Data-Labor-Technology

The spot, created by Grey Group, kicks off a Pringles campaign that will run throughout 2018. The integrated marketing campaign includes PR, digital and social media.

If there was any doubt that 2018 would be another year that marketers continue to turn a blind eye to the problems of digital marketing, it’s gone now. The revelations of the last 12 months have forced chief marketing officers to care about media.

For years, concerns over ineffective ad placements had lingered in the back of marketers’ minds, mere footnotes against the unfettered growth of online media. In 2017, those concerns spilled onto the front pages of national newspapers worldwide after ads for brands such as Jaguar Land Rover and Tesco were spotted against inappropriate videos on YouTube.

At the end of a year marked by countless pivots to video with mixed results, Bustle Digital Group has no intention of becoming a “video-first” company.

Bustle Digital Group, which includes women-focused lifestyle site Bustle, mom site Romper and millennial site Elite Daily, has been building its video operation, growing its video team from eight to 24 people in 2017. It’s produced 17 video series for its own sites, social channels and digital distribution partners such as Viacom, CNBC and Facebook Watch. BDG had more than 500 million video views across platforms in 2017, up 200 percent from the previous year, the company said.

But Bustle doesn’t call itself a “video-first” company, said Kate Robinson, svp of business development for Bustle Digital Group.

“We are a digital publisher, however you want to define that,” she said. “Our editorial is our strength, and we live by that. Video is really important and absolutely complementary to all of that, but our editorial is not going to be reduced or going away to only focus on video.”

Robinson’s comments echo Bustle founder and CEO Bryan Goldberg’s comments on a recent Digiday Podcast, on which he said video staffers account for roughly 10 percent of the company.

Bustle executives see video as an enhancement to the text-based editorial content, which also means the video team does not sit in a silo by itself, but works with editors and writers, whether to create social videos for platforms such as Facebook and Instagram or to develop shows for distribution on Bustle and external platforms, said Erica Tremblay, director of video for Bustle Digital Group.

“I don’t need a team that’s alone and works in a vacuum,” said Tremblay.

Versatility is another goal of the team.

“We’re constantly working with our video team to cycle them on and off projects that are at various levels of work,” said Tremblay. “And as we’ve built the team, we’ve been looking at folks that have a blended background.”

In terms of programming, Bustle focuses on serialized fare, including shows such as “Race 2 Face” and “Romper’s Doula Diaries” for Facebook Watch, “Young Money” for CNBC’s Make It vertical and “Save the Date” for Viacom. Facebook pays Bustle to make the Watch shows, while the CNBC and Viacom partnerships are co-production deals.

“There are financial terms [to the Viacom and CNBC deals], obviously, that make them valuable,” Robinson said. “But there is also marketing upside and the brand awareness of being associated with someone like Viacom and CNBC.”

Bustle is also careful about maintaining some level of ownership of the content it makes with external partners, Robinson said. “We’re not going to be a production house where someone is going to hire me and I’m going to produce a video without my brand on it,” she said. “We want that association and to own that IP. It might be exclusive to a particular platform for a small amount of time, but the idea is we can build up a catalog that we can use later for syndication or distribution on other channels.”

While the focus is on quality programming over quantity, Bustle also produces roughly 30 to 40 social videos per month. This is necessary for daily engagement with the audience on social platforms as well as to help Bustle’s ad sales, which can go to market selling sponsorships and other packages to advertisers, according to Robinson.

Bustle’s video efforts kicked into gear in the spring when it acquired Elite Daily from the Daily Mail and hired Tremblay to head up the video department. When asked if Bustle’s video business was profitable, a spokesperson said the operation hasn’t been running long enough to fully assess how much it’s contributed to ad sales, marketing and other partnerships but that making sure it’s profitable is an important goal.

Tremblay described the approach this way: “One of the first things we jumped at doing was having a strategic distribution calendar. We know that we didn’t want to build out a team so large that it was kind of sitting too heavy at the company, but we also wanted to ensure that we are having a constant video conversation with our audience.”

Commerce has gone from a curiosity to a meaningful source of revenue for Dotdash. The service-focused publisher grew its commerce revenues from $1 million to $7 million this year, about 10 percent of its revenue. It now has three full-time editors managing 20 contributors cranking out content across a number of different verticals.

Dotdash’s interest in commerce makes sense. More than two-thirds — 71 percent — of traffic to commerce content comes from search, according to research by Narrativ, a vendor that helps publishers price products featured in their e-commerce content. And Dotdash’s years of experience in Google search — more than two-thirds of its traffic comes from search — helped the publisher get its e-commerce operations off to a fast start, leaping out to a seven-figure run rate within months of its launch.

Dotdash CEO Neil Vogel said commerce will account for about 10 percent of Dotdash’s revenue this year. He predicted that next year, its growth will outpace the growth of its advertising revenue, which is up 40 percent year over year in the fourth quarter so far, to $20 million. At the start of this year, most of the commerce revenue came from Lifewire, Dotdash’s tech site, which has accounted for as much as 70 percent of Dotdash’s commerce revenue.

But the affiliate commissions on consumer electronics are often just 2 or 3 percent, so Dotdash has focused on publishing more posts about items that command higher commissions. Dwyer Frame, a veteran from Time Inc., came aboard in September to oversee lifestyle-focused commerce content that can live on The Spruce, Dotdash’s home-focused title, or ThoughtCo, its site for education and learning. Dotdash also earns commerce revenue from lead generation campaigns it runs for travel companies through TripSavvy, its travel-focused site, and for financial services companies on The Balance, Dotdash’s personal finance site.

Today, Vogel said, Lifewire accounts for 40 percent of its commerce revenue. The Spruce now accounts for another 40 percent, with Dotdash’s other verticals accounting for the rest.

Some commissions, particularly for credit cards, can be substantial. But Vogel stressed that the commerce strategy for Dotdash’s sites is driven more by what its audience is searching for, rather than items that offer the biggest payouts. “We get cues from our audience on what commerce things to write about,” he said.

Like other commerce publishers, a lot of Dotdash’s commerce revenues come from Amazon, but it’s made deals with some other retailers, including Google, on things like sponsored gift guides. It has focused on working with retailers that deliver a good experience and convert a healthy amount of visitors to purchase. “We’re trying to focus on lifetime value, not the value of that transaction,” said Tory Brangham, Dotdash’s vp of e-commerce.

People aren’t just subscribing to The New York Times in greater numbers; they’re also spending more time on its site.

In 2017, people spent about five minutes per visit on the Times’ site, which is up 35 percent from 2016, according to comScore reports pulled by an ad buyer. For the Times, getting users to spend more time on the site is part of a broader effort to drive subscriptions, which have become central to its business model.

“If we get people spending more time with us and reading more stories across our properties, it is good for our subscription business,” said Cynthia Collins, the Times’ social media editor.

Traffic for the Times was slightly up in 2017, averaging about 89 million unique visitors per month across mobile and desktop combined, which is up 9 percent from 2016, according to comScore. But unlike most digital publishers, the Times is not wholly dependent on ads for its revenue. What’s more pertinent is that the Times’ digital subscription revenue rose 46 percent year over year to $86 million in the third quarter.

To get people hooked on its content so they eventually subscribe, the Times loads articles with multimedia components. In Chartbeat’s list of articles from its digital publishing clients that users spent the most time on in 2017, the Times had 10 of the top 25 entries, many of which included embedded documentaries, podcasts, maps and interactive charts.

For example, in a report on the shooting in Las Vegas in October that left at least 59 dead, the Times complemented its reporting with maps and graphics that depicted the area where the shooting took place. With its coverage of the Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment scandal, the Times embedded Weinstein’s full statement and a supplemental podcast into the article.

Citing timing constraints, a Times spokesperson declined to share what percentage of its articles contain multimedia elements but confirmed that the figure is in the double digits and growing. One factor driving multimedia usage at the Times is that it introduced a new content-management system this year, called Oak, which made it easier for editors to sequence and shape images, text and other media, she said. The Times also added about 25 people to its newsroom who focus on visual journalism, said a company spokesperson.

The amount of time that Times readers spent on its site is similar to The Washington Post, whose readers spent about 4.5 minutes per visit on the site throughout 2017, according to comScore reports pulled by an ad buyer. The Times’ increase in time spent comes as session length is becoming important for publishers as a selling point with advertisers. To keep users glued to their properties, publishers are experimenting with various tactics.

Bleacher Report got people to spend more than five minutes per day in its app by introducing a tab for Vine-like video loops. The USA Today Network reformatted its digital properties to give users more personalized Facebook-like webpages, which increased time spent per article by 75 percent. The Outline increased time spent per session by 30 percent by embedding 3-D objects into articles. Forbes increased its average session length nearly by 40 percent by redesigning its mobile site to include Snapchat-like cards.

Erin Yasgar, buyer strategy lead at Prohaska Consulting, said that when buyers are setting up large deals with publishers or buying custom units, high time spent on-site lets buyers “know that they are purchasing a more lasting impression.”

Photo courtesy of The New York Times

In Digiday’s Confessions series, we trade anonymity for honesty from individuals in media and marketing. Our best Confessions from 2017 touched on topics spanning from The New York Times’ editorial layoffs to influencer fraud and agency culture.

Confessions of a New York Times copy editor
Less than a month after Times staffers’ walkout in June to protest layoffs expected to affect copy editors, a copy editor from the Times shares how the job has changed since the paper restructured the copy desk system about a year ago: “I had eight stories on a recent night, and I was just buried. I could hardly get up to go to the bathroom. The shift has been to get it up as quickly as possible and catch things on the fly. That isn’t the way The New York Times used to do it. Now, we’ll just give it a read, and off it goes. Then, you find out a name is misspelled. Or there isn’t a first reference to a name. Or a fact is wrong. When we shifted to this new system, people started spotting little things that were getting in the paper.”

Confessions of an ex-brand global media chief
A former global media head of a multinational brand argues that media owners are disconnected from clients and don’t understand how client-agency contracts work: “I call agency pitches the dance of prostitutes. The pimps at the back dictating the pitch are the agency-buying houses, and their individual agencies are the girls in the shop window. Because clients are driving the pricing process, the agency guarantees the client a fixed price based on using certain media partners. They’ll win the pitch, so that’s then locked in. So if a major broadcaster starts running a new show and a client wants to be involved in it, the agency won’t necessarily go for it because of how their bonus is set up.”

Confessions of a new mother at an ad agency
A new mother at an agency shares what it’s like to return to work after having a baby: “Working at an agency, it’s meeting apocalypse all day. There are legit meetings on a normal day that are scheduled for 5.30 p.m. or 6 p.m. at night. That’s fine if you don’t have a need to be home. That doesn’t work for everyone — especially parents who can’t afford to have a nanny at home all day and into the night.”

Confessions of an Instagram influencer
An Instagram fashion influencer reveals how brands pressure influencers to use bots to artificially inflate their engagement: “As the brands are being more pushy about influencers and agencies want them to grow their followers, they push them to use a bot that likes photos for you. A few years ago, everyone was growing organically. After brands started paying for things, these people realized they can sell followers to people. The brands use these fucking bots, too.”

Confessions of an agency millennial
A young employee at a digital and media agency delves into the culture at agencies: “Nobody wants to help each other. As an industry, we’re always at each other’s throats, or at least at each other’s collarbones. There is a culture of gossip that’s hurtful. Agency people are incestuous. The gossip follows people around. There are people who go to eight agencies in five years and come out with negative stories. People are real assholes.”

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