The Third Party Distributors and the Battle for Your Audience
A question the panel tried to answer: “How can we accommodate so many of these social media platforms?”
As I participated in the WAN IFRA World Congress's 68th gathering, this year in Cartagena de las Indias, Colombia, I have been privileged to sit on some informative and insightful sessions the past two days.
I would like to share some highlights and takeaways with you here.
Session: The Third Party Distributors and the Battle for Your Audience
Maintaining a direct link with your audience is critical. While publishers have increased their use of distribution platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Apple News, and Google, they also want to maintain a unique destination for their readers. And while distribution platforms depend on the quality news provided by publishers, they do not feel responsible for sharing the costs of good journalism, nor do they want any distractions that might affect their revenue. How will this tension resolve itself?
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This session was moderated by Gabriel Kahn ,Professor of Professional Practice; Co-Director, Media, Economics and Entrepreneurship; Director, Future of Journalism at the Annenberg Innovation Lab, USA
Speakers
Veit V. Dengler
CEO, NZZ Mediengruppe, Switzerland
Emilio Garcia-Ruiz
Managing Editor for Digital, The Washington Post, USA
Andiara Petterle
Vice-President, Newspapers & Digital Media, RBS Group, Brazil
Jeff Jarvis
Professor and Director, Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism, CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, USA
Jarvis:
“The challenge (for publishers today), how can we accommodate so many of these social media platforms?”
Petterle:
Answering the question as to what is the best strategy to follow to attract younger audiences without alienating the 55+:
“There is no right answer. Each publisher has a different strategy that’s right for them”.
Garcia-Ruiz:
“Humanity has decided Facebook is the way it wants to get news. Your audience is all there- you have to be there.”
“A lot of our business is going to be in social media”.
“We must find ways for us to generate revenue via social media. So far, our revenue from Facebook Instant Articles is better than expected.”
“They (social media outlets) are asking us to put our content in their platforms, let’s start seeing some money coming in.”
Dangler:
“We are not in the business of news. We make business out of curating, analyzing, giving sense.”“NZZ is working on the assumption that in 10 years it will not have any more ad revenues.”
Questions from the audience for this group:
Where do you see the future of your business going….
Dangler:
“ We have to do more video, play a bigger role in how we bring our content to the audience. Multiple channels to engage customers..”
Petrel:
“We have to migrate part of our print into digital, a different model. We have branded content, by far more than last year, stronger presence in verticals. Digital first, of course.”
Garcia-Ruiz:
“Be Visual. Go for consolidation, too many companies out there and the venture capitalists are getting tired of waiting for revenue…..I figure 60-80% of revenue will come from social in five years, so how they come to us is a challenge.”
On the question of people abandoning news websites’ homepage:
The panel felt that not many publishers are thinking about users in terms of interactivity, that still the focus is content and ads.
Dangler:
“More and more people getting away from our site. They are coming to other places but not the homepage, but that is not the most important issue. The important issue is engagement, you get that by content.”
“Engagement is critical and we have to put in the resources to produce great content that engages.”
New Frontiers: Virtual and Augmented Reality in News and Advertising
From the Associated Press: Seeking Home, a Virtual Reality story about migrant camps in Europe.
Moderator : David Calloway, editor in chief, USA Today
Galloway:
“How did it all begin for USA Today in terms of virtual reality? I was standing in the middle of the newsroom, and they transported me to a farm in Iowa. Greeted by Virtual guideposts, life in the farm….WITH HEADSETS…the magic realized. VR taking us to places we have never been before. The way to tell stories and create innovation for advertising.
“USA Today experimented with a dozen VR projects.
We have taken viewers up on a jet, brought them to streets of Havana, AND TOOK THEM on a tour of old havana on a 57 Chevy. We did it in English and Spanish and Spanish version had 1o times the traffic.“We have taken them to presidential candidates speeches. To the Iowa State Fair to see various presidential candidates speeches.”
And is there Virtual Reality in the future of publishers?
“For my money, the technological challenges of VR still prevent us in the media for making it widely distributed and a permanent advertising product. Not yet a multimedia storytelling easy to do for everyday storytelling in mass media.
“Something that marries VR with Facebook Live, so that reporters may bring their cameras to a live event and stream virtual reality to a wide audience. When we get there, we will have arrived at new medium for storytelling.”
Panel: how far we have come and how far we need to come.
Justin Hendrix
Executive Director, NYC Media Lab, USA
Hendrix emphasized applications of virtual and augmented reality.
“We still have a little time before this is ready to become more of a consumer idea…”
Hendrix feels that the real Virtual Reality progress will take place on our smartphones, by 2018.
“Tomorrow’s phones will have
low latency IMU integration. 120 frames per second
with higher pixel density to deliver great experiences.”
And he thinks that in terms of newspapers and magazines, VR will be excellent for live events, for real estate and retail, where many commercial opportunities are to be explored with VR.
“It is with advertising that we will see great possibilities, too. We have already done demo oriented opportunities, as with Nissan cars.
“AS media owners, you can’t cover your eyes and pretend this is not coming. Like mobil, like social media, this is coming, in about three years and it will be a major shift in the way we engage with computers**.
His recommendation:
“Begin to formulate experiments and think about how these VR technologies will affect your business. By 2018 many of your investments of today will begin to bear fruit.”
Helen Situ, Virtual Reality Evangelist, NextVR, USA
Situ put emphasis on the covering of live events using VR.
“With VR 7.2 billion people can attend these events via VR.
Zuckerberg; of Facebook has said it: VR is the next platform.”
“Your grandchildren will see framed video the we look at black and white photos today.
She banks on VR because it has the portability of mobil, the convenience of internet and the immediacy of TV and radio.
She alerted publishers to the fact that leading tech companies (Google, SONY, Samsung among several) are now investing billions in VR and, like other members of the panel, she mentioned that VR and mobile phones is where the action will be in the future.
“In VR you are the director, nobody is editing and cutting scenes for you. That goes very well with the audience.”
In terms of advertising, her group is already able to switch ads and to localize them for a region, delivering the most relevant content to users.
“The greatest impact VR will have on our lives: still to be realized. When you watch VR, you feel like you are there. People don’t tell you they watched VR they tell you they were there.”
Nathan Griffiths
Interactive Editor, Associated Press, USA
“VR is a new storytelling tool. How exactly will that tool best work? We are exploring at AP, building a grammar, a language for this format. We see transition. Bringing video and photography making its way into it. What we need to be doing is experimenting. 3D Mapping. Right now you can experiment at low cost.”
Griffiths called attention to such AP Virtual Reality projects as Matterport, which takes you inside a home, as in the luxury suite of a hotel in Manhattan, and where the the camera built an experience that you could walk inside of the space.
“VR is all about giving the users a large level of control.”
Griffiths also mentioned another VR project from the AP, Seeking Home, which took users to migrant camps in Europe
“We give them the experience of what it was like to live in a camp.”
Other VR projects of consequence, Star Wars Premiere (VR and the red carpet), and Alzheimers, a science project where VR goes inside the brain, with engaging visuals and “lots to look at”.
Quotes and highlights from various sessions during the Congress
Louis Dreyfus, of Le Monde, France :
”You need to come to the market with an innovation every two to three months” #WNC16
Greg Barber, The Washington Post
The Capital Weather Gang mobile feature of The Post ranks among our most popular. We also get more comments from readers who engage with Capital Weather Gang than the average reader of other sections. Readers know ther eis alaways going to the be knowledgeable , respectable voices there to keep a quality conversation going. There is value added here.”
Related: more takeaways from the WAN IFRA Congress
http://blog.wan-ifra.org/2016/06/13/top-takeaways-trends-for-small-and-mid-sized-publishers
Top takeaways, trends for small and mid-sized publishers
Each year during WAN-IFRA's Congress, the US-based Local Media Association (LMA) holds an annual meeting of small to mid-sized publishers, and it's inevitably a fascinating look at how news publishers typically working with small staffs and limited budgets are making the transition from print to digital.