Month: October 2019

In 2017 programmatic-guaranteed and automated-guaranteed deals accounted for just 4% of programmatic ad revenue. By 2018 they accounted for 40%, and today they account for 70% of overall programmatic revenue, according to the FT. It’s also seen overall programmatic ad revenue has grown 9% over the last year.

Granted, the FT was never reliant on open-exchange revenue, so dropping it didn’t pose the risk it would to many other publishers. But it still represented quite a strategy shift for the FT internally, according to Jessica Barrett, global head of programmatic for the FT. “Our programmatic strategy has changed drastically since GDPR took effect,” said Barrett.

Since it switched off OPM inventory, the FT focused hard on private marketplace, programmatic guaranteed and automated guaranteed deals. But over the last year, demand for PMP deals has tapered off, with far more interest from buyers on programmatic-guaranteed deals, according to Barrett. In fact, PMPs used to account for 70% of programmatic revenue; now that’s flipped, so PG deals represent 70% and PMPs roughly 30%.

With a strong subscriptions-based business model, the FT hasn’t relied on programmatic ad revenue as much as many publishers. To date, revenue from programmatically booked and executed campaigns remains a small slither of the FT’s overall ad revenue, accounting for approximately 5%, according to the publisher. That still represents a decent seven-figure contribution to revenue and therefore is an important focus that it plans to grow, according to Barrett.

The FT expects that growth to come from programmatic-guaranteed revenues, along with plans to significantly reduce operational inefficiencies.

Guaranteed deals seem to be the programmatic advertising deal-type du jour for publishers post-GDPR. This method of ad buying, in which an advertiser can match its first-party data with relevant publisher audience data on an automated basis but pre-agree terms at a fixed price, had previously been slow to gain traction because the technology was still relatively nascent among demand-side platforms and supply-side platforms. But ad-buyer demand increased for it post the GDPR.

“Post-GDPR a lot of buyers are asking, for legal reasons, how you collect and segment your data,” added Barrett. “Lots of publishers will say they have first-party data available, but no one was quite clear on who those people were. Whereas we’re able to show that, for instance, a CEO has declared themselves specifically as such on our site [thanks to subscriptions data].”

Publishers are facing data-privacy headwinds, thanks to GDPR and the drive from browsers to stamp out third-party cookies, with both Apple and Mozilla pushing anti-tracking strategies.

That’s led a lot of publishers to dial up their attempts to leverage their first-party data commercially in order to prepare for the eventual demise of the third-party cookie. Media buyers have invested a lot more in programmatic-guaranteed deals since GDPR was rolled out last May given the pressures of GDPR.

“Having direct programmatic buys with premium content publishers allows for high-quality first-party data overlays and more granularity of spend management and reporting,” said Chris Camacho, chief performance officer for Europe, Middle East and Africa at Mindshare.

Major publishers often talk wistfully of shutting off open-exchange inventory, given they can make higher premiums on private deals while also being able to guarantee brand safety and other client targets more easily. But it’s easier said than done, when there is so much agency demand for OPM.

Media buying agencies will likely remain keen to capitalize on the opportunities — like cheaper CPMs — allowed on the open exchange. For clients that have high-performance targets, this is particularly important. “Typically [clients] are better placed buying these types of titles on the open exchange as that still offers them better value for money given the lower clearing CPMs,” added Camacho.

By cutting out operational inefficiencies, the FT hopes to make programmatic ad revenue — comprising private marketplace, programmatic and automated guaranteed deals — account for a far larger part of the overall digital ad pie in future. If all goes to plan, then that could take it to approximately 20% within the next two years, a good hike from the current 5%.

A core way it plans to do so is by reducing operational efficiencies by automating all its sub-£5,000 ($6,200) ad deals. So far it has done this for around 10% of all deals within that price parameter, and plans to roll out the automation tech and standardize it across all those deal sizes in 2020. Those are laborious resource-wise to set up, and so the FT has implemented tech that removes a lot of the manual processes sales teams had to use to set up such deals. Over 100 people at the FT have been trained on how to use the tech globally. By the end of 2020, the FT plans to have automated all such deals, which account for 30% of all its programmatic campaigns.

The FT’s programmatic growth is proportionate to the demand of clients trying to target valuable audiences and ensure brand-safe ad environments, according to Paul Kasamias, managing partner at Starcom.

“In a broader context where programmatic is moving to the ‘first-look’ model, it is essential to highlight the importance of maintaining a good relationship with this publisher [the FT] in order to keep negotiating the best possible deals for our clients,” he added.

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“You don’t want to ask for 15 things off the bat — just get their email. But on the second interaction, you can ask for more personalized information to get more data.”

“For now, my vision is to make the user journey a priority. User data will trickle in, and we can use that to make inferred relationships.”

Your most valuable subscriber is your brand evangelist
“A brand lover is worth 100 times more to you than a casual reader.” 

“We get more than 1,000 views a day based off our referral program, and the referrals are incredibly high quality.”

“Thirty-seven percent of [paid] members were free newsletter subscribers first, and 10% of members subscribed directly from a free newsletter.”

“Four percent of our audience is a habitual reader who has seven or more sessions per month, but the average revenue per user in that group is five times that of a reader with one to four sessions [94% of their readership.]”

30 to 90 days is the best time to attempt reengagement
“Our retention program works best, we found, at 30 days, but we’re predominantly a daily newsletter company.”

“It’s always a struggle with reengagement. Is it worth the effort to reengage someone versus the value that you get from them after they are reengaged? Because we typically find that if they disengage, they don’t really want to come back.”

“Old subscribers for us, we find that since more often publishers are landing in the promotions folder, an email coming from a different email address than they normally receive the email from is really effective in reengaging people.” 

“What we started doing is actually buying their, what we call singles, so we’re able to see and match up in real time against their database when a user is opening and clicking other emails from other brands and then being able to trigger reengagement emails then, and that gives us a much better open and click-through rate.”

“We tend to look at it more of how we on-board people better to prevent them from disengaging. I think a lot of people are scared to ask upfront why you’re starting to disengage, but it’s about flagging it early so you’re not waiting for 90 days.”

Finding a place for affiliate links can increase the value of your newsletters
“The beautiful thing about affiliate data is that it can be used in many ways, but you can take it out to new advertisers to prove that there is an engaged audience getting to the point of sale in that email list.” 

“We have 42 newsletters that we’re tapping into that have a highly engaged audience; 10 are relevant for commerce on average, but depends on the time of year.” 

Include the editorial staff in your newsletter strategy
“For editors, being in the weeds helps them learn more about the audience than they would normally on the site, and that’s where we’re getting the ideas to create new newsletters — in the weeds.”

“Voice emails that utilize editorial talent build personal relationships with readers.”

“It’s important on the product-side to make the tools as easy as possible for editorial use and learn.”

The post ‘It’s always a struggle with reengagement’: How publishers rely on email appeared first on Digiday.

The payments are more symbolic than actual big revenue sources considering the $300,000 will be split by the companies.

“We strongly want to encourage collaboration for the in-person sessions, and we hope that work continues,” said Jesper Doub, director of media partnerships Europe, Middle East and Africa, and a former Der Spiegel executive. “A lot of my criticism of Facebook in the past has been about its transparency, or lack of transparency, with partners. There was a huge gap between the way publishers operate and understand partnerships and how Facebook operates. We’re trying to build a bridge over that. It’s not perfect yet, but it’s moving in the right direction.”

According to publisher sources, it’s a shot in the arm the Journalism Project needs.

“In the past, many publishers have seen Journalism Project as a ‘nice to have,’” said one publishing executive who, having previously attended meetings, said they were characterized by U.S. Facebook execs sharing PowerPoint presentations that had already been widely circulated. “MDs don’t show up anymore; they send team leaders. That’s the best signal that not much has been happening there.”

It’s a contrast to Google’s Digital News Initiative, which has an innovation fund of €150 million ($165 million) over three years and in 2018 issued grants to 461 projects at news organizations. At Google’s DNI meetings, publishers understand the frenemy relationship but value the closer access to product developers they get from attending.

“Jesper knows that,” said the publishing exec. “He knows he has to unlock that and make Facebook more relevant to publishers.”

Although Facebook’s Journalism Project has yielded positive results for cutting down the spread of misinformation and fake news on the platform through hiring third-party fact-checkers. It has also run successful projects with local media, which have faced all the same media struggles with even slimmer resources.

Ultimately, publishers are looking for long-term partnerships with Facebook, which is increasingly being forced to take premium content more seriously on its platform as it faces pressure from regulatory bodies.

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