The demise of identifiers such as third-party cookies or Apple’s IDFA presents both challenges and opportunities for publishers. Some complain performance marketing will take a hit. This would force marketing teams to refocus on delivering product excellence and ditch bait-and-switch schemes that promised audiences better experiences than they delivered.
Others praise the advance of a more privacy-oriented approach to targeting that will finally prioritize consumer preference. They point to a “golden opportunity for a re-imagining of digital advertising.” Companies would reap the benefits of an ecosystem that isn’t tied to tracking a user’s every move, nor beholden to GAFA. Publishers who wisely embrace this worldview are also taking impressive steps to leverage their valuable direct relationships with audiences.
For some, including Vox Media, Condé Nast and, most recently, Penske Media, this means offering up their own first-party data directly to advertisers. For others, it means leaning further into digital subscriptions. Subscriptions offer publishers a proven monetization model in a post-pandemic environment that has seen digital advertising collapse and revenues driven by paid content rise through the roof.
But winning with a subscription model is hardly a walk in the park. This is more keenly felt at at time when marketing departments may need to spend more resources to collect and leverage customer data to clinch the sale
Driving conversions and convincing consumers to commit to a recurring cost for content demands publishers do their homework and innovate. They must build the capabilities to understand their audience, identify valuable users likely to take the plunge and define clear pricing (at the level subscribers are willing to pay). What’s more, they should muster the resources and resolve to develop, deliver and continually improve a great product that meets customer expectations.
Continuing with our series of video interviews, I talk to Sheri Bachstein, global head of IBM Watson Advertising and GM of The Weather Company. Bachstein has overseen a wildly successful pivot to paid as part of a larger move to diversify revenue at the IBM-owned property. Since launching a premium subscription offering just 18 months ago, The Weather Company counts nearly one million paid subscribers, a figure Bachstein says is seeing double-digit growth every quarter.
Bachstein shares her step-by-step journey to subscription success, including insights on tailoring the product to the consumer, targeting potential subscribers and building a winning customer service team. She also reveals her take on the future of advertising and a call to action for the media industry at large.
WATCH OR LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW
Peggy Anne Salz, Founder and Lead Analyst of Mobile Groove, interviews Sheri Bachstein, global head of IBM Watson Advertising and GM of The Weather Company.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Peggy Anne Salz, Founder and Lead Analyst of Mobile Groove interviews Sheri Bachstein, global head of IBM Watson Advertising and GM of The Weather Company:
Peggy Anne Salz: Does it pay to pivot from an ad-supported model to subscriptions? Well, my guest gives us the inside track on the strategy that has allowed subscriptions to become the fastest growing line of revenue in the company. It’s impressive. And we’re going to spotlight some of the step’s publishers can follow to diversify their revenue streams. But first, of course, a bit about us. I’m Peggy Anne Salz, mobile analyst, tech consultant, frequent contributor to Digital Content Next, which as you know is a trade association serving the diverse needs of high-quality digital companies globally.
And now to my guest, she is the Global Head of IBM Watson Advertising and The Weather Company. And The Weather Company is an IBM Business. It offers the most accurate actionable weather data insights to millions of consumers via digital products that we’ll be hearing more about from The Weather Channel, weather.com, as well as Weather Underground. And previously, she was the global head of the consumer business there and was responsible for product management and design, content development, and global expansion across the organization on the weather’s owned and operated properties. So Sheri Bachstein, welcome to Digital Content Next. It’s great to have you here.
Sheri Bachstein: Hi, Peggy. How are you?
Salz: Good. And even better because we’re going to zero in on, I think the question of the hour, the pivot. It’s a time of transition, accelerated change, and you’ve made a move. And I think a lot of publishers are thinking about this move, which is diversifying your business model, specifically ad-supported to subscription, as I said. In a nutshell, why the pivot, Sheri?
Bachstein: So we just found that we want to continue diversifying revenue, it’s really just that simple. You know, to have a business and if you have a bulk of your revenue coming from one stream, that’s dangerous, especially in changing times. And so we started on a diversification path, actually several years ago. And really subscriptions was the next thing in that funnel of what we’re trying to do to diversify.
Salz: I said at the top, it has paid off. I know the numbers. Our viewers don’t. So why don’t you share some of those numbers that show just how subscriptions are evolving?
Bachstein: Yeah, so our subscription business launched about 18 months ago. So I think we’re still just starting, I like to say, because I think that’s a short period of time, and we’ve rolled it out on our apps. And actually, just next week, we’ll be rolling it out on our web platform as well. But in a very short time, we are approaching a major milestone with a million users that are subscribers to our business, and you know, it’s taken other publishers twice as long to reach that volume. So we’re really pleased with the number of subscribers that we’re getting. And then if you look like our quarter-to-quarter growth of subscribers, it continues to be in the double digits. So every quarter bringing on more subscribers.
Salz: That is amazing because this is a time where you’re asking someone to commit to a recurring cost. But it must be that way because they’ve gotten the value proposition or rather, they grasp your value proposition. How important is the product in this mix?
Bachstein: It’s extremely important. It’s the foundation of a subscription business, you know, the value exchange you have with the consumer, very important. With subscriptions, I feel that value strengthens. You actually have higher expectations as a subscriber. I know I do in my own personal apps that I subscribe to. You have a higher expectation. So it’s really important that the product live up to that expectation and that your customer service, very important as well, that you’re able to connect with those consumers if they do have a problem and resolve that very quickly. So the value exchange is very important, whether you’re doing a subscription business or you’re actually doing an ad-supported business.
Salz: I do want to get to those steps, step by step so that publishers can benefit or at least think of a roadmap that they can be following as they make this shift from ad-supported to subscription. But let’s take just a step at a different perspective, just zoom out a little bit because another big question is not just how do I get more value out of my customers, my users, my readers, my audience, but also, what are we doing right now? Because pretty soon the way we do this marketing is going to change very drastically. So from your perspective, what are some of the ways that this shift from cookies and identifiers and toward privacy-first might actually represent an opportunity for publishers because you have certainly grasped that?
Bachstein: So I do agree Google does plan to deprecate the cookie, and so that will go away. But really, I think as it relates to identifiers, identifiers is a really broad word because there’s a lot of ways to identify someone. It could be an email, a lot of different data points. I don’t necessarily see identifiers going away. What I do see is how we use those identifiers is what’s changing. So what’s happening is we’re moving from a society where we had consumers opt-out to a society where we’re having them now opt-in. So that gives them more choice, more transparency upfront, and really the decision of how they want to share their data.
Consumers should have control of their data. So again, we’re really moving into an opt-out society as it relates to advertising and targeting and giving consumers that choice.
Salz: What can you share about what has worked for you and what maybe other publishers need to get right? Because one thing you’ve done is, for example, really focused on getting the product, right, as you said, but there are other aspects of it.
Bachstein: So first, we did exhaustive customer research and listening. We asked our customers, one, “Would you pay for a weather app?” That’s first and foremost and what percentage would. And then secondly, “Okay, if you paid for it, what are the features that you would pay for? What is it that you want?” So we really listened to our customers. And that’s the part of the plan, the product plan came from that. Then we did testing, we did learning, and we kept improving. So a lot of testing went into what’s the right price, you know, to charge for a subscription app?
Again, asking the consumers, “How much would you pay for this feature? So when I think about what are three tips I could give to fellow publishers because I think us helping each other is really important to protect the open web. First takeaway for me is get rid of those perceived inconveniences for your customers.
So for my customers, those that start their day with us, end their day with us looking for weather, some of those customers, they just want to get into the app, find out what their weather is and move on to plan their day, mornings are very busy for a lot of people. And so they felt that ads clutter their experience that it was in their way, so we removed them in the premium experience. So that’s one tip.
The second tip, trusted human expertise is highly valuable. So how can you humanize the information that you’re giving? So for us, you see all this weather data, but how do you give context to that? How do you humanize that weather data for those that want more in-depth coverage?
And so we’re working on that, how to humanize that. And really the third thing is really around what you said before, the product.
Salz: That is really interesting, Sheri. I mean, I know it makes sense to ask the users. I wouldn’t say I would ask the user about the price, but that is surprising because I’ve also read a lot of research that we are actually more willing to pay a price that is higher than even, in many cases, the app developers, the companies themselves would charge. So it does make sense.
The humanizing of the information, now that is intriguing. Is that saying that you tap a team of writers, of journalists, of experts and trying to get that into the app? Because I think our publishers would be really interested in this at a time when, yes, we can automate a lot. And we’ll get to that in a moment. But this human part doesn’t seem to be something that you can automate or in any way streamline. This is roll up your sleeves, get down to work. How are you doing it?
Bachstein: Yeah. So for us, obviously, we’re unique in the weather space. But we do have some consumers that they want more information. So they want a meteorologist to explain, why is an outbreak of tornadoes actually happening? We actually are doing a test right now and we’re using Twitter to do the test where we had a meteorologist create a very short video that really explained how we forecast a tornado, what are the three elements that we look for in forecasting a tornado and describe it so people could see better like on a radar map those areas that may be under a tornado threat. And the response has been great. For those people who like to geek out on weather, they love having that extra information.
And news organizations could do it as well because you have journalists like yourself that have amazing expertise. And how do you take that story, just one level deeper, to really dig in with your consumers around more information that they might want? So almost, probably, getting into some debate, I would imagine, in the news world. So I think there’s ways to do that. But I think, for some, it might be easier than others. But you’re right, it’s something that’s unique. It’s not something I would say that can scale to millions. But if it’s a unique offering, someone’s really willing to pay for it, you could probably get a premium for that.
Salz: Exactly. And that’s the point because subscribers are the valuable users. They’re willing to pay. They’re worth customizing to. Interestingly enough, they also leave a very interesting data trail. They’re frequently engaging with the app or service. They show behavior patterns like no other. That’s why they are the valuable users. What are some early signs for you of a high-value user so that we can also help other publishers focus their efforts and investments?
Bachstein: So we are doing a couple things to really help target who are those consumers that want to be subscribers? One of the things that we’re doing is around propensity modeling. So who are those subscribers that really have an interest in a more premium experience? And so we’re looking at that, we’re using machine learning to do that. We didn’t do it in the early days. We kind of had this one blanket promotion that we did. And we learned a lot from it. Again, it’s that test and learn. And then we learned, “Well, we really need to just focus on these consumers that would be interested in this.”
Same thing that you do in advertising, right? The whole premise around understanding the consumer by the data that they share is so a brand can connect with the consumer. And that’s what publishers do, they bring the two together. So that same type of targeting information is important as you do a subscription business.
Salz: And you’ve leveraged AI to create a more compelling product as I understand it. What has actually worked for you? I mean, you’re lucky, you’re sitting on the source with your AI abilities within Watson, but what has worked for you?
Bachstein: So the propensity modeling I just spoke of, we’re just rolling that out so we can better target the right consumers so we’re not burdening people seeing our promotions who aren’t interested. So that improves the experience. But the other thing that we did is on the IBM Watson advertising side, which is the other part of my business, we’ve created ad-tech solutions rooted in Watson AI.
One of those solutions is a predictive real-time dynamic, creative solution. So I actually took that tech and used it on the publishing side, I’ve got to use my own products, to drive subscriptions. So what that really did was it enables you to create a lot of variations of an ad. So you put in a few images, call to action, and then using AI, it’ll target consumers differently based on what we can learn about them with the information that they share or their behaviors.
And it’s been an amazing tool for us. We actually did a test by using that ad tech. We got three times the number of subscribers than when we just did a normal promo doing it manually on our own.
And so it’s really been beneficial to use AI because you can put all of this data in there. It does the work for you and delivers amazing results. And frankly, we offer that ad-tech to everyone. Any publisher can use it, any DSP, SSP. So we are creating open ad-tech solutions that can drive business for a marketer or brand or it can help a publisher increase their subscription business or even their loyalty programs.
Salz: That is really interesting because dynamic. That’s the key here. It needs to adapt to the users. And actually, publishers need to adapt to this as well. So you’ve also called for industry-wide collaboration on privacy initiatives as we move into our cookieless future. Why is it important for publishers to be a part of those conversations?
Bachstein: It’s extremely important for actually everyone in the ad ecosystem, publishers and ad-tech providers, to be part of that conversation. What’s happening right now is you have about…we have two states. We have Virginia, we have California that have come up with their own privacy laws. There’s another 12 that are thinking about doing that by the end of the year. What happens is we get a patchwork of laws, really challenging for publishers. It’s not scalable to have different laws for different states. It’s really, really hard to be able to scale that and to do that.
And so, me along with many other publishers and leaders within this space, including the IAB, DCN, we are pushing for federal legislation so we can all be working from the same laws, the same rules. And then we have to clear up some of those rules as well. There’s a lot of gray areas when it comes to this. So let’s all be working on the same definitions of words. Very important that we’re all working together so we can become our consumer privacy focus. None of us are saying that we shouldn’t do that. We all think it’s a good idea. Let’s do it together in the right way, and let’s build some consistency across publishers so consumers know exactly what to expect.
Salz: Good point. I’m based in Europe where we’re still figuring out.
Bachstein: Yeah. But at least all of your countries got together and put it together, GDPR. There are still some gray areas, no doubt. But at least you guys took that step to do that, which is important.
Salz: What can help publishers better understand and even stop churn before it starts? So it’s about understanding subscriber behavior and reducing churn.
Bachstein: Yeah, so definitely two parts to any subscription business. There’s acquisition. I think consumers will say, “Well, I’ll try something once,” or, “I’m up to try something.” And certainly, you can give free trials. That’s been a technique that’s worked really well for us. But then the retention side, a really big part of the business. We’ve been fortunate to have retention as high as 75%, which is much higher than the industry. But it all comes down to the product. If you are delivering on the expectations that a subscriber has for your product, you will retain them.
And so, again, it’s really having a great strong product. We’re choosing to enhance the features and give them more as subscribers. So are we improving their experience? And so we found that to be really successful with retention. So we definitely pay attention to that. But I also feel customer service is important. When your subscribers have an issue, you have to respond to them. They are paying money out of their pocket and so they deserve to be listened to and to have their problems troubleshooted as quickly as you can. And so we definitely have made a big investment to focus on our subscribers to make sure that if they have issues that we are solving them for them very quickly.
Salz: You really do love a challenge in your job. What’s the hardest part of your job?
Bachstein: Oh, well, how much time do you have, Peggy? No. It’s funny, I think for every leader, you have to have a strong strategy. And it’s got to be a focused strategy. And then you have to stay focused on that strategy. That can be challenging sometimes because the world around you is changing. But if you really believe in that strategy, only working on that. Stop working on things that just don’t align to that. It’s very important, not only my business but all of IBM is doing that as well.
Salz: What do you see overall as the biggest opportunity on the horizon for publishers?
Bachstein: I absolutely think the biggest opportunity is the use of AI, especially in the ad-tech space. Using AI to really bring together the brands and the marketers with the consumers in a way that uses all different types of signals that doesn’t rely on the cookie is just a really big step forward. And one of the reasons I think so is because AI has the ability to predict. So the cookie only tells us what happens in the past. With AI, we can actually go forward, and we can predict, and we can forecast. And so being able to do that with AI is just, I think, a really great tool and it really has a bright future. I really feel it’s a transformational part of the industry. And really is a new tech that we need to embrace.
Salz: And to your point, I mean, advertising…which works, I’m not saying it’s broken, but through using cookies, identifiers, IDFA, we’re looking backward. And with AI, we’re going to be looking more forward, more predictive. So it does make a lot of sense to say that the opportunity is to understand what I may be doing, what I may be wanting, and to target that rather than maybe my past behavior.
Bachstein: That’s right. It’s all about a new technology, a new foundation or backbone to the ad industry, having it be AI instead of what we’ve been using in the past with cookies. It’s a way forward. I mean, advertising is not going away, but it is evolving. And we can be smarter, and we can use better technologies to connect consumers with our brands and marketers.
Salz: And speaking of connecting, Sheri, it was great to connect with you today. Thank you so much for sharing. How can people stay in touch with you if they want to maybe continue the conversation or understand a little bit more about tips, they can follow to move their app from ad-support to subscription?
Bachstein: Yes, reach out to me on LinkedIn. You can find me on LinkedIn. I’m happy to have a chat. And I’d love to just know what other companies are doing as well and how can we collaborate and work together?
Salz: Absolutely. Well, thank you. And thank you for tuning in. More to come of course in the series. And in the meantime, be sure to check out all the great content, including a companion post to this interview at digitalcontentnext.org and join the lively conversation on Twitter at DCNOrg. Until next time, this is Peggy Anne Salz for Digital Content Next.
Header bidding has become an essential component of most publishers’ ad monetization strategies, enabling better inventory fill rates and higher revenue. It allows publishers to receive bids from multiple trading partners at the same time. Contrast this to the traditional ‘waterfall’ method of trading, in which inventory is passed to ad networks sequentially.
Five critical metrics
Header bidding is a success story because it improves on what came before. But that doesn’t mean it is optimized to drive the best possible results for each publisher. The following five metrics can help publishers evaluate the health of their header setup. They will also provide insight into how they can use this information to further increase revenues.
1. Page Load Speed (the time it takes to fully display the content on a page)
Header integrations can be client-side or server-side. (Very simply, client-side header bidding sees all the auction-related activity takes place on the user’s browser, while in server-side bidding this happens on a standalone ‘auction’ server.)
As a general rule, client-side increases the audience match rate. (This, in turn, increases CPMs and monetization potential). But it also increases page latency. Server side reduces latency. However, this is at the expense of the match rate. When it comes to selecting which ad stack to go live with, publishers are forced to choose between prioritizing revenue and maintaining the user experience.
For most publishers, a combined approach that leverages both client and server-side setups is optimal, but it needs to be fine-tuned regularly. Ideally a publisher will have an A/B testing framework that moves client-side partners to server-side one-by-one, testing the efficacy in both locations (client versus server). By measuring for revenue, CPMs, page performance, viewability, and bidder timeouts between the test and control groups for the integration locations, the publisher can find the optimal balance to ensure maximum revenue.
For example, an SSP might have a tendency to time out in a particular region when it is called directly from the browser. A successful combined approach might see the publisher permanently move this SSP from client to server side in this specific geolocation. A/B testing, which can be carried out by the publisher or a partner, will show revenue remaining the same and the page latency being reduced. Using this technique with MediaGrid partners, we’ve seen load times reduced by up to 50% and viewability increase by more than 10%.
2. Timeout Rate (how often bidders fail to return ad auction bids within the publisher time limit)
When a bidder fails to return a bid within the timeout limit specified by the publisher, the bid is said to have “timed out.” The timeout rate indicates how often a bidder fails to return a valid bid response within the required time period (i.e. while the page is waiting for it) compared to how often it achieves this. When viewed alongside the bid rate and win rate, timeout rate can help publishers understand the opportunity cost of retaining a particular bidder. Bidders with a consistently high timeout rate harm the site’s user experience and the publisher’s revenue-generating ability.
Historically, publishers grouped all ads on a page and sent them to demand partners in a single request, with one universal timeout. While this reduces page latency, it also increases the likelihood of timeouts and may also reduce the fill rate and user experience.
A better way to manage timeout rates is to group ads based on page position (above the fold, below the fold for example). Then, send these in separate requests to demand partners, with different timeout windows. By tracking timeouts, a publisher can see the time frames in which partners respond. Those with shorter response times can be grouped in ad calls for above the fold inventory. Partners with longer response times can be placed in a second ad group lower down on the page.
The slowest partner may still be a strong revenue generator for below the fold slots, even if they do not bring anything incremental to the table for above the fold inventory. Using this approach, rather than a single request one, we’ve seen 10% higher CPMs and a 20% increase in bid rates.
3. Fill Rate (impressions served versus requests received)
Google Ad Manager (GAM) has traditionally prioritized direct sold campaigns. This means they will be served before line items that have been assigned a lower priority (even if the lower priority items have higher CPMs). These lower priority programmatic ads will get fewer opportunities to compete in auctions. This can adversely affect a publisher’s fill rate, and therefore revenue.
Publishers can achieve higher fill rates within their header bidding integrations by rethinking how they set line item priorities within GAM. This can be particularly important during periods when media buyers are looking to spend budgets (at the end of a quarter or the financial year, for example).
Traditionally, line items are set up in descending priority tiers: Sponsorship, Standard, Network, Price Priority, and House as the lowest with header bidding scoped to run only as Price Priority line items. However, this setup is far from ideal since high CPM header bids are unable to compete with direct sold campaigns.
To correct this, publishers should start by identifying the CPM threshold where the header bidding fill rate of the line item stops growing proportionally to the price tier. (Note, this is data that can be obtained from GAM reports or the SSP’s bid density reports, which include both impressions and bids).
Using this value, publishers can change a line item’s GAM priority tier from Price Priority (which is where header bidding lines are historically placed) to Sponsorship or Standard. This will increase its priority. It will, therefore, increase opportunities to complete in auctions. Based on analysis carried out for our publishers, the CPM threshold tends to be between $15 and $20. Publishers can create higher priority line items for open exchange bids above the CPM threshold value ($20 for example) and let them compete with direct sold inventory.
Uplift can be measured by tracking CPM and spend per line item priority type (Sponsorship, Standard, Network, etc) on a daily/weekly basis. We’ve doubled fill rates when header bidding lines greater than $20 CPM (or the respective monetary value for that publisher) are set at Sponsorship / top Standard priority.
4. VAST Impression Rate (video ad impressions versus bids)
The IAB VAST specification aims to ensure that video ads run in the way a publisher wants, regardless of which website and device they are being shown on. But the high number of technical integrations increases the likelihood of a VAST error in the time between the advertiser winning the auction and the ad being served. Our experience shows that, across the board, 13% of video supply results in errors and no revenue.
Monitoring the VAST impression rate lets publishers know whether video ads are playing. Then, it helps them to mitigate errors if they are not. Setting up a VAST waterfall combines video ads sequentially to ensure an ad is always shown (by having a fall-back VAST ad unit pre-prepared in case a failure results in the first unit not running). Publishers hesitant about investing in VAST waterfall development work may want to encourage their SSPs to support this technology as it also positively affects the video impression rates. MediaGrid partners utilizing this technique have seen 14% increases in VAST impression rates.
5. Downstream Match Rate (match rate between DSPs and requests from the publisher)
With no direct end-user relationships (and therefore no first-party data), SSPs and DSPs rely on cookie matching to “sync” the users that are common to all trading partners. The cookie sync determines a match rate, i.e. the percentage of shared known users. This usually averages 50-80% between each downstream participant. With higher match rates, publishers can command more advertising revenue.
Cookie syncs are often performed “downstream” in the media trading chain (publishers to SSPs, SSPs to DSPs, DSPs to brands). Unfortunately, the reduction in match rate between downstream trading partners (that are not directly connected to the publisher) is compounded at each step. This can result in a loss of revenue for the publisher.
For example, the typical match rate that a publisher has with a connected SSP is 70%. If that SSP has a 60% match rate with a DSP, the overall publisher to DSP match rate is only 42% (i.e. 60% of the SSP-to-publisher 70% match rate). From the DSP’s perspective, it may make sense to only bid on the matched 42% of inventory coming from the publisher, saving on hardware costs by not listening to the unmatched traffic.
Historically, publishers only deploy syncs with partnered SSPs, increasing the user matching with the SSPs. This however also has the side-effect of allowing the SSP to control matching with all other downstream partners. This may not be the best way to achieve the highest match rates. An alternative approach is to include a direct sync with the downstream DSP partners in addition to the SSPs, increasing the match rates with media buyers.
By syncing data between the publisher and every downstream trading partner, such as its top trading DSPs, the publisher can match user data directly with the DSP, improving the match rate and revenue with those key trading partners. Publishers on the MediaGrid using this approach have seen downstream match rates increase almost threefold, with revenue following a similar path.
Measurement for success
When looking to create an optimal header bidding setup, publishers should track as many health metrics as they can. Improving just one of them can increase revenue considerably. And because these metrics can make such a large impact on their business, publishers should not be shy about asking their SSP partners for input, data access, or support.
Armed with more data and solid benchmarks, publishers should create an on-going testing program that regularly and intelligently experiments with the header setup to find the optimal balance for maximum yield (which will change over time).
In early March, Google announced that it was committing to its FLoC method of targeting and would not support alternative identifiers in any of its adtech products. The industry had a small, and understandable, panic attack.
Don’t worry. This is good news. There are still a lot of alternatives available for each use case. Alternatives include cohorts, contextual, authenticated identity, and probabilistic identity.
Cohorts
FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts) is technically the addition of a semantic classifier to the Chrome browser. It will scrape page content and URL data and qualify users into small segment groups based on their navigation history. Everyone’s still being tracked, but now only by Google.
It’s a pretty blatant data land grab. Google is using the specious legal argument that if a consumer browses the Internet with Google Chrome, all of the data collected while they browse is the first-party data of Google. Publishers, marketers, and most importantly users of the internet should take a careful look at what Google is doing.
Critical questions:
Is the algorithm that builds these cohorts going to be open to publishers and partners for investigation?
How exactly will Google decide what cohorts to qualify users in? And how can we be sure they won’t be the cohorts that make Google the most money?
How will Google differentiate between valuable and less valuable scraped content?
If one company controls the advertising of, the discovery of, the navigation of, and the monetization of the internet, how is this not an antitrust issue?
Are cohorts privacy safe and are there controls for the consumer? Why, for example, has the Hague flagged FLoC as potentially non-GDPR compliant?
If it’s neither privacy-compliant, nor competitive, nor pro-publisher, then what’s FLoC’s value to the industry?
Contextual targeting
Contextual has gained a lot of traction in recent months. There are some that think contextual targeting is a privacy carte blanche. The truth is a little more complicated. Contextual does not require user consent as long it’s scoped to a single page of content.
However, as soon the context of more than one page is combined, even in session, even on a single publisher’s site, it becomes tracking. Thus, it carries the same legal burden of consent as any other tracking method. Further, without cookies, device IDs or other third-party identifiers, contextual has obvious struggles. These include precision, scale, frequency capping and, most importantly, measurement, which is critical to attract spend from advertisers.
Our recent survey of publishers and advertisers found more than 69% of U.S. publishers are bullish on contextual targeting as a replacement for audience targeting. However, 66% of advertisers disagree. That’s a big enough divide to question placing all bets on context.
Authenticated identity (deterministic)
Authenticated, or deterministic, identity requires the user to provide a known piece of personally identifiable information, such as an email address. To obtain that email address, publishers, data providers, and brands ask consumers to log-in or register to a site/app to access free content, deals, or other services.
There are a lot of worthwhile pros here. Because it can be tied to a person, it’s a highly accurate solution and great for targeting and measurement. Additionally, user consent is easy to track, which allays privacy concerns.
However, how much of the web requires logging in? Early estimates expect the authenticated web to capture 10-20% of users. Scale is a real issue. Some publishers have a clear advantage in the authenticated lane. The vast majority of publishers will struggle to drive authentication, while others have built their value around free and open content. Without deep technical and monetary resources to draw on, authentication could be a game-over for many.
Non-authenticated identity (probabilistic)
To capture the rest of the 80% of the open web, publishers can use non-authenticated identity. This is better known as probabilistic ID. The tech behind the probabilistic method assigns a cluster of devices and browser signals to an ID that can be moved via established pipes into activation channels. Publicly available, IAB-approved signals can include IP address, time stamp, or browser user agent.
Probabilistic identity is the perfect complement to deterministic identity. Probabilistic is data minimized with no email, home address, or phone number required. It scores points for consumer privacy and ensuring that no brute force attack on an encrypted ID can reveal an email or a phone number.
Unfortunately, probabilistic identity is also widely misunderstood in the industry. While it does rely on IP address, some misconstrue it as fingerprinting. In fact, probabilistic identity has no more or less privacy burden then multi-page contextual targeting that leverages a first-party cookie. IAB Europe Transparency and Consent Framework 2.0 stipulates that “with consent, vendors can create an identifier using data collected automatically from a device for specific characteristics, e.g., IP address.”
Certainly, it’s up to you to pick the best solution for your business. That said, it always makes sense to diversify your toolset to capture the most revenue possible. It’s too early to tell which tools will perform best for which marketers. So, having all of them at your disposal allows you to work with more brands.
Many white Americans—and American corporations—were shocked into a recognition of America’s ingrained racism, past and present, by the brutal drama that played out in 2020 on the blacktop of a Minneapolis street and under the knee of a former police officer.
The callous murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless other Black Americans spurred millions to finally take a close, honest look at their communities, schools, and businesses. Eyes turned to newsrooms as we sought to understand why the media’s depiction of these institutions do not reflect the diverse reality of our lives.
History lessons
Echoing uprisings in the streets, we saw similar uprisings within America’s newsrooms. The inequities seen in our communities parallel those long in place in media institutions. And our news coverage and the framing of news stories and issues reflect these biases.
Racial disparities in America are older than the Constitution. They began with America’s original sin of chattel slavery. Tremendous leaps and bounds have been made in the fight to realize the promises in our founding documents for all Americans. Yet those words—that all are created equal—remain aspirational.
The Institute for Journalism Education was born out of this aspiration, of the struggle to ensure all segments of our society are fairly, accurately, and equitably represented. This applies not only to the halls of Congress, but to the pages and screens of our journalistic institutions.
Long before the ubiquity of “DE&I” initiatives and Black Lives Matter marches, Washington Post journalist Robert C. Maynard recognized that white men dominate America’s media organizations. Declaring “We must desegregate this business,” Maynard and eight other journalists founded the institute to train and lift up journalists of color. Robert Maynard’s ineradicable legacy as a true pioneer was solidified when the organization he helped create was posthumously renamed the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education.
Amplifying voices
The Institute’s flagship program, the Maynard 200 Fellowship, is about building a new and lasting legacy for entrepreneurs, leaders, and storytellers of color who will shape the future of journalism in America. What we are seeing across journalism right now is a modern-day Civil Rights Movement for journalists of color.
In response, we must foster substantive power, belonging, and agency within the institutions that tell the stories of our society and our world. Through Maynard 200, the institute aspires to empower journalists of color to lead and grow organizations to have cultures of belonging. These leaders will help ensure that media organizations continue to serve our democracy. To do so, they must accurately represent the minds, souls, histories, and perspectives of all Americans.
Like many organizations, we’ve had to pivot following public health protocols due to the ongoing recovery from the global Covid-19 pandemic. That means that, for the first time, Maynard 200 will hold an all-digital training component to serve more than 40 diverse media professionals as fellows across the country. The program provides them with tools to elevate their own digital voices through panels, dialogues, and events.
Diversity and equity
For decades, Maynard has been the standard-bearer of aspiration and expertise in its primary mission of making newsrooms reflect America. It has led the re-envisioning, and advancing, of what it really means to be “diverse.”
In fact, Maynard has flipped the prevalent DE&I convention upside down, by bringing equity to the forefront. Without equity, diversity is only performative. By focusing on equity, Maynard has forged a longstanding record of training and advancing individuals from a varied diaspora of racial and ethnic communities throughout newsrooms and media organizations across the country.
Maynard conceived the “Fault Lines” framework for facilitating honest discussion about highly charged issues, through an understanding of how people with different perspectives can view something in completely different ways. In other words, the way we perceive the world and experience each other is filtered by our own backgrounds and experiences. Thus, diversity of perspectives produces a strength greater than the sum of each individual alone.
We belong
And, as a result of Maynard’s framework, a new narrative has emerged: the necessity and power of belonging. It is not nearly enough for organizations to check a diversity box with new hires. The perspectives and backgrounds and ideas that each individual brings to the table must be fully absorbed into the culture and decision-making of the organization itself. Inclusion alone is surface-level; inclusion can be as empty as toleration. But when you belong, you can feel it. And the implications can be felt in the work you produce.
For the Maynard Institute, pursuing belongingness is about far more than mere integration. Belonging creates the kind of atmosphere where people of color can feel empowered and entitled to bring their full selves into the newsroom, including their history and their perspectives, rather than feeling pressured to contort themselves to fit existing narratives.
Maynard 200 is the institute’s answer to the breakdown in the pipeline of training and jobs for journalists of color. In the wake of the Great Recession, years of progress were decimated in a matter of months. The ongoing public health crisis vis-a-vis the pandemic, America’s widening racial disparities, and the division and hate provoked by the Trump administration have only increased the urgency and salience of Maynard’s cause.
Writing a new story
Repairing all of this damage requires institutions of journalism to be active participants in the dismantling of structures of systemic racism—rather than the enablers of inequity and oppression.
Media organizations can be part of the solution. From the stories they tell, to the sources they use, to the framing of what is news and who is newsworthy, the media is a powerful component in our nations racial reckoning. We believe that strong diverse leadership is critical for this to occur. And so, with this year’s Maynard 200, we renew our commitment to supporting the growth and equity for future media leaders. And it is our belief that these leaders will make an impact that will resonate across all sectors of American journalism and media.
Publishers and advertisers need to be proactive about engaging with their potential customers where they are. And where they are, regardless of age or income group, is consuming content on mobile devices. Advertising is normally viewed as the currency used to view content. But if the ad experience isn’t positive for the consumer, they may choose not to buy in.
Whether it’s through differentiated ad units, frequency caps, or less intrusive delivery, the advertising experience needs to enhance the content, not lessen its impact by competing with it. The increase in time consumers now spend online can be seen as a boon. However, in the wake of last year, it means they’re bringing more expectations – and more uncertainties – about what they interact with. The savvy publisher can offer what others cannot: quality curated content, editorial standards, a less-cluttered ad environment and a greater degree of premium brand safety.
I spoke with Kelly Andresen, president of sales development at Gannett, to hear about the challenges they faced in an unprecedented year. We talked about where they still found opportunities for growth and where they are placing their bets in 2021 and beyond.
Kelly Andresen, president of sales development at Gannett
What are the challenges you are currently facing as a digital publisher? How have those challenges changed during the course of the pandemic?
Kelly Andresen: For years, news and media companies like Gannett have been very focused on advertiser-led revenue. Of course that’s still very important to us. But one of the things we’re focused on right now is putting more emphasis on growing our subscription business.
We have some aggressive goals to reach by 2025. So now we’re figuring out how that looks on the B2C side, growing subscriptions to our news products and other content we publish. On our B2B side we’re looking at building subscriptions directly with our advertising and marketing partners. The challenge is building solutions that really meet everyone’s needs.
Consumption habits have changed significantly in the last year. How have readership trends changed across devices? How has this shifted your thinking for next year?
KA: Content consumption in general has moved to mobile. That’s not a new trend, but it was certainly accelerated by Covid-19. The total amount of screen time and the amount of time people spend interacting with content have both increased. That’s a great thing for a publisher. However, we need to remain conscious of the demand and need for truthful, trusted content.
In addition to the pandemic there was a lot of political and social unrest last year, and consumers thirsted for content they could rely on. As we all work to transition out of survival mode, we know that for us to thrive as a news organization we need a laser focus on what our customers and other partners need during this time. That’s been a driving force behind our thinking for the year to come: to grow subscriptions by helping the local communities we serve find trusted content.
The last 18 months have brought significant changes to privacy with Google sunsetting Cookies, Apple doing away with IDFA, and stricter laws like CPRA. Publishers are now faced with an identity conundrum. What are you doing to rebuild the identity structure?
KA: There’s an opportunity with these changes for publishers to take back ownership of that audience relationship without using an intermediary. By providing more transparency we can build our own zero-party and first-party data in a way that provides people the choice about how, when and where they share their information within our ecosystem.
I think the larger question as an industry is then, how do we put all the pieces together? Is there an opportunity to share data and if so, what does that look like? We want to not only provide amazing content but also ensure people feel they’re in a safe and trusted environment. The goal then becomes educating the public so they can make informed choices and we can build a better experience together.
When it comes to identity, should the industry as a whole spend time re-evaluating the value exchange between publishers and advertisers? How will this benefit —or hurt — publishers?
KA: This is an opportunity to take a less-than-optimal model and transform it into something where everybody benefits. Consumers opt in to share their information. Publishers share information with advertising partners. And advertising evolves from the early online days of pushing out a message and instead takes that data to create an experience that consumers value.
I think we can build something unique as long as we focus on maintaining that trusted environment and that transparency, and think about what’s effective beyond ad impression opportunities. There are a lot of unanswered questions. That means there’s a lot to explore and chances to innovate and test for the future.
What are you doing to re-imagine the way you nurture the coveted publishers-reader relationship when it comes to advertising experiences, devices and targeting?
KA: The focus has to be on the overall experience. Now that we’re asking our audience for their data, we have to deliver something that makes sense and makes it worth their while. There should always be a choice around data, but I think we have more work to do for that choice to work in our favor.
We’ve conditioned our audience to consume content in one area and see ads in another area when we need to look at how to be beneficial to the overall content experience. And that extends to technology and knowing that people are consuming in different places on different devices. How do we encourage people to seek out and spend more time with a specific outlet because it’s a good experience for them?
Let’s talk about brand safety. What does brand safety mean for publishers now? How has the conversation around safety and suitability changed during the pandemic?
The story is no longer about “click here and buy my product,” it’s about how a brand is helping individuals, communities, society as a whole, move forward. It’s also broadening beyond immediate health and safety concerns to create a top-of-mind support system, reminding consumers that when they’re ready, brands will be waiting to accommodate them. I suspect this approach will continue, but only as long as it’s still viewed as a partnership.
What advice would you give to publishers looking to withstand the lure of the walled gardens and compete with that model?
KA: I think this is something that all of us are thinking about and trying to innovate around. What can we do to continue to focus on that trusted experience and then how do we build scale together? I think there are opportunities for brands to work together again.
For example, we recently announced our partnership with McClatchy, one of the other very large U.S. newspaper publishers. Even though we’re in the same space, we’re coming together to build something that pushes our own standards and brings more value to publishers, advertisers, and audiences. We actively have national advertisers telling us they want to be more relevant. They want to speak to a local audience in a trusted space. I think the fact that they want to help shape that consumer experience with us is perhaps an early example of things to come.
What new — or carryover — challenges and opportunities will 2021 bring for the digital publisher industry?
KA: First, there isn’t one leader in the privacy space. So, this is a great opportunity for trusted brands to come together and develop a new standard. Second, the new normal will probably not look like 2019 or 2020. In this next iteration, how do we remain relevant and provide an experience that people are truly seeking out in the 10, 12, 14+ hours they’re spending in front of screens or subscribing to audio streaming or other services?
Our current situation is pushing publishers to think about their audience in a much different way – not in a vacuum where it’s enough that they come to consume our content – more of a holistic view of how we can be even better and complementary to the other things our audience is consuming.
KA: As a publisher in the news category we know sometimes the news is not positive. In the past, brands often told us they didn’t want their messages to appear in the news category. But those kinds of blanket refusals are changing. I spoke earlier about changes in consumption, and how we’re all looking for trusted sources to help make sense of the world we’re in today. Brands and advertisers now recognize the audience demand for news and information content. We saw a large increase in advertisers aligning with social justice messaging in a way we didn’t see prior to the pandemic.
Announced earlier this month, the discovery of the “SneakyTerra” fraud scheme showed how an organized instance of fraud could impact more than 2 million devices a day. If left unprotected, this scheme alone could cost the industry over $5 million a month in ad spend. As the digital advertising industry grows, attacks like these show how fraudsters are evolving to take advantage of emerging technologies and supply chain complexity.
Some may consider fraud to be a buy-side problem. However, the truth is that this pervasive issue threatens the stability of the ad-supported ecosystem. And it takes millions of dollars away from trusted publishers in the process.
Recently, DoubleVerify surveyed 300 executives in the digital media sector. We asked digital publishers and supply-side platforms about challenges they have faced in the industry (particularly amid the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic). Publishers stated that “the ability to proactively identify and troubleshoot impression-level fraud issues” was one of their biggest concerns moving forward. Fortunately, there are several steps publishers can take to prevent the downstream effects of fraud from negatively impacting their revenue.
Stay informed
The World Federation of Advertisers estimated that by 2025, ad fraud will be a nearly $50 billion industry. With that much at stake, fraudsters are constantly evolving to work around measures that publishers have taken to quell their impact.
An example of this is ads.txt, a common method for publishers to increase transparency by declaring who is authorized to sell their inventory. While this practice accomplishes its goal of reducing fraud, it quickly became a target for a more advanced scheme. In 2018, fraudsters designed a bot network to take advantage of the ads.txt framework in order to commit fraud that would not trigger ads.txt violations.
This demonstrates that no single strategy against fraud will act as a silver bullet. Publishers need to stay vigilant and informed (alongside the rest of the industry) in order to keep a lid on fraud.
Develop transparency and best practices
The more shrouded the supply chain becomes in ad tech, the more gaps open up for fraudsters to exploit. Publishers can implement policies that provide a clear picture of where ad spend is directed to make it easier to diagnose and eliminate potential fraud. These policies have to put supply chain transparency at the forefront because it reduces places for fraud to hide.
In addition to a transparency-first approach, publishers have the ability to implement a few best practices into their anti-fraud strategy. These include:
Proactively looking at inventory on ad exchanges to monitor for misrepresentation.
Ethically sourcing ad traffic to prevent sources that benefit from fraudulent activity.
Establishing baseline metrics and campaign expectations so that you notice irregularities caused by fraudulent faster.
Despite fraud continuing to have a measurable impact on advertiser and publisher performance, there is not a clear road map for anti-fraud strategies. Even if there were, those strategies often expose themselves to new opportunities for fraudulent activity. Publisher operations must remain nimble to combat this evolving threat.
Bridge the buy-sell divide
Fraudsters eat up thousands of opportunities for publishers to monetize inventory by posing as publishers. (Yet they operate with no obligation to create legitimate content.) To make matters worse, the presence of fraudsters in programmatic marketplaces often force trusted sellers to lower prices in order to compete with fraudulent inventory that appears to be high quality.
These second-order effects show how complex the fight on fraud can become. They also know that brands and publishers alone aren’t equipped to snuff it out. By working with third parties that bring buyers and sellers together through verification metrics that measure fraudulent traffic, publishers can prove the quality of their inventory, protect their reputation and give fraudsters fewer openings to exploit.
Fraud negatively impacts publishers by diverting key ad dollars away from premium inventory. This erodes the trust that needs to exist between buyers and sellers. However – with the right tools and strategic approach – the industry can reduce the impact of fraud and it can divert misplaced ad spend back to trusted content providers.
When the Covid-19 pandemic shut down gyms across the United States last year, people were forced to get creative with their workouts. POPSUGAR met the moment by bulking up its fitness content. However, even as gyms open up, the women-focused digital lifestyle brand is betting at-home workouts are here to stay. They’ve also seen that fitness serves as part of an overall content and monetization strategy that is good for audiences, and the brand’s bottom line.
Fitness was a core part of POPSUGAR’s video strategy long before the pandemic upended lives around the world. POPSUGAR got into fitness content in 2006. It launched a signature video franchise, dubbed Class Fitsugar, in 2012, which now sees an average of 1 million views per video.
Fitness content helped propel POPSUGAR’s rapid growth on Facebook in 2015. By January 2020, the brand launched a curated 4 Week Full-Body Fusion program. The collection of 25 workouts, each under 45 minutes, carries a one-time fee of $19.99.
As the Covid-19 pandemic spread in 2020, POPSUGAR released more than 200workouts across social media platforms and its own website. It amassed more than 3 million new subscribers on YouTube in 2020 alone, where its total audience now stands above 5.5 million.
The brand, which is part of Group Nine Media, now hosts live workouts with top trainers on Instagram stories and YouTube. It launches Snapchat popups, and posts on-demand workouts to Facebook, Twitter, and the POPSUGAR website. “This year, we’re continuing to see growth and audience attention on these workouts,” POPSUGAR GM Angelica Marden said.
Bite-sized multiplatform content isn’t just for news
Have just a few minutes to spare? No problem. POPSUGAR created a series of short workouts that require nothing more than a phone.
Unlike going to the gym, working out at home is about fitting fitness into your life wherever you can, according to Jennifer Fields, a new deputy editor hired from WebMD to oversee POPSUGAR’s fitness content. That could mean sliping a 5-minute ab workout in between zoom meetings or a 3-minute BTS cardio workout whenever you can carve out 270 seconds for yourself. Or it could be making a 15-minute HIIT class on YouTube part of your morning routine.
POPSUGAR’s goal is to “meet audiences wherever people spend their time,” Fields said. “So many people are looking for ways to exercise at home. There’s a freedom that comes with at-home workouts.”
The rise of at home fitness over the course of the pandemic has made it possible for friends to workout with one another despite geographic separations and differing time zones. It’s also made it easy for audiences to take classes from the farthest flung of their favorite fitness instructors.
Free is key
In early 2020, the company was exploring audience-supported models, such as it’s flat fee Full-Body Fusion program. In fact, it had plans to release a subscription app with a recurring monthly fee last spring. However, in March 2020, the company shifted gears to better serve their audience in need. They released the app as a free, ad-supported product and – with hundreds of thousands of downloads to date – have opted to keep it free.
POPSUGAR’s free online workouts are far more affordable than even a bargain gym membership and certainly cheaper than a new Peloton. In addition to amassing audiences across platforms, the strategy serves as a bridge between popular fitness experts and people who may not otherwise be able to afford or access their services. And now that audiences are acclimated to the flexibility and cost savings, the company thinks they’ll stick with the POPSUGAR plan in the long term.
The strategy aligns with that of parent company Group Nine Media, which traditionally monetizes video content through sponsorships and advertising on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, and its website. It also licenses content to OTT services including Discovery+ and Xumo and syndicates some content to linear TV. Group Nine also generates revenue through affiliate product sales.
It’s about more than exercise videos
Nowadays, the lines between fitness, wellness, and health are blurring. That’s a theme Fields plans to surface more this year in POPSUGAR’s content. “Fitness isn’t a separate bucket adjacent to your health anymore,” she said. “It is your health.”
Fields takes a broad view of what fitness and health content can be, one that includes mental health, particularly among women of color. That view is one that’s already begun to emerge in POPSUGAR’s content strategy.
In fact, last May, POPSUGAR launched a mental health content hub. At the time, POPSUGAR Founder and President Lisa Sugar described the project as a way “to help readers feel connected and less alone in their daily battle.”
More recently, POPSUGAR launched a Snapchat show aimed at helping Gen Z audiences answer their questions about things like anxiety and depression. The show aims to provide practical, actionable advice to viewers.
“We feel this is really an important conversation for us to be a part of,” Marden said. “Our goal across everything that we create and all of our programming is to offer an inclusive positive safe space for our audience and to help them live their best lives.”
While we all know the end is coming, we’d usually rather not contemplate it. That’s the approach most media and adtech companies have taken toward cookies over the past year or two.
These companies have long used cookies to monetize their content. Yet we all know the end of cookies is near. However, Google drove the final nail in the coffin with the announcement that they won’t support alternative identifiers after they kill cookies across their stack (including Chrome).
Really, this should come as no surprise to anyone. Content companies have been looking down the barrel of this gun for a long time. A few years ago, I was at a Google summit for adtech leaders when the company announced it would do away with third-party cookies in Chrome. You could almost feel the panic. Without cookies, how would adtech platforms grow revenue? And without adtech, how would media companies monetize their content?
After Google’s most recent announcement, adtech stocks, which have been on a tear in 2021, took a hit. But in all likelihood, the market will stabilize and rebound. Many of the stocks already have. Content companies that already shifted their attention to strategies that are less cookie-dependent (CTV, subscriptions, curated communities, etc.) are thriving.
Logged in
However, content companies that don’t have a cookie-less strategy need to get one, fast. Relying on contextual advertising or alternative identifiers is far from a panacea. The good news is that many media companies already have good customer understanding, or the tools to get there.
These days, we live in a subscription-based world. Many sites require registration — if not payment — before accessing content. Gartner has predicted that by 2023, 75% of B2C companies will offer subscription services, and for good reason: The success rate of selling to an existing customer is 60-70% compared to 5-20% for new customers.
Without the cookie, content companies are now “forced” to create a direct, permission-based relationship. A positive side effect could be a level of personalization and customer engagement that the cookie could not provide.
Positive steps
As content providers and publishers shift from cookies to a new paradigm of permission-based services, here are three areas of focus for content companies:
Create a better customer experience. Admit it: the cookie spoiled you. You were tracking that visitor to your site with a focus on scale and not quality. However, a better, truly omnichannel experience will drive behaviors that your advertising customers will appreciate. Consumers will gladly subscribe to your content and give you permission (and declared data) to help you better serve them. And their increased engagement will drive up page revenue.
Have a data strategy. The cookie made you beholden to your ad/martech partners. Now that you have formed a relationship with your customer, own that relationship. Build the right product tools and platforms, and don’t leave it to someone else to determine your success (or failure). The first-party relationship you are creating with your readers, viewers, and customers gives you direct data on their habits and interests. These are things that third-party platforms could only infer.
Build more digital products. Be everywhere. Host virtual events, like Complex Networks ComplexLand. Create curated members-only communities, like Fortune Connect. Embrace new ways of generating revenue. Experiment! Be agile (and Agile). Don’t be afraid of fragmentation. Own your relationships and customer experience by having an omnichannel strategy.
The death of the cookie isn’t the catastrophe you might think it is. It is a necessary evolution. If you embrace it, it can actually set you up for long-term customer engagement and sustained higher revenue. Change has come … and it is good.
About the author
Chris Hansen is senior vice president of 3Pillar Global’s media and information services client service vertical.
Digital publishers face serious competition for readers at a time when customer loyalty is eroding. More than ever, readers want fast, personalized digital content regardless of device, platform, or location. Visitors are quick to abandon slow and mediocre online experiences in favor of outlets that deliver fresh content at the speed of breaking news. Unfortunately, many publishers find themselves unprepared and without a firm strategy.
Recent months have shown some progress when it comes to publishers and news aggregators. At the end of 2020, Australia was one of the first countries to require news aggregators to pay publishers for their content. Still, social networks and top-tier news aggregators dominate digital media.
Traditional publishers are responding with subscription-based services that drive predictable revenue streams and viewership. And, while not all readers are willing or able to pay for gated content, those who do have even higher expectations for a seamless experience when it comes to both accessing and viewing this content. For video content, consumers will set the bar even higher.
The key to customer retention is serving the most up-to-date content instantly, personalizing that content for readers, and ensuring online experiences are fast, safe, and secure. Let’s look a little closer at the top five challenges digital publishers currently face:
Speed matters
Today, milliseconds matter more than ever. Workflows and procedures must continuously be optimized and fine-tuned. Success often depends on editors being empowered to make content available the instant an article or video is approved for publication. Inherent delays, even for a few minutes, are almost certain to result in missed opportunity.
Thus, low-latency delivery is required to attract viewers and keep them engaged. Highly dynamic digital content, is more efficiently and quickly processed at and served from the edge of the network. However, that is often far from where the content is stored in a content management system (CMS).
Seen from the point of the subscriber, responsive systems that allow repeated and immediate access to gated and premium content are expected. Authentication and paywalls should be as unobtrusive as possible, as there is a significant risk of abandonment if the process takes too long for each request.
Personalization drives loyalty
With a plethora of news content, the competition for viewers and their loyalty has moved from pure availability and uptime to responsiveness and with that, personalization. Today, many digital publishers tailor news stories using variables such as viewing platform, location, and subscription status to deliver highly personalized content. However, not all CDN offerings have the needed visibility and configurability to support these efforts. This compromises customer loyalty initiatives and risks a loss of audience in both the near and long term.
Growing privacy and security concerns at every level
Strict privacy laws are placing new limits on traditional digital publishing approaches. And deploying cookies and other IP tracking methods is proving increasingly difficult. Within the European Union, GDPR enforcement requires publishers to explicitly define their tracking systems and limits any kind of data gathering unless the viewer accepts opts-in. And let’s not forget that similar privacy laws are emerging in the U.S. In order to enable compliance, digital publishers increasingly seek to control where content is viewed. To do this, many opt to partner with a content delivery vendor that can block access based on location and IP address as well as identify virtual private network (VPN) traffic.
Bots also continue to be a security concern for digital publishers. They can scrape and republish content illegally. This greatly diminishes the content’s value for the original publisher. It also poses a significant threat to both content quality and ad revenue. Advertisers are expected to lose an estimated $19 Billion to fraudulent activities this year—equivalent to $51 million daily (Juniper Research).
Political affiliations, opinion pieces, and other controversial content make digital publishers a frequent target for distributed disruption of service (DDoS) attacks. The mere exposure a hacker can get from disrupting major news sites is often incentive enough. Digital publishers wanting to build their online protection plans should be cautious of legacy CDNs that often lack visibility to detect online attacks and distinguish them from a flood of legitimate traffic when news breaks (not to mention the ability to react and mitigate).
Video content comes at a cost
Increasingly, customer demand is driving a pivot from static content to video. Snackable video is easy to consume. And, in the context of news, video usually conveys a higher level of perceived trust. Support for video can also bring additional revenue, as advertisers typically pay significantly more for video ads, especially those that can support dynamic ad insertion to target viewers.
The shift by traditional digital publishers to embed video into their news stories and feature articles is blurring the competitive landscape between video-only and video-first outlets. However, video content and delivery bring their own set of unique challenges. The amount of data needing to be transported increases exponentially. Therefore, it can put a heavy burden on infrastructure typically designed to accommodate much smaller payloads. Also, successful video delivery requires systems that can scale with audience and demand. This includes predictable demand for local news segments and purpose-built videos to unpredictable demand during significant news events such as breaking news or when video content goes viral.
Technical debt slows the pace of innovation
As digital publishers evolve their businesses to reach more customers with higher bandwidth content, they often encounter technical constraints created by legacy CDNs. Inflexible architectures fail to address fundamental content delivery requirements, including real-time visibility and control, as well as the ability to scale on demand.
Often, publishing workflows are complex and contain custom-developed technology stacks. Thus, modifying deployments for better scale and performance while maintaining uninterrupted workflows is fraught with risk and can feel daunting, if not insurmountable. Traditional CDNs routinely lack full API support, granular control, and real-time configuration changes. This flexibility is necessary in order to integrate with custom tech stacks, as well as other emerging technologies, and thus impede digital transformation efforts.
Don’t let outdated technology stand in your way
In a highly competitive market, often with thin margins, digital publishers striving to stay relevant must have modern systems in place that deliver content to readers and aggregators the moment it is ready. As you set out to architect and build your next delivery platform, be sure to evaluate the practical challenges a legacy CDN will impose when it comes to meeting the expectations of your audience.
Publishers know that competition for audience time and attention is fierce. Given increasing challenges, and rising consumer expectations, it is critical to make smart investments in order to deliver fast, excellent audience experiences.
/ An inside look at the business of digital content
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