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Advertising | Industry-Research | Video

Premium context and 30-second spots dominate video advertising right now

It’s shaping up to be a defining year for the video advertising landscape. Notably, 2019 was marked by the primacy of connected TV, an embrace of the value of premium content adjacency, and a return of the good old 30-second ad for brand storytelling.

We will reserve full judgement for our year-in-review report after the close of 2019. However, our Q3 report — based on video ads served from our asset management platform, AdBridge— reveals relatively stable trends this year in how marketers are using digital video to build business. This absence of wild swings indicates that the industry is settling into its new, CTV-based reality.

Perhaps what’s old is new again? And by this we mean that maybe things we always believed to be true are still true but in new and better ways.

Here are some noteworthy video trends:  

CTV Delivers the Big Screen TV-like Experience But with Consumer Choice & Control

In Q3 2019, it happened. CTV became the majority destination for impressions served, tallying in at 51%. Sure, this may fluctuate a bit quarter to quarter based on the supply of inventory. But it’s striking to see that figure relative to where we landed in 2018 at 38% of impressions being served to connected TV destinations. The steady march in CTV share from Q1 (49%) to Q2 (50%) to Q3 (51%) leads us to believe this is a true, predictable trend and not another shiny object phenomenon.

Premium Content Adjacency Clearly Works for Brands

All three quarters of 2019 showed a strong embrace of premium content destinations vs. media aggregators. In fact, the average mix in 2019 to-date is 81% premium/19% aggregators. This is certainly driven in part by the rush to leverage CTV but there is also a solid increase in impressions going to premium online content as well.

Spoiler alert: Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) brands really like premium content as evidenced by the vertical specific data in that category. In Q3, DTC brands delivered 93% of their impressions to premium inventory. But a preference for aggregators is one way in which auto advertisers show markedly different trends from the broader group. The 57% of impressions served to media aggregators in Q3 is a 10 percent increase from the prior quarter and nearly triple the overall rate.

Brands Need 30 Seconds to Grab Us by the Hearts and Minds

Brands need all shapes and sizes of ad formats to truly navigate the consumer media landscape today. And while that portfolio will surely include experimentation in the super short category (:06 ads for example), we saw a move back to more :30’s in 2018 and 2019 after a move to go shorter in years prior. For example, the share of :30’s served in 2015 was 41%.

That dipped to 38% in 2016 and hit an all-time low of 33% in 2017. In 2018, :30s jumped to 54% and in Q3 of this year, they accounted for 66% of ads served. Perhaps short stories can become too short to be effective and a mix is what’s needed to affect consumer behavior today. This seems to be especially true in the Auto and DTC verticals, which both showed an even larger investment in longer ads. For auto, 30-second spots accounted for 84% while in the DTC category they rose to a whopping 97% of impressions by length.

Our research, which has tracked video advertising trends quarterly for almost four years, finds that despite the innovative nature of the streaming wars, many video industry fundamentals still apply, or are back in style.  Context matters, both in the sense that premium placements are popular and longer ad formats provide more in-depth messaging. The heating wars are heating up and its critical to keep a close eye on the emerging trends and opportunities in this market.

Innovation

The Atlantic ventures into new digital waters

When you’ve been in the publishing business since 1857, you can rightfully say that you’ve learned a thing or two about longevity and how to make a product continually appealing to ever-changing consumers. The key to maintaining that allure today, apparently, is to make things look simple without losing your sophistication. For The Atlantic, that means taking an A-to-Z approach, beginning – literally – with a capital “A” and ending with a close eye on Gen Z, your future readers.

Investing in growth

To better compete for eyeballs in an increasingly digital world, the publication recently undertook a significant redesign of its magazine, website, and iOS app and rolled out a new digital subscription service. To support these initiatives, the brand made several prominent new hires, including creative director Peter Mendelsund, senior art director Oliver Munday, and director of photography Luise Stauss. And over the past year, the product, engineering, and growth teams were doubled.

The results so far have been promising. September and October both drew record numbers of subscribers—more than double the number of subscriptions and revenue originally forecast. The website now tallies 30 million unique visits monthly and the magazine boasts a paid circulation of 500,000. And in the five days following the redesign rollout, The Atlantic had twice the number of subscribers daily, on average, as there were in the same period before the redesign.

New look, same savvy

Readers who visit the website or use the app today will likely take instant note of the streamlined design and sparse template at work. A bold red “A” logo has replaced the title’s previous iconic emblem. The words stand out consistently in a clean new custom typeface. Clustered or crowded content is a thing of the past thanks to a generous infusion of white space. And the top navigation bar is a simplified element better served by a hamburger menu icon in the upper left corner.

But what hasn’t changed, insists Adrienne LaFrance, executive editor of The Atlantic, is the quality writing, diversity of content, and journalistic integrity. “The way we will continue to stay competitive is by showing people how we are different than other publications—reminding them of our extraordinary writing, unmatched narrative journalism, beautiful design, and photography,” she says.

“Were lucky because we have a really differentiated and highly valuable product that people already love and have loved for a long time. But it was time for a redesign, with a focus on giving people the best possible user experience and helping them get to the best of our work even more easily.”

Mobile matters

First introduced in 2011, the improved iOS app (plans are afoot to launch an Android version) is designed to function as a compact version of the print magazine while retaining the cleanly legible look and unconstrained feel of the website. A dedicated editorial team exclusively manages the app, which has more carefully curated and diverse offerings for subscribers, thanks in large part to its Today feed.

“The Today feed walks the reader through what’s happening but gives them deeper context behind the news – stitching together the larger patterns so people can derive meaning from the day’s events. There’s a narrative arc there, not just a list of bullet points or headlines. There’s definite value for people who want to come away with a complete and rich sense of what’s going on in the world and why it matters,” LaFrance explains. “You can choose how deeply you want to delve into the feed, whether you want to read every single story or browse through it. The app and entire feed are free. Where you encounter the need to subscribe is when you click through to a particular article.”

LaFrance notes that the app and website are two distinctly different products. The mobile experience is focused on making it simple to brush up on the news of the day and discover articles of interest to on-the-go users.

“We want to respect people’s time and intelligence, and we understand that there are so many different options for getting information and reading. We know people come to The Atlantic for extraordinary journalism. And we want to make it easy and delightful for them to experience our stories,” she adds.

While she couldn’t yet disclose numbers post-revamp, LaFrance says that, historically, The Atlantic’s mobile app audience was a fraction of its overall digital audience. Previously, “in any given week, about three-quarters of subscribers who used our existing app came three-plus times per week,” she notes.

New routes to revenue

Simplifying the subscription model was another priority. Now, readers can opt from three tiers:

  • Digital ($50 annually, which includes unlimited access to TheAtlantic.com, the iOS app, digital issues, and a subscriber-only newsletter);
  • Print and digital ($60 a year, which comes with the aforementioned plus delivery of 10 print issues); and
  • Premium ($100 annually, for all of the above goodies plus exclusive access to podcasts, ad-free web browsing, a complimentary digital gift subscription, Atlantic product discounts, and priority access to exclusive events).

Subscriptions and print advertising serve as complementary pieces of the monetization pie (comprising approximately 20% of revenue). However, the lion’s share comes from digital advertising (45%). The remainder is derived from various sources, including live events (like The Atlantic Festival, Future of Work seminar, and Aspen Ideas Festival 2020).

“It’s actually a wonderful time to be a publisher because the incentives for the highest-quality journalism and what journalists want to make are aligned with what readers are willing to pay for. So, we can be incredibly ambitious knowing that the highest quality product is what people will want to subscribe to,” LaFrance says. “I think one of the reasons The Atlantic has remained so urgent and relevant for 162 years is that we’ve been really aggressive about diversifying revenue and one of the first media companies to demonstrate extraordinary skill in the live event space.”

That’s not to say the waters won’t be choppy ahead.

“This is an intensely competitive environment. That’s not just among publications and magazines but in the way people spend their time nowadays – from Netflix to TikTok to Instagram to news organizations. There is no other publication out there like The Atlantic, and that’s why we’re having so much success with our subscriptions,” she continues. “But the key for us going forward is making people understand what makes us special.”

Eye on the horizon

LaFrance, who joined the company in 2014 and served as its website editor for years, lives by an important credo: Nothing is guaranteed, especially in the world of digital publishing.

“No publication has a right to survive. You have to really serve your readers. That means doing the best quality work and finding the places where your readers are so that they can connect with your journalism, fall in love with it, and keep coming back.”

While mum on the details, LaFrance hinted that other exciting changes are coming soon to The Atlantic’s digital offerings. Right now, her team is focused on further perfecting the digital user’s experience and gauging reaction to the redesigns.

“We’ve done a lot of audience research and looked closer at how people are finding our stories, what they like, and what they are excited about on our site. All of that has been factored into our editorial thinking process. So far, the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, almost to the point where we’re waiting to learn what we can do better.”

Perspectives

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

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

Featured Post | Perspectives

Platforms, politics, people and sharks

Last week at the 2019 World Media Congress in Las Vegas I had the privilege of being asked to address the weighty topic of “Platforms, Politics, and People.”  At this moment in time, it presents a remarkable challenge to cover the confluence of these topics before a global audience.

I found myself trying illuminate a perilous intersection between the growing distrust of tech platforms (which continue to register record usage) and the growing divisiveness in politics. And, to make things even more challenging, my speaking slot was at 5 p.m. just before cocktails in Las Vegas, of all places.

And so, facing challenges both topical and logistical, I decided to do what had to be done: I cued up “Baby Shark.”

Jumping the shark

As much as this dreaded video is guaranteed to intractably embed itself in the mind of any hapless listener, it also represents the good of these topics. This song impossibly united all of Washington, regardless of politics, as the Nationals won their first ever World Series. It has racked up close to four billion views on Google’s YouTube making it one of the most watched videos of all time. If there is good in the world of platforms and politics, it’s represented in Baby Shark.

Yet, despite the tenaciously peppy and persistent beat of Baby Shark, my mind turned to the bigger, badder sort. After consulting DCN member National Geographic and the Merriam-Webster dictionary, I found the term I was looking for: feeding frenzy.

This wildly aggressive attack of prey by an animal or group of animals provides an accurate description of policy makers’ and the press’ relationship to tech companies right now. Their frenetic scrutiny of tech has been driven primarily by Facebook’s woes over the past 18 months. It took some time but there are already signs of Google’s blood in the water. The alpha predators are under attack.

Boiling the ocean

Tech platforms currently face two issues that are making big waves. The first is a slew of antitrust investigations, which are underway in the Germany, UK, Israel, Australia, and France. Oh, and also in the offices of nearly every one of the United States’ Attorneys General, not to mention by the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and Congress. For perspective, recall the antitrust investigation of Microsoft two decades ago, which many argue provided the oxygen for Facebook and Google to launch. That investigation (which resulted on certain limitations being imposed on the company) involved a mere 20 states as compared with this bipartisan group of nearly 50.

On its own, an antitrust review might not cut too deeply. Significantly, however, this one takes place at the same time as new laws around privacy and data protection are being enacted globally. The business model of devouring personal data to micro-target advertising is at risk. It’s this intersection of data and competition policy which presents significant challenges to this mighty Duopoly.

Google and Facebook would prefer to keep antitrust scrutiny focused on the price of their products. That’s because most of their services are free to the end consumer. But price is not the only factor in an antitrust investigation. And, in an increasingly complex profit-driven data economy, new issues have arisen that raise the stakes. For one, there’s the obvious question of whether Facebook’s dominance allowed it to look the other way while users’ data was abused, and its post-IPO profits soared. 

Shark tank

Significantly, today’s political concerns – and these investigations – are bipartisan. Republicans and Democrats alike are increasingly worried about data privacy and the ability for market entrants to innovate in a world where two companies dominate through data-based surveillance advertising. At the same time, everyone is getting more educated on the issues as we can see in the hearings. And we’re seeing an increasing flow of press coverage and research.

I find no better examples of these two developments – bipartisan concerns and savvy scrutiny – than in the actions of some of our youngest politicians:

The youngest member of the House is the media-friendly Democratic US Representative, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Ahead of Mark Zuckerberg testifying two weeks ago, she went to Twitter to learn more about the issues and asked the public for good lines of questioning. Her engaged constituents dutifully replied with more than 12,000 responses.

With this input, her questions of Zuckerberg captured significant attention and highlights spread through Twitter receiving millions of views. We witnessed a representative using Twitter to gather input to question one of the most powerful people in the world and then to move the discussion further along after the hearing. Simply put, she came of age with the Internet and social media and knows how to use it.

The youngest member of the Senate is Missouri’s Republican Senator, Josh Hawley. I played his grilling of a Google policy executive for attendees of the World Media Congress. The audience was clearly pleased to see a Google executive being expertly questioned about concerns ranging from antitrust to child safety and privacy.

Chumming the water

These matters continue to drive down consumer trust in Facebook and Google. Unfortunately, this is where we confront an uncomfortable dichotomy between the interests of advertisers and the public. To date, advertisers are still drunk on the precision targeting, efficiency, and scale that Facebook brings to the table. 

As such, they’ve been willing to avert their attention from the growing body of research that shows that the perception of environment seeps into advertisements presented there. In the right context, that’s a good thing. In the wrong context, irreparable brand damage can occur.

Shark tale

The sailing is not smooth for publishers right now. While digital offers incredible opportunities for consumer engagement, audience interaction, and innovation, the market is reacting having been driven to the brink by the dominance of a few predatory players.

But it’s time to take the offensive and go on the hunt. There’s blood in the water and a frenzy of scrutiny buoyed along on a tide of changing consumer perspective. We need to focus on the opportunities emerging amidst this political and public scrutiny of the way in which information is being distributed and data is being collected and deployed.

DCN member research shows considerable growth in non-advertising revenues driven primarily by subscriptions and direct-consumer revenues. DCN’s public research, further confirmed by recent News Media Alliance research, also shows that most digital subscribers are happy with the value they’re receiving and at the same time are not concerned about how much they’re spending in any given month. These are two very good things: Consumers are happy with the value and not closely tracking what they’re spending. I smell opportunity in the water. The launch of Disney+ last week for $6.99 per month saw more than 10 million customers sign on in the first 24 hours. That’s a clear testament to this dynamic. 

Open water

With all of this in mind, there are four things I encourage everyone to focus on as we continue to build safe and sustainable businesses. First, know that trust is the currency our industry must capitalize on. Publishers can take their uniquely trust-based consumer relationships and brand safe environments to the bank. Second, premium publisher brands add considerable value to any platform. This is evident in the $100 million Facebook spent to entice publishers to participate into its latest foray into news. Third, media’s revenue mix is changing. Publishers are doubling down on consumer revenues and it’s paying off. And fourth, direct relationships win, and data is very much a part of this equation.

Above all, publishers need to maintain their trust-based relationships with consumers. They must protect their data and ensure that under emerging privacy laws, Facebook and Google don’t find ways to circumvent these protections and continue to vacuum up consumer data outside of their expectations. We must continue to illuminate these behaviors when we see them, and to build the next wave of digital innovation as the tide turns against the Duopoly.

Advertising | Uncategorized

Compete or collaborate? Two approaches to dealing with walled gardens

Publishers are rightfully concerned with the fact that huge search and social companies dominate today’s digital advertising market. Typically, they have reacted to this state of play in one of two ways: by either trying to compete with these so-called walled gardens, or by joining forces with them.

But which approach leads to the best results for advertisers? Should publishers give in meekly to the “can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” mentality that’s been lining the pockets of these companies for well over a decade? Or should they take stock, take a stand, and find profitable ways to compete against them?

We’re in a unique age of digital domination

The advent of digital has brought with it a dilemma for publishers and their advertisers. It is possible to reach a wider audience than ever before. In most cases, that means they need to pay for exposure with the globe’s biggest and most influential big tech firms, Google and Facebook.

However, many publishers are embracing the challenge of taking on these closed publishing ecosystems. They have confidence in their methods, and they want to prove to their customers that their brand is in fact in safer hands when it’s away from the monopolistic claws of the duopoly.

Others, however, believe that the walled gardens created by such companies make it nigh on impossible to compete for reach in the wider market. And some of them look to inter-provider collaboration as a way to guarantee results for their customers (and keep their business afloat).

The case for competition

A growing percentage of today’s publishers are hesitant to collaborate with big tech because they’ve been burned by them in the past. And many they don’t trust platforms to deliver the exposure and brand-safe contexts that their advertisers need.

The topic of trust has come to the fore in recent years. A series of antitrust investigations have been exposing the monopolistic practices of big tech, particularly in the US, where 50 state attorneys recently opened general investigations into Google’s advertising policies.

High fluctuations in traffic from these providers hasn’t improved their reputation for stable, consistent results, nor has the withdrawal of many features from these platforms that were intended to help publishers share, and profit from, their content. Facebook’s Instant Articles, for example, died a rather untimely death after just two years thanks to inconsistent reporting and a lack of opportunity for monetization.

The technical challenges involved with cooperating with these companies are also proving to be barriers to successful collaboration. Many big tech firms, not least Facebook, expect publishers to build their own separate content injection API, a process that is costly, time-consuming and inconvenient.

Data driven

In fact, walled gardens are notoriously cagey with their data as a whole, making it difficult to remove and activate key information from their own systems and thereby rendering it incompatible with other aggregation platforms that might have better (read: more relevant) features for publishing houses.

This has led to many publishers relying heavily on their own primary data as their main insights to the market. Doing so might be restrictive, but the upside is, at least the company in question has complete control over how much of this data is released, and who sees it.  

Experience matters

When considering the case for competition, we also need to look at the way in which the buying public respond to ads from various channels. Research has proven that people are sick of screens covered with paid search ads, but are receptive to advertising in the context of trustworthy content. A report from Nielsen goes so far as to say that local media receives three times higher consumer trust and 2.5 high positive sentiment compared to ads from high market-share platforms, suggesting that ads from magazines, TV and newspapers are less annoying to (and thus more successful with) consumers.  

The case for collaboration

Google and Facebook not only dominate the publishing space, they’re directing it. It could be argued that they are doing a lot of the hard work by blazing the trail. Thus, all collaborators need to do is keep up – and use the features and innovations delivered via their marketplaces to the advantage of their advertisers. A key argument for collaboration is that shared data equals better data. Having access to the insights shared by walled gardens benefits the whole of market. That is, if this data hasn’t been manipulated for these companies’ own gain, of course.

And here we are, back to the elephant in the room. The issue of trust. Those who are still keen to collaborate should be encouraged by the fact that some big tech CEOs, including Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, do appear to be addressing publishers’ concerns head on.

Yes, more needs to be done when it comes to levelling the playing field for publishers. (And proposed policies such as the Journalism Competition & Preservation Act are going to go some way to alleviating publishers’ concerns.) But the fact remains that these companies lead the market because they have nailed a model that, for the most part, works. According to a survey from Adform, some 13% of publishers even believe that walled gardens simplify revenue generation and the distribution process. Despite the bad press, there are publishers out there who are happy with what’s on offer and who will keenly collaborate.

Finding the best approach

Both approaches have their own merits. The only way that publishers can decide whether they want to compete or collaborate with Google and Facebook is to consider their long-term goals, then determine how the features on offer from each platform will help them achieve them. They also need to think about where they stand on content sharing and control, data ownership, and the availability and accuracy of their reporting metrics.

And there’s no reason why publishers can’t adopt a dual strategy that allow them to compete and collaborate in equal measure. After all, collaboration doesn’t mean giving in to big tech. It just means keeping their biggest adversaries onside – and using access to big tech’s products and policies to better inform their own strategy.

Can we really compare news publishers with big tech firms?

Regardless of the relationship they have with Google and Facebook, smaller publishers must remember that they offer something different to the tech giants of today. They’re unique from big tech in three important ways:

  1. Advertisers trust them, because they have control over where their ads appear.
  2. They can not only prove campaign ROI, but also deliver recommendations that add value to their offering. It’s an element of personalization that Big Tech struggles to emulate at scale.
  3. Crucially, they the capabilities to deliver omnichannel campaigns in a much more agile way than the bigger firms. This is key in a market that’s increasingly embracing the combined power of digital, print, OOH and events advertising channels. 

There is most definitely an argument for publishers to focus to their own strengths, not big tech’s well-documented weaknesses.

Advertising | Perspectives

How to accurately evaluate your content marketing

Today, branded content is the most effective way to capture the attention of and build trust with new audiences. And, as all marketers know, time (a.k.a attention) is money. For years, the best way to reach people who may be interested in your products or service was through pop-up ads, pre-roll or TV commercials.

However, with an estimated 25% of internet users employing ad-blockers and DVR devices allowing people to easily avoid intrusive ads, it’s become a marketer’s job to establish what and how to capture their attention. What we do know is, although audiences are steering clear of advertisements, they still want to enjoy the things those ads aim to interrupt: the stories.

Source: Pressboard’s 2019 Branded Content Benchmarks Report

Since releasing our first Branded Content Benchmarks Report in 2016, we’ve received many messages from marketers and media companies who found it helpful for understanding what metrics they should be using to evaluate their branded content campaigns.

Using data pulled from nearly 4,000 pieces of sponsored content created by brands and publishers through Pressboard’s platform, we’ve compiled an updated Branded Content Benchmarks Report, which details how well branded content performed in 2019. The report aims to help marketers go beyond mere impressions and clicks and to better understand the metrics they should be considering when measuring branded content.

Determine which traffic source to use

We’ve used several advertising platforms to promote our clients’ content as well as our own and have accumulated a wealth of data on traffic source performance. We’ve found that LinkedIn is incomparable for reaching working professionals, with average active attention time of 54.7 seconds. This highly engaged audience comes at a high price, however, which may be out of reach for the average marketer.

Twitter is great for reaching news seekers with timely and relevant articles, with average active attention time of 52.3 seconds. However, that’s not necessarily for the lowest possible cost. And although we’ve used several native platforms, poor traffic quality and low average attention time has consistently driven us back to paid social time and time again.

What we’ve realized is that the most cost-effective way to promote content to an engaged audience on social is through Facebook newsfeed ads, where we see an average attention time of 52.1 seconds. Facebook is a great starting point for promoting content because the ad platform is approachable, offers in-depth ad targeting options and doesn’t require a sizeable budget like some of the others to make a big impact.

Look beyond the surface data

In addition to average attention and the number of read, we find that Brand Lift Studies are emerging as an important way to measure the effectiveness of content marketing campaigns. As media executives, you want to ensure that you are capturing the right audience at the most optimal time to result in a purchase intended action.

As Brand Lift Studies have become a key marketing resource, social platforms have adapted and evolved their services to accommodate the format to advertisers needs. Facebook offers Brand Lift Studies to users and Google has two measurement models: Brand Lift Studies and Brand Lift Studies 2.0. SnapChat also jumped on the trend to offer Brand Lift Studies for premium buyers.

Brand Lift Studies are used to measure consumer-brand interaction based on a marketing campaign. They typically include a consumer survey of one question where one group of people are exposed to an ad and the second group is not. Once seeing (or not seeing the ad), the user can choose to participate and answer honestly or avoid the survey altogether. The purpose is to help advertisers identify positive changes in the consumer’s journey, from awareness, perception, consideration and the likelihood of purchase.

Ask the right questions

When conducting Brand Lift Studies, advertisers can directly determine the answers to questions such as:

  • Are audiences able to recall the ad?
    • Do people like what they see in our ad?
    • Did the ad influence people to consider your brand of product?
    • Are consumers more likely to purchase the product or brand after seeing the ad?

All of which are surveyed at different parts of the consumer’s journey in order to avoid brand fatigue and poor user experience.

Think long-term brand lift benefits

A user can be tracked through several social touchpoint metrics including post engagements, shares, link clicks, and impressions. But the goal is to be memorable to your audience. Therefore, it is important to understand how an advertiser can be memorable in a market full of content.

According to Bussiness.com, distribution metrics such as CTR, impressions, and clicks have lost value as true internet currency. When building brand awareness, advertisers can earn intuitive feedback on their audiences through their behaviors. This includes active reading time, scrolling percentage, ad recall, consideration, and likelihood of purchase.

However, the lack of granular insight produced by clicks, views, impressions, and CTR makes it quite difficult to understand an audience is really interested in. That’s where Brand Lift Studies fill this gap because they allow you to fully understand your consumer’s intent and preference.

A reason why more companies are choosing to use Brand Lift Studies as a reliable resource when marketing is because it provides direct feedback from consumers within days of audience interaction. This gives advertisers the ability to actively optimize their campaigns. They can opt to adjust creatives or targeting in order to maximize their ROI.

Through our research, we’ve established that the “how and when” you reach your target audience can be pivotal for your campaign to succeed to its full potential. Publishers should be sure that when they work with social of work with marketers on content-based campaigns, they understand audience behavioral patterns through metrics like active reading time, scrolling behavior.

Publishers should also know that Brand Lift Studies offer the most accurate measure of a campaign’s overall performance. Not only will these studies provide you with real time results, they’ll inform advertisers exactly how well your content delivers your message, and clearly demonstrate that the context you provide is an ideal fit.  

Featured Post | Innovation | Video

How People and Entertainment Weekly grow audiences with video

It’s a brand people have known and loved for four and a half decades – as a magazine. Now People is focused on video, determined to grow the brand and bring its content to new, and larger, audiences.

“The most important thing is that the brand has to have a voice to begin with,” said Will Lee, SVP of Digital for the Entertainment Group of Meredith Corp., a role he’s held for two years, which coincides with Meredith’s acquisition of Time, Inc. “People has a very strong brand voice that it’s cultivated over 45 years. We know what the consumer expects from us. We have a very well-developed playbook for how the brand should sound and look.”

People’s emotional DNA

That means sticking to the brand’s core emotional DNA when showing work on Snapchat, for example. “We don’t say snarky, mean things about celebrities. It’s not what we do.” So, even if Snap viewers prefer things a little salty, People stays true to its own style, regardless of medium. “We get a lot of data from Snapchat,” Lee said, “and that audience has evolved. It’s very different from what it was three years ago.”

People’s video content focuses on what Lee called “the three R’s, the content their readers just can’t get enough of: reality TV, the British Royal family, and the red carpet. “Streaming is a different level of engagement. The really passionate audience comes from reality TV.” So, Lee’s team of 60 to 80 staffers produce a reality-based video show four nights a week and a Royals show once a week. “Reality TV is a conversation starter,” said Lee, of the genre’s powerful appeal.

Reality check

The numbers back him up. “We’ve done 100 episodes of ‘Reality Check.’ And after four episodes, we already had the second most viewed show on people.com, with 2 to 3 million views of show clips in a week. That is a pretty good debut for us.”

Pivoting constantly is key and Lee knows how hard his team works to keep up. “All the parts of video work closely together because we’re constantly iterating product on a daily basis. It’s a very special kind of producer who can do three or four formats and keep it all together.”

“What’s interesting about our model is that we’re not tied to 26-week orders so we can adjust. We have a lot of flexibility which differentiates us from cable. We can iterate and improve the product.”

Brand building

But, when deciding which next steps to take, “we have to be very thoughtful, as a media brand with a history and the brand equity we’ve built,” Lee added. “Where is the growth? How do we amplify the brand and move into new markets?” Newer platforms like TikTok , he said, are “the solar power. That’s where the future lies. We have a great brand, but that is no guarantee of future growth.”

However, Lee feels confident that streaming is essential to their success. “That’s why we’ve made such a big bet on it. If we’re not in that space, we’re going to be left behind.”

Lee’s team also partners with Meredith Local Media Group , which has 17 TV stations across the country, which Meredith will leverage when it launches a new daily syndicated television show in September 2020. “That will be the centerpiece of our overall video product.” Lee acknowledged how ambitious this new product is: “Thirty minutes of daily broadcast level TV is a huge amount of work.” The magazine-style show, with “all new and original material really represents a pretty important next step for this iconic brand. It brings us more markets, and more audience. There aren’t a lot of media brands that will have this as part of their media ecosystem. In a company already producing print, digital and video, “this is going to be another evolution of how we all work together,” he said.

Entertaining audiences

When it comes to his other responsibility, Entertainment Weekly, Lee says a new launch is imminent as well. “We’re really trying to amplify the brand. We want to go to where the audience is, in local markets. It’s important for us to reach those audiences.”

EW has announced that it will be working with Jeffrey Katzenberg’s short form mobile video platform Quibi, slated to launch in April 2020. The morning show, which will recap late-night TV, will take a similar strategic approach to the Lee he employs with People. However, he emphasizes that the brands are quite distinct, and that EW is “known as a cultural curator.” That should play well on Quibi, which offers a new audience that Lee is excited to reach.    

Perspectives

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

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

Advertising | Perspectives

Let’s celebrate the decline of the third-party cookie

The “death” of the third-party cookie is a popular narrative shaping the advertising industry today. But while the usual story is one of doom and gloom for publishers the reality is altogether more positive. This is a headline we should celebrate. 

Consider this: For more than a decade, third-party providers have aggregated publisher data, packaged it and sold it to advertisers. This revenue should – and will – be reclaimed by publishers in the months to come. 

Today, third-party cookies are at the heart of the digital advertising economy, which is built on data. Programmatic has enabled advertising to be transacted based on rich granular user data and is now used to fuel 85% of all digital advertising. 

The promise for advertisers is that they can hyper-target their perfect audience. It’s little wonder the third-party data market is now worth $19bn in the US alone. 

A privacy-first world

However, it’s an unsustainable model, and one that is already breaking. Browsers and regulators are enforcing privacy restrictions that will change the very foundations of the internet. Tomorrow’s web is moving to a privacy-first model, where third-party cookies are no longer available for advertising. There are also legal implications for businesses that do not comply with consumer data rights. 

Take both Firefox and Safari, which this year has made significant changes to their browsers including the routine blocking of third-party cookies. To media buyers, these users are invisible. They cannot be served targeted advertising. With the two browsers controlling up to 40% of overall traffic to publisher sites, it’s easy to see why the doomsday headlines are coming in thick and fast. 

Yet there is another way. One in which publishers which change their business models can survive and even thrive in a world without third-party cookies.

Be prepared 

Currently, publishers are in two camps. They’re either ignoring the coming cookie-apocalypse, hoping that industry ID solutions will be their salvation – or they’re being proactive, rebuilding their businesses around first-party data instead. Let’s take a look at what it takes to be proactive.

Instead of putting their destiny in yet another external company’s hands, every publisher should see this new world as an opportunity, in which they are the primary, and indeed only, online advertising data supplier. Let’s call it the data 2.0 opportunity. 

Unlike third parties, publishers have the technical and legal right to process user data. That’s because they have a direct relationship with consumers. This opens the door to a huge $19bn opportunity for publishers, in the US alone. As third-party data disappears, advertisers will look to publishers to access targeted audiences. Below is some advice for publishers to succeed and take advantage.

Own your own data

The relationship that a publisher has with its audience via subscriptions and behavioral data is becoming much more valuable. But publishers must  shift their mindset and stop needlessly giving away their data. They must protect their advertising revenue by building a first-party data strategy to reduce their reliance on third-party cookies. 

Understand your users 

Third-parties have spent over ten years building and telling audience “stories”. Want to find a sports enthusiast? They could once build you an entire back story about these users, and allow you to target them all over the web. Not anymore, thanks to Safari and Firefox. By using third-party data today, advertisers have no differentiation between a CNN.com, and a NYTimes.com sports enthusiastic and have significant challenges with scale. Luckily, publishers are in a great position to start building their own audience “stories” with rich first party data, not relying on third-party data to do this work for them.

The best place for an advertiser to find and understand a sports enthusiast is directly from a relevant publisher. 

Educate your sales teams

Adapting to a first-party data strategy requires expertise in an area that some publishers may be neglecting. It requires marketing their strengths and repositioning their offering to media buyers. They will need new skills that mirror what adtech companies have been doing so well over the last ten years. If you prepare your sales force to sell with accurate first-party data, you will eliminate any gaps between audience creation and how this data is sold in the market.

Privacy-first = on-device

Chrome, Apple, Brave, and many other tech companies have recently discussed moving data-processing to the device, using ‘edge computing’. They suggest that in order to better protect user privacy, the amount of data leaving a device should be limited. As soon as any user data leaves the device (and is sent to the cloud), a user’s privacy is at risk of breach by a third-party.

It is critical to keep data on-device in the data 2.0 world because your method of processing data is scrutinized.

First-party audiences

There has been a lot of press recently about the rise of context. Instead of relying on profiling individual users, Advertisers are increasingly looking to leverage the context around what a user is reading and their behavior on-site as a replacement of third-party data. 

As third-party cookies decline publishers hold the richest data sets on the web. We support initiatives like IAB Data Labels which begins to explore a common taxonomy around audiences, and not cookies. An advertiser can find their audience in a unified way. 

There is a better way

A recent study showed that publishers stand to lose around 52% of their revenue if Chrome also restricts third-party cookies. This should be a wake-up call to publishers to act now.

The proposed solution is not theoretical. This year we have seen publishers monetize their Safari traffic that lacks third-party cookies. Publisher Immediate Media has seen a 135% increase in revenue year-on-year, Stylist has doubled its advertising yield and Entrepreneur has recorded a 7.6x increase in targetable inventory which resulted in a dramatic boost in their revenue. 

Each is in control of their own destiny, unlocking audiences through their first-party data and monetizing it effectively – even when third-party cookies are unavailable. They are ready for the demise of the cookie. Are you?

About the author

Kristy Schafer works with publishers and top talent to grow US revenues for the industry’s only publisher-focused DMP. With deep expertise in advertising, data and analytics, Schafer spends the majority of her time understanding how changes in ad-tech, browser updates, and privacy impact publishers. She is helping to lead an evolution in the ad industry.

Innovation | Perspectives

How Disney+ and AppleTV+ are changing the OTT landscape

It’s a big month for streaming. The launch of Apple TV+ and Disney+ are finally upon us. So it’s a good time for an update on the state of the streaming wars. 

In this strange new world, tech companies like Apple are investing in content, and media companies like Disney are investing in technology. So how does? all this effort stack up? A closer look at the content and ad spend of these new OTT major players provides some insight into the future of streaming.

Content spending among new OTT services

At launch, Disney+ unsurprisingly boasts a sizable catalog of Disney-owned content. The company has also announced that $2.5 billion will be allocated to producing more original content for the platform over the next 5 years. 

Conversely, Apple has opted for a small but mighty catalog. At launch AppleTV+ was armed with considerable “star power” to entice subscribers. The platform will host entirely original content exclusively available to AppleTV+ subscribers. And pre-launch advertisements reveal some of the biggest names in acting and directing.

Although these two major players bring promising new content to the OTT lineup, they will have to continuously find ways to retain value in the eyes of consumers.  

Monthly subscriptions to the top seven streaming platforms will collectively cost $61. Consumers will more realistically pick and choose the platforms they actually want to pay for.  These leaves companies pitching both price point and content.  

Clearly, these numbers indicate that Disney and Apple are attempting to join the royalty of OTT, made up of existing streamers like Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu, which all have their own originally produced hits. With the launch of HBO Max in 2020, AT&T’s WarnerMedia may join the club soon. 

With content creation underway and platforms officially launched, OTT services can now shift focus to conveying value to win the favor of consumers, who have more options than ever before. And that is where marketing and advertising come in. What does advertising an OTT option in an already crowded space look like? 

Apple and Disney spend big ahead of streaming launch

For now, let’s look at the two headline makers: AppleTV+ and Disney+. 

Here at MediaRadar, we found that both platforms only started running ads in late August. AppleTV+ quickly overtook not only Disney+’s ad spend, but the entire streaming space. In the month of September, AppleTV+ was the top ad spender out of all streaming platforms. This includes established players like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video.

To date, Apple TV+ has outspent Disney+ five times over on paid media. What’s more, AppleTV+ has not slowed their efforts now that the platform has launched. Ten days into November, AppleTV+ is on pace to once again be the top ad buyer out of all the streaming platforms this month.

The two companies differ in strategy, as well. Disney has promoted its new streaming platform as a whole, using clips from owned content to pitch the breadth of the platform. While Apple has been promoting its original content in stand-alone spots. So far, it has focused ad spend around eight shows in particular.

AppleTV+ may be outspending Disney+ on paid media. However, that does not mean Disney’s marketing push has been insignificant in any way. In fact, Disney has been orchestrating a massive marketing push using all of their various channels. 

This push includes everything from on-air endorsements from Tom Bergeron (host of “Dancing With the Stars” on the Disney owned ABC network), to billboard and bus ads around Disney’s theme parks, to QR codes on lanyards worn by Disney’s 7,000+ retail workers at various Disney store locations. In one of the more interesting moves, Disney posted a video on YouTube titled “Basically Everything Coming to Disney+”, using snippets of movies available on the platform. The video was over 3 hours long.

On top of this, Disney has rolled out packaged deal after packaged deal thanks to its extensive holdings and powerful partnerships. For example: Verizon announced a year of free Disney+ for both new and existing customers, and more impressively Disney announced a $12.99 bundle with Disney+, ESPN and Hulu (both of which are majority-owned and controlled by house mouse). Visa card holders who have a Disney branded credit card can even lock in a discounted price for 2 or 3 years. Apple, for its part, is including a year subscription to Apple TV+ with the purchase of any Apple product. 

Apple is almost on the defensive in this new world, playing as a tech company against media giants like Disney. No one says the best movies come from Apple today. They have a real deficiency in terms of changing perception that they are a place where you should go to watch your content.

In a bid to make that case, Apple has spent $20 million advertising its two biggest shows ahead of the launch. 

In contrast, Disney’s robust offerings, combined with constant messaging across Disney properties, may immediately drive Disney+ to the top. “Think of Disney like a giant pinball machine, with content and initiatives pinging between divisions in an effort to drive up the ultimate score,” Gene Del Vecchio, a marketing professor at USC, told The New York Times. 

With all this activity from the new platforms, and platforms like HBO Max and Peacock yet to join the fray, the streaming wars are heating up. It will certainly be interesting to watch how these companies market themselves as they fight for subscribers who will have many providers to choose from.

Industry-Research | Revenue

The publishers’ guide to ecommerce

While advertising and subscription revenues are core to publishers’ bottom line, developing alternative revenue streams is critical in today’s competitive environment. One diversification approach, ecommerce, has evolved well beyond affiliate links and branded content. A new report from Whatsnewinpublishing.com, The Publisher’s Guide to eCommerce, written by Damien Radcliffe, explores emerging ecommerce opportunities and lessons learned from publishers. The report details 10 ecommerce examples from publishers. Some used third parties to implement their ecommerce initiative, while others are developing inhouse teams.

The right recipe

As the report points out, eCommerce is not easy work for a publisher. They need to be thoughtful in identifying the benefits of brand extensions and messaging this to the consumer. Importantly, product relevance and quality must exist to build customer loyalty for any brand extension.

Tasty, BuzzFeed’s food brand, provides a great example of a healthy brand extension that organically fits its brand with snack-size recipes and videos. It successfully broadens the brand’s reach beyond its core site and social media channels. Tasty products include cookbooks and kitchenware, and even a partnership with McCormick Spices.

The report suggests that publishers stick close to their wheelhouse. For example, there might be a lucrative business living within their articles and photographs archives. The Denver Post and the The Seattle Times lead strong ecommerce channels selling special events and news coverage clippings for memorabilia, wall art, and keepsakes. Third parties are often used for the fulfillment, creation and distribution of these products, which reduces some of the publishers’ risks.

Social shopping

Social commerce is another interesting avenue for publishers to keep in mind. GlobalWebIndex research finds that nearly 3 in 10 online consumers say that researching and finding products online is one of the main reasons they use social. These platforms offer an opportunity for publishers to reach new and wider audiences.

As such, media analysts thought that social platforms would provide an optimal environment for a publisher ecommerce marketplace. Unfortunately, it hasn’t panned out just yet. However, Snap appears to offer a strong potential for experimenting in ecommerce. The research emphasizes that it is critical that publishers working to offer purchase opportunities on social strive for a frictionless experience.

Regardless of the approach, the report reminds publishers not to underestimate the cost and complexity of running an ecommerce division. It’s like building a startup business: Technology investments will be required (acquisition and fulfillment software) as well as those for merchandise and warehousing.

Challenges and rewards

First-party insights are important for a successful ecommerce initiative. This is particularly critical in establishing a correlation between the content the user engages into the product searches and products the user buys. Creating this type of first- party relationship between content and product will allow publishers to offer predictive analytics.  

There are a multitude of ecommerce ideas for publishers to experiment, from affiliate relationships to developing and selling proprietary products. Importantly, each ecommerce opportunity must be evaluated carefully to meet the necessary criteria to compliment the publisher’s brand. And publishers must recognize the level of investment required to undertake a successful ecommerce initiative.  

Perspectives

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

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

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