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Trend: Publishers Forging Key Partnerships to Bolster Tablet Products

In 2011, the world witnessed the iPad become one of the year’s most popular gift items. Now that more affordable tablets - such as the new Kindle Fire – are coming to the market, it’s no surprise that a recent study by the Pew Research Center found that tablet and E-reader ownership has nearly doubled in the U.S. over the holiday gift-giving period. As the surge in tablet use continues to grow, some publishers are looking to leverage the popularity of tablets through strategic partnerships.

Two examples point to the trend of publisher/tablet maker partnerships. MediaPost reported that Barnes & Noble joined forces with The New York Times to offer consumers who buy a digital subscription of the newspaper on a Nook $100 off of a Nook Simple Touch or Nook Color tablet. AdAge reported a slightly different model, with the announcement that News Corp’s The Daily app will now be available on certain Verizon-marketed devices. Consumers that already own a Galaxy Tab will have access to The Daily app through a software update. Both approaches aim to incentivize tablet purchase and increase app usage.

Since tablet maker/publisher partnerships are relatively new, we will have to wait and see how this seemingly symbiotic relationship performs.

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How Consumers Learn About Brands 

How did you hear about your most recent purchase? Chances are, it wasn’t from a social network.  I read a recent eMarketer study with interest and found the most salient item in the study to be that US internet users learn about new brands more often from online elements that are not social media, but rather from online media (news sites and blogs) or online advertising.

As the study shows, 40.6% of US Internet users most frequently or often learn about new brands, products or services through online media such as news sites and blogs, and 30.8% learn about new brands from online advertising compared to only 24.1% of users who most frequently or often learn about brands through social media.

We weren’t surprised. The OPA enlisted Harris Interactive to conduct a study research to understand how consumers perceive content in different online environments, and whether these perceptions impact consumer responses to advertising. The research, titled A Sense of Place: Why Environments Matter, found that consumers are more likely to trust content on media sites (72%) than portal channels (60%) and social media (23%). The study also found that audiences on media sites are significantly more likely to believe these sites’ advertisers are high quality and reputable (24%), compared to portal channels (20%) and social media (8%).

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OPA 10th Annual Summit: Day 3

The third day of the 10th Annual OPA Summit featured a lively discussion about paid content, featuring executives from LinkedIn, The New York Times Company, and Financial Times.

Moderator Jeffrey Rayport, Operating Partner, Castanea Partners asked the participants to crystallize their paid content business strategies.

Rob Grimshaw, Managing Director, Financial Times, said the FT was essentially trying to create a business that generates more and more revenue from its content, and settled on a metered model that charged users when they hit a threshold of articles.

He also discussed how switching its mobile experience from applications to HTML5 was a risk, but it has ultimately paid off handsomely. Since the FT launched the app, its traffic from Apple devices is up more than 50%, he said.

“We feel although it was a gamble, we’ve put ourselves in a much better position,” Grimshaw said.

Paul Smurl, Vice President, Paid Products, The New York Times Company, told the attendees that they need to research the tolerance of their audience to pay for content. He echoed Grimshaw’s previous comments that the Times found that people were more than willing to pay for premium content.

Unveiling a metered system has not impacted traffic to the New York Times, remaining at 44 million global unique visitors, which is flat year-over-year.

Another interesting aspect to the unveiling of digital subscriptions is that it gives publishers greater analytics to understand what type of content their users prefer.
“You want to know where the oil is on your site better than others,” Smurl said. “It allows you to think [deeper] about average revenue per user.”

LinkedIn, as a social media company, took a slightly different approach. They made sure they weren’t impacting the experience of those who use the site for general networking, while locating a paid model for recruiters and other power users.

“We [looked to] creating paid opportunities that didn’t overall negatively impact the ecosystem,” Sutherland-Wong said.

And because a majority of users spend time on LinkedIn in a free capacity, that active audience provides an effective ROI for those who use the paid services

The panel served up plenty of evidence that online subscriptions have a bright future, with the key takeaway that publishers will find success with paid models by putting resources towards understanding their customers and paying attention to their needs.

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OPA 10th Annual Summit: Day 2 Afternoon

The second half of day two of the 10th Annual OPA Summit featured a number of start-ups (Singly, Luminate and Moat), a fireside chat with Michael Zeisser, SVP Liberty Media, and a presentation from Benjamin Palmer, Co-Founder and CEO, The Barbarian Group.

Each of the startup presenters brought an interest thought-starter to the audience of publishing professionals.

Jason Cavner, Co-Founder and CEO, Singly, broached the interesting concept that your digital identity could become a paid service in the future.

Chas Edwards, Chief Revenue Officer and Head of Publisher Development, Luminate, surprised the audience with the stat that 10% of all photos in humankind were taken in the last 12 months. By showing how photos continue to be a huge driver of multimedia content, Edwards emphasized the opportunity for publishers to leverage Luminate’s platform, which helps publishers realize incremental revenue through advertisements or ecommerce applications linked to their photos.

Jonah Goodhart, Co-Founder, Moat, highlighted a future where advertisers will measure the impact of campaigns through attention metrics, versus the traditional click-based data.

Zeisser painted an environment of unlimited internet startups explaining that the “cost of creating an Internet company is almost negligible.” He said that investment in online properties will increase and elaborated saying his company looks to share best practices and guidance to the companies it invests in or acquires, so they can focus on the next opportunity.

He emphasized his belief that Internet companies must consistently evolve and take risks, as companies that don’t stand a great chance of failure.. f

The Barbarian Group’s Palmer sees social media as a catalyst for brand advertising dollars to move online. He summed up the day’s discussion by touching upon how social media agencies and publishers can work together to produce compelling campaigns. As marketers create shareable content, they will increasingly want to leverage the considerable audiences of publishers to tell their brand stories

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OPA 10th Annual Summit: Day 2

The second day of sessions at the OPA Annual Summit focused on marketing and branded content.

Leading off, Rishad Tobaccowala, Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer, VivaKi, identified audience, brand, content, data and enterprise as the key components for ongoing success for marketers.

He focused on marketers needing to understand their audience, but not just the people who buy the most of their products.

“Most marketers focus on heavy users, but we also have to focus on the heavy voice, or influencer,” Tobaccowala said. “If you don’t defang your detractors, it doesn’t matter what you do with your advocates.”

The three most important forces guiding the next phase in marketing are the Internet as “connection engine”; “digital leakage”, or how the digital spaces makes unlikely competitors of key brands; and D.A.D. (disaggregated, accelerated, distributed content).

“The next 10 years will be fantastic for the [publishing] industry if it lives up to its potential,” Tobaccowala said.

Tobaccowala, however, pointed out that there will always be unforeseen challenges and opportunities, or “black holes” when looking to the future. In 2002, he reminded the audience that Facebook didn’t exist, Google was just a search company, and Apple was given up for dead.

Matt Freeman, Vice Chairman/Chief Innovation Officer of McCann Erickson, highlighted how online publishers and advertising agencies have shared goals.

“The agency business and online publishing are not that dissimilar,” Freeman said. Adding that the goal is to determine “how we can work together to create new ideas in partnership with online publishers.”

Linda Descano, CFA and Chief Administrative Officer of Global Marketing & Corporate Affairs at Citi, talked about how her company is taking a stronger approach to content, from holding Twitter parties to launching social media sites.

The company asked itself: “How do we thrive in a conversation economy?”

Descano said that Citi’s previous marketing efforts lacked cohesion and a singularity of message, so they needed to alter their approach.

Citi has subsequently transformed its content strategy from the sort of formulaic “About Us” approach to identifying what information is relevant for its customers.

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OPA 10th Annual Summit: Day 1

The first day of sessions at the 10th Annual Online Publishers Association Summit highlighted the fundamental global changes that are impacting the publishing industry.

Moody’s Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi discussed the economic outlook for the next couple of years in opening comments.

While he says full recovery is a few years away, he is optimistic and predicts that 2012 will be better than 2011, and 2013 will see additional improvement.

Mark indicated that the next big opportunity for US companies is in China, but that products and services must be re-imagined in order to succeed in that very unique and different culture. This holds true for content as well.

Our next speaker Peter Francese, Demographic Trends Analyst for the MetLife Mature Market Institute, noted that the state of the union for publishers is strong, considering how limitless the demand for content has become.

He broke down the various demographics that will be consuming the most content. He focused on both the young–noting that children are starting to access content online at around 5 and 6 years old–and grandparents, of which there are 65 million in the US alone.

For the latter, he said that when users encounter a new life stage, e.g. becoming grandparents or seniors, the need for content that explains the new worldview increases.

Genevieve Bell, Intel Fellow and Director of Interactions and Experience Research, Intel Labs, INTEL, spoke next about how Intel uses anthropology to better understand how its products fit into this changing landscape.

She highlighted the fact that the world is not just more connected, but that the US is no longer the center of the web-driven world.

“17% of the world’s Internet users were based in the US in 2010 vs. 65% 10 years ago,” she said.

“You need to be clear about who you are targeting, not just creating a fantasy of who your user is,” Bell said. “It is essential that technology providers and content providers make things that cut through the clutter.”
                 
She highlighted a number of trends that impact the publishing space. For example: the proliferation of devices. While consumers are struggling with what devices are relevant to their lives, they have decided that no one device will do it all.

But not everything is changing; Bell is quick to point out that Americans still watch five times more TV in a month than spend hours on the Internet.

Plenty more to come tomorrow and don’t forget to tune in at 9:15 am ET and 9:50 am ET for the next two live streamed sessions from the summit

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OPA 10th Annual Summit Kicks Off; Live Streaming Exclusive Presentations Feb 1 & 2

Today marks the start to the 10th Annual OPA Summit taking place in Coral Gables, FL. In honor of our organization’s 10th anniversary, today and tomorrow, we will be live streaming three sessions directly from the Summit. The exclusive presentations—listed below—will offer thought provoking dialogue around the theme “New Ideas for a New Decade” designed to bring forward fresh approaches and new tools for the online publishing and digital advertising industries. To tune in to the live stream, click here. We also invite you to follow the conversation on Twitter with hashtag #OPASUMMIT10 and follow the live tweets @OPA_PamHoran.

Live Broadcasted Sessions:

Excavating the Future: How Intel Is Applying Anthropology to Invent New Technologies

February 1st, 2012 - 1:30 pm - 2:15 pm ET

Genevieve Bell, PhD - Intel Fellow and Director, Interactions and Experience Research - Intel Labs, INTEL

Digital Marketing: The Way Ahead

February 2nd, 2012 - 9:15 am - 9:50 am ET

Rishad Tobaccowala - Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer - VivaKi

The 21st Century Advertising Agency: Everything Old Is New Again

February 2nd, 2012 - 9:50 am - 10:20 am ET

Matt Freeman - Vice-Chairman, Chief Innovation Officer - McCann Erickson

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600 Campaigns Later, OPA Ad Units Resonating

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with AdExchanger.com. The resulting Q&A was just published and here is what I had to say about OPA’s 10th Annual Summit, our initiatives and the state of web publishing today:

AdExchanger.com: Looking into your crystal ball, what do you think might be some of publishers’ takeaways from the upcoming OPA Summit?

PH: If we think about what’s hot, I would say mobile. It’s everything from thinking about how online publishers are delivering their content in compelling ways to understanding how advertising can be effective on these platforms. Video has similar challenges with content and advertising - and then there’s social. If we consider that the majority of top links that are shared are based on content from, and links to, OPA sites, OPA publishers put the media in social media. Without our members’ content, there is no social.
Also, another takeaway may be the insights and opportunity that publishers are gaining from social. For example, we have Nate Richardson, who is the President of Gilt City, who will talk about social, local commerce. That is certainly something that is on the horizon potentially for some of the publishers: the intersection between commerce, content and social.

For the rest of the interview please head over to AdExchanger.com.

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OPA Digital Q&A: Discovery Communications’ Kelly Day on Marketing Innovations

The “OPA Digital Q & A”  showcases perspectives on key trends in online publishing and media by industry leaders.

Today’s insights on marketing innovations come from Kelly Day, OPA Board Member and Executive Vice President and General Manager for Discovery Communications’ Digital Media and Commerce division.

What do you see as being the biggest trend in strategic programming in 2012?
KD: As devices evolve and consumer habits shift, the push to multi-screen delivery is in high gear. Great content is no longer enough; the experience within which that content is presented matters as much or perhaps more. The most successful programming will deliver meaningful experiences designed specifically for the devices on which the consumer is engaging with it. 

How is user data factoring into how marketers plot their strategy?
KD: Marketing budgets continue to be managed carefully, so efficiency is key. As people are spread across a growing number of sites, channels, platforms and devices, marketers need ways to efficiently connect with their audiences, and user data in its various forms. This data can guide them to make educated decisions on where to reach their targets in the planning stages, and can help them measure their successes post-campaign.

Tell us about a recently executed strategic marketing program from Discovery Communications, of which you are particularly proud.
KD: We have an ongoing strategic marketing partnership with Unilever, representing many brands across their portfolio. From their food and home care brands to personal care for men or women, Discovery Communications has engaged, active audiences that align well with Unilever targets. This partnership, successful by all measures, demonstrates that you can have great engagement and brand alignment without sacrificing meaningful scale. For example, we successfully delivered against the Dove goal of being the authority on skin care by aligning the brand with hundreds of thousands of information seeking organic searchers through a suite of clinically focused articles. In contrast, we offered Degree a branded entertainment experience that included Discovery Channel talent and leveraged our expertise in video production.

What do you believe were the critical factors of success for the programs?
KD: Versatility, diversity, and flexibility have been the keys to our success with this partnership and others.
The versatility of the Discovery portfolio of networks, sites and platforms has been critical to delivering against the variety of audiences Unilever reaches with their products. We have leveraged several of our networks, including Discovery Channel, TLC and Discovery Fit & Health, to connect Unilever with our brand enthusiasts. We have also called on the strengths of sites, such as HowStuffWorks.com, to attract an audience of proactive information seekers who are key to the Unilever brand goals. Finally, we are able to bring to our partners the unique ability to reach people across platforms – from online and TV to mobile and social. Additionally, Discovery’s audiences are as diverse as the products Unilever offers. Aligning the two offers solutions to Unilever that remain on brand and in line with our mission to entertain and satisfy curiosity. Our flexible solutions have also enabled us to focus on each brand separately, tailoring campaigns to individual brand goals. 

What are marketers most interested in when it comes to online branding?
KD: Scale is not enough when it comes to online branding. Marketers are looking for meaningful, organic interactions with consumers. The trick is to deliver those interactions efficiently for the marketer and, at Discovery, the two are not mutually exclusive. If we create programming that continues to put the consumer interests and needs first, those opportunities for marketers will naturally develop, as we have seen with Unilever.

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5 Things Publishers Need to Know About HTML5

Last November, Adobe announced its decision to halt Flash development for mobile browsers, chipsets and operating systems.

Instead, the company plans to develop on the open HTML5 platform. While the announcement may seem startling given the legacy of Adobe’s business, the launch of Adobe Edge back in August marked the clear beginning of the company’s pivot toward HTML5.

Following the lead of many publishers in the space, most notably The Financial Times, the elimination of Flash will further enable publishers to focus their resources and streamline digital development.

In a company blog post, Adobe vice president and general manager Danny Winokur explained, “Adobe is all about enabling designers and developers to create the most expressive content possible, regardless of platform or technology,” he wrote. “HTML5 is now universally supported on major mobile devices, in some cases exclusively.”

So what does that mean for your business? To find out the five things every publisher should know about HTML5, click over to my guest post on Mashable.com

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