Month: February 2020

The program launched in October with seven titles, including The Wall Street Journal and USA Today, as well as local titles such as the Seattle Times and the New York Daily News. In November, the program expanded to 23 titles, including five papers of the McClatchy chain, the newly independent Los Angeles Times and The San Diego Union-Tribune, plus additional titles belonging to the owners of some of the program’s inaugural participants such as Gannett, Dow Jones and Tribune Publishing.

While Starbucks isn’t paying the participants, the publishers involved said they see the program as a good source of new readers. For example, Megan Parzych, vp of marketing for the Philadelphia Inquirer, called the pilot program a way to put Inquirer content in front of new audiences. A McClatchy executive said he envisioned the Starbucks program as a small source of new readers that are arriving through a unique front door, giving the company the chance to observe a specific cohort of people that it hopes to eventually turn into subscribers.

News publishers have begun spending more money to hunt for subscribers among individuals who are not currently visiting their owned and operated properties. Yet many publishers might prefer to add subscribers by building on the direct connections they have with readers. Partnerships like the Starbucks program give news publishers a way to put their product in front of new readers in a setting where they can spend a lot of time reading it and hopefully form a habit.

“We’re really trying to give [these readers] an opportunity to kick the tires,” said Grant Belaire, McClatchy’s vp of digital audience growth. His team is using with the Starbucks program-associated readers less aggressive marketing tactics and waiting longer before attempting to gather customers’ email addresses, for example. “This has helped us build up some benchmarks,” Belaire added.

While the number of visitors the Starbucks program attracts is small — typically in the low thousands each week for a publisher — they have qualities that make them attractive to the participating publishers. In McClatchy’s case, most of the Starbucks visitors tend to be totally new ones, meaning they haven’t visited McClatchy sites in the past, Belaire said.

A source at one publisher said that the program’s lack of geotargeting options, combined with the low traffic, have made his company’s participation a low priority. That same source noted that his team had to expend significant technical effort to make sure the paywall was properly lowered for Starbucks readers.

But with so many publishers now operating tighter paywalls, some of them are happy for a chance to show off all the work their publications produce. “Our website and app have been vastly improved within the past six months, and we’ve made significant investments in our journalism,” said Josh Brandau, the chief revenue officer of the Los Angeles Times. “A big part of what we’re doing is reintroducing people to our product.”

“We’re going to continue investing in that subscription platform” in order to become a fully “digital-first” business, Klein said.

Two other business activities bring in 10% of the company’s revenue: The Dwell Shop, an e-commerce site launched by the publisher at the end of 2017, and a real estate and vacation-rental marketplace.

Although Dwell turned a profit in 2018, it did not do so last year as a result of the publisher’s extensive investment into expanding its digital products, Klein said, but he projects the company will be profitable again in 2020. In 2018 the company began to explore ways to diversify its operations beyond production of its print magazine and in 2019 it embarked on creating the real estate marketplace and the membership programs, he added. The additional revenue streams are offsetting the losses that Dwell is encountering with its print advertising efforts.

Dwell’s affiliate and marketplace businesses are “a great way to [develop a] prototype very quickly [of] how influential we are in different areas,” such as travel, real estate and shopping, Klein said, noting that these will be major focal points for further development this year.

The publisher’s marketplace curates real estate and vacation-rental property listings submitted by readers. They submit for the publisher’s consideration the online links to their sale or vacation rentals from listings on third-party platforms, such as Airbnb or Vrbo. Editors review the photos and reviews for each submitted listing, then contact the owner to learn more about the property. If a listing is approved to appear on Dwell’s marketplace, the homeowner pays a fee to Dwell. The number of listings on Airbnb and other residence-sharing platforms have become so numerous that Dwell can provide value to readers by its curation, Klein said. “Quality is so inconsistent that it requires a third party to qualify that these are Dwell homes,” he said. “We can be the marketplace for that.”

While Klein would not share what Dwell charges for a marketplace listing, he estimated that about 10% of his company’s 2019 revenue came from its home-sale and vacation-rental marketplace combined with its affiliate commerce revenue. Additionally, he said Dwell’s affiliate commerce revenue increased 60% from 2018 to 2019.

A Dwell+ membership offers readers a mixture of content and tools. Each day Dwell currently publishes about a dozen online stories about the architecture and design industries that are not posted behind a paywall. But the goal for Dwell+ is to add new platforms and products that are only for members, Klein said.

The content from Dwell’s print magazine that is posted online is for members only; the same is true for its online house tours, video programming and renovation and how-to guides. A Dwell+ membership also lets members bypass the fee if their submitted vacation and home listings are selected.

In December the publication reached 9 million people in total across its digital and print publications and social media presence, according to Klein. Comscore reported that in December 2019, Dwell.com had more than 1.1 million unique visitors to the site, a 41% increase over the number for the same month a year earlier. The Alliance for Audited Media said as of Dec. 31, 2019, Dwell had a print circulation of more than 250,000 readers.

Peter Doucette, managing director in the telecom, media and technology practice of FTI Consulting, said no one blueprint exists for a publisher to create a membership model, but he said Dwell+ is just in the “1.0 phase.” 

Doucette said Dwell is wise to experiment with the marketplace business but needs to ensure that the curation process results in high-quality listings. “Pursuing a membership model means premium” content, he said. “How do you provide a high-quality marketplace to complement premium experiences?”

“TikTok is the best place for ‘Hypothetical’ because the user behavior fits perfectly with the show premise,” said Erina Jones, who is head of social media at UKTV, broadcaster of Dave. “It’s the right place to activate; we’re enabling others to create content and be [part of] their own TV shows” on TikTok.

For a lot of companies and publishers that are flocking to use the platform, TikTok represents a fast-growing, fertile ground for young creative users. Each month TikTok has 800 million active users, with about half of them being younger than age 34, according to Hubspot. UKTV executives are keen to diversify their channel’s following online where viewers are moving quickly between platforms.

As well as considering views, likes and shares, Dave managers are measuring the success of this TikTok campaign by counting the number of user-generated posts created in response to the challenges. So far, two creators have filmed challenges tied to the show, with each drawing 3,000 to 4,000 likes. Dave’s TikTok profile, which has been live for just two weeks, is still in a fledgling stage; the account has attracted only 1,000 likes and 500 followers in total and produced just nine videos. The number of likes for each of these videos is merely in the hundreds. These Dave-produced videos exude an irreverent tone, much like what’s on its shows. One TikTok video created by the Dave team features origami swans made of Dave-branded T-shirts. Dave plans to publish on TikTok five videos a week, with one or two tied to “Hypothetical” and the others bolstering the Dave channel’s overall brand.

Jones said she is aware that engaging users on TikTok represents a long-term play for Dave and building an audience takes time. Although companies and publishers have touted the huge numbers of viewers on TikTok, few case studies have tied such figures to the achievement of business objectives.

“Everything we do feeds into our channel brand tracker,” Jones said, referring to the UKTV research team’s method for measuring branding performance. “A big priority for us will be to tie social [media] back to business goals.”

A handful of broadcasters like the BBC (which airs “The Greatest Dancer“) and ITV (known for “Love Island“) are dabbling in TikTok use. But even though they have a wealth of video content at their disposal, U.K. broadcasters have been slower than print publishers and other advertisers to adopt the platform, said Timothy Armoo, Fanbytes’ CEO.

“Most people aren’t nimble,”Armoo said. “TikTok requires an understanding of a new platform that has burst onto the scene, so that requires an organizational change. It’s interesting to see those who jump in and those who don’t.”

Added Armoo: “Apart from [channels] like Dave, most broadcasters aren’t [using TikTok], but a ton of direct-to-consumer and e-commerce brands are. That’s just due to the [need for] speed of execution.”

For its eight channels, UKTV has a social media team of 11 people who create content for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and now TikTok. Dave is UKTV’s most popular channel on social media. Right now Dave doesn’t monetize any of its social media work due to its agreements with broadcaster Channel 4, which handles Dave’s ad sales.

“The primary purpose of social media is to drive talkability,” Jones said. “If we drive engagement and word-of-mouth, then we can ultimately drive tune in.”

Last year executives at Dave detected some evidence that social media campaigns can attract linear viewing: In a partnership with the Campaign Against Living Miserably charity to raise awareness about suicide by men, Dave ran messages and videos on Twitter that invited people to view its 9:09 p.m. takeover of a commercial break on TV; at that time the broadcaster showed a video that urged people to reach out to a friend. By 9:08 p.m., an additional 122,000 adult viewers had tuned in to the channel (a 73% increase over the number who had already been watching). Dave attributed this to its Twitter promotion.