Month: September 2018

There’s a point at which selling on Amazon and big-box stores only goes so far.

GoPro, whose products are sold in stores, is now making direct-to-consumer a core part of its strategy. To do that, it’s revamping its e-commerce site and investing in technology to help it obtain a detailed view of how customers interact with it, including where they are clicking and how much time they spend browsing different parts of the site. And while the brand continues to sell on Amazon and eBay, selling through its owned and operated channels is a major priority. Knowing the customer will unlock detailed insights to help grow the brand.

“A sale on Amazon is just a sale for us, but a sale through gopro.com is a relationship,” said Kathy Ando, head of e-commerce at GoPro. “Across all levels of the company, all the way down to the analyst level, data is informing all decisions we make.”

GoPro, which reported nearly $1.2 billion in revenue last year, generates most of its sales through stores like Walmart. For its e-commerce arm, Amazon is a major part of that, although the company wouldn’t comment on sales figures from GoPro’s Amazon store relative to those generated through its own site.

Margins are better from sales on gopro.com and over the past year, the company has focused on the customer data it owns to help it improve the e-commerce experience and personalize it based on customer attributes.

The company has been building out its data-gathering capabilities using tech platform ContentSquare, which provides a view of customers’ browsing activity, including how they navigate, how much time they spend on a page, and exactly at what point abandoned transactions occur.  The company also plans to use a feature of the platform that will give GoPro staff the ability to add a plug-in to their browser to get instant real-time data on how customers are interacting with the site. Empowering all employees of the company with easy access to this information helps it keep a close grip on customer sentiment at all times, Ando said.

“If you think about an e-commerce site, most people think it’s linear and flat, but it’s actually a bird’s nest where people pogo stick into different areas,” she added.

A high cart abandonment rate was a core problem Ando’s team was looking to solve when they began planning to update the e-commerce site early this year. The company had access to higher-level sales traffic data through Google Analytics; it could pinpoint where transactions were abandoned, but couldn’t figure out the precise triggers for abandonment.

It discovered, for example, that something as simple as a entering an email address more than one time during the checkout process could trigger customers to discontinue the transaction.

GoPro has been rolling out out e-commerce site updates in phases; it recently revamped its site in September, and it plans to roll out a new checkout page in the coming weeks. Since it began using the customer behavior data platform early this year, Ando said conversion rates jumped 40 percent. The company plans to add capabilities to further personalize website viewing based on customer behavior.

GoPro is employing a multi-channel approach to e-commerce, and Ando said that each marketplace has a strategic purpose. Amazon’s scale can’t be ignored, she said: GoPro lists all its inventory on Amazon. It also uses an eBay storefront to list products from previous generations — an outreach to price-conscious customers. But GoPro is at the point where an investment in its own brand’s DTC identity is what it feels will take it to the next level.

“We can’t shut down and go through Amazon,” Ando said. “We need to know who our customers are.”

GoPro, like other DTC brands, faces a careful balancing act of the necessity to partner with big-box retailers and large online marketplaces to reach customers, while growing their own direct relationships with customers. But battling low conversion rates can be a tough challenge for an upstart brand.

“Five years ago, the challenge was to have data, but today it’s to measure whether it’s good and create a dynamic of optimization for conversion,” said ContentSquare CEO Jonathan Cherki.

The timing for GoPro’s decision to invest in building a dedicated relationship with customers through its e-commerce site is a sign GoPro is a well-known enough entity to stand on its own.

“Now they’re saying, ‘How can we get a greater piece of the pie?’ — they’ve built up enough brand equity at this point,” said David Bray, CEO of ad agency Briz Media Group, which works tech companies that serve retailers. “People know about the GoPro brand, and they can go out on their own now, but to keep that momentum, they need to spend a significant amount of brand dollars to not be as reliant on big-box retailers.”

The post ‘We can’t shut down and go through Amazon’: How GoPro is making DTC part of its growth strategy appeared first on Digiday.

The past several days brought reports that two once high-flying digital upstarts Mic and Vox Media were facing financial pressures. They were just the latest examples of digital media adjusting to the difficult reality of building a sustainable media business online. Last year, BuzzFeed and Vice Media missed their goals.

A big part of the problem for pure-play digital publishers is that the sponsored content that these companies relied on to fuel their business is under pressure. At our Digiday Publishing Summit this week, attendees talked about profit margins getting squeezed, forcing publishers to lower their expectations. Publishers come up with original ideas for agencies, only to be rejected, then see their idea appear on another venue. (Many freelance journalists can relate.) “Agencies are using the publishers to do their work,” one attendee lamented.

The post The Rundown: Digital media’s branded content growing pains appeared first on Digiday.

Twisted started as a Facebook food channel, but now it’s delving further into offline experiences with the launch of a pop-up bar in October that will feature around 14 cocktails based on top-performing Facebook recipe videos.

This comes after the company launched a food-delivery service last year, Twisted London. A second site is set to launch in London’s Kings Cross early next year, and the second edition of a Twisted cookbook is due in spring 2019.

The Twisted Facebook channel had some 137 million Facebook views in August and 8.6 million views for its cocktail channel, Twisted Bar, per Tubular Labs. But wringing money out of Facebook video views is still a work in progress.

The offline business is small for now, but Twisted parent company Jungle Creations has ambitions to grow it, with plans to add eight more delivery service sites in London by the end of 2019. Jungle Creations is forecast to make £18 million ($23.7 million) this year through a combination of branded content, transactions and platform revenue. Twisted London and the bar will contribute under £2 million ($2.6 million), said Jamie Bolding, CEO of Jungle Creations.

“The primary focus is interacting with our audience away from the online experience,” said Bolding. “These chains aren’t going to make us billions, but it brings legitimacy to our brand and builds community. Margins are secondary as long as we’re making some money.”

Bolding said Twisted London has been constrained by its two-mile radius delivery limit, and having a bar where people can visit extends the ways people can interact with the publisher. The Twisted Bar Pop-Up menu will feature items like Cookies & Cream White Russian, Lemon Drizzle G&T and Black Forest Negroni.

“We’re focused on scale,” said Bolding. “For Twisted to succeed around the world, we need people eating our food.”

Growing revenue beyond advertising has been a goal for many social publishers like BuzzFeed, Tastemade and Kyra TV. With Twisted London and Twisted Bar, Jungle Creations can grow the branded content services it offers by featuring products on its menus. The publisher is talking with four brands about running branded content campaigns in media and real-life, two of which are new to the company.

Companies like Time Out and restaurant guide Square Meal have been working with advertisers in media and offline activations for years, but demand from brands is growing, said John Thomson, head of media at 360i Europe.

“We know sampling works, but in debriefs we see stats like 90 percent of people who attended will buy again, only to be disappointed when we find out 100 people attended,” said Thomson. “What matters is that big online brands like Twisted can help advertisers scale on the ground activations.”

Research shows younger people value experiences over material possessions. Putting on events is a different skill from selling media. Twisted is sticking to its media and marketing focus and leaning on partners where possible. The bar, for instance, is located under a restaurant, rather than built from scratch. And it’s leaning on its social roots to inform its offline efforts. The company is promoting the bar launch through its Twisted London and Twisted Bar social channels. The most popular dish from Twisted London, The Money Shot Burger, pays tribute to the anticipated cheese shot at the end of popular recipe videos on Twisted.

“That’s what gets people sharing and salivating — viewers are buying a socially driven product,” Bolding said. “Our key differentiator is we have a consistent flow of data coming through that’s telling us what people want to eat. Other restaurants don’t have that.”

The post Facebook food channel Twisted is launching a pop-up bar with social-inspired cocktails appeared first on Digiday.

This Q&A with BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith appears in the latest issue of Digiday magazine, a quarterly publication that is part of Digiday+. Members of Digiday+ get access to exclusive content, original research and member events throughout the year. Learn more here.

We’re in a time when the news cycle is incredible and distributors like Netflix are putting money into news shows, but Facebook is also going away as a distribution source and people are turning against journalists. How do you see it?
I think this is an incredibly good time to be in news. I do think it’s become much clearer over past year that news is a great business. You have a vastly larger audience who really appreciates what you do and what journalists do in a way that genuinely feels new to me. A political crisis is an exciting part of journalism. There’s an opportunity to do original reporting that cuts through a noisy ecosystem. And opportunities around new kinds of broadcast. So on the news and distribution side, it’s been an amazing year. We’ve been very focused on broadening the ways we make money. It’s incredibly heartening that people are starting to pay for news. We’re certainly going to start experimenting with that as well.

BuzzFeed grew up on Facebook; has that ultimately been better or worse for BuzzFeed News?
Certainly these new digital tools open the door for new outlets and voices and challenges to the journalism establishment, but also the litany of challenges is extremely long. There’s a really long-running conservative and Fox News-driven process that positions conservative commentators as the right and mainstream news as the left. That’s not reality. It’s healthy for outlets like ours that are rigid in the reporting, not the ideology.

Is Facebook falling for that trick by catering to far-right publishers?
I don’t know. I think a lot of the platforms’ leadership is new to this kind of dynamic. I don’t envy their jobs. I think they’re incredibly difficult decisions to make. On one hand, they clearly need to create spaces that aren’t toxic. On the other hand, it’s true when you create powerful tools for limiting speech, it will inevitably end up in the hands of the federal government. I don’t think the Alex Jones case was a hard problem, but some of these are genuinely hard problems. I think they are authentically aware — they see they’re opening these very complicated doors.

Facebook’s news partnerships head Campbell Brown was recently quoted as telling Australian news execs that Facebook doesn’t care about publishers. How did that go over with you?
I wasn’t there, but in general I think it’s healthy she’s speaking bluntly. Rather than having someone whose job it is to keep us happy.

As Facebook has deprioritized news, how has BuzzFeed News shifted its platform approach?
We were very dependent on Facebook in 2013. We’ve become steadily less dependent on them. Our strategy is to figure out quality news on every platform. I don’t think that’s necessarily changed much. Netflix is a really important platform for us at the moment. We’ve shifted away from social video and more premium video.

You joined BuzzFeed News in 2011, and the outlet is still described in terms of its parent brand, with its less serious content. Does it bother you that people still make that association?
The thing about reporting is, it’s not about abstract brand measures but does it hit? Does it get people out of jail? Ultimately, the way you do that is because the stories are compelling. So that’s never kept me up at night. We’ve always balanced the fact that we’re associated with this huge, beloved brand. The red brand doesn’t ask you to trust it; it’s relatable, it’s funny. Fundamentally, what news says is, I trust it. It’s the ongoing progress.

What would surprise people about your audience?
Obviously, our audience is primarily millennials. It turns out millennials care a lot about wars and abuse in the Catholic church. Every generation has this idea that the younger generation has no attention span. That is never true. But we also reach lots of older people and young conservatives. The stories, when you write about politics and Donald Trump, most people look for, does this support the ideas I already have? When you get outside that like with this story about deaths in a Catholic orphanage [posted by BuzzFeed News Aug. 27], that polarization falls away.

First everyone was doing social video, and then publishers shifted gears and started doing longer-form video. How do you know you won’t be shifting tactics again in a year?
The new shows we’re doing — three at the moment — is stuff that’s a megaphone for our journalism and brings a larger audience. I feel incredibly proud of the shows we’re doing. It’s not only what the platforms want but what the people who view them want. How sure am I things won’t change? If you look at mature media companies and hybrid media/technology companies like ours, it’s not like there’s one silver bullet. Every company needs diverse business models.

The post BuzzFeed News’ Ben Smith: ‘Every company needs diverse business models’ appeared first on Digiday.

A congressional hearing showed momentum behind legislative efforts to strengthen online users’ privacy, but also some resistance from tech companies leery of overregulation.

California’s consumer privacy law, passed in late June, has spurred demand for federal regulations to avoid a patchwork of state-by-state rules. To discuss what federal privacy laws might look like, representatives from AT&T, Amazon, Google, Twitter, Apple and Charter Communications met with the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation on Wednesday in Washington, DC.… Continue reading »

The post Senate Committee Holds Hearing To Discuss Federal Data Privacy Legislation – Five Things To Know appeared first on AdExchanger.

As concern over personal data protections continues to mount, representatives for six major tech and communications companies, including Google, Amazon and Apple, told federal lawmakers today that they supported federal data privacy legislation–so long as it is not nearly as strict as the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or the California Consumer Privacy…

The number of people using Facebook Stories on a daily basis has doubled since May, and their experiences are about to change drastically. The social network announced this morning that Facebook Stories ads are now available to all advertisers globally. Facebook said in May that Stories had 150 million daily users, and it began a…

The post Voter Enthusiasm at Record High in Nationalized Midterm Environment appeared first on Pew Research Center.

The Federal Communication Commission (FCC) voted on today to curb how much local governments can charge cell carriers to install the network equipment needed for the next generation of cell service. The ruling comes after a series of standoffs between wireless companies and various U.S. cities over the fees associated with the review process for…