Data-Labor-Technology

AdExchanger |

Data is helpful in the fight against fraud, but it’s not enough, said Martzel de Domingo, who leads user acquisition at French gaming giant Ubisoft, whose titles include “Assassin’s Creed” and “South Park: Phone Destroyer.” Fraudsters know how to hide behind the numbers. “Some people might not look to see what’s happening after an install,”… Continue reading »

The post Ubisoft On Why Devs Need More Than Data To Ferret Out Fraud appeared first on AdExchanger.

AdExchanger |

“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 James Smith, chief revenue officer at Arrivalist. Today, brands mainly use mobile location data to measure media effectiveness by aligning analysis with a specific campaign flight. They’ll look at start… Continue reading »

The post Reexamining The Lookback Window For Mobile Location Data appeared first on AdExchanger.

AdExchanger |

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Michael Weaver, senior vice president of business growth and development at Al Jazeera Media Network. Today we are living through the public costs of having a free press purpose-built to satisfy the short-term financial… Continue reading »

The post News Publishers: Resist The Perverse Financial Incentives of Content Monetization appeared first on AdExchanger.

AdExchanger |

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem… 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… Continue reading »

The post Comic: “Do you even lift test, bro?” appeared first on AdExchanger.

AdExchanger |

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. AMPed Up Google is referring a greater share of publishers’ mobile traffic than it once did. Consumers get 18% of their mobile traffic from AMP, up from 16% last year, according to a report from Chartbeat. Meanwhile, traffic from Facebook Instant Articles was down… Continue reading »

The post Google AMP Drives More Publisher Traffic; New NYT Team Will Activate Data For Brands appeared first on AdExchanger.

As American news publishers get more serious about consumer revenue, more of them have begun looking abroad.

In 2017, The New York Times grew its international digital subscriber base to more than 2.2 million, 14 percent of its total digital subscriber base, from 1.6 million (and 13 percent) the previous year. The Atlantic, just a few months into an effort to expand its audience in Canada and the U.K., saw its international subscription orders more than triple in 2017, and international subscriptions grew from 6 percent of new subscribers to 16 percent. The Washington Post, which has been trying to broaden its base internationally, quadrupled the number of international subscribers it has, and international subscribers now make up just under 10 percent of the Post’s customer base.

Most of the American publishers courting international readers are spending to bolster their editorial coverage of foreign markets. But they are also finding that robust coverage of American affairs, and American perspective, is what’s most important to subscribers in those foreign markets.

“Our global audience is not interested in another local news source,” said Jodi Rudoren, an associate managing editor at The New York Times who oversees its foreign report. “Our signature journalism is the biggest draw.”

The Trump bump that boosted the subscriber bases for many American publishers has played a role in this international growth. In an increasingly global media market, U.S. publishers can use their American perspective as a competitive advantage rather than a detriment. In effect, Trump has made the workings of Washington, in particular, even more top of mind to international audiences, though publishers cautioned that interest in the Donald was not the sole reason for their growth. “I wouldn’t overattribute the success of this to the administration,” said Miki King, vp of marketing at The Washington Post. “Even prior to the 2016 election season, we started to see an uptick in interest.”

At the same time, many publishers are bolstering their coverage in key markets to build local credibility. The Times, the Post, The Atlantic and Bloomberg have all grown editorial operations in certain target markets, including Australia, Canada and the U.K. Last year, The Atlantic assembled its first full-time international editorial staff, based in London.

Those reporters are not expected to outdo the local talent. Instead, they’re expected to produce coverage that adds value as a secondary read on the largest stories in a given market. “We’re never going to out-report Canadians on Canada,” King said. “The idea is to do what we do well, which is offer perspective.”

In some cases, they are supposed to build up readership around habit-forming lifestyle topics as well. The Times, for example, hired a food critic for its Australian bureau, who worked with food editor Sam Sifton to create food and wine packages that were seasonally appropriate for its antipodean readers.

Some of the gains from the past year came from product tweaks made to capture pent-up demand. For example, in the six months since Bloomberg put a paywall in front of Businessweek, international digital subscriptions have increased 71 percent. “The sheer act of saying this is a premium product actually works,” said M. Scott Havens, Bloomberg’s global head of digital.

But to keep subscriber growth going, some publishers think more elaborate changes will help. Though many news publishers have been wary about personalizing their sites too much, the Times’ Rudoren sees geotargeted personalization as a major opportunity.

“Every time we have a signature journalism moment, we get a massive influx of new readers. We’ve started thinking about that as a first date with those people,” she said. “I think we need to start figuring out how to personalize that experience and show them what we have to offer.”

For now, a lot of this work focuses on serving English speakers living abroad. But the Times and Bloomberg are planning to expand into different languages, albeit in different ways. Businessweek, which already publishes foreign editions in Mexico, the Middle East, Indonesia and China, is eyeing licensing partners in South America, central Europe and in the Asia-Pacific region, which will license Businessweek content and translate it.

The Times, which publishes small editions in Chinese and Spanish — around a dozen pieces per site, per day — is about to launch a collection of stories in French.

Almost all of this activity is focused on selling digital subscriptions. Though they have their share of problems — extra local taxes and duties, substantial delays between when a customer pays and when they can access the content — shifting to a digital-only product has made all this possible. “From a cost perspective, it doesn’t make a ton of sense to promote international home delivery,” King said. “The business model makes much more sense on the digital side.”

External pressure from the advertising market plays a role in this new interest as well. “It used to be that the advertising was so important that it made no sense to try and get international circulation,” said Ava Seave, a principal at media consultancy Quantum Media. “Now that advertising is so much smaller, the circulation revenue becomes more important.”

The post On the hunt for subscriber growth, US publications look abroad appeared first on Digiday.

In February 2017, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg boldly declared, “I see video as a megatrend. That’s why I’m going to keep putting video first across our family of apps.”

Facebook Watch launched in August 2017 with 30 content partners, and Facebook was reportedly willing to spend as much as $1 billion to fund original shows for Watch. Despite the massive investment, the question remains: Will Watch ever challenge YouTube’s dominance in online video? In an online survey of 43 Digiday+ members, about 1 in 5 (21 percent) thought Watch could take on YouTube.

The post Digiday Research poll: 8 in 10 don’t think Facebook Watch will challenge YouTube appeared first on Digiday.

Vans hired its first global executive creative director, Erwin Federizo, in January. The former agency executive is focused on improving Vans’ consistency on social media.

The streetwear brand is on a high, swept up in a flurry of celebrity endorsements, street-style sightings and high-end collaborators, but it’s trying to stay grounded. Federizo, for example, believes the brand’s “social voice needs to strengthen” if it is to venture into emerging markets.

A Brandwatch analysis of Twitter conversations that used one or more of Vans’ handles — @vans_66, @vansskate @vanssurf, @vansbmx66, @vanssnow or @vansgirls — between Feb. 15, 2017 and Feb. 15, 2018 revealed that 74 percent of the mentions came from the U.S. The U.K. was the next biggest market, with 3 percent of shares in the period. Twitter is banned in China, but each of the other three emerging markets Brandwatch tracked — Brazil, Mexico and Indonesia — accounted for 1 percent of shares each.

Federizo said finding ways to grow Vans’ following in emerging markets is at the top of his to-do list.

Asia, specifically China, is the growth opportunity for Vans: Sales in China rose just 9 percent year over year in its most recent quarter versus an 18 percent jump in Europe over the same period. In a market like China, where members of the younger generation are more eager to portray themselves as global citizens, Vans understands its focus on subcultures over the mainstream could be an advantage.

WeChat is Vans’ biggest social network in China and has become a staple in Vans’ marketing for most of the decade Vans has been there. Vans has had great success with publishing content on the app, said Nick Street, vp of global integrated marketing for Vans, whose team has turned photos and editorial features from events in China into magazines within the app. The brand has also bought WeChat Moments ads, which appear in a user’s feed in the app, and experimented with QR codes in the app. Street, who spent three years as Vans’ marketing boss in China, said “it’s a little easier” to gain reach there than in the U.S. and Europe.

Vans sees higher engagement on its livestreamed videos on WeChat versus those posted to other other social networks in other markets, said Street, who was unable to disclose figures by the time this story was published. He did, however, share that around 70 percent of Vans’ content on WeChat comes from its global team and therefore isn’t as localized as the output coming directly from the brand’s marketers there. Maintaining global consistency in a market like China, which has vast cultural differences from Western markets, is key to getting across the core of the brand, said Street, but it shouldn’t be at the expense of local relevancy.

The important thing the global marketing team at Vans must remember, he said, is to keep the curated content linked to the overall themes and identity of the brand. “We’re actually hearing from more followers [in China], asking that they hear more from our local creators and fellow fans in WeChat,” he said.

Less than two months into the role, Federizo described his plans beyond cracking China as “conceptual” rather than concrete. He reports to Jamie Reilly, vp of global creative at Vans, but will oversee the brand’s creative directors, who act as the day-to-day managers in a multidisciplinary team of around 30 in-house creatives. Vans has always worked this way, preferring to come up with its own creative ideas and work with agencies on a project-by-project basis.

Eventually, Federizo wants to make the brand’s products and marketing more customizable, while also developing a retail strategy that pushes stores beyond their product-focused role. The stores have become the face of Vans for many of its customers, said Federizo, who plans to bring immersive experiences around music, art, street culture and sports into those environments.

The post Inside Vans’ social media strategy appeared first on Digiday.

Facebook’s announcement about its news-feed changes in January continues to have ripple effects across the media industry. But whether this has a lasting impact on publishers’ strategies is debatable. In the latest installment of our Confessions series, where we trade anonymity for candor, we spoke to a publishing consultant specializing in social media, who advises legacy publishers in Europe. The conversation has been edited and condensed.

What are publishers saying about Facebook’s news-feed changes?
There’s a lot of shock and floundering and not knowing what to do inwardly, while outwardly, there’s a lot of posturing and big statements from publishers saying, “This is our new course of action; this is what we’re going to do.” It’s far too early to know what the path forward is. Of course, this will have an impact — we’re just not sure what.

What’s an example?
Publishers that are pulling their content from Facebook — it’s pointless, [like Brazil’s largest newspaper Folha de S.Paulo]. It’s a knee-jerk, posturing reaction. There’s an awful lot of showmanship right now. Publishers want to scare Facebook because there have been so many different gripes. Pulling content is a symbolic rather than strategic move.

What’s the problem with publishers’ response to the changes?
One major publisher said to me, “So, video is dead now. We should all forget about video because of the changes.” If you’re only making video in order to get Facebook views, then you’re doing something wrong. The smartest publishers are the ones who aren’t 100 percent sure what they are going to do, the ones that will test out 10 different new things over the next few months and see what works.

Are publishers reducing their reliance on Facebook, though?
Publishers are more cautious, but history could repeat itself. Publishers feel like they have to start a Group because Facebook has told them to. If they’re not starting these things to create value for people, they’ll be in a tricky situation down the line when they have staffed it with people, and it’s not something Facebook wants to prioritize. One legacy publisher said to me they would see if Groups make sense, and if it doesn’t, they won’t do it.

What’s the issue with Groups?
Groups are not traffic-driving. They are great if your goal is to increase hyperlocal engagement with readers, but the problem is they are not transferable: Groups don’t replace a page or a video strategy; they are not a one-to-one trade-off. If you lose 10 million views a month but you gain 10,000 comments, is that a net positive or a net negative? How do you communicate that to your higher-ups? Making a one-year detailed social media projection for benchmarking when all this change is happening is difficult, when you don’t even know if these metrics will be relevant in a year’s time.

How can publishers handle that challenge?
There’s a difference between strategy and trends or innovation. A lot of publishers have got very good at following trends and have lost track of their strategy. A publisher like Great Big Story will have an easier time navigating these changes than a generic platform-agnostic, social-only news publisher without a strong brand identity. No one wakes up in the morning and really wants to see one-minute videos on Facebook, but they do want to talk about documentaries, stories with strong characters or things they have learned.

Are publishers kidding themselves when they say the changes will ultimately be beneficial?
There’s a difference between saying, “this isn’t going to affect us” and “this is going to be good for us.” There’s a number of reasons why this will be good for publishers. For instance, having internal pressure to make content for Facebook, now there is a reason to focus on something people care about. Ultimately, anything that forces publishers to make better content will be better for readers and publishers themselves. Publishers have also remembered there’s more than Facebook out there. They are exploring YouTube, Apple News and working search engine optimization.

The post ‘There’s an awful lot of showmanship’: Confessions of a publishing consultant on Facebook’s news feed changes appeared first on Digiday.