According to the cliché: Content is king. Yet while an ever-expanding cadre of “content companies” such as Netflix, Spotify, and Apple are profiting mightily, newspapers continue to struggle. MECLABS Institute surveyed 900 people who earn at least $40,000 and spend at least three hours a week consuming print or digital news to explore what newspaper publishers can do to transform their customer experience in order to profit from consumers’ growing hunger for digital content experiences. Using the results of this survey as well as expert interviews, the report provides insights in how to increase the probability of converting the many readers who are open, but have not yet committed, to digital subscription news products.
The report, Newspaper Paywalls and Digital Subscriptions, is part of of the MECLABS Institute Executive Series. The Newspaper Paywalls and Digital Subscriptions report offers four key insights, which are explored in depth:
Key insight #1: Because digital subscriptions lack a perceived product-level value proposition, consumers have commoditized digital news content
The reason most readers do not purchase a digital news subscription is not because they do not understand the value of your content, but rather, they do not yet understand the value of a digital subscription.
Key insight #2: News consumers have been conditioned to expect a seamless digital experience
Poor user interface design and user experience may be negatively impacting the perception of your digital subscription.
Key insight #3: Exclusive content is the primary motivation for subscribers
Subscribers are motivated most by exclusive content—like arts/culture and local news—rather than other kinds of news topics.
Key insight #4: Customers are waiting for you to ask them to engage
Customers are more willing to engage with newspapers than you might think
Consumers’ frustration with paywall usability and advertising
Nearly three-quarters (72%) of adult smartphone owners in the U.S. reported that they still get their news and information frequently or very frequently from at least one traditional source like the television news or the printed newspapers.
The latest 2015 RJI Mobile Media News Consumption Survey also reported the local television news as the most popular “old” media source with more than half (55%) of smartphone respondents saying they frequently or very frequently used in the past week. Network television news ranked second at 49%, followed by printed local newspapers at 36%. While the percentages of each “old” media source varied, usage of at least one “old” media source was relatively consistent across all demographics:
67% of adults 18-24;
75% of adults
69% of adults 35-44, 79% of adults 45-54;
69% of adults 55-64; and
70% of adults 65 plus used at least one “old” media source.
Additionally, just under one-third (33%) of adult smartphone owners said they had followed news stories frequently or very frequently on their smartphones in the past seven days. Smartphone owners are also actively engaged in social networking. In fact, 49% reported they interacted on social media platforms and 24% stated they shared news stories using their smartphones.
The report provides a good understanding of consumer preference and the power of a multi-platform news operation, offering both quality news and information and the ability for a more dynamic interaction.
It’s no secret that investment in TV advertising is declining, with brands allocating more dollars to digital ad spend. This represents a huge opportunity for digital media. Marketers are looking to re-allocate ad spend, set a cross-platform strategy, and re-purpose video content online.
Linear TV ad spending is projected at $66 billion in 2016 – but $1.5 billion already shifted from TV to digital in 2015. While this amounts to less than 3% of the total $66B spend, this is still a huge amount in absolute dollars. This is not a new trend by any means, but one that continues to build momentum. Importantly, most of the beneficiaries are relative newcomers to video (think YouTube).
Here are some factors that are leading to this shift:
Changing media consumption habits: Consumers are increasingly spending time online, away from their television set. And even those watching video online are not watching in the same way. For example, instead of tuning in to linear TV, audiences are watching some of the most popular shows in one sitting (thanks to streaming services like Netflix and Hulu) or skipping traditional shows entirely, making a good business for alternatives like Twitch.
Appealing video content online. There are many examples of success in video, but YouTube stands above all. After only 10 years in business, YouTube is now believed to earn more than $7 billion in annual revenue. Despite some criticism of its “less-professional” content, YouTube is every bit a competitor to broadcast TV.
Here at MediaRadar we’ve recently added TV ad intelligence into our platform. We took a close look at the data to understand the opportunities outside of traditional TV and video streaming sites.
Here are three discoveries:
Online video advertising on DCN member company sites has low overlap with linear TV. There were 3,025 advertisers placing TV spots in Q4 of 2015 on national broadcast and cable networks. Of the 3,025 brands however, just 209 also placed on DCN member websites in this same period. This demonstrates a big opportunity to upsell and convert traditional TV advertisers to digital platforms.
Top ad categories in TV have low overlap with online. The top five product categories advertised for DCN members are Retail, Professional Services, Home Furnishings, Apparel, and Financial. Of those top five, however, only two overlap with TV’s top five: Retail and Professional Service. Making inroads with traditional TV advertisers will mean forging stronger relationships in product categories less associated with web advertising.
TV advertisers do buy across media platforms. Of the national TV advertisers, 50% are buying cross-platform for online video already. This is not to minimize the very different silos that TV, print, and digital are purchased by. But on the other hand, some of the biggest, highest-margin, deals are done across media formats, including even print.
As TV advertisers continue to rethink their strategy, digital media should consider doing the same. Specifically pursue advertisers who are open to shifting away from TV. Upsell existing customers who already buy with you, but not online video. Target early adopters who have already started the shift from TV to online video. Finally, find the product categories that are spending on TV, but not with you, and show them the value of partnering with online video.
Todd Krizelman is Co-Founder and CEO of MediaRadar (@MediaRadar). Growing up near the epicenter of technological innovation in Palo Alto, California encouraged him to become an entrepreneur and co-found of one of the world’s first social media sites, theGlobe.com. Krizelman also held leadership positions at Bertelsmann’s Gruner + Jahr and Random House. With his expertise in ad sales and innovation, Krizelman joined veteran web architect, Jesse Keller, to found MediaRadar in 2007.
Although Apple’s iOS operating system still sees the bulk of TV Everywhere (TVE) authentications, new analysis from Adobe Digital Index (ADI) shows TVE consumption slowly moving toward connected devices, such as Apple TV and Roku. According to ADI’s “Q4 Digital Video Benchmark” report, iOS share of TVE decreased 20% year over year (YoY), while connected devices saw 31% growth.
Among Adobe’s key findings:
Overall growth in TVE video viewing has doubled YoY (102%)—a trend ADI expects to continue.
The number of TV Everywhere (TVE) users has increased 22% quarter-over-quarter, particularly due to special programming (i.e. fall TV premiers) and sports-related content.
Broadcast & Cable genre grows more other content categories for the first time (up 11% YoY) due to seasonal TV programming events.
The Total number of TV video views doubled its growth year-over-year.
Roku share increased 14% QoQ as a result of major broadcasters adding their channels in mid-November.
All access types, with the exception of browser, continue to see growth in viewing frequency.
Adobe Digital Index publishes research on digital marketing and other topics of interest to senior marketing and e-commerce executives across industries. Research is based on the analysis of select, anonymous, and aggregated data from over 5,000 companies worldwide that use the Adobe Digital Marketing Cloud to obtain real-time data and analysis of activity on websites, social media, and advertising. This report is based on consumer video viewing from October 2014-December 2015.
News organization everywhere are competing for attention. In a continuously changing media environment, journalism is challenged more than ever before to connect to its audience. In its report, the Digital News Project 2016, Reuters Institute examined how news organizations, across Europe and the United States, analyze their audience’s behavior in order to inform and develop their editorial voices.
The Guardian and The Financial Times, both subscription-based business models, developed proprietary metric tools. The Guardian’s real-time analytics tool called Orphan offers minute-by-minute data on individual articles like pageviews, social shares, and attention-time for each article published in the last two weeks. Orphan can also show whether the article has been pushed via the Guardian’s social media channels and/or if it was promoted on the homepage. The data can also be broken down by different segments, such as time, section, device, browser, country, referrer, loyalty, and attention time. The editors can use this data to inform decisions on headlines, pictures, placement, and how to promote across social media channels.
Similarly, the Financial Times’s is developing a dashboard for its analytics called, Lantern. The Financial Times see editorial analytics as a step to its newsroom and its reporters being audience-first journalists, integrating engagement objectives into the editorial process. The tool will focus mostly on engagement-related metrics such as time spent, recirculation, volume of articles read per visit, and number of comments.
The report identified a few third party analytic tools available to news organization:
Chartbeat known for real-time analytics that focus on audience attention. Its dashboard advices on homepage structure and helps to refine headlines and formats. Editors can modify content in real-time.
Ly tracks in real-time as well and helps to identify topics audiences have responded well to in the past as well as where readers are coming from, where they’re headed next and on what devices.
NewsWhip is also a real-time tool that offers social media tracking like tweets, shares, and comments. It also allows newsrooms to monitor what stories are trending and breaking news.
In addition to Chartbeat, Parse.Ly and NewsWhip, the more standardized report of pageviews and visits are available in analytics tools like Omniture, google Analytics, Facebook Insights, and twitter Analytic.
Usage of multiple data sources is also common among news organizations. The Huffington Post, an advertising based business model, uses an Omniture dashboard, which includes traditional metrics like visits, pageviews, and unique visitors as well as referrals from specific sources and video data. They also use a customized version of Chartbeat tracking real-time split testing where different versions of an article (copy, headline and/or pictures) are tested to see which performs best.
Importantly, even in the most data-driven analysis, decisions often involve qualitative assessment. It’s a mix of art and science. It’s also important to ensure personal assessment is included especially in terms of how the data is leveraged for both short-term and long-term operations.
There has been a noticeable rise over the past two years in the percentage of people in the emerging and developing nations surveyed by Pew Research Center who say that they use the internet and own a smartphone. From 2013 to 2015, the percentage of those across 21 emerging and developing countries that use the internet occasionally or own a smartphone rose to 54%, with much of that increase coming from large emerging economies such as Malaysia, Brazil and China. By comparison, a median of 87% use the internet across 11 advanced economies surveyed in 2015, including the U.S. and Canada, major Western European nations, developed Pacific nations (Australia, Japan and South Korea) and Israel. And Pew reports that overwhelming majorities in almost every nation surveyed report owning some form of mobile device, even if they are not considered “smartphones.”
For smartphone ownership, the digital divide between less advanced economies and developed economies is 31 points in 2015.
Smartphone ownership rates in emerging and developing nations rose from a median of 21% in 2013 to 37% in 2015.
Roughly three-quarters of adult internet users across the 40 countries surveyed in 2015 say that they use the internet at least once a day.
It is almost universal that people with more education and higher incomes are more likely to use the internet or own a smartphone than those with lower incomes and less education.
Marketers are focusing on a newly valued audience segment know as ad blockers. Consumers using ad blocking software tend to be more tech savvy and in the millennial age range. According to a new report published by the International News Media Association (INMA), this premium audience segment offers a new opportunity for advertisers to engage with consumers who care and interact with valued advertisements.
PageFair, which sells services to measure ad blocking and offers alternative non-intrusive advertising to consumers, contributed to the INMA report, “What to do about ad blocking?” PageFair has also estimated that the total lost revenue from ad blocking grew approximately from $5.8 billion in 2014 to $10.7 in 2015.
The INMA report recommends specific strategies for publishers to avoid:
Do not use undeveloped anti-ad blocking technology like domain rotation.
Do not rely on native advertising since this can also be blocked.
Do not depend on advertising partnerships with walled gardens like Facebook or Apple News.
Do not refuse to show content to ad blockers.
Importantly publishers need to respond to ad blockers. This is the time to talk to ad blockers, the time to try new ad formats and the time to discover what specifications need to be included in advertising 2.0.
The radio industry grew its digital ad revenue 11.4% last year, to $550.8 million, and is poised to grow even faster this year, according to a comprehensive study conducted by Borrell Associates on behalf of the Radio Advertising Bureau. The Benchmarking: Local Radio Stations’ Online Revenues report showed that the average market cluster made $951,756 in digital sales last year, with the average station making $231,210. With forecast growth of 14%, the report states that digital advertising will account for 6.5% of station revenue by the end of 2016, a full point above what it was in 2015.
For some, the opportunity goes beyond banner ads and spots in the audio stream. Nearly half of the stations are now selling digital services — mostly Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and website design.
This 4th annual Borrell-RAB benchmarking report documents digital revenue, market share, sources of revenue, methods of billing, and attitudes toward digital ventures. The research studied digital revenue for 2,704 stations and surveyed 250 managers on their attitudes toward digital ventures. It documents digital revenues, market share, sources of revenue, methods of billing, and opinions on station strategies.
Among some of the findings:
One-third of stations surveyed believe their sales reps are talking to the wrong buyers when trying to sell digital products. Three years ago, two-thirds believed that was the case.
Only 16% believe that radio sales suffer because reps are forced to sell digital advertising. That’s down significantly since 2014, when more than half felt that way.
Conversely, 24% believe that digital sales suffer because reps focus on radio advertising. Three years ago, twice as many felt that way.
The average radio cluster received 0.26% of all locally spent Internet advertising. There were some, however, achieving 15 times that – up to nearly 4%.
Publishing is a prerequisite for effective content marketing. According to Forbes’ new CMO Practice report, “Publish or Perish” nearly all of the surveyed marketing executives (95%) agreed that effective content marketing is critical to the success of their company’s growth strategies. Further, eighty percent of marketing executives stated that successful content marketing is important to building and differentiating the brand. Today’s CMOs reported allocations of 25% or more of their marketing budget to content creation.
Brand publishing allows corporations to be agile in delivering new and diverse marketing programs to their customers. Marketing content can also provide customer personalization and offers the ability to manage and scale large processes.
Forbes identified seven key strategies for marketing executives to manage throughout the content marketing and operations process:
Content Planning – establish management teams to ensure editorial strategies and processes are in place for the production, curation and licensing of relevant and timely content.
Content Sourcing – manage the quality, volume and relevance of content from both internal and external content contributors.
Content Targeting – optimize content performance by customizing for specific audience segments to ensure a stronger return on investment.
Content Governance – manage and control content quality, consistency and compliance by establishing content governance across the company.
Content Distribution – establish processes and systems to distribute and track content across all channels and touch points.
Content Assembly – create an internal content assembly team to reduce costs on operations and to easily allow for the repurpose of materials.
Content Systems – leverage technology investments to increase productivity and reduce operational cost.
Marketing leaders need control over the publishing process or they and their teams will be at risk. Further, advancing content marketing is crucial to delivering actionable content in today’s digital marketplace.
While it has been widely speculated that a “fat finger” problem exists in mobile advertising, new research from Retale confirms that many clicks on mobile banner ads may be accidental due to finger scrolling on devices with small screens. The study, polling 500 adult mobile users across the U.S. between January 18-25, 2016, focused on several aspects of mobile banner ad engagement, from accidental clicks to perceived overall value.
This year proves to be quite a competitive year, both domestically and globally, with the Summer Olympics, the US Presidential elections and the UEFA European Football Championships, forecasting ad spend to grow by 5.6% (Borrell Associates).
Consumers are monitoring and tracking much in their life from spending patterns to personal fitness goals. This year more brands will create video content from budget trackers to activity trackers (IDC Worldwide Quarterly Wearable Device Tracker, March 30, 2015).
Completed views of vertical video ads are nine times greater than horizontal video ads views. As a result, this year marketers will use more vertical videos to connect more effectively with mobile consumers (Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends 2015 presentation, Ooyala Q2 Global Video Index, 2015).
Consumer spend on VR hardware and software is estimated to reach $21.8 billion by 2025. More mobile apps and 360-degree content will be this year for consumers to views (Tractica, “Virtual Reality for Consumer Markets”, July 2015).
An Unruly consumer survey reported that eight in 10 consumers mute video ads. Due to this behavior, advertisers are exploring new creative ways to tell their stories without sound (Unruly, Future of Video Advertising Survey n=3,200).
Emojis will continue to rule as important emotional connectors online. Along these lines emotional targeted videos will continue to be delivered to consumers especially for the purposes of sharing.
Media owners and ad tech companies will find new and different content partnerships in order to form strong alliances to remain competitive with Google and Facebook.
Advertisers are eager to re-connect with the ad avoiding consumer. Marketers will create more branded content and work to deliver it in methods that engages consumers. (Unruly Future of Advertising Survey, September 2015).
Close to half (49%) of all mobile users use a messaging app. Marketers will use messaging apps for narrowcast sharing and eMcommerce opportunities (US Mobile Phone Messaging App Users and Penetration, 2014).
The competition for peoples’ attention is getting harder to do and more-costly too. Companies will look to find competencies in agile marketing across all media, earned and paid. (ANA, Growth: Mastering Brands and Driving Results, Oct. That’s 2014).
As consumers look to escape the demands of always being “on” as well as the terror threats in all corners of the world, more and more people will look for those comfort moments and brands can help provide their needed escapism. Definitely expect more postings of cute little kittys (Alvin Toffler, Future Shock, 1970).
Crowdfunded journalism continued its growth trend in 2015, but it remains a small slice of the bigger picture, according to a report released last week by the Pew Research Center.
The report detailed the growth of journalism-specific Kickstarter campaigns since the crowdfunding site launched in April 2009. During that period, the number of funded journalism projects grew from 64 in 2010 to 173 in the first nine months of 2015.
The total revenue generated on Kickstarter also grew rapidly. In 2010, journalism projects received less than $300,000 in funding, but through nine months last year, that number had already surpassed $1.7 million.
Kickstarter campaigns have raised more than $6 million to support journalism since 2009.
Lessons from the Statehouse News Project
One of the news organizations taking advantage of journalism’s crowdfunding boom (albeit using Beacon, not Kickstarter) is InvestigateWest, a Seattle-based nonprofit news site that last year launched a crowdfunding campaign for its Statehouse News Project. (Disclosure: The author of this piece freelances for InvestigateWest.)
The ongoing project, which supports in-depth reporting on environmental legislation in Washington state, blew past its $2,500 goal last year and raised a total of $5,000 from 53 donors. After receiving positive feedback during the 2015 legislative session, InvestigateWest brought the campaign back again this year and has already raised $5,070 (and counting).
This time around, the Statehouse News Project is also backed by a $10,000 award from SVP Fast Pitch Seattle, a business pitch competition in which InvestigateWest won second place in the established nonprofit category in 2015. Jason Alcorn, associate director at InvestigateWest, says last year’s crowdfunded pilot helped strengthen the organization’s ability to chase even bigger money at SVP.
“It allowed us to tell Fast Pitch that we knew the project could work,” Alcorn said. “We’d done it at a small scale, and 80 percent of our donors said they would probably or definitely support the project again. And the qualitative feedback was that it was the best environmental reporting coming out of Olympia that anyone was reading.”
As InvestigateWest’s Statehouse News Project enters its second year, Alcorn shared some insights and tips for effective crowdfunding.
Produce a campaign video – Short promotional videos make it easy for partners, donors and other supporters to spread the word within their social networks, and crowdfunding campaigns featuring a video are more likely to get full funding, according to statistics from Beacon. “We did a video this year,” Alcorn said, “and that has helped with sharing on social media.”
Choose the right project – Crowdfunding for investigative journalism can be difficult when story details must stay confidential and the finish line might be months away or more. Alcorn says InvestigateWest chose to fundraise for the Statehouse News Project because it offers donors a tangible return (regular news stories and analysis from Olympia) and it meets a clear need in Washington’s media landscape. “People can wrap their head around coverage of a particular set of issues during the legislature, because they know those issues aren’t being covered any more,” Alcorn said. “It’s a concrete gap in reporting that people see and understand.”
Consider ancillary benefits – For a mission-driven organization like InvestigateWest, raising money isn’t the only benefit of a crowdfunding campaign. “In our experience, people are more engaged with these stories because they have a direct personal investment in the project,” Alcorn said. “They were among the most-read stories we’ve ever had.”
Crowdfunding campaigns also create an opportunity for one-time contributors to turn into long-term supporters, Alcorn said.
“People are chipping into this who aren’t InvestigateWest donors,” he explained. “Crowdfunding brings new supporters to the organization more than anything else we do in terms of fundraising.”
InvestigateWest’s crowdfunding campaign on Beacon has raised more than $5000 for the Statehouse News Project.
Still a drop in the bucket
Despite the success of campaigns like InvestigateWest’s Statehouse News Project, crowdfunding continues to represent only a small part of what’s funding journalism. For example, the nearly $6.3 million that Kickstarter has raised for all journalism projects since 2009 would barely be enough to support the Texas Tribune’s operating budget for a single year. By comparison, journalism revenue generated through advertising approaches $20 billion annually, according to the Pew report.
The authors argue, however, that the steady growth of crowdfunded journalism is still an important trend.
“The growing activity here is about more than just dollars and cents or prizewinning reporting,” they write. “In today’s evolving digital era, it represents a new, niche segment of nontraditional journalism driven in large part by public interest and motivation.
“It is bringing voice and visibility to efforts that would likely otherwise go unnoticed or unfunded, adding yet another way for the public to engage in creating, funding and disseminating journalism and adding one more option to the arsenal of revenue sources that the industry is desperately seeking to build up.”
Ben DeJarnette is the associate editor at MediaShift. He is also a freelance contributor for Pacific Standard, InvestigateWest, Men’s Journal, Runner’s World, Oregon Quarterly and others. He’s on Twitter @BenDJduck.
This was originally posted on MediaShift, the premier destination for insight and analysis at the intersection of media and technology. Follow MediaShift on Twitter @mediashiftorg, or check them out on Facebook and subscribe to their email newsletters.
Adobe Digital Index publishes research on digital marketing and other topics of interest to senior marketing and e-commerce executives across industries. Research is based on the analysis of select, anonymous, and aggregated data from over 5,000 companies worldwide that use the Adobe Digital Marketing Cloud to obtain real-time data and analysis of activity on websites, social media, and advertising. This report is based on consumer video viewing from October 2014-December 2015.
here has been a noticeable rise over the past two years in the percentage of people in the emerging and developing nations 
