Data-Labor-Technology

Digital scale used to be the watchword at Hearst Magazines, but it’s now joining the stampede to original reporting.

Back in January 2017, only one of the company’s top 50 stories included some research or reporting or both, said Kate Lewis, svp and editorial director of Hearst Magazines Digital Media. The vast majority of those stories were quick takes, like a compilation of Twitter responses to a news event. Top performers of this ilk included ones like these on internet reaction to a photo of a snake and to a “medium rare” chicken recipe.

But Lewis found that by December that year, 28 of Hearst’s top 50 stories had research or original reporting. That held steady, with 24 of the top 50 in February having research or reporting, according to Hearst. Recent top performers included this one on a figure skater who performed to a Beyoncé medley at the Olympics as well as an oral history of “Breaking Bad.”

“That’s a real shift in terms of how we’re distributing,” Lewis said. “Our whole organization is set up to be responsive to our readers. We saw pieces that had some unique piece of info or angle performing better, no matter where it comes from.”

Five years ago, Hearst’s priority was getting its portfolio of print magazines, including Cosmopolitan, Elle and Esquire, to work together and produce more content faster. To that end, it created a centralized news desk under Lewis. The company also ramped up sharing across titles and created contributor networks. The strategy worked: From the beginning of 2014 to February of this year, traffic nearly tripled to 91 million monthly unique visitors, according to comScore.

Hearst said scale remains an important goal, and it still does quick hits that it continues to distribute in different forms tailored to the delivery platform. But the company is also looking at metrics like time spent and actions taken, like reading another article.

Along with the shift in story type, Lewis said average minutes per visitor also has grown year over year. She didn’t have a portfoliowide number, but said that most sites were up in the ballpark of Delish, Hearst’s biggest site, which grew 11 percent; and one of its smaller sites, Town & Country, which was up 53 percent. Other factors that could have driven increased time spent include more use of video, other visuals and polls in articles. Across Hearst’s network, monthly unique visitors rose to 92 million in February from 79 million a year earlier, per comScore.

(It’s worth noting that during this time, Hearst hasn’t cut its story output, which could mean people are working harder to produce more elaborate stories. No one said digital publishing was easy.)

Lewis offered a couple reasons for the shift to more substantive stories. There are more apps (Snapchat and Apple News) offering more varied ways for people to get news and information, which may be raising readers’ expectations for quality. The busy news cycle last fall, with big stories like #MeToo, natural disasters and the Las Vegas shooting, also has forced differentiation. Hearst is sending reporters to cover more events on the ground, including someone that went to South Korea to cover the Olympics for all the digital brands, said Kate Storey, digital news director at Hearst.

“There was so much happening, so we had to think really strategically because we’re not a boots-on-the-ground newsroom,” Lewis said. “There was an awareness that what we needed to go after was something different. The noise of the internet is at peak, and unique angles, original content can help break through that noise.”

Hearst joins other digital publishers in emphasizing metrics like time spent over scale as the value of digital advertising fueled by cheaply produced content has declined.

Marketers also are shifting their focus toward quality of engagement rather than quality, especially when it comes to high-consideration products, said Jeremy Tate, Boston gm of the agency DWA. “Before, it was: How much audience did I reach? How many impressions did I get? It’s not as much about tonnage anymore.”

The issue is that it’s still impossible to know if more attentive readers are necessarily going to be more valuable customers — or less valuable ones.

“I’ve been in situations where there’s a deep engagement with the publisher that doesn’t translate into engagement with marketing messages,” he said. “That’s always the risk. You find an engaged user, but you can’t get them to engage with the advertising message.”

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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 Rachel Parkin, senior vice president of strategy and sales at CafeMedia. Imagine if every impression could find its perfectly matched buyer. Demand-side platforms (DSPs) are the ultimate gatekeepers for screening inventory, but publishers only… Continue reading »

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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 John Snyder, CEO at Grapeshot. The upcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) provides impetus for brands to take a stronger hand in the stewardship of the data that will be… Continue reading »

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At the Digiday Publishing Summit last month in Vail, Colorado, we sat down with 50 publishing executives to learn how dependent they are on programmatic for their digital revenues. Learn about how you can join our exclusive research panel here, or check out our earlier research on publishers’ expectations for branded content and video advertising here.

Quick takeaways:

• A smaller percentage of U.S. publishers increased revenues from programmatic advertising than European publishers, reflecting the relative maturity of those markets.
• U.S. publishers are more likely than European publishers to get over half of their digital revenues from programmatic advertising.

There’s a lot to dislike about programmatic advertising, with some advertisers lacking faith in it due to ad fraud, poor viewability and other factors. Despite advertisers’ trepidations, publishers continue to see increases in revenues from programmatic advertising, according to Digiday’s research.

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Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Business As Usual WPP’s interim leadership is denying reports that it will break up the company as a result of CEO Martin Sorrell’s exit. “We don’t believe this makes sense,” co-Chief Operating Officer Mark Read told staff in a memo Thursday. “WPP is a… Continue reading »

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On April 22, ESPN will air a 7-minute documentary short titled “The Six Day Race: The Story of Marshall ‘Major’ Taylor” on TV. The short, which was released online on April 18, profiles the first black athlete to win a world championship in competitive cycling.

It’s also a sponsored piece, commissioned by Hennessy and co-produced by ESPN and Cycle Media as part of an original content and advertising partnership between the sports broadcaster and the publisher-agency hybrid.

“The Six Day Race” is part of Hennessy’s broader “Wild Rabbit” campaign. The brand sent out an RFP for a short film about Marshall Taylor, which ESPN and Cycle won in part due to the companies’ promise of mass reach across both TV and digital, according to a Cycle spokesperson. On TV, 2-minute cutdowns of the short will be promoted April 20 and April 21 on episodes of “SportsCenter,” followed by two broadcasts of the full documentary short on April 22 on ESPN at 3 p.m. Eastern time and ESPN2 at 11:30 p.m. Eastern time.

For ESPN and Cycle, which entered into this ongoing partnership last October, “The Six Day Race” is an example of what the companies can do together — both editorially and on behalf of advertisers. (The short has minimal branding for Hennessy, which, as presenting sponsor, only appears on the title and end cards.)

“Think of it like this: You have BuzzFeed, Vice and [other digital publishers] going out and selling digital or social branded content to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars for the last seven years,” said Jason Stein, CEO of Cycle Media. “It’s something cool and compelling that they can now bundle in when we’re both out talking to advertisers — and in the case of [‘The Six Day Race’], it’s compelling enough to run across the whole ESPN ecosystem, from digital to TV.”

“The premise going into this was that we both believe we each do things that are compelling and interesting — and in some cases, complementary,” said Ryan Spoon, svp of social content for ESPN. “There’s a lot of willingness to collaborate and just put things on paper to test and learn.”

Six months in, ESPN and Cycle say they remain committed to the deal. Cycle, which said it can have anywhere between 15 to 25 people working on the partnership depending on the day and project, typically takes the lead on content strategy and developing new ideas and formats. While ESPN does not have any staffers embedded full time inside Cycle’s Brooklyn headquarters, the companies communicate daily across creative, production and sales. ESPN generally takes the lead on sales pitches to advertisers and will bring people from Cycle’s sales team to these pitches. As for any show or video that comes out of the partnership, it typically gets distributed across both companies’ digital and social channels.

“This is not a short-term thing,” said Spoon. “We have creative and revenue goals that we want to achieve, but we also want it to have legs.”

The companies have also rolled out two digital video series: the basketball-focused talk show “Buckets” and a roundtable discussion show featuring athletes, celebrities and other sports personalities called “Last Table.”

On April 6, “Buckets” became a live show for Twitter. Hosted by ESPN’s Cassidy Hubbarth and Twitter personality Rob Perez, the show breaks down the latest news, trends and memes in basketball. It has accumulated more than 10 million views across its 10 episodes. “Last Table,” which will begin its second season in time for the NBA Finals, hit 6.4 million views during its first season, according to Cycle. For ESPN, it’s a successful start, Spoon said.

When full episodes or shorter clips were shared by the talent appearing in the episode, those videos have more than a 10 percent engagement rate, added Cycle CMO Mike Mikho. “The talent plays a significant role in the show’s distribution — they all share trailers, segment cutdowns and the full episodes,” Mikho said.

In addition to “Buckets” and “Last Table,” Stein said ESPN and Cycle have three additional shows in development, some of which will use ESPN talent and properties, and others which will be entirely new. Some of the programming will be made for ESPN’s new subscription streaming channel, ESPN+, he added.

“ESPN wanted original programming made for the internet; that is what this is,” said Stein. “It’s not for cable subscribers. It has a different point of view and a different audience than what you’re used to on TV.”

For ESPN, said Spoon, the Cycle partnership is not a response to the success rivals such as Bleacher Report have seen on distributed platforms; instead, it’s more of a test to learn more about the different types of content and formats that can work within different digital and social environments. He pointed to ESPN’s large followings on Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat as proof that the company already understands social platforms.

“We didn’t go into this partnership by saying, ‘How do we show [the latest great James] Harden shot in a different way?’ Because I think we already do that well, and we do it every day,” Spoon said. “The stuff we’re doing with Cycle is different: It’s more evergreen, more personality-driven and finding different ways to do storytelling that we might have not done previously.”

The post Inside ESPN’s content and advertising partnership with Cycle appeared first on Digiday.

Will people watch TV-like shows on Tumblr? Verizon is looking to find out, as its media arm Oath tries to establish a digital video service that can succeed where Go90 has failed.

Verizon has syndicated some of Go90’s original shows on Tumblr and is seeking new shows that would air exclusively or primarily on the microblogging platform, according to two non-Verizon media and entertainment executives.

Go90 shows first appeared on Tumblr last year when Machinima’s “Transformers: Titans Return” aired on Go90 in the U.S. and Tumblr internationally. Given that Go90 is only available in the U.S., Tumblr was expected to play a larger role in Verizon’s attempt to establish a global video service, according to a Go90 executive. An entertainment exec said Verizon is shifting its original content budgets away from Go90 toward Oath’s other brands, with Tumblr among them.

In an emailed statement, Tumblr CEO Jeff D’Onofrio said the platform’s distribution of Go90 shows coincides with a broader linking of Verizon’s and Oath’s properties. He did not address plans to secure original shows specifically for Tumblr but said that “Oath is always in talks with partners exploring unique ways to engage our audiences and advertisers.”

Verizon’s video ambitions for Tumblr appear to be on a smaller scale than worldwide domination. They seem to center on catering to the teens and 20-somethings that were once considered Tumblr’s core audience. In late March, Verizon premiered a show from AwesomenessTV, “My Dead Ex,” simultaneously on Tumblr and Go90. A few days later, at least 10 Go90 original shows appeared on Tumblr. Those shows included a half-dozen from AwesomenessTV and its millennial mom-focused brand Awestruck as well as ones from Complex, DanceOn and StyleHaul.

When StyleHaul finalized the second and third seasons of its Go90 show “Relationship Status” late last year, Verizon made clear that the company would distribute it beyond Go90, said StyleHaul’s COO Olivier Delfosse. Verizon had the rights to distribute the show across its various platforms anyway, said Delfosse, adding, “For us, the more eyeballs on the show, the better.”

It’s unclear how many viewers these shows have gotten on Tumblr and how those figures compare to Go90. According to comScore, 39.7 million people in the U.S. used Tumblr’s site or apps in March, a 12 percent decline from a year ago. StyleHaul hasn’t gotten any performance metrics, Delfosse said. A second entertainment executive, who didn’t give specifics, said that “the Oath team has had some success promoting their scripted, teen series on Tumblr, so it wouldn’t surprise me if they were leaning more into that as a distribution platform.”

Tumblr’s emergence as a potential digital video destination coincides with Verizon’s unwinding of Go90. Launched in October 2015, Go90 was Verizon’s attempt to be a mobile alternative to TV for millennials. Verizon cut lots of checks to get shows starring celebrities like NFL player Rob Gronkowski and from media companies such as BuzzFeed and Vice, but that money was unable to buy viewers’ attention.

After Verizon acquired Yahoo, established Oath and put Go90 under the media division’s umbrella last year, Go90’s future became cloudier. By December, Go90 halted spending on original programs. In February, Oath CEO Tim Armstrong cast doubt on Go90’s future as a standalone service. “The [Go90] brand will remain, I don’t know how long for, but for now, it’s remaining,” he said at Recode’s Code Media conference. He described Go90 as “a content engine, a content library” and said that content “will be redistributed inside of the super large distribution that we have.”

But Verizon is still working out how new content will be distributed. In talks with media and entertainment companies, Verizon has been pitching Tumblr as the home for new original shows. But it has wavered on whether it would be the only one, according to two media and entertainment execs that have spoken with Verizon. Sometimes Tumblr is positioned as the exclusive distribution outlet; in others, Go90 is thrown in as a supplementary option, they said.

“If [Tumblr] is going to become a well-known platform for distribution of mid-form premium content or even long-form content, I think Verizon needs to figure out how it fits into the scheme of things in their business, so they can convert their users to that use case,” said Delfosse, who said he is unaware of any plans for Tumblr-specific original shows.

Sahil Patel contributed reporting.

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Advertisers want to use location data in ad targeting, but they’re finding the coming enforcement of the General Data Protection Regulation is throwing a wrench in those plans.

In theory, the GDPR makes location data more attractive because it’s typically less personal and more generic data for targeting purposes. But complying with the requirements of the GDPR, which requires user consent, has sapped the number of suppliers. Some ad exchanges, for example, are reducing and redacting the information made available via their logs, according to three ad tech executives who spoke to Digiday. This has created a supply and demand imbalance.

From an advertiser perspective, there’s never been so much interest in leveraging consumer location information for analytics and insights, said one of the executives. But as advertisers start to ask more questions about the source of location data, they’re finding that in many instances, they can’t use those suppliers in a post-GDPR world, the source said.

The data many location companies use to build profiles is plucked from the bid requests. This can’t happen under the GDPR because those same companies haven’t gotten consent to use the data.

Some supply-side platforms are even considering stopping the flow of certain data through all bid requests, said an ad tech specialist at a publisher, who wished to remain anonymous. Between pushback from exchanges and crackdowns from supply-side platforms, Europe is looking less hospitable for location data vendors.

“As the well of indirectly sourced location data dries up in Europe, we are already seeing brands start to create their own first-party location intelligence assets via direct collection,” said Tim Norris, head of marketing tech startup mParticle’s Europe, Middle East and Africa business.

The technical issue is this: The GDPR’s requirements mean location data must be completely anonymized and made nonpersonal. For that to happen, more generalized data such as city or region must be used so that it applies to many people in that area, rather than a specific person’s residence.

And if they can’t get that data, then some ad tech firms will need to rethink their business models. This week, location data firm Verve moved to close its European and international offices. Cross-device targeter Drawbridge is also set to exit the market, though some industry observers believe the GDPR is being used as a scapegoat for broader business challenges.

The GDPR will bring a much-needed barrier to cheap location data collection and could increase the value in the data exchange model between the collector and the consumer, thanks to analytic systems and or specific software development kits, said Reza Ghaem-Maghami, global chief strategy officer at customer-relationship management agency Proximity Worldwide. This will then allow for a “deeper consumer understanding based on multiple data sources versus only where the consumer happens to be now,” Ghaem-Maghami said.

Go deeper into GDPR by downloading Digiday’s full guide including checklists, definitions and more. 

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