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Advertising | Perspectives

The 8 biggest challenges digital publishers faced in 2019–and what lies ahead for 2020

A year in the life of a digital publisher contains multitudes. Ups to some felt like downs to others. But there were challenges and news that publishers of any size and any vertical faced universally—news and events that defined the entire year.

At Marfeel, we work with 850 global publishing partners, reaching almost one billion sessions every month. That means that we deal with the issues and trends that impact publishers every day. With the knowledge we have in-house, we surveyed our team to collect a list of what we consider to be the biggest publisher trends of 2019 and what they mean for 2020.

Red tape and regulation

Ok, GDPR wasn’t strictly 2019… but it’s effects are still being felt. Users continued to tick pop-ups without reading them. However, in the UK, fines in excess of $300 million were handed out to British Airways and Marriott for failing to ensure information security. A small price, perhaps, to companies of that size. However, they offer a much-needed reminder that nobody is above the law when it comes to GDPR.

The most notable regulation news came from the US, with the passing of the CCPA. This California-wide user privacy policy, touted by some as GDPR-lite, comes into force on January 1st, 2020.

Even if you argue that it’s not effective in protecting user data, it seems more regulation is coming in 2020. And with 50 different states in the US alone, publishers are going to have to find a way to cope with different levels of regulation for different users in 2020.

The great paywall question

To gate, or not to gate, that is the question publishers struggled with for 2019. We saw every variety of paywall tried and tested.

Premium publishers like The New Yorker and The Atlantic opted for soft paywalls, hoping to build consumer loyalty. Others decided to shut out all but paying customers, cleaving their audiences but guaranteeing a source of revenue. Major media groups like The Guardian and The New York Times made news with the success of their subscription models. However, the majority of publishers won’t convert significant audiences into paying customers.

The 2019 headline is that paywalls work, to an extent. Concerns grew about ‘subscription fatigue’ as many worried that audiences would grow tired of paying separately for a variety of different online services. It will be interesting to see whether 2020 crosses that tipping point and, of course, if paywalls work as a long-term proposition.

Content aggregation

Given the booming market for premium content offerings, it seems inevitable that in 2020 a true Netflix for News will emerge. People want to browse around a series of headlines. They want to be able to read stories shared by others and pick based on the story, not the brand.

No one company has managed to crack it definitively yet. But In the United States, Apple News now reaches more iPhone users (27%) than the Washington Post (23%). This is a sign that aggregation is going to gain traction in 2020.

Trust and transparency

In 2019, we learned that people don’t trust the news as much as they used to. This is makes it harder for smaller publishers to break stories and build audiences. Consumers veer towards larger media brands, which are a known commodity. It can be difficult for less well-known entities to break through, or maintain their growth.

And trust runs both ways. Advertisers and publishers both still want more transparency from SSPs and ad networks. Google’s switch to first-price auctions earlier in the year reminded the industry of the long-held last-look advantage that walled-garden exchanges can provide.

The hunt for viewability

Viewability was the hottest term in the industry for advertisers in 2019. Some publishers reacted with surprise that advertisers wanted a guarantee that their ads were actually seen by someone (and not bots). 

They started to set minimum standards and refuse to buy space that couldn’t demonstrate their viewability. These standards now exceed the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s (IAB) definition of a viewable impression, which says that at least 50% of pixels must be in view for at least a second. In 2020, publishers will have to offer as close to 100% viewability and find a way to prove it to advertisers.

The creeping growth of voice tech

Alexa, how do I advertise on you?

The use of smart speakers grew from 7% to 14% in the UK last year. And usage was up +3% (from 9% to 12%) in the United States.

With voice-assistants sprouting into more homes, more content is starting to be delivered by voice. Quick answers to once-Googled questions will possibly draw traffic away from news sites in 2020. This and the growth of podcasts as a content format gave advertisers a new concern in 2020: how to bring their programmatic tech to an audio format.

The rise of Gen Z

Move over Millennials. There’s a new generation here to casually pull apart the framework of the industry.

In addition to formulating the right content to reach them, publishers have struggled to find a payment model that appeals to the younger generation. Digital natives get their news from too many different sources to be tied to a single publisher. As Adweek explains, “52 percent of Gen Z consumers will transfer loyalty from brand to brand if they find product quality to be subpar.”

2020 will see diversified revenue generation models, segregated by the audience and content types.

Cookies crumble

Saving the most worrisome for last, 2019 may be the last year of free and unfettered access to user cookies to inform advertising.

Google confirmed proposals to overhaul targeting in Chrome. And Apple went further with its online tracking restrictions. ITP 2.1 reduces the accessibility and longevity of first-party cookies, allowing them to be stored for only seven days.

Ratko Vidakovic, founder of AdProfs summarized what the move meant, “Given Apple’s aggressive attitude towards this issue, it seems like the idea of persistent cookies in Safari, for cross-site tracking purposes, will eventually be a thing of the past.”

The uncharted territories of 2020

To help paint the picture of 2020’s publishing industry to come, Marfeel is putting together the big publisher trends of 2020 report, with the help of their publisher network. By sharing concerns and challenges, the digital publishing industry can unite to create a more informed industry as a whole and overcome the challenges of 2020 and beyond.

Featured Post | Innovation

Yes, your newsroom can get into podcasts. Here’s how.

Starting a podcast is easier than ever now. But how do you create a sustainable strategy around audio content, especially in the local and regional newsrooms that are dwindling at an alarming pace? That was the question Alison Gow, Digital Editor in Chief for regional content at Reach Plc – one of Britain’s biggest regional publishers – began exploring last year.

Reach had several podcasts spread across the business, created as passion projects by staff keen to experiment with audio. These included Black Mirror Cracked and Blood Red, both of which performed very well with audiences.

However, Reach lacked a strategic framework around its shows, which would better enable growth. So, at the end of 2018, it began formalizing its podcast output, switching from Audioboom to Acast. It also created new internal positions to explore the long-term viability of audio content and other emerging platforms.

One of those staff, Michael Pearson, now a permanent podcast producer at Reach, says the results were enormously encouraging. “We found that the levels of engagement of a podcast audience were far greater than any other platform we were currently utilizing, be it website dwell time, video watch-rate on our owned and operated websites or on other social platforms,” he says. The podcast audience also gave additional value to Reach’s existing sites, because people clicked through from podcasts to the site and vice versa.

Putting formal support structures in place gave shape and focus to existing shows. It also provided strategic direction to new ones, including Everything is Black and White and a mental health show called No Really I’m Fine.

Audience demand

However, one question the publisher still didn’t have an answer for was whether there was an appetite among regional audiences for podcast content made specifically for them. “Audio at the moment is dominated by comedy, true crime, and sport. We wanted to know whether local news providers could find a foothold in that market, and – on the other side of that equation – how a local audience might discover that content,” Gow says.

So, Reach joined forces with another large regional publisher, JPI Media, and a new podcast provider called Entale, to bid for Google funding to explore the viability of local and regional shows.  In July this year they secured a €500,000 Google News Innovation grant over two years for the Laudable Project.

Google’s Digital News Innovation Fund was created to fund creativity in digital journalism and the development of new business models. Madhav Chinnappa, Director of News Ecosystem Development at Google says, “We’re seeing more and more innovation by publishers in podcasts and voice technologies, and we’re proud to support initiatives like Laudable which can have a real and positive impact on the news ecosystem.”

Reach used the grant to help pay for studios, recording equipment and dedicated podcast producers. It also paid for training for around 50 reporters to help them turn ideas for new regional podcasts into reality in three trial cities – Manchester, Birmingham, and Edinburgh.

The new shows will be available across all major podcast platforms. However, they’ll also be hosted by Entale, which is using some of the grant funds to design bespoke analytics that give greater granularity on key indicators. Entale will also build an Android version of its IOS app, through which users can access interactive visuals and other online content as they listen.

The first Laudable shows are starting to go live, beginning with The North Poll, a show about politics from a northern British perspective, which launched in November. Other new shows include North In Numbers, which gives a human voice to data journalism stories, The Edinburgh Briefing, and Scran, a new podcast about food from The Scotsman. More podcasts will launch in early 2020.

Building the business

Gow says the Google grant has given Reach and JPI “breathing space” to test the value of podcasts to local and regional audiences without the pressure to monetize those shows straight away. “We wouldn’t have been able to scale like this [without Google’s support],” she says. “The time commitment and investment involved in this project, the cost of building studios – it’s a huge amount of money when you’re a regional publisher.”

Now, she says, they’ve “been given a low-risk environment to find out whether what we create has value beyond being appreciated … that it has value commercially, and can attract advertising clients, and we’ll be layering commercial into it next year.”

That will include creating a new post to sell audio advertising. Mind you, that’s a skill that doesn’t come naturally to journalists and editors. Nor is it a natural fit for advertising departments at newspapers that have yet to dip a toe in the podcast ocean, and which will face stiff competition from an increasingly crowded market in 2020.

Structure and strategy

Gow acknowledges that most publishers don’t have the luxury of Google funding, but has some tips for outlets that have organic podcasts that need structure and strategy to have a chance of long-term sustainability. “First, you really need to look at your audience, and at your digital analytics to find the themes that people are engaging with.

“For us, sports like rugby and football absolutely drive our audiences and have a huge fan base, so that was a no-brainer. It’s where we can start building revenue quickly because there are advertisers keen to get on board and the opportunity to host live events.”

They also found that their audiences were quite interested in financial information particularly because “audio means they can tell those stories in their own voices.” And Gow says that “combining those voices with insights from our data unit in a show like North By Numbers, moves the format on from being a host talking to an expert about housing shortages, to an individual who becomes a first-person case study for that data, and that’s incredibly humanizing.”

Trying to monetize podcasts before experimenting with audio is difficult, and Gow cautions against it. “You do need to create content first, but as soon as you’ve done it, you’ve got something your advertising team can show to clients as a proof of concept,” she says.

“And sometimes you just need to think of a podcast as loss-leader marketing. That may be what some of our Laudable podcasts become, a way of exploring issues that are occupying minds in places like Edinburgh or Birmingham, which might attract a sponsor at some point, but might not but it’s good journalism and may be worth doing on that basis alone.”

Monetization matters

In 2020, Gow says her focus will shift to trying to monetize the new shows. This includes those that are purely journalistic, as well as branded content programs.

“My approach next year is going to be working with our commercial team on themes we have in mind for 2020, what clients might want to be associated with different ideas, and what kinds of stories would overlap with what they’re interested in.” That doesn’t mean that advertisers will dictate the content, she says. Rather, they’ll work in partnership through things like sponsorship.

Gow believes that there’s an audience for the ‘how to live a good life’ podcast market beyond mindfulness. This could include practical questions like how to have a good divorce, how to buy your first house, how to prepare for a funeral, or how to pick the right school. “And there are potential commercial partnerships around all those ideas, because I can see someone tuning in while they’re in the kitchen asking Alexa to find something to listen to.”

Tracking results

The team at Reach adheres to the strategic approach recommended by the Reuters Institute to help outlets experiment with new formats and approaches while keeping business as usual running smoothly. “SMART principles have been drummed into me since I went on my first management course about 20 years ago, and we also had Google milestones to hit,” she says.

“We’ve been specific about what we need to deliver for Google, what we tell editors to achieve, and what our podcast producers need to deliver, and all of that can be measured.” However, podcast statistics are still somewhat lacking. So, Entale is building bespoke analytics as part of their partnership.

Beyond that Gow says that they are tracking what’s been produced, how many people have generated ideas, and how engaged they are in the process to gain a better sense of staff buy-in and participation.  “I work with incredibly smart people who love journalism and care about their audiences.” And giving them the tools to achieve good journalism on the podcast platform – the physical hardware, the training, the encouragement and feedback to build confidence and deliver the best possible outputs –  has made it achievable.

Ultimately, Gow would encourage any size newsroom to experiment with podcasts. “With all this in place, it’s 100% realistic for any newsroom to create great podcasts.

Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of December 19, 2019

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

Innovation

Why mistaking invention for innovation could be hurting your business

Innovation has long been the buzzword of the digital era. It has been called “the mantra of business leaders” and “the most important and overused word in America.” According to a McKinsey study, 84% of executives say that innovation is important to their growth strategy.

In one sense, this is a good thing. As The Atlantic put it, “In the 17th century, ‘innovators’ didn’t get accolades. They got their ears cut off.” Modern society’s embrace of innovation has enabled a technology explosion that has taken us from the telegraph to the iPhone, carriages, to self-driving cars.

Defining innovation

However, in another sense, the overuse of the word has led to a blurred understanding of what innovation actually is. Many consider it synonymous with invention. In reality, it’s not. How your company defines innovation can determine its prospects and success. And interchanging the two ideas can mortally undermine your company’s outlook.

We come by the confusion honestly. Trusted sources such as Merriam-Webster give a convoluted and misleading explanation of the difference. Merriam-Webster defines invention as the creation of a device or process that previously didn’t exist, and defines innovation as “a change made to an existing product, idea or field. One might say that the first telephone was an invention, and the first smartphone an innovation.”

The essence of innovation

This definition misses the point in a fundamental way. The critical difference between invention and innovation is value creation. Innovation is something new or something old applied in a new way that creates new value. This is well-illustrated by the phrase, “an innovative solution.” Invention is something new that could create value, but doesn’t have to.

Another way to look at this is that innovation usually starts with solving a need (and therefore contributing to value creation). However, invention starts with solving a technical challenge (that doesn’t necessarily create value if there is no demand for the solution).

Problem solving

A classic example of this difference is the Rube Goldberg Machine, named for the cartoonist who frequently drew devices that performed simple tasks in convoluted ways. The term has come to refer to an overly complicated and usually useless contraption. It has all the markings of a clever invention, but it hardly adds value greater than the cost or complexity of alternatives. It’s not innovation.

An example of innovation is the automobile. The invention was the combustion engine. But the combustion engine was not a car and a car is not a combustion engine. The car was a new way to solve the problem of transportation that leveraged a new invention (here: the combustion engine) to power a buggy.

Another way to think of innovation that it is the application of invention to a real world problem that customers will pay for. By this definition, if customers don’t see enough value to pay for it, then it’s not innovation. An automobile is valuable enough to pay for. A combustion engine is not.

Costly confusion

When you mistake invention for innovation, you could end up wasting your most precious resources – time, money and thought capital.

Consider blockchain and the Internet of Things. Both are fascinating new technologies. And, by exploring them, we can come up with innovative ideas to apply them. But they don’t, by themselves, generate value. Starting with a unique technology and then directing your best and brightest – your “thought capital” – to “do something” with that technology is a misguided business strategy.

You don’t want to explore new technologies without first having a clear understanding of how they will add value to your firm’s business outcomes and how it can create value for your current and future customers. In short, you should be working backward from the value to the technology, not the other way around. Not every company needs a “cool mobile app” or a “blockchain strategy” because not every company will actually benefit from having them.

Using this misguided approach drains thought capital and pulls your most talented and creative teams away from improving existing product portfolios. It also distracts leaders, who may be charmed by a new technology and may not be focusing on whether the business really needs a blockchain strategy at all.

Tinkering

So if “innovation labs” aren’t the best way to explore new technologies, what should organizations do? How do they go about creating new products? When craftspeople are left to their own devices and want to explore a new tool, framework, capability or technology, they embark on something I call “tinkering”. They read about it, play with it and may build a “hello world” application – something that allows them to get a feel for the new tool. They develop a sense of the technology’s potential uses and shortcomings. 

Companies can encourage tinkering in a number of ways by making it part of their individual development plans, asking individuals to keep a list of things they are interested in exploring next, setting aside time each week to tinker, and giving them cloud environments to play in. Teams that tinker will share their findings and excite other technologists about the possibilities. It also infuses the culture on the ground with a sense of support for recommending fresh approaches.

Tinkering gives the craftsperson just enough information to decide if he or she thinks it has the potential to solve the issues of the organization, or whether it might have relevant potential future uses. Tinkering + Real World Business Opportunities = The Best Chance for Innovation.

Supporting tinkering in your organization is cheaper and far more likely to lead to a breakthrough in value creation than directing all your resources – not just your money but your thought capital – toward “finding something to do” with a new technology. And that is what innovation is really about.

Advertising | Perspectives

What advertisers really want from digital publishers

Losses due to digital ad fraud made headlines in 2019. Such staggering reports have led some marketers to evaluate their media buying processes and become more selective about where they place their investment. So, what exactly are they looking for? We recently spoke with Jeanne Finegan, chief media officer at HF Media, the media arm of Heffler Claims Group, and vice president of media solutions at Prime Clerk, to gain insight into her selection process and discover what qualities she seeks in a digital advertising partner. Here are some key takeaways:

A quality environment

Advertisers want to partner with sites that provide them with the greatest return on investment. To do this, some are creating formal processes to assess whether a publisher has created an environment that provides minimal risk of ad fraud. Steps marketers have taken include reducing the number of intermediaries through supply-path optimization, using whitelists to separate premium websites from the rest, and dealing directly with publishers for their transactions.

Finegan’s team uses a multi-step process to evaluate potential partners. “We have a pretty extensive vetting process which includes proof of service,” Finegan said. “We ask a lot of questions running various scenarios for timing, quality, responsiveness and transparency.”

Part of this process determines whether the publisher can help the advertiser reach their target audience and ensure that the audience is legitimate.

Unfortunately, bots that generate clicks and fake traffic continue to be a contributor to the ad fraud problem. However, since bots don’t provide any real interaction – such as making purchases – they don’t give advertisers any return on their investment. As a result, marketers are steering their buys toward platforms that offer legitimate audiences even if that means fewer clicks.

“Quality environments, accountability, and human engagement are being valued over clicks,” Finegan added. “There has been a long-established narrative in the digital ecosystem that more is better. Smart marketers will increasingly value quality over quantity.”

Leveraging quality

Publishers can leverage their quality ad environments in several ways:

  • Create Quality Content. Regularly publishing well-written articles and videos are likely to attract more human traffic.
  • Use Legitimate Marketing Practices. Tactics such as social media promotions and email marketing attracts real audiences. While purchasing traffic may generate an influx of clicks, it is also a large source of bot traffic on legitimate websites.
  • Prevent Bots. Implementing tools such as registration forms, paywalls and CAPTCHAs can prevent bots from accessing the site and produce more genuine traffic reports.

Implementing industry solutions

Marketers also look for publishers that have implemented a variety of industry-vetted solutions.

One such tool is ads.txt. This initiative created by the IAB Tech Lab allows publishers to list all authorized sellers of their inventory, which helps demand-side platforms detect unauthorized digital sellers in programmatic buys. DSPs crawl these files to make sure that they are buying from legitimate SSPs. 

Another solution is the use of MRC-accredited fraud detection software. There are several solutions in the market that help detect invalid site traffic.

While fraud detection tools are important for fighting fraud, human oversight is equally as important. The 2019 ANA/White Ops Bot Baseline report revealed that less than half of all ad impressions are able to be fully, transparently validated by measurement tools.

Third-party website audits add another layer of protection by examining the processes the website has in place to detect and reduce fraud. “Through third-party audits, buyers can differentiate quality sites, analyze traffic and clearly see the difference between audited publishers and those who are sourcing traffic or running fraudulent sites,” Finegan said.

A website audit demonstrates a publisher’s commitment to transparency and separates premium sites from the rest by providing evidence that the site is doing everything possible to reduce fraud risk. It also helps media buyers make more informed decisions, leading to more successful campaign outcomes.

“Proof is critical. Clients need to demand proof of where ads appeared ­and proof that the campaign resulted in specific valued outcomes and then pay for performance,” said Finegan.

A holistic approach

While there are many tools available to publishers to fight ad fraud, no single solution can solve the entire problem. It’s important for publishers to include a variety of tools in their fraud-fighting arsenal. By taking a holistic approach to reducing fraud, publishers can stand out to advertisers and provide them with high-quality ad platforms likely to deliver real audiences and results.

Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of December 12, 2019

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

Featured Post | Revenue

The state of news subscriptions – and a newsworthy approach worth considering

Doggedly following the pace of the duopoly and facing falling print revenue, they anxiously watch as an increasing number of rivals drop out. And let’s face it, the route has only continued to slope uphill.

The next great hope is in digital subscriptions. Over the course of 2019, revenue growth was strong for many of the larger publishers that have been investing in subscription marketing and retention. The New York Times – effectively the poster child for news subscription success – reported its highest ever subscriber total in August: 4.7 million paid subscriptions across digital and print, of which close to 3.5 million are digital. Times’ CEO Mark Thomson said: “We’re making steady progress toward our goal of reaching 10 million total subscriptions by 2025.” A big part of that, as we’ve previously reported, is by converting young people to paid subscribers.

Meanwhile, the Guardian achieved its ambitious break-even target of financial stability by mid-2019, as 655,000 regular monthly supporters and a 300,000 one-off contributions buoyed their balance sheets. This suggests that readers do not necessarily even expect exclusive content to pay what is effectively a subscription in all but name. Similarly, Wired has claimed success after introducing a paywall in 2018, announcing a 300% increase in the number of digital subscribers.

Nor do the titles need to be international in scope to make successes of paywalls: a few years after launching a digital subscription the Shawnee Mission Post has over 2,500 subscribers. That’s more than enough for a local title that employs three people full-time. In the UK, too, more regional titles are launching paywalls as well. Some of JPI Media’s newspapers with larger circulations are currently trialling paywalls, too.

Overall, WAN-IFRA’s World Press Trends report found that: “Digital news subscriber numbers worldwide have increased 208% over five years to 2018 and are expected to grow by a further 13% in 2019.”

Smart paywall strategies

Small wonder then that so many news publishers are following the leaders and attempting to make digital subscriptions a larger part of their business strategy. There are countless examples of investment into smart paywalls, better retention efforts, and into data tools designed with the sole intention of signing up users.

That’s not to say that erecting a paywall is a guarantee of survival. Joshua Benton’s in-depth look into the L.A. Times’ disappointing subscription results in July makes it clear that if even one of those areas of investment is neglected, the result is that a publisher can be left running in place. They face failing to sign up sufficient subscribers or worse, a loss of existing ones.

A fear of fatigue

But the real shadow that falls across any conversation about paywall success is the term ‘subscription fatigue.’ Despite encouraging signs that readers have not yet reached this critical tipping point, the worry looms large. Essentially, it’s the tacit acknowledgement that audiences only have so much disposable income, that people are far more likely to subscribe to multiple entertainment products than a single news one, and that the people who have already subscribed were effectively the low-hanging fruit.

That last point was referred to in Wired editor-in-chief Nick Thompson’s one year paywall retrospective. He said, “We don’t know if they’ll resubscribe (please do); we don’t know if they’ll ultimately pay higher prices (please do); we don’t know if it’ll be as easy to get the next batch of people to join (please do).” Of those concerns, it’s the latter which is the most pressing.

Who pays?

In the UK, for instance, only 7% of people currently pay for a digital news subscription (a tiny increase over the previous year). On the face of it, that gives publishers a lot of headroom for growth. However, they’re up against competition for finite disposable income with entertainment services like Spotify, Netflix, Disney+, PlayStation Plus, etc. According to the latest Ofcom Media Nations report, for instance: “Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Now TV and Disney Life – increased from 11.2m (39%) in 2018 to 13.3m (47%) in 2019.”

That’s broadly in line with other findings, which demonstrate that people are far more likely to prioritize entertainment content over news. In fact, WAN-IFRA found that younger people –  on whom many publishers are pinning their hopes –  are less likely to prioritize a news subscription: “Just 7% of under 45s would pick news over everything else for the next year, compared to 15% of those 45 and over.”

What is news?

With relatively sluggish growth for news subscription numbers and the implication that it is seen as a luxury for young audiences, can publishers combat the potential “subscription fatigue” among audiences and prove they are as vital as an entertainment subscription? For most audiences, the reality for the foreseeable future is that entertainment will be prioritized. So, is it just that publishers need to reappraise what a successful ‘news’ subscription looks like?

A report by researchers at the University of Minnesota’s Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication, in collaboration with the News Media Alliance and the Star Tribune, found a positive correlation between people’s willingness to pay for entertainment and news. Their findings suggest that people’s increasing willingness to subscribe to entertainment is a tide that floats all boats.

It follows, then, that the way younger audiences think about subscriptions to both entertainment and news is similar. And, ultimately, they want unique content in a format that suits them best.

Bridging the divide

For instance, a paid-for subscription to something like a news podcast could help close that divide between entertainment and news. Media analyst for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism Nic Newman recently told me: “Publishers are really finding it hard to reach and engage with younger audiences. It’s not ‘news’

For instance, a paid-for subscription to something like a news podcast could help close that divide between entertainment and news. Media analyst for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism Nic Newman recently told me: “Publishers are really finding it hard to reach and engage with younger audiences. It’s not ‘news’ [that’s the problem], it’s about how you create content that is interesting, engaging, fun… But is also meaningful, and to me that’s where the daily news podcasts are hitting all those spots at once.” Notably, NYT CEO Mark Thompson has discussed spinning its flagship title The Daily off into a paid-for product in its own right.

In France, Le Monde is experimenting with a blend of news and entertainment content, with its three new podcasts being explicitly in service of squaring that circle. As Digiday’s Lucinda Southern notes: “French news publisher Le Monde has launched three podcast series adapted from investigative articles that have been successful at driving high numbers of new subscriptions.”

Subscription plus

So, it’s still vanishingly unlikely that every large-scale news publication will be able to sustain themselves through subscriptions alone. Many are already investing in non-news products to attract people to the top of the funnel. It’s also true that the first ones out of the starting blocks have an early mover advantage.

None of that is to say that news publishers should give up and transition entirely to entertainment content. Instead, they should be considering that the young people on whom much of their subscription success or failure rests are demonstrably interested in news content. Unfortunately, the vast majority of how that is currently presented on doesn’t necessarily convert or retain them.

Rather than attempting to push the fast news-based content that adds value once people are past the gate, publishers need to re-evaluate what types of content will lure younger audiences through in the first place.

Advertising | Perspectives

Top digital advertising trends for publishing executives in 2020

It’s that time of year – time to close the books, conduct annual reviews, and plan for the future. When it comes to online advertising, here’s what publishing executives should be monitoring in 2020.

Digital advertising is still a growth industry

In the U.S., advertisers increased spending on digital formats by 17% during the first half of 2019. That’s a net increase of more than $8 billion, far outpacing total advertising growth rates of approximately 5%. Digital is appealing because of its ability to target, comparatively low cost, and general ease-of-use. To capture more digital ad dollars, publishers need to simultaneously educate the market on the core value proposition – i.e., higher quality audiences – and make it easier to buy their products. Digital is a growth market, while growth in the overall ad business is expected to slow.

Podcasts are all the rage

Researchers from Reuters describe podcasting as a “worldwide phenomenon.” In the US alone, 90 million people are regular listeners, double the number as compared with 2015. Their appeal to established publishers is obvious: Podcasts offer an opportunity to repurpose and extend offline content into a new format, and generate new revenue opportunities along the way. The market is increasingly competitive and producing quality shows requires investment and talent. However, the ad appeal of podcasting iso longer in question. Marketers spent $479 million on podcasts ads in2018 and are projected to spend over $1 billion by 2021. We covered the topic of podcast advertising in March, and the underlying fundamentals have only strengthened since.

Creative is making a comeback

The mushrooming marketing technology industry and companion programmatic advertising sector of recent years allowed advertisers to target and scale at unprecedented levels. And brands invested aggressively on both fronts, to the point where the market is arguably oversaturated today. A byproduct of this situation is a subtle refocus on creative. What was once the cornerstone of the ad business – Why worry about creative when reach and scale was so cheap? – got shoved aside is re-emerging. But now that everyone is deploying adtech, it’s no longer a differentiator. Thus, market influencers are talking about the economic implications of creativity. And any advertising discussion that centers on quality favor publishers. It’s a talking point that can be exploited.

Brand safety: the rock in the industry’s shoe

No one really wants to discuss brand safety, or ad fraud, or transparency. It’s like planning for an economic downturn. Sure, it’s prudent, but the act of doing it feels like an avoidable self-fulfilling prophecy. Conventional wisdom says “the market is growing, benefiting both brands and platforms; let’s just keep plowing forward.” But this topic isn’t going away. And it could get more attention as market conditions soften and dollars become scarce.

During lean times, corporations reflexively look for cost-savings opportunities, and digital advertising is perfect target, as a growing and bloated line item. In recent years, brand safety, transparency and fraud initiatives have been molting; it’s no longer front-page news, as was the case with FBI investigations in 2018, but there are pockets of focus and expertise poised to emerge. This year, for example, we saw the launch of “data transparency labels.” And Jason Kint, CEO of Digital Content Next, has been a vocal advocate of identifying problem areas and offering solutions. This could be the year that these issues break out and get priority treatment, and it will favor publishers – who haven’t really been ensnared in these controversies to date – in a big way if it happens.

The future is bright

Though more than a decade old – Facebook was launched in 2004, Google in 1998 – the digital advertising category continues to evolve rapidly and offer myriad opportunities to established and upstart publishers alike. Sure, the duopoly will continue to dominate the category for the foreseeable future. However advertisers are exploring alternatives in a more meaningful way these days.

Advertisers are tired of being at the mercy of a couple of big platforms. They also have more infrastructure and know-how to wean their dependencies. Additionally, the biggest platforms are caught up in hailstorm of noise and distraction related to politics, privacy and governance. With the ability to offer compelling content, brand safety, and high-end audiences, savvy publishers are well-positioned to be prosperous in 2020. 

About the author

Tim Bourgeois is a marketing advisor who helps brands optimize ROI on advertising, technology and agency investments through digital marketing audits and strategy engagements. 

Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of December 5, 2019

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

Featured Post | Innovation | Revenue

Beyond news: How publishers are building subscriptions around non-news products

A welcome consequence of the abortive chase for scale is that publishers, no longer slaves to the Big Number, are diversifying their revenues. News events, podcasts, even forays into long-form video content – everything is back on the menu. At the same time, many media companies are also recognizing that they have the expertise in selling subscriptions to launch new paid-for products and services, rather than catering to anonymous audiences on platforms.

The collision of those two factors has inevitably led to a reappraisal of publishers’ ongoing activities around which they could conceivably launch a new subscription service. The New York Times’ success with its dedicated Crosswords app is well documented, for instance, with fully 400,000 people subscribing to the service as of February this year. Beyond that, some publishers are seeking to capitalize on their existing reputations when launching new subscription products. Forbes, for instance, recently announced the acquisition of stock prediction tool Quantalytics AI Labs, which Digiday reports could well be spun out into its own subscription tool using Forbes’ expertise.

The ARPU (average revenue per user) of those non-news subscriptions is often lower than the core proposition. However, they have advantages that the core news membership proposition often doesn’t. At the NYT, for example, they’re growing faster: “News product subscriptions totaled approximately 2,713,000 at the end of 2018, a 21.6% increase compared with 2017. Other product subscriptions, which include subscriptions to our Crossword product and Cooking product, totaled approximately 647,000 at the end of 2018, a 56.7% increase compared with 2017.”

Here, then, is how news publishers are looking past current affairs for subscription revenue. Some seek to monetizing loneliness, others want to owning gambling, but all are building upon their reputations to diversify their revenues.

Lifestyle and aspiration

Cooking apps – both paid-for and ad supported – are big business. The NYT prices a subscription to its Cooking portal and app at $1.25 per week, while in the UK Immediate Media acquired the BBC Good Food magazine and ad-supported app in part because of how valuable recipe content performs for its ad business.

Hearst’s All Out Studio

Equally lucrative, the health and lifestyle vertical is prompting some traditional publishers to launch new subscription services. Hearst, for instance, launched a new video on demand platform and mobile app dedicated to workout videos in July. All Out Studio features content centered around its brands like Men’s Health, Runners’ World, and Cosmopolitan, and is priced at $15 a month. Meanwhile Stylist is moving from the current affairs space into evergreen fitness subscriptions with Stylist Strong, which is based around real life events in London.

Meanwhile, off the back of its existing lifestyle content – and a savvy bet that people can’t get enough parenting content – the NYT launched its Parenting vertical earlier this year. At launch, The Times Open Team explained that it was important that the standalone product strike a balance between being identifiably part of the NYT brand and having its own identity: “While establishing how to structure content and topics in the product, we also invested in developing the site’s visual language. We knew that we needed to build on The Times’s brand equity while making our product feel distinct and premium, much like Cooking and Crosswords.”

The Guardian’s standalone Soulmates dating app similarly offers in-app purchases, and builds upon the longstanding digital service provided by the website through the branding.

The Guardian’s Soulmates app

VICE’s ‘Astro Guide’ astrology app (which offers in-app purchases) is almost completely standalone in terms of branding. Nevertheless, it feels like a Vice product in terms of the language used and audience at whom it is pitched. As the team noted in the Astro Guide launch announcement, “We were all proud of the site’s daily and monthly horoscopes and their growing readership, and we wanted to figure out what could come next. We ignored practicality for a moment – obviously, it was Pisces season – and dreamed up something entirely new.”

Meanwhile, as with the Quantalytics example mentioned above, health and science publisher Stat News is explicitly launching new products outside its core Stat Plus subscription model. One of those, Expert Advantage, offers the subscriber the chance to listen in to conference calls with leading researchers. Another hearkens back to the age-old technique of selling reports, this time with a digital slant.

Not one of those products is based around the core news and current affairs proposition of its parent publisher. That said, they each have something in common: They rely upon the audience knowing and feeling affinity with the brand, even if they would not necessarily pay to access their news content. They are, then, effectively a bet that news publishers can still take advantage of the fact that people are more likely to pay for entertainment or lifestyle subscriptions than they are for news.

Beyond beyond news

In addition to working as additive revenue, it’s been noted that standalone products can act as connective tissue between user and a news subscription. The NYT’s crossword and cooking subscriptions, for instance, are priced at half the amount of a news subscription. That’s welcome in its own right, but in terms of creating brand loyalty and habit, it’s incredibly valuable.

Similarly, efforts like The Telegraph’s Fantasy Football and Fantasy Rugby services, and their respective apps, potentially generate ad revenue. The real benefit, however, is that they encourage users to log-in, which works in service of The Telegraph’s stated aim of having 10 million registered users by 2023.

They can also be bundled as part of a wider subscription package. The fact that they also exist separately serves as inducement to pay for the more expensive news package, as the NYT notes in its 2018 annual report about its Cooking and Crossword subscriptions.

The sheer variety of non-news products demonstrates that there is plenty of opportunity for news publishers to diversify their range of paid-for products. That isn’t to say that every newspaper should suddenly launch a standalone cooking vertical, however.

For one thing, there are far too many recipes out there already. Competing with free and an already crowded market is something news publishers should be particularly wary of. Instead, as the NYT did with its Parenting vertical and Vice did with its Astrology app, the best new product launches will build upon successful brands and their understanding of what their customers are most interested in. Yet to succeed, they will also standalone, apart from the company’s core value proposition, and offer their own distinct value for consumers.

Advertising | Perspectives

Marketers: Here’s how we can ensure that consumers learn to love advertising again

When it comes to digital consumption, I’m about as avid as it gets. While I use my Amazon firestick to find a new show, I simultaneously scroll through Instagram and shop on my laptop. I forego physical books so I can listen to podcasts while playing Candy Crush. I’m not “techy” in any form; I’m simply a product of our highly digital generation.

And, like everyone else, I’ve grown up with various forms of ads. TV, magazine, newspaper, billboards – you name it. However, today’s ad environment is with us even more pervasively. In our digital society, it’s harder to escape screens filled with ads and calls to buy now.

Don’t get me wrong, I recognize the role of advertising. As a marketer, I understand how ads benefit our ecosystem. I know why YouTube runs ads on video, Hulu has commercials, and CNN features personalized article recommendations.

However, I have realized that there’s something that marketers must do in order to restore the value of advertising. We need to change the consumer mindset around advertising. Of course, winning back consumer trust is no easy feat. To do so, we need to examine how the industry changed from enjoyable and glamorous to over-saturated and salacious. And we need to figure out where to go from here.

Advertising’s “Golden Age”

The Golden Age of Advertising (the 1960s to the late 1980s), was a time of big ideas and larger-than-life personalities. From Volkswagen’s “Think Small” and Apple’s “Think Different 1984” to Burger King’s “Have it Your Way,” and innumerable ads in between, the campaigns were engaging, witty, and captured consumer attention. With television making its ascent into every household, magazines catering to every interest, and newspapers as the primary source for getting the word out, advertising thrived. People actually looked forward to seeing pages filled with their glamorous idols touting the latest products and fashions.

So, what changed?

Calculating too much

In the Golden Age, ads thrived because they were vibrant, fun, and intriguing. They offered a creative and engaging experience that made consumers want to learn more and own the products. Today, advertising focuses heavily on data, personalization, and research. Frankly, though the goal is to appeal to consumers, digital advertising’s constant in-your-face tactics are off-putting.

The market is oversaturated, crowded, and cluttered with disjointed marketing messages. Too many times, a popup ad has interrupts and degrades the consumer experience, causing them to close the page altogether and never return. And beyond simply losing advertisings luster, we’ve lost the trust of consumers. They’ve been burned too many times by clickbait and fake news, not to mention unexpected and even unethical uses of their data, which has caused them to ignore or block ads altogether.

However, instead of acknowledging this discomfort, consumer avoidance makes the advertiser push harder to increase engagement. The disconnect is real. As a consumer, I am acutely aware of the ways that ads ruin my experience. And, as a marketer, I focus on ways to get ads in front of consumers. To help heal our unhealthy advertising relationship, I propose a different idea: creating ads that serve a purpose. Ads that help the consumer experience, not hurt it.

A new golden age

Purpose-driven and values-based marketing is a growing area in which brands are reconnecting with consumers on ideas that matter to them — culture, society, politics, etc. Nearly two-thirds (63%) of consumers prefer to purchase products and services from brands that stand for a purpose which reflects their own beliefs.

Nike’s famous “Dream Crazy” campaign, featuring Colin Kaepernick, struck a chord with consumers, both good and bad. But a year after the initial launch, Nike shares have surged 36% over the year, adding nearly $6 billion to the company’s market value. Marketers, the lesson learned here is that consumers don’t mind ads. But they want ads that mean something to them.

Advertising also thrived during its first golden age because of brand loyalty. You could show a consumer a logo — Nike’s Swoosh, McDonald’s Arch, Starbucks’ Siren — and they would instantly recognize the brand. To stay top-of-mind, brands made it a point to circulate their logos on newspapers, TVs, billboards, etc. But today, consumers are too desensitized to care. And data-driven efforts are not the brand-building campaigns of yesterday. Brand loyalty and successful marketing campaigns must be driven by value, so as not to turn off the customer or lose their attention.

A new Golden Age is right around the corner. We can win back consumer trust and show them the value of a smart ad campaign. This will happen as we evolve beyond disruptive nature of the digital ad industry and create well thought out content that focuses on a long-term brand story and excellent user experience.

Advertising | Perspectives | Revenue

Fostering quality journalism through a brand safe open web

Almost half of comScore’s top 100 Web properties in terms of audience have some news component to their content offering. So, it is clear that news continues to represent a dominant share of online traffic. However, brand safety fiascos for advertisers on platforms such as YouTube and Facebook have swung the pendulum towards a conservative approach to advertising within news. The divisive political climate (and impending 2020 US elections) combined with increasing coverage of violent events, etc. further exacerbate potential risk for brands. It is now critical that publishers work with both advertisers and technology providers to balance their scale with a sound brand safety strategy to maintain and grow advertising monetization.

At Teads, we launched our global brand safety policy earlier this year to foster a sustainable advertising and media ecosystem. And we continue to advocate that publishers adopt constructive philosophies around brand safety. In addition to developing a brand safety policy, we have a few key best practices for every publisher to consider when developing a brand safety strategy.

Brand-safe best practices

1. Standardizing and enforcing brand safety processes

Although brand suitability will always be a subjective interpretation for individual brands based on their values and audiences, the industry first needs to define a lowest common denominator for universal brand safe content in order to develop scalable solutions. For example, most would agree that brands should not appear in or around content describing terrorist attacks or mass shooting events. News publishers have an opportunity to be proactive in defining relevancy standards and implementing a brand safety guarantee for their advertisers and audiences. Publishers can and should join initiatives that meet to evolve industry standards and best practices such as the Global Alliance for Responsible Media.

2. Technology and AI

There are tools available to publishers that allow them to more efficiently guarantee brand safe environments for their advertisers and even block risky content pre-bid. The key to success is seeking technological solutions that can optimally balance scale vs. quality. Keyword blacklists are currently the preferred (though blunt and rudimentary) instruments for many agencies and brands. Let’s call this “Brand Safety v 1.0.” Frankly, these tactics are a necessary evil for the application of brand safety in the absence of more efficient solutions. These days, publishers can also leverage technology tools to better target/anti-target contextual segments or leverage machine learning and natural language processing for their content filtering needs.

3. Educating the ecosystem

News publishers are already seeing advertisers shy away from news content in general and becoming the victims of blocklists applying to the entire news category. The problem with blacklisting hard news is that it eliminates a significant portion of online audience and scale for advertisers.

Publishers need to be proactive and implement solutions and processes to regain the trust of advertisers. It’s clearly more advantageous to block the minority of unsafe content vs. losing monetization on news traffic altogether, which is the current industry trend. We have to work together to advocate and educate brands and agencies that not only do ads perform better in news but also consumers trust premium news outlets (a positive halo that extends to ads on those properties).

If the industry does not coalesce around news publishers and continues to shift advertising budgets away from them, then we are ultimately on a path to defunding quality journalism and jeopardizing a free press. The result will be more disinformation, more advertising in the context of fake news and unsafe environments. It also reduces potentially massive quality audience reach for advertisers given the consumption of online news. That’s a scary proposition. Combining appropriate brand safety enforcement with premium editorial environments can not only effectively connect brands with relevant consumers, but also ensure that we support our democratic society at both a local and national level.

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