Category: Data-Labor-Technology Stories

The last time NBC aired an Olympics opening ceremony, during the 2016 Summer Games in Rio, the telecast sparked a social media firestorm. Viewers objected to what seemed to be an overabundance of ads, and blasted the network for airing the ceremony on a tape-delay. As NBC Sports prepares to air the Winter Olympics opening…

In this week’s Rundown: Distributed media still isn’t pulling in big bucks for publishers, and why Vice Media’s revenue woes could be a setback for digital media hopefuls.

Promises, promises
Trade group Digital Content Next is out with its second Distributed Content Revenue Benchmark Report, examining revenue publishers are receiving from the third-party platforms they distribute their content to. It’ll come as no surprise that the amount is small — it works out to $1 million per publisher per year — but given the promises platforms have made to publishers this past year about improving monetization, it’s surprising how little that revenue has grown. The report also reinforces the different classes publishers find themselves in — most of the revenue shared with publishers is generated from video, which favors TV/cable companies, while legacy text publishers are left to feed on the scraps. But if you factor in the high cost of producing video, those numbers still aren’t particularly impressive. Where it all points is that publishers can’t ignore the platforms — audiences are there — but they can’t count on them for money. — Lucia Moses

The post The Rundown: Vice is a headwind for digital media hopefuls appeared first on Digiday.

Google and Facebook are the biggest tech companies in terms of advertising and biggest traffic sources for publishers, but they still only account for less than 5 percent of publishers’ digital revenue, a new report from publisher trade group Digital Content Next shows.

Looking just at the revenue publishers make from their distributed content, across sources like Facebook Instant Articles, Google AMP and Instagram, Google and Facebook account for about 30 percent, according to the Distributed Content Revenue Benchmark Report, which will be released Feb. 8.

The report is notable because there isn’t a lot of industry data about how much revenue publishers are getting back from the platforms they heavily lean on to distribute their content. A survey last year by WAN-IFRA members similarly found that Facebook was responsible for an average of 7 percent of digital revenue.

This is the second year DCN has done the report, and what’s significant is that the revenue publishers are taking in from third-party platforms has barely budged in a year — despite platforms’ gestures to help publishers to help them better monetize their content as the platforms, particularly Google and Facebook, tighten their grip on digital ad spending.

In the first half of 2017, publishers took in $10 million from third-party platforms, representing 16 percent of their total digital revenue. That’s nearly flat with the first half of 2016, when third-party revenue was 14 percent. That’s pocket change for Google and Facebook, which together took in more than $52 billion in digital ad revenue just in the U.S. in 2017.

“The biggest surprise is how little has changed,” DCN CEO Jason Kint said. “You’re still looking at a situation where the best in class in news and entertainment isn’t being supported in a way it should be.”

The report was based on numbers reported by 20 members of DCN, which represents 75 digital content publishers including The New York Times, ESPN and PBS. (About two-thirds of that 20 are the same as the comparative group of the earlier report, so the comparison isn’t perfect.)

The report also shows that video revenue continues to drive monetization for publishers. Video represented about 85 percent of all third-party revenue. That might seem like a vindication for publishers that have organized their businesses around video, but the reality is that most of the video dollars went to companies that were established video producers. TV/cable companies reaping a disproportionate share of third-party platform monetization and growth through OTT and syndication partners including YouTube. OTT sources like Roku and Amazon represented more than half the distributed content revenue (see chart below). Also, video is more expensive to make than text content, which makes the distributed video dollars less impressive.

For all the attention the social platforms outside of YouTube get, they accounted for a smaller chunk of the revenue. Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram represented just $2.5 million of the total $10 million in publishers’ distributed-content revenue. Facebook drove more than half of the social media revenue pie (see chart below), increasing slightly from the second half of 2016 to the first half of 2017. Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram each represented a sliver, reflecting the fact that those platforms are hard to scale and it can be labor-intensive to create content for them. Snapchat is a closed platform, and publishers have to be picked to join its publishing section, Discover.

The DCN report comes at a time of growing publisher frustration with the monetization they’re getting from the platform giants, which has led some to scale back the amount of content they distribute there and think twice about dedicating resources to make content specifically for those platforms with too little or uncertain benefits in return. They’re also facing fresh concerns with Facebook announcing in January it would show less news in the news feed.

More than the revenue share, the traffic cut will have a bigger impact on publishers, most of whom weren’t living on distributed-content revenue anyway, said Jim Spanfeller, founder of Spanfeller Media and now a consultant.

“The revenue stuff was gravy,” he said. “The traffic people get from Facebook is going to go down dramatically, which is probably the most important thing. If you get 40 percent of your traffic from Facebook and if that gets cut in half, your business is crushed. The second issue is, publishers were getting relatively cheap reach on Facebook for native content. If that costs more, that’s obviously a big issue.”

The big catch for publishers is that they have little leverage individually with the platforms and they still get a lot of audience exposure by being seen there, which makes pulling out unrealistic.

“A lot might say it’s not worth it to give up prized assets if you get such a small percent of revenue,” Kint said. “But users are going to Facebook more and more for news and information. You have to match up the interest with the value in the platforms. There’s two big gaps: Where users are going and whether content’s properly valued, and where people are going and do they trust those platforms.”

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After years of decline, the number of arrests made by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement climbed to a three-year high in fiscal 2017.

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Pixability, a platform that originated as a tool for identifying high-performing YouTube channels, is putting its money where its mouth is. The company will refund advertisers for views that run on YouTube inventory that is not brand-safe or fails to meet an advertiser’s agreed-upon brand safety terms, either through cash or TV-like “make-goods.” Although Pixability… Continue reading »

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At Crayola, the lines between paid and earned are blurring. “The interaction between friends and family is so valuable – and it just can’t be garnered from paid media,” said Marisa Scurato, who oversees the brand’s strategic digital marketing efforts. “But we do believe that those things go hand in hand.” Crayola consumers create a lot… Continue reading »

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SoftBank Group is in advanced talks to buy a stake in reinsurance giant Swiss Re that could be worth $10 billion or more, in the latest example of the Japanese conglomerate’s soaring ambitions.

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Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The Sincerest Form Of Flattery Facebook appears to be testing another Snapchat product clone, this time of Snap Maps, a mapping feature allowing users to view and share Stories posts based on location. Earlier this month, Instagram also added a carousel format tripling the… Continue reading »

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Publishers who are looking to reduce reliance on Facebook since the social network announced plans to deprioritize news are giving LinkedIn a fresh look.

LinkedIn is best known as a social network for business professionals, but even publishers beyond the business space are eyeing the platform to see where they can capitalize on it.

News UK titles The Times and Sunday Times don’t post any content to LinkedIn, but the publisher said it plans to make publishing there a bigger focus this year.

HuffPost UK is working on an editorial series of work-related videos and text articles more suited for LinkedIn. Lifestyle publisher Shortlist Media is hiring several people to focus on LinkedIn.

Shortlist Media was approached by LinkedIn in last two months to test what video content works well with audiences. LinkedIn’s U.K. team is not adverse to receiving feedback on what works, said Owen Wyatt, managing director at Shortlist Media, who meets with the platform every other week.

“When I look at all the platforms, the biggest opportunity to grow audience and revenue is LinkedIn,” Wyatt said. “LinkedIn is trying to learn with content companies.”

Publishers like the Financial Times, the Economist and CNBC in the U.S. are also testing native videos on the platform, which LinkedIn rolled out last August. The Economist’s video on artificially grown meat has generated 2,000 likes and a few dozen comments. The FT posts a weekly five-minute video on a look ahead at the week’s news and 60-second stories like Tuesday’s launch of Space X’s Falcon Heavy. Both videos have around 500 likes. CNBC International isn’t doing native video tests with LinkedIn, but video content created by the International team like this Davos explainer video, has had 500 likes and two dozen comments after being posted to CNBC’s flagship page. We asked LinkedIn to comment on its publisher approach; we’ll update this story if they respond.

Publishers are unlikely to replace lost Facebook traffic with LinkedIn, though. LinkedIn is still a tiny source of referral traffic for publishers, accounting for less than half of 1 percent of all global referral traffic, according to Parsely data. While desktop traffic was flat last year, mobile referral traffic for LinkedIn across Parsely’s publisher base more than doubled. Engagements on LinkedIn content have increased fourfold in the last two years with publishers like Forbes, the BBC, Bloomberg and Business Insider, according to NewsWhip. LinkedIn told Digiday that comments, likes and shares are up more than 60 percent year-on-year, due to product updates, new features and analytics.

LinkedIn is also taking a slow and steady approach to video, perhaps to avoid repeating the brand-safety and measurement mistakes of other platforms before it, like YouTube and Facebook. Outside of branded content, LinkedIn hasn’t said how it will monetize video content through ads, according to publishers in the U.K.

There’s also a perception among publishers that it’s harder for small media companies than for big ones to reach large audiences there, whereas Facebook was more of a level playing field.

Page-follower growth has been slow for CNBC International, despite its business and finance content having a natural place on the platform, said Cristy Garratt, head of digital video and social media at CNBC International. LinkedIn drives more meaningful traffic when CNBC International’s reporters post stories from their own profiles than when the publisher itself does.

“Engagement [on posts] is really hit or miss,” said Garratt. “LinkedIn is newer to the news-feed game, and we’ve seen improvement since it redesigned its app. Hopefully, video will be a game changer.”

 

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TD Ameritrade is letting customers initialize trades over Twitter, the latest attempt by the discount brokerage to attract digitally savvy and younger investors.