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Perspectives

Publishers can’t afford to chase the revenue dragon without keeping an eye out for real data danger

In October, The Guardian’s Chief Revenue Officer revealed that numerous ad tech providers in the ad supply chain were extracting up to 70% of advertisers’ money without quantifying the value to the brand. Yes, this revenue loss situation is eye opening, but it’s not the only activity affecting publishers’ bottom line. Protecting data assets is critical for maintaining and maximizing revenue. Inability to control digital audience data within the supply chain is a catalyst for revenue loss. The looming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) regulations, that take effect in May 2018, makes the case for data protection that much stronger.

Data: a Publisher’s lifeblood
Every digital publisher intrinsically knows that one of their most valuable assets is their audience data: It drives a publisher’s stickiness with lucrative advertisers, their inventory value, and ultimately their brand image.

Data leakage is the unauthorized transfer of information from one entity to another. In the digital ad ecosystem, data loss traditionally occurred when a brand or marketing agency collected publishers’ audience data and reused it without authorization. Today, this scenario is much more convoluted due to the volume of players in the digital advertising landscape, causing data loss to steadily permeate the entire digital ad industry.

Publishers lose when they can’t control their valuable consumer data:

  1. Depleted market share
    With your audience data in their hands, advertisers and ad tech providers can always go to other publications and target the exact audiences, thereby devaluing your brand.
  1. Reduced ad pricing
    When advertisers or ad tech providers can purchase your audience at a fraction of the cost it decreases the demand for your ads, thus devaluing your ad prices.
  2. Exposure to regulatory penalties & risk mitigation
    Collection and use of consumer data is a publisher’s prerogative, but protection of this data is a weighty responsibility. Inability to safeguard data gathered from your website leaves a publisher vulnerable to running afoul of government regulations. Saying the penalties under GDPR are severe is an understatement. The repercussion of noncompliance is losing up to 4% of your total global turnover or €20 million, whichever is greater.
  3. Reputation loss
    Ultimately, data loss and any news of noncompliance could negatively affect consumer trust and brand reputation.

The hands behind data loss
On average, The Media Trust detects at least 10 parties contributing to the execution or delivery of a single digital ad, and this is a conservative figure considering that frequently this number is as high as 30, and at times more than 100, depending on the size of the campaign, type of ad, and so forth. The contributing parties are typically DSPs, SSPs, Ad Exchanges, Trading Desks, DMPs, CDNs and other middlemen who actively participate in the delivery of the ad as it traverses from advertiser to publisher. Any upstream player, including the advertiser or original buyer, has access to a publisher’s proprietary audience data if not monitored for compliance.

The advertising ecosystem isn’t the only offender. The bulk of third-party vendor code that executes on the publisher’s website goes unmonitored, exposing the publisher to excessive and unauthorized data collection. In these cases, a publisher’s own website acts as a sieve leaking audience data into the digital ecosystem.

Ending the chase
Resolving revenue lost from data leakage isn’t an unsolvable conundrum, but one that can be addressed by applying the following:

  1. Data Collection
    Get smart about the tools used for assuring clean ads and content. Your solution provider for ad quality should check for ad security, quality, performance and help with data protection. Reducing excessive data collection is the first step in addressing data leakage.
  1. Data Access
    With GDPR, EU-US Privacy Shield, and many more such timely regulations, the onus is on the publisher to understand what data activity their upstream partners engage in via advertising. Instead of today’s rampant mistrust, the supply chain must move to accountability for non-compliant behavior.
  1. Governance
    Publishers absolutely need to start adopting and enforcing stricter terms and conditions around data collection and data use.

Ultimately, every publisher needs to monitor and govern third-party partners on their website to close loopholes that facilitate data leakage before pointing fingers at others.

mattoneilMatt O’Neill currently works with The Media Trust as European General Manager. Since 1999, Matt has been working on the front line of digital advertising in an industry-facing capacity, consistently striving to generate industry consensus from senior leaders and drive innovation through collaboration. He is a frequent speaker, panelist, and chair at conferences including Digiday, IAB, dmexco, AOP (UK), Admangerforum, AdMonsters and corporate-operated events. He serves as an adviser and investor for advertising and marketing technology firms and an active partner at AtlanticLeap.

Perspectives

Trump and the Game of Thrones Effect: Why the election polls got it wrong

On election day morning, according to the majority of pollsters, Hillary Clinton seemed to have it in the bag. Nate Silver, predicted Clinton at a 71% win. A Clinton win was also forecast by 61 other national polls, including Fox, Reuters, Economist/YouGov, USA TODAY/Suffolk, and NBC News/SM. Indeed, as the votes started coming in on election night, you could feel the palpable shock among newscasters, as their precious data proved to come up so clearly wrong.

So, how did beloved data whiz Nate Silver and 61 other national polls mess up so “bigly”? Did the polls happen too late, before the impact of the additional Clinton email scandal hit? Did voter turnout have a play in it? Were samplings flawed? Or was it something else—something that perhaps speaks to deeper gaps in our understanding of human behavior and flaws in our overall approach to polling?

Public vs. Private Personas
One angle that is circulating is that many polled who said they were not going to vote for Trump were not telling the truth. Indeed, polling firm, Morning Consult reported that voters were more likely to say they want Trump in the White House anonymously online versus a live telephone interview. Meanwhile, Arie Kapetyn, director of the University of Southern California (USC) Dornsife Center of Economic and Social Research, whose organization jointly runs The Los Angeles Times/University of Southern California tracking poll (one of the few polls that did predict Trump as the winner) told reporters, “There’s some suggestion that Clinton supporters are more likely to say they’re a Clinton supporter than Trump supporters are to say they’re a Trump supporter.”

This theory that there was a discrepancy between what Trump supporters shared publicly versus what they did privately, is also supported by our Outbrain study authored by Roy Sassons, Outbrain’s Chief Data Technologist and Ram Meshulam, Outbrain’s Organic Recommendations Team Lead. The study revealed a significant gap exists between what we read privately and what we share publicly with friends.

Outbrain’s Research
Sassons and Meshulam’s research was comprised of two billion views on several hundred thousand articles from the world’s largest content and news websites. These views were then observed over three time periods between 2015 and 2016. Online content was split into categories using a natural language algorithm and was rated according to the ratio between the number of readers that read an article about a certain topic, and the number of readers that shared the article on Facebook.

What this data ultimately revealed is that categories that received many views and few shares did not reflect well on the personality of those who consumed them. In fact, most of them could be considered superficial, sexual or blunt.

On the other hand, categories that received many shares and little views were much more flattering. They tended to be more deep and intellectual.

And Outbrain’s data also revealed that this wasn’t isolated to a certain country or region—it was a global pattern. (Which might also explain why polls were so wrong regarding the controversial Brexit vote in the United Kingdom.)

Take, for example, specific content like “Game of Thrones.” When Sassons and Meshulam did a deeper dive on this content, they found that articles that were shared the most on Facebook focused on profound analysis and storyline prediction. Additionally, articles with a feminist spin that were focused on strong female characters, were also extensively shared.

Meanwhile, while the articles people read the most were focused on the show’s violent and sexual scenes, they rarely shared these stories on Facebook feeds.

The Silent Majority
Call it what you will: the “Game of Thrones Effect,” the “Trump Effect,” The “Brexit Effect,” what it adds up to is all the same. When it comes down to it, what we tend to share and present to the world is ultimately very different than who we are privately. This is something that the majority of election polls seemed to neglect in their analysis.

Further, if you couple this with our current social network-dominated society, in which the ordinary reader has tremendous power, sometimes equivalent to that of a magazine editor, you can also see why so many in the media world—Nate Silver, the pollsters, the bewildered newscasters reading the results on TV—may have felt like the rug was pulled out from under them.

In the age of social media, we decide what content we see based on our surroundings. The people connected to us in our network are exposed to the content we share and that, in turn, dictates what is exposed to others in their network. Since that decision is not always made based on the level of interest we really have in that specific content, the current “world map of interests” that everyone sees becomes distorted. This, in turn, eventually feeds the algorithms that recommend more content to us.

A recommendation system, be it human or automatic, must take this under consideration. It should find creative ways to fix these biases, or balance these representations with rich data from a source that reflects reader’s true preferences. Otherwise, expect more polling misses ahead.

jb_final_hannah_thomson-4Jennifer 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 | Perspectives

Six things we now know about native advertising

It has been a few years that native advertising is being actively placed in the market. With the year-end approaching, it’s a good time to take stock of what we now know. At MediaRadar, we’re now not just tracking native ads, but also studying how native is bought & sold, and are coming to a view of what is best practice. Posted below are some of our key findings.

  1. Native, a saturated market? Surprisingly the market is not yet saturated. Over Year 2016 we’ve tracked a median of 610 new advertisers buying native, for the first time ever. This is substantial. And we’re finding native ads across b2b, enthusiast, regional, and science media. Native is no longer for certain large consumer sites.
  1. Renewal rates. To provide an average here would be misleading. In fact what we see is polarized renewal rates. Out of the ~1000 websites that sell native, most have low renewal rates, under 30%. This is going to make scaling up native advertising a significant challenge. In contrast, there are a few dozen firms that are very focused on client success. They enjoy renewal rates above 70%. This includes some of the best performers, including brands like Quartz (QZ.com).
  1. Campaign packaging. We observe that it’s exceedingly rare to see native advertising running stand-alone. It’s much more common that native advertising runs as part of a broader campaign. The most common campaign is to run display for 30 days, then 30 days of both native and display, and then a final month of display.
  1. Duration analysis. Across 16,998 brands that have placed native over the past 2 years, the most common is one month only. It’s surprisingly brief. Just under 20% of brands are running campaigns for six months.
  1. Programmatic vs. Direct. In the past two years we’ve seen the rise of programmatic native – both display and in video. Without question, the product is marketing different than direct native. Programmatic native is display advertising that looks-and-feels like editorial. However, these ads don’t typically link to sponsored editorial. In contrast, direct native does. This is the kind of programming that Buzzfeed, Forbes, and Huffington Post are especially so well known for. Posted below is an overview of the massive growth we’re seeing from some of the leading programmatic native companies. This includes name native exchanges such as Nativo, TripleLift, Sharethrough, Bidtellect, Teads, Unruly, and Giant Media.
  1. Recommendation. Native advertising renewal rates correlate tightly with campaign duration. Those winning six-month deals have the highest average renewal rates, with the lowest renewal rate variance. In surveying those most successful publishers we heard consistent feedback: Require clients to commit to longer term deals. This gives you, the publisher, more time to course-correct, to respond to client needs, adjust creative, adjust marketing support, to absolutely make sure that you’re helping the client meet their campaign objectives. This, more than anything, drives up renewal rates.
Number of programmatic advertisers placing in the year 2016
Number of programmatic advertisers placing in the year 2016

Todd Krizelman is Co-Founder and CEO of MediaRadar (@MediaRadar). Growing up near the epicenter of technological innovation in Palo Alto, California encouraged him to become an entrepreneur and co-found of one of the world’s first social media sites, theGlobe.com. Krizelman also held leadership positions at Bertelsmann’s Gruner + Jahr and Random House. With his expertise in ad sales and innovation, Krizelman joined veteran web architect, Jesse Keller, to found MediaRadar in 2007.

Advertising | Industry-Research

Programmatic versus publisher-direct online ad buying: What do the data say?

Anyone who’s been buying digital advertising for more than a minute has been faced with the daunting question from marketing and non-marketing executives alike: “So, how much of this advertising is actually legit, anyhow?”

The industry has been hounded by issues relating to viewability, engagement, and outright fraud for the past couple of years, and the general business press regularly covers the subject matter. So the very same executives who authorized TV, print and radio advertising budgets without raising question one only a few years ago – when the “half of my marketing budget is well-spent, but I’m not sure which half” maxim was fully embraced – now regularly engage in forensic assessments of ad buys. Such is the life of the digital marketer.

So it is helpful that companies like Integral Ad Science (though not an entirely objective player in the digital marketing ecosystem) working to keep track of developments via its bi-annual Media Quality Reports.

However, depending on one’s point-of-view, the data can be considered a sign of improving conditions, or confirmation that we marketers knowingly *throw away* 10% or more of our budgets to fraud, deception, and advertising malpractice.

Here’s a look at IAS’s most recent report, which offers an analysis of “hundreds of billions” online display and video ad impressions during the first half of this year:

  • IASfigureConditions Are Improving. Though there continues to be a good deal of waste in the system, the overall state of online advertising is showing signs of improvement. For example, the U.S. market saw a significant drop in “objectionable content” impressions during the first half of 2016 versus the previous period (9.5% versus 14.0%). Most industry experts agree this is due to more sophisticated tools and digital ad buying practices, as one would expect in a growing and evolving industry sector.
  • Buying Direct Has Its Benefits. The incidence of ad fraud when buying advertising direct from publishers is dramatically lower than when buying programmatically (2.2% versus 8.3% in the U.S.), though it’s also typically more expensive, making the equation palatable for most marketers.
  • Viewability & Clutter Are Continuing Concerns. Fewer than half of all display ads – regardless of how purchased – get viewed for more than five seconds, and more than 10% of ad impressions are jammed onto pages with more than four ads on the page. These issues are compounded via mobile devices, which we cited in a recent article on the pros and cons of programmatic as “just a messy consumer experience”.
  • Bigger & Vertical Are Better. Large format, vertically-oriented display ad formats (300×600, 300×1050, 160×600) all tend to have better viewability than their smaller, rectangular and square counterparts – being viewed for more than five seconds about half the time.
  • Global Video Ads Are Best Purchased Direct. Viewability of video via programmatic means are only viewable at a 3-in-10 ratio, versus nearly 7-in-10 via publisher direct. This metric constitutes the biggest relative weakness of programmatic in the study.

While IAS’s analysis of the first half of 2016 has many encouraging findings, it’s also clear that the programmatic marketing industry has plenty of opportunities for improvements in the coming months and years.

BourgeoisTim Bourgeois (@ChiefDigOfficer) is a partner at East Coast Catalyst, a Boston-based digital consulting company specializing in strategic roadmaps, digital marketing audits, and online marketing optimization programs.

Perspectives

Facebook did the digital publishing industry a favor

For more than a decade, desktop pre-roll video has been the one safe ad format for publishers facing a market full of ad products with declining CPMs. TV-based digital properties have prospered while those lacking video content have struggled to participate in this lucrative market. With the shift to mobile, however, the game is changing for everyone – but in a positive way for once.

While Facebook is seldom viewed as a solution to publishers’ revenue woes, it has done the digital publishing industry a big favor with its video ad products. Rather than adopt the pre-roll ad model, Facebook adopted an inline video product optimized for mobile and convinced advertisers it is as valuable as pre-roll.

For years, in-banner video on desktop was considered inferior to pre-roll largely because the video ads were disassociated from video content. Using its market leadership, Facebook was able to decouple video ads from video content while overcoming the perception that inline video ads were worth less than pre-roll. If a user watches a video ad, does it matter what they watch or read next? The enormous success of Facebook video has proven it doesn’t.

For digital publishers, with or without video content, this shift in ad buyer perception has created a massive opportunity to participate in video ad market. A number of ad tech companies and publishers themselves have responded with new video ad formats that run independent of video content and are optimized for mobile – outstream.

Outstream video advertising is defined by the IAB as anything that takes place outside of in-stream video content, which includes native video, in-feed video, in-article/read video, in-banner video, and interstitial video. Outstream solves for pre-roll’s shortcomings on mobile by providing a better user experience-a thumb-friendly, mobile-first ad format-while opening up premium video inventory.

Rather than running in fixed ad positions on story pages, some outstream ads appear dynamically within the page body, causing the content to split above and below the ad.  While the page separation may be a little annoying for some users, frequency controls can regulate the how many ads appear on a page or are served to the same user. When no ad is served, there is no ad position on the page, providing a superior user experience and eliminating low quality, low priced remnant ads.

BuyingOutstreamThe outstream market is established enough to provide publishers with the confidence to adopt the format, but still new enough to command a premium. Last month, Mixpo surveyed 68 advertisers and agencies and found that 27% of advertisers and agencies currently buy outstream ads, with another 18% planning on buying next year, with premium inventory being cited as the top benefit the format provides. While adoption isn’t yet widespread, 71% of advertisers and agencies see the adoption of outstream video ads increasing in the next year. Digital ad spend is projected to surpass TV this year, but with the continued hunger for video and a new crop of video ad formats popping up, we can expect to see the shift from TV ad spend to digital faster than expected, into formats outside of pre-roll.

Mobile users on tight data budgets have driven the rise of ad blockers to avoid the literal cost of watching a pre-roll video ad. Recent stats from eMarketer show that 30% of ad blocker use is specifically to block pre-roll video ads. Outstream helps publishers improve the video ad experience by enabling users to simply scroll past the ad, with the video stopping when the ad passes from view. Importantly, the outstream ad is not forced in front of the content, but stats can be collected to show advertisers how many users watched the entire ad.

While pre-roll’s position is safe, outstream will provide the inventory to absorb the unmet demand for video advertising. The two will soon rival for the most valued video ad format on the web.

Charlie (@ctillinghast) is a strategic and resonant leader with over 30 years of industry and management experience at start-ups, large corporations, and joint ventures.  Prior to becoming Mixpo’s President and CEO, Charlie served on the Mixpo Board of Directors for two years. Charlie held management positions at MSNBC Interactive News (msnbc.com), the last eight as President and CEO of the former joint venture between Microsoft and NBC News.

Advertising | Perspectives

Seeing the data for the trees: Overarching themes from Advertising Week

Pictured: (from left to right) Simon Whitcombe, Group Director, Global Marketing Solutions, Facebook | Jen McIsaac, VP, Retail Partnerships, Oracle Data Cloud | Paul Jankauskas, General Manager and Chief Revenue Officer, Verifone Media | Christopher Heine, Technology Editor, Adweek

I won’t lie: My positive experience at Advertising Week wasn’t that different from previous years. But, when you consider the magnitude and impact of an event such as this, that’s really no small feat.

Whether it’s brushing shoulders with some of the greatest minds in the industry, or gaining a pulse for significant topics—be they bubbling under the surface and overflowing within every category in the marketplace—there’s value to be lifted from the experience. Advertising Week is ultimately the place where crucial conversations take place in real-time about the real challenges we’re presented with at this particular moment in digital.

Nothing could be more advantageous.

The live performances weren’t anything to scoff at either, with musical acts from the likes of De La Soul, Common, The Roots, and Sting. Entertainment and networking aside, my focus was getting to the bottom of the massive data explosion in the industry and better understanding its grip on media companies, agencies, publishers, and marketers alike.

Getting on the Right Side of the Data Track
At Outbrain, a growing number of our internal marketing initiatives are being driven by data-supported research. And as a recommendation network that is powered by its own sophisticated algorithms, it has always been important for us to communicate the value of that data on both the brand side and media company side.

While more data is a huge opportunity, it is not without its complexities and challenges. This past week, our own struggles with data were echoed by leaders in the industry and solidified into some key themes:

1. Solving for Too Much Data Involves a Simplified Approach

With this new level of granularity, data is changing the conventions of how many brands have been built up until today. More importantly, it has raised a glaring issue, which was shared across panelists who have represented and worked alongside many legacy brands, including Jon Suarez-Davis, Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer at Krux Digital:

“We’ve put together dumb pipes. And It’s not about putting in smarter dumb pipes, it’s about changing the system entirely.”

First, there needs to be a much deeper understanding of how the data has changed. Second, while data is now far more actionable than ever before, we can’t lose sight of how it drives business. This means applying clear objectives.

That’s because data can mean a lot of different things. From a user ID, to post campaign analysis, or, in our case, the consumption patterns of how audiences are interacting with our content across publisher sites.

The trick, according to Julie Fleischer, Managing Director of OMD, is simplicity and focus:

“The key is keeping an eye on what I’m trying to understand, what the best measurement approach available is, and what that mean in terms of whether it’s a complete or partial view. We need to stop looking at data as an answer, but more as an input to what we do. If we challenge where the flaws in measurement are, we can get to a better understanding of how to fill those gaps.”

When it comes to the data explosion, the challenge—and goal—is to find the metrics which are most indicative of wins and learn to measure what matters.

2. We Need to Put Data in the Hands of the Right People

A multitude of data types means a multitude of applications and outputs for data. And with that, a variety of potential business objectives that impact a variety of different stakeholders—whether it is informing product decisions, leading creative decisions, or driving better customer journey’s within the context of the content funnel.

Yet, currently, organizations struggle with interpreting and communicating all the data they now have at their disposal. Many are noticing a major talent gap when it comes to making their data actionable, due to poor cross-department translation and communication.

Charlie Chappell, Head of Media and Advertising at The Hershey Company, declared, “We need to get much more comfortable with much more data. We have to make that transition.”

Global Director of Business, Jeffrey Rossi shared similar sentiments about how data is used at Spotify, stating, “It’s not about just using data. It’s about living data. For us, the data goes into driving a product, we can market ourselves with data, and have conversations with data. It can’t be some jenky add on.”

So, while the digital advertising ecosystem is currently built to solve individual problems, we all need a much deeper understanding of the big picture to change the entire infrastructure of what we do. That means teaching up current talent and scouting the right new hires.

The only way to do it is to learn it.

3. Targeting for the Entire Dartboard and not Just the Bullseye

It’s easy to get swept up in the promise of reaching the right consumer on the right platform at the right time with the right message through data-enabled microtargeting but these insights don’t always live up to the hype. A real problem has been an over-reliance on these targeting capabilities as we try to lead with precision first. At the end of the day, though, context still matters.

In fact, that’s a large part of why Outbrain has been working with brands to better sequence the experience consumers have with their content. Overall, as an industry, we need to be thinking more holistically. Rather than just considering how we’re going to reach consumers, we need to invest in understanding all of the different touch points within the customer journey and create value for consumers at every point.


In the words of Tamara Alesi, Managing Partner and Integrated Planning Strategy at Mediacom, “You don’t always have to use the data on the front end, but to get smarter on the back end. That’s where you see your ROI.”

Looking Forward
As marketers and brands we sometimes get lost in our own worlds and forget about how our data impacts the customer experience. In order for us to not completely silo ourselves or our data; events like Advertising Week help center our work.

This week and fresh into Q4, we can all take these learnings and focus on innovation as well as better empowering the audiences we cater to online. In the quarter ahead, we will need to discipline ourselves when it comes to our data—focusing on how we want to use it and how it impacts our customers. Otherwise, all our data and tech is ultimately useless.

Eric_Hadley_Outbrain_GlobalMarketingHeadEric Hadley (@erichad) serves as Head of Global Marketing at Outbrain (@outbrain). He joined Outbrain in 2015, and is responsible for the company’s global go-to market strategy and for driving strategic value and large scale opportunities with its premium brand and agency partners. Hadley has over 20 years of experience in marketing leadership positions in consumer, media and technology companies. Previously, he served as Head of Partner Marketing at Pinterest leading the social network’s agency outreach organization. Prior to his work for Pinterest, he held roles at Yahoo, The Weather Channel, and Microsoft. While at Microsoft, he was involved in the launch of its search engine, Bing.

Industry-Research | Perspectives

Making metrics meaningful: Benchmarking engaged time

“What if we stopped focusing so much on traffic, and started focusing on experience?” I’m asked this question frequently. It’s a complex, divisive challenge for newsrooms, one I eagerly indulge.

I work directly with media companies of all shapes and sizes. I offer consultation on everything from using data to support editorial intuition, experimenting with audience development projects and honing tagging strategies. The best newsroom strategies start with someone saying to me: “It would be so interesting if we could…” and “What would happen if we tried…”. Data can provide the foundation for sussing out those new ideas while mitigating risk.

When I start to talk to clients about using engaged time, or any metric for that matter, the key is to set goals. What does success look like? But this prompts new questions: How do we stack up? Is this kind of engagement normal? Is it good? For us? For anyone?

There is no reliable comScore or Alexa rating for attention, thanks in no small part to various ways of measuring “time on site.” So if a publisher is eager to change the way they think about their audience, and their success, where could they start? I tried to find out.

How does Parse.ly measure engaged time?

First, let’s clarify exactly what we’re talking about, because Parse.ly measures engaged time differently than other analytics platforms. On your site, a visitor is considered “engaged” if they 1.) Have a browser tab open, and 2.) take an action (scroll, click, mouse-over) at least once every ten seconds.

For more details, feel free to browse this explainer on Parse.ly engaged time, or for a more technical explanation, read our engaged time technical documentation.

Analysis 1: How do we find an average engaged time for all content?

Weighted engaged time averages from a random sample of posts from 300 domains in our network gives a benchmark for engaged time.
Weighted engaged time averages from a random sample of posts from 300 domains in our network gives a benchmark for engaged time.

I first set up an exploratory analysis across our network, to see if I could identify any clear patterns. Over time, I started to see the same sites consistently outperform other outlets in average engaged time per visitor. What initially struck me though was actually the lack of pattern: each site seemed so diverse in voice and size.

To identify what made them competitive, I needed to understand the bigger picture of engaged time across Parse.ly’s network. To do this, I sampled user experiences at random for content published within one month from 300 anonymized domains to first understand, “how many seconds can you expect a typical reader to remain engaged with a story?”

Here we see how attentiveness is distributed across Parse.ly’s network. This graph shows what we can expect for “normal” attention time from any given reader, to any given article for each of the sampled domains. You can see a majority of our publishers attract an audience willing to invest roughly 40-60 seconds of their time on an article, though plenty of publishers can expect a more invested audience.

Finding engaged time in Parse.ly’s dashboard
Finding engaged time in Parse.ly’s dashboard

This provided a starting point for benchmarking engaged time, especially for my clients. Any Parse.ly user can easily find in their dashboard where their site, section or article falls on this curve. Teams can check to see if their stories and authors fall above or below the norm for their audience.

Understanding the context here is crucial though; not every article needs to outperform the average of the Entire Internet. There are better questions to ask. Where does your article fit in relation to what is expected for its section? How does that section perform in relation to the site as a whole?

Of course, there’s one more comparison that everyone wants to make: how does my site stack to the competition?

Analysis 2: How do we find the averaged engaged time for similar content?

This question helps you contextualize whether your work gets more attention than pieces that are similar to it and potentially predict how other topics, outside of your core competencies, might perform. For example, if you don’t normally write technology feature, it could help to understand the engaged time benchmark for tech publishing leaders. Here, we break down the analysis above further to understand how long a reader could be engaged on similar content.

Parsely3Broken out by publisher type, it’s easy to see how nuanced attentiveness is across different types of content. I found it noteworthy that local news sites command more engagement than major news outlets, even with undoubtedly fewer resources.

I mentioned earlier when I began investigating engagement, I was struck by how, month after month, the same set of publishers kept leading the pack, albeit with no discernible pattern among them. Broadening the analysis to the network, broken down by these categories, most of these names resurfaced at the top of their respective categories. A pattern finally became clear: the most engaging sites within each type of publisher were highly recognizable brand names.

Also, now that we’ve broken out engaged time averages across Parse.ly’s network, it’s easy to see how using homogenized data from a heterogenous group of sites to set benchmarks could do more harm than good. Certainly, the same concept applies within the newsroom; measuring the average engaged time on an article against what is expected for that vertical or topic will provide better context.

What do we know about engaged readers?

We’ll continue to explore other patterns within the most engaging experiences. In the meantime, here’s a reminder of what we do know:

  • Facebook vs Twitter. We already know from a recent study with Pew Research that, in an increasingly mobile ecosystem, referral sources on mobile were an important factor in determining engaged time. Their research found that Tumblr and Twitter generate highly engaged audiences, while Facebook audiences were less engaged.
  • Readers can be highly engaged on mobile, though infrequently. In another section of the same report, we distinguished between long-form articles with 1000+ words and short-form articles. Long-form consistently outperformed short-form, though visitors to either do not frequently go on to other articles.
  • In the analysis conducted for this post, we found no correlation between page views and engaged time. A large audience is not necessarily an attentive one.

How to navigate this brave new world

We’ve found ourselves in somewhat uncharted territory in an effort to shift away from primary traffic metrics like page views and unique visitors. How do we define what makes something “good” anymore? Why should we care about engaged time at all?

As I found in this analysis, the engaged time metric provides us an interesting exploration in how we can set a more relevant benchmark. In clinging to familiar traffic indicators like page views, perhaps we have systematically neglected not only the experience of our readers, but the nuance of our reporting. But coupling traffic metrics with engaged time helps us understand which articles create the most impact.

If your post gets hundreds of thousands of viral views, but no one sticks around to read it, did you really manage to convey anything meaningful? Increasing your newsroom’s dedication to understanding the relevancy of engagement in all its forms will lead to a deeper, better audience strategy.

Kelsey Arendt is a Customer Success Manager at Parse.ly. Previously, she worked with The Guardian’s commercial team where she managed a variety of projects for marketing and sales, including developing analytic support for sponsored campaigns and partner hubs. Kelsey is a Midwestern transplant to New York City, and is a passionate hiker, musician, and homebrewer.

Advertising | Perspectives

To mock or not to mock? Avoiding fraudulent advertising campaign verification

To mock or not to mock? That is the question frequently asked by media publishers trying to meet advertiser demands related to digital campaign success. The industry’s intense focus on viewability and transparency issues associated with ad fraud hijacks the limelight from another vital area of interest for advertisers: Are campaigns actually running as contracted?

What the advertiser wants, the advertiser gets
To justify the millions (and millions!) of dollars spent promoting products, advertisers rightfully demand proof that their campaigns execute as promised. From expected ad rendering on the page to accurate targeting by geography and behavior profiles, advertisers want to know that the right ad has been served in the right way in the right location on the right page to the right demographic. In fact, when considering the average spend of a large-scale national campaign flight, many advertisers will assert they deserve to know their campaign is performing as promised.

Authenticated ad inventory yields benefits
The advertising ecosystem is a dynamic environment processing millions of ads covering billions in spend at any one time. Considering that 5% of display and mobile ads are served incorrectly at launch and countless more break during flight, publishers need to actively monitor and protect their ad-generated revenue channels.[i]

Authenticated ad inventory helps publishers secure ad revenue by avoiding pre-planned delivery overages to compensate for anticipated discrepancies. In addition, it also reduces the frequency of misfiring campaigns, thus minimizing instances of “make good” campaigns.

Ad verification is more than good looks
Reputable publishers recognize the value of their high-quality inventory and demonstrate it by providing proof of ad delivery according to established terms. This is a complicated prospect in an age of large-scale campaigns incorporating ads of varying formats (i.e., HTML5, pre/mid/post-roll video, native, etc.) through multiple platforms (i.e., display, tablet, smartphone, gaming consoles, etc.) across increasingly granular targeting segments.

A Photoshopped mock-up or full-page capture of the ad on a screen is a start, but it isn’t enough. Presenting a “mock-up” of how an ad should look could be considered fraudulent as it’s not a true representation of how an ad performs across all formats, devices and geographies. In fact, several industries (Tier 2 automotive, pharmaceutical, etc.) and countries (especially those in Latin America) regulate advertising-based billing processes and require third-party verified screenshots upon invoice presentation.

Beyond the visual of “how” an ad looks on a device, publishers must prove that each ad is delivered as contracted with the advertiser. Continuous monitoring of campaigns at launch and throughout flight will quickly detect errors associated with targeting, creative and device-specific issues that impede optimal campaign execution.

Authentication of possibly hundreds of ad combinations—by size, format, device and geography—is used by publishers to substantiate inventory value and by advertisers to audit and measure campaign ROI.

Consider this
To verify accurate ad placement, execution and targeting, a publisher must consider these five factors:

  1. Legitimacy: Screenshots of ads in a live environment truthfully demonstrate that an ad is delivered to the right target. A “mock-up” or “test page” may display how an ad appears on a site, but in reality it provides a false sense of security for how the ad is actually executing. It also infers that the ad will render the same across all devices, OS, formats and geographies.
  1. Accuracy: Mock-ups can’t prove ad placement as many ad units only occur behind paywalls or require an IP address in order to serve the correct messaging to the individual user.
  1. Automation: Imagine scaling the manual process of verifying ads across the overwhelming number of devices, browsers, user profiles, formats, sizes and geo-locations. Without automation, the task is almost impossible. Leverage technology to streamline the process.
  1. Costs: Carefully consider the total cost of ownership when deciding between an in-house or outsourced process. While in-house resources are easier to control, it is difficult to secure funding and keep the staff engaged. On the flip side, outsourcing requires integration, training, probable coordination with targeting vendors, and continuous oversight which could ultimately be more costly than anticipated—not to mention the complications of managing a remote team, in a case of choosing a non-local entity if a non-native entity is selected.
  1. Quality Assurance: Reliance on mock-up designs to certify campaign execution will no catch errors that occur at launch or throughout the campaign flight.

Ad verification is a complex, yet critical endeavor for publishers looking to highlight inventory value. Don’t mock it.

ChrisChris 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.

[i] The Media Trust analysis of millions of ad campaigns verified over the course of 10 years
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion | Perspectives

On the ground in Cannes: The long road to changing gender portrayals in advertising

Every year, more and more CMOs embark on an annual pilgrimage to Cannes, forming a motley crew of Madmen and Madwomen that line the Croisette. I myself have been making the trip to Cannes Lions since its earliest beginnings, and still it surprises me that there are so few women in senior roles represented on such a global stage.

The reported figures for women among the creative ranks have seen a significant drop in the last few years and those climbing the ladder are even fewer. In fact worldwide, it’s estimated that less than 25% of agency creatives are female and just 3% are creative directors.

It’s been 20 years since I took my first tentative steps into the digital media industry – setting up netguide.live, the Internet’s very first daily guide. After launching CMP Media European licensing business, I took on an even more ambitious and challenging role as the UK MD at AltaVista, a company that was eventually taken over by Yahoo! These early opportunities cemented my love of media and tech and opened up the opportunity for me to join Outbrain.

A path less travelled
I have been fortunate enough to find a career path that I am passionate about in an area that I have become increasingly knowledgeable in. That it is in an industry that continues to advance and grow makes me extremely privileged. When I set out on my journey, I had a clear vision of what I wanted to achieve and this clarity of vision has allowed me to focus on and attain my goals despite any concern for gender stereotypes. However, as I delved into the schedule for the week ahead and began to explore some of the shortlisted work, I was not surprised to see that gender is once again a hot topic in Cannes. This year’s agenda was packed to the rafters with meet-ups, breakfasts, and events celebrating talented and creative women. You can also see a very visible shift in the amount of work geared towards transforming how we think about global gender issues and the subjects of gender disparity and identity.

Quashing gender stereotypes
IPGWomensBreakfastOn Wednesday June 22, as delegates from across the globe continued to pour into a balmy Cannes, I took my place at IPG’s Women’s Breakfast, this year titled: “A conversation with extraordinary women.” The discussions explored, among other things, how to reach women in an authentic way, building confidence and leading people. We journeyed through space (courtesy of Dr. Mae Jemison), time and politics and took a moment to celebrate a year of remarkable women with Gail Heimann. I left feeling invigorated.

Halfway through this year’s event as I write and so far it’s been a week that has challenged traditional and outdated thinking. In fact it’s led to some bold statements from the likes of Unilever CMO, Keith Weed, who has publicly vowed to drop sexist stereotypes from its campaigns for Dove, Lynx and Sunsilk and to overhaul its global strategy following research that suggests just 2% of ads show intelligent women. He is now on a mission to change the way women are portrayed in advertising.

In the same vein, JWT London tweeted:

I love the sentiment and believe these are positive steps, but given all the time, effort and investment that goes into research, gathering insights, analysing and targeting it’s been surprising to me to see so many companies and individuals questioning the output of their creative campaigns.

A sea change
This year, Cannes Lions announced that 40% of the 387 people selected to be jurors would be women, a significant increase on last year’s 31.5% and a record number for the Festival. I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist, but looking at the Glass Lions entries and ultimate winners, there is certainly a lot of gender-focused work that has started to breakthrough this year and earn recognition. Could it be the female factor?

One that caught my eye was the transgender acceptance campaign for Hindustan Unilever tea brand, Brooke Bond Red Label. A category introduced last year to celebrate work that addresses and seeks to have positive impact on gender inequality, imbalance or injustice, Mindshare Mumbai’s campaign featured transgender pop group the “6 Pack Band.” It was great to see them pick up a Glass Lions Grand Prix award for it.

Cannes Lions has also continued its successful ‘See It Be It’ initiative, which is designed to support and develop the industry’s underrepresented female creatives and this year, announced its first ambassador as Sarah Watson, chief strategy officer of BBH New York.

Inspired networking
I’ve also been pleased to see ‘The Girls Lounge’ back in full swing and better than ever with many lively debates from woman representing the gamut of marketing, media, advertising and technology. In fact, I’ve found myself in the company of nothing but extraordinary women since arriving in Cannes.

In my experience, building a network of smart and talented people has not only helped me perform in my day-to-day role, but has also often sparked my curiosity for new discoveries, helping me effectively navigate my career. Making connections that inspire you, even at the earliest stages of a career path, can open a number of doors that specialist knowledge and skills alone cannot: never underestimate the importance of business contacts and colleagues blazing a trail. You never know if they’ll be the ones to interview you in the future, or be critical to the future of your industry.

Let’s take inspiration from this year’s Cannes, and in the words of Anna Wintour: “Aim higher, dare to be different, use all your gold and make interesting friends.” ‪

Stephanie HimoffStephanie Himoff is the Managing Director, Northern Europe at Outbrain (@Outbrain). She is responsible for the strategic direction, business intelligence and sales operations of this leading content marketing and discovery platform. Prior to joining Outbrain Stephanie worked as the VP of Sales and Business Development at Demand Media and has a wide range of experience in working with innovative digital start-ups and world leading technology companies.

Advertising | Industry-Research | Perspectives | Video

Are 5 second ads the new Snapchat?

We live in a visual world. To make a story or campaign compelling, visuals or video are absolutely essential. In fact, it is commonly cited that the brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text. People are captivated by short, instant bursts of content—even content that disappears after a few seconds like Snapchat.

Platforms like Pandora and Vine offer bite-sized video content with homegrown, organic videos that go viral in a matter of days. Recently, Pepsi announced a collection of five-second ads designed to to gratify millennials. Pepsi plans to make 100 different ads for TV and digital this summer to promote their new emoji-themed bottles. And YouTube will soon show 6-second “Bumper” ads before videos, which cannot be skipped.

The market for online video has evolved immensely. When online video first launched, brands re-purposed existing 30 & 60-second TV commercials. The ads looked more clunky, required click-to-start, and didn’t assimilate with the surrounding content.

Instant gratification has become the norm—with advertisers and publishers adapting to meet the consumption behavior of today’s shortened attention span. Video ads are easier than ever to consume with the broad installation and access to broadband on desktop and mobile. Shorter videos ads have higher viewability and completion rates since the content is near instant. In effect, shorter ads may be more successful since consumers are more likely to watch the ads and remember the advertiser.

Today, online video ads are custom-created for each channel, the ads auto-play and compete for attention with a surplus of surrounding ads. Eighty-five percent of online video ads are un-skippable. MediaRadar found that almost all of the video ads (98%) that run less than 10 seconds are un-skippable.

According to MediaRadar data, there were over 1,100 new video advertisers in Q1 2016 alone who didn’t place ads in 2015. Online video is a key driver in digital ad spend with $9.6 billion predicted ad spend for 2016. In 2015, $1.5 billion dollars shifted from linear TV to digital. And yet there remains ample opportunity to grow. Only 10% of TV advertisers bought online video ads in Q1 2016.

Publishers are constantly innovating and introducing new products or ad offerings too. From premium page takeovers to YouTube’s new Breakout Videos that will highlight the fastest-growing videos as an indicator of viral potential.

MediaRadarshortads

Todd Krizelman is Co-Founder and CEO of MediaRadar (@MediaRadar). Growing up near the epicenter of technological innovation in Palo Alto, California encouraged him to become an entrepreneur and co-found of one of the world’s first social media sites, theGlobe.com. Krizelman also held leadership positions at Bertelsmann’s Gruner + Jahr and Random House. With his expertise in ad sales and innovation, Krizelman joined veteran web architect, Jesse Keller, to found MediaRadar in 2007.

Advertising | Industry-Research

Podcast consumption on the rise, and that’s good news for digital advertising

One in three podcast listeners expect to increase their podcast consumption over the next six months, following a similar increase in their behavior in the past six months. The results were revealed as part of comScore’s first study dedicated to podcasting, commissioned by audio on-demand network Wondery.

Significantly, among all forms of advertising on mobile devices, podcasts create the highest improvement in perception. And among all forms of digital advertising, podcast ads are considered the least intrusive.

Key findings include:

  1. Over two-thirds of online Americans aged 18-49 are aware of podcasting and nearly one in five listen to podcasts at least once a month.
  2. Incidence of podcast listening is highest among males aged 18-34, at 30%, who spend an average of more than 11 hours per month listening.
  3. About half of podcast consumption is done via mobile devices.
  4. Podcast listeners like the educational and entertainment value of the experience, and report an increase in positive emotions after listening to an episode.
  5. Two-thirds of podcast listeners say they have engaged in various research and/or purchase related behaviors as a result of advertising exposure from podcasts.
  6. More than half of non-podcast listeners say they would be interested in listening if they knew where and how to find podcast episodes.

The study was commissioned between March and April of 2016 among over 2,000 respondents in the US aged 18-49. Full results are available upon request at wondery.com/contact-us.

podcastads

Industry-Research

Evaluating content distribution channels

Publishers face unprecedented pressures in the mobile and social media dominated marketplace. In fact, according to eMarketer, mobile accounted for half of digital ad spending in the U.S. in 2015 and is suspected to reach 70% share of advertising by 2019, according to eMarketer. In response to publishers’ needs, the International News Media Association (INMA) released a report “Evaluating Distributed Content in the News Media Ecosystem” to help educate on the implementation strategies of distributed content.

As background, it’s important to note recent digital media announcements promoting content consumption on mobile and social media. Digital platforms are dominating users’ time and advertisers’ spending. Specific announcements include:

  • April 2016, Facebook opened Instant Articles to all publishers worldwide. IA is rich-media articles that open instantly within the Facebook mobile app instead of sending users away to a Web browser.
  • February 2016, Google launched Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), an open standard to speed up the mobile Web experience and Snapchat announced a new subscription option to publishers in its Discover section
  • Apple’s News app attracted 100-plus publishers.
  • October 2015, Twitter launched Moments, a magazine-like story format for curated streams of Tweets.

The INMA report identified different roles a publisher can choose to distribute their content on social platforms and classified them into three categories:

  1. On-platform hosts: Facebook Instant Articles, Snapchat Discover, Twitter Moments.
  2. Off-platform open standard: Google Accelerated Mobile Pages.
  3. Off-platform aggregators: Apple News, Axel Springer Upday.

Publishers first need identify which category can support their business strategy. Specifically, is the publisher looking to build an audience (growth), to develop an exclusive consumer relationship (content marketing) or are they interested in experimentation on multiple goals (laboratory).

Social media strategies are vital a publisher’s digital business. It allows one to distributes content beyond its property and to grow its audience base.

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