Brand safety remains a major issue for US news brands, despite the research published last year by Stagwell, which shows that it is primarily based on lies.
This was one of the key take homes for the Press Gazette’s third Media Strategy Network USA event held in New York last week.
The event, held at Stagwell’s One World Trade Center’s office, brought together over 100 leaders from US news media to discuss new ways to pay for quality journalism in the digital age.
The meeting will include two keynote speakers: Neil Vogel, CEO of Dotdash Meredith and Zach Leonard, Global Chief Operating Officer of Independent and North America, two panels and six roundtable discussions.
The panel speakers were: Wall Street Journal’s Chief Revenue Director Josh Stinchcomb, Stagwell Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, Bloomberg Media’s Chief Operating Officer, Julia Baser, Economist Stroke Bradley-Jones, Guardian US Chief Advertising Officer, Sara Badler, Associated Press Chief Flexan High, Christine Heidman, BBC Studios’ Main Mining Mining Mining Mining Mining Mining Mining Mining Mining Mining Mining Mining Mining Mining Mining Mining Mining Mining Mining Mining Mining Mining Mining Mining Mining Mining
The event was primarily held at Chatham House Base. This means that most of them were off-recorded, but they can share meeting insights. Based on that, there is my important learning from the day I offered a masterclass to those who deeply care about the future of quality journalism in the digital age.
Dotdash Meredith Stakes claims the title of the largest consumer printing/online media publisher in the United States. Despite having huge legacy print brands in their portfolio (homes, gardens, weekly US, etc.), they have achieved double-digit profit and revenue growth. Currently, annual revenues are around $1.8 billion and EBITDA is around $300 million.
Neil Vogel’s CEO comes from a financial background, is the CEO of online publisher Dotdash, and has paid $2.7 billion to merge with much larger printing magazine giant Meredith.
Vogel’s philosophy looks like this: You love your brand, but guide your business decisions by guiding mathematics rather than sentimentality. And we are good at high-tech without becoming a high-tech company.
The company has now printed 13 print magazines from six publications to 600 million copies, from 200 million copies to 200 million copies, but now it’s making more money than it is now.
It was a success focused on intention-based content. This means publishing most of the journalism suggests doing something with a purchase, such as recipes or health advice. So it’s easier to make money as a result.
When Dotdash bought Meredith, it had an ace on its sleeve in the form of technology that would help advertise based on the content people were reading. DDM claims it’s not too intrusive and is much more effective than cookie-based tracking.
DDM currently uses D/Cipher’s targeting technology to provide a service that buys advertisements on behalf of the brand for the rest of the premium internet.
The only bad news about DDM’s stories is that what it is doing works in key advertising and content categories for home, food, technology, travel, health, finance and entertainment, but it’s not general news (this is something we don’t intentionally cover).
2) Legal shit will hit the generative AI industry
Major publishers like Dotdash Meredith have been in licensing transactions with more responsible generative AI players (in that case Openai), but other AI companies are furious about wholesale theft that has been carried out on content.
We are currently at a dead end between publishers and generation AI companies (we know if commercial transactions and large litigation offer a path forward), but things like DDM will be very open about defending ownership of the work they have created.
If Google and others were allowed to hoover all known content and then compete with publishers in their own work without paying, the concept of capitalism and ownership is over. I can’t allow this (and I don’t think it will).
3) But there is an opportunity to cooperate
Independent US President Zach Leonard used judo analogy to explain his deal with the tech giant. You cannot use brute force to win against stronger opponents, but you can guide some of their strength in ways that benefit you. Shortly after the meeting, the Independent announced that it was working with Google to launch a news website powered by AI.
Similarly, Dotdash Meredith’s Vogel said Openai has become a good partner in helping develop D/Cipher products.
After eight years of profitable growth, independents rely on revenue from many sources, including programmatic direct sales ads, sponsorships, and e-commerce.
Leonard has revealed that syndication of content to news aggregators such as MSN, Yahoo, News Break and Smart News is “an incredible business for us” and a direct revenue stream.
For US independents, 80% of articles are currently video-driven, generating revenue through on-site ads, revenue share from platforms such as YouTube, and sponsored content produced in relation to the brand.
4) Brand safety is a major concern for publishers
One reason why things like Associated Press (consumer sites) and Guardians are increasingly looking towards reader revenue is because advertisers still hate the news.
This is despite ample evidence to suggest that news readers are wealthier and more engaged than your average online reader.
It is a sad fact that some of the most important work journalists, such as explaining foreign conflicts to politicians and covering conflicts, are the least valuable from the brand. Until advertising agencies and brands begin to grow from the current brand safety madness, they will become the loss leaders of advertising funded publishers.
(Event details: AP Revenue Boss notes “trends on trends” notes from advertisers in the current political cycle)
One particularly awful example I learned at our latest New York Conference was the fact that Cosmopolitan was considered a non-brand safe website by AdTech Companies, as it contained an article about sex.
One useful tip shared by Nils Lind, founder CEO of Assertive Return, was to simply remove potential ad blocking words from the article’s URL and metadata.
5) Improve your data (but don’t become a slave)
Advertising revenue growth strategy Roundtable has heard about the need for a “bridge” between advertising and editing, while preserving the necessary “church-nation” boundaries. Several publishers have described current reader data dashboards as “outdated.”
The assertive yields of table sponsors said they could create dashboards that provide daily views of advertising value driven by specific articles (there are no average feats given the vastly different rates paid at different times by different ad networks). The view was that if you could double the content that drives advertising revenue while still remaining authentic to the brand, this would be worth researching.
But being driven too by metrics can ultimately self-destruct, leading you to create content that is far from your core mission.
The User Experience Roundtable, hosted by ARC XP, concluded that building a loyal community of visitors rather than targeting visitors is key to our ability to plot one’s success independently of the technology platform.
It is important to access the right data and ensure that your website is continuously optimized for its core audience community.
7) AI = Advertising opportunities
The boom in AI investment from high-tech companies has led to a fall in advertising for business publishers, Wall Street Journal’s Chief Revenue Officer Josh Stincom told the meeting.
Meanwhile, the direct sales advertising roundtable sponsored by Burt Intelligence concluded that AI and automation have the ability to generate operational efficiency and remove groans from the world of in-house advertising sales.
AI can also improve advertisers’ sales stories and experiences by driving reporting, alerting improvements, and driving sophisticated client data portals.
The WordPress VIP-sponsored Roundtable of Website Technology concluded that all technology becomes legacy technology fairly quickly in the modern era of media.
If you want to build the best website and technology stack for today, be prepared for the fact that you will need a new business model and revenue stream next week.
9) You need to be self-disciplined so that your website doesn’t get full of junk
A roundtable discussing ad density and user experience on websites hosted by Clipcentric concluded that, despite this likely to lead to long-term profitability, it is extremely difficult to suffer the short-term pain of removing intrusive ads.
One solution is to provide different ads and editing experiences depending on the user (desktop versus mobile, flybyte racing and paid subscribers, etc.).
Ultimately, publishers should consider which features they will take away from their website when adding new ones.
10) Don’t forget to film your podcast
The video session hosted by Video Elephant asked how publishers prefer YouTube but would like to return to having a direct relationship with their audience.
If you’re recording a podcast, you’d also have to publish your advice as a video, which costs more, but is valuable from a viewer’s growth perspective.
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