Login
close
Login is restricted to DCN Publisher Members. If you are a DCN Member and don't have an account, register here.
Search

Digital Content Next logo

Menu

InContext / An inside look at the business of digital content

Archive Archive

Archives

  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
Industry-Research | Perspectives

Native advertising continues to grow, but compliance issues remain

Native advertising is a compelling and profitable way for publishers to offer custom ad opportunities in the form of articles, video, programmatic and sound. What’s more, it provides a creative outlet for marketers, resulting in increased demand and desirability for publishers.

With this in mind, we at MediaRadar felt it was important to take a closer look at native trends for a more thorough understanding of best practices, as well as channels. So we recently published a study that observes the native advertising trends that emerged in 2016. The study, “Leaders and Lessons in Native Advertising,” examines thousands of native ads from nearly 13,000 brands.

Here’s what we found:

37% of publishers are not native compliant. In December 2015, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released its first-ever native advertising guidelines. At that time, only 29% of publisher sites examined were compliant. That number has increased by 119% year-over-year, however, with 63% of digital publishers having modified their native advertising to adhere to the FTC guidelines. Still, it leaves 37% of digital publishers that aren’t native compliant.

610 new advertisers bought native each month. Adoption and demand for native ad content was extremely high, with an average of 610 new advertisers using native content solutions each month. And many of these advertisers are open to purchasing digital packages – not just native as a standalone. This is good news for publisher ad sales because native continues to drive bigger deals for more revenue.

An average native campaign runs for two months. Renewal rates and campaign duration for native remain low overall. Based on 2016 data, native renewal rates are at only 33% across all media sites. An even smaller portion of those – 20% – renew less than 20% of the time. The average native campaign duration is only two months. However, sites with more established native programs have a 49% renewal rate. This includes sites with native programs where more than 50 brands are placing native buys.

Media & entertainment is most popular category. The top-five categories in native advertising from January to December 2016 include:

  1. Media and entertainment (3,198 brands using native campaigns)
  2. Professional services (2,017 brands)
  3. Finance and real estate (1,246 brands)
  4. Technology (1,231 brands)
  5. Retail (1,153 brands)

Takeaways

Overall, there has become a greater demand for native advertising content. More publishers are familiarizing themselves with the FTC native advertising rules than ever before. However, there is still room for improvement, with more than one-third of publishers remaining non-compliant. And while the number of native ad campaigns continues to grow, renewal rates and campaign durations remain low.

Also, the media and entertainment industry is the most popular native advertising category, setting itself apart from the rest of the pack in terms of native ad adoption. But this may change in the coming years, as native becomes more popular and more industries begin regularly investing in native ads.

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

 

Perspectives

Gen Z: Marketing to the post-linear digital consumer

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

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

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

Be True and Transparent

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

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

The Big Shift

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

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

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

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

 

Perspectives | Revenue

Why publishers and advertisers need to get native advertising right

Native advertising has come a long way from its debut in the digital marketing environment, when the lines between advertising and editorial were blurry at best. But a new study from the cloud-based intelligence platform MediaRadar, “Leaders and Lessons in Native Advertising,” found that 37% of publishers still aren’t complying with the Federal Trade Commission’s rules on disclosure for native advertising.

In late 2015, he FTC clamped down with more guidelines and an 11-page guidebook for businesses to promote more transparency within native advertising and ensure clarity for audiences, as I wrote at the time. Of course, 37% is a huge improvement from 61%, which was the figure cited in last year’s study on non-compliance. But the bottom line is that honesty about native ads has yet to become the status quo. In a world where fake news and ad fraud have troubled audiences and skewed our instincts for what’s valid, it’s to the benefit of publishers and advertisers to work harder.

The Evolution of the ‘Explicit Native’

Attracting the attention of users quick to download an ad-blocker or scroll past promoted posts on social media poses a significant challenge for marketers and publishers. Enter native advertising, thought to be the panacea for balancing editorial interest with advertising dollars. The FTC guidelines emphasized explicit disclosure of native ads in proximity to the headline (which, let’s face it, is the only thing many readers will allow their eyes to glaze through).

While the IAB deemed the terms “overly prescriptive,” DCN’s own Jason Kint said the impact of the guidelines would largely depend on what cases the FTC brought to the fold. There’s a difference between publishers and advertisers “trying to do the right thing” versus those engaging in “egregious acts of deception,” to use Kint’s words.

Native Exposed

And we saw the first case the FTC brought up, in March 2016, when it charged retailer Lord & Taylor for allowing 50 Instagram stars to wear the exact same dress — with none of those influencers noting in their posts that wearing the dress was a coordinated campaign. Nylon magazine also ran an article and an Instagram post featuring the dress. It was almost as if Lord & Taylor had decided to blatantly disregard the FTC’s disclosure rules.

The FTC saw it as such and brought charges against the retailer, eventually reaching a settlement. The company, for its part, announced that it “never sought to deceive” its customers. But it was a clear warning that the FTC was serious in doubling down on enforcement, and that actions speak louder than words when it comes to trusting marketers. No matter that the FTC’s makeup under President Donald Trump is still a mystery (there are only two current members of the Commission) — the stage has already been set for advertisers to work harder to ensure compliance and not outsource this work to other parties.

And if the evolution of labeling content as native indicates anything, most digital publishers are trying harder. There’s been a 119% year-over-year growth in doing so. So how about the 37% of publishers choosing not to comply? They’re risking their reputation and revenue.

The Benefits of Going All In

With native set to continue to grow again this year, it seems only logical to go all-in on following the rules while delivering good advertising, and not circumventing the rules for the same goal. Yet some challenges going forward are that most native advertising campaigns only last a couple of months, and native renewal rates are fairly small at 33% across all media sites.

How should we address this? Well, MediaRadar’s study indicates that publishers who have robust native advertising operations and have invested in the necessary tech — including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Quartz — have a stronger renewal rate at 49%. Top publishers who sell and measure the impact of native successfully can expect renewal rates of 60 to 80%, according to MediaRadar’s forecast.

Tips for Success

That being said, here’s some advice for publishers going forward:

  1. Invest more in native advertising for more profit. It’s not going away, so seizing the right packages and running campaigns long enough to actually benefit is key. That also means considering the use of in-house native advertising teams, or freelancers devoted solely to creating native advertising.
  2. Communicate the results. This helps prove the efficacy of the advertising. And, granted the results are positive, this helps increase renewals.
  3. Consider newer ad categories that have yet to jump on the native bandwagon. Media and entertainment, professional services, finance and real estate, tech and retail were the top five categories in native advertising last year, so look beyond those to expand.
  4. Invest in the right technology. It will help sustain your business in the long run.
  5. Don’t break the rules. Unless you’re OK with potentially risking some revenue (a fine of $16,000 for every native ad violation) and your reputation among users.
  6. Try harder. The big issue for publishers who don’t follow the FTC’s guidelines, it seems, is that they want to game the system to make bad native ads work. But sacrificing quality or trust isn’t the way to go. The answer: Better advertising.
Perspectives | Revenue

Media brands with superfans most likely to succeed with digital subscriptions

Leaving this year’s Digital Content Next Summit in New Orleans, I was struck by how much of the conversation revolved around media companies moving from an advertising-supported model to a subscription-based model. There was a lot of healthy debate around the optimal types of brands and level of scale required to succeed in this transformation. Everyone wants to know what the best offering is and what types of content are best suited to capture subscription revenue.

One variable not discussed as deeply was the value of passion. Ask yourself: How passionate are your fans about the topics you cover. How passionate are they about the media brands themselves? The answers tell you a lot about your odds for success.

Passion Play

At TEN, we believe our passionate fan base is a key success factor in transitioning from a legacy publisher business model to a direct-to-consumer business with multiple revenue streams, including subscriptions and events. Let’s start with how we quantified how passionate our fans really are.

We partnered with market research specialists GfK to try to put a monetary value on our fans’ passion and influence. GfK’s proprietary study told us that our fans are two to five times more valuable than the national average in terms of buying power and buying influence across auto, action/outdoor, and home tech—our core content pillars.

We have built trust with these fans and through years of covering their passion and being a market leader in that particular space. Brands such as Motor Trend, Hot Rod, and Surfer go back decades as the respective bibles of their categories. Our job has been to leverage that brand trust and deliver great experiences on new and evolving platforms. In many cases, the business model is free with ad support, paid, or a combination of both.

Ready for Action

And now we are seeing it come together. Strategy is meeting up with execution. Looking at social, our auto reach is more than 106MM with an average age of 27. They are the greatest collection of millennial automotive fans in the world—an unexpected position to be for a legacy publisher reinventing itself in the new media landscape. Passion produces engaged fans. And that engagement provides a bridge to monetizing these fans in a variety of ways.

When we talk about original content and digital video, the story is even stronger. Our Motor Trend YouTube channel is ranked number one in the U.S. by Tubular Labs in every category they track, from subscriber monthly views and cross-platform views to engagement rates. This translates into revenue through pre-roll and ad-supported sponsorships and integration into our programming.

In our events business, we’ve gotten 30,000-plus fans to attend Roadkill Nights, an extension of our original video series of the same name. This past summer, Roadkill fans got to drag race down the iconic Woodward Avenue in Detroit. The show’s host, David Freiberger, is now (much to his chagrin) a genuine social media influencer, mobbed by autograph-seeking fans at every event, some bearing Roadkill tattoos.

That kind of success is what created the optimism around our original content and our SVOD service, Motor Trend OnDemand, which we launched in 2016. Today, you can find our shows and SVOD service on Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Roku, Apple TV, iOS, Android, and Chromecast. Hundreds of thousands of people engage with us there each month on top of the millions who watch us on YouTube and Facebook Live. Most important, they care enough about this content to pay for it.

The Passion Grows

This passion and viewership is further amplified through our existing media footprint. We use our social channel, sites, magazines, and events to drive viewership, subscription, and engagement—often in real life. Moving forward, we expect to add more affinity models, where we bundle the SVOD, print, events with exclusive experiences to surprise and delight our fan base.

All this leads us to encourage our media peers to monetize their consumers directly. This means focusing on the brands and properties with the highest engagement metrics, most passionate level of fandom, and the kind of content opportunities best suited for today’s consumption platforms of choice: on-demand digital video and social. If you do that, passion will beat scale every time.

Scott A. Bailey serves as President, Automotive, for TEN where his primary responsibilities include enhancing the relationship between the Automotive Group’s brands and its audience, leading the continued development of TEN’s digital businesses, and improving its customer offerings by expanding its media platforms. Scott is a two-time nominee and Emmy Award winner for his work in advanced media technology and brings decades of digital and publishing experience to TEN .  He came to TEN from Synacor, Inc., where he served as Chief Operating Officer and was part of the management team that took the company public in 2012. Before Synacor, Scott served as Senior Vice President at Comcast Interactive Media, and prior to Comcast, he was the General Manager for Turner Sports Interactive, a division of Turner & Time Warner.

Perspectives Image
Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of March 9, 2017

Here are some of the best media stories our team has read so far this week:

Innovation

Can machine learning detect “fake news” ?

While artificial intelligence can help newsrooms build a consistent fake news detector, it can also empower others to disseminate and even create new forms of misinformation.

Fake news is nothing new. The Roman Emperor Augustus led a campaign of misinformation against Mark Antony, a rival politician and general. The KGB used disinformation throughout the Cold War to enhance its political standing. Today fake news continues to serve as a political tool around the world, and new technologies are enabling individuals to propagate that fake news at unprecedented rates.

One of those new developments, artificial intelligence, can help journalists build a consistent fake news detector, but AI can also empower others to disseminate and even create new forms of misinformation. To understand how, we need to take a quick detour and explain machine learning — one of the most important sub-domains of artificial intelligence

Detecting Fake News with Machine Learning

Machine learning is, in the most basic sense, a system that learns from its actions and makes decisions accordingly, and it relies in turn on a process called deep learning which breaks down a single complex idea into a series of smaller, more approachable tasks.

Thus, conceptually, machine learning can help detect fake news! An intelligent system that takes news stories as its input and a big ol’ ‘Fake’ or ‘Not Fake’ sticker as output.

Machine learning (and deep-learning) relies mostly on algorithms, a set of rules that when followed leads to a desired output. But constructing algorithms is exceptionally difficult and the results can be catastrophic, especially when we rely on them to determine what news stories should be broadcast to our readers.

Algorithms Make Mistakes

The two most common errors in this sort of machine learning are terms that we borrow from statisticians — Type I (false negative) and Type II (false positive) errors.

A false negative would mean that your machine labels a fake news item as not fake. We don’t want that.

A false positive means your machine labels a real news story as fake. We don’t want that, either.

What we want is a system that can, with a high level of accuracy, label fake news as being fake, and real stories as not being fake. Again, we ask: How?

Using news articles to train the AI

AI machines can best make decisions like what is and is not fake news when you define fake and real news — you do so by showing the machine tens of thousands of examples of each.

For that, you will need a data set of high quality journalism, as well as another collection with a sample of fake news, which could be sourced from a predetermined list of fake news.

The AI Journalist

Remember, algorithms are written by humans, and humans make errors. Therefore, our AI machine may well make an error, especially in its early stages.

There’s also an editorial decision to be made here. No system is going to be 100 percent accurate, so which would you rather tend towards, false positives or false negatives? Would you rather a fake story be labeled as real or would you rather have a real story labeled fake?

Algorithmic errors aside, AI can help detect fake news. But as we mentioned earlier AI can also help disseminate it (all the more reason to understand AI, then!)

A New Wave of “Fake-news”?

If you’ve worked in the journalism industry long enough you’ve probably been fooled by a doctored video, photo or sound bite. And every day the technology available to produce those fake news items is becoming easier to use and more publicly accessible. For instance, Adobe recently announced an AI project that is able to replicate the same tone of voice by simply analyzing a sample of a speech, while a project developed by Stanford University researchers enables the manipulation of someone’s face in a video in real time.

In other words, the same sorts of machine learning and sub-domains of AI that can be used to fight fake news can also be used by others to propagate new types of misinformation.

The conclusion: Journalists need to understand AI.

Perspectives Image
Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of March 2, 2017

Here are some of the best media stories our team has read so far this week:

Perspectives | Policy

Press freedom—and friction—feed democracy

Freedom of the press around the world declined in 2016 for the 12th year in a row, according to Freedom House. Between reporters being jailed as enemies of the state and news organizations being shut down completely, journalism today faces a very hostile environment. Our current president’s tweet that the press is “the enemy of the American people” only introduces more turmoil for journalists and emboldens dictators around the world. His claim also couldn’t be further from the truth.

As Ronald Reagan famously noted, America is “a shining city on a hill.”  Our experiment with democracy is on full display for the world to see. And one of the more important factors of our success is a free and independent press. Over the course of our history, the world has seen an educated, relentless and free press expose the Teapot Dome Scandal and President Nixon’s Watergate along with countless local cases of corruption and deception. A free press is a bedrock principle of democracy. It provides necessary transparency, helping to educate citizens and fulfilling an important check on power.

On Presidents and a Popular Press

Yet, despite its importance, a recent Gallup poll showed that public approval ratings of major media platforms are at all-time low. It’s worth noting that, in the last 20 years, the media’s approval ratings have never risen above 40% for digital, print or television news. One could argue that if the press isn’t hated, then it’s not doing it right!

Before he became president, Thomas Jefferson was an original proponent of a free press. In a letter from 1787, he wrote “And were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” However, during his successful campaign for President in 1800, candidate Jefferson endured heavy scrutiny by the press. By the time he took office, he hated the press or at least what he thought it had become. In his second term, he even ordered the arrest of newspaper editors for sedition. However, by 1816, seven years after he left the presidency, Jefferson wrote in a letter “where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.”

Similar, strained relationships with the press continued with later administrations. After the failed invasion at the Bay of Pigs, President John F Kennedy stated “…the abrasive quality of the press applied to you daily, to an administration, even though we never like it, and even though we wish they didn’t write it, and even if we disapprove, there isn’t any doubt that we could not do the job at all in a free society without a very, very active press.”

Declaration of Independence

And just a few days ago, when asked about the role of the news media, former President George W. Bush responded, “I consider the media to be indispensable to democracy. We need an independent media to hold people like me to account. Power can be very addictive. And it can be corrosive. And it’s important for the media to call to account people who abuse their power, whether it be here or elsewhere.” This from a president who lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College. He assumed office at a time when the nation was highly politicized and divided. He weathered withering criticism from the press about his policies, cabinet picks and early missteps.

This is the point: Elected officials and most citizens will never like a healthy press corps. We don’t need journalists to be loved. We need them to be aggressive, persistent and abrasive. In turn, politicians should respect the press’ role in our democracy, not undermine it for their own political gain. Struggling democracies and entrenched dictators around the world are watching our “shining city on a hill.” What do we want them to see?

Innovation

ESPN takes a wide view of digital video, including its new SportsCenter shorts

ESPN is a network with a rich history of delivering sports news in a variety of entertaining and fun ways, but the network is not content to rest on that reputation. Recognizing the need to continuously evolve, ESPN recently made substantive changes to the way it delivers video and other content across its various properties.

They recently broke new ground by creating a dedicated team that produces digital video shorts, which can appear anywhere in the ESPN content ecosystem. Users of the popular ESPN app will notice this video content at the top of their Favorites page, and elsewhere throughout the app, but this same content could be used on TV on the SportsCenter at 6 p.m. slot with Jemele Hill and Michael Smith.

Ryan Spoon, SVP of digital product and design at ESPN, says whatever the network’s approach, it’s about delivering the right content to the right screen at the right time. Regardless of the delivery platform, Spoon says, they are focusing on accessibility and portability as you move from a 50-inch screen in your living room to the 5-inch screen in your pocket.

Unique Content, Uniquely Suited

The goal of the new video strategy is two-fold. First of all, they want to deliver content that is unique and place it front and center on all relevant platforms. Secondly, they want to present content that is highly customized to each individual’s preferences. That means placing headlines and video at the top of your Favorites page that are relevant to both the breaking news of the moment and what’s most relevant to you, based on what they know about your favorite sports/teams/athletes.

In practice, that means that if you’re watching on the ESPN app, you’ll notice that by design a new (and frequently changing) video at the top of the page. The volume is off by default, but it uses text to let you know the gist of the story, even before you turn up the volume.

Perfecting Presentation

That video might appear in other properties or it might not, but each bit of content can be repurposed based on the platform, and that includes not only customizing it for the various ESPN venues, but also for the particular social platforms. Each platform has its own personality whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or SnapChat, Spoon explained, and they will present the content in a way that’s appropriate for each one.

“It’s a challenge across content creation, against programming content, against the presentation layer and the system on technology side that drives it all. All of that has to be balanced with a mixture of what do you need to know and what do you want to know as a fan [of a particular team] and the sports news of the day,” Spoon explained.

As for monetization, they mix in ads with the video content they show across their various properties and across the various presentation platforms, whether TV or digital.

Overall, the strategy is about keeping the network fresh. A key component is understanding that what works at this moment may not always work, Spoon says. They are constantly experimenting with new ways of working and how to best serve their core audience of sports fans, including producing these short video pieces.

“I don’t claim to have the answers or suggest everything we are doing is perfect, but I will say we all believe the right way is to constantly iterate, watch, learn and test.” ESPN’s latest video initiative is less than two weeks old and, according to Spoon, it has already resulted in “great content and continues to improve and find structure and liveliness.”

Advertising | Industry-Research | Perspectives

Neurological research proves it: Context affects advertising effectiveness

The effectiveness of advertising depends, to some degree, on the content that surrounds it. In other words, content context has a direct impact on the way advertising is received. A new research study, “Why premium editorial content” from Teads, a native video advertising marketplace, analyzes why premium editorial content creates more impactful environments.

Teads partnered with Neuro-Insight, a neurological research firm, to better understand how premium content neurologically changes the way people recall advertising messaging. Four premium publishers, Conde Nast, Forbes, Time Inc. and The Atlantic participated in the research to expose video ads within their premium editorials on mobile. Consumers were also exposed to the same video ads within their personal Facebook feed in order to compare the two experiences.

The research revealed that premium editorial content is 16% more personally relevant and engaging than social news feeds. Interestingly, regardless of the personalization capabilities in a user’s Facebook feed, consumers still felt more personal relevance to the premium content. Users invest more of themselves in the premium editorial consumption experience.

Total Recall

What makes this finding so important? Premium editorial delivers a more powerful memory impact and a more memorable advertising experience. For the detailed-oriented left-side of the brain, premium editorial had a 19% greater impact on memory and for the emotional right-side of the brain, it had an 8% greater impact on memory. Memory encoding drives higher ad effectiveness and is an influencer of consumer purchase behavior.

Interestingly, both premium editorial content and Facebook social feeds create high impacts on long-term memory, however, premium content generates a greater and more even activation in both the left and the right sides of the brain. The triggering of both sides of the brain offers the best opportunity for broad video advertising creative approaches to influence a consumer’s long-term memory. Premium content is unique because of its impact to both the left- and right-side of the brain, meaning, it has an equal and considerable opportunity to influence consumers.

It’s not just that premium publishers offer advertisers a quality audience, their content also creates a higher impact on advertising. Teads’ research concludes that content with a high level of engagement is more likely to impact the memorability of online video advertising. Importantly, premium content raises the level of impact that social platforms cannot duplicate.

Advertising | Perspectives

We need to solve digital advertising’s quality control problem now

An explosive investigation in The Times of London found advertising from reputable brands like Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar and the NGO Marie Curie running on YouTube videos promoting extremism and pornographic content. So, by extension, those companies were helping to fund pro-Nazi, ISIS and other terrorist propaganda.

Despite YouTube’s investment in software to weed out such content, its continued existence — coupled with the advertising that appears on it — shines a harsh light on advertising’s poor quality control. And News Corp.’s CEO Robert Thomson released an incisive statement in reaction, saying that the industry’s actions are undermining its stated priorities, and vouching to bring its advertising under its own authority.

It’s clear that attaining actual solutions to this problem requires much more soul-searching within the entire industry, and a change in current operations.

A Looming Problem

In many ways, the recent report in The Times is not that surprising. Publishers and advertisers have found themselves in unwanted territory on the internet before, as we previously wrote in DCN. The attention fake news garnered at the end of last year was a game-changer in that regard, as it spotlighted the money to be made from hyper-partisan sites with misinformation. Google, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft’s pledge last December to share information, to better eliminate extremist content, was therefore a lauded effort.

But even though Google says it has a “zero tolerance policy for content that incites violence or hatred,” blacklisting is apparently not enough. And ad quality has long been an issue before “fake news” became the term du jour in media and marketing circles. The pervasiveness of fraud and viewability issues has demanded better standards for metrics, and better advertising so that consumers don’t just reach for the ad blocker. Google doubled-down by removing 1.7 billion ads last year that defied its policies — which was more than twice the number of ads it took down in 2015.

But with Facebook and Google together controlling well over half of the digital ad market, that leaves smaller players in a desperate scramble for the scraps, undermining concerns about integrity.

Who’s to Blame?

Which brings us to the question: Is programmatic advertising to blame, or is it a scapegoat for other problems the industry can’t yet address? Marie Curie, for instance, claims it was absolutely unaware its ads were appearing alongside the content of a pro-Nazi group. Sandals Resorts, which had its advertising appear next to an Al-Shabaab video, meanwhile, blamed Google’s mishandling, stating the video hadn’t been categorized as “sensitive.”

The advertisers were quick to express their deep concern and withdraw their advertisements, but the “hands off, we didn’t realize it” response is not the kind of reaction that engenders trust. And that is the bigger concern here. News Corp’s Chief Executive Robert Thomson called this out in a statement. Some of his choice lines deserve highlighting:

“We are in an era in which integrity is priceless, yet digital distributors have long been a platform for the fake, the faux and the fallacious, highlighting an issue which we have long stressed – that they have eroded the integrity of content by undermining its provenance.”

“Ad agencies and their programmatic networks are also at fault because they have sometimes artificially aggregated audiences, and these are then plied with content of dubious provenance – the agencies win, the fabricators of the fake win, and advertisers and society both lose. Affinity and integrity are core elements of a sustainable relationship between advertiser and consumer, and yet affinity and integrity are far too often missing in the modern marketplace.”

If the demand for money and efficiency is eroding the integrity of content — not to mention that of brands and platforms — everyone involved must collaborate to gain that trust back. And that means investing the time, energy and resources in some not so quick-and-easy moves.

Identifying Solutions

One potential solution that puts the advertising industry back into the hands of advertisers is to rely less on programmatic and more on in-house ad networks. News Corp, for instance, is testing its own digital ad network to ensure a “high quality audience for advertisers.” The Scandinavian publisher Schibsted also has its own in-house ad network, and focusing on that has helped decrease ad-page load times while doubling viewability from 40 to 80 percent. Vox too has its own in-house ad platform. And alongside BuzzFeed, Mic and other publishers, it’s expressed an aversion to programmatic. Digital Content Next recently announced the formation of TrustX, a cooperative digital advertising marketplace made up of many DCN member companies, including NewsCorp and Vox.

The reality is that individual ad networks are not yet mainstream by any means. Most advertisers are not big enough or rich enough to opt out of automated advertising, and smaller publishers don’t have the size to build their own network.

What is possible, though, is a more consistent, industry-wide approach to addressing these issues and testing solutions. That means worrying less about the bottom line — at least for now — and taking collective responsibility for this problem. And more human oversight over the entire industry — even over programmatic advertising — is the first big step. Just as Facebook has acknowledged it can’t just rely on an algorithm to stamp out fake news on its platform, marketers know that it can’t rely on automation alone. Doing so only stands to create more problems for an industry already on the edges of consumer trust.

Perspectives Image
Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of February 23, 2017

Here are some of the best media stories our team has read so far this week:

©2024 Digital Content Next. All Rights Reserved.