Covid-19 hit some sectors of the media industry hard (live sports, concerts and trade shows). The global entertainment and media industry saw its largest revenue decline in more than two decades. However, the pandemic has also presented an opportunity for companies embracing digital strategies that are aligned with consumer trends and expectations.
Disney, for example, lost over $6 billion in revenue from the closure of its theme parks. But Disney+ reached 50 million subscribers worldwide two years ahead of schedule. In January, Fortune – once just a print magazine – announced its redesigned website, an immersive video hub, and other premium offerings. All of this strongly positioned them strongly to counteract the advertising slump that hit the industry last spring. In October, the company launched Connect, a membership community and online platform for purpose-driven, mid-career professionals.
Here are three trends we’re likely to see this year:
1. The relationship with the content consumer matters more than ever.
Cookies were a convenient crutch. They were the building blocks for digital advertising and helped drive revenue for media companies as they transformed. Now that cookies are nearing their end, some companies are panicking while others are evolving. The ones that succeed will be the ones that focus on creating a continuing relationship with the consumer. This means engaging with them differently, through a soft or hard paywall, or as a curated member experience (e.g. Fortune Connect). This not only preserves advertising, which is a significant source of revenue, but opens the door to new, diversified revenue streams.
The ultimate death of the cookie will turn out to be a blessing for the media industry, even if it creates disruption in the short term. Necessity drives innovation. The cookie’s demise will revamp the way companies post content and interact with their consumers. In 2021, we will see even more innovative media business models that will define the coming decade.
2. Pandemic-driven changes won’t revert.
There is no going back, so let’s embrace the change. Let’s highlight some of those changes. In the first 28 days on Netflix, The Queen’s Gambit was watched by 62 million households. No, it didn’t reach M.A.S.H. season finale numbers of 106 million. However, M.A.S.H. aired on a major broadcast network at a time when there were only a few.
We’ve seen an acceleration in media companies following in Netflix’s footsteps. Peacock is betting on a network show that first aired in 2005 – The Office – to drive premium subscriptions at $5 a month. Who is the largest audience for that show? People who aren’t old enough to have worked in an office.
Just as the music industry needed to evolve and find new ways to engage and monetize consumers when streaming took off, so must media companies. Experiments bringing what would have been blockbuster movie releases like Mulan, Soul, and Wonder Woman 1984 to Disney+ and HBOMax will forever change, but not completely destroy, the theater industry. (Alamo Drafthouse-like experiences may well be the theater experience of the future). And let’s be clear, the definition of media is evolving. Consider Peloton: a fitness company? Sure. A hardware company? Maybe. A media company? Absolutely.
Successful media companies aren’t embracing a move to digital. They are disrupting their own legacy business models to become digital. Spectator events have become intimate digital experiences. (Think DJ D-Nice spinning to 120,000 live viewers including Diddy, President Joe Biden, and Janet Jackson on IG Live in the early days of the pandemic).
Sporting events are better with fans in stands. However, sporting experiences can, and should be, complemented with connectivity to the players, drivers and coaches. Leagues have already embraced fantasy sports, but could they openly embrace sports betting? And are there opportunities to connect with online gaming to create a full-surround fan experience, digitally?
It is critical to focus on the consumer and how they consume and where they consume and providing new ways to consume – directly. This will create new and stronger revenue opportunities.
3. Legacy media companies can succeed. But they have an uphill climb ahead.
Legacy media companies have the most to gain from transformative change. However, they start at a massive disadvantage compared to new media companies like Complex Networks and Spotify. (Yes, Spotify particularly with the acquisition of podcast content companies such as Gimlet).
These brands and what they represent have lasting value. However, they demand reinvention with a focus on digital channels, habit-forming digital products, multiple streams of monetization and libraries of content. When Maven bought Sports Illustrated last year, it did so with the intent of “revitalizing and strengthening” the publication for a new era by focusing on technology.
Past the tipping point
A recent McKinsey report noted that Covid-19 has “pushed companies over the technology tipping point.” Media companies that want to succeed will have to rethink their digital business models in 2021. And they have no time to waste.
While most software products were once developed on a 6-to-12-month timeline, the pace of change has accelerated. Consumer expectations are far more immediate. But with the right digital product strategy, the media industry could see a game-changing resurgence in 2021.
About the author
Chris Hansen is senior vice president of 3Pillar Global’s media and information services client service vertical.
Since Covid-19 closed offices everywhere, the workplace has changed beyond recognition. Home working currently accounts for than more than two-thirds of economic activity in the U.S. Now, about a year in, employees have settled into a routine of working from their bedroom, office, or kitchen. And managers have found new ways to communicate and engage with their staff.
With the pandemic normalizing remote work, the question is: Will we ever want to work in an office again? According to research, 55% of US workers want a mixture of home and office working. Liz Vaccariello, Editor-In-Chief of Real Simple at Meredith Corporation agrees that hybrid is the best option.
“All remote, all the time is not healthy, especially in media, where the creative process needs to happen in person,” says Vaccariello. “But as a creative lead, I don’t see the need for office hours to be Monday to Friday, nine to six. It’s just inefficient. Twice a week is good enough!”
Many businesses are considering this hybrid option and starting to think about a long- term model. So, what lessons have been learned during lockdown that we can take forward into this next phase? We spoke to industry experts at Complex Networks, Meredith Corporation, and The Financial Times to find out.
Communication pro tips
“The pandemic has put a focus on intentional and clear communication,” says Krystle Douglas, VP People & Culture at Complex Networks. “So, think about what it is you are saying, how you’re saying it, and how it’s received.”
While Slack is great for keeping in touch with your team and dealing with daily duties, you need to make sure you take the time to personally reach out to individual staff. “I’ve been checking in with everyone by calling them every two weeks,” says Vaccariello. “A phone call feels more intimate and it makes us feel more connected. This is even more true than when we were in an office together, where I was around, but not always available. Additionally, I personally mail each person a note about each issue, mentioning a story they worked on, or how they contributed.”
Surveys are also a great way to communicate, as the anonymity enables employees to freely express their opinions. The Financial Times (FT) regularly surveys their staff. Since lockdown Kirsty Devine, the company’s U.S. Head of HR & Global Project, says they have been targeting questions around well-being and working from home.
Be empathetic
According to Vaccariello good communication starts with empathy. “Managers need to empathize individually and thinkabout each member of their staff and what they need,” she explains. “For example, when dealing with my younger team members, I think about my 22-year-old self. I ask: How would I be feeling?”
Douglas agrees that empathy is key to ensuring people interpret messages the way you want them to be received. “We are all busy, but you have to pause and pay attention. Everyone is dealing with a lot right now, but not everyone is ok with sharing it,” she states. “It’s about being more thoughtful in how you reach out and connect with people.”
Empathy doesn’t come naturally to everyone. However, according to research, it can be taught. The FT provides training and coaching on how to supervise staff according to their situation.
“Empathic leadership has never been so important, but not all managers are used to it,” says Devine. “In the office you can read body language. But with people working remotely they need to ask questions about how people are doing and not just brush off the response, which some people are uncomfortable with.
EMPATHETIC LEADERSHIP TIPS
The mindfulness app Headspace offers the following advice for empathetic leadership:
Look: Check-in with your team and look for the unsaid. How are people’s energy levels?
Listen: Give your team space to be open and honest about how they feel, both mentally and physically.
Feel: Taking the time to acknowledge how someone else is feeling empowers us to respond with kindness.
Respond: In times of high stress, it’s easy to let frustrations get in the way of skilful communication. Pause and give yourself space to respond in a kind way.
Flexible hours and expectations
With empathy comes an understanding of how people choose to manage their working day. This can be particularly important if they have other responsibilities, such as home schooling.
“Nine to five is out the door,” states Vaccariello. “Working during this pandemic is just about getting work done when you can.” You have to trust your staff to get their work done, at a time that fits in with their home life.
Giving them more autonomy, rather than constantly checking they are online, will cultivate a culture of trust, respect and ultimately hard work. “The work will speak for itself,” says Vaccariello. “If a team member can get their work done in five hours, good for them!”
Less can be more
The downside of flexible working is finding the “off button” at the end of the day. “The commute served as the emotional shoulder of the day,” explains Vaccariello. “You would read the paper on the way in to prepare for the day, and a novel on the way home to switch off. But now we have no practical or emotional boundaries. So, we work longer hours.
“Meredith may get more [time] out of us, but I don’t see it as a benefit. I want employees with a healthy work-life balance. if they spend 12 hours a day looking at a screen they are going to burn out, and that’s not good for business.”
It’s up to management to supervise their staff and ensure they aren’t working all hours. Real Simple has a “no meeting” policy on Fridays, so people can set their own hours and focus on creativity. Complex Network has Mental Health Friday, where the office is closed every other Friday.
Monitor mental health
It’s also up to management to keep any eye on their team and watch for signs of mental health problems. Of particular concern are employees who live alone because work is their main source of interaction. Research by TotalJobs found that 46% of U.K. workers have experienced loneliness during lockdown.
There are a number of things you can do to support staff, from offering virtual therapy sessions, to providing in-house mentors. The FT already had a network of employees with mental health training in place. Devine says they have been a great source of support during lockdown. The newspaper also offers an employee assistance program (EAP), which provides independent, confidential counseling and support 24/7. Plus, they offer to pay 50% of a Headspace subscription.
“Since lockdown we have also introduced five wellness days, which are paid days where staff can take a break to get their head together,” says Devine. “And we provide resilience training on how to manage yourself in a remote environment.”
Team building
No matter how much support you offer, nothing can replace the bonding and benefits of sharing office space. “Journalists in the newsroom are itching to get back to office. They miss those moments of serendipity, when they are working on a story and bouncing ideas between desks,” says Devine.
Without those watercooler moments, Vaccariello says you need to find new ways to kickstart a conversation for your teams – especially with new staff members. “We can’t grab a beer or have a welcome bagel party. So, to make new staff feel part of the team we play games on Webex. Or we go around and have everyone say something about themselves, such as a book they’ve recently read.”
Complex Networks has a similar system, set up by Douglas, called Complex Coffee Talks, where different staff members talk about their professional and personal lives. “I wanted to find a way to keep morale high, but also provide a learning experience, so that all employees understand what everyone else is doing,” Douglas says. “Because understanding is the route to empathy, which builds a stronger, happier workforce.”
While Covid has caused chaos around the globe, there is no doubt that some positives have come out of the pandemic. Workplace flexibility is one of them. It can increase productivity, decrease stressful commutes and save money on office space and travel expenses. But the key to successful remote working is good management and consistent support.
“It’s all about empathy, communication and understanding,” says Douglas. “You need to be in tune with your team, so listen and pay attention.”
As McKinsey reminds us, great products result when companies build bridges between technology innovation and audience preference. It is critical to deliver a holistic experience across functions and every stage of the customer journey. In media, aligning teams to develop data-informed products that engage audiences is more than a pathway to excellence. It’s essential for survival.
However, it can also be expensive to support. The record number of newsroom closures in 2020 offers unsettling proof that quality content cannot be the only draw. Organizations need to combine content and experience in new ways that decrease friction, increase satisfaction, and adapt to how consumers want to interact and where they are in the journey.
Continuing with our series of DCN video interviews, I talk to Millie Tran, chief product officer at The Texas Tribune. A local news success story, the Texas Tribune has built a sustainable business, employing more than 60 journalists through a range of revenue sources, including thousands of paying members.
Drawing from her experience at the Tribune, as well as The New York Times and Buzzfeed, Tran shares how the Tribune aligns editorial with the back-end processes to adapt content and coverage to what most readers find most useful. She also reveals how her team harnesses audience data and innovative news modules and visualizations to drive a 2x increase in homepage views and keep readers coming back.
Watch the video or read the full transcript below.
Transcript
Peggy Anne Salz: Product is the new marketing, but it’s not a new focus. It is gaining new significance as content companies’ perfect ways to draw from their data, to customize content and measure the results. But what are the business benefits? How can you individualize flagship products to drive views and longer sessions? How should you focus efforts and investments? Tough questions, yes, but we get the inside track here today from The Texas Tribune on Digital Content Next.
I am your host, Peggy Anne Salz, mobile analyst, content marketing consultant and frequent contributor to Digital Content Next. Of course, DCN is a trade association serving the diverse needs of high-quality digital content companies globally.
So my guest today is the chief product officer of The Texas Tribune. So it is a perfect match with our topic. That is where she leads audience, engineering, data, design, marketing, and communications and loyalty teams. Before this, she was deputy off-platform editor at The New York Times and before that global growth editor.
I am so excited to have her here today to talk about how she creates a holistic and successful product. Millie Tran, welcome to Digital Content Next. Great to have you here.
Millie Tran: Thanks for having me Peggy. I am excited to talk.
Peggy: It is a great topic. Product is so important, and I would like to start by understanding the alignment between product and the newsroom.
So, just thinking about your day-to-day routines, strategically and in practice, what does that look like?
Tran: I love this question. You know product can feel really opaque. I think traditionally we think of product as sitting in the center. But at a news organization, the news is the product.
So that alignment between product and the newsroom really manifests in the alignment with me and our editorial director Stacy-Marie Ishmael. I would say we are constantly in communication. And one of our core functions in each of our roles is just making decisions, making a call under conditions of uncertainty, conflict, complexity and increasing and sometimes unknown interdependencies.
We make a decision over here it can affect two things over there. And we are in a process of constantly anticipating those downstream effects so we can make the smartest decision based on our strategy. The balance between editorial decisions, product decisions and revenue decisions.
How I see my job. I think it is a mix of people, process and product. And I think it has to be in that order. It has to be that you understand people, their roles, their jobs, their skills, to work together most efficiently and effectively to build that product.
Salz: I love that because first of all you have people first, that resonates with me and you are thinking about not just the output, not just the articles, videos, podcasts, whatever it needs to be. You are focused on an experience. What you yourself have called a more holistic product. I would like to understand what you mean by that. I think you have also tweeted about that as well.
Tran: Probably. Speaking of tweets, I was just reminded of this tweet that Margaret Sullivan shared the other day about how she is a big fan and supporter of local news. But the websites are so horrendous, and I think that neatly ties up with what you are asking. Holistic to me means the whole experience. All of those things you mentioned, those modules, articles, videos, podcasts. There are micro experiences to each of those things, but all of those add up to the overall user experience.
When I say holistic user experience, I also mean not just the engineering, not just the CMS, it is also the design. It is also the way we write headlines, for example. So it is organizationally something we want to provide our users. I know even the ads we consider putting on our website, are not random ads that are offensive and distracting to the journalism. If you go to our website, you will see right now the ads are very relevant to someone interested in Texas, for example.
Salz: That is very important because relevancy, as you said, it is the entire experience, and it has to fit together. What are the systems I am even interacting with or working with in the first place? It goes far beyond CMS is what I’m hearing.
Tran: It is, and I would say we have a great tech setup here, our CMS is homemade, so that is our engineering team’s biggest product, and that powers our website. We have our data visuals team who are doing one off projects that we can test and learn from.
So we have a way to experiment with new products and a nice process to build it into the broader systems to make it easier. It is this nice feedback loop of experimenting, learning, and then integrating it into how we just do our work.
So our journalists and editors can also make these things easily because that also informs the work product at the end.
Salz: I want to get back to the whole idea of delivering a product, a product is the new marketing. We said that at the top and it is a success when it either acquires audiences or deepens the connection with existing ones. What is it at The Texas Tribune? What is your audience approach? Is it acquisition or retention or maybe, something else?
Tran: That is a great question. I think it has to be both acquisition and retention.
One of our big strategic priorities right now is double and diversify. Doubling our audience and making our audience reflect Texas, be more representative of Texas.
I often think about our membership. We want to grow the number of people who are supporting us through small dollar donations. The way to increase the members is to either have more people come to your site and then you have this natural conversion flow.
A percentage of our total readers are members so there is this natural conversion flow already. So you get more members by increasing the number of people who come to you or you increase the effectiveness of converting them. So at every point, do they come back, do they potentially sign up for a newsletter? We have seen that newsletters are our most effective channel in membership conversion. So: getting a reader to donate to us. I think it is about putting both of those things into a framework that helps you understand the costs and benefits of each at every point.
So, I think it is about having all the data, putting it in a model and framework that helps you balance all of these things. I don’t think you can just choose one or the other. Having that broad view will help you make better decisions.
I said that is a quantitative framework and to loop back to what you said about product is the new marketing. I think people subscribe to things. They support organizations, they support brands for reasons that we can’t always quantify. It is really important also to understand the emotional connection that someone has to your product and your organization, your brand.
I think in addition to having that quantitative framework, you need a way to understand why people are supporting you. I think that goes back to an organization’s mission and values.
Something that I am really proud that we do is have our journalism free to publish for kind of any news organization.
When you support us, you support Texas overall having a better news ecosystem. I think people, that resonates with people. I think understanding that resonates with people is really important, even if you cannot quantify it in that model I just talked about. To your question it is balancing the acquisition and retention, but also balancing the measurables and immeasurables.
Salz: I like that because that is exactly it, it is very holistic. It is about looking at what you can measure, and we will talk about that in a moment.
There are events, there are metrics, there are things you want to optimize too, but you also want to optimize the experience. That is thinking about the people, the audience, what resonates with them, what did they appreciate?
Now I would love for you to unpack that. Maybe you can give an example, walk us through the homepage because that is where the conversions happen. That is where the conversations happen.
Tran: Yes, so let me just pull up my homepage for you. This is The Texas Tribune homepage. There are two things on here already that I can talk through that we just launched within the past year during my time at the Tribune.
So this navbar is something we launched and what you’re seeing here, by the way, these little green numbers are live audience data. We use Parse.ly for this so we can see in the last 10 minutes or whatever time period, what people are clicking on. We can see what is of interest, what is resonating with people, that will inform, not necessarily decide, what we choose to feature.
Going back to what I was saying, about our two teams, the data visuals team, which is in the newsroom and then the engineering team. This navbar was code that was in a previous, I think it was in an election page, a way for us to highlight different topics on that page. We ended up pulling that code and the engineering team made it a part of our core CMS.
So we took something that was a one-off, we learned about how people used it and then saw a need for it. There are so many coronavirus stories that we did not know how to surface all the different lines and angles. We knew that we had the code. We took it and then the engineering team built that feature into our CMS. Now editors can just choose their own topics each day and highlight the most important. I think that is a great example of the culture of experimentation, it is a culture of learning and iterating.
When the most people are on our homepage, we want to optimize for the most important things that they should see.
That was one quick way that we did that. Another way is this coronavirus in Texas model you will see here.
I think the beauty in all of this again, is the flexibility and adaptability. It’s actually not a coronavirus in Texas model. It is a model to feature any kind of series that we choose.
You can imagine this not being here. If you are scrolling through, it would take so long to see all the relevant stories in one place. This in itself is such a great product because it does a lot of things. It gives you the latest coverage in a very skimmable way. So you are not having to scroll so deep because most people don’t, and again, that is understanding the audience behavior and making it a better product, given that information. We also have feature coverage, so it is not just chronological, it is our editorial priorities.
I talked about newsletter subscribers and having that module there is really important to us because if we can get people to subscribe to our newsletters, they can become part of our email universe and therefore eventually hopefully become a member.
Salz: Absolutely. You can re-engage with them and talking about engagement you have some other modules that you were showing me in prep that I was very interested in. How you turned a news story into a module. Can you walk me through that as well?
Tran: Yes, absolutely. This is a story that we did, late last year about how Texas has made it easier and harder for people to vote in the pandemic.
You will see if you notice the order here. This was not the original order and what we did was make sure that we were tracking what people were clicking on, so we can get a sense of what people needed to know most. We ended up moving that question about when was the last day to register to vote first. And again, I think that’s just being responsive to reader needs, working with our newsroom, working with our engineering team, working with our data visuals team to really have an integrated news driven, but reader informed product. And you’ll also see here there’s fiscal support, right?
So April Hinkle who’s our chief revenue officer was able to take it to market and get funding for it. Again, this is just one way that we really tied in, the newsroom, product and revenue.
Salz: You more than doubled your views to the homepage in just one month.
So you went from 400,000 in February to more than a million in March, obviously breaking news, very important. We’re all talking about COVID, but that number is also consistent. So you keep them coming back. We talked about how that works when there’s news, breaking news, but of course it’s not a static world out there.
So I’d like to understand how you adjust to make the changes in the editorial product accordingly to keep that number as high as it is.
Tran: We found that our readers who visit the homepage are just also more engaged with us, right? They’re more loyal. They visit an average of 2.3 pages versus 1.4 of all visitors on site. They stay on the site for longer to 2 minutes, 45 seconds compared to 1 minute and 10 seconds for all visitors.
So they are more engaged. They’re reading more, they’re staying longer. So I really want to retain this audience. If this goes down, that would be a huge red flag to me because there are people who have come to, I would say, depend on us.
So I think it’s one, meeting that editorial promise and mission. And then two, it’s about making that experience better. And that’s all the things we talked through about making the homepage, you get more information in one glance, it’s fast. Speed matters in page loads.
And going back to your very first question about alignment between news and products, that’s one way to bring together that news promise and also making the best product experience for that person looking for information.
Salz: Of course, there’s another side to this. There are the challenges, you see it everywhere. Local newsrooms are crunched, even closing down. I’d like to have an understanding about the investment and staffing necessary to achieve what you’ve been able to do.
Tran: I’ll always say that it begins like starts and ends with the journalism, but I think just as important is having the kind of architecture and infrastructure to support that journalism.
So I think it’s really important to invest just as much in the scaffolding around the journalism to enable that journalism, with a continued focus on the reader and I think it’s important to say also the revenue.
And in terms of investment, we’re hiring two people right now for our marketing team because that marketing function actually serves several parts of the organization.
It serves our republishing strategy. It serves our event strategy, which has a direct line to revenue. And it serves our membership strategy, which has a line to revenue. Thinking about all the things that make things you see at the back end possible is really important. So that’s where we’re focusing our investments for this year.
Salz: I’d like to just think about going forward in a different way. You talk about holistic product and I’m looking at this all the time, what is the next big thing? Although I have to say we have a lot of work to do on the existing products we have.
We haven’t really nailed it in apps, but we are talking about AR, we are talking about voice, both are poised for explosive growth.
So let’s talk about what other innovations you might be looking at or ways you want to make your product or plan to make your product more engaging, more accessible, and increase of course engagement retention in the process. What’s on the horizon?
Tran: You mentioned AR, that’s definitely not in my roadmap. But voice on the other hand, that is more plausible.
With voice for example we have a pretty robust suite of audio products already. We just rebooted Point of Order which is our podcast with our CEO, Evan Smith ahead of The Texas Legislature being in session again. So I think it’s about aligning what we have currently to build off on and then really sizing the opportunity for us. Again, I’m really laser focused on understanding the ROI of every investment, predicting and modeling the outcomes of that. And I think in doing that you’re balancing high risk with high reward. And I think not everything will fall into that. But you also don’t want to limit yourself in not taking those risks. So anyway, to your actual question… I’m thinking about all of it and hoping that we can make the smartest decisions that aligns with our strategy, with the information we have.
Salz: I think you will, because of course you have these very specific guidelines. You’re thinking about people, you’re thinking about process, and you’re aligning to create a holistic experience. Some of these will play a role. Some of them, of course, maybe not. But all of it will be very interesting to watch as it goes forward.
Thank you so much for sharing Millie, for speaking about what you’re doing at The Texas Tribune, showing it as well in your homepage and giving us a little peek into where your thinking is going into the future. Thanks again for being on.
Tran: Thank you so much Peggy. This was great.
Salz: Thank you. And of course, thank you for tuning in and taking the time today. In the meantime, of course, be sure to check out all the great content here on digitalcontentnext.org or join the conversation on Twitter @DCNorg.
So until next time, I’m your host Peggy Anne Salz signing off for Digital Content Next.
A fundamental shift has occurred in the past year: Publishers experienced a fortuitous combination of increased audience size and engagement. Many publishers are considering how to balance subscription marketing with ad monetization in order to take advantage of new readers and higher engagement.
In a recent survey, 53% of publishers experienced an increase in engagement with their email newsletters during the Covid pandemic. Email is taking on a new role in nurturing these relationships and maximizing their value. Much like retailers, publishers can leverage email as a path to conversion.
Rethink the “customer” experience
Executives are rethinking many parts of their business in light of the pandemic’s silver lining of higher engagement. And with third party cookies under imminent threat, publishers have both a challenge and opportunity with how to collect insights about visitors to deliver value for advertisers and drive business operations effectively.
One way that publishers can take better advantage of their new engagement opportunity is to collect more data. They have an opportunity to more effectively test and integrate new revenue opportunities by approaching their digital business the way a retailer approaches ecommerce. Many publishers have discussed adding commerce opportunities to their models, such as The New York Times’ addition of Wirecutter to their portfolio. However, for many publishers, the concept needs some direction.
Often, the best work across publisher initiatives is done by connecting experiences between the website, search, and social media. Unfortunately, email remains a relatively static, separated channel. Retailers would be shocked to know that publisher email is frequently bifurcated between content-based newsletters and transaction-based messages about subscriptions with little coordination between them. Email is a hidden opportunity that will help with many 2021 publisher goals.
There are many strategic and tactical improvements that publishers can make to better orchestrate channels to achieve their goals. And these improvements have already proven successful in ecommerce. The multichannel retail experience includes data collection and segmentation, intricate channel orchestration, a dedication to measurement and analytics, and sophisticated testing and personalization with email and SMS. These channels must work together seamlessly to serve to engage, connect, and communicate.
Mapping the “customer” journey
A loyal reader has a particular series of actions that they will, pretty predictably, take. They might visit the site every morning. Or perhaps they open their mobile app every evening as they hang out on the couch. A search-driven reader might have another set of behaviors. They might averaging 30 seconds on the page, with a possible second article before abandoning the site.
These various user profiles are essentially different “customer segments.” Each of these offer their own set of value opportunities and paths to conversion. Many publishers have already created segmented strategies and content personalization. However, multichannel revenue-driven marketing, including email, usually takes a back seat. This reduces the ability to re-engage, offer deeper personalization, and drive conversion.
Retail tactics to learn from
Publishers have more in common with the ecommerce experience than they may realize. In fact, several established ecommerce best practices can be repurposed for publishers:
Browse abandon
Retailers will often trigger a personalized email when someone abandons a product search. Publishers can do the same, tracking everything from scroll depth to which search terms drove them to the site. By testing segmented triggers to bring different readers back to the story, or to similar or different stories, publishers come across as more relevant and more interesting.
Cart abandon
Similarly, retailers will trigger a personalized message via email or SMS to remind people of what’s in their cart. Publishers can do the same with event and subscription signups, or with articles saved for later reading.
Interest-based triggers
Every time a consumer reviews a product, or clicks on a link, that information is gathered to improve personalization and triggered messaging in the future. This information, be it driven by content behavior or more transactional behavior, should be collected by publishers to build richer user profiles and to inform segmentation and marketing actions. This data is also hugely valuable for editors seeking to better understand reader interests.
Live content
Retailers used live content during Black Friday/Cyber Monday to drive interest in sales, manage inventory. Streaming content showing employees explaining products, and influencers discussing health tips, drove engagement and sales. Publishers can imagine incorporating everything from breaking news and live entertainment to real time interviews and podcasts.
Channel optimization
Email is only one element of a multichannel communication strategy. It’s best to test within and across channels to understand how to get people to stay engaged based on their preferences and habits. For example, testing the success of driving engaged readers on mobile web to download the app, or transitioning engaged mobile app readers to in-app messages and push instead of email, can help publishers meet readers where they are without any friction. SMS can take things one step further for brands that don’t have standalone apps but cover breaking news, the same way many D2C retailers alert shoppers about sales.
Bonus points
These five common triggers in a retail strategy also serve another purpose: to test messages and collect more data. Adding triggers along the customer journey doesn’t just provide opportunities to re-engage, they make businesses smarter. Combining insights and measurement across different parts of the business can help speed up learning. Personalizing different elements of the customer journey can help speed up conversion.
Content is the product that many publishers focus on, but it’s the readers (aka customers) that will deliver insight and revenue. By turning focus toward the transactional touchpoints along the reader journey, publishers will find more chances to increase their insights and improve their performance. Retailers may have more measurable ROI. However, what retailers have spent years learning through testing can now serve as a reliable blueprint for publishers.
About the author
Allison Mezzafonte has worked in the media and publishing industry for 20 years and is currently a growth consultant, as well as a Media Advisor to Sailthru. A former publishing executive for Bauer Media, Dotdash, and Hearst Digital, Allison serves as a strategic partner to media clients.
Public policy debates over consumer privacy and platform liability will feature prominently in 2021. Some are even hopeful that policymakers can reach bipartisan agreement on solutions. These are two important issues that I want to explore. However, I wonder if they aren’t the byproduct of a bigger problem.
Consumer privacy: A policy patchwork
One could argue that the digital advertising industry has been “regulated” (even if enforcement was less than robust) since 2010 when the industry’s self-regulation group, the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA), rolled out its AdChoices program. In 2018, Europe began enforcing the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In 2020, the California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA) came online followed by the November passage of the GDPR-like California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA).
Against this alphabet soup of patchwork regulation, we may be reaching a tipping point. For one thing, more states are expected to pass consumer privacy laws in 2021. Even with pandemic-altered legislative calendars, 16 states nearly passed laws in 2020.
Additionally, Congress has held countless hearings over the last two years to investigate big tech’s massive data collection operations. Those hearings are sometimes painful to watch, but they are serving to educate members of Congress, who appear to be much more knowledgeable now than they were a few years ago. (Remember when one of them asked Mark Zuckerberg how Facebook makes money? Oy.)
As further evidence of an increasingly savvy Congress, there is a bipartisan group of Senators quietly negotiating to craft a national consumer privacy framework. From what I’ve seen and heard, their approach is fairly solid. With slim Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, this kind of bipartisan approach is the only way that any meaningful privacy law can get passed. However, the deck may be stacked against them. It is difficult to move major legislation with slim majorities in the House and Senate because the margin for error is very small.
All that said, the California laws (CCPA and eventually CPRA) are likely to serve as the de facto national standard. Many companies already apply those laws nationwide, not just for California residents. Besides which, most of the big tech giants are based in California. While the CCPA was a strong first law designed to give consumers more control over how their data is collected and used, CPRA is directly targeted at curbing Google and Facebook’s massive data collection and profiling operations.
GDPR has a similar focus. However, Google and Facebook have employed creative compliance strategies that have allowed them to temporarily evade a direct hit to their businesses. The big question is whether European and California regulators can force big tech companies into finally complying with the spirit of these consumer privacy laws. Fines are fine. But the laws were actually intended to empower and protect consumers.
Section 230: A Tale of two parties
Often referred to as “The 26 Words That Created The Internet,” Section 230 became a target of both political parties in 2020. Prominent Republicans and Democrats — including each party’s Presidential nominee — have called for the elimination or massive overhaul of Section 230. And yet Congress is not all that close to resolving anything.
The problem is that each party’s concerns lead them to propose different solutions. Democrats and Republicans both agree that big tech platforms have too much market power. Hence, the flurry of antitrust lawsuits filed by a Republican Department of Justice (and likely to be carried forward by a Democratic Department of Justice) and a bipartisan flotilla of state attorneys general.
With regard to Section 230, however, Democrats criticize tech platforms for not taking action quickly enough to combat disinformation, harassment, and demagoguery. Republicans, on the other hand, allege that big tech companies use the legal shield of Section 230 to suppress conservative speech. Essentially, Democrats want tech companies to do more while Republicans want tech companies to do less. These fundamentally different viewpoints are likely to make it difficult for Congress to agree on any big changes to Section 230.
Big picture, bigger issue
What’s interesting to me is that the public policy debates around consumer privacy and Section 230 are largely driven by dominance and anticompetitive behavior of big tech companies. I wonder if we would even be having these debates if Google and Facebook faced meaningful competition.
The aforementioned alphabet soup of consumer privacy regulations was developed to address consumer concerns about the ubiquitous and non-transparent collection of consumer data for use in behaviorally targeted ads. The two most dominant players in the digital ad industry, Google and Facebook, have built massive ad targeting businesses (basically the digital equivalent of junk mail), which are fueled by the collection of consumer data across the web and our lives. The duopoly, as we have called Google and Facebook for years now, accounts for 70 to 80% of the growth in the digital advertising marketplace. Much of this advertising is delivered on their own properties regardless of where they mined the data.
With regard to Section 230, the original intent of the law was to incentivize companies for making “good faith” actions to clean up their services. However, without meaningful competition among digital platforms, those companies are merely incentivized to protect themselves against legal action as opposed to competing for consumer loyalty.
Anticompetitive by design
Imagine a world where Facebook and Instagram were separate companies competing for consumers. I think they would be vying to prove which company would be the best at snuffing out disinformation, stamping out illegal activity, and generally providing the most trustworthy service.
Significantly, when Facebook was first launched, it touted a super strong set of privacy protections and controls to differentiate from the established market players at the time. But not now. The “like” button was originally designed as a user signal to show content interests. It has become an opaque means to track people’s movement around the web. Facebook’s business model is so reliant on tracking users it ran a national ad campaign last month to publicly pressure Apple to blink on its plan to restrict the use of its advertising identifier (IDFA). And let’s not forget that Facebook only reluctantly and belatedly de-platforms hate groups and removes disinformation.
If there was meaningful competition, big tech platforms would behave very differently within the industry and for consumers. The latest bit of evidence that Google and Facebook agreed to cooperate rather than compete with each other was particularly appalling. The two dominant players in digital advertising decided to carve up the market for themselves while icing out everyone else. The fact that the agreement exists at all is quite amazing. Perhaps more amazing is that these two companies had enough chutzpah to even engage in the negotiation in the first place. In many ways merely confirmed what many industry insiders already suspected. It’s the Duopoly’s world and we’re just living in it.
While we engage in meaningful and important debates about consumer privacy and the responsibilities of companies in a digitally-dominated world, let’s not lose sight of the fact that the competitive landscape is heavily tilted in favor of the big tech companies. The antitrust lawsuits and regulatory scrutiny faced by Google and Facebook are hugely important for restoring a heathy dose of competition, which could alleviate some of the downstream public policy concerns.
The new year brings new cheer to the advanced TV advertising sector, with an exceptional outlook for 2021. Following months of accelerated change in 2020, a remarkable 84% of marketers across five European markets expect to increase their investment in advanced TV during the next 12 months. This positivity signals a recognition of the channel’s potential to reach highly engaged audiences in premium video environments that are on-demand, connected, and addressable.
Media owners – whether programmers or distributors – have a golden opportunity to tap into this wave of optimism for a channel that includes multiple interconnected solutions and platforms. This includes video-on-demand (VOD), connected TV (CTV) and over-the-top (OTT), to audience-based linear, programmatic, and addressable. Here are just a few of the trends media owners should be aware of as they prepare for advanced TV’s take off in 2021.
Unification of linear and digital
Linear TV and digital video have been on a convergent path for some years. However, in 2020 it became perfectly clear that viewers see no difference between the two. People switch effortlessly between channels, platforms, and screens to satisfy their appetite for video content everywhere, any time. Advertisers are adapting to this evolution. They want to deliver seamless experiences across all premium video environments, regardless of whether they are linear or digital.
In 2021, the ability to sell and deliver inventory across all devices and platforms in a unified way will be a top priority for media owners, enabling them to meet advertiser demand. Significant steps are already being taken towards achieving this goal, including the advance of linear schedule optimisation through digital ad decisioning tools. However, more still needs to be done to achieve greater unification over the coming months so media owners can make a greater portion of inventory available for advertisers to buy simply and holistically.
Availability of addressable inventory
Marketers are increasingly keen to target TV advertising at household level through the use of high-quality data insights. Traditional TV advertising is still the most effective option for achieving scale. However, marketers can supplement it with addressable advertising to access niche audiences and achieve incremental reach.
Across Europe, over three-quarters of marketers expect to increase investment in addressable advertising next year, with a 9% growth predicted overall. This does vary however, according to the maturity of individual markets, the technology capabilities and the availability of addressable inventory. Spain has the most optimistic outlook, forecasting a 13% increase in addressable advertising, while France is the most cautious at just 4% growth.
To take advantage of increased investment in addressable advertising, media owners should focus on making more of their inventory addressable. This will mean breaking down silos between TV and digital teams. It also requires exploring how they can effectively use first-party and second-party data – while complying with data privacy regulations – to enable richer targeting.
Preparing for addressable advertising will require a degree of collaboration and European media companies can take inspiration from the U.S. Across the Atlantic, industry initiatives such as On Addressability are driving progress towards simple, scalable addressable capabilities across TV formats. And project OAR (Open Addressable Ready) is establishing a common technology for dynamic, addressable advertising management.
Collaboration with competitors
The trend for cross-industry collaboration doesn’t just apply to addressable advertising, but to advanced TV as a whole. Advertisers demand more streamlined solutions that allow them to buy across channels, platforms, and devices. So, media owners will need to put aside traditional rivalries and take a collaborative approach. In this case, working with competitors well help them gain mutual advantage.
There are already examples of successful collaborations around addressable TV within European markets, including partnerships between FranceTV and both Bouygues Telecom and Orange, as well as the LOVEStv platform in Spain. In the U.K., Sky, Virgin Media and Channel 4 are all partnering on AdSmart. ITV has extended an open invitation to broadcasters to join its Planet V platform. More established cross-market collaborations are also in place, such as the European Broadcaster Exchange, which was established in 2017 between Mediaset, ProSiebensat.1, TF1 and Channel 4 to enable programmatic video advertising across multiple countries.
Over the coming year, more media companies will form partnerships or join existing collaborations. This will allow them strengthen inventory offerings to allow advertisers to access premium, brand-safe advanced TV environments at scale.
After a turbulent year all round, the next 12 months look extremely promising for the TV and video ecosystem. Media executives will be poised to maximize the opportunity by embracing the unification of linear and digital and making more of their inventory addressable. If they also find ways to collaborate with partners and competitors across the industry, media companies can put themselves in the best position to make the most of advanced TV’s 2021 take off.
As we enter a new year, most tech departments look to create a product creation and upgrade schedule for the year, which then gets divided into two or three-week sprints. As publishers undertake that process this year, I have two overarching thoughts:
First, recent events continue to suggest that Google will deprecate the third-party cookie by the end of this year. As a CTO, it seems to me that publishers must deploy minimal but real changes to code-on-page to take advantage of new identity marketing solutions.
Second, most publishers declare a “code freeze” in the fourth quarter due to heavy advertising volume. Indeed, with its lower ad volumes, the first quarter is when publishers typically implement new technical capabilities.
These two facts lead me to recommend that web publishers immediately begin to deploy the code associated with new identity resolution services. This will allow them to capture the highest revenues, avoid hectic scrambling, and minimize technical risk.
Will Google eliminate the third-party cookie on schedule?
Early last year, Google announced it would eliminate third-party cookies “within two years.” Subsequently, Google officials stated that this timetable might be delayed, mainly if the industry’s replacement solution was not in-place.
At BritePool, we believe Google will follow-through with its original timetable. At a recent PRAM (Partnership for Responsible Addressable Media) meeting, Stu Ingis, chairman of the Venable law firm, discussed the urgency of completing PRAM’s work (in conjunction with the IAB Tech Lab) to be prepared for the elimination of third-party cookies.
Similarly, eMarketer recently spoke with industry experts to review the changes confronting advertisers and publishers that will have “significant effects on how they do business.” This list prominently included “Google’s planned deprecation of third-party cookies in Chrome by early 2022.”
But won’t Google provide a lengthy notice period?
Google’s initial announcement included a schedule, with a two-year period, for the adtech ecosystem to prepare for the demise of third-party cookies. There is no reason to believe Google will provide an additional lengthy notice period before acting. It is easy to imagine that at the start of this year’s fourth quarter, Google will simply confirm that by the end of the year, it will eliminate third-party cookies, as planned.
How does this fit into privacy reform?
BritePool’s COO previously wrote that a Democratic election victory would lead to national privacy legislation. Now, Republican concerns associated with social media “censorship” mean a bipartisan consensus for legislative reform is developing.
In this firmament, we believe Google will conclude that it will benefit by following Apple with privacy-centric browser management. Moreover, Google officials who suggested the possibility of delay indicated Google would act when the industry is ready.
Now, multiple industry solutions are available. For example, BritePool and LiveRamp have both demonstrated the viability of their cookieless identity resolution offerings. And PubMatic has launched its Identity Hub.
My advice? Act now
eMarketer concluded its review by stating, “It’s critical for advertisers to start testing approaches to targeting these types of users and measuring results now—while the traditional signals are still available for them to make comparisons.” My advice for web publishers is the same: It is critical to start implementing new cookieless targeting capabilities.
Acting now benefits publishers in multiple ways. It eliminates the high technical risk potentially associated with scrambling to adopt identity resolution services late this year. Publishers gain experience by running pilot campaigns with these new capabilities and can optimize their offerings for 2022. Finally, it increases the CPM’s for programmatic traffic throughout this year, in part by accessing the users of Safari and Firefox browsers, which currently block third-party cookies automatically.
Editor’s note: This article was submitted, and set for publication, before this week’s Wall Street Journal article confirming that Google would eliminate third-party cookies. This Journal reporting reinforces the significance of the related analyses in this article.
“Women’s representation in the news has flatlined (if not reversed) in the 21st century.” That was one of the damning conclusions in the recent report The Missing Perspectives of Women in News by Luba Kassova.
Structural marginalization
The claim is drawn from many factors including analysis of online news publications from six countries – the U.K., U.S., Nigeria, India, South Africa, and Kenya. The report also cited that, in political coverage, men accounted for up to seven times more of the voices heard than women.
It cited from a separate report: “Given the deeply political nature of the Covid-19 crisis, women’s structural marginalization in the political leadership roles established in response to the crisis locks in the suppression of women’s voices in the story.”
Some of the research used was conducted by Media Ecosystems Analysis Group, which wrote, for a study conducted between 1 March and 15 April 2020, that “when looking at non-coronavirus stories, gender equality metrics tend to be better than 2019 levels.”
Taking control
So, what are journalists doing differently for non-Covid stories? It comes down to control. And we’ve made control a core principle of the BBC’s 50:50 Project, which uses data to increase the number of women contributors on content. Control in this context means a journalist or content-maker’s ability to choose the people they include in their article, TV, or radio news piece.
For example, when the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson makes an announcement around the latest coronavirus restrictions, a journalist would be compelled to include a statement from him. He is intrinsic to the storytelling. Therefore, he’s not an element of the news item that can be controlled. However, sourcing the business owner impacted by the new announcement is in the power of the journalist to control.
This is what 50:50 concentrates on. It looks to create change by identifying the voices that are in the power of the journalist and content-maker to influence, and it is working to increase women’s representation at the BBC.
Data effects change
Understanding what content-makers can control has required the BBC to subtly change its thinking. BBC News presenter Ros Atkins, who started 50:50 in 2017, talks of how he wanted to move the BBC from being in a “constant state of trying” to increase women’s representation to actually doing it.
His approach was simple: Use data to effect change.
“We ask content creators to count each of the contributors in their work that they control and try to reach 50% women over a month. Every person who counts, counts as one. That makes the data collection very simple,” explained Atkins.
In the earlier Boris Johnson example, this would mean the British Prime Minister would not count but the business owner would. And counting people once, no matter how many times they appear in a piece, means the monitoring can be done quickly.
Atkins continued: “The approach means you can measure your work as you produce it, when it is still fresh in your mind. That gives the data the best chance to influence your thinking and your actions.”
Find new voices
The golden rule of 50:50 is that the best contributor always takes part. Atkins explains that it is not a quota system. Rather, “It is an opportunity to identify where representation may be lacking and then for content-makers to go out and see if they can find new voices to enrich their content, while improving the output’s gender balance.”
There are more than 650 teams across the BBC taking part in 50:50. That means not just the news, but also sports, factual and entertainment are seeking out new voices themselves. To support their search there is also a central expert database with more than 1,500 women contributors available to the content teams.
Implementing these actions – using data to effect change, measure what you control and widening the pool of voices – has made a tangible impact at the BBC – and the audience has noticed. A survey of 2,000 BBC online users found that 39% had noticed a shift toward more women contributors and 32% of women aged 25 to 34 are now consuming more content as a result.
The impact
Lara Joannides, 50:50 Project Lead
In March 2020, as the world went into lockdown, two-thirds of BBC teams that submitted data reached 50% women representation. This is up from a third when they joined the project.
50:50 Project Lead Lara Joannides, who spearheads the initiative inside the BBC, had feared that the challenges of coronavirus could have a detrimental impact on representation because 50:50 is a voluntary scheme, and the Corporation moved down to critical services. Despite this, the challenge results saw a nine percentage point increase on the previous year.
“The determination of BBC colleagues to make change and the conditions created by the pandemic have resulted in a really positive shift,” said Joannides. “We’re confident that while there is still a way to go, we’ll be able to maintain and improve on these figures going forward.”
The Covid effect
In more recent months, the BBC wanted to better understand the impact Covid-19 may have had on the representation initiative. So, the BBC took more than 2,500 snapshots of the gender balance on its programmes, online content, and events across a six-month period. Between June and November last year, the BBC took 2,563 snapshots, with 1,219 (48%) reaching 50% women contributors. During the same period in 2019, we took 2,528 snapshots and 988 (39%) reached the 50%. As mentioned, that represented a nine percentage point increase on the same period in the previous year.
Fran Unsworth, Director of BBC News
For Director of BBC News Fran Unsworth, a key factor behind increasing women’s representation has been the removal of barriers in the news making process that existed before the pandemic. “We’ve all embraced new ways of working this year. One definite benefit is that we’ve had a wider range of guests on air,” she said.
Such a theory is supported by the content-makers themselves including Rachel Foley, Senior Journalist and 50:50 Lead for the BBC News Channel. “There haven’t been many upsides to Covid-19. But one is that it appears to have made it easier for women to appear on air,” said Foley. “I’ve noticed more female contributors are able to speak to us live on the BBC News Channel since the pandemic began because they can do so from their own homes using apps like Zoom or Skype.”
Dr. Linda Bauld, professor of public health at the University of Edinburgh and a regular contributor on BBC News programmes, is one such example. “Not having to go anywhere has been absolutely brilliant,” she explained.
“It’s just made it much more possible for me to fit it in with my family responsibilities as well as my working life. It’s now not unusual for me to do TV or radio interviews before my youngest goes to school in the morning. I’d not been able to easily do that before.”
Collaboration now
The Kassova Report may see the women’s perspective as missing overall however, it also points to solutions. In fact, the report cited 50:50 as one of them. It points out how BBC News achieved “a wave of change in a short space of time against all odds and despite the numerous societal, cultural and systemic barriers that stand in their way.”
Since launch, more than 75 organizations across 22 countries have begun to do so as well by using 50:50 to monitor their content and communications to reach gender balance. In October, the BBC’s Director-General Tim Davie invited more organizations to join the 50:50 partners network saying that it is “only together we can deliver positive change.”
50:50 is simple solution to increasing women’s voices on content but it is an effective one. It cannot fix a company’s workforce inequalities but it can act as a tool in a its diversity and inclusion armory.
I truly believe that the more of us embracing the 50:50 way the more likely we will be that, one day, we will read a report on gender representation that is not about the absence of women’s voices but the inclusion of them – loud and clear.
About the author
Nina Goswami is the BBC’s Creative Diversity Lead and is spearheading initiatives to support the Corporation’s aspiration that its on-air representation reflects society. Nina is also a journalist and, before her current post, was a BBC News senior producer. She has worked in media her whole professional career including The Sunday Times and The Sunday Telegraph.
With restaurants, bars and clubs closed, you might assume that Covid has created a surge in live TV viewing, but it has not. If you compared U.S. TV audiences in September 2020 with the previous year, all television watching was actually down 10% during prime time. This may seem counter intuitive considering that the average time spent interacting with media has shot up 17% to a whopping 12 hours, 21 minutes a day according to Nielsen’s Total Audience Report for August. However, digging into the reasons why reveals important opportunities to re-engage audiences.
There has long been a simplistic narrative that live sports viewership is declining. Yet the reality is that huge amounts of sports content is still being consumed. And that number is growing, especially in international markets. The change is predominantly around two axes. The first is that sport is no longer “the only game in town.” It must co-exist within a much wider array of activities. The second shift is that fans are redefining what “sport” content means to them – along with how they want to consume it.
Feeding frenzy
This diversity of content is highlighted by 2020 offering up another landmark. As the year when time spent using an app and/or web via a smartphone or tablet finally overtook live and time-shifted TV. This cross-over has undoubtedly accelerated due to Covid, given increased home working, less travel, and more screen time. However, the data has been moving that way for a few years. Nielsen also points out that 25% of total TV consumption is via streaming. This includes the rise of highlights and “instant” sports news services that are the equivalent of fast food compared to the three-hour banquet of a typical NFL game.
Highlights packages are not new but what has changed is the way in which they are delivered. The big networks have jumped onboard. Fox, ESPN, and others have now added more content available via the web. Yet the mindset for many is still around the “big game” and reporting that fits into a traditional schedule.
In a generation, Netflix transitioned from renting a million DVDs through the mail to touching 200 million monthly global subscribers. However, sports media still trails behind the curve when it comes to the model of instant access.
Bleacher gets it right
However, sports publications like Bleacher Report highlight one possible direction. The Turner owned brand has always delivered exquisite reportage but its rapid diversification into video and social has been striking.
Its “House of Highlights,” an Instagram feed offering highlight clips across several sports, now reaches over 20 million subscribers. Their viewership that has grown 150% in just two years. Highlights describes itself as “Everything you need to see in sports and youth culture.” It offers huge amounts of user generated content. And, while this content is still sports themed, it has much broader in its appeal – especially to younger audiences.
Bleacher is joined by a growing cohort of app and clip-based ways to consume sports content including CBS Sports and Fotmob – with the latter particularly good at notifications. If done well, personalized mobile app notifications, can drive customers into full game viewing as well as scores and highlights.
These brands and others recognize that it’s not all about the game. They help people get their highlights and sports fix from following athletes, teams, leagues, and media companies via social on the go. They also feed the growing sports engagement around fantasy and sports betting. However, these data points do not necessarily translate into full game viewing.
Breaking bread
The fear of cannibalizing traditional TV audiences through online offerings is still deeply ingrained in the psyche of TV executives. But instant gratification culture means that failure to offer a wider buffet of visual sport experiences will make decline inevitable.
And it’s not just creating a like-for-like facsimile. The audience expectation of TV watching versus engaging with on-demand via smartphone, embedded highlights on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, or the cacophony of social-led platforms requires producers to rethink program formats.
This raises several challenges. It starts with nurturing a new generation of creatives that are digital natives, with the ability to engage with fans of today. There’s also a need for technical retooling to simplify the production and distribution process. This enables content to be disseminated easily across multiple platforms. It needs to be done efficiently and with the controls in place to ensure that rights obligations are enforced as demanded by contract terms. Last, but no means least, is the ability to monetize multiple platforms by spreading CPM across a wider reach and unlocking far more targeted advertising models.
Innovation zone
A great example of innovation in action is NFL RedZone, an all-in-one channel that when a team reaches the 20-yard line, (i.e. the “red zone”) cuts to the local broadcast of that game. The channel also offers the option to watch any turnovers, game-changing plays and scoring plays outside of the designated area. RedZone also has an “octabox” mode with simultaneous 8 game highlights designed for fantasy football fans.
This ability to deliver “highlight packages on the fly” uses dynamic playlists. It is is part of a surge in Cloud based technologies that are leading the charge to build streaming platforms that can pivot output to match the increasingly diverse audience profile.
The long-term issue is more cultural than technical. Live sport is still a huge deal in terms of direct and ad-related revenue. Messing with a successful formula is certainly a hard call to make. However, the Bleacher report and its siblings illustrate ways to respond to a shift in audience demand. Ignoring the opportunity makes the prospect of an empty dinner table much more likely.
/ An inside look at the business of digital content
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