Data-Labor-Technology

IAC rebuilt About.com and renamed it Dotdash in May. The publisher branched out to focus on six unique sites, including Verywell, The Balance, Lifewire, ThoughtCo and travel site TripSavvy.

Mobile took 54% of total digital ad revenue in the first half this year, up 22% from first-half 2016. Advertisers spent $21.7 billion on mobile during the first half of 2017 — up 40% from $15.5
billion in first-half 2016 and surpassing the $8.2 billion reported two years ago in first-half 2015.

Among the season’s biggest sellers, the multicooker is emerging as a powerhouse; these multitasking machines were top performers Thanksgiving weekend, often selling out.

Year-to-date, digital is at a 12% increase over the same period a year ago. Broadcast inched up 1%, and cable saw a 3% hike.

According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Internet Advertising Revenue Report, digital video ad spend, including mobile and desktop, rose by 36% to $5.2 billion in the first half of 2017.

Is it time to stop thinking of the Web as mobile versus desktop? It’s a sentiment I’ve heard a lot this year, and it speaks to the maturity of mobile, and our evolving conception of media
consumption. However, without such distinctions, I couldn’t clearly communicate some interesting developments. For instance, for the first time ever, we know now that video on mobile overtook
video on display.

The spot, created by Grey Group, kicks off a Pringles campaign that will run throughout 2018. The integrated marketing campaign includes PR, digital and social media.

If there was any doubt that 2018 would be another year that marketers continue to turn a blind eye to the problems of digital marketing, it’s gone now. The revelations of the last 12 months have forced chief marketing officers to care about media.

For years, concerns over ineffective ad placements had lingered in the back of marketers’ minds, mere footnotes against the unfettered growth of online media. In 2017, those concerns spilled onto the front pages of national newspapers worldwide after ads for brands such as Jaguar Land Rover and Tesco were spotted against inappropriate videos on YouTube.

At the end of a year marked by countless pivots to video with mixed results, Bustle Digital Group has no intention of becoming a “video-first” company.

Bustle Digital Group, which includes women-focused lifestyle site Bustle, mom site Romper and millennial site Elite Daily, has been building its video operation, growing its video team from eight to 24 people in 2017. It’s produced 17 video series for its own sites, social channels and digital distribution partners such as Viacom, CNBC and Facebook Watch. BDG had more than 500 million video views across platforms in 2017, up 200 percent from the previous year, the company said.

But Bustle doesn’t call itself a “video-first” company, said Kate Robinson, svp of business development for Bustle Digital Group.

“We are a digital publisher, however you want to define that,” she said. “Our editorial is our strength, and we live by that. Video is really important and absolutely complementary to all of that, but our editorial is not going to be reduced or going away to only focus on video.”

Robinson’s comments echo Bustle founder and CEO Bryan Goldberg’s comments on a recent Digiday Podcast, on which he said video staffers account for roughly 10 percent of the company.

Bustle executives see video as an enhancement to the text-based editorial content, which also means the video team does not sit in a silo by itself, but works with editors and writers, whether to create social videos for platforms such as Facebook and Instagram or to develop shows for distribution on Bustle and external platforms, said Erica Tremblay, director of video for Bustle Digital Group.

“I don’t need a team that’s alone and works in a vacuum,” said Tremblay.

Versatility is another goal of the team.

“We’re constantly working with our video team to cycle them on and off projects that are at various levels of work,” said Tremblay. “And as we’ve built the team, we’ve been looking at folks that have a blended background.”

In terms of programming, Bustle focuses on serialized fare, including shows such as “Race 2 Face” and “Romper’s Doula Diaries” for Facebook Watch, “Young Money” for CNBC’s Make It vertical and “Save the Date” for Viacom. Facebook pays Bustle to make the Watch shows, while the CNBC and Viacom partnerships are co-production deals.

“There are financial terms [to the Viacom and CNBC deals], obviously, that make them valuable,” Robinson said. “But there is also marketing upside and the brand awareness of being associated with someone like Viacom and CNBC.”

Bustle is also careful about maintaining some level of ownership of the content it makes with external partners, Robinson said. “We’re not going to be a production house where someone is going to hire me and I’m going to produce a video without my brand on it,” she said. “We want that association and to own that IP. It might be exclusive to a particular platform for a small amount of time, but the idea is we can build up a catalog that we can use later for syndication or distribution on other channels.”

While the focus is on quality programming over quantity, Bustle also produces roughly 30 to 40 social videos per month. This is necessary for daily engagement with the audience on social platforms as well as to help Bustle’s ad sales, which can go to market selling sponsorships and other packages to advertisers, according to Robinson.

Bustle’s video efforts kicked into gear in the spring when it acquired Elite Daily from the Daily Mail and hired Tremblay to head up the video department. When asked if Bustle’s video business was profitable, a spokesperson said the operation hasn’t been running long enough to fully assess how much it’s contributed to ad sales, marketing and other partnerships but that making sure it’s profitable is an important goal.

Tremblay described the approach this way: “One of the first things we jumped at doing was having a strategic distribution calendar. We know that we didn’t want to build out a team so large that it was kind of sitting too heavy at the company, but we also wanted to ensure that we are having a constant video conversation with our audience.”

Commerce has gone from a curiosity to a meaningful source of revenue for Dotdash. The service-focused publisher grew its commerce revenues from $1 million to $7 million this year, about 10 percent of its revenue. It now has three full-time editors managing 20 contributors cranking out content across a number of different verticals.

Dotdash’s interest in commerce makes sense. More than two-thirds — 71 percent — of traffic to commerce content comes from search, according to research by Narrativ, a vendor that helps publishers price products featured in their e-commerce content. And Dotdash’s years of experience in Google search — more than two-thirds of its traffic comes from search — helped the publisher get its e-commerce operations off to a fast start, leaping out to a seven-figure run rate within months of its launch.

Dotdash CEO Neil Vogel said commerce will account for about 10 percent of Dotdash’s revenue this year. He predicted that next year, its growth will outpace the growth of its advertising revenue, which is up 40 percent year over year in the fourth quarter so far, to $20 million. At the start of this year, most of the commerce revenue came from Lifewire, Dotdash’s tech site, which has accounted for as much as 70 percent of Dotdash’s commerce revenue.

But the affiliate commissions on consumer electronics are often just 2 or 3 percent, so Dotdash has focused on publishing more posts about items that command higher commissions. Dwyer Frame, a veteran from Time Inc., came aboard in September to oversee lifestyle-focused commerce content that can live on The Spruce, Dotdash’s home-focused title, or ThoughtCo, its site for education and learning. Dotdash also earns commerce revenue from lead generation campaigns it runs for travel companies through TripSavvy, its travel-focused site, and for financial services companies on The Balance, Dotdash’s personal finance site.

Today, Vogel said, Lifewire accounts for 40 percent of its commerce revenue. The Spruce now accounts for another 40 percent, with Dotdash’s other verticals accounting for the rest.

Some commissions, particularly for credit cards, can be substantial. But Vogel stressed that the commerce strategy for Dotdash’s sites is driven more by what its audience is searching for, rather than items that offer the biggest payouts. “We get cues from our audience on what commerce things to write about,” he said.

Like other commerce publishers, a lot of Dotdash’s commerce revenues come from Amazon, but it’s made deals with some other retailers, including Google, on things like sponsored gift guides. It has focused on working with retailers that deliver a good experience and convert a healthy amount of visitors to purchase. “We’re trying to focus on lifetime value, not the value of that transaction,” said Tory Brangham, Dotdash’s vp of e-commerce.