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Perspectives | Revenue

Ad quality is content quality. And quality content needs better classification

As stakeholders across the digital media industry work to fine tune the programmatic market, the issue of ad quality continues to reveal new challenges. This makes sense. “Ad quality” is really an umbrella term, and under that umbrella we find ad security, ad performance, aspects of brand safety, and more. But ad quality is about even more than the ad itself. It’s about content – on the publisher’s page and beyond. Content quality is a deeply significant piece of the perceived quality of an ad, and it needs to be considered more closely and carefully in these conversations.

For the sake of clarity, when we say, “content quality,” we’re not accusing your editorial team of slacking. We’re talking about making sure content is classified accurately and specifically, so fewer off-message ads end up next to that content. And we’re certainly talking about where the user goes when they click on an ad: What is on that landing page? Does the content of that landing page send a message that feels inappropriate or unwelcome, compared to the publisher page they just came from?

Faking it

Another question: Does the ad’s creative accurately represent the content it leads to? Yes, we’re all familiar with “fake news.” But the problem of “fake ads” has also spread, more quietly but widely. These ads may be inconsistent with the publisher’s ad policies. They may also feature misleading creative.

Sometimes, the creative tells all you need to know, and the ad is simply the wrong ad for the environment in question. Unfortunately, though, often the only way you can tell it’s the wrong ad for this environment is to click through and see where you land. And for the unsuspecting user, landing on a clearly inappropriate page can wreck user experience.

It is impossible to fully separate the publisher’s site from the ads on that site, and in turn from any of the landing pages behind any of those ads. When the user clicks through a seemingly innocuous ad and is surprised to end up on a highly partisan page, or a page with adult content, they may close out that site in seconds. However, they will remember which publisher site they came from. Publishers have a responsibility to their users to provide positive, relevant experiences, and it’s a liability to the publisher when an ad links out to a site the publisher shouldn’t be associated with.

Creative opportunities

But let’s go back to the right ad creative for the right environment. Inappropriate creative can be instantly spotted. And, at this moment in digital, a lot of categories could be considered inappropriate. Political ads are an obvious case. Major digital players, including Netflix, Spotify, and Twitter, are now banning political ads, or at least election ads. The trend is to get ahead of potential brand safety and UX issues by blocking entire ad categories wholesale.

However, when you block, say, all political ads, you likely also end up blocking harmless ads as well. For example, ads about local politics, which could ultimately be more of a service to the user than a source of controversy.

The nuclear option should not be a publisher’s go-to. Publishers should step back and ask: Are our content categories too broad? Is that inadvertently causing ad quality issues? When we categorize content, are we representing our brand and our vision accurately? These are questions publishers can answer, and the answers will not only help publishers monetize, but enrich the entire programmatic ecosystem.

Collaboration

This requires collaboration between publishers and their supply partners. Together, they can clarify and codify more accurate content verticals for the publisher’s site. Passing keywords to SSPs and other ad platforms is old hat. We need to go deeper for a couple reasons.

First, platforms do have an interest in demonstrating their value to publishers by delivering monetization, and keywords are only effective if targeting around them is enforced. Second, buyers won’t always demand an exact match of keywords anyway, if the site is a high-end premium publisher. They may value certain sites for the publisher’s name and brand higher than the page’s content itself.

Ad platforms need to recognize that when they collaborate with publishers to classify content more clearly and specifically, they open the door to more business for the entire programmatic market. Brand safety concerns have long been a huge deterrent to brands increasing their investment in programmatic. Alleviating those concerns will lead to more programmatic spend, more supply – which in turn makes the platform more valuable to publishers.

Creative solutions

All stakeholders need to look at and classify not only the ad creative, but the landing pages. In programmatic, it’s essential to classify landing pages in real time, before the page renders. While this may seem technologically daunting, ad quality and security vendors (such as the company I work for, GeoEdge) have already the groundwork for this kind of real-time detection of and response to issues in the programmatic market.

For publishers and ad platforms, it will likely be necessary to introduce more content verticals – more specific content categories that can be allowed or blocked, for the ad creative and for the content of the landing page. This will take some effort upfront but will create efficiencies in the long run that are truly useful on the programmatic level.

Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of January 30, 2020

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

Featured Post | Innovation

In the wake of several big name failures, the industry seeks a solid Spanish language news model

2019 will be remembered as a turbulent year for Spanish-language news in the U.S. The New York Times, BuzzFeed News, the Huffington Post, and the Chicago Tribune all shut down their Spanish-language websites in a large blow to parts of the 59 million Spanish language speakers in the U.S.

However, as the old decade folded into the new year, national news outlets confirmed that they weren’t giving up on Spanish-language news. In the past two months, The Washington Post launched its first Spanish-language news podcast, El Washington Post, and USA Today started Hecho en USA, its series on Latino communities. As the new decade begins, the future of Spanish-language news in the U.S. remains a puzzle, difficult to piece together.

Revenue review

The reason for the failures of 2019 largely boil down to money. The Times, for instance, initially launched NYT en Español in early 2016 as a way to grow its international audience. This was part of an optimistic goal to generate $800 million in digital revenue by 2020. At the time, Donald Trump’s racist rhetoric was in full force. So, putting the Times’ journalism stamp on important issues south of the border was meant to be a significant step towards the outlet’s lofty aims.

The plan was to support NYT en Español with advertising revenue, along with the hope of turning readers into subscribers. But a little more than three years later, NYT en Español closed its Mexico City bureau. Despite a potential audience of 80 million people, the advertising dollars weren’t coming in, a Times spokesperson said when the website shut down in September. Nor were these readers subscribing. But according to NYT en Español’s founding editorial director Eli Lopez, the Times lacked a credible plan to monetize his team’s content.

In the wake of these ill-fated efforts, Spanish-speaking communities pay the price. More than 8,000 English-speaking news organizations currently serve approximately 250 million English speakers in the U.S. However, for the almost 59 million Spanish speakers – 10 million of whom don’t speak English well – only approximately 624 news outlets serve them.

When Tribune Publishing shut down Hoy Media, their Spanish-language newspaper in Chicago, in November, reporter Laura Rodríguez lamented the news that would no longer be reported for Chicago’s Latino and Hispanic communities.

Markets in need

“I’m seriously so angry and frustrated at the fact that the company decided to get rid of such an important platform for the Spanish-speaking community in Chicago,” Rodríguez tweeted. “I wrote so many stories no one else did — we had our space! Our Latino, Spanish-speaking community counted on us to tell their stories. Those that are often not told.”

While some of the nation’s largest outlets can afford to experiment, the same can’t be said for smaller organizations across the country. Statewide and citywide newsrooms have already faced crushing layoffs and decimated revenues in one of the hardest decades ever for journalism. And Spanish-speaking communities are among those that will suffer the most.

In New Mexico, where slightly more than one million Spanish speakers represent 49% of the state’s population, the Hispanic population is the most underserved. Despite having a long history with the Spanish language that dates back to before the Constitution, the state only has three Spanish-speaking news outlets. And they are all TV stations and all based in Albuquerque. Compare that to neighboring Arizona, home to a Hispanic population around double the size of New Mexico at more than two million. It is home to 17 Spanish-language outlets, more than five times the amount in New Mexico.

Size matters

At a time when local news has already suffered greatly and positive signs are few and far between (it’s estimated that more than 13,000 communities in the U.S. don’t have any local news coverage) is it too much to expect smaller and medium-sized outlets to launch Spanish-language offerings? Given that national outlets such as the New York Times can’t turn a profit from such investments, the answer for many local newsrooms with fewer resources may just be yes. Right now, it is too much.

Scott Brodbeck is just one local news editor who is familiar with the obstacles of running a local news website. Brodbeck is the founder and CEO of Local News Now, a network of hyperlocal news websites he launched in 2010 that serve markets in northern Virginia and Washington, D.C. With the shrinking advertising market for most media companies due to Google and Facebook’s dominance, financial uncertainty is just one reason why local news companies such as Brodbeck’s aren’t able to implement new products specifically for non-English speaking audiences.

“The biggest challenges are recruiting, training and retaining talented people; producing consistently excellent local journalism that attracts a large local audience; and growing sales to keep growing our organization,” Brodbeck said. “Given the challenges of just putting out our current news product, it would be unrealistic to try to do what we’re doing in a second language.”

Demanding demographics

America is undergoing a rapid change in demographic identity. According to Census projections, the Hispanic and Latino population represented just more than 17% of the U.S. population. By 2060, that population is predicted to be roughly 120 million people, or 28 percent. That’s why Brodbeck said that the best solution for local newsrooms in the future could be for them to focus on hiring reporters from diverse backgrounds. That would allow them to serve as many communities as possible.

“Having separate Spanish language brands may make sense for some of the largest news publishers. Smaller newsrooms would be better off putting their energies into developing robust hiring, training, and employee support practices, to cultivate a diverse workforce that can better serve all readers

News outlets continue to wrestle with how to serve diverse audiences. Thus, it might be down to schools and universities to take a proactive approach by preparing the next generation of journalists for the ever-changing media landscape.

One journalism school that’s already doing so is the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. The school’s Spanish-language journalism program aims to train bilingual journalists to better cover issues important to Latino communities. This program could be a footprint for other journalism schools across the country to follow. It could also provide news outlets with a new generation of journalists to serve an increasingly diverse population.

Like many other aspects of an industry grappling with profitability and even survival, the future of Spanish-language news remains uncertain. And just as the industry experiments with reader engagement and revenue models, news organizations and universities are now exploring different methods of delivering Spanish-speaking news, such as podcasts and special series. With so many moving pieces, only one projection is relatively certain: the growing population of Spanish speakers in the U.S.

Advertising | Perspectives

Publishers: Have no fear of a cookieless future

In case you missed it, just about everyone has been predicting the death of 3rd-party cookies for almost a year. Now, Apple has closed loopholes with ITP 2.3. Mozilla, Brave, and Chrome have grossly restricted or eliminated the use of cookies. And Google has further committed to eliminating all 3rd-party cookies along with UA parameters within the next two years.

What’s more, the loopholes long used to circumvent these regulations are closing quickly and will likely be almost completely eliminated in the future. Even new ones that pop-up will likely be quickly snuffed out as these practices roll-out throughout the digital ecosystem.

For digital publishers, this raises a lot of questions. Isn’t the personalization provided by 3rd-party cookies better for advertisers? And, isn’t that what is required to maximize the value they are willing to pay publishers?

Revenue concerns

We’ve heard Google recently tout research that says personalized advertisements are more highly-valued than non-personalized contextual ads. That would seem to paint a bleak picture for publishers. However, keep in mind that Google is one of the few parties that can offer scaled first-party data and may be inclined to view this issue with bias.

With that being said, many still wonder that in a world without third-party targeting, how are publishers going to be able to deliver an audience to advertisers that are as valuable as the ones they’ve become used to? And at the end of the day, publishers want to know if they can make as much money as they were before from advertising.

Consider the source

Publishers need to take a step back and look at the premise of all this and ask, “Am I being manipulated by parties in the space to believe that I am going to lose value selling the exact same thing as I am today?”

The big change in the ecosystem will come to the third-party targeting system as a whole—and that’s an advertising system. The system being affected is largely going to be the programmatic one (buying and selling inventory using online systems, like Google Ad Manager). Publishers are simply leveraging the advertiser’s system to sell their inventory in an easy and cost-effective format.

This isn’t to say that publishers get to sit back and relax. In fact, publishers might have to find a new way to market that audience to the advertisers. However, if we look at the shifts in spending for advertisers, there’s no slowdown in digital ad spend. Given that spending is going up and your audience remains the same, publishers should have a fair amount of optimism.

Winners and losers

Google is already using cookieless tracking. The same can be said for many other major ad exchanges and ad networks. The advertising market has continued to grow and the money flows to the eyeballs, no matter what. When those eyeballs are on a TV ad for the Superbowl (obviously without cookies), the money flows there. That revenue is driven by the opportunity for advertisers to reach an audience they know is unique.

For advertisers, this is where they lose a little bit. They will have to work much harder in identifying what makes their audiences unique and where they can put their dollars to ensure they’re still able to capture them. This means trying new systems and methods.

In the realm of programmatic advertising, Google has the largest reach, a hold on the industry’s most effective tools, the most user data, and they’re incumbent at just about every layer of digital user experiences. It’s hard not to see them as the biggest winner in all of this.

Publishers’ position

The vast majority of the internet is potentially going to lose personalized cookie targeting. The good news is that publishers are more important than ever before. Your audience, your data, and the material relationship you have with them are more important than ever. And the value that comes along that is only poised to increase as time passes.

The only thing you should fear, given the death of 3rd-party cookies, are the players that will inevitably come out of the woodwork. They’ll tell you that the upcoming cookie changes are of reason why you need to pivot your strategy, need to leverage this company, or this third-party network, because they have great personal relationships with X network or Y direct advertisers.

Basically, they’ll say: Sell your audience to us and we’ll resell it to advertisers. It’s the only way to save your business. It’s in these players’ best interest to grow their first-party data and they need you to help them. Beware these pitches. Instead, rely on doing a good job of engaging with your audiences and understanding who they are.

My last piece of advice is this: Protect the relationship you have with your audience because it’s only going to get more valuable as time goes on.

Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of January 23, 2020

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

Featured Post | Perspectives | Video

Audience expectations are critical in DCN’s 2020 vision

We’ve just returned from our annual summit where a couple hundred senior executives gather in a closed-door meeting to discuss the most pressing issues and exciting opportunities that we, as an industry, have before us. It was my sixth year of having the honor of setting the table to open the executive summit, after more than a dozen years listening from the audience.  

Everyone in the room is a premium publisher – with the exception of a handful of supporting sponsors, speakers, and invited guests. The attendees at the DCN Next: Summit are among the most knowledgeable people in the business of digital media anywhere. It is a daunting task to capture the proper sentiment for the direction of our industry at a gathering of such key leaders. That said, here are the main points from my kickoff remarks this year.  

This new year also marks the start of a new decade, 2020.  

2020. Yes, perfect vision. Optimal focus. As we begin this decade, I believe that DCN’s members are uniquely positioned. As a group focused on creating premium content experiences, we have never lost sight of the importance of our audiences. We’ve remained steadfast in their trust and our direct relationships. 

I see three key facets to this 2020 vision: 

First, we find ourselves rightly renewing our resolution to put the expectations of our audiences first. To meet, to exceed, their expectations. To be their trusted ally. 

Second, we’ve defeated the myth content has to be free and finally defined what it means to be premium. It simply means to have real value worth paying for whether by distributors or consumers. 

Third, given too many years of platform dominance – in which they have indiscriminately hidden the real costs to their services and vacuumed up as much consumer data as possible while, at times abusing trust – we find ourselves in the best position to align with new user expectations. To believe that data is the lifeblood of the Internet is to look past the trust and audience expectations which underpin it now, and in the future.  

Audience first 

Unlike some of those who seek to cravenly capitalize on consumer attention merely to collect data and target ads, we celebrate an unwavering focus on the wants, needs, and expectations of our audiences. The experience across platforms can be rich and elegant. But even more importantly, digital allows us to use multimedia to tell stories in ever more engaging ways, better informing the public – something that has never been more important.  

In this case bringing it altogether, I’d like to point to the brilliant Wall Street Journal report on Google’s ad tech business. It informed a public conversation and made its way not just across the industry but into meetings of regulators investigating Google – this is true impact in journalism. 

Storytelling at its best 

As technology enables us to better tell our stories, it also becomes more deeply embedded and entwined with every aspect of our audiences’ lives. The New York Times 1619 Project was one amazing example featured at a DCN Storytelling Member Day. It not only brilliantly told the story; it reexamined the legacy of slavery and made its way into other media – not just audio and video but it also found its rightful place in classrooms and libraries as educational material – this is true impact in journalism. 

Revenue revived 

The past couple of years have been particularly promising around subscription-based and other Direct-to-consumer (DTC) models. While ad vendors chase “DTC”, the latest acronym in their alphabet soup, DCN’s members have always focused on direct, trusted relationships with their audiences.  

While concerns have loomed around subscription fatigue, recent DCN research found the opposite. In fact, consumers aren’t even aware how much they are spending on subscription products. (DCN’s research shows an average of $54 per month across 4.3 products). So, it’s clear there’s room for more! And we now see that younger audiences who grew up in digital are willing to pay for satisfying experiences. The DCN research backs this up showing that they see value well beyond their cost. 

As we build our subscription-based offerings, and optimize ad experiences across platforms, we must keep these audience experiences top of mind. We serve neither our audiences, nor advertising partners, if we do any less.  

Video views 

Our members – and the industry as a whole – are seeing a hearty appetite for audio and video content. We see robust revenue around licensing of our content and IP, which also allows us to impact ever widening audiences. This is backed up by a renewed effort to preserve copyright over their art, notably including last year in the EU.  

We are also seeing true diversification in our busiess models.  

Where desktop display eroded over the past years, mobile display has offset it. And other forms of advertising including native, sponsored content and leads have helped drive growth. Video advertising, where inventory can be created, continues to carry the highest price and growth in advertising.  And arguably the most important growth of all, we’re seeing direct audience revenues grow more than 20% per year where content companies are being paid directly for their content recognizing its premium value. 

UBS estimates that a combination of 16 media firms will spend $100 billion to produce content in 2020.  In fact, it has been predicted that more than $35 billion will be spent on streaming video content alone.  And with over 60 media companies among the DCN membership, we know that the total investment will be much higher. And rightly so. Hulu has been investing in premium content for its streaming video platform. So is CBS All Access. Disney+ launched in the last few months with an absolutely gorgeous experience. Peacock will launch in April and then HBO MAX a month later. And those are only a few examples. 

Engaging experiences 

While we continue to monitor the power of platforms, their own investment in content demonstrates that information and entertainment are the lifeblood of social experiences online. And now the platforms are starting to pay for it. No DCN member is surprised that film, television, news, sports and other topics engage audiences and ignite conversation, debate, and discussion across platforms.  

Be it delivered on the big screen, small screens, smart speakers, or the myriad delivery channels in the digital content ecosystem, the work our members do forms a nexus of cultural impact. We have reached new heights of digital storytelling. And, undoubtedly our craft, the art of storytelling, will continue to surprise and delight as its evolution continues in the decade to come. 

And, while we face challenges like broad-swath and blunt keyword blacklisting masquerading as “brand safety” and the ease of data-driven scale, we also see signs that marketers too are shifting their focus to quality contexts and making genuine customer connections.  

Yes, it is “easier” to pull a series of data-driven levers and reach purportedly targeted audiences with generic messaging. However, as a growing number of consumers opt out of advertising and intro tracking prevention, savvy marketers too are reviving the art of storytelling. They have a renewed understanding of the power of delivering compelling messages in trusted, engaging, inspiring environments and an appreciation for the cost to their brand when it’s associated with experiences that abuse customers’ expectations. They see that being part of exceptional experiences creates the kind of cultural resonance and relevance that a click cannot compare to.  

Data diligence 

Don’t get me wrong. Certainly, data is a powerful tool for understanding audiences. It is also critical for storytelling and we see it leveraged in stunning executions to create vivid narratives built on numbers. 

But user expectations around data collection and use are of critical concern. With increasing consumer awareness around data practices online and looming enforcement when they’re abused, we must continue to focus in on what’s best for our audiences and only then for our marketing partners. The ability to micro-target, to force an action with a digital ad is not the same as engaging audiences around trusted content. It is not the way to build long-term customer relationships. 

Fans and friction 

It up to us to keep our customer focus razor sharp as we embark on this 2020 vision. We need to minimize complexity and reduce friction while continuing to innovate and enhance experiences for our audiences. Certainly, challenges abound including news deserts impacting local communities, anti-press rhetoric from none other than our own President which sends dangerous signals globally, and continued platform competition and unequitable marketplace control now under investigation by Congress, FTC, DOJ, states, the EU among others.  

I’m feeling good this year about where things are headed. I’m feeling really good.  And I’m thrilled at the programming lineup we assembled for our annual summit to talk about it.  

What I’ve seen in my time in digital, particularly the years I’ve been fortunate enough to spend on the team at DCN, has taught me is that we are at the forefront of something great here. We are on the frontlines of storytelling and communication. We have the power to shape minds, to touch hearts, to fill the world with laughter and tears. Here’s to 2020 bringing the roar of the crowd as we focus on what matters most: the audiences we serve. 

Advertising | Innovation | Video

Publishers focus on the evolution of the business at the annual DCN: Next Summit

At the dawn of the new decade of 2020, DCN members gathered at the Mandarin Oriental Miami January 16 and 17 to network, discuss victories and challenges as media companies evolve, and explore industry predictions.

The new decade calls for a perfect ‘20/20’ vision, said Jason Kint, CEO, Digital Content Next as he kicked off the closed-door, off-the-record gathering. That encompasses continued focus on audience desires, pushback against the myth that all content has to be free, and the elevation of trust and transparency in an era marked by ‘fake news’.

The European Union’s recently enacted copyright law is a win for the industry, with similar discussions expected this year in the U.S, noted Kint. Federal and state investigations as well as emerging regulations are all good signals toward protecting consumer privacy, regulating data use and anti-trust concerns, notes Kint.

We can also expect a steady rise in content investments. UBS estimates that in 2020, a combined 16 media firms will spend $100 billion to produce content. More than $35 billion will allocated on streaming video content, as new players such as Disney Plus and NBC’s Peacock emerge.

“I’m feeling really good this year about where things are headed,” said Kint.

Platforms and policy

Jim Bankoff, CEO, Vox Media said he valued being at the DCN Summit. He described it as a place where premium publishers come together to “find ways to partner and to check our healthy, competitive impulses … and figure out ways to work together” in the wake of ceding ground to third party big tech platform and ad network “that have proven time and again not to have our best interests in mind.”

Investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr

Investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr, who freelances for the Guardian and Observer, captivated the audience by recounting her experiences unearthing the activities of Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. She was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for her work, which sparked international investigations as well as inspiring the Netflix documentary, ‘The Great Hack’.

“This was my introduction to this world of creepy disinformation, but also complete reluctance from the platforms to even acknowledge the problem, let alone deal with it,” she noted. She was instead subjected to legal pushback from Google and Facebook as well as online bullying.

She also called for media companies to not compete against each other. Instead, she encouraged those in the room to join together to “compete against lies and falsehoods. We’ve seen it in Britain and you’re next,” said Cadwalladr.

Monopolies

Scott Galloway, professor, NYU Stern School of Business, said he believes that the big tech companies on the antitrust radar should be broken up. Monopolies kill economic growth and are a “key step to tyranny,” he contended, adding a co-opted government can’t serve as a dominating force for protection.

Galloway pointed out that efforts to regulate the behavior of big tech fines have been largely ineffectual. To date, the fines haven’t been punitive enough to dissuade the big tech companies to modify behavior, he said. He also criticized the federal government for being slow to act.

Money matters

Monetization and concerns about subscription fatigue were recurring themes at the summit. Yet DCN research shows that younger audiences in particular appreciate the value of a subscription and finds that there is still consumer appetite for subscription products.

Jonah Peretti, founder and CEO of Buzzfeed

Jonah Peretti, founder and CEO, Buzzfeed noted that over the course of a few short years, the company has begun to generate significant revenue from Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Netflix from licensing.

“I don’t think Facebook or Google wants to buy news companies,” said Peretti. Of the platforms movement toward paying for content, he said that “They get the benefit of sharing some of the costs of the production of that content. News is a great way to direct repeat visitors and to build trust in the platform to avoid some of the problems of misinformation.”

Media shifts

Kevin Turpin II, president, National Journal, noted his longstanding publication adapted to the changing media landscape by transforming itself from a media company to government research and consulting services company for which subscribers are willing to pay premium prices.

Jim VandeHei, co-founder and CEO, Axios; Executive Producer, AXIOS on HBO said, “you have to deliver content in a way that I would deliver in a conversation with you over a drink, like what is new.” However, to create value, “Tell me why it matters. Give me some context. Give me the power to go deeper.”

For Complex, the path to success hasn’t been simple. Rich Antoniello, CEO and founder, Complex Networks said, “we call ourselves a brand that happens to monetize through media.” He said his company shifted from an ad-dependent model in 2016, ahead of the curve.

One example is the wild success of its “Hot Ones” program. It features10 questions of its celebrity guests that get progressively more personal along with the consumption of hot sauce that gets progressively hotter. And the business model is based not on advertising, but on the sales of high-margin hot sauce.  

Antoniello also outlined the success of ComplexCon, the company’s flagship event, which connects cultural icons with fans who spend $100 to $700 for VIP tickets, with hundreds of thousands sold. Fans also snap up merchandise from Complex and its app-based vendors such as Nike and Adidas.

The power of fandom arose again when Howard Mittman, CEO, Bleacher Report spoke of how his company’s app and successful franchises attract sports fans. He described how individual athletes hold more sway in their fandom habits than sports franchises.

Nearly 10 million fans have signed up for alerts and the app accounts for half of the company’s user engagement. Bleacher Report’s focus is not on breaking sports news, but creating engagement on its own platforms, according to Mittman.

Her story

Media continues to go through cultural shifts toward diversity both in company staffing and in targeting readership such as women. “Women are generally not seeing themselves in media and advertising to the extent that they should be,” said Catherine Levene, president, chief digital officer, Meredith National Media Group.

“We have been the first to support #SeeHer, a national organization committed to accurate representation of women in media and advertising,” she said. She added that’s not only good for supporting women, but also for the bottom line. Women who see themselves in media and advertising are 45% more likely to recommend a product to a friend and purchase it, said Levene.

Elise Loehnen, chief content officer, Goop

Despite the controversy it has attracted by those who question the veracity of its science, Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop brand is growing, noted Elise Loehnen, chief content officer. The platform embraces several media forms and covers topics from relationships to health, including alternative therapies. She said that the controversy has been good for keeping the brand at the forefront of popular discussions.

“We’re tired of being talked down to,” said Loehnen. “We’re a strong female brand undisturbed by the chaos.”

Adapt or die

Rishad Tobaccowala, chief growth officer, Publicis Group,noted that the only way to get ahead as a legacy company is to “kill your core. You have to rethink your entire business.”

Levene from Meredith believes that the mobile world and 5G will create an even greater market for video. And, with 50% of searches conducted on the more than 200 million voice-enabled devices in U.S. homes, opportunities and challenges will arise.

Google’s action to purge third-party cookies against the backdrop of GDPR and CCPA will impact the entire digital ecosystem, Levene noted.

“Data is going to be the currency of the future. Those who have it at scale and the ability to drive a lot of insights from it are going to win,” she added.

Kindness matters

In a social media environment that is being blamed for everything from decreasing personal contact to radicalizing disaffected youth and intensifying suicide rates among girls, Tatyana Mamut, head of product, Nextdoor, made the case that her platform is creating connections on a micro-level in a neighborhood at a time when people hardly know their neighbors

“I believe that kindness is the next big thing in tech,” she added.

Palo Alto journalism educator Esther Wojcicki made the case that helicopter parenting has impacted the workforce and its ability to embrace risk and innovation. She calls for parenting – and management – to embrace trust, respect, independence, collaboration and kindness. She also promotes the idea that every student should take a journalism course to build media literacy skills.

The future will be fraught with change. And as Tobaccowala pointed out, “human beings know how difficult change is.” But to survive, media companies must continue to evolve.

“We have the power to shape minds and hearts, to fill the world with laughter and tears to inform the truth,” said Kint. “Here’s to 2020 bringing the roar of the crowd as we focus on what matters most: the audiences we serve.”

Featured Post | Perspectives

Scott Galloway on Antitrust, election interference, the future of Amazon and more [Video]

Last week, at the DCN Next: Summit, Scott Galloway who is a professor at the NYU Stern School of Business and Author of ”The Four“ and ”The Algebra of Happiness” had a lively conversation with Reuters Breakingviews columnist, Jennifer Saba. DCN’s annual Summit is a closed-door members-only event. However, Saba and Galloway have graciously agreed to allow us to share this session publicly.

Their conversation covers a wide range of topics, in particular antitrust – specifically as it relates to big tech. As Galloway said, historically, “A key step to tyranny [has been] the government being co-opted as opposed to being a countervailing force to corporate power.”

To do its job, “effectively, government has to be bigger and badder than any individual or company – and it isn’t any more.” Amazon now has over 100 full time lobbyists “educating our elected officials … about why they’re not a monopoly.” He points out that “We are in a very dangerous situation in which private power is going unchecked” and in which government resources to regulate growing monopolies is declining while these organizations’ investment in lobbying is their largest area of expenditure growth.

Their discussion also looks at government efforts (largely ineffectual) to rein in the power of big tech as well as to penalize them for their negligence, privacy breaches, role in the spread of misinformation and election interference. They also uncover the source of Galloway’s prescience in predicting the location of Amazon’s HQ2 and he makes some new predictions about shifts in Amazon’s business model.

Watch the full Jen Saba interview with Scott Galloway:

Breakingviews columnist, Jennifer Saba interviews professor and author Scott Galloway at the annual DCN:Next Summit

Perspectives

From Fortnite to Jeff Goldblum, here’s how 7 publicity stunts affected readership

There’s a blackhole in the video game universe. A massive, bare chest Jeff Goldblum is lounging on a London lawn near a bridge. And the golden arches have inverted.

Surely some sort of revelation is at hand!

Oh no wait: It’s just brands going viral.

Inspired by Fortnite’s bold strategy of taking the massively popular game offline for nearly two days to tee up the release of a new virtual world, we decided to investigate several so-called “publicity stunts” to see which ones were the most impactful in generating reader engagement.

To do this, we checked how these campaigns impacted readership about the companies on the Taboola network of news publishers. We’ve seen that successful marketing can often generate significant news coverage and create a viral effect.

Taboola’s data include readership of more than 1,300 US news websites including national, local, and digital-native organizations. The scope of the network offers a broad view of what’s capturing people’s attention.

With that in mind, let’s see which stunts sparked the biggest spikes.

The Fortnite black hole

Fortnite has become one of the rare titles of this generation to transcend gaming to become a cultural phenomenon. Its player base has expanded into the hundreds of millions over the past two years.

Naturally, people totally freaked out when the game’s universe was sucked into a black hole leaving behind only a dark screen and a cryptic string of numbers.

As described by Kotaku’s Riley MacLeod:

“It then, to the internet’s collective shock, stayed that way. Confused players joined forces to decode mysterious numbers, play a hidden minigame, entertain themselves with speculation, and spend more than 35 hours staring at what basically amounts to a screensaver.”

It didn’t take long for people to realize that this was the game’s way of teasing the beginning of a new season and the introduction of a new world for players to shoot to control.

In the meantime, millions of people read news articles about the phenomenon. We saw readership spike more than 10x above its daily average.

International house of what now?

Who doesn’t love IHOP? The food is decadent. The blue roof is iconic. And “Rooty Tooty Fresh ‘N Fruity” is honestly one of the all-time great names for a menu item.

You could invert three of the letters in IHOP and not a thing would change. But when the company inverted that fourth letter, a great mystery ensued.

After several days of anticipation, “IHOb” revealed the b stands for burgers because, yes, they also serve burgers. A month later, IHOP admitted the supposed name change was a gimmick all along.

Readers seemed to find the gag palatable. Traffic spiked like an 8-year-old’s energy level after eating IHOP pancakes with blueberry syrup.

WcDonald’s

IHOP isn’t the only food chain to cause a stir by inverting its branding. A McDonald’s in California flipped the golden arches in honor of International Women’s Day and the company changed its logo on its social media channels to match.

McDonald’s said this gesture was meant to recognize “the extraordinary accomplishments of women everywhere and especially in our restaurants.”

(Credit: McDonald’s)

We saw increased readership about McDonald’s related to this move. But it was not necessarily a triumph of publicity. The gesture received harsh backlash as people criticized the company for the wages it pays its workers.

Payless pranks influencers

Fashion influencers flocked to Palessi’s popup shop in Santa Monica, California, to sip champagne and try on shoes listed for up to $1,800. The line to get in extended well out the door. Photos were posted to Instagram.

No one suspected the supposed luxury kicks normally sell for as low as $20 until discount retailer Payless ShoeSource revealed it was behind the entire production.

Well played, Payless.

The farce earned a big bump in readership for the company. Unfortunately, the spike was overshadowed a few months later by the news that Payless was imminently closing all of its US locations.

Tesla boldly goes

Here’s one only Tesla could pull off.

Yes, that’s a Tesla Roadster in outer space.

The electric car company was able to pull off this extraterrestrial feat because of its association with SpaceX (since Elon Musk founded both companies).

So when SpaceX needed to show off the capabilities of its Falcon Heavy rocket during a 2018 launch, it brought along the Tesla as the payload to add some extra flare to the event.

How epic was this stunt? Business Insider’s Mark Matousek wrote, “Tesla created the world’s best car commercial without spending a dime on advertising.”

Both companies saw significant bumps in readership around this event.

Pizza and potholes

Most of us likely have experienced the utter disappointment of receiving a pizza from a delivery person, only to open the box and see a pie that looks like it’s reached us via a carnival ride.

Domino’s created its “Paving for Pizza” campaign aimed, perhaps symbolically, to address this issue by fixing potholes in towns across the US. In theory, this would create a smoother ride for their delivery people.

A road condition meter on the website promoting the campaign shows the supposed carnage various degrees of road disrepair wreak on pizza.

(Credit: Domino’s Pizza)

Domino’s even put its own branding on repaired roadways to make sure citizens knew who was responsible for the fix.

(Credit: Domino’s Pizza)

This campaign did not see the same type of traffic spike as the others. When it launched in June 2018, there were a number of stories that caused a small bump in activity as indicated by the red arrow in the chart below.

It’s possible this campaign had more of a slow burn effect though. It seemed to create increasing buzz at the local level as it expanded to new towns.

And despite the lack of readership at launch, there were a number of positives. PRWeek highlighted the campaign’s success on social media. It also covered the sheer number of requests the company received from towns that wanted to be part of the program, which included over 15,000 zip codes.

Sex sells, but at what cost?

Your scientists marketers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.

If the advertising maxim “sex sells” is true, then this one might be the new gold(blum) standard. See for yourself.

The British streaming platform Now TV was behind this monumental stunt.

Unlike the other companies we’ve discussed so far, we didn’t actually see a spike for now Now TV when measuring readership in the UK. Taboola’s semantic AI looks for terms in headlines and the first few paragraphs of a story to categorize them into topics. Since Jeff Goldblum is such a big star, most of the story headlines about the statue gave him top billing and mentioned that it was organized by Now TV deeper in the stories.

With this in mind, we also looked at news stories about Jeff Goldblum and did find a bump in readership when the statue first appeared. As you can see below, it wasn’t the biggest Jeff Goldblum news of the past two years. That honor went to the revelation that Goldblum, Laura Dern and Sam Neill would all appear in the next “Jurassic World.”

The competition is fierce for the attention of readers and customers.

The stunts that not only successfully garnered “earned” media for brands but also significant audiences for those media sites can be categorized into three themes: providing a public service or pushing for social good (Domino’s/McDonalds), generating intrigue (Fortnite/IHOP/Payless), or creating a spectacle (Tesla/NowTV).

The successful stunts for brands were the ones that best aligned with their public image. A lighthearted brand like IHOP with playfully named menu items can get away with shenanigans if it’s all in good fun. While Tesla and SpaceX, both known for being on the cutting-edge of technology, took those reputations to the next level with the space car stunt.

Journalists have the important responsibility of giving readers context about these stunts and holding brands accountable when their plays for attention miss the mark. However, when done right, these stunts not only deliver significant PR, they drive interest and traffic for media companies as well. 

Note: Taboola’s news publisher partners have access to data on trending topics in the Topic Insights part of Newsroom, a real-time audience analytics platform. There’s also a publicly available version of Topic  Insights on the Taboola Trends page.

Taboola is always looking for interesting ways to use data to help bring context to how news readers are interacting with real-world events such as measuring which presidential candidates are getting the most attention and measuring the huge impact of a coordinated media effort to increase climate change coverage. Please DM @franberkman on Twitter if you’re doing any research or reporting that you think this type of data could help support.
Featured Post | Perspectives

Rappler CEO Maria Ressa says 2020 is the year that we must fight the battle for truth

The year 2020 will be a tipping point year for media companies. This is the year in which journalists must fight the battle for truth, according to Maria Ressa, CEO of Rappler, a digital news organization based in Manila, the Philippines.

“What we do this year – not just in the Philippines, but all around the world and especially in the United States – will determine whether or not the whole world walks into a cycle of fascism. We’ve been here before. What we do now matters.”

Ressa – who has been the target of persecution in her country – offered these comments as part of a recorded statement presented to attendees of DCN Next: Summit at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Miami, Florida on January 15.

In her statement, Ressa expressed gratitude to DCN CEO Jason Kint, the DCN Board of Directors, and the members of DCN for supporting her cause and helping her to “shine the light” through journalistic endeavors.

“That really is the only weapon that journalists have,” noted Ressa. “What we’ve lived through in the Philippines…our dystopian present is your dystopian future. This is it, the battle for truth.”

The DCN Board of Directors issued a statement (included below) supporting House and Senate Resolutions calling on Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte to end his political persecution of Ressa and Senator Leila de Lima.

“Healthy democracies thrive with vigorous political discourse and a free, independent press,” noted the statement.

On, the question of whether there exists a line between journalism and activism, Ressa said that “in the battle of truth, journalism becomes activism. This is a hard-fought lesson we have learned in the Philippines.”

Popular populist authoritarian-style leaders are getting elected throughout the world. “Just like they had a dictator’s playbook, they lie,” she said. “A lie told a million times becomes a fact. Without facts, you can’t have truth. Without truth, you can’t have trust. Without all three, democracy as we know it is dead.”

Ressa referenced her own experience when in 2018, the Philippine government investigated Rappler in at least 11 cases. “In 2019, I was arrested…not once, but twice,” she said. “I posted bail eight times.”

Ressa – who in 2018 was named by Time magazine as one of several journalists honored as Persons of the Year – spoke of her experiences at the 2019 DCN Summit in Orlando, Florida – just before one of her arrests. She also made the 2019 TIME 100 List as one of the most year’s most influential people.

The relevance of her travails extends to journalists everywhere. Because, as she said, the “the enabler for all of this is technology. And technology is in the hands of American social media companies,” said Ressler.

“Facebook is our internet” she said. “Where Facebook goes, the Philippines goes. The weaponization of social media was followed by the weaponization of the law. This is what’s happened to the gatekeepers, right? And when the gatekeepers move from the journalists to technologists… lies spread faster than facts.”

Official Statement from the
DCN Board of Directors

“We applaud Senators Edward Markey and Marco Rubio along with Senators Marsha Blackburn, Christopher Coons and Richard Durbin who introduced Senate Resolution 142. We also applaud Representative Jackie Speier along with Representatives Henry Johnson, Jamie Raskin, Brad Sherman and Lloyd Doggett who introduced House Resolution 233.

Both resolutions call on Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte to end his political persecution of Senator Leila de Lima and journalist Maria Ressa, founder and CEO of Rappler, a digital news organization based in Manila. Healthy democracies thrive with vigorous political discourse and a free, independent press.” —DCN Board of Directors

To reinforce our support of a free press everywhere, DCN is pleased to share the video of Ressa’s statement:

Advertising | Innovation | Revenue

Fact check series, part one: the truth about “cookieless” DMPs

As a 20-year marketing technology and media vet, I must tip my cap to data management platform startups for bringing new energy and interest to the needs of publishers and their commercial partners. We face an ever-changing media landscape characterized by fragmentation in delivery channels, evolving consumer consumption behaviors, and privacy regulation. To navigate it successfully, we need to focus our time and effort on finding innovative and effective ways to connect, enrich, and activate consumer data for publishers in a manner that respects consumer privacy and empowers choice.

I admire the marketing prowess and focused messaging of these data management platform (DMP) companies. However, I can’t stand by while they purposely and repeatedly mischaracterize technical capabilities and confuse  publishers (and media outlets) on the facts related to profile identifiers, browser storage mechanisms, privacy compliance, and “match rates.”

In a series of three pieces, I will set the record straight. This first piece will focus on the facts on profile identifiers, browser storage mechanisms, and their relationship to privacy regulation.

The facts about profile identifiers and browser storage mechanisms

If I had a dime for every time I’ve heard the term “cookieless DMP” in the last year, I’d be a very rich person. This is purely a marketing term with no basis in fact or function. If we’re talking about data management technologies that are operating in a web browser context, then there is no such thing as a “cookieless DMP.”

PIDs

All data management technologies — including DMPs — use profile identifiers (“PIDs”) in a web context to organize and connect consumer data. A PID is typically a string of randomly generated letters and numbers. By itself, a PID usually has no information that can directly identify an individual in the real world.

In a web browser environment, these PIDs can be stored using one of three browser storage mechanisms. These are: 3rd party cookies, 1st party cookies, or browser local storage (sometimes referred to as HTML5 web storage). It’s important to understand that a cookie is just a storage mechanism (a text file), and you put a PID string inside the cookie.

1st and 3rd parties

Many years ago, DMPs primarily stored PIDs in 3rd party cookies because they provided a consistent and scaled container to access PIDs across websites and over time. In 2017, Apple released their Intelligent Tracking Prevention (“ITP”) functionality in Safari. It blocked the setting of 3rd party cookies by default and made that storage mechanism an ineffective tool for storing and retrieving PIDs. As a fallback mechanism, DMPs could use 1st party cookies to store and retrieve PIDs. 

The difference between 3rd party cookies and 1st party cookies is that 3rd party cookies can be accessed by the entity that originally set the 3rd party cookie irrespective of which website the consumer is visiting. In contrast, 1st party cookies can only be set and accessed when a consumer is visiting a specific website domain.

So, for example, a PID that is placed in a 1st party cookie when a consumer is visiting Publisher_A.com can only be accessed when the consumer is at Publisher_A.com. If the consumer subsequently visits Publisher_B.com, then a different PID will be generated and placed in a 1st party cookie that can only be accessed from the Publisher_B.com domain. Now this same consumer has two PIDs stored in 1st party cookies — each only accessible when visiting the originating site.

Storage issues

Within the past year, Apple has continued to ratchet-up the ITP restriction on cookies in Safari, and now even 1st party cookies are being squeezed. In many situations, 1st party cookies will now only persist for 24 hours before being deleted. As a result, web developers — including DMPs — have increasingly used browser local storage as a fallback for storing PIDs.

Browser local storage is a standard technology built into all major web browsers. It allows for the storage of larger amounts of data (e.g., HTML code) than cookies, and over longer periods of time than cookies. Browser local storage isn’t magic technology — it’s standard web browser technology — and using it to store PIDs isn’t innovation.

When companies  refer to their tech as “cookieless,” it should be qualifying such as “3rd party cookieless.” It is worth noting that, despite loud and repeated marketing claims to the contrary, these companies use 1st party cookies as the centerpiece of their platform for data collection. We know this factually and objectively because they say so in their documentation. 

The facts about profile identifiers, browser storage mechanisms, and privacy regulation

I’m not exactly sure how the idea came about in the press that “cookieless DMPs” are automagically GDPR compliant. However, that’s a misunderstanding that needs to be corrected. Whether a PID is stored in a 1st party cookie, 3rd party cookie, or local storage has no bearing on GDPR compliance obligations as a processor for a publisher’s data.

Consumers have a set of rights under GDPR. Therefore, any technology company processing consumer data on behalf of a publisher needs to provide a means for publishers to transmit to such processors the consent signals for data collection and use. They must also provide a way for the processors to enforce those consumer consent choices. Mobile devices don’t use cookies whatsoever in the app-space. However, publishers still need to comply with GDPR. 

Regulation

GDPR compliance obligations for a publisher-as-controller and a vendor-as-processor do not differ based on whether a vendor’s PID is stored in a 1st party cookie, 3rd party cookie, or browser local storage. Even if no 1st or 3rd party cookies were used — and if browser local storage was exclusively used — the GDPR obligations for the parties remain the same.

True forward-thinking innovation for publishers will be based upon connecting publisher data to marketer data in meaningful ways across channels and platforms. It requires providing the means for all parties to analyze, enrich, and activate for commercial benefit — while always respecting consumer privacy and empowering choice.

About the author

As Chief Marketing Officer, Adam leads Lotame’s global marketing and product teams in helping publishers, marketers and agencies solve complex business challenges with unstacked data solutions. His diverse experience balances art and science. It includes stints as an aerospace engineer and patent attorney, plus 21 years in consumer media and marketing technology in leadership roles at Viacom Media Networks, Time Inc., Hearst, and PebblePost. Adam is co-inventor on four issued U.S. patents related to interactive video advertising technology.

Featured Post | Innovation

The snack is back: How messaging will satisfy audience appetite for bite-sized content

A decade ago, The Power Of Pull described the amazing outcomes possible when we have the tools to find and access the people, content, information, and resources we need. Pull was seen as the mechanism that would put people in control. It would give them more choices and more information to make those choices.

Today, pull has been turbo-charged by mobile, a transformative technology (the impact of which the authors could not address in their book, so I will here). Mobile has become our collective default state. It eclipses all other digital technology and enables us to do exactly what the authors hoped we would: “collaborate in a complete re-imagination” of our experiences. From content to commerce, and from advertising to advocacy, mobile has left an indelible mark.

You could even say that, thanks to mobile, the Power of Pull has finally arrived. But it’s the advance of messaging apps and platforms that takes this to a new level. Pull brought us the toolset and the mindset to take charge of our content and experiences. Mobile amplified this ability exponentially. And messaging is giving us a new environment to experience both.

A new wave

The first wave of messaging saw the emergence of what I will call pull content, delivered primarily via app notifications. In this scenario, individuals granted permission and volunteered preferences (the choice of news categories, the frequency of alerts and notifications, the level of personalization). And that they opt-in is a must for audiences increasingly concerned about personal privacy. For this reason, content companies that delivered pull content could build trust and brand. In retrospect, it was this reach and impact that allowed the first wave to deliver scalable efficiency.

The second wave of pull, powered by mobile messaging apps and platforms, is destined to be even more transformative because it promises scalable connectivity. Messaging is a platform where companies can deliver interactive, personalized, and conversational experiences. And they can do it affordably at scale.

Messaging is also free to consumers. It also  vastly reduces the blight of unsolicited communication. That’s because, as a rule, messaging platforms do not permit companies to send bulk messages as they can via SMS. And it’s growing in popularity. Analysts forecast that the volume of messages sent via the major messaging platforms is expected to exceed the number of SMS text messages by as much as 10x in 2020.

Pull and pictures 

Messaging apps and platforms provide an ideal space for companies to forge relationships with audiences and drive connection with brand fans. They have also become the epicenter of our most frequent digital activity: messaging. In August 2018, app market intelligence provider Apptopia reported users globally spent a whopping 85 billion hours in WhatsApp over a period of just three months. (Compare that to 31 billion hours spent on Facebook).

Messaging platforms have experienced explosive growth in users and usage, outpacing some of the biggest social media channels. Together, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger alone have nearly three billion daily active users– that’s almost half the planet. In 2018 the Big Four messaging apps (WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat and Viber) had 4.1 billion combined users. A whopping 72 trillion messages were sent across these platforms (compared to 1.6 trillion searches on Google).

However, people aren’t just messaging more or more often. Empowered by pull, are using the universal language of pictures. People share more than 4.5 billion photos, 1 billion videos, and 80 million GIFs per day on WhatsApp alone. A comprehensive analysis of people’s messaging behaviors on Facebook Messenger (conducted by Facebook) reveals that nearly 60% of respondents have sent emoji-only messages to communicate a concept. What’s more, over half indicated that messaging has replaced all other forms of communication.

United by their passions and interests (supported by a shared visual language), this audience craves instant access to what matters. There’s no room for trial and error. Content must be hyper-personalized, highly visual, and always to the point. Against this backdrop, messaging platforms offer the perfect petri dish to experiment with new approaches around content design and distribution.

Bite-size is back

Messaging platforms also unlock the potential of content companies to satisfy our appetite for bite-sized content. That means short videos, short-form content, graphics, and memes. Content that might feel out-of-place in-app or online is at home on messaging platforms. Media companies and publishers need no convincing. In fact, some new organizations are encouraging audiences to visually enhance the conversation.

The Washington Post’s news stickers on Viber.

The Washington Post, which distributes snackable news content via Viber, a messaging app used by more than one billion people worldwide, has had remarkable success with a series of news-related stickers. The packs count more than 2 million downloads since they were first launched in 2016. “The stickers we’ve created allow users to say what they want about news without having to type a complete thought and simply add delight and character to their conversation,” Amy King, Design Director of Emerging News Products at The Washington Post said in a recent interview.

The Washington Post is just one of a long line of news organizations — including the BBC, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, HuffPost, and Financial Times — that are experimenting with messaging apps as an additional distribution channel. For many, the primary focus has been on providing short news updates and links to related and relevant content. However, some companies have zeroed in on the interactive nature of messaging platforms. They’re adding a new dimension to bite-sized news and leveraging yet another aspect of pull: two-way conversation.

Micro-newsletters for mass audiences

Bloomberg has harnessed WhatsApp to send messages every day and hear back from users directly, Katie Boyce, Managing Editor, Digital, Bloomberg, stated in an email interview. “After big news would break, we started to ask our WhatsApp audience what they want to know. We would get such thoughtful feedback that we could then incorporate it into our reporting and send back updates,” she explains. “It was a much different conversation than what we get on our public social channels. We built up a very highly engaged audience.”

It also paved the way for Bloomberg to bundle bite-sized content into personalized packages that balance depth with the demand for distilled information. The outcome was a new format it calls the “micro newsletter.” The content is longer than a push alert but shorter than a typical newsletter.

Boyce describes the content as a “very conversational update three times a day at the end of each region’s news day, summarizing the big stories of the day.” It has been so popular with the audience that it prompted Bloomberg to “create multiple sub-groups around topics like markets or the Middle East so that we could send more targeted messages.”

Using this approach, which was nominated for a SOPA (Society of Publishers in Asia), a benchmark for world-class journalism, Bloomberg has done more than grow its numbers. It has recruited and audience of advocates eager to follow the discussion no matter where it takes them. 

In December Bloomberg moved its distribution to Telegram, a messaging platform projected to hit 1 billion users by 2022. (Admittedly, Bloomberg’s move was driven more by necessity than inspiration as Facebook, which owns WhatsApp, made good on its promise to crack down on what it considers “non-personal” use on the platform. In December efforts turned to the gray area of newsletters. And it ruled that publishers will no longer be allowed to send out newsletters on WhatsApp.) 

Within two weeks of moving the micro-newsletter messages over to Telegram, Boyce reports that Bloomberg “gained over 25,000 followers” on the new platform many of whom migrated from WhatsApp. But efforts to leverage the popularity of messaging platforms doesn’t stop there. Bloomberg is “continuously evaluating other ways to meet users where they are,” Boyce says. It’s a smart approach in the age of pull.

Messaging is the new frontier 

As we kick off a new decade, it’s critical that content creators — be they media companies or marketers — understand consumers’ growing appetite for concentrated content on their terms and in the spaces where they choose to congregate. It’s a global phenomenon that sees audiences flocking to messaging apps, drawn by the simplicity of snackable content. 

It also offers audiences the opportunity to “share and discuss news, away from the toxicity of political debate that threatens more open spaces,” according to the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2019. Based on data from almost 40 countries across six continents, the report highlights this mega-trend. It notes that WhatsApp has already become a primary network for discussing and sharing news in western countries (where WhatsApp has a strong presence) as well as non-western countries including Brazil (53%), Malaysia (50%) and South Africa (49%). The upshot: “as more people use messaging services, news usage has also risen.”

Now that news organizations and media companies have an audience on these platforms, they must adopt the culture and language of these communities and capture the Zeitgeist to deliver on the promise of pull. A decade ago, companies were just beginning to develop this mindset, with the understanding that constant and instant accessibility of information was an audience demand and responding with models that would rebalance businesses and organizations to be powered by pull. 

But there was a catch. We had the message, to borrow a concept from the visionary Marshall McLuhan. But without messaging platforms, we lacked the medium to deliver at scale. Today we have both. Mobile — messaging in particular — is where people spend their time. And content companies who build experiences that are right-sized and optimized can leverage this behavior to engage highly-receptive audiences.

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