Month: September 2020

Future has weathered the ongoing coronavirus crises over the last six months thanks to a broad range of titles and a blended revenue mix of e-commerce, events and digital advertising. Like a lot of publishers, it’s had significant traffic hikes: In August, organic unique visitors in the U.K. and U.S. were up 25% and 40% respectively compared to the prior year, according to Google Analytics numbers via the group.

“[Future] stands out in its confidence and performance,” said independent media analyst Alex DeGroote. “Some of its products skew towards gaming — like Techradar — and gaming has gone nuts in lockdown.” DeGroote added that proof the group is on a growth tear comes from Future appointing Goldman Sachs to act as its corporate broker in July, alongside Numis Securities). “[Future] is becoming too big to ignore.”

While there are signs that programmatic advertising is coming out of the doldrums — CPMs across open exchanges in the U.S. reached a high of $1.35 in August — Future’s advertising revenues have been protected thanls to its specialist titles, which command relative demand from advertisers. As one publishing executive put it, specialist titles don’t see the same boom and bust cycel as general news publishers. 

Of course, cost savings also make the numbers look good, sources say. In April 2020, Future finalized buying magazine brands like Marie Claire via the acquisition of TI Media. The integration is on track while “synergies” are ahead of forecast. The group now anticipates cost synergy savings of £20 million ($26.4 million) a year by the end of 2021. According to reports, an unconfirmed number of job losses are planned as part of its next phase of cost-saving. Future took an early decision to close six print titles in early April as footfall in stores plummeted after temporarily cutting freelance budgets. Belt-tightening served it well: In July, thanks to its strong outlook, it agreed to repay its furlough cash.

Also announced Sept. 7., Future is not renewing its licenses of Gizmodo UK and Kotaku UK, which end Sept. 9. The group licensed the pop culture, tech and gaming sites — and launched local versions in 2011 and 2014 respectively — from the now-defunct Gawker Media before the brands were picked up by G/O Media. The rights will now revert to G/O Media.

According to a person familiar with the matter, the terms of the deal were such that it meant the licensed brands stopped being profitable. Gizmodo UK had 580,000 and Kotaku UK 366,000 global monthly users, according to Future’s site.

WTF is creative separation?

Creative separation is the term used to describe putting boundaries around which TV and streaming ads can run before or after one another in a commercial pod that contains multiple ads.

Is creative separation a new concept?

Not in TV. TV networks and advertisers have a long history of keeping a distance between some advertisers. For example, rival brands such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi typically don’t want to have their ads appear next to one another. However, creative separation is a newer focal point in streaming.

Why is creative separation becoming a focal point in streaming?

As more ad dollars shift to streaming, advertisers are taking a harder look at where that money is going and holding their streaming ads to a higher standard. Among those standards is the ability to insulate a brand’s ad from appearing next to certain other types of advertisers’ ads, which is possible for traditional TV ads, but harder to do in streaming.

Why is managing creative separation for streaming ads a challenge?

Managing creative separation is more challenging in streaming because streaming ads are often purchased programmatically. Moreover, streaming’s convoluted programmatic sales structure — in which connected TV platforms, media companies and ad tech firms can sell different ads running in the same pod — complicates the issue because the different companies would need to communicate with one another regarding the types of ads they would be placing in the pod.

Is it possible to manage creative separation in streaming?

If an ad is bought directly from the media company or streaming service running the ad, yes. If it is bought programmatically, not so much. One agency executive said that it is technically possible to control creative separation through server-side ad insertion, a programmatic ad technology that stitches ads and editorial content, such as a show, together on the fly. However, the ads and the slots where the ads will go need to be labeled correctly to identify which ad can or cannot go where. “It is possible, but it doesn’t exist right now,” said a second agency executive.

Are there other issues with managing creative separation in streaming?

Yes. In addition to the labeling requirements, there is the issue of advertisers being virtually unable to verify whether creative separation was maintained for their streaming ads. Streaming services often show different ads to different viewers because the ads can be targeted to specific audience segments, especially when sold programmatically. As a result, advertisers have “no way of checking” what other ads their campaigns appeared next to, said a third agency executive. “It’s not like a [TV] broadcast where I can pull it up and see who aired next me.”

Are there ways to get around streaming’s creative separation challenge?

Yes, to a point. Streaming services can easily manage creative separation when ads are sold directly, but as mentioned above, “it is more challenging to do so in programmatic,” said the streaming media executive.

How much of an impact is this issue having on the streaming ad market?

It has not made much of a dent yet, but media and agency executives believe that will change as their streaming ads are more likely to run alongside political ads and as political advertisers look to ensure their campaigns do not run next to a rival candidate’s spot. “People are going to question it. Since it’s at the individual [ad pod] level, there’s no concept of how often it’s happening or the scale of the issue,” said the third agency executive.

Scroll through Apple’s list of top podcasts and you’ll see a lot of big names (including actual Hollywood celebrities).

Within that landscape, Wonder Media Network has managed to make critically acclaimed podcasts without the A-listers.

“That’s kind of a silly media strategy, honestly. How are you supposed to build an audience with non-celebrity?” said company CMO Shira Atkins on the Digiday Podcast. “But we’re just testing to see if this is viable.”

One way its managing that is by dedicating a lot of resources to branded podcasts, which offer the possibility of scale.

“The ideal scenario is, ‘let’s get Microsoft to sponsor a podcast and also promote the podcast.’ Because they look good being attached to the show; we get the audience and we get the money so that we can create the good content and it’s a beautiful cycle,” said Atkins.

One recent example: Fiverr, a freelancers’ platform, paid for a month-long takeover of the company’s Encyclopedia Womannica podcast, a five-minute daily that tells stories of notable women in history.

For weekend episodes, they switched up the formula to focus on women involved with Fiverr instead (including the company’s CMO). Fiverr also got post-rolls ads on every episode, and in addition, “we did some PR with them, and they promoted nearly every day on all of their social media,” Atkins said.

Overall, Wonder Media Network, which was founded in 2018, is a purpose-driven media brand that performs a balancing act between activism and non-partisan story-telling.

“Our full mission is to amplify under-represented voices and to inspire action and promote empathy,” Atkins said.

Here are highlights from the conversation, which have been lightly edited for clarity.

Walking a line between media and activism

“We’re excited about people opening their minds to stories that they otherwise wouldn’t hear, and giving a platform to people that probably wouldn’t be able to host a podcast with The Ringer. All of our hosts are non-celebrity. That’s kind of a silly media strategy, honestly. How are you supposed to build an audience with non-celebrity? But we’re just testing to see if this is viable. The other thing is, when we started the company people asked why we weren’t just a non-profit. Much love to the people in non-profit, but I’m trying to make money here. I’m trying to do good and develop stories that are mission-driven, but we’re trying to make money and we want to prove that you don’t have to be a ‘pink politico’ (I’m using air quotes). You can just be good media that happens to be led by women. I don’t like identifying as women’s media company.”

How they’re approaching branded content

“I love branded content. I think, done well and in the right place, it can be incredibly impactful. If we have a rapt audience, and if we can help big organizations dip their toes into the audio space by creating beautiful branded content that has an integrated feel, that’s awesome. For Encyclopedia Womannica, we sold a whole month takeover to Fiverr. We just told their story in a way that integrated Fiverr and Fiverr’s work. We did some PR with them, and they promoted nearly every day on all of their social media. Fiverr had accomplished pay equity on their platform, which they announced in March. You could hire some of their top freelancers, and there was a link to Encyclopedia Womannica.”

Scale is king

“The biggest hurdle with podcast advertising — I’m working with Verizon and all these massive media organizations care about [is] scale. That is it. It might be that they have $200,000 that they can just play around with and don’t have to track. But they’re not interested in making their jobs harder than they are unless there’s celebrity attached or some other massive brand campaign. In terms of the friction, that’s big. And also, no one really knows how to track this stuff. Even [for] brands looking to buy at scale, the analytics are really poor. It’s just downloads.”

With the coronavirus still a significant threat, mail-in voting has become a more pressing — if not confusing — news story than ever before. Meanwhile, widespread social unrest and climate activism are top of mind for voters, who are looking for guidance from publishers, which, in turn, are increasingly prioritizing their voting campaign content.

In 2016, theSkimm registered 100,000 people to vote through its voting content initiative, according to vp of brand marketing Jodi Patkin. In 2020, however, “the rules have changed around voting and even figuring out if you’re eligible to vote early or absentee can be incredibly challenging,” she said.

That’s why theSkimm’s goal for Skimm’2020, which launched on August 18, is less about getting people to register, but more about giving them the tools they need to seamlessly cast a vote in November. 

TheSkimm partnered with several organizations, including Vote.org and Rock The Vote, to give its audience a one-stop hub to do everything from checking registration to requesting and absentee ballot without leaving the site.

“With so much being out of our control right now, voting shouldn’t be,” said Patkin. “How can we mobilize the widest subset of voters [millennials] and make sure that they have all what they need … to cast their ballot in an informed way and with confidence?”

The same goes for Complex, which launched its voting initiative, Pull Up & Vote, on August 19. Jocelyn Carrington, director of content operations at Complex Networks, said her team is focused first and foremost on educating its readers on the importance of casting a vote, but also on the issues and the candidates in order to make an educated vote.

In 2016, Compex had its Flex The Vote Campaign, which had a heavy emphasis on encouraging people to cast a ballot. “In this election, the issues are leading the conversation,” Carrington said, and the goal has become to deliver all of the information they need on those topics to make an informed decision come election day. 

To do this, the publisher has created deep dive articles and videos on the various issues and candidates. It also tapped its research arm, Complex Connection — which surveys 30,000 of its readers to highlight the issues are that its audience is most concerned about — and found racial equality and justice, personal finances and the economy and health care to be the most pressing issues for its readers. 

Since launching this year’s Pull Up & Vote campaign, 58% of the visitors who have interacted with the voting hub on Complex have checked to make sure they are registered, while 25% have registered to vote for the very first time, according to Jonathan Hunt, evp of marketing at Complex Networks.  

Lindsey Cormack, an assistant professor of political science at the Stevens Institute of Technology, said that as the number of publishers sharing information on how to register and how to vote increases, the more likely it is that repeat readers will take the leap and actually vote. That’s because similar to advertising, the more people are exposed to a call to action, the more likely it is for them to take said action.

But while it can be incredibly effective for publishers to continually push these voting campaigns, she said that it is hard to actually measure how any one piece of content motivates a reader to vote or register. 

“Is it TheSkimm or is it the accumulation of all of the publishers’ content?” she said. “There is no evidence that [pushing this content] backfires, but it’s hard to say that any one thing flips the switch.” 

Not all publishers are building out entire hubs. Smaller integrations and partnered landing pages are also making an impact on registering people to vote.

Hearst’s Marie Claire title launched a voter registration button that’s embedded in its politically related articles on April 1. The button links to a registration landing page on Marie Claire’s website that’s uses the Rock The Vote’s registration platform. Since its launch, the button has driven over 3,000 people to register to vote, according to a company spokesperson.

Cormack also said that having the branding of a publication that readers are fans of and trust on a registration page resonates more with those audiences. “While it’s being powered by Vote.org or Rock The Vote, it’s in the visual language that someone going to [the publisher’s website] would expect,” versus sending those readers off to a government site or registration platform that they’re unfamiliar with, she said.

Meanwhile, Hearst’s Cosmopolitan brand has seen an increased level of engagement on its “Candidates Come To Cosmo” video series, which premiered in 2019 and featured editor-in-chief Jessica Pels interviewing the various Democratic presidential candidates during the primaries. The average view time of those video pages were a minute longer than on other political content it published.

But beyond brand lift metrics, there’s a larger benefit to consider.

“There is a non-functional advantage of doing this, too,” said Cormack. “If everyone is getting the message that this matters, there’s quite a social pressure around that and serves a greater purpose of voter awareness.”