APIs. This enables publishers to connect their content with their user and deliver customized experiences based on content type, device and location.

2. Connect Content and Revenue

Publishers need to connect content and revenue so that content can be personalized and optimized for yield. There is currently a lack of understanding about the true value of content. This doesn’t mean the total value of content. Instead, it means knowing the exact value of any article or video at a single point in time and the ability to take meaningful action based upon that insight. When content is a publisher’s currency, and each click is the trigger for revenue, a publisher must connect what they are selling (advertising) with the content that accompanies it

3. See a Holistic Picture of All Revenue

Lastly, publishers need to understand revenue from all sources in a single dashboard, not as individual boxes on the page. Once publishers have access to these insights, they can further optimize to the correct partner, referral source, or set of specific pieces of content to maximize additional revenue. Simply adding more paid links as a way to generate more revenue is sure-fire way to disappoint users, while being counter-intuitive to the principles of yield optimization.

The Power of the Complete Picture

Partners with expansive network insights as well as multiple paid relationships and networks can help publishers meet revenue goals. This model has played out over the last decade, beginning with display and evolving over time to include native, sponsorship, ecommerce and even off-platform distribution. However, the majority of publishers have not yet brought those revenue sources together into a single, manageable view to that they can take direct actions that are maximized for each piece of content.

Connecting content with revenue allows publishers to understand how much RPM value their Facebook referral traffic is delivering compared to all of their other sources. Yield teams can understand which partner delivers the most value. Audience development teams can launch campaigns based on feedback from ad operations about under-delivering sponsorship campaigns. Executives can see how revenue goals in real-time, all based on the connection between revenue and content.

Publishers must break down the walls that are typically built up between revenue and editorial teams. Real-time insights allow them to personalize the content experience, while also considering the value of each piece content. It is clear that publishers need to leverage the appropriate tools and strategies to achieve this level of insight and opportunity.

Dennis Yuscavitch has spent the last several years creating and launching new product, most recently with Outbrain as director of product marketing. When he’s not making publishers and advertisers happy he’s often coaching his local youth soccer team. The consummate early adopter, you can find him online @dennisy or via LinkedIn.

Perspectives

Gen Z: Marketing to the post-linear digital consumer

After playing catch-up to evolve their approach to reach Millennials, marketers must move quickly to connect with Generation Z. This generation, born between 1997 and 2011, is estimated to count 2 billion members globally – approximately 27% of the world’s population. Gen Z will present unique challenges to marketers, adding to the already difficult slate of changes that a rapidly evolving digital marketing environment is presenting.

At the top of the to-do list for marketers is a need to gain a rapid understanding of the needs, aspirations and behaviors of Generation Z. To be accepted by this key group, marketers must develop mobile-led creative content that appeals to the generation’s imagination and passions for design and music. Marketers will also have to innovate to build better brand experiences and connected consumer journeys.

For Gen Z, development of more engaging content and more sophisticated, brand-infused programmatic targeting is critical. Less intrusive media approaches that will help play their part in discouraging ad blocking, which Gen Z is prone to. Finally, marketers will have to take advantage of new technologies that enable cross media placements that work together to drive synergies and deliver enhanced ROI. Marketers who most enthusiastically tackle these challenges and embrace these opportunities will lead the way.

Be True and Transparent

Perhaps most critically, while described as both frugal and brand-wary but also industrious and collaborative, Gen Z will challenge not only how brands communicate, but also the very notion of a brand’s authenticity and transparency in digital.

The reason is simple. Gen Z is one of the first groups to come of age in a post-linear digital world. They have knowledge about everything at their fingertips and on demand whenever they want it. They’re also emerging at a time of institutional instability. Consequently, Gen Z presents a conundrum for brands because they place a high emphasis on personal privacy but also expect full transparency from brands.

The Big Shift

Successful brands will need to embrace three paradigm shifts moving forward:

  1. Brands should invest media dollars and focus activity in digital platforms that allow consumers to co-create a shared brand experience. Unlike the personalization coveted by Millennials, Gen Z will be hands-on: They want to try it, take it apart and re-create it.
  1. Brands will need to give their target consumers a deeper look at themselves through owned media (social, apps, and websites). In addition to products and services for sale, brands must share their story, their purpose and details about their supply chain and production processes, so that Gen Z can determine if the brand’s values match their own. This narrative and underlying content will be further cascaded through strategically placed branded and sponsored content.
  1. Brands should aim to shift their focus to right-brained influence. The foundations of the internet and digital media were left brain – with a focus on the linear, factual and linguistic. Digital media for Gen Z will be right brain with a focus on imagination. This may take the form of augmented reality and virtual reality. The emphasis should be on experience through non-verbal immersive formats and stronger visual imagery as well as emotion, emphasizing music and narratives.

These shifts, when embraced by brands, will help drive brand growth and increase the power of digital as a channel for brands to meaningfully connect with this audience, as it exerts ever greater economic power and influence.

Joline McGoldrick is Vice President of Insights and Strategic Marketing for the Media and Digital Practice of Kantar Millward Brown.

 

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