Month: January 2021

While the survey touched on several topics, the bulk of it focused on publisher revenue streams, both as they exist now and where they fit into respondents’ plans for 2021. Respondents were asked to choose from a list of six responses to describe how focused they were on building out a particular revenue stream over the next six months, ranging from “not focused at all” to “a very large focus.”

After a year that challenged almost every facet of most publishers’ businesses, publishers enter 2021 with a list of priorities that is largely unchanged from last year’s.

Direct-sold advertising and subscriptions, the two top priorities among respondents to last year’s version of this survey, again topped lists this year, with 56% of respondents saying growing their direct-sold business was at least a “large focus” for this year; 46% said the same about growing subscriptions.

But further down the list of priorities, however, evidence of coronavirus’s lingering effects can be found. The effect on events is most obvious, with the percentage of publishers who said events would be a large focus in the first half of 2021 at 17%, down from 32% the previous year.

Similarly, advertisers’ interest in campaigns with shorter turnaround times has made branded content less of a focus. Going into 2020, nearly three quarters of survey respondents said branded content growth was at least a moderate focus; going into 2021, fewer than two thirds of respondents said it was a moderate focus.

Conversely, video advertising showed a large jump in interest. Forty-one percent of 2021 respondents called it at least a large focus, compared to 26% of 2020 respondents.

Interest in affiliate commerce, despite the banner year of growth it delivered for several publishers, was slightly down, dropping from at least moderate focus for 39% of respondents in the 2020 survey to 36% of respondents to 2021’s.

Taken in total, publishers appear to largely be shifting their attention away from anything that does not have traction in their own businesses. When the survey’s responses were given numerical value, with 0 representing “not a focus” and 5 representing “a very large focus,” the weighted averages for almost every option were down this year.

Just one choice on the 2021 survey — direct-sold ads — recorded a weighted average greater than 3, and four choices recorded weighted averages lower than 2.

Ekstra Bladet, Denmark’s biggest news site with 500 million page views per month, reached this pinch point three weeks ago. The publisher said goodbye to Google Analytics in favor of a homegrown alternative called Longboat and hasn’t looked back. And while it’s too early to call the switch an outright success, there’s always an upside to having more influence over data, especially for publishers. 

No Google Analytics means no middleman between Ekstra Bladet and data from its site, whether its views or subscription conversions. The two-sentence summary of this dynamic’s net effect is this: Ekstra Bladet is now in full control of the entire data flow around its site, meaning execs can wrangle it all much easier. The days of struggling to get Google Analytics to play nice with its own proprietary tools should be long gone — in theory at least. Google did not respond to a request for comment by deadline.

Not only can the publisher get this data faster from its own platform, but it can also access more of it. It took minutes to get the 30 million or so data points Google Analytics tracked daily, whereas now it takes seconds to get up to 137 million data points, said Thomas Lue Lytzen, head of product development and insights for ad sales and tech at Ekstra Bladet’s owner JP/Politikens. 

“We need near real-time data to support not only our commercial team’s plan for better targeting on the site, but also the editorial team’s efforts to react to trending news faster,” said Lue Lytzen. “But we had to take ownership of the data collection ourselves to get to this point.”

Advertisers are taking notice, and comfort in, how much control Ekstra Bladet now has over its data at a time when data provenance is table stakes for many businesses. In other words, Ekstra Bladet execs can vouch for how all its audiences and contextual segments are being built. 

This is hard to do with full confidence when that data comes from a middleman like Google. Consider it a sort of liability comfort blanket for the General Data Protection Regulation age: reassurance that whatever happens to the data, it is on the publisher’s watch.

“Having full ownership over our data is giving us leverage with major advertisers who like the fact that we’re not reliant on another vendor when it comes to our web analytics and can offer complete transparency,” said Lue Lytzen. 

Plans are already underway to make this data more accessible, especially to ad tech vendors. Moving forward, audience data from Ekstra Bladet’s proprietary data platform Relevance will be shared directly with Adform’s programmatic bidding technology. From there, the ad tech vendor can add this data into bidding strategies for advertisers looking to buy inventory from the open marketplace. Previously, these sorts of deals had to be done via very clunky, direct deals and weren’t automated. 

“The next challenge will be how to maintain control of that data in advertising and use it in a way which respects the audience and improves the engagement between the user and the advertiser within the publisher’s environment and context, without handing it over to intermediaries and falling into the trap of commoditization again, just without Google,” said Alessandro De Zanche, founder of media consultancy ADZ Strategies.

It may only be weeks into Ekstra Bladet’s life without Google Analytics, but it’s been years in the making. In fact, the plan can be traced back to 2019 when the publisher launched Relevance, which was launched as a way for advertisers to run campaigns on the site with first-party data. It’s harder to do that when the tech processing the data isn’t the same as the one collecting it, said Lue Lytzen. 

“We couldn’t use Google to do some of the data collection from the site and then put it all into a homegrown system,” he said. “Even though we were able to shut down the transmission of data to Google Analytics, you never really know what’s being done to it behind your back.”

Still, it’s not the first time nor a publisher has tried to wrestle some control of their commercial model away from google. Nor will it be the last. Two years ago, German media business Axel Springer completed a year-long transition of its ad tech stack from google to AppNexus. In doing so, a senior exec from the publisher said he hoped the move showed others that “there is some life and independence around Google technology”.

Doing so, however, is easier said than done. Google’s platform is easy to enter, but hard to leave. It works essentially like a plug and play system that businesses have gotten used to over the years. There are early signs of more concerted attempts from publishers to be less reliant on Google’s ad tech. However, this is not a small endeavor and will require significant investment. 

“In the U.S. especially we are starting to see a movement away from Google Analytics with customers taking their own log-level data and using cloud-based architecture to build their own analytics,” said Canton Marketing Solutions founder Nick King, who previously worked for publishers including News U.K. and Future Publishing. “Obviously, there is also a huge amount of change coming within the Google ecosystem and it will be interesting to see how Google Analytics plugs into Google Identity and in general how it treats analytics over the next few years.”

A second media executive said their company is also dealing with this dilemma. “The question is why there’s still a disparity in terms of audience attention and media investment in social video. The answer is advertisers can buy platform-direct,” said this executive.

It’s not that advertisers are uninterested in media companies’ platform video inventory. It’s that advertisers are more comfortable buying that inventory from the platforms themselves. The reason for that largely comes down to the simplicity of managing their campaigns when the campaigns’ aims are to reach as many people in a given audience segment as possible. 

Obtaining mass reach “is becoming more and more difficult as more and more fragmentation happens. And [mass reach] is really needed for upper-funnel brand campaigns, which have taken a backseat in recent years to performance [campaigns],” said one agency executive.

Advertisers prefer the ease of consolidating their ad buys with a smaller number of ad sellers versus the work of stitching together deals with a larger number of ad sellers to reach the same number of people. Also, advertisers continue to be concerned about overexposing people to their ads. Maintaining their ad buys at the platform level means that the platform can make sure someone is not shown an advertiser’s ad too many times no matter which channels that person checks out.

Another obstacle for media companies is getting in front of the right buyer. “From an agency perspective, sometimes it’s like ‘I don’t cover YouTube, that’s a different team,’” said the first media executive.

Despite the obstacles, there are opportunities for media companies to get advertisers to buy their platform video inventory directly instead of, or at least in addition to, the platforms. For starters, the platforms are largely limited to selling traditional ad placements, like pre-roll and mid-roll slots, whereas media companies can package their inventory with sponsorship and branded content deals.

Furthermore, for as much as advertisers want to consolidate who they’re buying from, they also want to know what they’re buying, and that level of transparency can be lacking when buying from platforms that aggregate inventory across various media companies. A third media executive likened the platforms’ aggregated inventory to sausage. As an advertiser, “you have to get comfortable with the fact that, if you’re buying sausage, there’s going to be a lot of fat and gristle in there,” this executive said.

Confessional

“Luckily we were able to capture everything by the second week of December. We were on schedule, and everything was great. Now it’s a little bit of a scramble to get the pipeline back in order.”

— Media executive on rebounding from LA’s most recent production shutdown

Stay tuned: Olympics 202-when?

The International Olympic Committee and the Japanese government have denied a report that this summer’s Tokyo Olympics could be canceled. Nonetheless, there continues to be a question mark over whether circumstances could change. The number of new coronavirus cases in Japan has spiked in January, and the country is not slated to start vaccinating its citizens until late February.

Japan and the IOC did not announce the postponement of last year’s Olympics until late March, so there appears to be plenty of time for the situation in Japan to improve or worsen (or both). Given that, Olympic ad buyers don’t seem all that anxious at the moment. “Let’s get through the Super Bowl first,” quipped one agency executive.

On the other hand, there is a lot of money riding on the Olympics happening this year. NBCUniversal had sold $1.25 billion worth of national ad inventory for last year’s Olympics before the event was pushed to 2021. A majority of that money likely stayed put, with advertisers holding on to that inventory. But if the Games are not just postponed but canceled, NBCUniversal would likely need to release that money back to advertisers. The already tight TV and streaming ad markets make it hard to see how the media conglomerate could come up with enough new impressions to fulfill that demand.

As Havas Media svp of strategic investments Jeff Gagne said last year before the 2020 Olympics were postponed, “There is no contingency plan for the Olympics. It’s too big.”

Numbers don’t lie

62%: Share of Apple TV+ subscribers that are not actually paying for Apple’s streaming service.

$47: Amount of money that the average U.S. household spends on streaming service subscription each month.

27%: Increase in the NBA’s TV viewership this season compared to the start of the 2019-20 season.

Trend watch: TV’s tight ad market

The TV ad market typically loosens up around Christmas and remains lax through the early part of the first quarter. But now it is expected to tighten back up, which is typical for this time of year. However, “we’re expecting it to be much tighter as the year moves on,” said Brad Geving, vp of media at TV ad buying firm Tatari.

In addition to linear TV viewership declines curtailing the amount of available inventory, traditional TV advertisers that pulled back ad dollars in 2020, like airline and hotel brands, are expected to start spending again as the coronavirus vaccine becomes more widely available. Those advertisers are likely to put that money toward TV to make as many people as possible aware that they are open for business.

That anticipated influx of additional demand for a shrinking inventory supply means that Tatari is looking to lock up TV ad slots way further ahead of time than they typically do. Normally, Tatari may place TV ad buys three to four months in the future. “This year, we’re looking ahead into Q2 and even Q3, so six to seven months in advance,” Geving said.

What we’ve covered

How NBC News is making ‘many millions’ of dollars on YouTube after adjusting its strategy:

• In 2020, YouTube became central to NBC News’s video strategy.
• The news organization is uploading full episodes of TV shows like “NBC Nightly News,” which averaged 1.6 million viewers per episode on YouTube last year.

Read more about NBC News here.

Confessions of a producer on in-person shoots:

• A coordinating producer at a digital media company discussed directing in-person videos shoots during the pandemic.
• While most shoots remain remote, this person works on one or two in-person shoots per month now.

Read more about in-person shoots here.

As social platforms begin Black creator programs, critics say they need to do more:

• Facebook, YouTube and TikTok have launched programs to support Black creators.
• However, Black creators believe the platforms’ algorithms make their content hard to find.

Read more about platforms’ Black creator programs here.

What we’re reading

Streamers’ subscription churn:
Streaming services are having a harder time hanging on to paying subscribers, according to the Los Angeles Times. Nearly half of people surveyed by Deloitte said they have canceled at least one streaming service between April and October, compared to 20% of people surveyed in January who said they had canceled a streaming subscription in 2019. However, in a separate survey by JD Power, 50% of respondents said their households subscribe to at least four streamers. Taken together, the issue doesn’t seem to be that people are permanently trimming their personal streaming bundles but instead are somewhat regularly swapping out streaming subscriptions based on programming availabilities. That would explain why Netflix has lined up a new movie to premiere every week in 2021. The streaming wars are becoming a fight for retention.

Netflix’s financial stability:
Netflix has reached the point where it doesn’t need to raise outside money to finance its business, according to CNBC. That’s a major milestone for the company. The dominant streaming service reached that position, in part, by taking on debt to build up its original programming library and not only head off potential rivals but get so far ahead that all comers are effectively competing for the No. 2 streamer spot. It worked. And now Netflix appears to have addressed the one potential hitch in its plan: for how long will it be able to continue taking on debt? Now, with others including Disney, WarnerMedia and NBCUniversal taking losses in order to take on Netflix, the question becomes how much farther ahead can Netflix get before anyone else has a reasonable shot of catching up?

NBCUniversal’s cable network culling:
NBCUniversal will shut down its sports TV network NBCSN by the end of this year and redirect some of its programming to USA Network and Peacock, according to The New York Times. The news follows a report by The Wall Street Journal last year that the media conglomerate was looking to shed some of its cable TV networks as part of its shift to streaming. The fact, though, that NBCUniversal is moving so quickly to get rid of NBCSN — which airs NHL games and NASCAR races and pulls $380 million in revenue before advertising — is surprising, the high cost of sports rights notwithstanding. At least, surprising to someone who’s still used to TV companies slow-rolling their streaming shifts. The NBCSN shutdown is not on the level of WarnerMedia releasing every Warner Bros. movie on HBO Max or Disney phasing out its Netflix licensing deals, but it’s in the ballpark.

The latest update is FLEDGE.

What is it?

FLEDGE puts into practice an earlier Google-led cookie replacement method called TURTELDOVE. It operates by making ad auction decisions in the browser itself, rather than at the ad server level. FLEDGE stands for “First Locally-Executed Decision over Groups Experiment.”

Put simply, the idea is to help protect user privacy by limiting the amount of data flowing around ad systems and bidstreams. If ad bid and targeting decisions happen at the browser and device level, there will be less user data to siphon off for building user profiles, the argument goes.

FLEDGE incorporates ideas from other ad tech firms, according to Google. In a blog post mentioning the update, the company named Criteo, NextRoll, Magnite and RTB House as collaborators.

Criteo’s senior analytics and product manager Arnaud Blanchard told Digiday the company has had a team dedicated to participating in the Google-led process for the past year. “Early on, Criteo recognized the importance of being involved in the Privacy Sandbox and making sure we had a part in defining what the future may look like for cohort advertising on Google,” he said.

What’s new about FLEDGE?

At this point, it’s not clear what a trusted server is or whether Google or some other entity would control one.

Chetna Bindra, Google’s group product manager of user trust and privacy told Digiday criteria for what makes a server trustworthy will be hashed out with others participants contributing to the Privacy Sandbox project.

What makes a server trustworthy anyway?

It may be that a trusted server is controlled by an independent third-party, or that it involves code audits or specific security methods, said Bindra. “The goal of the discussions in open forums including the W3C [Worldwide Web Consortium] is to collaboratively explore various qualities that would make up a trusted server, including potential requirements,” she said.

Of course, advertisers, publishers and ad tech firms cringe at the notion of Google controlling more of the ad process inside its own browser. One of Criteo’s proposals is to set up an “independent gatekeeper” such as a cloud service provider or server side platform to “provide people more control and transparency,” said Blanchard.

OK, so the industry is in total agreement on a cookie replacement, right?

No, not even close.

Although engineers from some ad tech firms are contributing to the project through a Worldwide Web Consortium forum set up by Google, many in the industry see it as yet another way for Google to control the data and tech that undergird the digital ad industry it helped create.

“By definition, this isn’t an industry standards group,” said Alan Chapell, president of privacy law firm Chapell and Associates, regarding the Privacy Sandbox effort.

Keep in mind that Apple, which makes the second-most-used browser, is not really involved in this Google-led Privacy Sandbox effort. Apple, of course, is on its own solitary crusade against third-party cookies and other cross-site tracking techniques.

Whatever Google and others settle on for tracking in the open web, it is unclear whether it would be accepted by Apple’s Safari browser.

So, what other cookie replacement stuff is happening then?

Not only are these Google-led methods not ready for prime time, this is just one of many approaches for replacing third-party cookies.

Some advertisers and publishers are moving toward first-party data identification services from LiveRamp, Neustar and others.

Then there’s the Partnership for Responsible Addressable Media, another industry collaboration for devising a universal ID standard. PRAM includes big name ad tech players such as MediaMath and the Trade Desk along with the biggest industry associations including the 4A’s, ANA and IAB.

What’s Next for FLEDGE?

Google Chrome will allow ad tech firms to test FLEDGE later this year. The company also plans to make another related sandbox toy which enables personalized ad targeting to groups or cohorts —FloC — (Federated Learning of Cohorts ) available for public testing in March. Google Ads advertisers will get first crack at FloC in second quarter.

The price of the deal was not disclosed, but some key details:

• Revue will remain a separate brand, but Twitter will provide the resources to make Revue more competitive with other newsletter platforms; the commission Revue takes on all consumer revenue has been reduced to 5%, half of what Substack charges. All of the Pro features for Revue will be freely available to all Revue users as well. Twitter will also help Revue hire more people across research, design and engineering.

• Twitter also said it is considering ways to integrate Revue more tightly into its own product, including newsletter signups inside Twitter and private chats between newsletter authors and their subscribers using the platform.

• Though Substack got most of the recent headlines in the newsletter space, Revue had found traction serving both individual creators as well as larger publications, ranging from Vox Media and the Markup.

• Twitter would not say how many users or subscribers Revue has. When Revue first launched its subscriptions feature in 2018, its users had acquired about 30,000 readers, 2,000 of whom were paying. Casey Newton, the author of Platformer, had amassed 20,000 subscribers using Revue before he left Vox Media and brought his subscribers with him to Substack.

A first step toward consumer revenue for Twitter
Upon closer inspection, Twitter’s move into newsletters is unsurprising. The platform publicly indicated late last year that it would begin pursuing consumer revenue, and while many people presumed that meant something like an ad-free experience, direct connection with the audience and the platform’s biggest users makes more sense.

And while Twitter doesn’t have the same surreal user scale as Facebook or YouTube, it does have a critical mass of writers and thinkers using its platform. For a time, Substack would use Twitter to identify possible Substack recruits, in part by measuring the amount of retweets, likes and replies that prospects’ Twitter content got. (Per the reference in the lead, the sum of those engagements was used to calculate score, named after a former employee named Nathan Baschez.)

Working backwards
Adding newsletters makes sense because, as Twitter has expanded beyond its original 140-character strictures, it has grown into a kind of thought leadership platform where people will go off on lengthy discursions on everything from the news to personal histories.

“There’s a reason people are posting all these god-awful threads,” said Jacob Donnelly, the gm of Morning Brew’s B2B business and the owner of A Media Operator, a newsletter that, until recently, operated on Substack.“You can use them to build an audience, but then you need a place to port them over to.

“Most of these companies are building product first and figuring out how to get audience on top,” Donnelly added. “Twitter already has the audience, and it can figure out what its biggest creators would benefit from.”

Bells and whistles
Figuring out and adding those benefits quickly will be important. As the newsletter space grows more crowded, the competing platforms are augmenting their offerings to keep (or retain) authors.

Some of the additions come in the form of services, such as the legal defense fund Substack opened up to all its authors last summer. Others are more strictly monetary: Forbes’s newsletter program, announced earlier this month, will pay a salary and benefits to people using its newsletter platform, plus a cut of any ad revenue each newsletter drives.

LinkedIn is busy developing its own newsletter tools as well.

A fight over valuable turf
The fight over newsletters has ratcheted up because the rest of the media world is starting to understand the value of a direct connection in an environment where users are engaged and less distracted: Research conducted three years ago by Adobe found that the average person spends over five hours per work day engaging with their inbox, a figure that, in our current work from home moment, figures to have only gone up.

“It’s more validation for what we’ve been saying at LiveIntent over the last 12 years,” said Kerel Cooper, the CMO of LiveIntent, an email monetization platform.