Author: rssmasher

Major U.S. news sites including the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune are still blocking European visitors more than a month after the enforcement of the General Data Protection Regulation.

Chicago Tribune parent Tronc started blocking EU visitors after May 25, when GDPR took effect. The regulation requires businesses to seek site visitors’ consent to collect personal data from them that could be used, in the case of publishers and marketers, for ad targeting.

“We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism,” a message on the L.A. Times homepage reads to visitors it detects as being from the EU.

Lee Enterprises, The Dallas Morning News and local news network Patch are also blocking EU visitors.

“Our site is unavailable to European Union visitors while we work with our partners to ensure your data is protected,” reads a message on The Dallas Morning News site.

Other sites including USA Today are showing EU visitors nontargeted ads. Meredith and The Washington Post are asking EU visitors to agree to new terms to access the site (with the Post even upselling them to an ad-free version of the site).

Entertainment news site Topix is blocking EU visitors from the news and forum parts of its site, which it judged to be especially vulnerable to GDPR, CEO Chris Tolles said. For everything else, Topix is running nontargeted ads to the EU, which makes up just a few percentage points of his traffic, he said.

“Right now, I just don’t understand what my risks are,” he said. “It just behooved me to wait till the regulators figure out what to do. Europe isn’t a big-enough market.”

Tronc expects to reopen its sites to EU traffic in the coming months, a source there said.

Given their limited EU audience, it makes sense for these publishers to be cautious, said Chris Olson, CEO of The Media Trust, which helps publishers keep track of user data that’s collected on their sites.

“They don’t want to lose their EU audiences, but they also want to avoid the risk of infringing the GDPR and paying 4 percent of their global revenue, especially in cases where EU revenue fails to justify that risk.”

Chris Pedigo, svp of government affairs at Digital Content Next, a trade association for digital publishers, said it’s still unclear which tech solutions for gathering and storing consent data are fine-proof, and for sites that don’t get much traffic from the EU, it’s not worth the hassle to evaluate all the options and risk choosing one that has weaknesses. Publishers are also waiting to see how regulators will enforce the law, and with European summer vacation season around the corner, no one expects that to start until at least September.

The fact that online privacy is gaining steam is, maybe ironically, another reason for publishers like these to take a wait-and-see approach. In addition to GDPR, there’s its companion ePrivacy Regulation, which protects the privacy of online communications; and more relevant to U.S. companies, California’s just-passed online privacy law, which could become the default for the U.S. It doesn’t make sense for publishers to get compliant with one set of rules, only to have to redo the process in a few months. This may be a case where there’s little advantage to being first.

“Attorneys are advising them: ‘You don’t want to be an outlier. You want to be right in the middle,’” Pedigo said.

As for publishers that are already GDPR-compliant, they are also talking about how to turn the privacy demand to their financial advantage, a la The Washington Post, said Brian Kane, COO of Sourcepoint, which has a consent management platform that helps publishers comply with the GDPR.

“It comes down to, every dollar counts and if there’s a way to marry GDPR with some ad monetization, some publishers are leaning into that,” he said. “Every conversation we have, it starts with content and moves to monetization.”

The post US sites continue to block European visitors post-GDPR appeared first on Digiday.

Joe Media, which initially grew a following through its coverage of football and other sports, is using podcasts to break into business and entrepreneurship coverage for younger people.

The publisher launched its first podcast in October, an hourlong weekly interview format, “Unfiltered with James O’Brien.” The podcast has had 3 million downloads since launch and an average listen length of 82 percent, roughly 50 minutes, according to the publisher.

According to Joe Media, it plans to launch a business-focused podcast in July as a one-to-one interview format. Each episode aims to get inside the minds of Britain’s entrepreneurs from different sectors, telling their stories of how they found success.

“We think there’s a huge gap in the podcast market for a show like this that appeals to a younger, switched-on, success-hungry but socially, economically and environmentally conscious demographic,” said Rebecca Fennelly, head of brand at Joe Media. “There’s a way to talk about entrepreneurship that’s not a hoity-toity business show.”

Joe Media has invested £1 million ($1.3 million) in audio across equipment, its team and building its third studio in London. Its other two studios are in Manchester and Dublin. The podcast team is led by former BBC deputy editor Simon Clancy, who joined Joe Media as head of audio in May this year. The team has grown from two to eight people since October, and the company plans to hire more.

Last week, Joe Media released its second podcast, “Boys Don’t Cry,” a 40-minute show hosted by comedian Russell Kane, that discusses topics that largely remain taboo with three guests each week. Fennelly said “Boys Don’t Cry” appeared on the iTunes top 10 podcast chart before the release of the first episode, which launched June 28. A football podcast is also planned for July.

“Humor is at the center of what we do,” said Fennelly. “Podcasts are genuinely immersive storytelling experiences. We’re telling stories that everyone wants to hear — like [food writer] Jack Monroe on poverty and class [on ‘Unfiltered with James O’Brien’] — but we don’t want to go the obvious route. We have to go beyond that.”

Other guests on “Unfiltered with James O’Brien” include Parliament member David Lammy talking about Brexit, social activist Nimco Ali on female genital mutilation and former footballer Gary Lineker on the refugee crisis.

Success with previous podcasts featuring key talent is one thing. Translating that to areas that already have a lot of podcasts will take more work in carving out a distinctive editorial tone, said Steve Ackerman, managing director of media production company Somethin’ Else.

“There are very many successful football podcasts, like ‘Totally Football’ and ‘Guardian Football [Weekly],’” he said. “While ‘Unfiltered’ is a success, it’s a brand-building exercise for Joe and does a job for raising James O Brien’s profile.”

Off the back of “Unfiltered,” brands have been approaching Joe Media to discuss partnerships, said Fennelly, although the publisher is discerning about how it integrates with brands.

“Podcasts are a cool place for brands, but we have to be careful and picky about who we work with,” she said. “We want to find the right partner. If have to wait, we’ll wait. We’ll build the momentum rather than wait to have commercial backing.”

Ackerman said it’s possible for publishers to make six figures and upward sums for successful shows. “[Podcast advertising] is no longer just the preserve of mattresses, razors and website companies,” said Joe Copeman, U.K. country manager at podcast platform Acast. “As more and more diverse podcast content is being produced, we’re seeing a wealth of advertisers — from food to auto brands, banks to tourism bodies, arts organizations to record labels — enter the fray.” The number of brands that Acast works with has grown by 77 percent year over year, he said.

Joe Media said “Unfiltered” has also aided the growth of new, older audiences, typically female and over 35. This has occurred partly through distributing video and audio clips that are usually under two minutes on Facebook and Twitter to drive downloads, like this clip of Rugby World Cup referee Nigel Owens on accepting being gay and this one of Gary Lineker discussing why footballers shouldn’t be abused for their high wages.

The post With 3 million downloads, Joe Media expands podcast slate to cover business appeared first on Digiday.

Publishers have shifted from building scalable audiences to seeking consumer loyalty in the pursuit of non-advertising revenue streams, and they’re trying to convert that consumer loyalty into consumer revenue.

For publishers like Clique and PopSugar, commerce revenue has become increasingly important, with over 40 percent of publishers previously surveyed by Digiday relying on e-commerce as a revenue source. If publishers want sustainable non-affiliate commerce operations, then developing shopper loyalty among their customers is critical. According to a survey of 53 publishers at the Digiday Hot Topic: Commerce for Publishers event, 77 percent said it’s important for publishers to develop shopper loyalty. (This survey did not count subscriptions as a component of shopper loyalty.)

The post Digiday Research: Publisher commerce strategies suffer from lack of loyalty appeared first on Digiday.

The post Short is sweet: The effectiveness of 6-second ads appeared first on Digiday.

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