media | Paul Wallbank - Communications Professional

Jonah Peretti’s seven digital advantages

Buzz Feed founder Jonah Peretti laid out his vision of the changing media industry in his year end memo but he missed the one item most important – revenue.

Buzzfeed founder Jonah Peretti laid out his vision of the changing media industry in his year end memo but he missed the one item most important – revenue.

“Print revenue is decelerating at a rapid pace, cable subscriptions and TV ratings are starting to decrease even for live sports, and traditional media businesses are at various stages of a terrifying decline,” writes Peretti in accurately describes the challenges facing the industry.

Buzzfeed’s success has largely relied on sharing across social media, particularly Facebook. In his memo Peretti lays out how he sees the modern social and personalised publishers as having seven digital advantages over the push model of the mass media days.

Instant access to fresh content
On-demand access to entire media libraries
Nearly free distribution enabling many free ad-supported services
Global distribution providing access to content from every market
Data about audiences allowing personalization and customization of content experience
A feedback loop between audiences and content creators making media production more dynamic and responsive
Social experiences where people can use content to communicate and connect with the people who matter to them and weave media into their daily lives

Peretti is absolutely right, those digital advantages put online platforms far ahead of print publishers and broadcasters although the advertisers haven’t quite figured out how to make these positives work for them.

That advertisers can’t get their models to work on the digital platforms is also a problem for Peretti and Buzzfeed and the site had to half its 2016 revenue estimates earlier this year.

In the search for new opportunities, Buzzfeed hired a new Vice President of Marketing earlier this month as it appears the branded content model is too labor intensive and video isn’t proving to be the river of gold most online publishers hoped.

The advertising model appears to be just as broken for online publishers as it is for the traditional channels.

As Peretti has pointed out in previous end of year memos, new media platforms always struggle in their early years.

The difference in the modern media world is the internet destroyed the scarcity of publisher and broadcaster controlled advertising space, replacing it with an almost unlimited inventory supplied by Google, Facebook and other services that take most of the profit.

A better comparison to today’s online advertising conundrum are the early days of radio where it took RCA’s David Sarnoff to figure out how to make broadcasting profitable.

Like radio, online has great advantages over the older distribution methods but the revenue models that worked for those more traditional businesses don’t work on the newer medium.

Peretti, like every online publisher, is trying to find that new model and it seems he’s as further away from discovering it as the rest of us.

P&G focusing on Facebook is bad news for media

Proctor and Gamble’s decision to focus on Facebook is bad news for media and smaller websites

Consumer goods giant Proctor and Gamble has announced they will be dialling back their targeted advertising on Facebook, as they discovered being too precise turns out to stifle sales.

It turns out that big companies need scale, not precision, so to grow sales they need to be engaging with more people and not restricting their message to niche groups.

Given the different natures of businesses it’s not surprising to see strategies that work for one group fail dismally for others, but it’s interesting how targeting turns out not to work so well for mass market products.

The losers though in the P&G story are smaller websites as Wall Street Journal quotes the company’s Chief Marketing Officer as saying they will focus more on the big sites and move away from niche players.

Mr. Pritchard said P&G won’t cut back on Facebook spending and will employ targeted ads where it makes sense, such as pitching diapers to expectant mothers. He said P&G has ramped up spending both on digital sites and traditional platforms. One category the company is scaling back: smaller websites that lack the reach of sites such as Facebook, Google and YouTube.

Again we’re seeing the early promise of the web failing as economic power continues to be concentrated with a few major platforms. This is also terrible news for media organisations as big advertisers – P&G are the world’s biggest spender – focus on a few sites and increasingly ignore local or niche news publications.

There’s also the quandary of where the content that Facebook’s users share will come from, with the advertising shifting away from media companies – new players such as Buzzfeed and Huffington Post as well as the old established mastheads – to Google and Facebook, there’s less funds to create interesting and shareable stories.

P&G’s move is very good for Facebook’s and Google’s shareholder but the future media models still seem a long way off.

Subverting the house rules

An Arab Spring seems to have come to the US Congress as members occupy the chamber and stream their own video footage.

It seems the Arab Spring has come to the US Congress where Democrat representatives protesting the house’s refusal to vote on gun control legislation have occupied the house.

House speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican, ordered the chamber’s TV cameras to be shut off but the occupying members responded by streaming their own media feeds through Facebook and Periscope.

Once again we’re seeing how new media channels are opening up with the internet. While they aren’t perfect, they do challenge the existing power structures and allow the old rules to be subverted.

The advertising revolution still awaits

Mary Meeker flags big changes for the mobile phone industry but advertising still remains stuck in the broadcasting past

As usual Mary Meeker’s internet trends report lays out the current state of the online world.

Two things that stand out in the mass of statistics are how the smartphone market is now commoditised and that the advertising funded media model is redundant on mobile with adblockers proliferating in China, India and Indonesia – the world’s three biggest emerging markets.

While Mary Meeker flags those changes, she also continues to point out how broadcasting still gets a disproportionate spend of advertising revenue, something she’s been flagging for five years.

For advertisers sticking with the media they know is understandable but it does open some opportunities for a great disruptions.

The design of Meeker’s slides leave some people unimpressed though.

Rethinking the media business model

Fading newspapers around the world are showing how poorly planned cuts condemn a struggling business to failure

Last week Australia’s Fairfax Media announced the company will cut another 120 editorial jobs at the Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Age. What strategies beyond cuts can save old media companies as traditional advertising revenues dry up?

For decades, the print and broadcast media was incredibly profitable as they provided an advertising platform for businesses and individuals. While television revenues have held up, the rest of the media industry has seen their income collapse.

In the early days of the web the hope was display advertising would provide revenues for online publishers, however it turns out readers are blind to the ads and, should the messages become too intrusive or resource heavy, people will install ad-blockers.

One revenue channel for publishers is ‘content marketing’ or ‘branded content’ where advertisers sponsor specific stories. At the Sydney Ad:Tech conference earlier this week Asia-Pacific Regional Advertising Director for the New York Times, Julia Whiting, described what the iconic masthead finds works in this medium.

Whiting says there are five key factors in making branded content work for advertisers.

Give something of value. Be entertaining, informative, educative or provide some utility.
Tell an authentic story. Make the link between the brand and story as subtle as possible.
Produce high quality content. Consider how a newsroom cover the story and what would hook the reader.
Choose the right environment. Advertisers have to align with publishers that have the right brand values and audience.
Targeted campaigns. Use data to define and find target audiences then use that information to deliver relevant content.

The question with the branded content is how explicit the advertiser’s message or sponsorship can be before readers start losing trust.

Becoming creepy

Another aspect is creepiness. One of the campaigns Whiting showcased was The Creekmores, the story of a young family who travelled the world as the mother was dying of breast cancer that was sponsored by Holiday Inn.

On a personal level, this writer is uncomfortable with such a personal story being associated with a multinational brand and wonders if the family would have been happy for their tale to be part of a branded content campaign for a hotel chain.

For branded content to really work, that ‘alignment’ between the publisher, audience and advertiser is essential and in turn ultimately relies upon the credibility of the outlet.

In the case of the New York Times, that credibility rests upon good writing and strong editorial values, although the paper hasn’t been immune from scandal itself.

Good, well edited writing may turn out to be the greatest asset for today’s media outlets as smaller publications such as The Economist, Punch and The Spectator see readership and revenues increase.

The Guardian, ironically an outlet that itself is cutting 250 staff, reports these publications are succeeding due to well written articles. “If you produce journalism that is not just better but significantly better than what’s free on the web, people will pay for it,” says Spectator editor Fraser Nelson.

Which brings us back to Australia’s Fairfax where a succession of clueless managements have eroded editorial standards. Three years ago former editor Eric Beecher wrote a scathing account of his time at the company where an incompetent and unqualified board flailed in the face of market changes it could barely comprehend.

One of the villains of that tale, board chairman Roger Corbett, was a successful Chief Executive of the Woolworths supermarket chain. That he was so obsessed with a failed business model and protecting margins by slashing costs indicates much about the nature of Australia’s insular corporate world.

A consequence of Fairfax’s cost cutting obsession has been foreign outlets have stepped into the market with The Guardian, Daily Mail, Buzz Feed and a range of other sites setting up in the country – something that further squeezes the incumbent’s market position.

In opening her Ad:Tech presentation, the NY Times’ Julia Whiting noted Australia was the outlet’s fifth largest global market, something undoubtedly driven by the decline in the SMH’s and Age’s output.

The travails of Fairfax and the successes of smaller outlets show what might be an encouraging trend in the media – that a quality product actually attracts an audience and advertisers.

If that’s true, the managements that mindlessly cut costs that hurt the quality of their core product may be accelerating the demise of their businesses.

Towards the post journalist media world

How will public relations people will deal with the post-journalist media landscape?

For years I resisted attending the Tech Leaders conference, formerly Kickstart, as I felt a bit of an imposter being invited to attend as a journalist. As a consequence I missed the peak days of the event.

In the ‘good old days’ dozens of journalists, most in the employ of profitable media companies, would fly to a Queensland resort to wine, dine and debauch themselves as PR agencies who were picking up the tab would try to introduce their clients and pitch to the group of hungover scribes.

Funding these events was relatively straightforward, public relations agencies and their clients were happy to pay substantial sums for access to journalists. In the golden days of technology journalism, large IT supplements were full of lucrative advertising for jobs and products.

That river of advertising gold has long dried up and in the technology industry that shift has been exacerbated by the collapse in IT industry margins which has further hurt advertising budgets.

As the industry has faded so too have the numbers of media professionals, many journalists have either moved into PR roles themselves or are now desperate freelancers.

The industry shift to freelancers has been problematic for the organisers as the remaining staff journalists are chronically time poor so can’t lightly take a day away from the desk and the independent reporters don’t offer direct access into trade journals and general news outlets.

Events like Tech Leaders are giving the PR industry a glimpse of the journalist free media landscape of the near future where the traditional pitching to outlets in the hope of being published is effectively obsolete. Looking at the numbers at Tech Leaders, it’s clear that world is not far off.

The question everyone in the industry has to ask is ‘how do people perceive I add value?’ For many, including myself, the answer is ‘we don’t’.

In an age where there is an almost unlimited supply of information and commentary, journalists and PR people have to find a new way to convince the market they add value.

The limits of corporate journalism

There are limits to most of new ways of running a media company

One of the new models for journalism is being sponsored by corporate interests.

This works well until the news turns against the corporate sponsor, as Australia’s ANZ now discovers.

For companies there are many good reasons for to have their own media centres, but to pretend they are twentieth century style Washington Post, Watergate journalism is probably hoping for too much.

Restructuring the media

How the BBC is restructuring itself in the face of technological change is a lesson for many other businesses, not just media companies.

The British Broadcasting Corporation could be about to abolish its radio and television divisions reports the London Telegraph. This could be a pointer for how many other businesses will revamp themselves in the face of digital disruption.

As audiences change, the organisation’s Director General is looking at restructuring the 94 year old broadcaster into new divisions based around content rather than platform.

The demarcation between radio and television, let alone the Internet, made sense in the 1950s as the cost of production was high and the specific skill sets to get a radio program to air were very different to those of television.

Now with increased automation many, although not all, of those differences have vanished and with the internet changing distribution methods it’s harder to justify duplicating production.

Another important aspect of the BBC’s mooted restructure is streamlining of management, with the Telegraph noting how this would be an opportunity to cull the executive ranks.

The changes will lead to a new round of senior executive departures, as Lord Hall seeks to flatten the corporation’s labyrinthine management structures, and reinvest more money on-screen.

How the BBC is restructuring itself in the face of technological change is a lesson for many other businesses, not just media companies.

Thinking beyond the group

Varied sources of information are essential to avoid stale, group thinking

It’s nice and comfortable living in an echo chamber and we’re all guilty of it one way or another. An example of how insular echo chambers can be are two surveys done by UK company Apollo Research on who UK and US tech writers follow on social media.

The answer was each other, with most tech writers following a common core of twenty in the UK and thirty in the US. Basically the groups are talking to each other which explains how technology stories tend to gain momentum as variations on the same stories feed through the network.

While technology journalists are bad for this, it could be argued their political colleagues are far more guilty of this group think as their working in close quarters makes them even more insular and inward looking. That explains much of the political reporting we see today which often seems divorced from the real world concerns of voters or challenges facing governments.

For all of us, not just journalists, it’s easy to become trapped in our own little echo chambers and find it harder to think outside the pack as the web and platforms like Facebook deliver us the information we and our friends find confirms our own biases.

Clearly, thinking with the pack creates a lot of risks and for businesses also raises opportunities. At a time of fast moving technology and falling barriers to entry, thinking outside the prevailing group could even be a good survival strategy.

A good example of industry group think is the US motor industry of the 1970s where they dismissed Japanese competitors as being cheap and substandard – similar to how many think about China today – yet by the end of the decade Japan’s automakers had captured most of the world’s market.

On a national level, Australia is a good example of dangerous groupthink as up until three years ago the consensus among governments, public servants, economists and business leaders was the China resources boom would last indefinitely.

Today that consensus looks foolish, not that those within the echo chamber are admitting they made the wrong call, and now governments are struggling to find new revenue streams as the expected rivers of iron ore and coal royalties fail to arrive.

For Australian businesses, governments looking to raise revenues are another factor to plan for and getting one’s tax return and company paperwork in on time might be a good idea to avoid fines from overzealous public servants.

The bigger lesson for us all however is not to think like the group. While it may feel safe in the herd, we could well be galloping over a cliff.

One simple way to avoid groupthink, and that cliff, is not to copy the tech writers or the Australian economic experts who mis-called the China Boom. With the web and social media we can listen to what other voices are saying, most importantly those of our markets and customers.

A varied information diet is something we all need t0 understand what our markets, economies and communities are doing. It might be comfortable huddling down with the herd, but you’ll never stand out from the pack.

Getting off the content hamster wheel

The bulk publishing model starts to fade and media companies’ focus returns to quality

We may have reached Peak Content suggests Kevin Anderson in The Media Briefing as media companies, social media services and sharing platforms flood the world with information, rendering a lot of what’s being produced by media companies effectively worthless.

For publishers trying to make money from advertising this has been the reality for the last decade as the market has been spread thinner as thousands of new channels have developed and the established players have doubled down on their efforts to churn out content.

To illustrate the content explosion Anderson cites Columbia Journalism Review’s 2010 feature The Hamster Wheel where Dean Starkman described the effect of media outlets’ focus on churning out content with a description of the Wall Street Journal’s output.

“According to a CJR tally using the Factiva database owned by the paper’s parent, News Corp., the Journal’s staff a decade or so ago produced stories at a rate of about 22,000 a year, all while doing epic, and shareholder-value-creating, work, like bringing the tobacco industry to heel. This year, theJournal staff produced almost as many stories—21,000—in the first six months.”

While that was bad enough new players were pumping even more content onto the interwebs as Anderson points out, in 2013 the Huffington Post put out 1,600 pieces a day from its 550 staffers and an uncounted army of unpaid bloggers.

The vast bulk of what is being put out is trash, in Huffington Post’s case well web optimised garbage, that adds no value to readers and is only attracting fractions of a penny per article. The model, as both Anderson and Starkman point out, is broken and no-0ne is paying much attention any more.

Fixing the broken attention model is what online travel site Skift are exploring as they rationalise their operations to focus on delivering more relevant content to their audience.

Skift’s co-founder Rafat Ali described how the company refocused on its core purpose of informing travel industry professionals about their sector and stopped regurgitating syndicated stories and those of less value.

We gave up chasing scale. We took out *all* goals on traffic on the site, for everyone. We could do this because we didn’t have tons of outside money pumping through our veins, and this was a useless pressure we created for ourselves in an effort to show the illusion of growth to investors. And since we weren’t chasing investors, we didn’t need to chase what they would consider scale. It was a vanity metric.

We cut back on spending any money on getting users through Outbrain/Facebook/Twitter. We cut back on the number of stories we were doing on a daily basis, on chasing the tail on disposable news stories. We also cut back on syndicating our stories — in which we put in a lot of effort at the start, publishing on NBC News, CNN, Quartz, Fox News, Business Insider, Mashable and many others, to zero effect on our revenues — and also cut back on publishing useless filler syndicated stories we got from a third party syndication service.

Chasing those ‘vanity metrics’ was killing Skift, just as it is for most of the publishing industry in the views of Starkman and Anderson.

While we’re still some way off finding the model that works for online publishing, Skift’s stripping back to the basics seems to be an important step in finding what’s profitable.

The biggest problem though facing the publishing industry is convincing consumers, or advertisers, of the value they are adding in a world of almost unlimited information. This is a challenge that many industries are going to face.