Author: rssmasher

The share of U.S. children living with an unmarried parent has more than doubled since 1968, jumping from 13% to 32% in 2017.

At the Digiday Retail Summit in February in Austin, Texas, we sat down with 53 retail executives to learn how they’re employing subscriptions, addressing customer loyalty and using online consumer data. Check out our earlier research on brands’ reliance on retailers here. Learn more about our upcoming events here.

Quick takeaways:

• Nearly 40 percent of retailers in Digiday’s survey said they offer a subscription service.
• Over half say it’s important to contribute to a social cause in order to build a stronger relationship with consumers.

Subscriptions are taking off for retailers looking to create new revenue streams and strengthen consumer loyalty, amid thousands of store closures. Thirty-nine percent of the retail executives in Digiday’s survey said their companies currently offer a subscription product.

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“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Samantha Cunliffe, head of client services, Australia-New Zealand, at DWA Media. Nobody can deny that advancements in algorithms, processing power and audience verification are anything short of astounding. The level at… Continue reading »

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AdExchanger: Origins AdExchanger: Crisis In Ad City (Part I) AdExchanger: Crisis In Ad City (Part II) AdExchanger: Enter Malware (Part I) AdExchanger: Enter Malware (Part II) AdExchanger: Enter Malware (Part III) AdExchanger: Enter Malware (The Conclusion) AdExchanger: Angels And Startups AdExchanger: Rumble In Arbitrage Plaza (Part I) AdExchanger: Rumble In Arbitrage Plaza (Part II) AdExchanger:… Continue reading »

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“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Caley Lewis, senior director of programmatic strategy at Bauer Xcel Media. The number of brands moving programmatic media buying in-house doubled to 35% in 2017. With brands pushing for more control and transparency, this… Continue reading »

The post A Publisher’s Perspective: Working With Brands That Take Media Buying In-House appeared first on AdExchanger.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Amazon Ad Revenue Accelerates Revenue in Amazon’s “Other” category grew 132% YoY to $2 billion this quarter, with advertising services making up a “majority” of that segment, CFO Brian Olsavsky said during the company’s earnings call Thursday. So it’s safe to say Amazon’s ad… Continue reading »

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Verdens Gang, the Schibsted-owned Norwegian tabloid, has added 20,000 subscribers since January 2017 by putting documentaries behind the paywall, bringing its total subscriber count to nearly 150,000.

VG’s premium subscription, VG+, which also offers exclusive articles and long reads, has around 400 documentaries that the tabloid’s video spinoff, VGTV, has acquired over the last five years. These include global award winners like “Searching for Sugar Man,” “Amy” and “Catfish.” An annual subscription to VG+ costs 695 Norwegian kroner a year ($87).

The publisher uses teasers to its premium subscription on the tabloid homepage. Last year, ads for “Magnus,” a film about Norwegian chess prodigy Magnus Carlsen, led to nearly 1,500 new subscribers. VG crunches user analytics to help determine how long to promote content, its placement, what content has a higher conversion to new subscribers or a higher churn rate, and engagement metrics like session length and time spent. Promotions for “Love and Sex in an Age of Pornography” and “Emma Wants to Live” both converted roughly 1,200 subscribers each.

The publisher began acquiring Norwegian rights shortly after Netflix launched in Norway, said Andreas Fay, head of acquisition at VGTV. But it’s not like the Scandinavian giant to shy away from competing with the big U.S. tech platforms. Besides Netflix, VG+ documentaries are up against Norway’s public service broadcaster, NRK, which reaches 61 percent of Norway’s population of 5 million across TV and radio, according to Reuters Institute Digital News Report.

“We saw the opportunity to take the No. 1 position of expertise as the main provider of docs,” said Fay. VGTV, which consists of roughly 65 people, experimented for years on different genres, but decided to focus on documentaries as they are a better fit for a news brand. Fay and another staffer work on acquiring documentaries, and two people work on producing VGTV’s in-house documentaries, collaborating with the VG editorial team and external partners.

VG found documentaries help with churn and frequency. The early indication, according to Fay, is that those who sign up through documentary promotions are less likely to unsubscribe than those signing up through nondocumentary promotions. Subscriber surveys backed this up.

“Documentaries definitely have some commercial value, but it also has the value of integrity,” said Fay. “We’re offering a better experience for the users in multiple formats. They work on different levels, but it’s not necessarily a cash cow, and in my opinion, it’s not meant to be.”

Norway is the world leader in getting people to pay for content, according to the Reuters Institute Digital News Report, with 40 percent of people in Norway paying for video content like Netflix in the last year. In the U.K., this figure is closer to 25 percent.

When free and ad-supported, VGTV’s documentaries averaged around 500,000 monthly started streams. While the number of started streams has dropped significantly, said Fay, the number of completed views rose.

“We have a lot of potential in the way we present content to existing users and new potential customers on all platforms,” said Fay. “We’re on Apple TV, but the experience is not yet seamless. That’s what we’re focusing on these days.”

Image: Courtesy of VGTV via Facebook.

The post How Schibsted’s Norwegian tabloid used documentaries to add 20,000 subscribers appeared first on Digiday.

Amid all the news of Facebook’s scandals, Instagram has remained relatively unscathed. In the wake of the brouhaha over Cambridge Analytica, advertisers like Mozilla declared they were pausing spend on Facebook. Elon Musk deleted his companies’ Facebook Pages. #DeleteFacebook trended. Congress hauled Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to hearings. But Instagram, an app with 800 million monthly active users (as of September) that pulled in $4.3 billion in ad revenue, according to eMarketer, was barely mentioned. The companies work similarly and share data — and Instagram itself ran 150 ads that were part of the Russian disinformation campaign — but Instagram is not seen as an enemy.

That is exactly what Facebook wants. Instagram has benefited from people often seeing it as separate from Facebook, while the app hasn’t worn out its welcome with as many people as Facebook.

“You cut slack for people when you like them. Facebook has always been the thing you love to hate. Facebook became a household utility, and people are like, ‘Yeah I don’t use Facebook,’ but Instagram is a place where you highly curate your life,” said Ian Wishingrad, founder and creative director at agency BigEyedWish.

Consumers see the obvious differences between the apps as products, but distaste with Facebook doesn’t cause the same ire toward Instagram despite the same supreme leader and back-end infrastructure. Only a “handful” of Facebook advertisers paused spending, said Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg during the company’s April 25 earnings call. Facebook and Instagram are considered connected and separate depending on the company and the marketing goal.

“From operational mechanics, [Facebook and Instagram are] considered a single platform. For marketing purposes, it is considered separately in the same way you’d evaluate any channel/media tactical mix,” said Jessica Richards, managing director of North America at Havas Media-owned agency Socialyse.

Facebook and Instagram share data, but the data privacy scare stemming from Cambridge Analytica did not ignite a #DeleteInstagram movement. Musk decided to delete Tesla’s and SpaceX’s Facebook Pages, but as he tweeted, Instagram’s “probably ok imo, so long as it stays fairly independent.” Indeed, Musk is an active user of  Instagram.

“There’s a perception that Facebook has been burning in ashes, but that Instagram is untouchable,” said Eric Schiffer, CEO of ReputationManagementConsultants.com and DigitalMarketing.com. “But I think that’s the public disconnect and even Congress’s disconnect. All it requires is one high-profile incident.”

As researcher Jonathan Albright wrote in his analysis of Russia-linked manipulation on Instagram, the service is larger (by monthly active users) than Twitter and Snapchat combined. Yet Instagram was not the brunt of Congress’ questioning this month, and advertisers did not tout decisions to pause spend on the app.

Facebook and Instagram may both be considered social networks, but the experiences are different. At the most basic level, Instagram is limited to photos and videos, while Facebook is filled with news articles and other links. On Facebook, people can easily share other’s posts for others to see in the news feed, while on Instagram, the feed is still (mostly) content directly from people that users actively choose to follow. Facebook encourages reactions, while Instagram is limited to the like. Pictures may say a lot, but how we can react to them is actually quite limited, and to the user, there’s something pure in simplicity.

“We like, love, hate, laugh at Facebook posts now — very specific emotions. On Instagram, we just like a picture. We don’t play ‘games’ or take ‘quizzes’ on Instagram,” said Janet Johnson, a social media researcher and author.

As people choose to share less on Facebook’s news feed but keep posting to Instagram Stories, Zuckerberg’s strategy to buy rivals before they gain too much power themselves has paid off. While he didn’t manage to buy out Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, Zuckerberg has Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom to make sure his company doesn’t lose teens. Facebook also bought apps MSQRD and Tbh amid their rise to popularity. Yet Instagram has kept its individual identity. Integrations in the back end for developers and advertisers keep the money flowing. But to consumers, Instagram is a brand that isn’t flooded with fake news or grandparents’ love reactions. And that benefits Facebook. 

“I think Facebook will eventually become the layer that powers the generational products people love,” said Eric Toda, director of marketing at Gap, who previously worked at Facebook on the global marketing solutions team. “Everyone should stop comparing them to ‘what’s the hot app now.’ They’ve evolved past that. I see Facebook as a holding company similar to Time Warner, Oracle or SAP. They’ll be super successful, but more of a lifeblood than a shiny face themselves.”

The post Why Instagram managed to remain unscathed amid Facebook scandals appeared first on Digiday.

Data privacy and getting compliant in time for the General Data Protection Regulation was a hotly debated topic for marketers attending the Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit Europe in Estoril, Portugal, this week.

With less than a month to go until the deadline for GDPR enforcement, uncertainty around who in the supply chain will be held responsible should regulators decide to prosecute remains top of mind. We’ve collected some of the main concerns that attendees talked about throughout the week — under condition of anonymity — to give a flavor of what execs across the digital ad industry are truly thinking.

Advertisers with GDPR jitters are a risk to everyone
“We’re hearing brands saying they may just pause spend to avoid risk.”

“They [advertisers] must understand that simply withdrawing spending is going to hurt publishers, and that means hurting the ecosystem as a whole.”

“The biggest risk at the heart of most clients’ minds is reputation risk under the GDPR.”

“I don’t think the GDPR has been invented to screw brands and ad tech companies over. It has been devised to protect private citizens. But they’re [regulators] also not interested in protecting brands.”

GDPR preparations
“There are some third-party data providers that have told me they don’t know what’s going to happen, so they’ve done nothing. That’s not good.”

“We’re a U.S. publisher and thought this wouldn’t affect us until about two weeks ago, and since then, there’s been a massive scramble.”

“A recent audit on a retailer’s site showed that 75 percent of the pixels on that retailer’s site were from external [ad tech] companies.”

“For those banking on legitimate interest, that could be the real Achilles’ heel of all this.”

“I heard an ad tech vendor say it had spent £8 million [$11 million] on getting its business GDPR-compliant, and it still [wasn’t] sure if they’d achieved it.”

“Showing you’re doing it [attempting to be compliant] is the best defense against [regulators] trying to attack you.”

“If you’re a brand [advertiser with a website], you’re a publisher, and therefore a data controller, and so liable in the same way as a [traditional] publisher.”

“Under the GDPR, the value of first-party data will go though the roof.”

Uncertainty about who is liable
“If you’re using a third-party [ad tech] provider that [says] they’re GDPR compliant, how do you then protect yourself against liability if you find out later on that they actually haven’t been compliant?”

“The IAB framework doesn’t protect publishers. As far as we can tell, we take all the risk.”

“I have no real idea what my DPO [data protection officer] is doing, and she has no idea what I’m doing, which makes me a little concerned.”

“I fear the savvy students, who by right under GDPR can claim €150 ($182) payment from us if they find their data has been used without permission.”

Download Digiday’s guide to GDPR, including research, analysis, checklists and more. 

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