Month: September 2020

Content sits across eight core categories like life, wellness, beauty, recommendations and travel. A core team of three plans to publish between 18 and 20 pieces of content a day, 70% of this will be available globally with 30% local to either the U.K. or U.S. market. Under Future’s women’s lifestyle category, which includes titles like Marie Claire and Women & Home — both part of TI Media magazine group which Future fully acquired in April — there are between 30 and 40 staffers who will also commission and create content for the site.  

Over the next few months, Future will build out an editorial team and audience in the U.S., where some other Future brands, like Tech Radar and Tom’s Hardware, have more of a presence. By this time next year, the team wants the U.S. headcount of the women’s lifestyle department to equal the U.K. 

Strategically, reaching U.S. young women is attractive. In the U.S. “millennials” are projected to spend $1.4 trillion according to a report from a 5W Public Relations in January this year. In the U.S., millennials overtook baby boomers as the largest group in the last census — and in the U.K they’re supposed to become the biggest group this year, according to the publisher. It’s a group that legacy TI Media and Future brands haven’t served before.

Future has been wary of defining the group by an age range, although 25 to 40 is the closest, and acknowledges U.S. born and established competitors like Bustle, R29 and Hello Giggles.   

Most [publishing] “brands pivot to serving this audience, we’ll be serving them from the start in a way that’s transparent, direct, inclusive and diverse and this audience demands that right now,” said Mark Winterton, managing director of women’s lifestyle at Future. “We’ll be in a powerful position from day one because it will be in our roots.”

My Imperfect Life is as tonally on point as you could probably get right now, said independent luxury consultant, Livia Stefanini. “Although similar content platforms targeting women are plentiful, the launch is an example of how much snackable content is in demand, particularly content which blends the lines between entertainment, education and wellness. “

The site is talking with a handful of brands for launch partnerships, (although it wouldn’t say which) — spanning brands and agencies in the U.S. and U.K. — where it will offer editorial and social content partnership packages. After taking over a couple of dormant Future brand social accounts, My Imperfect Life is starting with 200,000 Facebook followers and 100,000 Instagram followers. The business model will be an equal combination of affiliate, partnerships and display ads. Winterton was unable to share any specific financial targets.  

My Imperfect Life marks the sixth new title launch from Future since it finalized the acquisition of TI Media in April, after Gardening ETC, Fit & Well, Pets Radar, Adventure and What To Watch. Most use affiliates to monetize through buying guides and product recommendations, powered by Future’s e-commerce platform Hawk. Other TI Media brands are going through the process of migrating to Future’s content management system, Vanilla. 

Future has just rounded off a successful 12 months, estimating profits of nearly $110 million this year.

Since shelter-at-home restrictions eased over the summer, producers across the country have eased their way back to shooting in studios and on location. Because of the changes and limitations necessary to protect people’s health and safety, the production process is still far from having returned to normal. However, the workloads seem to have. “The demand for us has been about the same as we would usually see this time of year,” said a producer at a company that produces digital shows and branded videos. Costs for physical productions have increased by roughly 30% because of the additional health and safety measures, such as testing. 

Branded productions have particularly picked up over the past couple months. Advertising-related shoots accounted for 52% of the film permit applications filed in Los Angeles in August, according to the official Los Angeles area film office FilmLA. “As we’re moving into [the fourth quarter], we’re definitely seeing an uptick,” said Meagan Maudsley, managing director at creative agency Mustache.

That uptick is welcome news, though it has introduced some challenges. For example, many companies are hiring compliance officers to ensure their productions follow health and safety guidelines and to meet requirements for productions with crew members who are part of industry unions. As a result, these compliance officers are becoming increasingly harder to come by, though companies like Mustache have been able to mitigate the impact by having all of its production team members become certified in covid compliance, Maudsley said. 

Insuring productions continues to be a challenge because insurers do not cover coronavirus-related impacts on production. As a result, those liabilities reside with the production companies, which is one reason why producers are taking a conservative approach in returning physical production. “It’s just something everybody is dealing with,” said the first producer.

Covid compliance officers are not the only hired hands whose workloads are filling up, though. “It’s hard right now to find an animation studio,” said the first producer. Prop and food stylists are similarly in high demand, said Mangino.

Of course, for all the signs of normalcy, productions today remain much different than productions pre-pandemic. Health and safety measures are limiting crew sizes, lengthening shooting schedules and increasing costs by around 30% of the usual budget. Meanwhile, certain projects remain largely off the table. “No one has the appetite to do big, epic productions with tons of people crammed into a single space,” said one producer. 

Well, not no one. A second producer said their company went into production on a premium short-form episodic series. However, to do so, the company had to rent out a small hotel in order to create its own bubble. “The bubble was very expensive because we had to do 14-day quarantines, so people were there longer before and after the shoot,” said the second producer, who declined to detail the production’s costs.

These adjustments to protect people’s health and safety, however, are temporary and will likely go away after a vaccine becomes widely available. But the crisis has introduced changes that producers are likely to be more longstanding. 

Productions will likely to continue to incorporate at least some remote components for the foreseeable future. For example, Food52 is now set up to be able to shoot in the homes of its shows’ stars, which is something that the company had always hoped to do, Mangino said. Additionally, because producers and even directors are able to participate in shoots remotely through Zoom, projects are not as restricted by people’s locations, schedules or travel costs. As a result, companies are returning to traditional production better equipped for all manner of productions.

“The question we’re asking ourselves is who absolutely needs to be on set and who can operate successfully remotely. During quarantine and needing to find different ways to work remotely, people have realized that it can be successful and a lot of different workflows and technologies have been set up to make that work,” Maudsley said.

The legacy sports publication had been losing millions of dollars in ad revenue in the previous couple of years before ABG came into the picture, according to a source familiar with the company.

Now Marc Rosen, ABG’s evp of entertainment, said Sports Illustrated is profitable and its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) has more than doubled since the May 2019 acquisition, which is on pace with the company’s forecasts. The company declined to share hard revenue figures.

This is thanks in large part to the 15 active licensing deals on going for Sports Illustrated that ABG signed in just over a year of owning the brand, said Rosen. ABG’s SI is also expected to close three to five additional deals in the fourth quarter, he added.

Part of the strategy for licensing is finding partners who can do the job better than can be done in-house, and given ABG was ranked as the third largest licensor of 2020 and sold $12.3 billion worth of branded products, according to License Global’s list of Top 150 Leading Licensors, the company thrives when it can find other companies to pay top dollar for SI’s name.

“The everyday conversations around sports now includes gambling and esports, things that weren’t in the conversation 10 years ago,” said Rosen.

Some of the new licensing deals coming at the end of the year include a new ticket sales business for secondary sporting events, including meet and greets with athletes. Additionally, like several other sports publishers, online betting is the new frontier where Rosen said he sees “a lot of upside.”

Arguably the most important deal that ABG has going for SI is its deal with The Maven, which paid ABG $45 million upfront in June 2019 for the right to SI’s editorial operations and print the magazine, and also includes an ongoing revenue share. A source familiar with The Maven said that currently approximately 60% the revenue earned from SI’s editorial operations comes from subscriptions while the remaining 40% comes from advertising. The company wouldn’t disclose additional revenue figures.

Acting as a bridge between ABG and The Maven-run editorial team is the Sports Illustrated Studios, which was created in May through a licensing deal with production company 101 Studios. Rosen would not disclose the terms of the deal but said members of the editorial team will be involved in creating films, documentaries, television shows and long-form podcasts.

Some tried and true licensing deals for SI include a swimsuit line tied to its Swimsuit Issue franchise, coffee table books and an art gallery and photography reprints business. Those businesses have been strong performers within the category, according to Rosen, adding that the SI Cover Store more than doubled its sales year over year.

But these categories are not known to be significant money makers on their own.

Apparel as a category is likely to fetch in the range of $50,000 to $100,000 per year, with SI’s swimwear line likely being on the upper end of that scale, said one licensing consultant who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The consultant also priced the category of branded books and coffee table books at under $50,000 per year per book, adding that coffee table books are one of the hardest things to make money off of because all of the parties involved in the photographs (photographer, subjects, etc.) have to give the right to use their image, which usually results in a revenue share with each party. 

In all, the consultant estimated that all together these businesses would give ABG only “a few hundred thousand dollars per year.”

“Apparel, books and art won’t generate enough revenue for this to be a successful acquisition,” said Stu Seltzer, president of Seltzer Licensing Group. The bigger opportunities that he said he sees for SI is its new ticketing business, its studio and particularly gambling.

The reason why publisher partnerships with online betting companies have been successful is because they have the authority of being trusted resources for their audiences and people are more likely to risk their money with a trusted source than on some random online betting outlet, Seltzer said. 

“It’s plausible to say that gambling might be a successful venture because those with more disposable income are 50-plus and they know and respect and trust the SI brand,” Seltzer said. 

Now, with the election just over a month away, agency execs say that influencer marketing hasn’t been utilized as expected for this cycle. That said, in the run up to the election, there will be a more dedicated push to work with influencers and celebrities on organic social media posts, particularly from Biden, according to digital agency executives and influencer marketing experts who say that the Biden campaign has hired influencer marketing agencies including Village Marketing.

Press offices for the Biden and Trump campaigns did not respond to a request for comment for this story.   

“There’s campaigns in progress and some already launched,” said Brendan Gahan, chief social officer at Mekanism. “However, I think [influencer marketing is] wildly under-utilized. What other medium can you get young voters to listen and pay attention to for hours on end? It’s not TV. It’s not print. Influencers are the medium that can accomplish that.” 

In recent months, the Biden campaign has worked with influencers like Elle Walker of What’s Up Moms and Bethany Mota on livestream interviews on platforms like YouTube and Instagram with the influencers asking Biden his stance on various issues. The approach is part of the Biden campaign’s push to lean into an organic media strategy with influencers, according to agency execs and influencer marketing experts. 

“The campaign did hire a marketing firm, Village Marketing, to set up at least six of the Instagram talks,” said Kristy Sammis, executive director, Influencer Marketing Association, adding that while the agency was likely paid for their work the influencers were definitely unpaid. “Overall, Biden has taken a very ‘personal’ approach to his influencer strategy using tools like Facebook Live and Instagram Live to chat with influencers about their concerns and his policies.” 

As for the Trump campaign, digital agency execs and influencer marketing experts said they hadn’t heard of the campaign seeking out influencers for either a paid or organic marketing push. “I honestly don’t know if the Trump campaign has hired influencers in what I would consider the ‘traditional sense’ — but he has a whole social media circus in place that amplifies his every Tweet, speech, headline, etc.,” said Sammis. “I can’t imagine him having heartfelt one-on-ones with influencers.”  

Influencers’ audiences pushing them to make their stance clear has likely given both Biden and Trump more “free user-generated content, driven by free influencer work than they ever would have before,” said the exec. “Given the polarity of this election, though, not as many creators or influencers need the incentive to get involved as they might have in years past.”

Using a paid approach to work with influencers can be dicey for political campaigns as paying an influencer to talk about a political candidate can come across as inauthentic. That’s likely why neither candidate is employing a paid influencer strategy now, according to agency execs and influencer marketing experts.   

“I understand why Bloomberg did it; there was an insurgency to his candidacy,” said a social media agency exec who asked for anonymity as he has done a lot of political work previously and is actively working on campaigns for this election cycle. “But audiences sniff out inauthenticity really easily. If I were on the Biden campaign running influencer strategy I would not run a paid approach because of the high likelihood of phoniness. It could have the opposite intended effect. They should be pursuing an aggressive organic partnership strategy.” 

Agency execs who have worked on influencer marketing campaigns for politicians say that getting influencers to sign on to working with a campaign can be difficult — no matter if it’s a paid or organic partnership. “Obviously, stating outright who you are voting for can be divisive,” said Gahan. “Many influencers don’t want to risk alienating half of their audience.” 

Still, even if influencers are wary of working directly with presidential candidates, influencers are endorsing candidates “more than ever,” said another digital agency executive who requested anonymity. “Even if they’re not being paid there’s more pressure than ever before for influencers and creators to pick a side,” said the exec. “There’s no way you can be an influencer today and be on the sidelines of this conversation — your audience just won’t let you. We saw it with Black Lives Matter and we’re seeing it now with the election.” 

The impending browser changes will promote consumer privacy and are aligned with recent laws and regulatory guidance intended to do the same. But they also present the advertising ecosystem with a challenge — some might say an opportunity — to champion privacy while finding new and innovative ways to provide marketers and consumers with relevant, targeted ad experiences.

The challenge, and the opportunity, is not about solving for the loss of third-party cookies or creating workarounds, but determining the best path forward, investing and partnering to develop strategic identity solutions, enabling publishers to maximize the value of their first-party data, help advertisers meet their business goals and build consumer trust in digital advertising.

This problem-solving can ultimately open doors for industry participants, and when it comes to day-to-day strategy and planning, it’s clear that there are key learnings and steps to consider as a future without third-party cookies quickly approaches.

1. Understand regulations and what they mean for marketing strategies

With regulatory requirements evolving across the world, it’s important for advertisers to understand the impact of those changes on their existing data collections and data-use policies — and to assess any new policies that need to be implemented as a result.

Especially for businesses that span states, regions and countries, these new regulations must be considered and prioritized when developing company strategies. Working closely with industry bodies such as the IAB can be helpful for better understanding the implications of new rules and how peers in the industry are reacting. In many cases, this leads to collaboration, consistency and, ultimately, a more successful strategy.

2. Maximize the value of first-party data

The move away from third-party cookies will further increase the focus on maximizing the value of first-party data insights as they enable more effective and direct collaboration between media companies and advertisers.

Solutions such as data onboarding and analytics technology such as InfoSum, for example, enable users to harness first-party data while maintaining consumer trust and also address privacy and regulatory constraints that impact the industry. When choosing a provider, it’s essential to verify that their first-party data sources truly connect advertisers, platforms and publishers in ways that enable privacy-safe discovery, matching, analysis and activation. It’s also critical to ensure that sensitive data — i.e., PII — is never exposed to external sources.  

Enabling the flow of data and insights between advertisers, media companies and technology platforms in a way that’s compliant with CCPA, GDPR and other regional regulations, while returning audience match rates and analytics almost instantly, these will be the factors necessary for the advancement of digital advertising.

3. Evaluate alternative engagement models 

Identity is key to powering relevant advertising. Even basic ad-serving features like frequency and recency control, which improve the consumer experience, are not possible without understanding a user’s identity. Connecting more relevant ads to users is part and parcel of making advertising a better experience overall. But doing so in a privacy-safe way can be challenging.

Models such as contextual targeting, however, which has been around since the start of the programmatic era, are re-emerging as an approach of choice for advertisers seeking to provide a positive user experience for potential customers. Not only does contextual targeting enable advertisers to reach audiences based on context or categories of interest rather than IDs, but it also supports a continued stream of advertising revenue that is essential for publishers bound by privacy regulations. 

Widely proven to help brands maintain the relevancy of their advertising to consumers, the accuracy and precision of contextual targeting will only increase as technology continues to evolve. The better a platform can understand the true context of a page, the better the ad match — and the better the consumer experience.

4. Diversify formats and channels

To optimize media spend in a world without cookies, buyers need to diversify and expand the formats in which they share their messages. Mediums and channels that aren’t reliant on browser-based cookies — including CTV, digital out-of-home, addressable TV and data-driven linear TV — are continuing to grow, especially as viewing habits have shifted during COVID-19. These channels are a safe bet for advertisers looking to engage relevant audiences across screens.

Long-form video offerings prompting robust engagement will grow in importance, and buying strategies such as programmatic guaranteed — which enables buyers to easily reserve access to premium supply through a consolidated buying platform — may well become the preferred transaction method.

The direction of consumer privacy controls — whether because of regulations, technical changes or device-maker strategy — is likely to continue on its current trajectory. In whatever ways the future plays out, strategies should always center around a core dedication to developing solutions that create better, more personalized experiences for consumers, while continuing to fund free, high-quality content through advertising.

For the four billion users now on the internet, the answer is a resounding yes. More than 400 million active websites now exist, and 200 million come online each year. Such excessive options can overwhelm the human brain. It’s a phenomenon psychologists have dubbed the “tyranny of choice,” resulting in anxiety and uncertainty for audiences and consumers.

In the face of this effect, and struggling to connect with readers, some publishers have resorted to lowest-common-denominator tactics. They’ve turned to quick fixes such as click-bait listicles and dubious news stories — the types of insubstantial, low-quality content that grabs attention on social at the cost of debasing society. These publishers may be securing short-term traffic, but they’re adding kindling to a social media bonfire that thrives on fake news and polarization. In the long run, they risk eroding their established bond with readers, which should conversely be based on editorial excellence leading to engagement with their content. 

As an industry, rather than raising the white flag and surrendering to the powerful forces wielded by the social media oligopoly, publishers can instead take steps to create positive alternatives that put more legitimate approaches into play. 

Publishers that reward engagement over time earn impressions — and revenue

For some publishers, there doesn’t appear to be an alternative to the status quo: Without securing clicks and immediate (if fleeting) attention, readers will flee to a competitor, and ad revenue — the lifeblood that keeps publishers afloat — will shrivel. But it doesn’t have to be this way. There now exist highly effective best practices that, when deployed successfully, provide sustainable financial rewards to premium publishers for the quality of their content. These tactics jettison a different kind of tyranny — the tyranny of the click — and leverage the duration of readers’ engagement instead. As a result, ad impressions will reach engaged audiences only.  

It’s no incredible feat to garner absentminded clicks from asinine or spurious articles and social posts. But real engagement is a product of the audience’s authentic effort (and time) spent with the expectation that the outcome will be rewarding. The greater the expected reward, the more time is invested, which leads to the sale of more viewable impressions.

To make this dynamic a reality, publishers need tools that enable them to serve ad impressions only when their readers are investing their most valuable resource — their time — and only when these ads are viewable. These impressions become more valuable for advertisers (and produce a higher return for publishers) since they can only be bought up once they’re in view, and once they’re situated next to content with which the reader is actively engaging for a significant length of time.

It’s a particularly urgent approach to monetization as cookies disappear. Now, more than ever, contextually relevant ads of this sort are vital to buyers’ strategies — and therefore to publishers’ inventory offerings. 

With revenue tied to engagement, only high-quality publishers will thrive 

As this approach takes hold throughout the industry, premium publishers will gain strength, while all others will suffer and fade. When duration, engagement and viewability replace mindless clicks, substantive and contextually relevant content becomes more valuable than repurposed cat photos and fake news. The marketplace of ideas not only becomes less overwhelming, but it also becomes more fact-based, less sensational and capable of fostering richer dialogues. 

This isn’t some pie-in-the-sky utopianism. A cursory analysis of recent history can clearly tell us that no such societal transformation will occur simply because professionals and intellectuals say it should. But when questions of quality and veracity are tied directly to revenue, even a cynic can recognize that such changes are possible — even likely. When advertisers become more confident in the available supply, and audiences benefit from time better spent, publishers will be forced — as they should be — to ensure that rewarding entertainment and intellectual fulfillment are baked into their business models. 

Shaking off tyranny is never easy. First and foremost, it requires a group of committed revolutionaries who can lead the way to a better future. Premium publishers need to treat viewability and contextual relevance as mandatory elements of the user experience. When they do, their lower-quality competitors will fade. Those 400 million active websites will shrink to 80 million — at most. And just like that, the bonds of tyranny will break.