Together, these forces are changing what competitive advantage looks like. No longer seeking scale for its own sake, publishers are focused on proof, predictability, and performance.  

To gain a high-level view of the industry, DCN gathered perspectives from companies that work with publishers every day across measurement, monetization, infrastructure, workflow, and operations. Their proximity to daily decision-making across media companies of all sizes and types provides insight into the competencies publishers are actively strengthening as they adapt to discovery volatility, evolving advertiser expectations, and the operational realities of AI.

Several capabilities stand out as especially relevant for publishing priorities in 2026.

Authenticated audiences anchor revenue growth

The media industry’s shift from quantity to quality has accelerated. Advertisers are increasingly focused on confidence in who they are reaching, how audiences engage, and what outcomes media delivers.

Rich Murphy, CEO, president, and managing director of Alliance for Audited Media, points out that buying continues to move away from pageviews and impressions toward outcomes. In that environment, independent, third-party verification is foundational. Publishers able to demonstrate authenticated reach and engagement across channels are better aligned with how advertising investment decisions are being made this year.

This change is reshaping how growth is defined. Audience scale still matters, but only when it is identifiable, engaged, and repeatable. Audiences must be respected as business assets rather than traffic streams—assets that need to be cultivated, measured, and maintained over time.

That redefinition is already influencing advertiser behavior. Jack Marshall, head of news at DoubleVerify, points to engagement data showing that trusted news environments outperform non-news content. For advertisers prioritizing attention and impact, proof and performance are increasingly intertwined.

Cross-platform adaptation reflects audience discovery

As search and social referrals become less reliable, publishers are rethinking how content travels and how value is captured beyond owned-and-operated environments.

John Nardone, CEO of JWX, says publishers are strengthening their ability to adapt content across platforms rather than rely on a destination-first model. With referral dependency declining, publishers can no longer wait for audiences to arrive. Instead, they need systems that allow high-integrity journalism to meet audiences in the formats each platform favors—whether vertical video, audio, or short-form social expressions—while still reinforcing the core brand.

That shift turns content operations into an adaptive engine. The goal is not simply wider distribution, but more relevant, context-aware presentation of journalism across platforms. This enables audiences to experience content in ways that feel native to where and how they are engaging.

From the demand side, Sean Dean, vice president of media owner development at Criteo, notes that clearer signals around context and engagement make it easier for adapted content to be understood, valued, and discovered as it moves across platforms.

And from an audience perspective, Naomi Owusu, CEO and co-founder of Tickaroo, emphasizes that relevance is built through formats that invite participation and transparency. When audiences feel content is timely, understandable, and connected to their needs, cross-platform presence reinforces trust and habitual return behavior rather than fragmenting it.

In 2026, brand presence across platforms is increasingly tied to audience loyalty and repeat engagement, not just reach.

Modern media infrastructure is about signal quality and orchestration

In 2026, modern media infrastructure is less about adding tools and more about connecting systems that have historically been siloed.

From the demand side, infrastructure quality shows up as signal quality. Dean at Criteo says accurate, complete bidstream and bid-response data allow buyers to understand context, pricing, and performance with greater clarity. When those fundamentals are in place, innovation and premium demand tend to follow.

In premium video and streaming environments, infrastructure also needs to support consistency and accountability across screens. Nicolas Mignot, vice president of publisher sales and strategy at FreeWheel, emphasizes that modern infrastructure increasingly connects ad exposure to business outcomes such as sales and conversions. As advertisers expect video to behave more like digital channels, infrastructure becomes a growth enabler rather than background plumbing.

From the content side, JWX’s Nardone describes modern infrastructure as an orchestration layer, which collapses the divide between the newsroom and the ad tech stack. When a single piece of content can be automatically optimized for reach, engagement, and yield across platforms, publishers are better positioned to monetize attention wherever it occurs.

Engagement becomes the key to unlock monetization

As reach fragments and acquisition costs rise, sustainable monetization in 2026 depends less on volume and more on depth of engagement. It’s also critical to understand how clearly that engagement translates into advertiser value.

Ginny Hunter, vice president of publisher client development at DoubleVerify, says one persistent inefficiency is treating performance, media quality, and revenue as separate conversations. Publishers that unify these signals can proactively package and price premium opportunities around advertiser-favored KPIs, shortening the path to investment and strengthening trust.

In video environments, engagement is also reshaping how inventory is valued. Nicolas Mignot, vice president of publisher sales and strategy at FreeWheel, notes that advertisers increasingly look beyond content metadata to signals such as attention and ad interaction. These indicators help distinguish passive viewing from moments when ads are more likely to resonate and perform.

This year, monetization strategies that treat engagement as a secondary outcome face growing pressure. Approaches that design for engagement as a core input to pricing, packaging, and measurement are proving more resilient.

Trust and inclusion support long-term audience value

In a market saturated with automated and commoditized content, differentiation increasingly hinges on whether publishers can deliver journalism that audiences perceive as credible, relevant, and trustworthy.

Tickaroo’s Owusu believes that inclusive, audience-first journalism is closely tied to trust. Audiences no longer grant publishers the benefit of the doubt; they want to see their communities and lived experiences reflected authentically in coverage. That requires more than hiring practices. It depends on editorial, technical, and product systems that allow a broader range of voices to shape storytelling.

Trust also depends on accountability beyond the newsroom. Marshall from DoubleVerify points to engagement data showing that trusted news environments consistently outperform other content categories, reinforcing that credibility is not just a values issue—it is measurable and meaningful for advertisers. When trust is supported by transparent signals and outcomes, it becomes a durable source of audience and revenue value.

Owusu emphasizes that transparency is of particular importance as publishers adopt new tools. In the context of AI, audiences want clarity about what is human-led, what is assisted, and where accountability sits. Trust, once lost, is difficult to regain. And in 2026, it is increasingly visible in retention, engagement, and willingness to pay.

AI becomes operational infrastructure, with limits

This year, AI has moved beyond the experimental phase for many publishers. As media companies increasingly work with AI, it has started to function as infrastructure, shaping how inventory is forecast, priced, packaged, and sold.

Unni Kurup, director of client consulting and strategy at Theorem, describes AI’s real impact as emerging in commercial and operational decision systems—forecasting demand, optimizing yield, planning inventory, and coordinating decisions across teams. In volatile markets, AI can be used to forecast demand more accurately and align decisions across sales, pricing, and operations, reducing costly missteps.

At the same time, leaders are clear that not every application is appropriate. Murphy from Alliance for Audited Media emphasizes that, as AI becomes more deeply embedded in media operations, strong governance is essential. Without transparency, human oversight, and clear data-privacy protections, AI can introduce bias and opacity in the push for efficiency.

In 2026, effective AI adoption is less about speed and more about judgment: applying automation where it sharpens decisions and operational clarity, and restraint where trust and accountability are at stake.

Looking ahead: partnerships, execution, and what matters now

As publishers navigate 2026, decision-making has become more deliberate. An environment defined by uncertainty has sharpened the consequences of choices about audiences, investments, and partnerships. That execution depends not just on internal capabilities, but on the partners publishers choose to work with and the standards those relationships reinforce.

From a business perspective, performance, flexibility, and transparency have become baseline expectations. Tina Pautz, chief business officer at Raptive, says publishers have less tolerance for partners who underdeliver or fail to evolve alongside changing business models. Sustainable growth depends on alignment, clarity around tradeoffs, and a shared focus on long-term outcomes rather than short-term gains.

Supply-chain integrity is also receiving greater scrutiny this year. Bill Wheaton, CEO and co-founder of Symitri, believes that complexity and opacity (particularly the spread The of MFA inventory) are diluting value for both publishers and advertisers. Direct connectivity, clearer supply paths, and reduced waste are increasingly part of how publishers demonstrate accountability and rebuild confidence in the digital marketplace.

Taken together, these perspectives point to a broader shift. Publishing partnerships and priorities in 2026 are less about maximizing scale at any cost and more about reducing uncertainty, protecting trust, and enabling consistent performance over time.

The publishers in the strongest position this year aren’t trying to do everything. There’s less appetite for new-for-new’s-sake, and more focus on capabilities that actually move the business forward. That means understanding and authenticating audiences, adapting content strategy to the new rules of discovery, improving signal quality, and tying monetization more directly to engagement.

The post Trends shaping publishing priorities in 2026 appeared first on Digital Content Next.

According to Innovid CEO Tal Chalozin, “the biggest frustration in cross-platform measurement is that it’s so hard to understand.” This, from the man who whose company was the first to receive Media Rating Council (MRC) accreditation for its OTT ad impression tracking in 2018.

The problem is that there are multiple new currencies and measurement tools emerging, as the TV industry attempts to blend media platforms and devices, and provide a comprehensive and deduplicated view of media consumption.

Jon Watts, managing director of the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM), describes the industry’s current situation as “messy, but exciting”.

”The biggest change in measurement is that we no longer just use panel data as currency,” explains Watts. “Most TV is consumed in a connected environment and those devices create data about viewing habits, which compliment what panels do. Setting up a currency based on a representative panel is complex enough. But it has got more complex due to the increasingly fragmented audience.”

A storm is brewing

The shift from traditional TV to streaming was accelerated by Covid-19. OTT media revenue is expected to reach over $210bn by 2026, more than double the $106bn generated in 2020. As a result, ad spend on CTV in also on the rise  and predicted to hit $19.10 bn in 2022, accounting for 5.6% of total media ad spend.

With the growth of streaming came the inevitable rise in providers. These days, 49% of US households subscribe to at least three streaming services.

“This fragmentation of audiences combined with big data and changing market dynamics has created the perfect storm of craziness,” says Nathalie Bordes, EVP Measurement for Marketers at Association of National Advertisers (ANA). “Traditional measurements are being challenged, so there is room for innovations and new approaches.”

These innovations come amidst criticism of Nielsen (rececntly acquired for $16bn) over its inability to adapt to consumers’ shift to streaming.

“Some would argue it’s a lazy monopolist, who has not done enough to evolve their measurement services,” states Watts. “For at least 15 years the industry has been trying to encourage competition and dislodge Nielsen from the market.”

However, complaints about Nielsen’s measurements aren’t limited to streaming. Confidence in its legacy TV measurements has also been shaken due to accusations of undercounted audiences during the pandemic. As a result, the MRC pulled its accreditation of Nielsen’s national and local TV ratings, which has opened the door for new solutions:

“Nipping at their heals are a new breed of providers, which are slowly gaining traction with alternative approaches to measurements based on TV data,” says Watts.

Measurement independence

Nielson’s counterattack is Nielson One, which is due to launch December 2022. Meanwhile, NBCU has taken a clear stance against Nielsen’s ratings monopoly and has been working with the industry in a bid to create “measurement independence.”

NBCU selected iSpot as its partner in January and they teamed up for a test run at the 2022 Olympic Winter Games and Super Bowl LVI. In addition, the media giant has struck up a number of partnerships with the likes of Comscore, DoubleVerify, and Innovid. NBCU also plans to use iSpot’s data as its national currency for ad buys at this year’s upfronts.

“We must move away from how things have historically been and move towards a future of optionality and interoperability,” Kelly Abcarian, NBCU executive vice president of measurement and impact, told Ad Exchanger.

iSpot claims it can measure audiences for streaming and linear on a second-by-second basis and in real-time. Measurements include ad impressions, incremental reach/frequency and deduplication. Abcarian, who joined NBCU in 2021 after nearly 16 years at Nielsen, says these new metrics will give advertisers more accurate and effective data about their campaigns.

Greater transparency

Deduplication is another challenge of cross-platform measurement as big data provides information on what was watched, but not by who. Simulmedia’s CEO Dave Morgan alleges that 90% of what is claimed in the market about deduplicating audiences isn’t true. However, Morgan cites NBCU as one of the companies “doing really well,” alongside ViacomCBS and Disney. He also has high hopes for Nielsen One and Comscore.

One of the key problems is that media measurement continues to be siloed by different platforms and metrics. A more transparent system is needed, where advertisers can see where their dollars are being spent – and where they can be saved. According to research by TVSquared, more than 90% of U.S. buyers said transparency of metrics across linear and streaming channels was critical in order to devote ad spend to converged TV.

“We need an apples to apples comparison, so we can compare the same person watching on one platform or another,” says Chalozin.

This is what the entrepreneur is hoping to achieve following Innovid’s acquisition of TVSquared. The Scottish company tracks more than 100 million households around the world and more than 75 CTV platforms. Chalozin says TVSquared adds linear TV capabilities to their arsenal, which will provide a complete view of consumer viewing habits, with a currency-grade measurement.

Aside from technological issues, a cultural shift needs to happen in which broadcasters, platforms and marketers work together. This seems to be what NBCU is trying encourage by working with the industry to create a measurement framework for all.

NBCU is not the only major media brand creating collaborations. Disney has been testing new measurement solutions with nearly 100 vendors, and recently named Samba TV as its first official measurement partner. WarnerMedia is also testing with iSpot.tv, Comscore, and VideoAmp.

No single currency

Nielsen has been the industry standard for decades, allowing networks to see how they stacked up against one another. Without a single agreed-upon currency, it is more difficult for advertisers to decide where to allocate their budgets, and for networks to prove their worth.

CIMM is doing their bit to help the industry navigate their way through these turbulent times. The coalition is conducting a deep dive study into the different methodologies of currency-grade provider to find the most effective solutions.

Bordes believes multiple currencies can work, as long as they are fully transparent and the measurement solutions are accredited. “Measurement systems needs to be reformed and there needs to be innovation,” he says. “But the processes must be validated in order to create transparency. We want measurements that go beyond the silo.”

Accreditation throws up yet another challenge in the industry. In 2019, the MRC produced cross-platform measurement standards, but three years later no providers have been accredited using the guidelines. There are companies in the audit process, including Videoamp and ComScore, but as Chalozin states, “people need to believe that you do what you say you do”.

Test and learn

According to Chalozin, another essential cog in the wheel of cross-platform measurement is the buyer. The industry needs their approval – and money.

“Solutions are coming in, but we can’t yet define success,” he says. “In order to say a measurement works we need our customers to agree on a chosen currency and trust how it’s measured. We need to have money flowing on both sides.”

“NBCU put their money where their mouth is by creating a new framework. But the Olympics was a test event, and not as large scale as full blown TV. We have yet to see a solution that can conduct business at a large scale.”

The pros of different currencies is that it has created a more competitive environment which stimulates innovation and drives down profit margins. The downside is, with no established truth state, the industry is in a state of flux as new providers and partnerships barter over solutions. Until cross-platform measurement is solved, the true revenue potential of today’s multiplatform viewing will not be realized. The opportunity is there, as is the level of experimentation.

“We are in test and learn stage,” says Watts. “Come back in five years’ time, when things have settled down. I believe there will be small number of large providers, offering slightly different, but effective, cross-platform measurements.”

The post The battle for cross-platform measurement has created the perfect storm appeared first on Digital Content Next.

For every hour of television we watched, networks force-fed us 17 minutes of commercials. Radio jingles were a fixture of every car ride. Whenever we opened a newspaper or a magazine, we were greeted by pages upon pages of slogans and taglines.

In those days, marketers could always count on having a direct line to consumers. There was no opting-out; audience attention was an entitlement. But we all know those days are long gone.

Today, reaching consumers and building connections require marketers to earn attention — a more difficult task that requires far more innovation.

Now, for less than $10 a month, you can stream almost every song ever recorded or binge watch shows and movies for hours — all without the threat of an ad.

Even where the majority of advertising budgets are spent, scale has been the defining metric and continues to persist today. On social media, where it’s still possible to reach consumers at scale, audiences are far from captive. Instead, the average person scrolls through 300 feet of feeds every day — the height of the Statue of Liberty, including the torch. It might be easy to capture a click, but it’s much more difficult to make a connection.

The job of a marketer is ever changing. Once the mouthpiece of innovation, a marketer now needs to be the source of innovation, through new customer acquisition strategies, consumer mobile experiences, or customer service, to name just a few. For those who try to avert this new reality, there are real business consequences. (See: the DTC disruption of larger incumbents across nearly every industry, or the $15B writedown of Kraft — an action directly tied back to lack of investment in the brand and innovation).

The risks of not building a brand that matters — a brand that is worthy of people’s attention — are becoming more evident.If we’re not entitled to time with audiences, what can we do to earn it?

It’s in this light that marketers and media companies are becoming more alike. Delighting audiences, creating connections, building a brand people trust are not only priorities for us, but they’re also prerequisites for building a modern media company.

If you’re nodding along thinking that this state of things is obvious, I ask you this: If we’re not entitled to time with audiences, what can we do to earn it?

1. Redefine context to include mindset

I wake up in the morning and check how the Sixers did last night (trust the process), read a few daily newsletters, and waste time by saying something snarky on Twitter on my way to work. In the office, I’ll read industry news, research a client’s latest business opportunities in preparation for a meeting, and end my day listening to a podcast while trying to find the newest restaurant in New York worth a try.

Why am I telling you my media diet? For starters, it’s because this user did much more than act as a male 18-34, business-decision-maker who recently put another pair of white Converses (free ad) in his cart. I acted like someone who didn’t want to look stupid in front of colleagues to going on a fact-finding mission and getting in dinner-planning mode.

I am the same person through those experiences, though my mindset changes constantly — with different expectations, different intentions, and a different level of receptiveness to very different messages.

Every minute we’re online, our attitude changes. It’s no longer enough to frame context solely around premium environments or whether the words on the page are brand safe. It’s about reaching and connecting with people based on the mindset they’re in, not just the latest pair of shoes they put in their cart.Do a job for audiences. Don’t just look for a transactional relationship based on personal information.

People have many (often independent) identities and marketers should treat people like the multi-dimensional — and yes, fickle — internet users that we are.

To earn attention and build real connections, do a job for audiences. Don’t just look for a transactional relationship based on personal information. Consider the whole context (and the whole person!), and meet audiences in the right mindset.

2. Measure what matters — not what’s easy to count

Too often we optimize for what’s easiest to measure, focusing on the data that’s most readily available.

We even try to justify bold decisions, like Nike’s recent campaign with Colin Kaepernick, with easy-to-access metrics like stock price: “What a bold move, their stock is up XX%!” In reality, if Nike’s core customers love and identify even more with the brand because of it, that sounds like enough of an outcome to me. People overly worried about what Nike’s stock price does in the immediate aftermath aren’t assessing Nike’s long term health anyway.The harder something is to measure, the more it’s worth your time and energy.

Real, long term returns come from optimizing for things that are harder to measure. And just because it’s harder to measure doesn’t mean it’s not worth focusing on. Rather, the harder something is to measure, the more it’s worth your time and energy.

Our industry values scale, clicks, views. But what about impact, connections, and loyalty? These are the metrics that matter.

How do you make an impact? How do you make a connection? By communicating brand values to your audience through creative storytelling. Telling great stories transcends platforms, audiences, formats, and environments. Combine this with our new definition of context and you will build deep audience relationships delivering both near and long term business results.

Earning attention means remembering value creation exists outside of a spreadsheet. Don’t let technology and data set your entire strategy. Make a connection, earn one.

3. Find a long term partner worthy of your trust

My final message for marketers is this: I need your help just as much as I believe we can help you. Like you, we are laser-focused on developing stories that break through the noise and appeal to audiences. And like you, we do it across platforms — through articles and videos, podcasts and live events.

But that’s only part of the reason marketers and media companies make such good partners. Modern media companies work every day to earn audience attention, beginning with an unwavering dedication to audience trust. These are not transactional relationships and they are not lost in 300 feet of mindless daily scrolling. From this perspective, it’s obvious to us why consumer trust in social media is half that compared to modern media.

From there, we take a holistic, strategic, and long-term approach to building our brand and making an impact — and we approach our partnerships the same way. Our goal is to find collaborators who are in it for the long haul, who make us smarter about what we do — and who expect us to do the same for them. These kinds of long-term partnerships are more strategic, consultative, and iterative (and more fun!).Let’s find collaborators who are in it for the long haul and who make us smarter.

As a result, this delivers compounding returns. Partners who have mastered creative storytelling in all forms, develop technology platforms for publishing, deliver high-value distribution channels, and layer insights across everything will continue to emerge as leaders.

To push us forward, let’s think of audiences in their fullest contexts — mindset-first — and respectfully foster relationships, loyalty, impact, and deep connections. Let’s lean into the creativity and storytelling that we know matters most. Let’s be worthy of our audiences trust and their time — and earn their attention together.

Ryan Pauley is Vox Media’s Chief Revenue Officer. When he’s in the mindset to waste time, you can find him on Twitter @rypauley.

The post Attention is abundant, but you have to earn it appeared first on Digital Content Next.

However, the ongoing challenge has been identifying those users as they jump from device to device for advertisers. Cross-device targeting solves this problem, by helping publishers effectively aggregate, understand and then monetize their audiences.

This technology uses a combination of data sets, signals and device-specific information to identify relationships between disparate devices and tie them together. For publishers, there are three specific ways this can directly impact their bottom line:

Increased App Revenue

Users are spending far more time with tablet and smartphone apps. But those apps are not inexpensive to build or maintain. By layering audience data into their app inventory, a weather site, for example can command higher in-app CPMs by offering a more precise audience to advertisers. Adding in additional audience targeting also often leads to increased sell-through rates, reducing the overall “cost” of developing great mobile content while increasing revenue.

Better Campaign Performance

Publishers can also harness cross-device intelligence to optimize advertisers’ campaigns, potentially leading to greater retention and bigger buys. The device graph can be used to improve a campaign by delivering sequential messaging across screens.

For example, consider a news site with loyal readers who visit their site multiple times with different devices. Cross-device intelligence can help ensure that their readers don’t see the same ad too many times. Rather, the news site can use cross-device targeting to serve readers a series of sequential ads that vary based on the device they’re using – such as a 15-second video for a mobile user – and then a longer, 30-second video when they’re on the desktop. Ultimately, this means a better brand experience with consistent (but not annoying) messaging.

Content Customization

But beyond generating revenue, cross-device intelligence can also lead to better user experiences overall.

A financial services site, for example, could see that a particular group of users only consumes content related to choosing the right credit card – and not any of the articles about saving for retirement or stock performance. By matching these users to specific devices through the device graph, the site could prioritize credit card content when those users returned and accessed the site, no matter the device.

Customizing content in this way can help increase time spent on site and boost return visits, two key metrics in terms of user engagement.

What’s Next?

Ultimately, cross-device technology can help publishers better satisfy both users and advertisers, maximizing revenue-generation opportunities at a time when this is critical. But there remains a lot of room for improvement when it comes to cross platform measurement.

In an ideal world, publishers would have instant access into measurement across the whole market to really understand the dynamics between TV and digital, but we aren’t quite there yet. For marketers creating cross-platform campaigns, measuring how many ads each customer has been exposed, regardless of media, is the next challenge that remains to be solved.

The post Cross device targeting: 3 ways publishers can benefit today appeared first on Digital Content Next.

Audience development and social strategy teams vary in size and composition. However, almost uniformly, they are charged with attracting an audience via social media. Sometimes that means simply building brand awareness. However, most of the time, the goal is to attract audiences to content on a website or in an app—regardless of where the consumer may have discovered the content in the first place.

But even trying to figure out exactly where and how to publicize content has become tricky with so many social media channels to choose from. Media outlets work hard to keep up with the latest ones, while leveraging their limited resources efficiently. It’s often a balancing act, and it’s not always easy to figure out where your audience is going next.

Team Building

When it comes to audience development teams, managers aren’t necessarily looking for someone who has a big presence on social media. Instead, they are looking for a broader set of skills that fits in with the overall objectives of the particular media outlet. That means understanding the content and what will get people to engage with it.

Raju Narisetti, CEO of Univision’s Gizmodo Media Group sees the audience builder’s job in fairly basic terms. It is essential that they “Have a keen sense of our brands’ sensibility that can then be translated and reflected in that site’s social presence, understanding of how to engage and grow audiences, and a willingness to try new approaches.”

Ryan Kellet, director of audience for the Washington Post social media team, says he generally doesn’t care how overtly active someone may be on social media. He’s not looking for the person with the most followers. “For the audience development team within the newsroom, I only hire journalists, not marketers. If you are a marketer, that’s not what I’m looking for,” he said.

Finding the Audience

The teams work differently across outlets, but (unsurprisingly) the job is generally focused on driving traffic to the content and building brand awareness. The real trick is deciding how to divide up the work across the team and where to publicize the content for the best results.

Helen Havlak, who is engagement editor at The Verge, where she oversees audience growth and distribution strategy, says her social media team uses an on-call system. The editor on call is responsible for reviewing every article before it goes out, checking the headline, the image and even the URL, making sure it’s all putting the article in the best social media light. When not on call, the other editors check analytics, plan social coverage for future events, create Snapchat or Instagram stories and run engagement experiments. Havlak says this keeps everyone involved. And, because the job always varies, it also keeps anyone from getting bored doing just one thing.

The other issue is trying to decide how to allocate people to new social media platforms as they emerge. Narisetti says that at Gizmodo Media they have to make sure a new platform is right for them before even trying it, and they don’t jump at every new shiny thing that comes along. “There isn’t an inherent, defensible first-mover advantage of jumping feet-first onto a new platform when existing ones are still ripe for mining.” He says it comes down mostly to how to best allocate a limited set of resources.

A Numbers Game

Of course, the advantage of using social media platforms to build audience is precisely that you can measure the impact of your work. But even that isn’t always as simple as it sounds.

The Washington Post’s Kellet believes that what you’re measuring is specific to each platform. “We try to be as smart as we can. If you start doing platform comparing at the same time, you can get an apples-to-oranges situation. What does a view mean in the context of a particular platform? You want to be careful when comparing across platforms,” he said.

The Verge team looks at metrics differently. “When comparing across channels, we boil everything down to a “content view” so we can easily look at Facebook Instant Article views, Flipboard flips, Instagram Story views, newsletter opens, etc. in one place. However, because that doesn’t account for the relative ‘value’ of different channels, we also look at engagement metrics like time on page and minutes watched,” Havlak explained.

Narisetti says for him, it’s pretty simple. It’s about “growing engaged social audiences [and] bringing audiences back to our own platform.”

These teams work with content creators, and ideally the individuals who make up the team have a deep sense of the content, allowing them to distribute it appropriately across platforms. Gone are the days, where you threw out some content and hoped for the best. Media outlets have very clear strategies for building audience and dedicated teams to help them achieve their goals.

The post A numbers game: Audience and measurement dominate publishers’ social distribution strategy appeared first on Digital Content Next.

The cross-device tracking benefits include the ability to:

• Log into email or social media accounts from multiple devices.
• handoff from one device to another (e.g. one can start reading a book on one device and pick it up on another).
• Helps to fight against fraud, companies recognize users sign-on to devices with easy authentication methods.
• Personalize advertising by analyzing a consumer’s activities on all devices and then matching with offline behavior.

Many companies also use a probabilistic approach to extrapolate which consumer is using a device, even when a consumer is not logged into a service. This method of probabilistic tracking uses IP address matching. Typically, an ad platform places a cookie on a consumer’s browser, the cookie regularly includes the IP address of the device running the browser. Since the devices on the same local network often have the same public IP address, the ad platform can surmise that the devices using the same IP address, belong to the same household. It’s important to note that most of the probabilistic tracking companies, like third-party advertising, do not have a direct relationship with consumers nor have access to user agreements on data collection and data sharing.

Many consumers have little awareness of cross device tracking and the information captured from their smart televisions, health information from wearable devices, or offline shopping habits. Therefore, the FTC recommends the inclusion of four central practices for companies conducting cross-device tracking:

1. Transparency
   Companies should provide meaningful information to consumers about cross-device tracking activities to help inform consumer decisions about whether to use existing opt-out tools, or whether to stop using a site, app or service.

2. Choice
   Companies should offer consumer choices about how their cross-device activity is tracked. Consumers should be informed as to how the practices apply or are implemented.

3. Sensitive data
   Companies should stop cross-device tracking on sensitive topics, including health, financial, and children’s information, without consumers’ affirmative express consent.

4. Security
   Companies are required to maintain reasonable security, in order to avoid unexpected and unauthorized uses of data.All companies in the digital ecosystem, especially those that are consumer-facing, have a responsibility to inform consumers of third party and cross-device tracking companies being utilization on their site and apps.

The post FTC recommendations for cross-device tracking appeared first on Digital Content Next.

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.

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The report, which uses data from leading third‐party providers, reveals a gross audience for magazine brands of 1.7 billion in February 2015 versus 1.5 billion in February 2014. The February performance continues to benefit from increased video and mobile web consumption, up 18.7% and 78.0%, respectively, over the same time period in 2014.

This month, web (desktop/laptop) was up 6.9%, with nearly half of all websites in the report showing double-digit to triple-digit growth in unique visitors versus the same period last year. This growth is notable after six consecutive months of flat year-over-year web audience numbers, a trend which reflected, in large part, the migration of online media consumers to mobile devices.

According to an analysis by MediaPost, the list of magazines with the biggest gross audiences was led by ESPN The Magazine, with a gross audience of 92.8 million in February 2015, due to its combination of Web (25.4 million), mobile (40.3 million), and video (11.8 million) audiences. In second place was People at 85 million. With a strong performance across digital channels, it also boasted a print audience of 44 million.

Better Homes and Gardens came in at third place with a gross audience of 49.1 million. Forbes was in fourth place with a gross audience of 45.7 million, followed by Time at 44.8 million and AARPat 44.4 million.

The complete report, which currently covers approximately 145 magazine media brands from over 30 companies, can be found at www.magazine.org.

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While Collective has been successful deploying its own solution, Apprendi says “now that we’ve got the patent, we’re excited about trying to make this as the standard in the market and establishing a licensing model around it.” Their U.S. Patent 8,949,890 protects the company’s offering and reinforces Collective’s expertise in multiscreen advertising.

Certainly, as audiences increasingly consume content across multiple devices, media companies and marketers are interested in understanding their behavior and, of course, the impact of advertising in various contexts. Interestingly, Apprendi says the origins of Collective’s TV Accelerator solution can be traced to Nielsen research that showed the remarkable lift in ad recall when consumers were exposed to a television commercial and online video. With the Nielsen process, however, this could only be measured when it “randomly happened.” Apprendi says his team realized that “Collective was in a unique position to make this happen intentionally.”

Nielsen’s recent acquisition of Exelate, a company that connects identities across all channels and devices, signals that others would also like to be in that position. Apprendi notes that Nielsen was in the “ad effectiveness and audience measurement business, which they are good at. Now it looks like they are moving into targeting, using data to target, not just measure.”

Collective, says Apprendi, has a head start given that they’ve been doing this for a decade already and have core capabilities focused on data-driven programmatic advertising and on providing audience contextual data to deliver targeted ads across platforms.

Apprendi believes that most marketers are buying publishers’ channels as a proxy to reach a target audience but they should actually flip that thinking in order to make better decisions about where to make big direct investments. “Let’s not make those decisions until I buy programmatically across platforms, screens and media brands to see which avenues and media brands perform the best.” Then, he says, marketers can make better decisions about where to make a significant direct investment.

And, while he sees signs of progress with more and more agencies having a unified video buying practice across screens, he says that “The Holy Grail is that eventually, we’ll see marketers start with audience first, rather than ‘this is what I did on TV now what should I do to support that.’”

At a minimum, Apprendi encourages marketers to use data and analytics to determine which media outlets make the most sense for their objectives. And on the publisher side, that data can help them respond or optimize their content strategy. “Data makes everyone smarter at the end of the day.”

The long term goal, however, is “full transparency,” says Apprendi. This is not just cost transparency, but includes issues of inventory quality and viewability. “We need transparent relationships if we want to help marketers make smarter media decisions.”

The post Collective Patents its Cross-platform Targeting Technology appeared first on Digital Content Next.

Nielsen [has] announced that it has completed its acquisition of eXelate, a leading provider of data and technology to facilitate the buying and selling of advertising across programmatic platforms. This acquisition allows Nielsen to enable its clients to make better and faster marketing and media decisions.

With the acquisition of eXelate, Nielsen clients gain the ability to activate in real-time Nielsen audience insights as well as eXelate’s aggregated consumer segments from over 200 data providers. eXelate’s advanced technology leverages data to inform the highest quality programmatic buying decisions in the marketplace…

eXelate aggregates and distributes third-party online data, composed of premium demographic, interest, and intent data from over 200 online and offline data providers. Nielsen intends to further develop and expand eXelate’s already rapidly-growing data marketplace and innovative technology solutions.

Nielsen’s acquisition raises a couple of key issues:

1. This move may have a significant impact on data-driven programmatic for television. The acquisition brings Nielsen closer to being able to transact based on measurement and data.
2. It will enhance measurement capabilities from Nielsen, answering questions about who’s watching and what they’re doing post exposure.
3. It will be interesting to see if comScore responds with an acquisition of its own in order to keep up (though there are few independent DMPs left out there, such as Krux and Lotame)

Coverage of the acquisition:

MediaPost: Nielsen acquires Exelate for undisclosed terms

AdExchanger: Nielsen Acquires Data Platform eXelate For Estimated $200 Million

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