New academic research “Seeing the Big Picture: Multitasking and Perceptual Processing Influences on Ad Recognition” finds that a certain type of users can recall video advertising as effectively when they are exclusively viewing the ad as when they are splitting their their time between watching the ad and performing another task on the computer.
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Getting Attention in Miami: Tweet-Wisdom from DCN Summit 2015
It’s no surprise that photos of sunshine, swaying palm trees and shots of the shoes-optional networking on the beach were highlights of the tweet stream from this year’s Digital Content Next (DCN) Summit, held January 21-23 at the Mandarin Oriental in Miami.
However, in addition to lovely weather and networking, this year’s members-only DCN Summit generated non-stop discussion of the event theme: The Attention Economy. From the kick off by OKCupid Founder (and author of Dataclysm) Christian Rudder, who looked at the relationship between data and dating, to the closing session in which EVP Rick Allessandri showed how deeply Univision understands and connects to its customers —speakers, DCN Members and special guests alike, remained engaged and attentive, despite the lure of the sandy beaches.
In case you missed this year’s Summit, here are three key takeaways:
1. Relationships Matter. When seeking to attract and engage audiences, understanding them and catering to their interests and needs is a top priority.
Jason Kint, CEO of Digital Content Next, set the tone for the 
importance of trust in the age of data, pointing out that, given the ever-increasing competition for user attention online, trusted sources will move to the front of the line. That trust requires building a personal relationship with audiences; data allows us to do so, when ethically collected and skillfully applied.
Ray Wang, author of the forthcoming Harvard Business Review Press book Disrupting Digital Business urged attendees to strive for “mass, personalized scale for segments of one.”
Editor-in-chief John Avlon demonstrated his understanding of The Daily Beast’s millennial-dominated audience: “Don’t bottom feed to attract millennials… offer a high-low mix that doesn’t taste like medicine.”
Vice President of eCommerce Rhonda Crawford spoke about Delta’s content strategy, which strives to optimize content for different “stress-levels” of the traveling experience (from planning to boarding passes). “When balancing content and functionality, ask yourself if are you enriching the experience or getting in the way?”
Rick Allessandri discussed Univision’s customer-centric philosophy, which has led to a successful series of brand extensions all arising from its close audience relationship and a desire to maintain their trust by serving their needs.
2. The Need for Speed. Throughout the event, speakers emphasized the need for continuous experimentation and innovation without fearing the fast-failure.
Julie Fleischer, Director of Media and Consumer Engagement at
Kraft, may have summed it up best when she said, “The pace of change will never be slower than it is today.” She discussed Kraft’s agile approach to marketing, which emphasizes creativity and fresh thinking over tried-and-true.
Kendall Aliment Ostrow, Digital Agent at UTA, offered a Hollywood’s-eye view of the transformation that’s taking place in the entertainment industry and, in particular, the pace at which younger consumers adopt and drop social media and technology tools. Keeping up, according to Ostrow, is essential in order to identify the best channels and formats to reach audience younger audience and also to identify talent, suggesting “…find a 14-year-old to follow—one that won’t make you feel creepy for doing so.”
Noble Ackerson, co-founder and CEO, LynxFit, shared that
while wearables ”launched” in 1780 with the first pedometer, the pace of development has ramped up exponentially of late. Rather than chasing the next thing, Noble encourages companies to focus on creating useful wearable content experiences.
DCN CEO Jason Kint echoed the “need for speed” mantra when he spoke about DCN’s focus on the business issues of today and the future for digital content companies noting the change in its board structure voted in at the event which will better reflect this evolution and surface creative ideas from the breadth of its members.
3. Quality, not Quantity. Another recurring theme of the Summit was that, in an Attention Economy, it is important to make the most of customers’ valuable time through excellent content experiences.
Edward Felsenthal, Managing Editor of Time.com pointed out 
that the tension between content we want to consume and the limited time we have to consume it is not new: He kicked off his talk with a Henry Luce quote from the 1923 prospectus for TIME: “No publication has adapted itself to the time which busy men are able to spend on simply keeping informed.” And while his publication continues to attract and engage audiences almost a hundred years later, TIME’s continued focus is on high-quality journalism that respects the value of its reader’s time.
Brendan Spain, US Commercial Director of the Financial Times and Tony Haile, CEO of Chartbeat, offered a candid look at what it’s like to transact ad-sales based on time. As Haile pointed out all ad views are not created equal: “impressions are not a commodity. There is a difference between one that gets a lot of attention and one that doesn’t.” Spain spoke about the FT editorial team’s focus on writing deeply-engaging content to support the time-spent monetization model. Their paying subscribers spend 10 or sometimes 100 times more minutes with content and that, in their beta tests, “the shift to attention over impressions yields more engagement and more value.”
Frank Igrec, Brand Director of Dick’s Sporting Goods pointed out that engaging content can be branded, yet as interesting to the viewer as editorial. He played some of Dick’s Hell Week series to hammer home the point that native advertising can add value to a publisher’s site when well-executed.
Ray Wang, author of the forthcoming Harvard Business Review Press book Disrupting Digital Business, summed it up when he said that “We’re moving from selling products and services to selling brand experiences….You are competing for time and attention; focus on delivering experiences and outcomes to succeed.”
Hidden Tracking Undermines Consumer Trust
The recent revelation that healthcare.gov was sending highly personal data about consumers to third parties highlighted two important ways that consumer trust is undermined.
One, healthcare.gov needs to be a far better steward of the direct relationship they have with consumers. Rightfully, consumers have an expectation that websites and services will protect their sensitive data and certainly not recklessly broadcast that data to the world.
Second, there needs to be greater transparency and controls for consumers around what data is being collected and used by third parties. Some companies have a presence on a website simply to help that website operate. See the well-written reaction from Tony Haile at Chartbeat http://blog.chartbeat.com/2015/01/22/chartbeat-healthcare-gov-personal-information/.
The role of some third parties, however, is far less clear or even apparent to an average consumer. Revelations like this one with healthcare.gov highlight the need for a more effective and simple tool for consumers to express choice over how their data is collected and used. Given the explosion in the complexity and capability of the Internet and the different relationships that consumers have with various companies on the web, it is more important than ever for industry to develop a reasonable Do Not Track (DNT) standard that will give consumers a meaningful choice over how their data is collected and used by companies with which they have no relationship.
Read more here:
The Strategy Behind Harvard Business Review’s Last Redesign
Harvard Business Review (HBR) may never overhaul its website again. Late last year, HBR debuted its first major site redesign in five years and, according to Eric Hellweg, Managing Director, Digital Strategy, this may be its last. No, this doesn’t mean that Hellweg believes that the site won’t have to evolve to keep pace with consumer demand and digital developments. Quite the contrary. HBR.org’s latest redesign fully embraces an agile methodology that will allow it to continuously iterate the site. “We need to stay close to our customers and make changes quickly,” said Hellweg.
Becoming an increasingly agile digital organization is a significant undertaking in terms of mindset and Hellweg said that HBR made organizational changes and used incentives to ensure that all employees worked cross-platform effectively. It also required “groundbreaking work by our tech team to make the site open, modular and flexible because, for us—like a lot of publishers—the future is ambiguous and we need to be able to quickly adapt.”
The site redesign took about a year and a half to complete because of the significant technological undertaking, but also because HBR employed extensive customer reviews to ensure that the focus stayed squarely on their needs. “We did user testing every week and all of the new features reflect customer requests and feedback.” One particularly significant piece of feedback HBR got out of user testing was that its registration page “completely missed the mark.” It took a bit longer to get it right—and involved sharing some of the user videos in which they found registering to be difficult with the development. But Hellweg says they “nailed it” and the process of regular user testing was so effective, that it has become a standard part of his ongoing development strategy.
Given that it is a subscription-based product with a rich reputation, Hellweg says “the bar was set very, very high. We are a premium brand making a premium product.” For years, subscribers to the magazine had received the standard fare: the print publication, an app and access to the archive. Hellweg called this “table stakes” and said the brand wanted to rethink the entire experience to make it more digitally centric and better reflect the workflow of its users today. “We know there are still people ripping out magazine pages and filing them or sharing them around the office. We wanted to create functionality that enabled them to do this better.” To that end, the site now features “My Library,” an area where registered users and subscribers can save articles and graphics, create reading lists and share those lists with others. Users can also track their activity over the past six months, enabling them to resurface things they may have read in the past that could be useful now; an additional personalization feature includes the ability to follow nearly 200 topics, which will be featured as a feed in their library. They now also offer a one-click payment option in the ecommerce platform for HBR Press books, toolkits and other products.
The new site has also been visually streamlined and simplified, with an increased focus on graphics. In part, this reflects its growing mobile user-base (one third of its 4 million monthly users come from non-desktop devices and that number is climbing fast.) However Hellweg emphasized that they did a lot of user tests to be sure that they “aren’t sacrificing the desktop view and going overboard on mobile-first.” He also said that they are developing mobile-centric, and mobile-specific enhancements to their digital offerings.
Users can expect a steady stream of enhancements from now on, according to Hellweg. In the next three to six months, he says that the focus will be on enhancing the findability and usefulness of HBR’s largely evergreen archival content. “A central part of our value proposition is the caliber of our editors and what they deem important and relevant,” so the plan is to employ more curation and surface archival articles to continue to build out the highly personalized experience and make it easier for people to find relevant content.
Though Hellweg said he likes the idea of this being HBR’s last major redesign, he does acknowledge the possibility of major technological changes requiring another one at some point. He also points out that the premise of the agile methodology is to “always be improving,” which requires staying close to their readers — an approach that Hellweg finds “humbling and exciting. It is fascinating to really see, hear and watch firsthand how people engage with your content.”
TRUSTe: 79% of consumers are concerned about about the idea of personal information collected by smart devices
The newly released TRUSTe’s 2015 U.S. Internet of Things Privacy Index focuses on the Internet of Things (IoT) and captures consumer attitudes and concerns on privacy, security and data collection through smart devices.
Read more:
Press release
Infographic
Time is Money in the Attention Economy
Time is money: true. But time, as it turns out, may not always be on our side.
The web is awash with stories about ad viewability problems and the need for measurement standards. The hard truth is that because we can count clicks, we do. Yet almost anyone really thinking about the true measure of digital content success realizes that a click might measure little more than clumsy fingers or fleeting glances. What content creators—whether from media or marketing—really want is engagement. And, as DCN research recently revealed, an emerging measure of engagement is time spent.
Yet as anyone with an overstuffed inbox and more push notifications than they can handle will attest, there are never enough hours in a day to do what we need to do, much less read everything we want to. Time is among people’s most valuable resources therefore if a consumer spends time with content, we can assume that the content provides them some value.
This topic is so meaty and relevant to aspects of our business both today and in the future, we decided to make the theme of our annual member’s-only DCN Summit this year: “The Attention Economy.” We’ll examine how everyone in the digital media business needs to put the customer first and create experiences that make the most of their valuable time.
One of the most vocal champions of time based measurement is Tony Haile, CEO of Chartbeat, who will team up with Brendan Spain, the FT’s US Commercial Director to discuss the real-world applications of time as a metric for advertising performance. The FT has been an early mover in selling display advertising based upon the amount of time its audience spends with content. Spain plans to come armed with FT data generated by the first six months of experimentation with this strategy to provide insights into whether or not time spent with an ad message does, in fact, generate greater measureable impact.
Demonstrating engagement on one platform is challenging enough, but many media organizations reach consumers across a broad range of channels and need to measure the entirety of their audience. At this year’s Summit, three organizations—ESPN, NBCUniversal and AOL’s Adapt.tv—will explore how they are tackling cross platform measurement.
While advertising is certainly an important means to deliver advertising, an increasing number of brands compete for consumer attention with content. Dick’s Sporting Goods has gone all-in on content and Brand Director, Frank Igrec plans to reveal his beguilingly simple content marketing strategy: create content people actually find compelling. Attendees will also hear from Delta Airlines, which approaches content as a means to of super-serving its customers, as well as Mt. Dew, which has found content to be the best way to reinforce its brand among its millennial target. These sessions will look at the innovative work these organizations are doing to step up their content game in order to attract and genuinely engage audiences.
FCC Close to Revealing New Net Neutrality Regulations
FCC Chairman Wheeler is expected to unveil a new plan for Net Neutrality regulations in the coming weeks. If reports prove correct, the new rules would reclassify broadband as a Title II service, applying regulations to broadband and mobile internet that some have called “utility-style”.
The cable industry has vigorously opposed this approach for years, arguing that Title II would constrain the development and deployment of broadband. Meanwhile, wireless carriers believe Title II would be wholly inappropriate for mobile. At the same time, with a newly won majority in the House and Senate, Republicans may even try to proactively move legislation to head off the FCC’s efforts.
While the FCC’s intent is to require ISPs to treat all web traffic equally, with no blocking and no throttling, and to ensure that consumers have unfettered and non-discriminatory access to the internet – a laudable goal. The Chairman’s proposal is not likely to be black and white. The FCC could broadly apply Title II while also providing specific relief (or “forbearance”) from certain requirements and exempting certain parts of the ecosystem. Indeed, the FCC is widely expected to grant forbearance with regard to pricing – meaning they won’t regulate or set prices for broadband internet access. Also, the FCC has suggested that there may be instances in which prioritization of certain content may be acceptable. We would also suggest that–as we argued in our comments to the FCC–the regulations should not extend to websites or edge providers since the federal government should not be in the business of regulating content creation or distribution.
The FCC should carefully craft rules that will allow the Internet to continue serving as the open platform that has been its defining characteristic. It is critical that the FCC rules allow for the next generation of content creators to flourish and ensure that consumers can continue to enjoy access to all the content and services they demand and expect.
WebMD’s New Series “The Future of Health” Hints at the Future of its Video Content Plans
WebMD has signaled an increased emphasis on video with the announcement of its new video series “The Future of Health.” While WebMD is no stranger to video content, it has teamed up with Robin Roberts’ Rock’n Robin Productions to develop new original video programming featuring five prominent health and medical advancements illustrated by global experts who will bring the information to life.
Hosted by Roberts, “The Future of Health” will highlight medical advancements as well as powerful human-interest stories. WebMD editors and Rock’n Robin Productions’ team of network, cable, digital, and commercial producers plan to begin production later this month, with the series slated for Q1 release. President Steven Zatz, M.D. says “We are really thrilled to be working with Robin Roberts on this series on such exciting topics. She is an inspiring and compassionate storyteller who can make the future of health accessible today.”
Zatz noted that there is a very broad appeal for the subject and not just for those whose health might be directly impacted, but for others who have a friend or family member that these medical advances might help in some way as well as those interested in general advances in medicine and technology. “There is such an interest from the public in what’s going on in healthcare. Also, some of the most interesting science and applications of technology are in healthcare. Whether it is ourselves or loved ones, these topics touch everyone.”
Some of the topics, however, can be complex and confusing. Given its reputation as a trusted source for reliable medical content, Zatz believes that WebMD is uniquely positioned to identify emerging medical advances, to reach a large audience and to make a positive impact. And while the series will contain a range of multimedia content, they are emphasizing video because it is an optimal format to communicate complex subject matter. “I’m a physician,” said Zatz, “and I find the video helpful myself.”
While WebMD already produces a significant quantity of video content, the collaboration with Roberts heralds a “serious investment in high-quality video” an effort to keep pace with the general trend to satisfy increasing consumer demand, particularly as it is readily consumable on mobile devices. “All Digital Content Next members are seeing the rapid growth of access to our content through mobile. We are all thinking hard about how you put together content that plays well on mobile or desktop,” Zatz said.
However “The Future of Health” series, which is slated for launch early this year with a series of five videos is more than simply another addition to WebMD’s online video lineup. “Stay tuned,” says Zatz. “We are exploring video and its uses. We think we have both perspective and audience that will respond to video programming but the web isn’t the only outlet. We are always interested in reaching new people and reaching our existing audience in new settings.”
Digging Deep into Attention and Metrics that Matter
I was thrilled to see an industry visionary like Ev Williams tackle the measurement discussion with his post “A mile wide, an inch deep” and advocate the use of a dimension beyond simply unique visitors.
We agree that time is a critical dimension and arguably the most important one as noted in our recent report “How Time-based Measurement is Grabbing Publishers’ Attention.”
In terms of measuring the quality of an audience, Ev’s “rectangle analogy” nails it.
Ask any junior high student which rectangle is bigger, one that is three inches wide or one that is two-and-a-half inches wide, and they’ll tell you it’s a nonsensical question unless they have more information — specifically, the height.
And yet, we literally say one company or service is “bigger” based on a single number — specifically, number of people who have “used” it in the last 30 days.
A site that attracts one million visitors for 30 seconds per month is an entirely different business than one that attracts one million visitors for 3 hours per month. The same holds true for brand advertising. We will continue to urge the industry to debate and discuss a time-based measurement world, what it means to brand advertisers and how it more correctly aligns the incentives for creating great media. As Ev so eloquently puts it: “Most Internet companies would build better things and create more value if they paid more attention to depth than breadth.”
It’s an Attention Economy. Content is everywhere and so are the consumers. We need to be in the business of making the most of their precious and valuable time. We’ll be exploring this topic in depth at the 13rd Annual Digital Content Next Summit later this month. It is members-only but we’ll be reporting on the insights and major themes on InContext after the event.
Mastering Data to Optimize Content and Capture Attention
Last year around this time, more than one pundit predicted that 2014 would be “the year of data;” unfortunately, the sobering light of early 2015 has delivered a fair number of articles calling 2014 the year of data breaches. It appears that consumers, media industry players are developing a bit of a love-hate relationship with data given the necessity (and challenge) of addressing privacy concerns, the seemingly limitless potential for hacks, grim statistics around ad viewability, and ongoing discussions about which metrics really matter to marketers.
On the the positive side – particularly for marketers, is that data is providing opportunities to create compelling new marketing offerings and personalized content experiences. While just-right, just-on-time content is hardly controversial—particularly in the context of trusted content providers who are transparent about what data is collected and why—there remains some concern that data-driven content creates a “filter bubble,” in which content is so tailored to your stated interests that you rarely see anything else, even if it is about important issues.
For consumers, data-driven content creates a mixed reaction: frustration when sites don’t tailor content offerings to their needs and even more when they are served ill-fitting pseudo recommendation links or followed around the web with content-targeted advertising. So despite the challenges in collecting, protecting and leveraging data, the focus our industry shines on it is merited. Given the insights and opportunities data provides, it is also well-worth the effort to understand its power and potential.
This year’s Digital Content Next Summit, the member’s only annual meeting of DCN’s senior executives from more than 60 digital media brands, is themed “The Attention Economy” and will focus on the myriad ways our attention is pulled, stretched, interrupted and engaged. While advertising and marketing have captured the lion’s share of attention, there are many other ways that organizations online are putting data to work, not only to measure attention but also to attract and engage in the first place
Christian Rudder, the co-founder of OKCupid and author of Dataclysm, will kick off the event with an unprecedented look at what data can reveal about people and ways in which should or shouldn’tuse this information to shape online experiences. Rudder has had his share of success with data: OKCupid is not only highly trafficked with impressive time spent statistics, but also a highly-rated dating site. He has also had his failures, some of which drove his most revealing explorations of data. Ultimately, though, this Harvard-trained mathematician has developed a committed relationship with data and will share his “intimate” knowledge of the subject.
Certainly, getting to know users is one of the most appealing applications of online data. But most of us aren’t in the matchmaking business so we put that information to work in other ways. DCN Member, Business Insider, uses data to grow attention through mobile, social and other channels. At the Digital Content Next Summit, President and COO Julie Hansen will discuss how they’ve created a site that leverages algorithms and editors to produce recommendations that actually satisfy visitors. Business Insider also provides its entire team—business and editorial—with real-time dashboards to optimize content creation, delivery across channels and increase value for readers and marketers alike.
The CEO of Dynamic Yield (a DCN Supporter Member), Liad Agmon will share insights in his Summit presentation on ways in which organizations can harness data to increase user engagement. In particular he has found that, given decreasing user attention spans and the real-estate limitations imposed by mobile browsing, the need to show visitors exactly what they are looking for has become critical. Agmon’s point underscores the theme of the DCN Summit for 2015 and the rest of the 2-day agenda: Today’s consumers have a voracious appetite for content, but a finite amount of time in which to consume it. Data is a powerful tool—and an essential one to master—as we seek to make meaningful connections in this attention economy.
The Biggest Challenges Digital Media Faces in 2015
We asked a few of our members:
What do you think will be the most significant challenge for the business of digital media in 2015?
Here’s how they replied:
In 2015, I expect that most brands with a mobile presence will create offerings that better meet customer needs on the go. Presently, most mobile experiences simply mirror the desktop experience, but when we’ve reviewed customer insights we can easily see that behavior is different on the mobile platform. I predict that there will be a marriage of “big data” and mobile that allows marketing and product development departments to really grasp the opportunity to create meaningful and relevant mobile moments. This will require innovation, skill and the thoughtful application of user data, but it will be well worth the effort as it will generate more loyalty for the brands that do it well. Especially as mobile continues to grow to its inevitable domination of the online experience, we all need to be paying special attention to what more we can be doing to meet customer needs in this unique space.
—Michelle Denogean
CMO, Edmunds.com
@michadv2000 @Edmunds
According to the ANA, the marketing term of 2014 was Programmatic. There is no doubt that Programmatic is important and here to stay; however, consumers don’t follow programmatic. They don’t get excited about programmatic or curl up with programmatic…they do that with content. In 2015, it is time for content to get back in the driver’s seat. Premium content should never be viewed as a commodity and top publishers should be sending that message in every meeting they have.
—David Morris
Chief Client Officer, CBS Interactive
@CBSi
The biggest challenge for the digital industry is proving the efficacy of display advertising. Digital still remains the most measurable and trackable form of mass media and with the right metrics and methodology, it can provide marketers with much more insights than other media. But due to the oversupply of ad inventory, unscrupulous tactics by publishers and marketers to force feed ads down users’ throats, and the lack of progress the industry has made to show effectiveness beyond sheer click thru rates, we are at a critical juncture where we need to change how we do business. The scale, efficiency and targetability of digital still makes it an incredibly powerful tool for marketers. But publishers need to work harder to prove that digital ads “work’” and rethink some of the age old practices that have led to user blindness.
— Brian Colbert
CRO, About.com
@aboutdotcom
The challenge in 2015 will be around standardizing measurement for ad viewability. Right now, there are so many different sources to obtain campaign data, much of which lies with agencies; however, some of this lies with publishers and with third parties. There’s no real consistency on how the overall industry measures results. The publishing industry is working hard to deliver the maximum value to advertisers for their investment. The issue we all face is how to move forward efficiently without getting bogged down in the act of reconciling the various measurement services.
—Mark Howard
Chief Revenue Officer, Forbes Media
@markdhoward @Forbes
Finding the right way to structure the product management function in the organization. As we saw several times in 2014, media companies struggle with this. It’s easy to see why: product management works across editorial and commercial, to focus on the users’ needs, the business’s goals and the organization’s capabilities. Helping editors understand product managers and vice versa and teaching them to work well together is absolutely essential for the success of digital media.
—Eric Hellweg
Managing Director, Digital Strategy,
Harvard Business Review
@ehellweg @HarvardBiz
The most significant challenge for digital media advertising in 2015 will continue to be dealing with the operational issues that need to be addressed as more advertising moves through programmatic channels. Publishers need to understand how to get the greatest yield from this channel of demand while evolving custom programs that can deliver value and performance beyond what can be bought and sold on the open market—with enough scale to make it worth the marketers time to consider. Marketers need to master the tech stack and techniques required to get real value from programmatic buying but not become so consumed by the complexities that they miss out on other digital advertising opportunities that can offer greater value.
—Mike Kisseberth
CRO, Purch
@mikekisseberth @PurchGroup
