/ An inside look at the business of digital content

March 7, 2019 Maureen Morrison, Independent Marketing Consultant

It’s safe to say that brand safety has been one of the most pressing issues in marketing over the last two years. Advertisers have been made all too aware of the perils of digital media and what can happen if an ad runs alongside harmful content. Often, marketers may not even aware of where an ad will run, thanks to programmatic. So, they can be caught off guard when the issue spreads on social media.

The most recent brand safety concern happened in February when a YouTube user posted a video that highlights patterns of comments by pedophiles on otherwise innocuous videos. These people made comments that sexualized the kids in the videos. In other instances, these commenters shared links to child pornography.

Soon after, several advertisers including Nestle, Disney, AT&T, and Epic Games all pulled their advertising from YouTube. YouTube responded by disabling comments on most videos that include children under 13, as well as on some videos featuring older minors. It had also been reaching out to agencies and brands, reassuring them that YouTube is still a safe platform for their ads.

Brands and Boycotts

Many people feel that when brands boycott a platform, it’s just grandstanding PR. And really, boycotts haven’t materially affected YouTube’s financial performance. But these days, advertisers are generally concerned by the responses from platforms like YouTube and Facebook, with one digital ad executive recently telling Ad Age that YouTube’s promises “ring hollow, however, given this latest flare up is just one of many brand safety failures in the past two years.” They just keep happening, and so the cycle of brand boycott, only to inevitably return to the platform, continues.

Ad Age noted that YouTube offered flimsy solutions for advertisers. “YouTube has offered half-measures for brands, the executive says. For instance, YouTube is telling some brands to categorize ads as ‘alcohol’ (even if the company is not an alcohol brand), that way it tricks the automated ad system into avoiding videos with themes that appeal to children and families.”

Do Advertisers Really Care?

However, some observers think these brand safety issues have been overblown. It has been suggested that some advertisers are much more worried about consumer backlash over brand-safety incidents than they are about the incidents themselves. In the grand scheme, there are relatively few flare ups when considered in the context of how many ads are served, says media analyst and consultant Thomas Baekdal.

“What brands are worried about is to be called out about something – often outside of their control – and to face some type of backlash. Because of it… they are worried about what people might say or do on social channels,” he says. “They are also worried about activists, who in recent years have grown far more aggressive. And again, with the help of both the press and social media, they have managed to have a far bigger impact using very few resources.”

That may be true. But any time a major advertiser like AT&T, which spends a total of billions in advertising annually, pulls its advertising from one of the world’s largest platforms, reporters do need to cover it – regardless of whether or not it’s a cynical PR move on the brand’s part. (You could argue that the business press should stop covering PR stunts like this altogether, but that’s an entirely different conversation.)

All or Nothing

Baekdal also questions the move to ban comments, arguing that in some cases, comments are integral to a platform’s existence, or a content creator’s success. “One of the things we have to remember is that YouTube is fundamentally a two-way channel. It’s a platform where you are communicating rather than simply publishing. So, taking away comments entirely is a pretty drastic step that, for some channels, could destroy them,” he says. “If you have a YouTube channel where the discussion and the community are what defines the focus, removing comments would kill that channel. More to the point, it punishes the wrong people.” In fact, if some of the comments are inappropriate, disabling all comments penalizes the video’s poster.

Shelly Palmer recently wrote a column for Ad Age that’s worth reading in full. He argues that we should stop looking at YouTube to ever be totally brand safe. Palmer posits that there is no possible way to make YouTube, or any environment that relies so heavily on user-generated content (UGC), 100 percent brand safe. “Asking ‘Is YouTube safe for my brand?’ is a better question, and it is the proper lens for any serious marketing discussion.”

The Quality Question

For publishers, there’s a potential upside to all this uproar. Just after the most recent YouTube incident, Digiday noted that agencies began looking to directly buy from premium publishers on YouTube, potentially providing a revenue boost.

And let’s not forget brand safety is not a one-dimensional issue. And, for many advertisers, it isn’t limited to these noisy consumer outcries and PR flare ups. At the Digiday Media Buying Summit in November, GroupM’s Joe Barone defined it in a number of ways, including viewability and concern over bot traffic. Less flashy, but still important.

“We’ve also begun to talk about is the idea of quality. If we can get a quality environment, quality inventory from quality publishers, that are seen by real people in appropriate contextual environments, those ads sell better. Brand safety is linked directly to inventory quality and client results. Clients have become very educated on this process. They ask the same questions. They start with questions like ‘you mean to tell me my ads aren’t being seen?’ or ‘bots are clicking on my ads?’”

About the Author

Maureen Morrison is a marketing consultant working with agencies, startups, publishers and brands. She previously was a reporter and editor, having spent nearly 12 years at Ad Age covering agencies, digital media and marketers.

Audiences | Industry-Research

Password mooching costs streaming services millions in monthly revenue

March 6, 2019 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

Subscription mooching is a common practice in today’s streaming ecosystem where people borrow subscribers’ logins to access services like Netflix and Hulu rather than paying for them. To understand the magnitude of password sharing, the website, Cordcutting.com conducted a survey of over 1,000 people ages 18 to 81 to examine who is really paying for streaming subscription services. The new report, Subscription Mooching, shows that nearly 20% of users of the major streaming services are borrowing logins from subscribers.

According to the research, 19% of Hulu viewers use someone else’s login, as do 17% of Amazon Prime Video viewers, and 15% of Netflix viewers. Not surprisingly, parents are the most frequent source of shared passwords for Netflix and Amazon Prime (32% each, respectively) while significant others are the main source of password sharing for Hulu (26%).

The television landscape is changing with only 7% of viewers subscribing to cable TV and 30% subscribing exclusively to video streaming services for their media consumption. In total, approximately 68% of people use cable TV and 92% use a video streaming service.

Lost revenues

Of course, many streaming services allow simultaneous streaming on multiple devices. However, each treats the sharing of account credentials differently.

The amount that moochers avoid paying varies. On average, people borrow a Netflix subscription login for 26 months. At the lowest subscription plan price of $7.99 a month, a person can save $207. Interestingly, a login is borrowed for Amazon Prime Video for approximately 16 months, saving on average $144. A login borrowed for Hulu is used the shortest amount of time, approximately 11 months, saving an individual $88.

While sharing an account login can provide a consumer savings, it comes at a substantial loss for the streaming services. The research uses the difference between the total number of subscribers and the total number of users in order to project the potential revenue loss. According to this report, Netflix is losing approximately $192 million every month or $2.3 billion a year. Hulu and Amazon Prime Video average between $40 and $45 million in estimated losses each month or approximately $0.5 million per year, respectively.

Converting the Moochers

Trial usage appears to be a good source of conversion. Approximately 59% of people are willing to pay for their own Netflix subscription if they are no longer able to access a shared login. While significantly less than Netflix, 38% of Hulu and 28% of Amazon Prime users are willing to subscribe if they are no long able to access a borrowed login.

Login sharing does offer some retention value. It’s hard for consumers to cancel their subscription if they know others are relying on them for access. Marketing and retention factors aside, streaming services need to address password sharing in order to grow their market share, especially among millennial and generation X audiences.

Innovation | Perspectives

How integrating analytical and editorial teams drives subscriptions

March 4, 2019 Rachel Williams, Product Marketing Manager—Outbrain

Publishers are reclaiming their voice when it comes to how and when they are reaching their most important readers. As the market continues to feel pressure from ever-changing trends of the duopoly, publishers are putting more effort into direct relationships with their audiences and leveraging actionable intelligence from data. This means much more than ad targeting today. Data allows publishers to better serve their readers and, as a result, better profit from true engagement.

A study by the American Press Institute surveyed over 4,000 consumers of news and found that 78% respondents value getting reliable, accurate facts. An audience survey conducted by The New York Times, found that 73% polled believe “that it has never been more important to support quality journalism.” As consumers are willing to pay for quality journalism, publishers are looking to leverage these trends to deliver their best content and form meaningful reader relationships that will sustain the media business.

Although the vast majority of readers don’t subscribe, those that do are the that do are the most impactful. They spend longer on site and drive greater revenue. Of course, it is important to remember that there is no one-size-fits-all for subscriptions. Solutions will be different for every publisher and publishers must adapt to audience behaviors quickly, as they change often.

Flexible paths to subscription

For example, some audiences respond well to metered paywalls. Among digital subscribers, it was found in the same study by the American Press Institute that 47% of respondents became a subscriber after they reached a limit on free access. Other audiences engage after enjoying a newsletter. Deciding on what content to show and when to show it is something that needs to be finessed in order to satisfy audiences (and hopefully entice them to subscribe).

Yet, even as subscriptions become a focal point, advertising revenue still accounts for the majority of publisher revenue, despite per-ad revenue declining. At the same time, readers are getting savvy about how they choose to consume content, bouncing quickly from pages when they are blanketed with disruptive ads. Publishers that deliver a clean website experience are more likely to build long-term relationships with readers.

Engagement is key. But getting there is not easy. One route is personalization. In fact, publishers who successfully drive subscriptions share a common theme in understanding the importance of integrating both analytical and editorial teams to provide deeper reader personalization in this digital era. This can mean content personalization, but it can also take the form of personalizing subscription offers based upon customer behavior and preference.

Data driven success

Hearst Newspapers has integrated various initiatives where their growth is fueled by data. The publisher’s goal was to evolve its digital properties into a portfolio of diversified subscription and ad-supported sites. Through the use of AI, Hearst analyzed over two years of subscriber data and can now identify what users are going to convert and where, as well as analyze pre- and post-subscription patterns.

Editorial teams at The New York Times use content analytics platforms to understand readership in real-time. They also centralize the data for actionable intelligence that helps them better serve their audience. (We’ve seen customers who take this kind of approach increase conversions up to 200%.)

Data enhances the reader experience and makes valuable connection for publishers by allowing editors adjust content strategies based on where audiences come from and how they convert.

By being data informed, publishers can better understand reader engagement as well as how that readership consumes their content and what helps convert them from casual readers to seriously committed, and even to become subscribers.

Advertising | Perspectives

Malware and redirects: Publishers need to protect customers now more than ever

March 1, 2019 Steve Stup, CRO—The Media Trust

As the programmatic revolution reaches its potential, bad actors continue to find innovative ways to exploit the system. The technological advances to increase advertising efficiency are the same ones targeted by bad actors who are incentivized to move at a faster pace in order to keep their revenue streams flowing. The result is an endless scourge of malware and auto redirects that threaten the viability of the overall digital advertising supply chain and the relationship the industry has with the end consumer.

Programmatic provides a green field to bad actors, who consistently evolve their attacks, bypassing defenses and attacking publishers and their digital customers. Once thought the answer to publisher woes, malware blockers have proven to be a short-term fix. Unfortunately, malware incidents have almost doubled since the solution’s relatively recent introduction. Clearly, something has to change. That’s why smart publishers are calling in the experts and forming a joint task force between their Ad Ops and the IT/security teams to combat the problem together.

Bad ads aren’t your only problem

Digital ads are not the only security issue that publishers need to watch. Digital publisher businesses have diversified their revenue streams, evolving from advertising-only models to introduce subscription services and merchandise stores such as the ones hosted by most major news outlets, like The New York Times, NBC, and the The Washington Post. These new revenue channels introduce a new significant security risk for publishers due to the storing of personal data and credit card information.

Publishers are an even more tantalizing target for cybercrime groups, especially those behind large-scale malicious campaigns like Magecart, ShapeShifter-3PC, and ICEPick-3PC. Cybercriminals increasingly use the digital ad supply chain targeting payment pages to steal personal data and payment card information. Publishers trust that the payment processing vendor provides perfect security. However, time and again, these vendors are compromised, either through a direct hack, employee error, outdated code or misapplied patches. Even worse, when a breach happens, the customer will hold the publisher accountable. Headline grabbing news regarding major breaches in the past year focus on the brand, not the vendor. That makes sense since the brand has the relationship with the consumer.

Cybercrime groups zero in on vulnerabilities in third-party code in the digital environment to execute their attacks. Digital ads serve as delivery vehicles for third-party code. Publishers also rely on third-party code to optimize and monetize the user experience. Beyond ad-related platforms, the use of analytics, content delivery systems, video platforms, and widgets carry the risk of being compromised, exposing the website and its users to harm. One recent example is the havoc wreaked by the JuiceChecker malware, which utilized vulnerabilities in third-party code to enable smart malware delivery, which evaded multiple detection efforts including malware blockers.

Interdepartmental partnership

These complicated scenarios leave publishers with difficult choices. While using ads and other types of third-party code help to generate more revenue, they also expose them customer base to more vulnerable code, ready to be exploited by cybercriminals who know how to find and exploit weaknesses. Exposing customers to these threats have long-term consequences. Failure to strike an appropriate balance between revenue and security kills the user experience and creates situations where customers don’t return.

Clearly, a modified approach is necessary if the balance is to be struck correctly. This approach involves bringing product and IT/security teams into the ad/revenue operations fold. An interdepartmental culture is already being fostered by many publishers in order to stay on the right side of legislation such as the EU’s GDPR and California’s upcoming Consumer Privacy Protection Act.

The need for digital security expertise

Moving forward, advertising and revenue operations must work with both product and IT/security teams to review publishers’ existing vendor relationships and strategize how to drive revenue without sacrificing security. Internal security teams are experts in the latest threats and can help develop a comprehensive plan to protect the digital environment and deliver a better user experience.

The ability to successfully generate revenue through multiple revenue streams is important. It is up to the revenue teams to engage with the security experts within your organization to make sure the Internet remains a safe place for advertisers, businesses, and users alike.

About the Author

Steve Stup is responsible for developing and overseeing the revenue and product strategy at The Media Trust. Previously, he ran digital strategy as the General Manager at The Washington Post. In this capacity, he was pivotal in the publication’s digital transformation effort and served on the leadership team that helped position it as one of the most innovative digital publishers in the industry. He led teams responsible for driving product strategy, ad innovation, and revenue operations. Prior to that, he was in technology sales at Lexis Nexis, and other recognized brands. He received his MBA from The George Washington University and is an alum of Virginia Tech.

Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of February 28, 2019

February 28, 2019 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

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

Bloomberg | Facebook Grew Too Big to Care About Privacy (4 min read)
Digiday | ‘It’s the human cost’: Buyers shrug at YouTube’s latest brand crisis (4 min read)
Axios | Media plays tech watchdog while regulations stall (1 min read)
AdExchanger | Consent Fraud: A Simmering Problem That Could Scald The Ecosystem (3 min read)
Bloomberg | Everybody Makes Podcasts. Can Anyone Make Them Profitable? (4 min read)
Fast Company | You’re being used to steal $50 billion in digital advertising (3 min read)
The Verge | New FTC task force will take on tech monopolies (3 min read)
The New York Times | The journalist Maria Ressa is facing both criminal charges and social media threats. (5 min read)
Digiday | ‘Hard to back out’: Publishers grow frustrated by the lack of revenue from Apple News (5 min read)

How The New York Times’ free student subscriptions strategy will pay off

February 28, 2019 Chris M. Sutcliffe – Independent Media Reporter

It does not come as a surprise that most digital publishers look to the New York Times for subscription strategy advice: On February 6th, The “failing” New York Times posted digital revenue of $709 million for 2018, based largely on its 3.4 million digital subscriptions. It also bucked expectations when it came to its ability to attract new subscribers. The NYT added 265,000 new digital subscriptions in the last quarter of 2018, which it calls “the biggest gain since the months immediately following the 2016 election.” As a result, the paper has set itself the new goal of having 10 million subscriptions by 2025.

This all suggests that while the “Trump bump” was a reality, there is more to the NYT’s success than simply being the target of The President’s ire. In an interview with Ken Doctor, the NYT’s Chief Executive Mark Thompson attributes much of its success to steady investment in the newsroom – which he calls a “very simple, old-fashioned model” – through having the highest number of journalists on staff in the paper’s history.

The vast majority of news publishers, however, do not have the coffers of a national title. Later in the interview, Thompson acknowledges that the NYT has unreplicable advantages when it comes to adding staff. However, the New York Times is employing a strategy that more publishers can and should emulate: It’s giving its news away for free – to 3 million students.

Premium value

On its face, the idea sounds crazy. Back in July of last year, the NYT’s ‘The Truth Is Worth It’ advertising campaign made paying for high-quality news the responsibility of the public. Its press release stated that its research had “found that seventy-three percent of U.S. news consumers who pay and subscribe to a news source say that it has never been more important to support quality journalism.”

That rhetoric has also been employed by publications including The Times of London, the Guardian, New Statesman, and others as they market their own paid-for news products. Even local and hyperlocal publishers are increasingly pushing the idea that, while “news” is readily available for free online, quality news needs to be paid for.

In fact, the NYT is making a bet on free as a long term investment in demonstrating the value of quality journalism. As with the growth in its newsroom headcount, this is an investment the NYT is making in its future. And, while there might not be straightline attribution between these free subscriptions and total revenue for the foreseeable future, it is a smart bet that it can convert some readers who might never have paid into lifetime subscribers.

It’s a clever strategy for a number of reasons. However, it all builds upon the idea that free subscriptions for a particular demographic can convert a proportion of people –0 who otherwise might never pay for digital news – into regular subscribers.

Subscription satiation

While young people are more likely to pay for news than previous generations, there is a hard cap on how many news subscriptions they can afford. The latest Digital News Report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found that just 14% of people globally currently pay for online news. And it’s vanishingly unlikely that the majority will pay for more than one subscription. Additionally, the price of an annual news subscription can take a back seat to entertainment services, though this is not a phenomenon unique to young people. Competition for those 14% of people, then, is going to be fierce.

(The NYT’s scheme is currently limited to students in the United States. However, the increasingly international NYT plans to open it up to international students as well, where the propensity to pay for news is typically lower than in the US).

So by offering the subscription for free, the NYT is effectively betting that it can create a relationship with enough students to make the scheme worthwhile. Having that preexisting relationship with a potentially lucrative audience is vital: With more players entering the subscription space, it’s unlikely that more than a handful of truly international publishers will be able to sustain themselves solely with the revenue from the 16% of people who are willing to pay for news in the US.

Those subscribers are a rare commodity, and getting young people on board early could mitigate some of that conflict with the NYT’s peers.

Retention costs

The Axios piece that trumpets the NYT’s 3 million student subscriptions contains a telling quote from Hannah Yang, head of subscription growth at the paper: “We already have high retention, but I think this could make it almost bulletproof.”

It’s a vote of confidence in the NYT’s ability to retain subscribers, but it’s also tacit acknowledgment that the cost of acquiring new subscribers far outstrips re-upping the contracts of existing ones. By some accounts, it costs up to five times as much to acquire a new subscriber than to retain an existing one.

While it’s never been explicitly stated, that is presumably the main reason behind similar subscription schemes at at The Financial Times, and sharply discounted student pricing from The Times of London. From an acquisition point of view, it’s far cheaper to reignite an existing relationship than forge a new one from scratch.

Corollary benefits

Having an extra 3 million subscribers – particularly younger ones – on the books also has a beneficial impact on the NYT’s relationship with advertising. Brands are keen to reach as many people as possible, and younger demographics are highly desirable to some. So, while marketing subscriptions relies on having the depth of content that the NYT’s expanded newsroom offers, marketing products and commodities requires reach.

Additionally, having data on those self-selected subscribers is invaluable. Thompson makes this observation, both in the Nieman Lab article and in the press release, noting that “we are more attractive to the world’s leading brands than we would be if we didn’t have a digital subscription business. That’s why we’re growing our digital advertising business.”

Having those logged-in users also allows the NYT access to user data that allows it to refine its publishing strategy and the types of content it highlights to interested readers. Over the course of the last few years, The Times of London has been using exactly that sort of data to reduce consumer churn by appealing to their favourite aspects of the subscription. The greater the sample size, the better the refinements. Therefore, 3 million extra subscribers equals a huge amount of data points.

From a purely altruistic point of view, too, offering subscriptions to those who might not otherwise be able to afford one fulfils the journalistic remit to inform the public. That was explicitly the reason the FT announced it was extending its free access to FT.com to 16–19 year olds globally.

The downsides

In a recent episode of the Media Voices podcast, we discussed the practical difficulties of other publishers trying to emulate The New York Times. It has, after all, a number of inherent strengths that most newspapers simply won’t be able to replicate.

In particular, it has a profitable business that allows it the luxury of both investing in its newsroom and the time to let those free subscriptions percolate and, eventually, have a chance to develop into full subscriptions. As a national title, it also has strong brand recognition, and can reach students from coast to coast.

Some other publishers, particularly local papers, simply don’t have the time to let those experiments play out. They also may not have enough students or other potential future subscribers in their patch to make it worth their while, and consequently we are already seeing many local publishers iterating on a hard paywall model rather than letting a particular demographic in for free.

Ultimately, it all comes down to whether free student subscriptions allow a newspaper to bypass that hard cap on propensity to pay for news. If reducing the friction of onboarding, deepening the relationship with the user during their free trial, and using their data to support other parts of the business adds even a few percentage points to the number of people who will re-up that subscription, the endeavour will have been worthwhile.

Audiences | Industry-Research

Understanding the role of relevance in news consumption

February 27, 2019 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

Today’s consumers navigate a high-choice multiplatform environment to find their news content. Understanding their news consumption habits – what’s relevant to them, and why they read what they do – is a complex process. However, while data rankings show which stories are clicked on, shared, and liked the most, there’s little information about why consumers choose to read the content they do. Kim Christian Schrøder’s new report from The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, What do News Readers Really Want to Read about?, delves into the process by which consumers choose the news the consume. The research evaluates the ways in which people are drawn to news, how it helps them make sense of their lives, and shapes their views of the world.

Relevance is a key driver in consumer decision-making on news content. Ultimately, perceived relevance determines whether consumers end up engaging with a particular news story.

Examples of relevance include if the news is:

The factors that drive and define news relevance.

personally relatable, the potential impact on one’s own life and family
socially shared or sharable
stories that speaks to a more general, perhaps civic nature
known news brand
familiar, the headline and/or sub headline provides enough information

Understanding the role of relevance helps explain why important news stories may not always rank according to national interest. Article rankings are often algorithmically charged by the number of “likes” and “shares.” While social indicators often increase visibility, they are not necessarily reliable factors of relatability and quality content.

The four clusters of news readers

In addition to identifying relevance as an important driver, the research also classifies four distinct clusters of news readers according to news preference.

People with political and civic interest in news. This segment is mainly interested in stories about health, education, and the environment.
People with a social-humanitarian interest in news. This cluster like stories with a humanitarian perspective on the world. They also gravitate to news reports on soft politics (e.g. Britain’s royal family).
People with a cultural interest in news. This segment values news stories about children, health, educational issues, and environmental protection. However, they dismiss clickbait articles designed to lure them into reading human-interest and celebrity focused stories.
People who seek (political) depth stories. This segment likes their news from a mixture of general and more specialized news sources. They are big readers and selective in their news sources.

Schrøder provides insight into what drives audience choice when it comes to news consumption. Understanding relevance and its impact on how readers build their personal media selection is an important step in identifying consumers’ news preference. Further, the identification of consumer news clusters offers four distinct reader groups of content preference without imposing the standard news categories. Both set of findings heighten our understanding of how consumers select their news content.

Industry-Research

What’s driving traffic? 5 trends based on platform data

February 27, 2019 Clare Carr, Vice President of Marketing—Parse.ly

This past month, we took an in-depth look at the referral platforms sending the most traffic to our network. We looked at the rate of their growth in 2018, the word count and device type for each, and the specific categories of content that attract readers, both in total volume and pageviews per post.

We’ve got loads of data, which you are welcome to dig into. But here are five key highlights from the 50+ graphs, 5000 words, two posts, and a PDF we created out of the data report we produced.

1. Consistent growth on Flipboard and SmartNews for 18+ months.

Non-social and non-search traffic referrers grew (in terms of percentage) the most in 2018, 21%, you can see the breakdown for each below.

Specifically, a lot of people didn’t realize that SmartNews and Flipboard have been growing for a while. Sure, their volumes still don’t warrant the attention that Facebook or Google gets. However, their steady growth numbers still surprised a lot of people who saw our data. For anyone that wants to learn more about these two platforms: Axios covered more about SmartNews, and Digiday looked at Flipboard’s user growth.

Figuring out if that’s an audience that works, and how to work with them should at least be on the short list of considerations for audience teams in 2019.

2. Twitter referrals vs. content “about” Twitter

Twitter didn’t grow in terms of referrals in 2018, but does that mean it’s not important? Just because we see a platform go down in one metric doesn’t mean it should get written off. One example of why was this data stat: More views go to articles that include Twitter as a topic than views that are actually referred by Twitter.

The relationship between media and Twitter is clearly more complicated than a simple “how much traffic are we getting” question.

3. Pinterest gets the highest percentage of its referrals to short (<200 word) posts.

SmartNews and Facebook also both send more shorter posts than is average on our network. LinkedIn sends the highest percentage of its traffic to long from (>1000 word posts), as does the Drudge Report.

This data itself doesn’t say much about whether people stay and read those long form pieces, but it does indicate what people want to share on those platforms and the mindset they’re in.

4. Desktop dropped, mobile and tablet increased:

Well, this one isn’t exactly a surprise, but it is worth noting that the trend hasn’t stopped.

From Mary Meeker’s annual Internet Trends report, per Recode:

“People, however, are still increasing the amount of time they spend online. U.S. adults spent 5.9 hours per day on digital media in 2017, up from 5.6 hours the year before. Some 3.3 of those hours were spent on mobile, which is responsible for overall growth in digital media consumption.”

Speaking of mobile, AMP is everywhere.

44% of mobile referrals from Flipboard are on are AMP. As are…
50% of mobile referrals from Google Search
89% of mobile referrals from Google News
39% of mobile referrals from LinkedIn
19% of mobile referrals from Pinterest,
54% of mobile referrals from SmartNews,
AND finally, 48% of mobile referrals from Twitter.

The full report on these referral data trends and more can be found on the Parse.ly blog.

Perspectives

Putting users and publishers at the center of the online value exchange

February 26, 2019 Denelle Dixon, Chief Operating Officer—Mozilla

Publishers are getting a raw deal in the current online advertising ecosystem. The technology they depend on to display advertisements also ensures they lose the ability to control who gets their users’ data and who gets to monetize that data. With third-party cookies, users can be tracked from high-value publishers to sites they have never chosen to trust, where they are targeted based on their behavior from those publisher sites. This strips value from publishers and fuels rampant ad fraud.

In August, Mozilla announced a new anti-tracking strategy intended to get to the root of this problem. That strategy includes new restrictions on third-party cookies that will make it harder to track users across websites and that we plan to turn on by default for all users in a future release of Firefox. Our motive for this is simple: online tracking is unacceptable for our users and puts their privacy at risk. We know that a large portion of desktop users have installed ad blockers, showing that people are demanding more online control. But our approach also offers an opportunity to rebalance the ecosystem in a way that is in the long-term interest of publishers.

Publisher Pros and Cons

There needs to be a profitable revenue ecosystem on the web in order to create, foster and support innovation. Our third-party cookie restrictions will allow loading of advertising and other types of content (such as videos and sponsored articles), but will prevent the cookie-based tracking that users cannot meaningfully control. This strikes a better balance for publishers than ad blocking – user data is protected and publishers are still able to monetize page visits through advertisements and other content.

Our new approach will deliver both upsides and downsides for publishers, and we want to be clear about both. On the upside, by removing more sophisticated, profile-based targeting, we are also removing the technology that allows other parties to siphon off data from publishers. Ad fraud that depends on 3rd party cookies to track users from high-value publishers to low-value fraudster sites will no longer work. On the downside, our approach will make it harder to do targeted advertising that depends on cross-site browsing profiles, possibly resulting in an impact on the bottom line of companies that depend on behavioral advertising. Targeting that depends on the context (i.e. what the user is reading) and location will continue to be effective.

Curing Advertising Dysfunction

In short, behavioral targeting will become more difficult, but publishers should be able to recoup a larger portion of the value overall in the online advertising ecosystem. This means the long-term revenue impact will be on those third-parties in the advertising ecosystem that are extracting value from publishers, rather than bringing value to those publishers.

We know that our users are only one part of the equation here; we need to go after the real cause of our online advertising dysfunction by helping publishers earn more than they do from the status quo. That is why we need help from publishers to test the cookie restrictions feature and give us feedback about what they are seeing and what the potential impact will be. The technical documentation for these cookie restrictions can be found here. To test this feature in Firefox 65, visit “about:preferences#privacy” using the address bar. Under “Content Blocking” click “Custom”, click the checkbox next to “Cookies”, and ensure the dropdown menu is set to “Third-party trackers”.

We look forward to working with publishers to build a more sustainable model that puts them and our users first.

Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of February 21, 2019

February 21, 2019 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

Our picks of the must-read stories from around the web:

Bloomberg | Nestle, Disney Pull YouTube Ads, Joining Furor Over Child Videos (2 min read)
The Wall Street Journal | Amazon’s Ad Business May Be Growing Faster Than Thought (2 min read)
Adweek | Why Do Advertisers Keep Spending More and More With the Walled Gardens? (5 min read)
Mother Jones | How Facebook Screwed Us All (20 min read)
Digiday | Vox Media’s Melissa Bell: The industry has given Facebook too much emphasis in the conversation (35 min listen)
The Register | Unearthed emails could be smoking gun in epic GDPR battle against Google, adtech giants (7 min read)
Recode | The UK Parliament wants to regulate Facebook. So does everybody else. (4 min read)
MediaPost | Hundreds Of Android Apps Found To Serve Invisible Ads (2 min read)
Reuters Institute | What do news readers really want to read about? (25 min read)

Audiences | Industry-Research

Understanding consumer motivations delivers an OTT competitive advantage

February 20, 2019 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

With new OTT video services popping up daily, there’s fierce competition in the marketplace. Cord-cutting continues in the U.S. with just over two-thirds of consumers (67%) reporting pay-TV subscriptions, down from 73% in 2017, and 77% in 2016. PwC’s new report, A new video world order, studies consumers’ relationship with video content to develop five new motivation-based consumer profiles. In this competitive market, it is critical for content services to maintain strong viewer relationships, which start with understanding.

Here are PwC’s five distinct consumer profiles:

Indulgists are consumers driven by consumption, be it video, technology, or just stuff. The indulgists is always looking for the latest gadget, premium service, and original content to purchase. They watch approximately 17 hours of content a week and at least 35% spend $100 or more on video content a month. The average age of indulgists is 37. Importantly, they are committed to their pay-TV relationship and see themselves as subscribers five years from now.
Engagers are totally immersed in the content they view. Their average age is 34 and they consume approximately 12 hours of content a week. Seventeen percent of engagers spend $100 or more on monthly video entertainment. This segment wants to engage with video content and they like to post about the shows they are watch on social media. They are also more likely to be gamers. Engagers look forward to virtual reality intersecting with TV series for a personalized storyline experience.
Fanatics, whose average age is 34, are willing to do anything to access content. They consume about 16 hours of video content each week and 20% spend $100 or more on video entertainment a month. This segment wants to access endless content, especially all in one place. They’re likely to be cord-cutters who now subscribe to multiple services. Fanatics can often be found binge watching.
Connoisseurs tend to be more educated and are culturally focused when it comes to their video content. Their average age is 39 and they spend about 10 hours a week viewing video content. Eighteen% of connoisseurs spend $100 or more on video content a month. While they like television, they prefer to read. This segment is also more likely to be comprised of cord-trimmers than cutters.
Traditionalists are overwhelmed by content choice and find comfort in watching live-TV. Their average age is 40 and they consume approximately 15 hours of content a week. Thirty-two percent of traditionalists spend $100 or more on video content a month. This segment tends to be older and often has TV on in the background. It’s used for both comfort and company. Traditionalists are more likely to use pay-TV to access content compared to going online or accessing an apps.

PwC mentions two areas of focus to increase consumer engagement: 1) better content recommendations and 2) a central access point for content and payment. Consumers report that recommendation algorithms are often reactive and recommend the same content over and over again. Thirty-six percent of consumers also report that finding content on streaming platforms needs to be easier. Further, consumers want to consolidate their content and payment into one place (51 and 50%, respectively).

PwC emphasizes the importance of maximizing the user experience to develop a competitive advantage in a very crowded video marketplace. Providers should understand the audience’s motivation for content. It helps to drive engagement. Content is not a one size fits all experience and it’s essential to build a positive consumer encounter at each step in the process.

Rappler CEO arrested just weeks after outlining Philippine media attacks at DCN Next: Summit [video + transcript]

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]

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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.