Tags containing: "user experience"

How well are digital brands meeting consumers’ hierarchy of digital needs?

April 17, 2019 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

Innovation fails when it does not meet the needs of people. In its new report, Digital Society Index 2019: Human Needs in a Digital World, Dentsu Aegis Network examines just how well digital technology is working for all people in society. The research, conducted with Oxford Economics, surveyed over 43,000 people in 24 countries across three key dimensions of the digital economy: dynamism (its strength), inclusion (its range of access) and trust (in data usage).

Overall, the research shows the digital economy as a glass half full. A number of countries show a positive balance between dynamism, inclusion, and trust. Importantly, for these countries, the future of the digital economy is viewed in a positive light. However, the misuse of data (64%) is a hot button driving declining trust in technology.

In fact, the decline in consumer trust helped drive the UK’s overall Digital Society Index ranking drop from first to fifth. Other factors include that consumers in the UK think that technology companies do not pay enough taxes (36%) and are establishing an unbalanced society by creating excessive wealth (28%).

In order for digital technology companies to build a positive digital economy, Dentsu developed a new framework, based on Abraham Maslow’s work on the hierarchy of needs. It examines products and services across people’s needs. The framework includes four perspectives: basic needs, psychological needs, self-fulfillment needs, and societal needs.

The Digital Needs Model

Basic needs are the necessary preconditions for people to engage with digital products and services. Dentus identifies basic needs as access to a quality digital infrastructure (internet and mobile connections) as well as the trust that personal data will be used responsibly by businesses and the government. Less than half (49%) of consumers worldwide (and 43% in the US) believe their basic needs of people are being met.

Psychological needs include the impact of digital technologies on consumers’ health and well-being. It’s about the healthy balance of personal technology on the overall quality of life. Digital tech is helping people manage their lives from shopping to doctor health monitoring online. However, technology can be a double-edged sword, allowing for errands and efficiencies as well as the increase in obsessive online behavior.

Self-fulfillment needs center on having the skills, education and opportunities to find rewarding work. Consumers show concern about their fulfilment in terms of learning new digital skills for educational or career purposes. Less than half of all consumers (45%) feel they are prepared in their usage of digital technology. These research findings suggest that employers are not doing the best job in training their employees. One in three people cannot recall the last digital training (if any) they received. Importantly, companies need to build people’s digital skills and employability to establish positive personal fulfillment.

Societal needs offer opportunities for technology to help close the digital divide. Consumers are optimistic that digital technology can aid in positive changes in the world. In fact, just less than half of those surveyed believe that digital technology will enhance society to help solve key global problems.

Consumer Behavior

Dentsu’s research also presents behavior of new digital consumers. These digital natives are more likely to take control of their online footprint by installing ad blockers, controlling the amount of data shared and limiting time spent online. Still they are active online consumers. They are also the most likely to shop online, use an app to take a taxi or stream music.

It’s important for companies and brands to understand the digital audience in terms of their attitudes towards the digital economy. Dentsu’s digital needs model offers a framework to inform product and service strategies from marketing to communications. The digital marketplace must strive to guide technology’s development to ensure consumers are not left behind by digital growth.

Industry-Research

Research reveals that ad tech is reducing reader trust

December 13, 2018 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

Advertising is a fundamental part of news publishers’ revenue model. Within the digital advertising marketplace, programmatic and advertising technology are a large part of ecosystem. According to eMarketer, more than four of every five US digital display ad dollars is a programmatic transaction. Simply defined, programmatic is the automation of the buying and selling of desktop display advertising using real-time-bidding. Included in the programmatic is the usage of ad tech to collect and aggregate user data. A new research report, Guide to Advertising Technology from the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, looks into programmatic advertising and the influence of ad tech on the practice, distribution, and perception of journalism.

User experience

The Tow report suggests that news publishers’ reliance on ad tech for user data is threatening both a positive user experience and trust in a news brand. News sites. like other sites, collect user data and tracking codes to offer advertisers targeting campaigns. The data is collected by the ads’ tracking cookies (i.e., Javascript and HTML code) and embedded inside ads. Digital ads also send data to and receive instructions from thousands of servers. The data embedded within these ads creates a heavy load on web browsers, often slowing down the site and negatively impacting the user experience.

Further, even though publishers require that ads on their sites contain no malware, the current ad tech setup can serve malicious codes to reader often compromising user security and privacy.

Social media fallout

The report also examines the impact of the plethora of user data collected by social media platforms on the advertising ecosystem. Unfortunately, publishers cannot compete with the unprecedented ability of Google and Facebook to collect data and in order to provide the same level of targeting opportunities and offerings. And, as stated above, publishers’ drive to collect more consumer data may have the undesired effect of negatively impacting their experience.

The exploit of fake news on social media has also had a significant impact on impacts news publishers. Of specific consequence is Facebook’s change to its News Feed algorithm, which de-prioritizing news articles and content from media brands in favor of content shared by friends and families. Unfortunately, as consumers are exposed to less trustworthy content, their overall sentiment around content being trustworthy declines.

Digital filter bubbles are also a concern as search engines and social media algorithmically tailor content recommendations according to a user’s consumption histories. The research found that this can get to the point that the users are only shown information that conforms with their preexisting biases. Thus, data collection – in the name of better targeting information – may actually lead to less-informed readers.

Advertising still fuels the media economy. That’s why it’s important for media professionals to understand the advertising infrastructural and the role ad technology plays in digital media today. We must keep a close watch on advertising technologies, data collection, digital delivery and continue to weigh their impact on the reader experience and our ability to deliver the news they need.

Innovation

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

October 16, 2018 Jon Shalowitz, CEO—LiftIgniter

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s what online publishers need to know:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pretty soon, readers won’t settle for less.

About the Author

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

Advertising | Uncategorized

Consumers want control to improve the relevance of online advertising

July 18, 2018 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

Consumers who use ad blocking software are also more likely to say advertising is important to their purchasing behavior. Surprised? You might also be surprised to hear that—overall—consumers believe that digital advertising is improving. Unfortunately, there’s still a long way to go.

That said, today, one out of five adults report using an ad blocker all of the time according to Kantar Media ‘s DIMENSION 2018 research. And it’s not just younger adults using ad blockers. The proportion of adults 45 to 64 who block ads is almost at the same level as those aged 18-34s. It’s also not just heavy tech-savvy users blocking ads. Twenty-three percent of heavy users report always blocking advertising content compared to 21% of all connected adults. The Kantar research surveyed 1,000 Americans and 5,000 in Brazil, China, France and the U.K.

Importantly, attitudes toward advertising appear to be changing for the better. Nearly three-quarters of online adults feel that that “advertising is changing for the better, or not changing at all.” Unfortunately, consumers report that targeting practices are misaligned with a positive online advertising experience. Seventy-two percent of consumers say that “sometimes I see the same ad over and over again, it’s too repetitive.” Further, more than half of online consumers (56%) report to frequently seeing ads for products they’ve already purchased.

Control seems to be a key theme in online advertising, particularly in ensuring relevance. Approximately, 63% of those surveyed say that they would like more control over the ads they see online. Just over two-fifths (43%) report their willingness to share personal information for a more relevant advertising experience. Targeting as we know it today with third-party data streams and cookie collection is not the holy grail. There’s still a window of an opportunity to improve the online ad experience and engage users.

Consumers digital ad boycott should deliver a clear message that we need to improve the online advertising experience. The Kantar research indicates that while progress is being made in how online advertising is perceived, there’s a need to improve advertising creative, experiences, and relevance.

Advertising | Perspectives | Revenue

Thinking differently about outstream video ads

July 10, 2018 Dennis Yuscavitch, VP of Product Marketing—Outbrain

Assaulted by a sudden rush of sound while surfing the web, you probably have found yourself asking “where is that audio coming from?!?” We’ve all been there, frantically searching for the video ad that auto-played with sound. This negative video experience has become so problematic that leading browsers now stop video that auto-plays sound. Without a doubt, this should have us all asking how can publishers gain the revenue benefit of video without annoying readers?

Marketers enjoy video because it creates a deeper connection with the audience. And publishers are willing to push the boundaries of an acceptable video experience in the name of improved RPMs. That said, there are three things publishers can do to take advantage of these improved connection and revenue opportunities while creating a healthy and friendly user experience:

Personalization is Relevancy

Video ad content must be personalized for the reader. The over-abundance of video demand shouldn’t be a license for inundating the reader with whatever demand meets the viewability (vCPM) completion rate goals. Make video ad content relevant and users will engage and stay through completion.

Video signals are important

The experience must be customized based on reader habits. If the reader has shown a propensity to engage with video, make the video experience more prominent with more entry points to accommodate their preference. Gather signals like time of day, device, and user’s preference to consumer short and long-form ad content to help tune their session.

Interruption is non-starter

Allow video ad content to become ‘native video’ and non-interruptive. On mobile this works best by emulating a feed experience through inline play. Alternatively, by placing it at the end of an article in non-feed formats, you can show at the exact moment the reader is deciding what content to consume next.

These strategies are required for a successful and user-friendly auto-play video experience. However, there’s another powerful alternative: enabling click-to-play outstream video ads. Publishers can put the control back in the hands of reader while proving to marketers that lean-in, long-form video ad content and immersive storytelling experience they’ve been looking for.

Outbrain’s Click-to-Play solution, which we launched earlier this year, has averaged view times of 37 seconds, 49% completion rates, and 10% conversion rates for 60 second videos. This proves that amazing engagement stats can be achieved while giving full control to the viewer.

Lots of value can be extracted from auto-play video ads for both publishers and marketers. But we need to think differently and invest in the right mix of video experiences. If we do, we’ll all be able to forge a relationship with our readers that keeps them coming back.

Advertising | Industry-Research

Why being more transparent about data may make your ads more effective

May 9, 2018 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

As Microsoft founder Bill Gates said this week, “People don’t mind having a little bit of demographic information about themselves used to target ads. That’s value added to the user.” When data is clearly used to improve the relevance of the ads consumers see, it can improve their overall experience.

Unfortunately, the amount of data collected and the myriad ways in which it is used are opaque to most consumers. And, when they get a glimpse behind the curtain, (as with Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica dealings) consumers grow mistrustful of data collection—and even online advertising—as a whole.

However, it is possible that if consumers are more informed on the tracking process and what’s going on behind the scenes, advertising would be more effective and impactful. This is what Tami Kim, Kate Barasz, and Leslie John examine in their study, “Why Am I Seeing This Ad? The Effect of Ad Transparency on Ad Effectiveness” published recently in the Journal of Consumer Research. Their research analyzes the impact of ad transparency on ad effectiveness.

Today, some websites and advertisers are informing users (albeit in a limited fashion) about what they are tracking and their data practices. Some sites may display an adChoices icon that indicates an ad is targeted based on user characteristics. Consumers can find out why the ad is being displayed to them by clicking on the icon. Other websites are alerting visitors, upon first visits, of their tracking user software and practices (e.g., cookies).

The Ad Transparency Effect

Kim, Barasz, and John conducted five studies using the Facebook platform. They analyzed the findings to identify the core dimensions of ad transparency needed to positively impact ad effectiveness.

Study 1 allows consumers to select acceptable tracking methods from a pre-defined list. The analysis identifies two important ad tracking practices consumers find acceptable: 1) the information is obtained from tracking within the site and not outside of it; and 2) the information (attributes) is provide by the consumer and not inferred by the site.

Study 2 tests the effectiveness of revealing data tracking practices within a site versus across-websites. Participants are shown an ad. Then, they are shown either no information or messaging as to why they are seeing this ad (message a: the ad has been generated based on user information obtained within the platform or message b: the ad has been generated either based on information obtained cross-platform). The results from Study 2 confirms that transparency messaging increases ad effectiveness especially when it reveals the information is obtained within the platform and not from cross-website tracking.

Study 3 examines the impact of revealing a targeted ad is based on stated attributes versus inferred attributes. Participants are shown an ad and then given one of two messages (message a: the ad is generated based on information stated by the consumer or message b: the ad is generated based on information inferred by the site). Results for Study 3 indicate that privacy concerns are higher in the inferred attributes and detracts from advertising effectiveness.

Study 4 looks at the role trust plays in a site’s data transparency and its impact on ad effectiveness. The results of this study indicate that users who trust a site are more likely to engage with an ad that offers ad transparent messaging than those sites they distrust.

Study 5A and 5B explore the impact of ad effectiveness when there’s both trust of a site and ad transparent messaging. Study 5A divides consumers into two groups, half are assigned to a loyalty program (higher trust of site) and the other half to a non-loyalty program (no trust of site). Personal information was obtained transparently from the loyalty program consumer group.

This study found consumers are more willing to click on recommended items, spend more time, and purchase more when they both trust the platform. They will also provide their own data (attribute information). Study 5B includes two additional consumer groups and offers messaging regarding shared or inferred user attributes. Message group one: Recommended based on what you’ve shared with us (implies data user provides). And message group two: Recommended (implying the data is inferred about the user). Study 5B reveals that consumers are more likely to have a higher propensity to click on recommended items if they state their attributes than those targeted based on inferred attributes.

Kim, Barasz, and John’s research is an important step to understand how consumers’ readiness to engage with digital ads is affected by their awareness of the data practices used to deliver such ads. Ad transparency messaging is a critical step to increase advertising effectiveness on your site.

Innovation | Perspectives | Revenue

Why many mobile ad experiences fail and how to make yours work

April 3, 2018 Peggy Anne Salz, Founder and Lead Analyst – Mobile Groove

Mobile is as personal as it gets. That’s why people feel annoyed when mobile ads delivered to their devices and apps are a mismatch with their desires and expectations. To cut out unwanted noise and shut out ads that deliver a poor user experience, consumers are reaching in record numbers to mobile ad-blocking technology. Unfortunately, bad ad experiences don’t only alienate and frustrate consumers; they also deprive publishers of an important chance to monetize their assets and audiences.

So, what is a bad ad experience? Unsurprisingly, ads that disrupt or distort content people are trying to read or enjoy lead the list of most “hated” annoyances, according to research from Nieman Norman Group. Pop-up ads, auto-playing video with sound, interstitial ads that must be viewed before content can be viewed, and postitial ads that obscure the content or just breaking the browsing flow are ad approaches and formats that people want to avoid.

Naturally, in the Age of Personalization—marked by milestone studies that reveal 78% of consumers said they would be happy to receive mobile advertising that is relevant to their interests—mobile ads that are out of sync with people’s interests and context are also a “fail.” However, this doesn’t appear to deter publishers and brand marketers from plowing huge amounts of money into mobile ads that people ignore.

It’s a dynamic that threatens to bankrupt the entire digital ecosystem. At one level, mobile ad spend is rising into the stratosphere. Research firm eMarketer reckons ad spend in the U.S. alone, which accounted for 66% of all digital ad spend in 2017, will increase to 72% (or $65.8 billion) in 2019. At the other end of the spectrum, the vast majority of brands and publishers are wasting budget ads that fail to inspire or influence consumer behavior.

Dangerous Disconnect

New research based on internal data from Verve, a location-based mobile marketing platform that connects advertisers with consumers, puts this dangerous disconnect into perspective. Over half (56%) of respondents surveyed in the U.K. think most ads they see on their mobile phones are “boring or dull.” As a result, the average person in the U.K. ignores 7 mobile ads each day. When looking at the national population, this figure translates to a massive 20 million. “In their current state,” Verve reports, “mobile ads are not making the cut.”

Only one in ten respondents (11%) believed their mobile ads were genuinely helpful. This figure increased significantly with the quality of the mobile ad experience. While just 17% said they were “likely” or “very likely” to interact with a generic ad on their phones, over twice that number (38%) said they would do so it the ad was related to their interests or hobbie. And 34% said they would engage if the ad was related to where they were at that particular time.

Lack of relevancy is part of the problem, lack of imagination is the other. A 2017 survey of 100 advertisers and 1,000 consumers regarding their recent experiences and preferences toward mobile ads conducted by Forrester Consulting and commissioned by digital advertising creative management platform Celtra found that poor creatives may be at the core of bad ad experiences.

The study revealed that more than two-thirds of advertisers believe at least half of their mobile advertising budget is wasted, sunk into the development and deployment of mobile ads that can even harm their brand image. In fact, a whopping 73% of all mobile ads seen in a typical day fail to create a positive user experience. “The overall digital content experience is littered with creatively uninspired ads, irrelevant ads, and intrusive ads with slow load times,” the report states. “The consumer experience has gone terribly wrong.”

The solution is more engaging ad creatives. Companies that crack the code, using creatives that are more relevant and less disruptive are sure to see improved customer response rates and higher brand recognition, the report concludes. As Mihael Mikek, Celtra founder and CEO, put it in a press release at the time: “Smart advertisers have a significant market opportunity to drive high levels of customer engagement and sustained competitive advantage by leveraging strong creative in their mobile ad campaigns.”

Vendor spin aside, the data suggests positive mobile ad experiences promote positive consumer perceptions and influence actions. The findings also support my personal view that the ability to craft and evaluate effective mobile ad and in-app creatives is at the core of what marketers must learn and master to ensure their campaigns move the needle, not miss the mark.

Inspirational and Relatable

Effective marketers follow the data to determine what works. “But it’s not just about amassing Big Data,” Haydon Young, Director of User Acquisition at Dots, writes in an insightful post. “It’s about creating a Big Picture view of your users by blending what you know about them in the digital world of mobile and apps with what you observe about them in the “real world”.

He recalls how a re-think of ad creatives rocketed conversion rates for Covet Fashion – an app for fashionistas and the shopping obsessed. Observing shoppers in real-life, at malls and shops, helped his team architect an ad experience catered to its unique audience demographics (“moms, daughters, sisters, aunts, grandmothers, and everything in-between”). It allowed them to align with their aspirations (“a vast and diverse group of races and body types united by the singular desire to be a part of the fashion and beauty world”). Rather than use ad creatives that depicted super-models, he removed the faces altogether. This encouraged users to picture themselves in the clothes and look they wanted most. The creatives worked because they spoke to the audience ambition to be and look amazing.

The takeaway: Ad creatives succeed when they address audience demographics and desires and encourage people to unlock their real potential. It’s no coincidence that brand creatives “rooted in real life” are crushing it, according to the Global Marketing 2018 Trends study from Freedman International. From fashion brand ASO that refused to photoshop models in its ads to Fitbit that has switched from using professional athletes to showcasing average people working out, companies are winning audiences with imagery that portrays the real world as it really is.

Test for Success

Authenticity is a must across the entire ad experience. Be upfront about what your app offers and choose mobile ad creatives that are descriptive, not deceptive.

“The most important thing to do creatively [in the ad] is to show users what the experience is within the app,” observes Helene Trompeter, Media Manager at The Weather Company and a Mobile Hero recognized for her app marketing accomplishments. “Being straightforward and visualizing the benefit of your app capabilities [in the ad creative] almost always outperforms lifestyle imagery.”

Even the coolest creatives won’t appeal to everyone in your customer base. So, use data to develop effective segmentation and targeting strategies. “Ad copy and images may perform differently depending on user demographics, operating systems, and interests,” Trompeter explains. Choosing the right creative for the right audience is an ongoing task that requires the discipline to test and the courage to innovate. It can be a daunting task, but Trompeter tells me there are some shortcuts. Dynamic ads and creative templates can remove a lot of the heavy-lifting, making it easy for marketers to mix and match hundreds of creative variations to ensure mobile ads are fresh, relevant and engaging.

Trompeter achieves this by applying what she calls the “80/20 rule.” In practice, she runs “about 80% of budget toward historical performers and 20% toward testing.” It’s a smart approach that recognizes the hard truth about effective advertising. Marketers have to focus ad spend on what is proven to work. However, they also need to experiment with ideas and ad elements that take them outside their comfort zone.

Push the Boundaries

Verve Foundry can use part of the screen or all of it to create an animated experience.

Meaningful and effective mobile ads follow the data and demographics to appeal to the target audience. But using the right ad format can also make a huge difference. Walter T. Geer III, VP and Creative Director at Verve, tells me new ad formats that build on existing ways people interact with the mobile Web and apps on their devices are boosting audience engagement. “Scroll, pinch, swipe—it’s all about delivering the best possible ad experience with ad formats that let consumers use their fingers and put them in control.”

The days of using the consumer’s mobile device as a “launching pad” for ads that disrupt and annoy are over, Geer says. “The future is about creating an opportunity that is cohesive to the device and using the data to ensure mobile ads deliver the right opportunity and one that is relevant to the individual.” This is also where ad formats that “augment and enhance user activities” play a major role, enabling a positive brand experience and driving closer customer connection.

A prime example is Canopy Onscroll, a new ad format developed by Verve that combines two engaging experiences into one without interrupting the consumer’s core app experience. Animation beyond the banner activates when scrolling. “It’s one of our highest engaging ad units and a great example of how giving users choices. In this case, showing subtle animation completely activated by scrolling—is capturing people’s attention with advertising that is effective, not intrusive.”

Effective and emotive mobile ad creatives are a huge departure from the annoying screen-takeovers and one-size-fits-all ad experiences that characterized the early days of digital marketing. Stronger creatives, real-life imagery, and innovative formats that push the envelope point the way to positive ad experiences that will engage, motivate, and activate consumers.

Perspectives

We need design that is faster and design that is slower

March 20, 2018 Jeffrey Zeldman, Creative Director, Founder —studio.zeldman

During a recent conversation with David Sleight, Design Director at ProPublica, I found myself realizing and saying “we need design that is faster and design that is slower.”

Who are we and what is this thing called design?

When I say “we,” I mean our whole industry, when I say “our whole industry,” I mean design, and when I say “design,” I mean: web design and development; digital product design; digital user experience design; digital user interface design; digital interaction design; “mobile” design (which is the same thing as web design and development); graphic design as part of UX, UI, interactive, digital, and web design; publishing and editorial design; and other design practices specifically empowered by the internet and digital technology and built largely around reading and interacting with words on screens.

A mouthful, isn’t it? Some people mean all the above when they say “UX.” I generally mean all the above when I say “design” and call myself a designer.

I exclude from the category, for this specific discussion, tactile, conversational, and passive design powered by the internet of things. Not because those practices are uninteresting or unimportant — on the contrary, they are fascinating, exciting, and fraught with critical ethical questions — but because they are not specifically screen- and reading-driven. And it’s our screen- and reading-driven design that needs a reset.

Our whole industry, as I’ve just defined it, needs design that is faster for people who are trying to get things done, for they are our customers and should not be burdened by our institutional surrenders. We need design that is slower for people who are trying to comprehend, for they are our only chance of saving the world.

This porridge is too fast

Derek Powazek’s {fray} (1996) was an early site that practiced art direction on the web.

Our news and information sites have succeeded so well, they are failing. We’ve designed them to be quickly scannable — at a glance, I take in the headline, the key visual, and the lead paragraph. But today’s news is anything but simple. The truth cannot be reduced to visual sound bytes. That’s how we got in this mess in the first place.

As a society, we’ve replaced thinking with slogans, listening with wall-building. Our best news publications are doing a better and better job of reporting beyond headlines — getting down to the details that really matter. But we designers have so trained readers to scan and move on — Pacmans scarfing dopamine hits — that they no longer have the instinct to sit back and take their time with what they’re reading.

Our news designs must work to slow down the reader, engage her more deeply, encourage her to lean back and absorb. The good news is, we’ve long had the tools to do it: typography and whitespace.

Imagine that! Typography and whitespace can encourage thoughtful reading.

Larger type — type that actually encourages the reader to sit back in her chair — plus radically uncluttered interfaces and (when budget permits and the story merits it) art direction are the way to do it. Derek Powazek’s late lamented {fray} (1996 — remnant here) and Lance Arthur’s Glassdog were the first sites to do real art direction on the web. Jason Santa Maria’s personal site was a later, brilliant exponent of art direction on the web. (See “Previous/Embarrassing Editions.”)

You can see these techniques working in the recent designs of The Washington Post (but not its homepage), The New York Times (but not its homepage), ProPublica, Slate, Smashing Magazine, and Vox — with inspiration from predecessors including the Readability application, Medium, and A List Apart.

To a great extent, the ability of news publications to pursue slow design depends on their ability to finance themselves without overly relying on race-to-the-bottom advertising. Not all periodicals can free themselves of this dependency.

On the flip side of the news experience, which must be savored and digested slowly, comes the challenge of our corporate and organizational sites, which must become faster — not just technically, but (even more importantly) in terms of their content’s comprehensibility.

In the beginning, there was shovelware

As the once-vital blogosphere recedes from the equation, and as traditional periodical publications struggle to retain solvency and relevancy (and wrestle with readability), the web becomes the turf of stores like Amazon, powerful networks like Facebook, and traditional corporate brochureware. It’s this brochureware that most needs fixing—most needs to be designed to be faster.

In the 1990s, disgruntled computer buyers coined the word “shovelware” to refer to the second-rate games, fonts, and software that came pre-bundled with many PCs. It wasn’t stuff you had to have, carefully curated by software wizards who cared for you — it was garbage presented as value. Early web designers, including your present author, soon used “shovelware” to refer to the reams of corporate copy that got thoughtlessly dumped into the first corporate sites. The corporate overlords thought of the stuff as content. The readers didn’t think of it at all.

Getting easier to publish and harder to communicate

So we spent years preaching that the web was not print, finding ways to design words on screens so they could be scanned and used. We learned to inventory our old content and develop the will and the sales ability to toss the dross. Only content stringently designed to satisfy both customer and business needs would be permitted onto our excellent corporate websites. At least, that was how we did it when it came time for a major redesign (and only when astute stakeholders permitted it).

But most of the time, and constantly between redesigns, junk still got shoveled into our websites. We even made it easier for the shovelers. We developed CMS systems and gave everyone in the organization the power to use them. It was easier for us to let people publish the stuff their little group cared about than to stop and ask what mattered to the customer. And it was also easier for the organization, as it enabled warring fiefdoms to avoid difficult meetings.

It was easier. But not better.

And the CMS systems multiplied, and the web-savvy middle managers were fruitful, and the corporate site was filled with documents nobody but those who posted them ever read. And the corporate site sucked. It sucked harder than it had even in the earliest shovelware days of the 1990s. It sucked deeper and wider and more frequently and with better algorithms. For all our talk of user journeys and mental models, most corporate sites are mostly pretty garbage.

Shhh! Don’t tell the client. They still owe us a payment.

Ethan Marcotte’s 2010 article, “Responsive Web Design” not only changed web layout, it pointed the way to more meaningful content.

Beyond pretty garbage

Gerry McGovern’s “Top Tasks” method showed how to prioritize the information the customer seeks over the darlings of Management. Ethan Marcotte’s responsive web design and Luke Wroblewski’s mobile-first strategies pointed the way to restoring the focus on what’s most essential. There’s no room for pretty garbage on the small screen. Now, before it’s too late, we must fulfill the promise those visionaries and others have shared with us. If we want to save our brochure sites, we must make them not just faster, but relevant faster.

Designing with the content performance quotient (CPQ) in mind is how we will take the next step. We’ll ruthlessly prune the inessential, cut our sitemaps down to size, slash our bloated pathways, removing page after unloved page, until there’s nothing left but near-neural pathways from the user to the information she seeks.

In short, we will sculpt the design, presentation, and amount of content in our brochure sites with the same scalpel we take to the shopping carts in our e-commerce sites.

Evaluating speed or relevancy for your site’s content

How can we tell which sites should be faster, and which should be slower? It’s easy. If the content is delivered for the good of the general public, the presentation must facilitate slow, careful reading. If it’s designed to promote our business or help a customer get an answer to her question, it must be designed for speed of relevancy.

A conversation with David Sleight – The Big Web Show № 171.

I’ll continue to explore both these themes in future articles . My thanks to ProPublica’s David Sleight for the remarkable conversation that helped give birth to this piece. David is a web designer, creative director, and leader at the intersection of publishing and digital technology. ProPublica is an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces “investigative journalism with moral force.” To hear the complete conversation, don your headphones and listen to Episode № 171: Art Directing the News — with ProPublica Design Director David Sleight on The Big Web Show.

Jeffrey Zeldman is an entrepreneur, web designer, author, podcaster, and speaker on web design. He is the founder of A List Apart Magazine and the design studios Happy Cog and studio.zeldman, and the co-founder of A Book Apart and the design conference An Event Apart. He also co-hosts The Big Web Show, a podcast about the web and online publishing.

This post originally appeared on Medium. It has been reprinted with the author’s permission.

Research

73% of site visitors get there via mobile. Here’s your guided tour through the mobile landscape.

March 12, 2018 Clare Carr, Vice President of Marketing—Parse.ly

There’s a good chance that you have a cell phone within arm’s reach right now, maybe in a pocket, next to you on your desk, or even in your hand as you read this post.

Even so, when you imagine a reader interacting with your site, do you tend to picture a person browsing on a laptop or do you see a commuter reading on her phone? Getting a clearer picture of how readers discover content via devices starts with checking in with the data.

As recently as 2013, peak daily mobile usage only accounted for 20% of traffic. Parse.ly network data shows that on average over 65% of traffic to publisher and brand sites in 2017 was “pure mobile.” Now, at the beginning of 2018, mobile and tablets drive 73% of traffic to our network.

With the mobile audience growing faster and bigger than ever before, it’s essential to understand the media habits unique to those readers. Here’s what the data suggests about people’s habits when it comes to when, where, and why we’re on our phones.

When: Desktop during workdays, mobile all the time

The times that people are more likely to browse on mobile vs. desktop vary. Desktop still has a weekday cadence (following peoples’ work schedules), whereas mobile is “all day every day,” including some morning and night-time peaks. People also tend to use tablets on weekends.

We also consistently see a drop-off in desktop traffic between 5:00 pm and 5:30 pm in every local timezone in the U.S.. Of course, this makes sense because many people head home from work around 5:00 pm.

Desktop ended 2017 at only 25% of total traffic across all our publishers, and kicked off 2018 at only 23% of traffic. This does vary quite a bit on a publisher-by-publisher basis. For example, some international publishers are almost all mobile traffic, and some subscription or workday reads lean desktop. However, overall, it’s a safe bet that mobile and tablet have firmly overtaken desktop for “casual” news reading.

Where: Five big movers of mobile traffic in 2017

When you break down the services or referrers that drove mobile growth in 2017, five bigs ones stand out. People are discovering content on mobile devices via:

1. Plain old Google Search

Google experimented a lot with highlighting premium publishers in their mobile search experiences, and unifying Google Search with Google News, which drove more traffic back to publishers’ sites.

Traffic from Google AMP increased by 87% in 2017. Not only that, but making AMP available to other platforms contributed to mobile growth. AMP drove 3% of visitors to our network by way of non-Google platforms, including Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.

2. Google’s non-search connected services

These services include Google Now and Google Play Newsstand, mostly on Android. Though these services did not grow the most out of the five listed here, the absolute number of visits delivered was substantial, and contributed to Google overtaking Facebook as a primary source of traffic. AMP and Android platform dominance propelled Google’s shift from news search to content discovery.

3. Flipboard

Flipboard was the big independent (read: not Google or Facebook) traffic source growth story of 2017. Especially in the latter half of the year, as they launched their formal partnerships with major publishers, Flipboard grew over 300% over the year in mobile.

4. Twitter

Twitter and Flipboard are now sending similar levels of mobile visits to publisher sites. Twitter has reinvested in news partnerships, mobile speed, and their mobile apps. Notable changes to the app include the shift to the 280 character limit, AMP embeds, and algorithm changes.

5. Instagram

Instagram also cracked our top-10 list for traffic sources overall for publishers, driven by the platform’s move this year to allow linking to external web-based content from Instagram stories. With the copycat stories feature, Instagram ultimately took the wind out of Snapchat’s sails.

Why: We feel the need, the need for speed on mobile

Speed heavily factors into why people are browsing the way they do on mobile.

With people using their phones everywhere—in transit, waiting in line, you name it—it’s likely that they’ll be off wifi and on a network. The speedier the network connection, the better the experience. This resonates with a finding from a recent Pew Research survey: half of Americans say an unlimited cell data plan would help them get information to make decisions.

People also trust content that loads quickly, according to the American Press Institute:

“A majority of digital news consumers report it is very important to them that ads not interfere with the news (63 percent); that the site or app loads fast (63 percent); that the content works well on their mobile phones (60 percent).” — American Press Institute

Facebook, Google, Twitter, Flipboard, and others were right, we think, to focus so aggressively on mobile page speed improvements. For example, Google recently re-emphasized the fact that their search algorithms would penalize slow sites on mobile.

It’s worth noting that just because people want content to load quickly, that doesn’t mean they want to move on from content quickly. Long-form articles get more than twice the engaged time of short-form articles on cellphones, according to a 2016 study from Pew Research.

Keeping up with the pace of mobile growth

With the fast growth of mobile, and especially now that Facebook referrals are declining, building direct mobile channels allows publishers to meet readers where they are.

People still spend a lot of time checking email, and having a “daily read” newsletter is a great way to drive traffic to your mobile site, without requiring a native iOS or Android app strategy. According to a study by Campaign Monitor, 41% of email opens happen on mobile devices, exceeding the amount of opens on both desktop and tablets. If you can’t build your own app, integrate your content into users’ habitual engagement with their email app.

However, it’s also important to keep in mind that readers are less likely to click through on mobile. Campaign Monitor reports, “As more people consume email on mobile devices, the standard for compelling content is higher than ever.”

As mobile grows, checking back in with the data helps ensure that you’re connecting with readers when and where they are on mobile, and delivering content that resonates with them.

Industry-Research | Video

The 5 big trends media execs must understand to succeed

October 9, 2017 Terri Walter, Chief Marketing Officer—Chartbeat

How has both consumer consumption of news and traffic patterns changed year-over-year? What about the role of platforms? Every October, media analytics platform Chartbeat identifies macro trends in audience behavior and news consumption to help publishers understand major shifts and discover new growth opportunities. These just released trends, rolled up from Chartbeat’s network level data from 2016 to 2017, sum up the key findings:

1. It’s not a mobile first-world, it’s mobile-only.

In looking at platform-referred traffic by device type, we see that mobile has made stunning gains year-over-year. Last year, traffic from Google had just tipped over the 50% mark for mobile for the first time ever, showing a 51% mobile vs 42% desktop split. But from 2016 to 2017, Google mobile traffic grew from 51% to 60%, and Facebook’s grew from 78% to 87%. For publishers with high dependencies on platform-referred traffic, it is significant to note that most visitors are now coming via mobile. At least for platform-referred visitors, it is practically a mobile-only world.

2. It’s not that Facebook traffic is down, it’s that Google is up.

Traffic that was referred from Facebook and Google to premium sites has been fairly steady over time, with Google driving roughly 1.25 billion visits per week and Facebook around 1 billion. The ebbs and flows in their traffic have stayed pretty consistent each month—until now.

Due to recent major news events including the solar eclipse and hurricane Irma, we saw traffic coming from Google escalate in unprecedented ways in September. Recent reports have described a decline in Facebook traffic, but in looking very closely at multiple data sources, we see a different picture: While it is true that Facebook’s share of total traffic is down, the missing piece is that, in fact, the pie is much larger, and Google is up.

So what does this mean for publishers? Newsworthy events, particularly those that are unfolding over time, are huge moments for search activity leading to direct traffic. Social traffic does not spike until afterwards, mainly around more emotional, reactionary content.

3. Demand for video is not constant; it spikes around breaking news.

In looking at consumer engagement with video content, we see that it’s much more dependent on what’s in the news than text is. Below we’re looking at how much time visitors spend watching video, relative to the time they spend with text. The first notable thing is that this line isn’t at all constant — demand for video content really changes across the year. When we look closer, we see that spikes in video watching correlate with a few highly visual stories in the news (like hurricane Irma). And that makes sense: for highly visual news, readers look for a highly visual news medium.

It is noteworthy for publishers that video demand is variable, and deeper insights here should lead to a better content strategy and smarter monetization.

4. Longer time reading content drives higher loyalty.

How can media companies build and grow a loyal audience? Focus on engagement.

Why is engagement as a metric so important? Chartbeat research shows that half of visitors who click through to an article hardly read what they land on: 45% spend less than 15 seconds on the page. As you can see in the graph below, a new reader who engages for a longer amount of time during their visit is more likely to return. And the more they return, the more pages they consume and the longer they read on the page. This in turn, means they also view more ads on the page. Overall, optimizing for engagement can drive loyalty, and revenue.

5. The homepage is not dead– it’s the place for your most vital audience.

Is the homepage really dead? Not at all. Yes, Facebook and Google are prime sources to target new readers, and those first time visitors are more likely to land on an article than a homepage. However, to our surprise, in looking at how article and homepage consumption changes by loyalty (based on the fraction of days a user visits in a two-week period), our data shows that frequently returning visitors build strong homepage habits.

As readers become more loyal, they use front pages more actively.
Visitors who come more than every other day (hitting the 50% threshold), visit more front pages than articles
Subscribers (see dotted lined below in contrast to the solid lines) demonstrate higher overall engagement, at first with articles, but as they become more frequent users, their homepage consumption then begins to spike

The lesson for publishers? It is becoming increasingly clear that there are different tools in the publisher toolbox as it relates to building and growing a loyal audience. While platforms are for acquisition of new visitors, driving direct traffic on your owned and operated properties is critical to retention. The homepage is more important than you might think–it’s where you’ll lose or retain your most loyal readers.

Innovation

How National Geographic empowers content exploration

September 25, 2017 Peggy Anne Salz, Founder and Lead Analyst – Mobile Groove

In the early days of digital, media companies believed that more was better. However today, they are waking up to a hard truth. Stockpiles of content – without technology platforms to make it widely available in ways people find valuable, meaningful, and dead-simple – can destroy competitive advantage, rather than build it. National Geographic, an iconic brand with over 360 million social fans, including a significant audience across desktop and mobile for its editorial and video content, is exploring technology platforms and partnerships to open the aperture of the content they offer and the audiences they reach.

Peggy Anne Salz – mobile analyst and Content Marketing Strategist at MobileGroove – caught up with Marcus East, National Geographic executive vice president of product and technology. They discussed the company’s strategy to build strong emotional engagement with global audiences through deep personalization, intuitive access, wider app distribution, and an intelligent platform codenamed CHIP. National Geographic has no shortage of compelling content. Here’s a look at their strategy to deliver experiences to match.

PAS: You joined National Geographic from Marks and Spencer, where you ran e-commerce, digital product, digital operations and technology platforms. Before that you ran e-commerce solutions for Apple in EMEA, and later at HQ. How does your experience prepare you to define and drive mobile strategy at National Geographic?

ME: Spending half of my career in technology and the other half in consumer brands allows me to understand what it takes to deliver mobile content consumers love. Your app is only as good as the content and the utility that sits within it. And for us, the emphasis is on making sure that we’re investing in both of those areas. That means having the right technology platforms and the right app strategy, but driven by content. Ultimately, it’s the content that our consumers love and why they come to National Geographic.

PAS: So, we are back to Content is King…

ME: Yes, and everything we do has to be about making the content king. The content is what drives the experiences that consumers love. That’s fascinating for me because I’ve worked in e-commerce environments where consumer value is very much about utility. At National Geographic, it’s about bringing our brand to life on mobile. The reality is many of our consumers are right now interacting with us through their mobile the way they want, which may be on Instagram or it may be on Facebook. So, what we do need to be complementary to that experience.

Social reach and engagement is important to us. We have 360 million social media fans, and that’s an incredible footprint. However, we also think there’s an opportunity to build upon that and to extend and optimize our mobile experience for that audience that is dedicated and comes directly to National Geographic and wants to get deeper and further into the stories behind the pictures.

PAS: Your mobile app is work in progress. It’s already breaking some exciting new ground when it comes to helping users navigate and personalize content. We can’t all access it yet, so what can you tell me about the user experience you offer?

ME: Right now, we’re redesigning elements of our website to really be optimized for that mobile experience. Around 50% of our traffic comes on mobile, which is no surprise. At the same time, we’re also building a new app strategy, which we’ve launched and tested in one market: Australia. We launched the app with a telco partner, and we’re seeing a great deal of success there and that is informing our wider global mobile strategy.

Content is king in the app and so the experiences that we deliver through our app put the content front and center. We have a 129-year heritage of photos and articles and, more recently, videos. We don’t want the interface to get in the way of that. The interface has to allow our consumers to explore the content and go further. That means moving the navigation into the background so that it really highlights the content. We achieve this by thinking about what the consumer wants to do first, and there are three concepts. Rather than presenting consumers a complex navigation that groups content into pictures, video and articles, we’ve decided to design it the way people to engage with content. We have ‘Read,’ which is where users can engage with the editorial and the magazine; we have ‘Watch,’ which is where they can access to our video content.

Our app approach is about the consumer and the content. For this reason, the app experience also provides a level of personalization, allowing the user to specify what’s most interesting to them. Over time, the app will learn exactly what things are most interesting to that consumer based both on their preferences and on what they’re actually consuming.

PAS: The navigation is invisible and intelligent. What about the platform that powers it?

ME: We want users to log in to the app and experience the content that’s right for them, and we’re applying this same principle to our websites. We’re also looking at how we can, using some advanced techniques like progressive web apps, for example, to create a more personalized experience for consumers. This is why we want to build an intelligent platform to support the ambitions of our business.

So, what we’re exploring and building is what we’re calling a cohesive intelligent platform, codenamed ‘CHIP’. We’re building an innovation lab here in our headquarters in Washington, D.C. and we’re working with lots of technology partners and companies to explore all that. The idea is, as users come into our platform, we want to learn more about them, give them an opportunity to tell us about their preferences so that we can improve that experience, and let them see the content that’s most valuable for them. Offering personalized experiences where content is front and center – this is really the future of mobile.

PAS: It’s an ambitious strategy. But what is really interesting is how you are building the platform to deliver it because you are also orchestrating the best pieces of the other platforms, like social …

ME: I like your choice of the word “orchestrated” because the platform that we envisage is, you could argue, a virtual platform because we aren’t going to build every component of it. We are making it by orchestrating the right content management systems, the right personalization engine, the right distribution system. For some parts of the platform we may work with third parties, and for others we may build it ourselves. It all starts with experimentation; we are iterating in an agile way and building.

We’re unique in that we’ve got unparalleled global reach. We touch over 745 million consumers across 172 countries, and that’s every month. But it’s also across lots of different content types. People watch our TV channel, which is the most widely distributed in the world. People read the magazine, and they also interact with us in social.

As we build out and execute our digital capabilities we want to create a way to allow our consumers to go beyond how they experience our content today. Take consumers who read the magazine. We want them to also be able to consume our digital content on our website and watch our TV channel. It’s all about pivoting away from the different products and channels that we have and bringing it to life for the consumer and giving them new ways to explore National Geographic and the world around them through National Geographic.

PAS: You want to enrich consumers’ lives through content. That also sounds a lot like you may have a new twist on native advertising. Where does monetization fit in and how do you plan to also put content front and center in that experience?

ME: We’re exploring all the ways in which we can create the best experience, including sponsorships and e-commerce opportunities that can become part of that experience. Let’s imagine we have a consumer who absolutely loves penguins and they are on our website where they search for and engage with lots of content about penguins. We see that as an opportunity to maybe share with them details about our products that are related to penguins. It might be a penguin cuddly toy, or it might be a book about penguins, or ultimately, it may be a trip to Antarctica to go and actually see penguins in real-life. This is where we will have delivered on the ultimate promise of digital and making content part of everything that we do.

PAS: You also offer educational content. How does personalization of content and advertising extend to that audience?

ME: Ten years ago, media brands and publishers would’ve expected people to come to the website, do the work, go through the navigation and find the content that’s right to them. The Nirvana, for us, is to create a personalized experience, one that allows us to know enough about those two personas – the consumer and the educator. So, when they interact with our brand, we can give them access to content that is relevant to them, and that meets their needs.

To that point, one of the things that we’re embracing is the Jobs To Be Done paradigm that Clayton Christensen and other academics have proposed. Yes, we look at all the metrics as any media company would, but we’re also deep diving into what consumers really want and why they come to our website. Getting a deeper understanding of those consumers want to do, powered by technology. We need to have the right technology platform in place to do that in the first place. This will allow us to maximize the brand opportunity.

PAS: You can also maximize your opportunity by getting your brand in the hand of all your readers – across all 172 countries. How do you see this global opportunity and what are you doing to grasp it?

ME: There is a real opportunity at distributing apps using alternative channels and app stores. And it’s a cost-effective way to reach and interact with consumers and markets where we haven’t necessarily had a strong proposition. We recently did an audit of app stores globally – of which there are over 200 – to better understand their focus and their audience. We have a good relationship with many telco partners around the world that have their own app stores. Various technology companies have also come to and asked us to publish out app in their app stores as well. So, right now, we’re auditing to make sure that we, in a deliberate way, prioritize which of those app stores are right for us.

PAS: I am researching this alternative app store landscape, which is over 350 stores and counting. In China, for example, alternative Android app stores dominate…

ME: I was quite intrigued to see the range of app stores in China. From WeChat to handset maker, there is a wealth of opportunity. We also want to minimize the cost of being in all these different environments, and that’s why I attach so much importance to orchestrating an intelligent platform so that if our teams in Asia, for example, can identify a new app store and a new partner in the region and be able to embark on a relationship without having to build everything from scratch, and without having to do lots of development work.

The number of app stores is quite remarkable, and as you well know from your research, many of them are quite different – with different audiences and different demographics. So, it’s fair to say that in the short term our priority will remain the best known and most established app stores, but we are exploring all of them.

PAS: Of course, being in app stores – even if it’s just Google Play and iTunes – means investing effort to ensure brand integrity. As a global and iconic brand, how do you ensure this?

ME: On the one hand, protecting your brand online and in apps is incredibly important. One of the things I’m responsible for here at National Geographic is information security. However, I believe if you build the best experiences for your consumers, ultimately, that’s the best way to protect your brand. Consumers will come directly to you to get content because they know your website or app is the right destination – and the only way – to get the most up-to-date content and personalized experience. It’s all about creating a compelling content story and a compelling user experience because that will make sure consumers come to us first.

Peggy Anne Salz is the Content Marketing Strategist and Chief Analyst of Mobile Groove, a top 50 influential technology site providing custom research to the global mobile industry and consulting to tech startups. Full disclosure: She is a frequent contributor to Forbes on the topic of mobile marketing, engagement and apps. Her work also regularly appears in a range of publications from Venture Beat to Harvard Business Review. Peggy is a top 30 Mobile Marketing influencer and a nine-time author based in Europe. Follow her @peggyanne.

Perspectives

Why homepages still matter

August 31, 2017 Mark Glaser, Founder and Publisher – MediaShift

Since the time people first began predicting the death of the homepage —from the edges of conversations to center stage at various panels — you could have already raised a teenager. And that teenager would, by and large, be consuming a news and information diet dependent on a few key ingredients: Snapchat, Facebook and other social media, push notifications, and maybe some newsletters. Mind you, the creation of the stories are driven by key metrics deciphering what she’s interested in, how long she might linger for on a given article, and so on.

But despite the rise of no-website news outlets like NowThis, it looks like most internet players believe a good recipe still calls for the original essential ingredient: the homepage. Coupled with recent research on user experience, it’s safe to say the homepage isn’t dead, probably was never endangered, and is being reimagined for the social age.

A Tale of Two Sites

HuffPost

When The Huffington Post, under its original moniker, first splashed onto the internet in May 2005, it doubled-down on bold headlines, reported with a liberal slant and quickly gained a huge following. This spring — under a new name, HuffPost — new editor-in-chief Lydia Polgreen announced plans to shape the news website in the tradition of grand tabloids.

Redesigning the website was a part of that, and putting resources into the homepage made sense for HuffPost. As much as a quarter of its audience accesses content directly via the homepage. Internal analytics reveal these visitors also read six times the number of stories a month than the average reader coming in through the side door of social media.

In the way that a digital tabloid exists for a new generation, so too does the homepage for it. Today’s homepage has 30% fewer stories than what might have once been considered “normal,” and splashy headlines that aren’t fearful of punning and challenging the figures they’re portraying.

The homepage is meant to be a “snapshot” of the day, according to Polgreen. Video — while intrinsic to its editorial strategy, especially on social — doesn’t clutter the top fold of the website. Instead, a user encounters video clips only after several swipes or scrolls from the top, which still helps these videos gather 50,000 to 100,000 more views than videos that don’t make it to the homepage.

Bottom line: Be true to yourself, and you’ll realize the hows and whys of the necessity of the homepage. And remember that homepage visitors typically spend more time on the site and represent more loyal readers (i.e. ones you can monetize).

Even though Reddit is the fourth most-visited website on the Internet, known as the “homepage of the internet,” it remains a mystery to the majority of consumers. But even Reddit regulars have pondered just why the website, which launched in 2004, still looks like it exists in the year 2008.

Take some user feedback from the sub-reddit “why_is_reddit_so_ugly:”

“I think a lot of redditors actually like the ugly look. And if you dare call reddit ugly or recommend changes in most subs here, prepare for an onslaught of downvotes.”

“My problem with the design is that it isn’t user friendly especially if you have a vision impairment like my best friend does. It has a terrible use of whitespace (what whitespace?). The line height is awful. The character count per line is way too long. These “design” practices aren’t just to make it look pretty, it’s also for usability and accessibility…”

Yet even Reddit is finally going for a redesign. The site recently raised $200 million in new venture capital funding, and a new site design will help it overcome “perception debt,” according to CEO Steve Huffman. “Reddit feels old. We don’t want to be associated with old,” he told Recode’s Kurt Wagner. A new design that’s in the works for the homepage mirrors social feeds a la Facebook and Twitter, showcasing visually appealing “cards” to help lure people into conversations. (Axios already uses a social-style story feed on its site.)

It’s worth it for Reddit to invest in redesigning a homepage meant for a desktop because that’s where their users are. Reddit attracts 300 million users a month, and about 80% of which come via the web. (Probably because that’s where it’s easiest to engage in long text-based, thread-based conversations and arguments.)

Bottom line: Reddit users may initially cry foul at a redesign (just as users anywhere do). But Reddit can get away with it because it’s shaping its design for its audience.

Test First, Revamp Later

If the no homepage/yes homepage binary argument is still leaving you ambivalent about what to do, take heed from the Engaging News Project at the University of Texas. “Different website designs can elicit different user experiences and influence what people recall,” the researchers said. “Site design can affect metrics like page views and time on site, but results can vary.”

In the study, the researchers examined how a newly redesigned homepage of one American news organization and one Canadian news organization changed users’ perception and ability to recall. The Canadian news site saw an improvement in metrics; the American one did not. Still, the researchers found that articles with less scrolling, which were located in the left-most column, and that contained a photo were all better recalled among users. A previous 2015 Emerging News Project study also found that contemporary website designs attracted more readers than sites with traditional newspaper layouts.

Together, the two studies suggest that redesigning a homepage — so that it’s fast, visual and user-friendly — could help in a few ways: By increasing the amount of time people spend on the site; by increasing the number of pieces they read; and by helping them recall what they read. All of this, too, helps make the content and reporting on such a website much more effective.

Of course, this all depends on the outlet and its audience. Do some testing. Examine where your audience is coming from. Think of the values of your brand’s identity. The biggest takeaway from the study? Experiment first before a full-blown redesign.

“Our results show that an online experiment can pick up on many of the same signals as a full launch of a site redesign,” said Emily Van Duyn, research associate for the Engaging News Project.

So, don’t tear down your homepage just yet.