The average person checks their mobile phone 150 times a day and spends 82 minutes on it.” That slightly unsettling factoid from Google’s Rohit Dhawan summed up the main theme of the day – MOBILE. The mobile is ubiquitous. Celtra’s Jonathan Milne, quoting from research done by Dr Simon Hampton for the IAB, says that the “smartphone has become a component of the self, part of the body!”. Jonathan goes on – “downtime is screen time; people can’t do nothing anymore, we use our devices to fill the gaps.”
What’s more, one device is no longer enough. Multi-screening is the new norm, with two thirds of people using another device while watching TV.
Unsurprisingly, then, mobile is becoming a bigger and bigger part of publishers’ operations. According to ESI Media commercial director, Graeme Finneberg, “50% of our traffic now comes from mobile and everything we do is mobile-first.” Dezeen editor Anna Winston agrees that all trends point to continued mobile growth: “the vast majority of visitors in the future will be via mobile.”
The opportunity for publishers is self-evident: potential readers are on their phones the entire time, ready to consume our content. Even more mouthwatering is the statistic from the US, quoted by Milne, that “20% of media consumption is on mobile, but only 5% of ad spend is.” The righting of this anomaly spells huge future revenue potential.
Mobile challenges
Yet the challenges are immense. Firstly, says the Guardian’s Rob Smallwood, “our readers are way ahead of us” and secondly, there was widespread acknowledgement that publishers are still not set up to take advantage of these global media trends, despite AOP research showing an increase in the number of publishers launching mobile-optimised sites.
According to Mindshare’s Paul Rowlinson, “mobile development is not moving as quickly as it should be – there is an investment lag.” At many publishers, Paul continues, certainly on the commercial side, “mobile feels like an annex; it’s not part and parcel of the company’s operations.”
But probably the biggest hurdle facing publishers in the mobile arena is mindset. Just as in the early days of the web, said Time Inc’s Neil Robinson, when publishers thought that copying and pasting their print content to their website was sufficient, we are in danger of repeating that mistake with mobile. “It should not be about trying to squeeze web content onto mobile,” said Neil, “we should be asking, what content for what device.”
As Future’s Zillah Byng-Maddick said, “consumption patterns differ by device.”
This is not new.
The lean forward / lean back characteristics of content consumption on different devices has been talked about for years. We all know, from our own experience, that we use our phones, desktops and tablets at different times of the day and for different reasons.
The fact that we’re still debating this stuff shows how far behind the curve many publishers are with mobile.
And it’s not just content where a lack of imagination hinders progress. Our approach to advertising can be equally short-sighted. As Yahoo!’s Nick King said: “we’ve all seen horrendous mobile creatives – each platform needs a different approach – after all, no one ever tried to stick a press ad on a billboard.”
Data
The wonderful thing about digital, of course, is that this is all knowable, if only we look at the data. “Just look at the data,” said Byng-Maddick, “it drives all our development.” Mumsnet’s Sue MacMillan advised delegates to “test and measure absolutely everything”. “It sounds obvious”, said WIWT’s Poppy Dinsey, “but not everyone does it”.
And that’s the rub, because for many publishers, the all-important data is still stuck in silos. “We talk about data,” said one, “but the reality is that it’s all in different pots!”
Clearly, Future has enough data to be getting on with, and Byng-Maddick said that they had identified two distinct customer journeys: ‘passion’ (enthusiasts seeking more information) and ‘buying’ (buyers seeking more information). For each group, Future asks four questions: who are they?, how can we help them?, how do we monetise?, how do we measure success?
It’s getting increasingly hard, said Byng-Maddick, for advertisers to get people’s attention, so Future’s approach is all about data, because it enables us “to interrupt the customer journey at just the right time”.
Data gives us the crucial insight into customer behaviours, which can help publishers tailor both their editorial and commercial offering. News UK’s Abba Newbery recounted how, for instance, analysis of data had revealed the very different video consumption habits of Sun and Times readers. For Premiership goals, which News UK has streaming rights to, Times subscribers like to watch them the following day as part of the match review, whereas readers of sister title, The Sun, like to watch them straightaway.
Programmatic
And it’s data, of course, that underpins one of the other main themes of the day – programmatic. As Tim Cain, unveiling the results of the latest AOP Census, revealed, 50% (up from 42% last year) of publishers now see programmatic as a major opportunity.
Abba Newbery says that News UK is seeing revenue growth from programmatic and 20-30% of Incisive Media’s inventory is traded programmatically, says John Barnes, and, what is more, Barnes hadn’t seen any decrease in yields as a result. For ESI’s Graeme Finneberg, “programmatic grows in importance as each day passes”.
But speakers were keen to dispel one myth; “programmatic is not all done by machines – it needs expensive humans to drive them,” said Paul Rowlinson.
The programmatic offering seems to be maturing, as does publishers’ attitude to it. “It’s part of what we do, but it’s not everything we do”, said Time Inc’s Neil Robinson. It’s no longer seen as a threat to direct sales, but complementary to it. John Barnes said that Incisive use both “sales people and programmatic”.
Programmatic is not a total solution. Harvest Digital’s Mike Teasdale warned of the risk of losing “empathy” - “Not everything can be done by an algorithm”. Another panelist added that programmatic can’t supply all the answers: the “whys” still need good old-fashioned primary research.
Furthermore, two factors stand in the way of its continued growth, said Paul Rowlinson. Firstly, a lot of clients still don’t understand it, and secondly, the issue of trust, which boils down to the suitability of the content in which the ad is being placed and the question of fraud. Trusted inventory is crucial, and here, it would seem that professional publishers have a real advantage over the rest, in having the brand heritage and measurement infrastructure to be able to deliver on that trust. When you consider the comScore statistic that in 2013, 54% of ad impressions were not seen, you see the scale of the trust challenge.
Content marketing
The other big recurring theme of the day was the rise and rise of content marketing. Many publishers have set up content marketing divisions and revenues are growing fast. According to Huffington Post’s Jimmy Maymann, “two years ago, we didn’t do any content marketing; now we have a team of 25 people doing it and it forms 30% of our revenue.”
Content marketing was proving so successful, said Digiday’s Nick Friese, that his company had spun the division off into a separate agency.
There was a word or two of warning for any publishers who see content marketing as money for old rope. MEC’s Justin Taylor warned that publishers should not fall into the trap of thinking “build it and they will come; you need to push it out.” Complex Media’s Rich Antoniello agreed: “great content alone is useless, you have to do a lot with it.” According to Vibrant Media’s Tom Pepper, “often great campaigns fail and fall short because of poor distribution.”
A panelist from Mynewsdesk thought that the division of labour should be 20% content production, 80% promotion.
For Matt Downs, creative director of Time Inc Content Solutions, there were four ingredients to a successful campaign: customer insight, content creation, content distribution and content measurement.
Given the continued decline in display advertising, content marketing looks set to grow and grow.
Panelist Tips
Throughout the day, as you’d expect, panelists were asked what advice they would give the delegates in the room. Magnific’s Vincent Dignan clearly thought publishers were not long for this world (“Dinosaurs will die.”) but to prolong our lives, we should hire young people versed in social media. “They get it, so you don’t have to.”
“Test everything, analyse everything,” came up more than once.
In the ‘View from the USA Panel’, Rich Antoniello advised: “Don’t try and attack everything at once. Pick one thing and do it well rather than half ass a whole lot of things, which is demotivating, because you’re not winning at anything / make everyone as uncomfortable as possible and tell people they better get used to it!” Jimmy Maymann urged us to “embrace change, fail fast and stay laser focused”, whilst for Digiday’s Nick Friese, “it’s all about the talent – get the best people.”
My top takeaways
* Programmatic: get started, get learning. Embrace it, but see it as a constituent part of your commercial offering, not as your whole offering.
* Bring mobile in from the cold. If you haven’t got a coherent mobile strategy, then get one, fast.
* Content marketing: it’s huge and growing. Jump on the bandwagon, but do it properly and don’t sell your soul.
* Data: analyse it and act on it. Data of itself is pretty useless, but used intelligently, it should inform every publishing decision you ever make.
