/ An inside look at the business of digital content

February 20, 2019 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

“Termites [are] eating at the credibility that you have as news organizations. Those termites are coming from from geopolitical power plays.”
– Rappler CEO and Time Person of the Year, Maria Ressa at DCN Next: Summit

On January 29th, at the 2019 DCN Next: Summit, Rappler CEO Maria Ressa outlined the role social media and concerted, well-orchestrated disinformation campaigns played in perpetuating false information and media distrust in the Philippines, as well as attacks aimed at Rappler.

She then went on to have a wide-ranging discussion examining the various pressures on media credibility (and safety) worldwide with interviewer extraordinaire Kara Swisher, Co-founder of Recode.

Less than two weeks later, on Wednesday, February 13 at 5 p.m. local time in Manila, plainclothes officers from the National Bureau of Investigation, an agency within the Department of Justice, arrested Ressa on charges of cyber libel. As Ressa wrote in a statement: “We are not intimidated. No amount of legal cases, black propaganda, and lies can silence Filipino journalists who continue to hold the line. These legal acrobatics show how far the government will go to silence journalists, including the pettiness of forcing me to spend the night in jail.”

The Board of Directors of Digital Content Next (DCN), a trade association representing nearly 80 high-quality media companies, said, “The arrest of Maria Ressa is deeply troubling. Maria traveled to the U.S. to share her developing story with our members only two weeks ago. It is vital we value and protect the independence of media organizations and journalists around the world. Any effort to silence journalists or use intimidation to reduce their reporting is an affront to freedom. We encourage global leaders and the press community to make it clear this cannot be tolerated.”

In light of Ressa’s arrest, and to reinforce our support of a free press everywhere, DCN is pleased to share the video of Ressa and Swisher’s interview (full transcript below):

Learn more about supporting Rappler.

And, for those who would like to show support for Rappler and Ressa’s work, she has provided a link to their crowdfunding page.

Below, we’ve shared a full transcript of Ressa’s conversation with Swisher.

Alexandra Roman: [00:00:00] I am truly honored to introduce this next conversation interviewer extraordinaire Recode’s Kara Swisher. She’ll be speaking with a very special person in our world these days. Named Time magazine’s Person of the year as one of the guardians of journalism, please welcome the CEO of Rappler, Maria Ressa.

Kara Swisher: [00:00:33] So we’re going to start…first Maria is going to make a presentation then we’re gonna have a full fantastic discussion. Maria was on my podcast recently. It was, it was an amazing experience for me and I’m so glad she’s here and safe in the United States right now. We’ll be talking about that more. But first Maria go ahead.

Maria Ressa: [00:00:52] So I like that Jason [Kint, CEO of DCN] talked about trust. And this is stuff I’ll show to you from our perspective in the Philippines because it’s got the data to prove the thesis and then I think you guys are not quite… I think you’re not seeing the termites eating at the the credibility that you have as news organizations and those termites are coming from geopolitical power plays. We go back to information is power and with that that let me show you what’s happened in the Philippines.

January last year, there were two surveys that came up exactly the same time but they’re almost complete opposite results. The top is real world Pew Global Attitudes Survey: How do Filipinos look at traditional media? And they came back they said 86 percent think traditional media is and the right quote is “fair and accurate.” But the Philippine trust index, which is part of the Edelman Trust survey, they came out with a survey that same month a year ago. And they asked people on social media and they came out with 83 percent “distrust traditional media.” Right. So how did that happen? We tried to figure out why is the world upside down? That’s really the question right. Why is the world upside down?

We have a database that we started gathering in July of 2016 when the when the drug war began in the Philippines because the attacks all came on social media. In our case it’s Facebook. But this is a timeline of attacks on traditional media. And in Rappler because we were the main focal point for a period of time, [which] started January 2015 and then moving to April 2017. January 2016 was when the campaigns began and the social media machine of then Mayor Duterte. He Was elected to office May 2016. You see that one? And you can see the fracture line Byaran means corrupt. Bias. So Bayaran is the one in the middle. The first long line and bias is the last one. If you look at that it’s a fracture line of society right.

There were mentions before but it was constantly pounded until it became a straight line after president Duterte was elected the weaponization of social media happened after he was elected because it was repeatedly pounded until it became fact. A lie told a million times its truth.

Right. So, then what happened? Here: This This is the database I was telling you about right? We call it The Shark Tank. The one on your left is the URLs that are spreading fake news in the Philippines. The middle column are the court the Facebook pages that are spreading that page. And I always look at the average reposting time which is the one all the way to your… my right, sorry it’s flipped.

I want to show you when the real attacks began against Rappler and it was after we came out with a three-part series on the weaponization of social media. It was October 2016. I went to Facebook with the data August 2016. So, October 2016 this is what it looked like. In October 2016, if it’s more than 10 times reposting, it turns red, You can see how it turned red. This Facebook page Sally Might Die accomplished its goals by April 2017. It’s been deleted from Facebook but you can see … This was something we created for our social media team so that you can see it’s a cut and paste account. And they post; look at how many times they post in one day! Each one of those squares is just one day. And this is where they post the groups. They posted to go viral in the campaign pages of Duterte it and Marcos, the son of former President Ferdinand Marcos.

oneI’m going to just show you the last thing which is how can we figure out who’s attacking us. Well you can gather the data and it looks like this but if you put it in a network map, It looks like this. This is the network that was attacking Vice President Leonie Robredo about a year ago and it is the same network that constantly attacks me, Rappler, and every traditional media. It is so systematic that the content creators of the network are broken down by demographic. For the Motherland, it is pseudo-intellectual and tries to target the one percent but pseudo-intellectual. The middle class is targeted by thinking Pinoy and the mass base is this Moka Olsen blog who is former singer dancer. They used to use to build her Facebook page by having it like she has a singing group called the Mocha Girls and they do pillow fights every Sunday. That was how they first built her Facebook page. Then she became the head of social media for the presidential palace and it became a whole other thing.

Anyway, you can see this is what attacks what attacks journalists systematically. And it happens so many times. I just want to show you one last thing which is something we did for Rappler. Natural Language Processing to pull out. So, we looked at the entire Lexis Nexis right to try to figure out … What do we need to learn? What Is the data telling us about the articles that were written about us at the time when I was about to come home for bail to file bail? Yeah, I had an arrest warrant then.

Right. So, the Philippines wrote 34 percent of the stories. The United States wrote 27 percent. You guys are a potent a potent force for us. But what was most interesting is that the Filipino stories are part of the reason it’s in a line like this is because they essentially just regurgitated the press release of the Department of Justice. It was the American news organizations that talked about it as a Duterte rights crackdown. That wrote about it in context. That was an amazing thing. I want to leave you with sorry I don’t know what wrong thing, I think. I want to move forward. I want to leave you with this information warfare. Yeah, I guess this is the right one.

So, with information warfare I’m going to bring it to to Russia. Dezinformatsiya. This was really interesting because. For Duterte to end the drug war. Sorry about that my slides were. OK so… I don’t know if you remember Yuri Andropov. He was the former KGB Chairman. This quote stuck with me because it fit the Philippines. Dezinformatsiya works like cocaine. If you sniff once or twice it may not change your life. If you use it everyday though it will make you into an addict. A different man. I think this is the impact on our democracies and we’ve seen it.

The first reports came out in November of 2017 saying that cheap armies on social media are rolling back democracies all around the world. And at that point it was something like 28 countries. By last year, it was 48 countries. It’s doubling. We started looking at Ukraine to try to understand how we can use the data the way Ukraine started fighting back. It is information warfare. It is political. It is about power and the money part of it … or the people who are actually or who are actually catering to the politicians. Russia backed Facebook post, this was November of 2017, this is the first time that I saw Americans really starting to look at it. But even when I saw this ok they reached 126 million Americans. I think what people missed is it happens all the time. It wasn’t just ads, it was it’s all the time …

I talk about termites. This bot is interesting to me because it tweeted about U.S. elections. First, remember the Philippine election of Duterte was one month before Brexit. After Brexit, there were U.S. elections and then the Catalan elections. This little bot Ivan tweeted about all of those. So, we found him from the Catalan elections. And when I’ve looked at his account, it was specifically only tweeting about the Philippines. When we posted this story, within 24 hours Twitter took his network down.

On Facebook, this is the last part I want to show you, the most recent thing that I found fascinating. In December, two groups came out with reports based on data that was given to the US Senate Intelligence Committee. This is the chart that is from new knowledge. And this thing at the bottom, I want to show you the connection between the Philippines and that chart. It’s this: So we tend to map the networks around us. Let me just. Try to get this so that you can see it. There. This is the attack network. Not connecting.

OK. So, this attack network was from November. Sorry it’s frozen. There. Yay. OK. November 8, December 7th. This network. And you know what I used to map the network is this free tool called Flourish. It’s a startup. This is little Rappler. And what’s so interesting and this is where I will make the pitch that I don’t think we have any other choice but to actually collaborate together. Rappler is here. This, all of this, is a disinformation network that’s attacking us and you can kind of literally see it right.

But what’s so interesting is in the Philippines this overshadows the information landscape. The traditional media groups are so set aside they’re desperate. I’ve been trying for the last two years to get our top television networks our newspapers to work together like retweet re share each other so that we can rise up together in the algorithms. We refuse to do it because people think it’s competitive. But you know what? You’re competing against disinformation not against each other now.

I want to show you this because and I’ll end with this one… so this disinformation network is so interesting right. But this is the most fascinating one. When we saw this, I was surprised because this was created a year ago. It’s only one year old the daily sentry dot net. And yet the larger the circle, the larger the eigenvector centrality, the more powerful the account is. This is exponential pushes behind it. What’s interesting about it is that this is the first time we saw a direct connection to the Russian disinformation landscape because daily century dot net uses experts in quotes from this network. Sorry I can’t I can’t do the thing but on that chart there is an American man who who’s often interviewed by our de Sputnik by Iranian television … His name is Adam Gary. He is now an expert who’s popping into the Philippine ecosystem. He came in through the Daily Century and he’s from the Daily Century and he jumped into traditional newspapers from there. There’s a direct link to him because he writes for Global Research dot ca a group in Canada and connected to two other groups: one is Eurasian affairs dot net here. Another site both of whom come from a Russian IP address.

All that data in the chart came from the data that was given to the Senate Intelligence Committee and published last December. This is what’s happening in my country. I think you’re finding out what’s happening in yours. But I think we’re only a small case study of what is happening globally and that scares me.

Kara Swisher: [00:14:13] OK. All right. So, how was prison? [laughter] No really. How was prison?

Maria Ressa: [00:14:20] I, oh, I hope I won’t get there but you know…

Kara Swisher: [00:14:25] You were arrested. Explain what happened to you? We we did a podcast and I said you should not go back to the Philippines because you will be arrested. And what happened.

Recode’s Kara Swisher in conversation with Rappler CEO, Maria Ressa

Maria Ressa: [00:14:32] Of course I went back. Right. But I wasn’t arrested. OK. I thought I would be so our lawyers told me … My flight arrived on Sunday night at 9:30 p.m. The court, which is supposed to be an all night court, well it closes at 9:00 p.m. So, if they had picked me up that night I couldn’t have filed bail until Monday morning when courts opened. In the Philippines, if you have an arrest warrant you’re not told you have an arrest warrant. They just come get you. I came I went home and I was I wasn’t going to change anything and it went OK. I filed bail. I I filed bail once I filed. I posted bail five times actually in that week.

Kara Swisher: [00:15:16] But to be. And you weren’t actually arrested.

Maria Ressa: [00:15:18] No I wasn’t arrested. I wasn’t arrested.

Kara Swisher: [00:15:20] Please explain to everyone here who doesn’t know why they [are going to] arrest you. What are the charges?

Maria Ressa: [00:15:26] Well charges are ludicrous. Tax evasion. It’s really one event, the same event, that I have four other cases of. They’re alleging, the government is alleging, that I am working for, well, that Rappler is owned by Americans one and that I am essentially working for them to take down the government. Very Putin-esque. None of that is true. And then on top of that, the arrest warrant came from taking that same charge: the investment instrument that we used, which was constitutional. They then decided that… we didn’t pay the right taxes. And the reason why they said we didn’t pay the right taxes was because they reclassified Rappler into a stock brokerage agency.

Kara Swisher: [00:16:16] Rather than a journalist.

Maria Ressa: [00:16:17] Rather than a newsgroup.

Kara Swisher: [00:16:18] Right.

Maria Ressa: [00:16:19] And that’s what I have to post bail for.

Kara Swisher: [00:16:21] The reason I’m asking what this is I want people to understand how people can use social media to create trumped up charges and then arrest you for them arrest you for it.

Maria Ressa: [00:16:32] Well it is interesting that you said that because all of these charges. I laughed off because they first appeared on social media. And they were thrown at me. CIA you’re a foreigner. I am a dual citizen. But, all of that. Like termites you know they just came at it and then a year and a half later it comes out of President Duterte’s mouth during the State of the Nation address. He said that you are a journalist; I’m covering the State of the Nation address. And then President Dutertet says look at Rappler: They are American. So, then I just tweeted back. President, no we’re not owned by Americans.

Kara Swisher: [00:17:12] Right, right. So, let’s talk about the state. Well, last we talked you, you made a very passionate plea to Facebook to do something about what’s happening. What you’re showing here is essentially organized disinformation campaigns to pull you down because you’re doing critical coverage of the president in the Philippines. And so they’re employing a very slow moving but powerful network to do so and using in the Philippines as you said most people get their news at not just the Philippines but across the world from Facebook. This is the purveyor of news. And these malevolent forces have created pages and news organizations and fake organizations to try to battle that. Talk a little bit about that. About what where you are right now because at the time. You were sort of subject to the biggest news organization attacking you being used to attack you.

Maria Ressa: [00:18:06] OK. So I think that there’s a whole information ecosystem that has been manufactured and it is manufactured reality. And we went down to a point where we were looking at you know how how powerful is it really. We manually counted the impact of 26 fake accounts. 26 fake accounts can actually reach up to three million other accounts in the Philippines and it wasn’t we were the first targets because we expose them. I was so naive.

You know, I thought wow we can just do a hashtag no place for hate campaign and people will come back because you think these are real people. They Are not. And after we did that, we became the target. And as you saw in the first slide it’s not just us it is traditional media because the main goal is to kill any trust in any institution that can that can push back.

All we have done is challenge impunity. Impunity here in information warfare and impunity in the drug war. You don’t know how many people have been killed in the Philippines during this drug war because they keep changing the numbers. At most recent count the Philippine police will admit to killing 5,000 people. Even that number alone is huge compared to the fact that 3,200 were killed in nine years of Marcos rule. Right. But. There’s this other number they never rule out. It’s the homicide cases under investigation and there are 30,000 people who’ve been killed there. So, If you think about it since July 2016 you can have more than it is tens of thousands. Thirty five thousand. I know the way they parse the number and I’m even cautious in the way I tell you how many people have been killed.

Kara Swisher: [00:19:58] So what they’re doing is trying to use social media to stop you from writing about them.

Maria Ressa: [00:20:03] Not just trying to use it they’ve used it effectively. iI think this is the first the first weapon it’s a new tool against journalists and against truth. And part of the reason we’re having a crisis of trust is because this is global.

Kara Swisher: [00:20:17] Right. So, talk a little bit about your efforts with Facebook to do this initially. You ran into Mark Zuckerberg and told him about this.

Maria Ressa: [00:20:28] F8 April 2017. There was a small group of us who had lunch together. It was founders groups of companies that were working with Facebook and I invited him to come to the Philippines because I said you know you have no idea how powerful Facebook is. Ninety-seven percent of Filipinos who are on the Internet are on Facebook. We’re 100 million people. And he was frowning and I was going so why are you frowning. And he just said, “Maria what are the other three percent doing?”[laughter]. We laughed: huh.

Kara Swisher: [00:21:05] Ah. Ha. Ha. That’s how the board talks. But go ahead.

Maria Ressa: [00:21:09] But that’s when you realize that that they didn’t understand their impact. What they understood was their goal. And so I think now that’s changed.

Kara Swisher: [00:21:21] Right. So they did that and then you brought this information to them. What happened initially?

Maria Ressa: [00:21:27] Nothing. You know by the time Mark Zuckerberg was in Congress for me everything that you guys were finding out here is you know “been there done that.” We’ve talked about this. I feel like Cassandra, you know. I’ve talked to maybe more than 50 different officers and friends inside Facebook.

But we’re the Philippines and maybe people think you know you’re out there. But, when He appeared in Congress and he said it would take five years to fix this with AI. I was like you can’t do five years. Because In the global South in my countries in Myanmar Sri Lanka and the Philippines every day that it isn’t fixed means people die… I think they’re getting it. I think partly your coverage you know the 2018 has spotlighted this but I don’t think enough because it’s still being used.

The good thing is there have been take downs take downs of Russian networks, Iranian networks, they’ve been to take downs in the Philippines. The most recent take down was about three weeks ago of a network we identified and did a story on 13 months earlier. You know so it’s a little too little too late but you know what. I will take everything because at least it cleans it up. But the fundamental problem is that. our gatekeeping power …

So, we used to create [and] distribute the news and when we distributed the news we’re the gatekeepers. Now that power has gone to the social media platforms. Facebook is now the world’s largest distributor of news and yet it has refused to be the gatekeeper. And when it does that when you allow lies to actually get on the same playing field as facts, it taints the entire public sphere. And it’s like introducing toxic sludge in the mix. And this I think that’s the fundamental problem. They have to actually at some point say take down the lies instead of allowing it to spread.

Kara Swisher: [00:23:33] So what do you face when you go there and say you need to take down these lies? Tell me what happens or how are they now working with you.

Maria Ressa: [00:23:41] It’s it’s significantly different now. And that’s part of the reason.

Kara Swisher: [00:23:46] Well they’re very sorry now. But they’re very very sorry and also very very very sorry.

Maria Ressa: [00:23:53] I think they’re starting to understand what they’ve done. And I think they’ve started to hire the right people. In January of 2017, Nathaniel Glaser who was in charge of counterterrorism in the Obama White House. You know he was hired and shortly after that, well took a while, because this is a manual effort right? Tracking these networks down like counterterrorism requires somebody like a law enforcement official to go look for them. And so that’s part of the reason you see the takedown start starting to happen. I think it goes. The main thing that they have to do is to go to the content moderation system that they’ve put in place.

Kara Swisher: [00:24:39] Right.

Maria Ressa: [00:24:40] As journalists we have values and principles. We call it the standards and ethics manual. As tech people they tried to atomized it into a checklist and then this checklist goes to content moderators in — you know the two largest for a long period of time we’re in Warsaw and Manila.

Kara Swisher: [00:25:01] Right.

Maria Ressa: [00:25:02] And in Manila … I don’t know if you saw the movie, it was done by..

Kara Swisher: [00:25:06] The Cleaners?

Maria Ressa: [00:25:08] The Cleaners, right. And in that one you can see that that these content moderators who barely make you know minimum wage here in the States but they they have seconds to decide whether to delete or whether to let content stay. And if they just go by a prescriptive checklist they’ll just go up delete delete and let it stay. And the guy who took down Napalm Girl was a Filipino and he took down Napalm Girl because check list naked.

Kara Swisher: [00:25:35] So there’s no famous photograph of the girl running from napalm in Vietnam. Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph. It was news.

Maria Ressa: [00:25:44] So these Filipinos who were in a call center in the Philippines are taking down terrorist content potential are taking down supposed hate speech without any cultural context without understanding the content.

Kara Swisher: [00:25:59] So what do you what is your solution to them. I’m using Facebook as a broad thing but they really are the game. Twitter is sort you have the same problems with Twitter and other social networks?

Maria Ressa: [00:26:10] Twitter is only 7 percent of penetration in the Philippines.

Kara Swisher: [00:26:13] So it’s an unpopular service. So yeah.

Maria Ressa: [00:26:18] No, but it’s same right the same content moderation policy as YouTube. YouTube is huge. Also in the Philippines. And you know what this disinformation cuts across all of them. So I mean you saw it in our shark tank. We had the you or else I would love to give that to Google and have them down ran some of that. Right. Because.

Kara Swisher: [00:26:39] This is just you doing their work for them. Correct?

Maria Ressa: [00:26:43] You know I… I guess for me when you’re dealing with this stuff. and you’re breathing it, it’s like toxic fumes every day. You just want a solution. And it takes… Imagine if somebody from America comes to the Philippines and tries to figure this out. It would take them a year. I already know it. Here take it. Do something with it. I don’t look at it as their work. I think OK. This is where I’ll be really generous. I know that they didn’t mean to do it. It is an extremely powerful tool and the reason why I continue to work with Facebook is because I think if they had the political will and the economic will to do this.

This is a game changer for the Philippines. Rappler couldn’t exist without Facebook. We zoomed we grew 100 to 300 percent year on year because of Facebook at the beginning in the good times. And I think they made a crucial error in 2015 and that was instant articles when they brought all the news groups in and then all of a sudden were at the same algorithms as the joke that you heard or what you had for dinner. And when we became mob rule when facts became determined by mob rule then it changed the ecosystem of democracy in the world.

Kara Swisher: [00:28:03] And what do you propose now that these… So, YouTube is a problem.

Maria Ressa: [00:28:09] YouTube is huge…

Kara Swisher: [00:28:09] A huge problem. Are you getting the same responses from them: So sorry. They’re really, really sorry. [laughter] No they really are. But they’re not in any way whatsoever.

Maria Ressa: [00:28:22] So yeah. Tell me do you think they will act on it?

Kara Swisher: [00:28:27] You know I have an expression that was from one of my grandparents: You’re so poor all you have is money. I think they like their billions. I think they think they’re doing good for the world. And I think they’re careless. It’s sort of like from The Great Gatsby. They were careless people and they moved, they did damage and moved on.

Maria Ressa: [00:28:47] But they now know they’re not. And they’re killing people. They know that now.

Kara Swisher: [00:28:52] I think they, what I’m getting now from a lot of people, is you’re so mean to us.

[laughter]

Maria Ressa: [00:28:59] Because I do see them see this.

Kara Swisher: [00:29:01] When they say that I’m like fuck you. [laughter, applause.] You know what I mean. So it’s very hard for me to. But they are there’s a lot of victimy.

Maria Ressa: [00:29:11] I mean until now. But you don’t know.

Kara Swisher: [00:29:14] No I think they’re they literally get angry when people say hey hey now you know hack democracy you really need to fix it. And they… I think one of the things that I find interesting is when there is money to be made or whatever, they are it’s their company. Yes.

And when there’s problems to be solved, it’s we all togethe have to solve it as a group. You know I mean and I’m like we didn’t get 64 billion dollars that I looked at. You know I have real old shoes. I don’t know. I mean we didn’t share in the upswing. And so I think again I joke. I’m so sorry but they feel badly but then I think are actually incapable in any way of taking care of it. I think they have they don’t have the mentality. They don’t have the talent. I think they’re incompetent to the task. That’s what I think.

Maria Ressa: [00:30:02] But if that’s the case they will die. I mean it’s going to be a slow painful death. But you know what I mean I guess for me I’m taking almost an opposite that it’s there’s this phrase on enlightened self-interest that is…

Kara Swisher: [00:30:17] One would think. One would think. No because this this will eventually… the product will become terrible to use.

Maria Ressa: [00:30:24] Right.

Kara Swisher: [00:30:25] Or it will become very addictive to use. And then what’s the difference? Like you said with cocaine, I think. So, how do you … what are you wanting. What would you like from them? You’d like them to become gatekeepers in other words.

Maria Ressa: [00:30:37] I don’t think they have a choice. I think they have to be. Otherwise we will leave. Right? Or again they’ll break be broken up by regulation or people will leave. In the Philippines so look at the immediate reaction. Alexa ranking of all the websites where do Filipinos go? From 2012 to 2016: number one Facebook. Undisputed. But then when the toxic sludge began mid-2016, by January 2017 on Alexa ranking Facebook dropped from number one to number eight. And then by January 2018, it went back to number five. In January 2019, right now, if you look at Alexa ranking in the Philippines, it’s number four.

So slowly they’re rising up but there’s no way. So, I mean my thing is if they don’t fix it we will leave. We will leave. So that’s why I think it is in their best interest they have no choice. But They are going to have to suck it up and they’re going to have to have they are going to have to hire real people. Machines can’t do this. But those real people will train the A.I. and it will get better over time and they will have to lose money because they will have to hire real people.

Kara Swisher: [00:31:52] So talk to me a little bit about that business because you’re trying to create a real business.

Maria Ressa: [00:31:57] Yeah. 2019 I’m trying to be a good CEO.

Kara Swisher: [00:32:00] Being arrested attacked and essentially they’re trying to put you out of business.

Maria Ressa: [00:32:07] The government.

Kara Swisher: [00:32:07] Talk about the actual business. Because it’s hard enough to do a digital effort. You know that. I know that.

Maria Ressa: [00:32:14] Yeah. So, in the Philippines and in many other parts of the world good journalism is really bad business and I wear both an executive editor hat and I’m the CEO so it’s my job to make sure our business survives. In 2017, when the attacks started happening we realized that and we had a big board battle. You know “you journalists, you know you gotta tone it down” from the business men. And then, from the journalists, because we had we were the largest group of shareholders in Rappler. We had 3 percent more votes. So we pushed forward and 2018 was mission and a lot of anger management issues. But 2019, I have to be a good CEO and we need to build the business. So what we’ve decided. So when you’re under attack by the government your advertisers get scared almost immediately they don’t want to be associated with the brand. They always say you know Maria we’re behind you but they’re very very far behind. [laughter].

Kara Swisher: [00:33:18] And nice Time cover!

Maria Ressa: [00:33:23] So I found out about it on Twitter. And I had to check whether it was real! But the time cover is the first time I saw the ecosystem come up like real people who were afraid. Fear is very real in the Philippines and I’m sorry. Before I before I talk about the fear and I just want to finish on the part about the business. So businessmen the businesses… they’re not the protectors of democracy. And even if their values say that they want to do that they just don’t because the money isn’t there. So, you can’t attack Facebook in the same way or if you’re run by businesses your values — sorry — they follow afterwards after the money. So, well, what we did is: We came up. We were forced to be agile. And A lot of the things that you saw–the mapping, trying to understand unstructured big data ,all of these things– we came up and pivoted and became a consultant. Like I essentially carved out another team that can do the same things we do for Rappler for other companies.

Kara Swisher: [00:34:37] So your business… so, in that environment what do you do? Because good journalism like you said is bad business.

Maria Ressa: [00:34:44] Rappler continues doing good journalism. And I’ve we’ve taken the business and pushed it away and we actually found a new business. The two things that we did. We’re the first in the Philippines… The crowdfunding part, actually I didn’t think it would work in the Philippines. But when our legal fees became like a quarter of the entire monthly spend, we asked our community and they helped. And that that helped pay for some of the legal fees. And then we, just December, we began a membership program we called it Rappler Plus. I don’t think it would have worked in the Philippines because unlike the United States or Europe unlike the more developed countries, we don’t have a history of that but not even subscriptions. People don’t want to pay for news especially in a country where you struggle to put food on your table three times a day. So the Rappler Plus took off much faster than I had expected and I think it is because of the fear. People are afraid and by standing up … By being the kid telling the emperor he has no clothes. By telling him he cannot do this with impunity.

This Is the most powerful man that we have had in since… I think he’s more powerful than Marcos was. He controls the executive. He owns the legislative and by the time he leaves office he will have appointed 11 of 13 Supreme Court justices. You guys in the states worry about one Supreme Court justice he’ll have appointed 11 of 13. This is our next generation. And It’s extremely worrisome, especially with this information warfare, with the young men in our country who are sucking up these fumes. You know the levels of misogyny according to our data women are attacked at least 10 times more than men.

Kara Swisher: [00:36:40] Alright, we have questions from the audience and then we are going to end. Are there questions from the audience? Yes, you over here. Right here. Put your hand up.

Recode’s Kara Swisher and Rappler CEO, Maria Ressa

Question: [00:36:51] Hi. Krishan Bhatia from NBCUniversal. Thank you for sharing this story and the insights and everything that you’re doing to uncover this. My question for you is in the US market, as we sit here today as premium publishers most of whom have some sort of news business and we serve large cap marketers in the US: What should we be doing differently with respect to Facebook in particular but platforms in general that we’re not doing.

Maria Ressa: [00:37:20] I think we have [to address the issue]: Who is the gatekeeper right now? But I think that ideas are very simple to me. If information is power. And the gatekeeping determines what information is taken by everyone. And we all focus … the debate in the US focus is on all of these different demographics and the polarization. The polarization happens because we don’t have the same facts. So it goes down to that. Please push. I think Kara asked the solution for me is when you have something like Facebook or YouTube moving beyond prescriptive to where we used to be which is what are the values? What are the principles like standards and ethics for journalism right? It can’t be prescriptive because. Ironically what they keep saying they defend free speech but free speech in this case is being used to stifle free speech. So, you’ve got to take the toxic sludge out of the body politic because that is killing us and everything else is organ failure you know because you’re not getting the oxygen that you need.

So please push you have far more power than little Rappler does in terms of pushing for action in my part of the world I guess you know maybe I’m happy with little because it’s been so long. We have elections in May and these take downs will do a lot. I’ve seen the reactions of the people running those those Facebook pages. But please look also do the investigations here in the United States. The data is coming out now. I think that our credibility are and I mean are for traditional media and the new ones coming up. I think we’re getting eaten up by termites without realizing that that the floorboards are about to crack. That’s why I think there’s a crisis of trust.

Kara Swisher: [00:39:19] Yes, I would agree with that. Finish on this question of fear because I think it’s a really important thing of fear of not speaking up of rocking the boat of all kinds of stuff or just people just are exhausted by it because you’re not doing journalism you’re spending time dealing with lawyers you’re spending time moving businesses around you’re not doing the actual job which of which you were.. used to do.

Maria Ressa: [00:39:43] Yeah that’s also true. I know it just means I’m not sleeping that much. But you know I find that the journalism… So look, Rappler has been mission-driven and all of the friction of a normal organization is gone because everyone who stayed with us and everyone did stay with us on the journalism side we lost sales and tax strangely. But the mission is so clear and the purpose is so clear and I think the challenge for all of our news groups is to be able to maintain that.

In a society, what fear does, what this stuff does is normal people will not… When you get attacked like this I didn’t show you any of the attacks, but when you’re attacked so viscerally when you’re threatened with rape with murder, you just shut up. And that’s exactly it’s meant to pound you into silence. But our community realizes this. So in a strange way. I. We’re not just journalists anymore also that’s weird.

Like when I’m at the airport sometimes a family a family came in and hugged me and I hug them back. I didn’t know who they were but it was because they are also they are afraid to speak. So when you speak for them you fulfill a role that I think that’s the mission of journalism. I think I have a natural tendency to be more positive I should hang out with you a little bit more. [laughter]

But you know when you’re in my place, I put one foot in front of the other. The mission is clear. We’re going to have to deal with this. And I think this is what Facebook has to realize. They have to get through this because it’s not just us. We’re just the canary in the coal mine. It’s here it’s happening here. Your problems are because of stuff like this. I think. I think it’s global.

Kara Swisher: [00:41:37] Are you scared?

Maria Ressa: [00:41:39] No because there’s too much to do. Not right now. You know there are times when I think it was far worse when no one was paying attention because when the attacks were so personal the first two weeks…I got 90 hate messages per hour. Not one nine. Nine zero hate messages per hour. And when I got that, it took me two weeks to just figure out how do how am I going to deal with this and what’s real and what’s not and then do I need security? You know all of that stuff. So no I’m not afraid because now I know what it is. And the data helps me understand it. So that’s the certainty. That’s why I know it’s important to have the facts. You cannot fight back if you don’t have the facts.

Kara Swisher: [00:42:24] All right. On that note Maria Ressa. [applause]

Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of February 14, 2019

February 14, 2019 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

The New York Times | Maria Ressa, Philippine Journalist Critical of Rodrigo Duterte, Is Arrested (4 min read)

Ad Age | Publishers cry foul at Apple’s terms in new sub service (4 min read)
Nieman Lab | A major British government review proposes some light regulation of Google and Facebook (and perhaps new limits on the BBC) (19 min read)

The Australian Business Review | Google’s one-sided plan is bad audio news for all of us (4 min read)

New York Magazine | Can Subscriptions Save All Media Companies, or Just the New York Times? (7 min read)
Wired | Journalism Isn’t Dying. It’s Returning to Its Roots (7 min read)
LinkedIn | Taking advantage of data, without taking advantage of people (4 min read)
Quartz | The decline of high-quality journalism is a market failure, says an official UK report (4 min read)
Columbia Journalism Review | News media needs to convince readers to open their wallets. Consolidation has not helped. (9 min read)

Nieman Lab | Here’s where your new readers are going to come from in 2019 (12 min read)

Balancing the equation: In a fair market, subscriptions work

February 14, 2019 Jason Kint, CEO – DCN

The best things in life aren’t free, they’re loved.

In the table-setting remarks opening the 2019 DCN: Next Summit, I shared a publisher challenge that I strongly believe our industry is well on its way to overcoming: “Fighting the pervasive mentality that content must be free.”

While there is speculation that subscriptions won’t work for many content companies online, there are a growing number of companies succeeding with subscriptions as well as other direct to consumer revenue models.

Truth be told: We don’t know if direct revenues from the audience will suffice to sustain the industry in the broadest sense. However, there are positive trends on all dimensions. We’re certainly seeing more evidence across the DCN membership that people are willing to pay for premium publisher services. It’s no longer simply the financial or national news outlets that can garner subscription and membership revenues. Local news outlets, entertainment channels, and new bundles are attracting consumer revenue. We’ve started to capture these learnings in DCN research, as well as through our events on direct audience revenues.

We see three positive subscription trends happening:

If you want to differentiate a news or entertainment service, you need to compare it to the rest of your category on YouTube or the Facebook news feed. Your offering, your brand, needs to clearly stand out as compared to the next best user-generated offering in the ways more and more users are discovering it.
Every new subscription to a publisher’s product drives more intelligence and more investment back into the product so that the next subscription is easier to convert. In a world of more stable and dependable payments from your audience, it’s also easier to drive a percent of the revenue back into constantly improving the product (see trend 1) whether it be hiring more journalists or adapting the experience to the needs of the audience.
The population that has grown up with digital devices shops for news and entertainment with the tap of their fingerprint on a mobile device. Subscribing to Spotify, Netflix, Hulu, Apple Music, and more is a way of life for them. They will not hesitate to invest in news and entertainment that they trust and value. Each successful experience drives their behavior going forward and is more likely to bring their friends into the market of paying subscribers.

Importance of free to Google and Facebook

Whenever the sentiment is shared that people simply won’t pay for content in the digital age of abundance, it’s likely that Facebook or Google is lurking around a corner. They’re a crafty pair. Often, they prop up this notion with a truly worrying concern: that a shift to paid content will only serve to further divide the public based on ability to pay. However, their intention is to protect their free fortresses. An industry-wide effort and belief that audiences will pay for content is bad business for them. Hence the veiled efforts over the years to spin the narrative and control the outcome.

DCN has long established that the free digital content market has mainly benefited these two companies. The math is simple, and it’s been cited far and wide. However, it’s important to recognize how critical the free content ecosystem is to their unbalanced equation. And you don’t have to take our word for it. On Monday night, the UK government released the long-anticipated Cairncross Review, which contains over 150 pages of analysis of the digital news marketplace.

The Cairncross Review highlights two clear problems with the disturbing dominance of the Google and Facebook business models:

1. The first problem (that forms the foundation of the duopoly’s dominance) is Google’s control over the buying, selling, transacting, and measuring of the digital ad marketplace. As Cairncross so eloquently puts it:

“Google has ad inventory in the form of Google Search and YouTube videos, and it owns ‘demand side technologies’ (used by advertisers to bid and buy inventory online), such as Display & Video 360 and Google Ads, and supply side intermediaries (that publishers will use to sell their ad space to advertisers), such as Ad Manager and AdSense. It also owns supplementary technologies such as Chrome browsers, Google Analytics (a ‘freemium’ web analytics service that tracks and reports website traffic as a basic free service, with more advanced features that can be paid for), and the Android mobile operating system.”

It’s clear what’s wrong with this: Antitrust much?

2. The second problem that bolsters the foundation of these platforms’ superiority is Google and Facebook’s unmatched ability to collect voluminous amounts of personal data on peoples’ everyday interests and behaviors in both the digital and physical worlds. Again, Cairncross astutely captures:

“Publishers gather user data from their own sites, including login data for their subscribers, but this pales in comparison to the power of online platforms, which have a rich set of user data giving them significant advantage over others in the market. Whether it is search data (Google), the social networks of users (Facebook) or generally the devices, locations, interests and behaviours of users online (both), these players have an unimaginable wealth of information – valuable to advertisers and publishers – about who is coming to which news sites, and who is seeing which adverts.”

Google and Facebook are fueled by the amount of personal data available to their heavily-controlled advertising systems. Subscriptions inevitably create more user friction and restrict the flow of data. This means that movement towards subscriptions also forces these companies to step outside their carefully constructed profit guardrails. For risk-taking Silicon Valley start-ups, they’re terrible at stepping outside their shareholder comforts. Cairncross hits the nail on the head in calling for regulatory scrutiny (without mincing words) of these businesses — in how they deal with publishers, their position in the advertising market, and how their algorithms make decisions in promoting journalism.

So, who is the knight in shining armor?

To be clear, there are also positive moves by industry and government to encourage these developments. Interestingly, the Cairncross Review takes a similar position to the Canadian government by recommending a tax incentive for subscribers to news, local news, or investigative content. Again, we agree with this recommendation and expect it would help support publishers.

To their credit, Google and Facebook have made donations to innovation, journalism institutes and, in the case of Facebook, run seminars to share best practices on subscriptions. Again, their profit guardrails make it impossible for real moonshots. So, while these are good efforts, they are not enough.

And then there is Apple. A company with the leadership, the payment systems, the brand architecture, and lack of dependence on everything in between Facebook and Google’s profit guardrails (data collection, advertising). And, as news starts to trickle out on Apple’s plans for a subscription news service, there is a lot to like in it. However, as I shared with Ad Age, the reported 50% revenue share is offensive especially if it also comes with the risk of another intermediary controlling the customer relationship. I’m frankly surprised they would roll out with anything close to these terms and hopeful it’s merely a head fake.

I don’t have any proprietary information, but my back-of-the-envelope numbers on Apple’s offering means that the 100 million monthly users of Apple News translate to approximate 10-20 million daily users. Even if 10 million of these users moved into a subscription tier, this is a mere $120 million in revenue. And according to what’s being reported, a paltry $60 million would get divided between all of the participating news companies. That math doesn’t add up. If Apple has higher confidence in their model and ability to expand the market, then they’re going to need to put some revenue share behind it.

It’s just business. Oh, and the future of journalism.

Industry-Research | Innovation

How to avoid making AI “discriminatory by design”

February 13, 2019 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

Artificial intelligence (AI) is part of today’s decision-making process. It’s used when companies identify the value and risk of issuing credit cards or forecasting unemployment benefits. It’s also used in employee recruitment and the college admissions process. Since AI is based on machine learning, each small decision impacts larger ones. Unfortunately, AI algorithms, especially among those conducted in black boxes, may include discriminatory practices. A biased outcome may not necessarily be the intent of the algorithm, but it can easily be a by-product.

Frederik Zuiderveen Borgesius, Professor of Law at the Institute for Computing and Information Sciences (iCIS), Radboud University Nijmegen, addresses issues of AI bias in his new report Discrimination, artificial intelligence, and algorithmic decision-making. Borgesius analyzes the AI process to better understand how unfair differentiation can be produced. He wrote this report specifically for the Anti-discrimination department of the Council of Europe. However, it is an important read for anyone involved in or thinking of using AI in decision-making.

The AI Decision-making Process

It’s important to first understand the basics of an AI decision-making program. AI involves machine-learning to find correlations in data sets. It uses algorithms to identify the relationships in a set of related attributes or activities, also known as class labels. The class labels separate all possibilities into mutually exclusive categories. When building a machine learning tool, programmers use class labels to predict a derived outcome or what is called the targeted variable.

To understand how this is works in a common application, think of a spam filter. The spam filter is an AI program that sorts through email messages and identifies those that are “spam” and “non-spam.” The program uses archives of older emails labeled as spam or non-spam to help identify the characteristics (a certain phrase, an email address or an IP address) of each.

Professor Borgesius references the work of Solon Barocas and Andrew D. Selbst, two academic research experts, who identify five ways in which the AI decision-making process can lead unintentionally to discrimination.

How AI Leads to Discrimination

1. Defining the target variables and class labels

When defining target variables and class labels, it’s important to think beyond how they are defined. For example, let’s say a company wants to define an “engaged employee.” A variable assigned to an engaged employee is someone who is never late for work. Unfortunately, this could negatively impact employees who do not own a car and depend on public transportation. Car ownership can also reflect higher income while reliance on public transportation can connote lower income. Therefore, this class label of never being late creates a bias against lower income employees. Mindfulness in the usage and creation of class labels is important to prevent built-in biases.

2. The training data: labelling examples

AI decision-making also offers discriminatory results if the system “learns” from discriminatory training data. All training data should be scrutinized to ensure against biases. For example, a medical school decided to use AI decision-making in its application process. The training data for the programs included old admission files from 1980. Unfortunately, the acceptance policy in the 1980s was heavily weighted against women and immigrants. While the AI program was not introducing new biases, it included those inherent in the admissions process of the older applications.

3. Training data: data collection

The sampling process of the data collection must be free of biases. If the sampling process is biased, it will train the predictive models and reproduce the biases. For example, the number of police officers sent to patrol a neighborhood is often dependent on key variables such as neighborhood size or density, etc. If a larger number of officers patrol a neighborhood and report a high level of crime, we need to understand the factors involved. Otherwise, the data amplifies a high crime rate in this neighborhood when it could be that was a higher ratio of officers to see more crimes in progress.

4. Feature selection

A programmer selects the categories or features of data to include in their AI system. By selecting certain features, a programmer may introduce bias against certain groups. For example, many companies in the U.S. hire employees who graduated from an ivy league university. An ivy league education cost significantly more than a state university. If a company uses ivy league universities as part of their data features, they are establishing a bias against individuals of lower income. Data features must be fully accessed to ensure characteristics do not introduce bias in the results.

5. Proxies

Sometimes measures to make a relevant and well-informed decision may lend themselves to a biasness. Zip codes are often used as a neutral criterion to provide socio-economic information for decisions on loans, credit cards, insurance, etc. However, if a zip code is used as proxy to identify people of a specific race or gender, it will impact business results.

Summary

Importantly, transparency of AI systems and the decision-making process is necessary. Borgesius, as well as other academic scholars, advocate for the development of transparency enhancing technologies (TETs) to drive meaningful transparency of the algorithmic processes. AI decision-making can result in negative consequences for people, especially protected member classes. Caution must be used in algorithmic decision-making to ensure AI does not pave the way for discrimination.

Advertising | Innovation | Revenue

CPM is old news: The business case for selling content differently

February 12, 2019 Trisha Stefani, VP, Media Partnerships – Pressboard

Of the millions pieces of content that are published online every day, only 10% are ever seen.

If that shockingly low statistic makes your heart sink, you’re certainly not alone. Publishers across the globe are fighting the increasingly difficult battle to get their articles in front of the right people – or even just real people. From fake ad impressions to the death of organic traffic, the digital maze that your content needs to navigate its way through before appearing on the newsfeeds of your target audience is becoming more and more complex.

This crowded, often disingenuous advertising landscape has brought the industry to something of a crossroads. Quality engagement is both publishers’ most valuable and scarcest commodity. It’s also more expensive to achieve than ever before. So how do publishers give advertisers more of what they want without spending themselves into the red to deliver it?

Perhaps the greatest obstacle to winning the fight for engagement is the CPM, or cost per thousand impressions, model. Only by tossing this outdated method of ad performance measurement out the window can the industry move forward. But what’s so bad about CPM, and what should be called upon to replace it?

Out With the Old…

The CPM model was created during a time when banner ads and impressions reigned supreme. Getting an impression on a banner ad only required a reader to open the webpage and view the ad for a second, which is fine when you’re raising awareness of a shoe sale or a flight deal. But it simply doesn’t work for content. Whether that content is an article, a video, or a social post, its power comes from engaging readers or viewers with a story for an extended period of time, during which they become aware of your values and develop a connection with a brand’s voice. Scrolling past a sponsored headline on your homepage just doesn’t deliver the same result.

The mass publisher shift towards branded content and content marketing arose out of a desire to forge more meaningful relationships with customers — and when was the last time you made a connection with someone in a second? For this reason, selling on impressions and praying you succeed doesn’t work. This model also doesn’t put value on the thing publishers are best at: crafting an engaging, powerful story. Content needs a new measurement (and pricing) strategy that better reflects its strengths and rewards publishers for their efforts.

… And in With the New

If you’re seeking guaranteed, meaningful interactions with your stories, one possible solution could be the Cost Per Read (CPR) model. Where CPM measures split-second impressions better suited to display ads, CPR bundles the content with a number of high-quality reads, so advertisers know exactly what to expect.

The rapidly growing and evolving digital advertising landscape also demands a greater degree of flexibility and control over content. To cover the reach limitations of models like CPM, publishers often tack on things like banners, social posts, and e-newsletter mentions in order to drive engagement. These tactics (and their associated costs) can earn pushback from advertisers who want to see as many of their hard-earned dollars go towards content as possible. To better reflect this modern mindset, the CPR model focuses solely on drawing in quality views to a piece of content, making investing in branded content less risky and removing ambiguity around campaign deliverables.

How the Death of Organic Traffic Killed the CPM

CPR also puts publishers back in the driver’s seat in terms of amplification. Organic traffic has been rapidly declining since 2014. And when Facebook swung its metaphorical axe down upon the News Feed in 2018, it seemed as though the industry would never recover. Publishers had spent years honing their Facebook promotion skills and building a larger, more dedicated audience through the platform, only to have that effort made to feel pointless. Reaching the same readers they used to reach suddenly cost significantly more, making content amplification a loss-leader for many sites.

But it doesn’t have to be. Business models like CPR allow publishers to charge a premium on amplification. That’s because advertisers want to leverage a publisher’s brand and audience to reach as many people as possible. From a profitability standpoint, it also creates an opportunity to generate more revenue on additional earned reads. As long as you’re confident in your story and your amplification skills, you can earn incremental revenue for every new person reached.

Additionally, CPR allows you to grow site traffic on someone else’s dime, because the cost of the social amplification used to drive traffic to branded content is factored into the pre-set cost per read. This wider readership closely aligns with your own target audience, meaning you can connect with new readers who may someday become a loyal part of your audience.

Digital advertising is an innovative, fleet-footed industry that demands a great deal of adaptability from publishers, brands and agencies alike. In the tug-of-war over audience engagement, you’ll want the business model that favors quality attention over cursory impressions on your side.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion | Uncategorized

A conversation about media engineering with Bloomberg’s Pooja Malpani

February 11, 2019 DCN

Pooja Malpani joined Bloomberg in October 2018 as the head of engineering for Bloomberg Media. We spoke with her about her new role, in which she leads the team responsible for Consumer Web, Media & Marketing engineering. This includes supporting Bloomberg.com, consumer mobile applications, and the systems that deliver marketing-moving news, data, audio and video to consumers and syndication partners – among other Bloomberg websites. The conversation – which covers her background in technology, technical challenges faced by the media industry, and diversity in the tech sector – was edited for length and clarity.

What’s your professional background?

I earned my bachelor of technology in computer science from Model Engineering College in India and my master’s in computer science from Indiana University. After completing my degrees, I worked at a few small companies before joining Microsoft as a software design engineer. I worked there for 9 years and spent most of my time on Microsoft Lync and Skype. Most recently, I was a senior engineering manager at HBO, where I oversaw subscription management for HBO video streaming. This included integration with several affiliates on HBO GO and paywall support in HBO NOW to ensure that HBO streaming could acquire new users and authorize existing users to browse and watch content. When millions of users logged in concurrently to watch a show like Game of Thrones, my team ensured that the back-end user services could handle that load gracefully.

What interested you in technology and engineering?

As a young girl in India, I loved mathematics, logic, and problem solving and wanted to be a logician. In my teenage years, I learned about computers and programmers and discovered that software engineering and coding was a natural fit for me. I was fortunate to find a booming tech industry and a career that was so well aligned with my interests.

How has the technology changed since you started in the field?

Today’s problems are more complex and we use different tools and languages to develop solutions.

Since starting my career, there’s been an evolution in messaging – from the ICQ client (released in 1996) to Yahoo! Messenger (released in 1998) and Skype (released in 2003). Facebook and Gmail were also launched, creating a platform for users and data to grow over the years, which resulted in an evolution of storage and retrieval technology. The world has become more connected than ever, with more than 2 billion smartphone users. Tech companies that noticed this trend became early adopters and employed mobile-first strategies. Today, there are emerging technologies – including virtual reality, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, home assistants, location-based services and voice recognition – which are creating unique user experiences.

Many businesses are dealing with data on a scale they haven’t experienced before. For example, WeChat, a popular instant messaging client in China that’s also used for banking, shopping and playing games, now has about 1 billion users, and Facebook has about 2.5 billion users using at least one of their apps, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger. Advancements in technology and cloud services have evolved to support horizontal and vertical scaling to address large data.

How has the development of technology solutions for the media industry changed since you started in the field?

We’ve gone from analog to digital video and from DVDs and CDs to internet streaming – more than 50% of young American adults use streaming to watch TV as opposed to subscribing to traditional cable packages. Media companies are launching their own over-the-top (OTT) applications that stream content directly to consumers rather than only relying on linear subscription models.

For Bloomberg Media, users have direct access to content through Bloomberg.com or our mobile app, and our machine learning algorithms curate content to create a personalized experience for users. Breaking news on Bloomberg’s live blog can cause a spike in web traffic, and the right technology and investment are necessary to ensure that our systems can manage varying traffic patterns in a resource-efficient manner without adversely impacting user experience.

Our OTT offering has been part of our strategy for many years and it is available across multiple platforms, including Roku, Apple TV, Google TV and Samsung Smart TVs. The Bloomberg channel on the Roku platform offers the best of OTT, Video on-Demand and Live TV viewing experiences. Bloomberg Media was also one of the first media companies to offer OTT through Amazon Fire TV and was first to partner with Amazon for an Alexa Skill.

What are some of the key technical challenges that Bloomberg Media is faced with?

We have to be very mindful as we cater to different audiences, and each audience wants to consume their news in different mediums, such as digital, TV, radio, print or live events, as well as different formats, like a summary versus long-form article. In supporting these different formats and mediums across audio and video, there were a number of technical challenges that we overcame by building tools and processes to support the editorial teams. When editors are creating their stories, we provide them with a rich toolset to take advantage of different mediums without complicating their workflow, as well as provide them with flexible systems that render stories in different formats. In addition, we have built sophisticated edit dashboards and data visualization systems that the newsroom relies on for creating, curating and tagging stories. Bloomberg prides itself on speed, and as we accommodate our segmented audience, we must make sure latency is kept in check.

What do you see as the future of the media industry and what role does technology play?

Currently, we are witnessing a wave of media companies launching an OTT offering to complement their linear offering so they can meet their users where they are. Over the long-term, I don’t think users will want to manage and pay for more than six to 10 subscriptions. We can expect to start seeing some bundled subscriptions, either a la carte or skinny bundles to offset that overhead.

I think we’ll continue to see a decline in print news consumption, which means that digital news consumption via podcasts, video, web or apps across all devices will continue to increase over time. As users move from print to digital, advertising will follow. Engagement is going to be a key metric, so, to combat the shift to digital and user churn, many media companies are investing in user retention strategies rather than solely focusing on user acquisition strategies.

What’s something interesting that you find people often don’t know about Bloomberg and its engineering department?

I originally thought of Bloomberg as a financial services company. But, while there are journalists, analysts, and customer support agents, engineering is actually the company’s largest discipline. Bloomberg is really a technology company that builds software used by finance companies and others. Bloomberg has solid engineering rigor and some of the industry’s best software developers. Bloomberg is a very technical org and that runs deep across departments. I am constantly amazed by Bloomberg’s use and creation of cutting-edge frameworks and software. Bloomberg also uses and contributes to open source software actively.

Throughout your career, you’ve been a champion for gender diversity in technology. Are you seeing changes? What else needs to change and how can other engineers at Bloomberg and across the industry help?

Fewer women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) is, unfortunately, a global phenomenon. When I pursued computer engineering at university, I was one of 17 women in a class of 60. The number of women shrinks as you move into postgraduate studies, teaching, or work your way up in the industry. While there have been advocates for gender parity all along, over the last two decades, we have witnessed the numbers grow and, as a result, gather enough momentum that this a topic that is front and center in diversity initiatives across the industry. We can find solutions to problems we understand, and the first step is to acknowledge the problem. So, personally, I am very happy to see an open dialog on the low women:men ratio. We often blame the pipeline for not having a large pool of women candidates despite women making up 50% of the world’s population. We have to get more creative to effect a change in getting more women to reach the “pipeline.”

Bloomberg supports Teach First in the UK, which recruits, trains and places great new teachers in STEM in the schools they’re needed in, as well as partners with the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT), whose “Aspirations in Computing” (AiC) initiative and community increase female participation in tech careers through mentoring and sponsorship. Bloomberg also has programs such as Returner Circles to support and engage talented women looking to return to full-time roles after a career break.

Helping women and other underrepresented minorities as they start their careers is important. Technologists can train and prep them for job interviews. Managers and senior engineers can mentor interns and minorities who work within and outside their company. Technologists can provide advice to students exploring whether to pursue computer science or STEM degrees. We need more male champions and allies to join the cause as the next generation of potential tech leaders pursue their career goals. There’s great promise when some of the smartest people in the world are working to address the gender disparity problem.

You once told the Herstory of Tech podcast that you had to get special permission from your dean and parents in order to access the engineering lab at your college in India, but your male colleagues didn’t. How have things changed since then in terms of women getting access to educational opportunities in STEM?

I was competing with two other students, in a .NET contest held by Microsoft across Asia in 2000. This was a new technology platform at the time, and the computer labs were locked at 6 PM. Male students could request late access easily, but being female, I was told by the dean that I needed written consent from my father. At the time I thought it was more unfair than outrageous. Apparently, I was the first female student to make such a request. Things are improving, and, on a positive note, investments go a long way in encouraging diversity and supporting the next generation. Efforts like the GHC Scholarships administered by AnitaB.org or the Emma Bowen Foundation Fellows Program, which provides internships for students of color, can change the education system. Just as important, women don’t need special permission to use computer labs today. We are on a good trajectory, and we need to continue moving forward.

What’s your favorite thing about working at Bloomberg?

Projects move very quickly through the ideation, planning and execution workflow to deliver new features to the customers. This is true even for the most complex initiatives that have multiple stakeholders. I love that about Bloomberg.

What’s your favorite aspect of Bloomberg’s culture?

Bloomberg prides itself on transparency. You see this in the physical office space, which has glass walls; the television and radio studios and conference rooms are also glass and all employees share an open office plan. Transparency flows through to how people work – two teams are never solving the same problem, employee calendars are shared across their teams and we don’t have redundancies because of this transparency.

This post originally appeared on the Tech at Bloomberg Blog.

Perspectives

How consumer privacy regulation creates opportunities for publishers

February 8, 2019 Mike Pugh, Senior Manager, Client Solutions—IPONWEB

One of the main drivers behind programmatic’s meteoric growth (at least on the demand side) has been the ability to leverage data to find and buy specific users, out of seemingly infinite opportunities, wherever they might be online.

After all, this enabling of “audience-based buying” brought marketers closer to their long-held notion of advertising utopia: reaching the right person, with the right message, at the right time, in the right context.

Data Dilemma

It also, theoretically, went a long way to minimizing wasted ad spend and enabled significant performance gains. The ad dollars flowed. But this shift took its toll on the sell-side.

To secure programmatic budgets (which were growing steadily and taking dollars away from their direct IO business), publishers had to relinquish control over their hard-won audiences by allowing cookie access to DSP partners in real time via cookie syncing. In doing so, they allowed the buy-side to build up and store those valuable audiences in their own platforms, reducing the need to work with publishers directly to gain access to or insights about their users.

Regulation Matters

The rapid proliferation of user-based targeting has understandably been followed by recent increased focus on consumer privacy. The GDPR went into effect across EU member states in May of last year, limiting unfettered access to user information and the ability to share that information with multiple parties across the ecosystem.

With passage of the California Consumer Privacy Act (which really means all of the US, given California’s outsized influence) and the likely imminent passage of the ePrivacy Regulation in the EU in the second half of 2019, the push for greater consumer privacy legislation seems unstoppable. France’s recent lawsuit against Google also indicates that common industry solutions and frameworks for satisfying new consumer data collection, usage, and privacy regulations aren’t always holding up to legal scrutiny, making the prospect of sharing data widely across partners and vendors increasingly difficult in the future.

While the enactment of these measures on such a global scale erodes the value (and calls into question the long-term viability) of cookie-based buying, it may also open a door for publishers to regain over their data and audiences and re-assert their position in the advertising value chain.

Data Diligence

Here are three tips for publishers looking to capitalize on the moment:

Limit access to your pages

A quick Ghostery check across a number of premium sites shows just how easy it is for 3rd-parties to build pools of data on a given publisher’s audiences. Publishers should be constantly evaluating who has access to their users, and what they’re doing with the data they’re collecting. Partners who add value, either by enhancing audience segments with additional data, or providing analytics and attribution services, should be prioritized. Others, who may be packaging up and reselling data, should be de-prioritized or even culled. An added benefit to this pruning process: faster page loading for users.

Use your data to enhance deals with buyers

Creating greater audience scarcity (enabled through the culling process mentioned above) opens a door for publishers to work more closely with advertisers looking to gain access to their users (and maximize the yield they see from those users). Striking guaranteed and non-guaranteed deals directly with advertisers based on 1st-party audience segments gives publishers the ability to more closely link the cost of media to the value of audiences, and thereby extract greater revenue from their inventory, while also benefiting parties up and down the supply chain. Advertisers enjoy the confidence of targeting audiences using the most recent and accurate data pools. And DSPs and SSPs executing the deals incur less waste (and listening costs), because the inventory is pre-filtered to match only the audience the buyer wants.

Let advertisers bring their own data

More than just building and monetizing their own audiences, publishers should start allowing advertisers to bring their first-party data to the table. One of the main benefits to this strategy is that buyers are able to trust the veracity of the audiences they’re buying. From a publisher’s perspective, it opens up new options for inventory segmentation that may not have existed within their proprietary audience pools. Overlaying additional data will always limit scale, by matching cookies at the source of origin rather than through DSP and SSP intermediaries. And publishers and advertisers can at least maximize match rates, minimize data loss, and decrease the risk of inefficient decisioning down the line – thereby offsetting scale issues to the greatest extent possible (while also commanding very premium CPMs).

Audience First

Consumer privacy legislation is pushing us to the point where the party closest to the consumer – typically the publisher – will increasingly enjoy exclusive access to those audiences as well. When we add the unique ability to know who that user is and what their interests are, the value soars. Couple this with the decline in quality and scale in the open exchange and what you have is publisher data that hasn’t been this valuable since programmatic began to take off.

Following these three steps will help publishers maximize that value. It will also deliver greater efficiencies and performance to advertising partners as well as privacy consideration to valued users.

About the Author

Mike Pugh is a Senior Solution Consultant at IPONWEB where he acts as the intermediary between clients and IPONWEB’s design, delivery, and engineering teams to create custom ad tech projects. He is responsible for bringing client-specific solutions to market and ensuring a successful execution of the solution, strategy, and opportunity. Mike is currently the team lead on the TrustX SSP as well as other strategic business accounts. Prior to joining IPONWEB, he led a team of 14 programmatic traders at Accuen, Omnicom’s trading desk. Mike has experience managing programmatic buying campaigns across the Autos, Retail, CPG, Financial, and Pharma verticals on most major DSPs. Mike graduated from the University of Iowa with a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics and DePaul University with a Master’s Degree in Economics & Policy Analysis.

Perspectives | Uncategorized

DCN’s must reads: week of February 7, 2019

February 7, 2019 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

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

The Financial Times | News groups search for a business model beyond advertising (4 min read)
The New York Times | Trump Discusses Claims of ‘Fake News,’ and Their Impact, With New York Times Publisher (30 min read)
AdExchanger | ‘They Raised Too Much Money’: Digital Media Heads Reflect On Layoffs At Peer Companies (4 min read)
The New York Times | Digital Media: What Went Wrong (9 min read)
NiemanLab | Newsonomics: Amid screaming alarms, consolidation mania turns feverish (14 min read)
Fast Company | FX CEO John Landgraf blasts Netflix for “not telling you the whole story” (2 min read)
Fox Business | Fortune CEO says these media companies are leading the industry’s future (2 min read)
NiemanLab | Researchers crunched 13 TB of local newspaper subscriber data. Here’s what they found about who sticks around. (3 min read)

Why everyone’s getting into streaming and how they plan to compete for eyeballs

February 7, 2019 Erik Martin—Independent Journalist

Want to keep up with the latest plays in the streaming game? You practically need a scorecard and the guidance of a fast-talking play-by-play announcer to keep up. For proof, consider just some of the latest streaming service bombshells to hit the news in the past few weeks:

Viacom purchased Pluto TV, an AVOD service.
Sinclair introduced Stirr, featuring content from its 191 TV stations.
Amazon debuted IMDB Freedive, an AVOD service.
Netflix and Hulu raised subscription prices.
NBCUniversal is prepping a free, ad-supported video on demand (AVOD) service available to anyone who already subscribes to a pay-TV plan or for $12 to those without pay-TV.
BBC and Discovery to pool wildlife programs in subscription streaming deal
WarnerMedia decided its forthcoming streaming service will feature some content supported by ads.
NBCUniversal announced its OTT roadmap.
ESPN+ passes 2 million subscribers in under a year
The Criterion Channel set an April launch date for its streaming service.
Disney continues to ramp up its Disney+ streaming service, expected to launch later this year.

All of these moves speak, of course, to a larger and evolving trend: Anybody and everybody in the media business seems to be getting in on the OTT act. The idea is to take their product direct to the consumer via an AVOD or SVOD (subscription-supported video on demand) model. And that’s creating an increasingly crowded field of competitors.

It will be fascinating to see who else enters the fray and who will survive and thrive in a crowded OTT world where consumers only have so much viewing time. To help make better sense of all the market chaos—and understand what streaming services will need to do to stand out from the crowd—I spoke with several industry experts.

Why more media players want in on streaming

It’s no big surprise why news and entertainment companies are jumping in and jostling for position in an already congested OTT pool: Consumers crave streaming content.

“They don’t want the same bundle of channels they receive today. And they don’t want the same, scheduled experience they’ve had for decades,” according to Peter Naylor, senior vice president/head of advertising sales for Santa Monica-based Hulu, which now has 25 million subscribers. “Consumers want choice and control in their TV experience. In order to continue to reach consumers, TV must move from a business ruled by cable and satellite gatekeepers and by a traditional schedule to a model where the consumer truly gets to choose.”

Billy Nayden, research analyst for Parks Associates in Dallas, agrees. “Younger consumers are watching traditional television at decreasing rates. In order to reach them with video content, internet video is a necessity. A dedicated streaming service helps facilitate delivery of that video and gives consumers a centralized place to access content,” Nayden says.

Offering a direct-to-consumer streaming service also provides some unique benefits.

“Broadcasters and content companies are able to collect data on consumption and their audience, which is often not available through over-the-air broadcasts or pay-TV providers. Direct offerings also provide a hedge in pay-TV licensing negotiations, allowing networks to reach consumers even when blackouts occur on pay TV,” adds Nayden.

Overcoming multiple challenges

However, experts caution that fragmentation of content sources, changing viewer habits, multiple direct competitors, and rising content costs make competition in streaming extremely difficult.

“The number of streaming services available globally has exploded in the past few years, and they are now competing not just with other streaming services but also pay TV, user-generated content like YouTube, and digital entertainment options like video games for consumer time and eyeballs. Standing out and innovating in a crowded ecosystem is a major challenge,” says Nayden.

Laura Martin, senior media analyst for New York City-headquartered Needham and Company, says discovery and clutter are huge problems. “Roku has nearly 4,000 video apps of free TV and about 1,000 apps of SVOD that the 28 million connected TVs in their network can choose from,” she says. “That’s many more choices than the 200 channels you typically have in a linear pay TV bundle.”

Additionally, to succeed long-term in the streaming space you need deep pockets, says Dan Rayburn, principal analyst at Frost & Sullivan in New York City. “Think about who’s behind the big services today—Sling TV is owned by Dish, Direct Now is owned by AT&T, and Hulu is co-owned by Disney and Comcast” (as well as Fox and AT&T), Rayburn points out. “A lot of these services can’t stand on their own as a profitable platform because the costs to license and create all their content is too high.”

You also need a deep library of content to compete effectively, per Alan Breznick, cable/video practice leader for Light Reading in Toronto. “Although, if you’re a niche player going after a specialized market, like wrestling fans or hobbyists, and no one else has such a channel yet, then you don’t necessarily need a huge library of old content,” says Breznick.

Another huge hurdle? Retention. “You’ve got to worry about churn rates and how to keep your customers as well as keeping the cost of acquiring customers down,” Breznick adds.

Plus, “it’s going to get harder for the smaller companies because so many of the big competitors entering this space—like Sinclair, NBC and Disney—have free marketing opportunities. They have other media outlets with unsold ad inventory they can use to promote their streaming services,” says Martin.

A myriad of models

In the OTT space, there is no such thing as one size fits all. A variety of service models and pricing tiers exist that often make it difficult for analysts and consumers alike to compare apples to apples (see Sidebar for an overview of the major services). Some brands strictly follow a direct-to-consumer formula while others also partner with a pay-TV service (by, for example, offering authenticated streaming apps). And some services run ads while others don’t.

“Ads have always been in the mix for many of these subscription channels because the cost to make and license the content is still too high—you can’t make enough money on subscription alone,” says Rayburn. He notes that ad-free Netflix—despite its 139 million paying subscribers—still expects a negative cash flow of $3 billion in 2019. This is likely a big reason why it recently raised (and will continue to raise) its subscription fee.

“It’s tricky. We’ve had this mentality as consumers that content should be free for a long time, thanks to YouTube and others. Now, we’ve got several channels charging up to $15 or more per month and live services like YouTube TV charging $40 and up monthly,” Rayburn says. “The question is, how much higher can streaming services push their prices before consumers say no?”

Strategies for success

Ian Wishingrad, creative director/founder of BigEyedWish in New York City, says the formula for sustainability and profitability in the streaming market is simple. “Have award-winning content. ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ legitimized Hulu and ‘House of Cards’ legitimized Netflix. You also need the right price. If you’re good and your price is right, you’ll get hits,” says Wishingrad.

Nayden seconds that sentiment. “To maintain subscribers, services must offer a variety of compelling content exclusive to their particular service,” says Nayden.

That’s why, according to Naylor, “over the last year, we’ve focused a lot on adding more content to the service, including full series runs of shows like ‘ER’ and ‘Lost,’ and new originals like ‘Castle Rock.’”

Content may be king, but so are customers, insists Breznick.“You really have to know your customers and the market you’re going after.”.

Offering your patrons more choices—in programming as well as pricing—can go a long way, too. “Convenience to the consumer is the new service. Giving options makes you flexible and cool, versus ‘this is the rule, take it or leave it,’ Wishingrad adds.

Ask Martin and she’ll tell you that the best way forward for OTT services is to “have at least two revenue streams, such as subscription-supported, ad-supported, eCommerce, micro-payments, etcetera.”

And, as mentioned, partnering with pay-TV providers could bring increased visibility and exposure to your service, “especially among consumers who otherwise would not have known about the service,” suggests Nayden. “Until recently, the operator set-top box has remained one of the few in-home connected devices that OTT video services were unable to penetrate. The pay-TV set-top box is often used daily. Being available on that box is a big boost to user convenience.”

A booming market

Virtually all of the media giants have launched or announced an impending standalone streaming service by now. But there are others poised to make a splash, and legacy video brands are far from the only players looking at the streaming opportunity.

Nayden foresees major print media brands entering the fray eventually, too. “While print media has found it financially difficult to transition to the new digital marketplace, I think the space for news-based OTT services represents a significant opportunity for content creators,” Nayden explains. “Cheddar and Newsy give us an example of what is possible. If a traditional newspaper like The New York Times or Wall Street Journal could partner with a video content creator and build a service that combined access to premium print and video content, I think it would attract a significant amount of paying news junkies.”

Breznick also envisions a day coming soon when college sporting programs—like Notre Dame football—roll out their own streaming service. “And at some point, every single broadcast channel out there is going to have to think about it,” adds Rayburn.

Major Streaming Services and Monthly Costs*

Live services

YouTube TV: $40
Sling TV: $25 and up
PlayStation Vue: $45-$80
FuboTV: $45 and up
Hulu Live: $45-51
DirectTV Now: $40-$75

SVOD (subscription video on demand) services

Netflix: $9-$16
Amazon Prime Video: $13 (when included with Prime membership) or $9 as a standalone service
Hulu: $8 (ads) to $12 (no ads)
HBO Now: $15
Showtime: $12
Starz: $9
MLB.TV: $25 and up
CBS All Access: $6 (ads) to $10 (no ads)

(*rounded to the nearest dollar)

Perspectives

Would you outsource data strategy and execution?

February 5, 2019 Michel Benjamin, Director of Marketing—Lotame

It’s fair to say that the advertising industry has embraced audience data. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and its Data Center of Excellence released a study in December 2018 showing that companies have spent nearly $19.2 billion on the acquisition of audience data and on solutions to manage, process, and analyze this data in 2018. That’s a 17.5% increase from the prior year.

Whether it is first, second, or third-party, using audience data to enhance campaigns is more impactful than un-targeted campaigns. While third-party data exchanges have been widely available for over a decade, second-party data marketplaces have sprung up, as the need for increased data quality and questions of sourcing and transparency have also proliferated.

What’s the problem?

Data isn’t just useful for advertising. It is a necessity across every industry. However, for many companies, figuring out how to act on this data is the hard part. There are many reasons why companies fail to use data to drive their marketing campaigns, including:

Lack of enterprise-level strategy (What are we using this for again?)
Strong corporate strategy, but lack of internal talent to execute (How can we get this thing to do what we want?)
Competing needs for limited resources (My whole team is swamped!)
Turnover of employees who manage the software (Our power user quit, now what?)
No collective ownership (It’s not my job!)

The upside of outsourcing

A study conducted in late 2018 found that 78% of the senior digital media decision-makers polled would choose to outsource their data strategy and execution. Data strategy development, management and execution require investments in talent and technology. And many organizations simply don’t have the in-house capabilities or infrastructure.

When asked what specifically they would want help with if outsourcing their data strategy, the answers varied:

30% have some sort of strategy in place, but need help executing the tactics
22% has a basic understanding, but needs help optimizing their campaigns
14% need help from start to finish in developing the actual data strategy and tactics
11% is short on resources and needs additional support to run reports and build audiences

Clearly, there is a lack of internal resources and/or knowledge among many of these participants. Education and knowledge are required to maximize the value of data, from the beginning during data collection through building and executing upon a strategy.

Using data correctly can help drive traffic and grow audiences, which then has a cascading effect on campaign success and the value provided to advertisers. But if you don’t have the internal resources available, or the talent to execute, or even an enterprise-level strategy: What are you to do?

Gain control by giving up

If a company believes that a strong data can be a true source of insights and revenue, then they will take the necessary steps to achieve their goals. Really, outsourcing data strategy shouldn’t be any different from outsourcing marketing strategy or overall sales strategy. Consulting firms have been around for many years, but data consulting firms are not quite as commonplace as others. 2019 is predicted to bring many changes to the publishing industry. And I believe the proliferation of data consulting and outsourcing of data strategy is just one piece of this puzzle.

The publishing industry is facing enough challenges. If it’s time to sink or swim, what would you be willing to give up in order to survive?

Innovation

Regulation, revenue diversification, and values top of mind at the 2019 DCN Next: Summit

February 1, 2019 Carol Brzozowski – Independent Journalist

In 2019, top media challenges include consolidation, regulation, and “fighting the pervasive mentality that all content needs to be free and the ever-spawning attacks on the independent press, even from the U.S. administration,” according to Jason Kint, CEO of Digital Content Next (DCN).

In speaking to attendees of the 17^th annual DCN Next: Summit at the Ritz Carlton in Orlando on January 29th and 30th, Kint noted that mitigating those challenges means that trust will continue to be a media company’s greatest asset, augmented by high quality content that informs and delights, creates a direct relationship with customers, anticipates the audience, and reflects diversity. Diversity, as Kint put it, “is a fact and a business imperative. It encompasses the range of ethnic, gender, economic, sexual or political identity, geographic, education, abled-ness, and so much more.”

The event’s speakers represented a breadth of media organizations from legacy print and television organizations to digital pure-plays, upstarts, agencies, and industry watchers. This year’s Summit speakers did have one thing in common though: They were all women.

Regulation and Scrutiny

During his opening remarks, Kint referenced a prediction he made last year of an intensification of a global policy war for big tech with its early stages continuing to emerge in 2019 as Facebook and Google face global scrutiny regarding transparency and accountability.

While GDPR has set the global tone for privacy protection, and California’s privacy bill may set a foundation for the U.S., it remains to be seen how the issue will be taken up on a U.S. national level, noted well-known industry insider Kara Swisher, co-founder and editor at large of Recode.

Regulation is far from the only pressing issue on media businesses today. In fact, the past year has seen governments at home and abroad exert extreme pressure on journalists and the media as a whole. In addressing global efforts to suppress journalism, Maria Ressa, CEO of Rappler and 2018 Time Person of the Year, called herself the “canary in the coal mine” as she recounted her story of answering a subpoena to appear before the Philippines National Bureau of Investigation on charges of tax evasion and failure to file tax returns.

Political Pain Points

A vocal critic of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, Ressa illustrated the impact of social media disinformation campaigns. She showed attendees a timeline of manufactured information social media attacks with global tentacles corresponding to her political coverage. She also described a meeting with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg during which she implored him to understand the company’s global impact and how experiences such as hers demonstrate the need for platforms to take more responsibility for the role they play in disinformation and attacks on journalists.

In response to attacks from the U.S. administration, The New York Times continues its focus on “good journalism.” The company is emphasizing transparency in its processes by showing consumers the great lengths to which reporters go to put together a story before publication through its TV marketing campaign, noted Meredith Kopit Levien, COO of The New York Times Company.

While attacks on journalism and emerging regulations have set the stage for 2019, brands also are placing a high priority on how to sustain their mission of building trust with consumers through offering high-quality content, connecting with audiences and monetizing the effort.

“The New York Times is so far ahead of most in the industry. What they have done is so compelling. The relationships they’ve built from a business standpoint with consumers continues to impress,” said Wenda Harris Millard, Vice Chairman of MediaLink. “Publishers are understanding that relationship is everything.”

Diversification and Experimentation

On the heels of a seven percent increase in 2018 third quarter earnings for digital and print, Levien pointed out that there is a long-held belief at The New York Times that a “subscription business first is the key to a great and scaled ad business” with marketers re-awakening to the value of context as the world comes to grips with privacy concerns.

In addition to continuing to produce its high-quality news content, she pointed out that The New York Times also is responding to consumer lifestyle habits by expanding its popular crosswords into a games business. It is also offering subscriptions for specialized offerings in the cooking and parenting spaces.

Additionally, two million listeners tune in each day to The Daily, which has become the nation’s most downloaded podcast.

Podcasting plays an increasing role at NPR, says Anya Grundmann, the company’s senior vice president Programming and Audience Development. Its Fresh Air ranks fourth on the most downloaded podcasts and its flagship Planet Money podcast is also among the top 20. Interestingly, some NPR podcasts start as radio shows while some radio shows have grown from podcasts so the legacy and digital ecosystems feed one another. Grundmann says that NPR also is committed to becoming a leader in audio this year in the voice search smart speaker environment, Grundmann said.

While audio offers emerging opportunities for media companies of all types, digital video maintains its popularity. The Guardian’s Oscar-nominated ‘Black Sheep’ documentary – a story of a black teenager who befriended racists – is part of the company’s strategy to deliver journalism through written, filmed, and spoken formats. As Evelyn Webster, CEO U.S. & Australia, Guardian News & Media argues “good journalism can be good business.”

The company has three revenue streams: a trust reserved for economic downturns and advertising revenue. But rather than deriving revenue from subscriptions, the Guardian has been successful using the reader voluntary contribution business model. The company also crowdfunds initiatives to support special reporting.

Reaching Audiences Far and Wide

Organizations like NPR, The New York Times, and The Guardian are known for serving audiences at a national and even international scale. However, local remains a point of concern for many in the media business.

To beef up local news, Marian Pittman, Executive Vice President of Digital Strategy and Research of Cox Media Group, says that the company seeks to innovate on its TV side with its “garage projects.” The initiative draws together the diverse skills of engineers, marketers, and reporters to produce and test prototypes in an effort to appeal to consumers through different platforms.

In support of local journalism, CEO Pam Wasserstein said New York Media plans to launch The City in early 2019, a not-for-profit initiative providing New York City news and investigative journalism in addition to its portfolio of premium digital brands.

Identifying underserved consumers is a business strategy Morgan DeBaun, CEO and co-founder of Blavity used when she left her Silicon Valley career to start a media company with her own money. Blavity targets black millennials, which DeBaun identified as an underserved demographic in the media ecosystem. The company is now backed by investors who share Blavity’s value system.

Navigating Revenue Streams

While more people are consuming media digitally, there is a simultaneous desire among consumers to connect as part of a community. That’s where events play a key role in establishing direct relationships with consumers. At the Summit, speakers from Blavity, The New York Times, CondeNast, Recode, and Combs Enterprises all cited events as a significant way to connect with consumers while deriving healthy revenue streams.

Subscriptions, events, advertising, and ecommerce all play roles in enhancing relationships, according to Wenda Harris Millard from MediaLink. “When you really understand your consumer, that’s where you have an advantage. You have to be thoughtful strategically. What is it you’re building and why?”

In 2019, marketers will be focusing on trust, data security and management and attention to disruption, noted Millard. Marketers are concerned about safety, security and the environment in which they’re marketing.

“In a world where marketing is so fractured and there’s a plethora of choice of where to put dollars, the ‘F’ and ‘G’ buttons are easy to press. But it’s not enough anymore,” she said. “We have to fight to keep that conversation about the quality of the environment as well as context and the importance of publishers continuing to put forward what is critically different about what they have to offer.”

Millard cautioned attendees not to “write off Amazon.” She noted that the rise of Amazon as a force in the ad industry represents the importance of search – including voice search. In particular, she pointed out that Amazon has access to an “extraordinary data trove” with the ability to push its brands first based on its insight into consumer behavior and scale.

Millard noted that now, more content has been consumed online than on TV, “forcing dollars into OTT versus linear television. While TV may be important, it’s not television the box, it’s content.”

Values-Driven Marketing

For digital advertising and marketing, Laura Correnti, Partner at Adweek Breakthrough Agency of the year Giant Spoon, said that attention should be focused not on “how to buy impressions, but how to make one. With $200 billion dollars in advertising this year, that’s 200 billion ways to make an impact.”

Increasingly, that impact is become more driven by values.

Adrienne Lofton, incoming Nike marketing executive and former Under Armour CMO, said that while at Under Armour, she created a set of values that included loving the athletes. Her emphasis was on equality, fighting the good fight together, creating fearlessly, always connecting, telling stories, thinking ‘beyond’, and celebrating the wins.

“Values-driven marketing should be infused in everything a company does,” she added. “Understanding what you stand for and what space you fit into in the world is critically important.”

Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of January 24, 2019

January 24, 2019 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

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

Variety | Can Hollywood’s Biggest Media Companies Avoid Getting Crushed by Debt? (15 min read)
Digiday | Publishers see PR behind Google’s news and search tests in response to the new EU copyright directive (4 min read)
The Financial Times | Davos tiptoes around the questions of Big Tech governance (5 min read)
The New York Times | If Mark Zuckerberg Wants to Talk, Britain Is Waiting (5 min read)
Ars Technica | Why Silicon Valley’s “growth at any cost” is the new “unsafe at any speed” (4 min read)
Deadline | Media Giants Will Pause Merger Mania After CBS-Viacom, Per Wall Street Analysts: “You Need A Motivated Seller” (4 min read)
Vanity Fair | The Ever-Increasing Cost of Streaming (4 min read)
Axios | Users rely on traditional news amid misinformation crisis (2 min read)
The Wall Street Journal | Condé Nast to Put All Titles Behind Paywalls by Year-End (4 min read)