Brand safety remains a huge issue for newsbrands in the US despite research released by Stagwell last year showing that the practice is largely based on a lie.
This was one of the key take-homes from Press Gazette’s third Media Strategy Network USA event in New York last week.
Held at Stagwell’s offices at One World Trade Center, the event gathered more than 100 leaders from US news media to discuss new ways to make quality journalism pay in the digital age.
The conference included two keynote speakers (Dotdash Meredith chief executive Neil Vogel and The Independent’s global chief operating officer and president, North America Zach Leonard), two panels and six roundtable discussions where the delegates themselves were invited to solve a news industry challenge.
The panel speakers were: Wall Street Journal chief revenue officer Josh Stinchcomb, Stagwell chief corporate affairs officer Alexis Williams, Bloomberg Media chief operating officer Julia Beizer, Economist president Luke Bradley-Jones, Guardian US chief advertising officer Sara Badler, Associated Press chief revenue officer Kristin Heitmann, BBC Studios president of global news and streaming Tara Maitra and Arc XP chief customer officer Jennifer Leire.
The event was held mainly on a Chatham House basis, meaning it was mostly off the record, but insights from the meeting can be shared. On that basis here are my key learnings from a day that provided a masterclass for anyone who cares deeply about the future of quality journalism in the digital age.
1) Legacy media, done right, has a great future
Dotdash Meredith stakes claim to the title of largest consumer print/online media publisher in the US. Despite having huge legacy print brands in its portfolio (such as Homes and Gardens and Us Weekly) it is achieving double-digit profit and revenue growth. It now has some $1.8bn in annual revenue and around $300m EBITDA.
Chief executive Neil Vogel comes from a finance background and was CEO of online publisher Dotdash when it paid $2.7bn to merge with much larger print magazines giant Meredith.
Vogel’s philosophy appears to be: love the brands but let maths, rather than sentimentality, guide your business decisions. And be good at tech without becoming a tech company.
The company has gone from publishing 13 print magazines to six and from printing 600 million copies per year to 200 million, but it now makes more money now than it did then.
It has succeeded through a focus on intent-based content, meaning it largely publishes journalism that suggests people are going to do something that could involve a purchase, such as recipes and health advice – so it is easier to make money as a result.
When Dotdash bought Meredith it had an ace up its sleeve in the form of technology which would serve advertising based on the content which people were reading. It is less intrusive and, DDM contends, far more effective than cookie-based tracking.
DDM is now offering a service whereby it uses its D/Cipher’s targeting technology to buy advertising on behalf of brands against the rest of the premium internet.
The only bad news about the DDM story appears to be that what it is doing works in the key advertising and content categories of home, food, tech, travel, health, finance and entertainment – but not general news (which is something they intentionally do not cover).
2) A legal shitstorm is going to hit the generative AI industry
Whilst major publishers like Dotdash Meredith have done licensing deals with the more responsible generative AI players (in their case OpenAI), publishers like them remain furious about the wholesale theft which has taken place of their content by other AI companies.
We are currently at something of an impasse between publishers and generative AI companies (as we find out whether commercial deals or massive litigation will provide a way forward) but I have a hunch the likes of DDM and others are going to be extremely forthright when it comes to defending ownership of the work they have produced.
If Google and others are to be allowed to hoover up all known content, and then compete against publishers with their own work without paying them, capitalism and concepts of ownership are over. This cannot be allowed to happen (and I don’t think it will).
3) But there are opportunities to work together
The Independent’s US president Zach Leonard used the analogy of judo to describe their dealings with tech giants. You can’t use brute force to win against a stronger opponent but you can channel some of their strength in a way that benefits you. Shortly after the conference The Independent announced it was working with Google on the launch of an AI-powered news website.
Similarly Vogel at Dotdash Meredith said OpenAI had become a good partner helping them develop their D/Cipher product.
After eight years of profitable growth, The Independent relies on revenue from numerous sources including programmatic, direct-sold advertising, sponsorship and e-commerce.
Leonard revealed that syndication of content to news aggregators like MSN, Yahoo, News Break and Smart News are “an incredibly great business for us” and source of direct revenue.
For The Independent in the US, 80% of articles are now video-led with revenue coming via on-site advertising, revenue share from platforms like Youtube and sponsored content produced in association with brands.
4) Brand safety remains a major concern for publishers
One of the reasons the likes of Associated Press (with its consumer site) and The Guardian are looking increasingly towards reader revenue is because advertisers still hate news.
This is despite ample evidence suggesting that people who read news are more affluent and engaged than your average online reader.
It’s a sad fact that some of the most important work journalists do, such as holding politicians to account or covering conflict abroad, is the least valued by brands. Hard news is going to be a loss leader for ad-funded publishers until ad agencies and brands start to grow up and grow out of the current brand safety madness.
[Read more from the event: AP revenue boss notes ‘concerning trends’ from advertisers in current political cycle]
One particularly egregious example I learned about at our latest New York conference was the fact Cosmopolitan was considered a non-brand-safe website by adtech companies because it contains articles talking about sex.
One useful tip shared by Assertive Yield founder CEO Nils Lind was to simply remove potential advertising block words from article URLs and metadata, which he said could make a substantial difference in terms of bypassing the ad-blockers.
5) Improve your data (but don’t become a slave to it)
The ad revenue growth strategies roundtable heard about the need for a “bridge” between advertising and editorial whilst retaining necessary “church and state” boundaries. Several publishers described their current readership data dashboards as “antiquated”.
Table sponsor Assertive Yield said dashboards could be created which provide a daily view of the advertising value driven by particular articles (no mean feat given the widely varying rates paid at different times by different ad networks). The view was that if you can double down on content which drives ad revenue, whilst staying authentic to the brand, this was worth investigating.
But being too driven by metrics could be ultimately self-defeating by leading you into creating content that is far away from your core mission and so becomes a turn-off for readers.
6) Community is more important than empire-building
The roundtable on user experience, sponsored by Arc XP, concluded that building a loyal community of returning visitors (rather than targeting vast reach) was key to the ability of publishers to plot their own success independently of tech platforms.
Accessing the right data to ensure your website is continually optimised for that core audience community is key.
7) AI = advertising opportunity
The boom in AI investment from tech companies is leading to an advertising windfall for business publishers in particular, Wall Street Journal chief revenue officer Josh Stinchcomb told the conference.
Meanwhile, the roundtable on direct-sold advertising, sponsored by Burt Intelligence, concluded that AI and automation had huge capacity to create operational efficiencies and remove grunt work from the world of in-house ad sales.
AI can also improve the sales story, and experience for advertisers, by improved reporting, alerts and by driving slick client data portals.
8) All media tech is legacy tech
The roundtable on website technology, sponsored by WordPress VIP, concluded that all technology becomes legacy technology pretty quickly in the modern media era.
If you build a website and a tech stack that is perfect for today, be prepared for the fact you’re going to need a new business model and revenue stream next week.
9) Self-discipline is required to stop your website from filling with junk
The roundtable discussing ad density versus user experience on websites, sponsored by Clipcentric, concluded that it is incredibly hard for publishers to take the short-term pain of removing intrusive advertising even though this would likely lead to longer-term profitability.
One solution is to serve different advertising and editorial experiences depending on the user (desktop versus mobile, flyby traffic versus paid subscribers and so on).
Ultimately publishers should consider what features they are going to take away from a website if they are going to add anything new.
10) Don’t forget to film your podcasts
The session on video, sponsored by Video Elephant, heard how publishers like Youtube but also want to return to having a direct relationship with their audience.
If you are recording podcasts the advice was to publish them as videos as well, it costs more but is worth it from an audience growth standpoint.
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