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Perspectives

Beyond 140: Will another walled garden bloom? 

The latest report on Twitter’s efforts to reinvigorate its platform included the long-rumored project to break loose from the 140 character limit. Like all newsfeed changes, this triggered a polarizing debate about people’s preferred experience of the almighty feed. Lost in the fray was a more important development, that Slate’s Will Oremus astutely captured: “Twitter isn’t raising the character limit, it’s building a wall.”

So while the fundamental user experience of seeing 140 characters is likely to remain the same, a story can be expanded and be read in full, without linking back to (and delivering traffic to) the site of origin. This comes as we just wrapped up a year in our industry that saw the “platformization of content” with Facebook, Snapchat, Apple and Google rolling out proprietary experiences to seduce content creators.  (Yes, AMP is proprietary until proven otherwise.)

I’m on record as a fan of these platforms.  I think any new distribution channel that meets consumer demands is fertile ground for the trusted content of our membership. Some of the greatest innovation in content creation has come as a result of these platforms. Consider the power of the social graph (Facebook), real-time (Twitter), user-created video (Google), anytime/anywhere (Apple). As long as the open web and competition remain in force then it’s a win-win for consumers. It’s why we made this the first point in our DCN Trust Principles.

Yes, a virtual elimination of the character limit in Tweets allows content to be embedded on Twitter. It will enable text to travel in a way that is more native to the Twitter experience, similar to what Twitter has done with images and video. A better in-Tweet text experience will mean less text screen grabs, which will serve all parties better by opening up improvements to search, discovery and sharing. But most importantly—if properly executed—it creates an opportunity to improve the consumer experience by making it faster and easier to read interesting content. I have no doubt that, with Jack Dorsey at the helm, Twitter will do this the right way so that it first delivers consumer value and then creates business value.

So given Twitter’s plans to go “Beyond 140” and speculation on what this will mean in terms of content delivery and consumption, what are the big issues we should be thinking about? First off, we need to remember that this is nothing new. As each of these closed distribution points emerge, people suggest we are facing something radically new. But, before there was the open web, there were proprietary platforms (Compuserve, AOL, Prodigy). They ultimately lost because of the open web and the innovation it enables.

However we also passed through a phase dominated by portals, which were essentially platforms that allowed for content to be natively distributed on them. I recall fierce debates in the late 90s when I argued to embed Times Mirror content directly on Yahoo! as they rolled out channels. Right or wrong, it’s where the eyeballs were seeking the content.

So if we accept that content is going to live on platforms,  there are some basic requirements: Trusted content creators need to be able to maintain brand identity, measure audience and make the financials work.  What this means is that…

  • Yes, GroupM’s fight to have market-maker Facebook play by the same rules and measure their ad impressions like the rest of the Web were important. The fox can’t guard the hen house.
  • Yes, the WSJ report that Apple News has no idea how large your audience is should be concerning. Actually, it’s even worse than not knowing: They were miscounting. It’s good to see the transparency on the problem and I hope it gets fixed if the platform is going to be meaningful.
  • No, Google can’t develop its own controlling markup language and be the arbiter of which companies can play ball. Well, they actually can, as long as competition exists. But again, please don’t try to pass this off as “open.”
  • Finally: Snapchat. Dear Snapchat. The world is moving towards a measurement based on time.  Your video views are a nice press release but as Nielsen recently pointed out, they will soon rightly be a measurement of the past.

Here at DCN, we’re focused on advancing the future of trusted content. The positives and negatives of these new platforms are top of mind for us. We’re keeping a close eye on both the competition they do (or don’t) foster and—most importantly—how they continue to bring back value to the vital information, entertainment and news that our members plant in their gardens.

I encourage our members to continue to experiment on emerging platforms as it makes business sense for each of them. And I look forward to the many ways they will continue to share the insights and lessons among our trusted forums. The future of content will flourish on the open web and in carefully tended gardens, as long as we all remain focused on the customer.

Perspectives Image
Perspectives

DCN’s recommended reading: week of January 14, 2016

Our recommended reads from around the web:

 

Industry-Research | Revenue

Media companies find new revenue streams

The International News Media Association (INMA) newly released report focuses on revenue diversification beyond the scope of print and digital media. This report presents 14 case studies of global publishers in ten countries where new value is being found from to highlight ground-breaking success stories for revenue diversification.

The report identifies five key strategies port to promote diversification: (1) opening new markets, (2) reaching new audiences, (3) creating new partnerships, (4) making smart acquisitions, and (5) seeking steady income.

In additional to revenue diversification, acquiring the right talent is also critical for innovation to develop new competencies and explore new revenue streams.

New revenue streams highlighted in the case studies include:

  • El Colombiano, Colombia:Collaborative digital advertising sales company.
  • The Dallas Morning News, USA:Content marketing, marketing automation, branded merchandise, SEO, event marketing.
  • W. Scripps Company, USA:Podcasting.
  • Grupo Nación, Costa Rica:Digital printing.
  • Independent Media, South Africa:Events for public institutions.
  • KM Media Group, UK:Creative services for local businesses.
  • Kompas, Indonesia:Collaborating to build smarter cities.
  • com, USA:Incubator.
  • Rheinische Post Mediengruppe, Germany:Mail delivery.
  • Rodale/Hearst UK:Vitamin co-branding.
  • Singapore Press Holdings, Singapore:Retail properties and events.
  • Toronto Star, Canada:Sample packs for Millennials.
  • Vecerniji list, Croatia:Exercise classes.
  • The Washington Post, USA:Technology vendor.

Notably, media companies are looking at new ideas and strategies to connect to their core business and services in collaborative ventures and licensing deals with other partners.

Advertising | Perspectives | Revenue

5 Successful sales habits to try now

Take on 2016 by capitalizing on high-value sales opportunities, including leveraging programmatic to new heights and, of course, improving interpersonal relationships with prospects and customers. As the sales, and revenue generators, of our firms, locking in the fundamental habits below will allow us to remain successful even as the bumpy digital landscape continues to evolve.

Let’s take a closer look at how all of this possible:

1. Understand advertisers’ buying trends
Wouldn’t it be great to have a crystal ball so you could see what your prospects want and when? If only ad sales was that easy. Yet, there are other instructive ways to give your prospects what they want. Before you pitch, get to know which product lines they are focused on, what type of advertising they value and understand the goals of their campaigns. Once you have this information, it is important to document it. Whether you put this information in your CRM, notebook or Excel document doesn’t really matter. What’s important is to be able to easily reference this as you build out your individual account plans. Just watch the effectiveness of your next pitch soar.

2. Adopt high-CPM ad units
Choose high-CPM ad units that are most valuable to you and your digital business. This means adopting native, whole-page takeovers and online video. Given that video ad prices are capable of commanding 10x higher than the price of display ads, web publishers should leap at the opportunity. The bottom line is that high-CPM ad units are the most profitable sources for publishers, but also more valuable to the advertiser—and that’s how you should approach it in your pitch.

Among these high-CPM options, native ads probably stand out the most. It has attracted a ton of hype, and yet, only 4% of total online advertisers placed native ads from January-November last year (a total of 7,220 brands across the sites MediaRadar tracks).

mediaradarfig1

3. Take advantage of programmatic
Ninety-five percent of all national consumer magazine media companies have already started selling programmatic, according to MediaRadar data.* Programmatic advertising has made it much easier for marketers to purchase advertising and expand reach. Publishers can also manipulate programmatic advertising to their advantage to leverage their audience and grow profit.

4. Identify up-selling opportunities
The probability of closing a new prospect is 5-20%, while the probability of selling to an existing customer is 60%-70%! Yet, upselling is something that reps sometimes lose focus on as they want to hunt and close a new account. As sales leaders, it is important that we focus on helping reps identify upsell opportunities and set goals for each account. By inspecting what we expect in weekly meetings, we can coach our reps to get stickier with our clients and become a more integral part of their business and success.

5. Increase client engagement (also known as “Old Faithful”)
No matter what changes happen this year in the industry, focusing on continuing to earn our client’s business is how we create lasting partnerships. People buy from people. Statistically, 38% of clients don’t renew due to lack of relationship. Make sure to engage with your clients before, during and after the sale. Proactively reach out to clients so you can get a better idea of their needs and address concerns. This will help you build confidence, show them that you are there to help and excel in the above mentioned four tips.

*Data source: MediaRadar 2015

**Data source: https://www.groovehq.com/support/upsells

Jen Wilga (@JenniferWilga) is a dynamic sales champion who is leading MediaRadar’s global expansion efforts. She joins the team with over 20 years of experience in SaaS solutions. Prior to joining MediaRadar, Jen played a critical role in developing and executing the sales strategy for Careerbuilder’s HR SaaS solutions. Jen received her BA from Misericordia University.

 

Perspectives

Get ready for “concierge” media

There is an untapped distribution channel for publishers to create private,
intimate and tailored relationships with the audiences they serve.

NBCnewsPeople have always had the desire to be informed. In the pre-industrial society, news was limited to conversations and gatherings. The arrival of pamphlets, edicts, ballads, journals and the first newssheets allowed information to spread regionally, while the Internet, social networks, smartphones and messaging apps instantaneously push data globally.

In particular, messaging apps also provide an untapped distribution channel for publishers to create private, intimate and tailored relationships with the audiences they serve — a concierge media service.

From search to social to messaging

Since the recent advent of the Internet, publishers have been trying to leverage distribution channels — such as search and social media — to grow their audiences. Huffington Post saw immense growth by mastering the art of search engine optimization and BuzzFeed capitalized on social sharing to become the media brand everyone talks about.

A significant opportunity for the next generation of media companies will come from knowing how to play in messaging apps. For journalists, brands and media creators, that means reimagining how they create content, how they engage users and how they generate revenue.

Messaging is ubiquitous in our lives. Apps can provide unique opportunities for giving audiences direct access to content and publishers, be it through tailor-made WeChat platforms or public chats on Viber and WhatsApp.

Why concierge media will become the way audiences consume content by 2020

Mobile messaging and chat apps will explode.
According to ComScore’s 2015 U.S. Mobile App Report, Millennials spent the majority of their time (over 90 hours a month) on smartphone apps. And guess what services they use the most? Messaging and social networks.

According to Global WebIndex, smartphone owners aren’t necessarily exclusive in choosing one specific messaging app. For example, 7 in 10 Snapchat users also use Facebook Messenger while 5 in 10 also use WhatsApp. People will be consuming content across chat platforms.

The leading publishers are starting to experiment with messaging content creation.
fm2According to a recent Tow Center research report, The Wall Street Journal is among the news organizations that have more than a million subscribers on LINE, Japan’s largest messaging app, experimenting with different content and daily alerts and breaking news. BuzzFeed, a more recent entrant to the platform, has taken a very different approach by building audiences through push notifications, stickers and comics.

BBC News was the first to experiment with editorial content on WhatsApp in 2014, most notably with its WhatsApp “lifeline” information service targeting communities in West Africa affected by Ebola. However, WhatsApp is not engineered to work efficiently as a mass push-notification service, and much of BBC News’ recent strategy on the platform has focused on audience engagement through user-generated content and newsgathering.

Some publishers are also linking journalists salaries to performance on messaging apps in an effort to grow digital audiences. For example, the Times of India is making its contributors file a minimum of 3 WhatsApp alerts every week

How to start experimenting
(Kik Partnered with Ad Council on anti-bullying campaign by creating a collection of stickers)
(Kik Partnered with Ad Council on anti-bullying campaign by creating a collection of stickers)

It is important to remember that these platforms are still in their infancy. They are, in most cases, longer-term play, rather than ones that will bear immediate fruit if referrals and audience reach expectations. Concierge media builds on people’s intrinsic desire of wanting to follow others, their own curiosity and the private nature of conversations and higher level of intimacy.

With that said, a team of editors can create specialized channels and seed it with content updates native to those platforms using automatic messages. These include text messaging, alerts, stickers, trivia and emojis.

This seed content will engage members to participate in the discussion and elevate the level of the conversation by sharing unique perspectives. This model of journalism and media creation mimics what happens in the real world, where a person surfaces a topic and the group engages in an active exchange. This is what gives value to the story; the journalist is responsible to initiate the debate and moderate it. He or she can add value to the discussion by fact-checking or providing more information when needed.

The key takeaways
Photo courtesy of The Associated Press
Photo courtesy of The Associated Press
  • Concierge media on messaging apps can be built by developing hyper-specialized verticals across topics such as sports, entertainment, lifestyle and general news.
  • Messaging apps provide a space for news outlets to engage their audiences with different — and possibly lighter — types of content.
  • These verticals are managed to follow the interest levels of news stories and dynamically adapt to the news cycle. If a certain topic ceases to be meaningful, the editor of a certain channel needs to make a decision whether to sunset the channel, maintain it or create a sub-channel.
  • Automation and bots will be a central piece of the content publishing strategy.
  • Monetization opportunities will come from sales of digital goods such as stickers, e-commerce or micro-events such as paid live programming.
  • Concierge media could reinvent the concept of newsroom to be inherently mobile and global. Reporters would not have to come to a physical space.
  • A big opportunity exists to build contributor networks of individuals with specialized knowledge of niche topics.

With time spent on messaging apps exploding, will the next generation consume most of its content on the small screen?

I’m the Strategy Manager for The Associated Press and fellow at Columbia Journalism School. I write about media, storytelling and innovation. Let’s connect. (@fpmarconi)

Perspectives

What drove traffic for 2016’s hottest stories?

How do readers use search and social to discover top news stories?

Since the digital publishing industry has been so focused on the growth of social as a medium for news distribution at the expense of search, the Parse.ly team was curious to learn whether this held true for individual stories. So, we compiled a list of the top stories of 2015 and looked at how readers landed on them to see what patterns we could find.

For the biggest news stories this year, social media traffic dominated search referrals within our network of more than 400 media sites.

What does this mean for digital publishers?
Foremost, the results of our study suggest that social media is pushing breaking news. In 2016, digital publishers who provide their audience with breaking news should be investing heavily in social.

On the other hand, search traffic is bringing fewer readers to digital publishers; yet, it remains one of the top referrers to evergreen articles. Publishers who invest time and effort in long-form journalism must get to the bottom of who is reading their evergreen content and keep tabs on existing audience’s preferences and past reading trends.

Let’s look more closely at the top seven stories in 2015 to get a better sense of why (and how) this is the case:

Charlie Hebdo

What happened? After the French satire magazine became the target of a terrorist attack that resulted in the deaths of 12 people, the story became one of the most covered news topics of the year. Parse.ly’s network published more than 1,300 posts on the subject at its peak.

How did readers find the story? Readers chose to navigate directly to breaking news on publisher websites about the Charlie Hebdo attack. Both searching and sharing increased as the story developed, suggesting that readers still look to traditional publishers for up-to-date information on important breaking news stories.

Bobbi Kristina Brown

What happened? The daughter of performers Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston was found unresponsive in a bathtub on January 31, 2015. She was kept in a medically induced coma for several months, but died in hospice care on July 26, 2015.

How did readers find the story? Social led the charge here by driving 54.9 percent of referral traffic.

Floyd Mayweather, Jr. and  Manny Pacquiao

What happened? This much-anticipated professional boxing match between Floyd Mayweather, Jr. and  Manny Pacquiao took place on May 2, 2015, at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.

How did readers find the story? Unlike other top news stories in 2015, the interest about the match built up long before the event — 66.4 percent of readers found articles via search engines versus social media, peaking on fight day.

Rachel Dolezal

What happened? In June 2015, Rachel Dolezal resigned from her position as president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) chapter in Spokane, Washington after her white parents announced that their daughter was a white woman passing as black.

How did readers find the story? Readership of this story was largely driven by social media traffic, with 71.1 percent of referral traffic to publisher sites coming in from social sites and only 28.9 percent coming in from search.

Cecil the Lion

What happened? In July 2015, a Southwest African lion living in Zimbabwe was killed by an American hunter named Walter Palmer. Although Palmer had a permit, the killing drew international media attention and sparked outrage among animal conservationists.

How did readers find the story? The story attracted readers through social media. It was a smaller story that became national news because it elicited an emotional reaction and caused outrage — two reasons why some stories go “viral.”

Ashley Madison Hack

What happened? On July 15, 2015, hackers stole the emails, names, home addresses, sexual fantasies, and credit card information of Ashley Madison customers, threatening to post it online if the site was not permanently closed.

How did readers find the story? While the topic attracted a significant fraction of social referrers, the majority of traffic came from search engines.

Ahmed Mohamed

What happened? Fourteen-year-old Ahmed Mohamed was arrested at MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas for allegedly bringing a bomb to school on September 14, 2015. The “bomb” turned out to be an electronic clock that he had built himself.

How did readers find the story? The local news story caused social outrage, triggering national attention. There was virtually no organic traffic coming from search engines about this topic, yet readers were compelled to share articles in the context of their own opinions about the events that transpired — and this took place via Facebook and Twitter, primarily.

What did we learn?
Parse.ly’s data suggests that viral stories may be heavily reliant on shares, while more austere news stories are best discovered and distributed through search.

However, digital publishers will do well to remember that the most actionable data that they have access to is that which is found on their own sites. The aggregate trends are helpful in telling a big-picture story of traffic patterns, but where it can really help publishers is by showing them the types of trends that they should be looking for in their own content to inform their own unique content strategies.

Allie VanNest works with Parse.ly’s marketing team as Head of Communications. She spends her days telling stories about what content draws in website visitors, and why. You can reach her on Twitter @parselyallie.

Perspectives | Revenue

What’s next for publishers after FTC’s native ad guidelines?

Native advertising has always had the advantage over banner ads because it mimics the look and tone of editorial content. And because publishers may have confused readers with native ads that look too much like editorial, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced guidelines late last month in an effort to keep readers from being misled. It also announced an 11-page guidebook for businesses on how they can comply with the FTC’s new policy.

The overarching theme behind the FTC’s new guidelines is that advertising must be absolutely clear to consumers, and the language used to describe it must be explicit. Plus, disclosure should be in proximity to the headline and should be disclosed before people click on the story – much stronger rules than is now common practice.

Impacting Innovation
So will these new regulations stymie native advertising’s potential? The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), while welcoming the guidelines, took some issue with them, saying the emphasis on the clarity of meaning was “overly prescriptive, especially absent any compelling evidence to justify some term over others.”

”While guidance serves great benefit to industry, it must also be technically feasible, creatively relevant, and not stifle innovation,” Brad Weltman, IAB’s vice president of public policy, said in a statement.

However, DCN CEO Jason Kint had a more nuanced take on the rules: “Ultimately the impact of these guidelines will very much depend on what cases the FTC brings,” Kint told me via email. “We hope the FTC will use their enforcement authority to stop egregious acts of deception and not punish publishers and advertisers trying to do the right thing.”

An Ongoing Problem
According to the FTC, terms such as “Promoted” or “Promoted Stories” — which are commonly employed to label native advertising — are “at best ambiguous and potentially could mislead consumers that advertising content is endorsed by a publisher site.” Words such as “Ad” and “Sponsored Advertising Content,” according to the FTC, are much more direct and clearly understood as advertising by consumers, and should be used instead.

The FTC’s conern is meritted. A study conducted by Contently last year found that most consumers can’t distinguish native advertising from regular content on a website. “Our findings show that no matter what steps publishers have taken, there is still significant confusion on the part of readers as to what constitutes an article and what constitutes an ad,” Contently said in its report on the study. The company suggested the “devil may be in the details,” and that perhaps readers also aren’t choosing to take the time to recognize the difference between an article and an advertisement.

Jeffrey Chester, the executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, meanwhile, likened native advertising to “product placement on digital steroids. There’s no way that saying, ‘This is an ad,’ means anything,” he told the New York Times.

Ensuring Clarity
Perhaps these reactions indicate that publishers and advertisers just haven’t yet found the right way to ensure clarity — which only substantiates the FTC’s argument that obvious and well-placed statements are necessary to describe native advertising. Indeed, digital publishers such as Mashable and the Huffington Post were relatively calm about the new policy, with the Huffington Post saying it’s the result of inconsistency in the market.

But the bigger issue for publishers, according to the IAB, is that more enforcement on native advertising is bound to come. While the FTC’s regulations are not quite the law of the land, most publishers and advertisers are going to want to comply to avoid financial sanctions or risk being held out as bad actors.

And that brings publishers and advertisers back to a predicament that once seemed far away from this new, innovative kind of advertising. So publishers will have to weigh their desire to push the envelope with innovative ad forms and being crystal clear to users about ads. The winners will be the ones who can do both, without sacrificing quality or trust.

Perspectives Image
Perspectives

DCN’s recommended reading: week of January 7, 2016

Our recommended reads from around the web:

Perspectives

Is your data leaking?

We hear a lot about ad blocking and ad fraud, but surprisingly little about data leakage, the underlying problem that feeds both. What is data leakage, anyway?

Sophia Cope at NAA: Data leakage is the collection and monetization of an online publisher’s audience data by a third party without the publisher’s knowledge and consent.

John McDermott at Digiday: Data leakage typically occurs when a brand, agency or ad tech company collects data about a website’s audience and subsequently uses that data without the initial publisher’s permission.

Note that these definitions include nothing about user permission. That’s a separate issue. Data leakage is a publisher/third-party problem, not a publisher/user problem. Both definitions are based on publisher permission.

That’s a good start. But “permission” is hard. The reality is that publishers often don’t understand all of the third-party resources on their own sites. And to make things worse, third parties bring along other third parties … with the result being that pages can end up with 50-70 third-party pixels, scripts, and iframes. (There’s even a zone on the Lumascape devoted to services that a publisher can use to figure out what other services they’re using.)

Every one of those third parties comes with some kind of contractual “permission.” All of those permissions, though, are expressed in complex contracts. Even if a publisher can afford to comprehend the terms of one contract, the set of resources on a page can introduce unwanted data transfers working in combination. And the combinations of technology and contracts change faster than anyone can evaluate them.

Learning from security software
It’s inadvisable for security companies to call malware “malware” when the malware developer has a lawyer. The solution has been to come up with a new category name, Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUPs). The definition is based on whether the software works against the user’s interests, not on whether the user has clicked on “I agree” after not reading a complex, deceptive contract.

Labeling programs as PUPs is a small win. It is possible to define a problem in terms of interests and norms, not in terms of what someone has “agreed” to. We will be able to have a more productive discussion of the data leakage problem if we can shift the definition from one based on “permission” to one based on publisher interests and business norms. Remember: Data leakage is not a problem about user permission (which is another story). Instead, user norms and expectations can be a helpful way to establish the definition of data leakage.

So here’s a new definition:
Data leakage is collection or transfer of publisher audience data in a manner that violates the norms and expectations of the members of the audience.

Why is it important to clearly define data leakage? Because we still have trouble collecting data on it, and to do so, we need to know what to measure. We don’t know how much of the ongoing problem that newspapers have with building online ad revenue is attributable to data leakage.

In order to measure data leakage, we have to define it based on a reasonable standard, not on a mess of contracts that results in publishers unknowingly “agreeing” to practices that work against their interests.

Finding data leakage
We can look for leaks at the top of the pipe and at the bottom:

Bad bots visiting good sites: Fraudulent ad inventory gains value from associated user data, which is why even the best-run sites still get some fraudbot traffic. Bots are collecting cookies on legit sites, then showing up as valuable “users” on fraud sites. If your site has a small bot problem, then any advertiser paying to reach your users on other sites will have a big bot problem.

Good audiences available in bad places: We don’t have access to the “user data chop shops” that sit between legit publishers and sales of targeted impressions based on publisher data. But we can look at demand-side platforms to find out where valuable impressions are showing up, and measure the impact of anti-data-leakage tests.

Data leakage is an important issue that must be better understood and addressed.We can’t deal with ad blocking, ad fraud, and low ad revenue without understanding the data leakage problem. The good news is that data leakage is measurable, if we work it from the legit publisher end and the questionable inventory end.

 

Don Marti (@dmarti) is a contributor of code and documentation to the aloodo.org project, a low-friction way for sites and brands to reclaim the value of online advertising from fraud and ad blocking. He serves as a strategic advisor for Mozilla, and is the former editor of Linux Journal. Don is the subject of an out-of-date Wikipedia article which he will not edit himself, but wishes that someone would.

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