For Michael Wolff, writing in MIT Technology Review, the acceptance of Instant Articles by major players who have signed up to provide content through the feature provided yet another example of bad decision-making by the news industry. As he points out: “Netflix will pay approximately $3 billion in licensing and production fees this year to the television and film industry; Hulu is paying $192 million to license South Park; Spotify pays out 70 percent of its gross revenues to the music labels that hold the underlying rights to Spotify’s catalogue. Now here’s what Facebook is guaranteeing a variety of publishers, including the New York Times, BuzzFeed, and the Atlantic, which are posting articles in its new “instant articles” feature: $0.”

He accuses news publishers of giving away their content for free, while at the same time losing control of their branding and valuable usage data. In the Facebook deal, publishers can sell ads on their articles and keep all of the revenue, or have Facebook sell ads in exchange for 30 percent.

“In the case of these new platform distribution deals—while they all involve slightly different plays—they each mimic a standard publishing business model: syndication. That is, a publisher with access to a different audience redistributes the content of another publisher—of course paying the content owner a fair fee. In some sense, this is the basis of the media business … Content is valuable–otherwise why distribute it?”

This leads Wolff to wonder whether “republishing initiatives are digging a deeper hole for publishers or helping them get out of the one they are already in”. He sees no reason to think things will turn out well: “…publishers have largely found themselves in this dismal situation because of their past bad decisions—accepting the general free ethos, bowing to a vast catchall of casual and formal sharing and re-posting agreements, and failing to challenge an ever-expanding interpretation of fair use. It seems only logical to doubt the business acumen of people who have been singularly inept when it comes to protecting their interests in the world of digital distribution.”

Facebook’s rationale for publishers to support Instant Articles is that it will provide a better user experience and deliver bigger audiences. While true, Wolff says that publishers will lose sustainable brand-building opportunities; it’s a model that better suits content that maximizes revenue potential, in particular ‘native content’, and will further push down digital ad prices.

According to Wolff, this type of syndication arrangement represents “another step closer toward what Ken Doctor, an analyst and journalist who has closely covered the demise of the news business, calls “off news site” reading. In this, publishers effectively give up their own channels and become suppliers of content to more efficient distribution channels … In effect, the New York Times becomes a wire service–the AP, except where the AP gets paid huge licensing fees, the Times does not.”

With the collapse of traditional ad revenues, publishers have justified pushing forward with digital experimentation because others were and because they couldn’t afford not to, even though they don’t fully understand the technology. “The ultimate result was a disastrous, sheep-to-slaughter endgame scenario, in which the new, digitally focused publishers are a fraction of their analog size. And now, in the prevalent view, there is simply no turning back.”

Meanwhile, dollars are flowing into the coffers of TV, movie and sports content creators. Even music, is fighting to win back control of – or at least payment for – its product. Wolff concludes that while there are differences between entertainment and news publishing that may explain why the old rules don’t apply in the new world, “perhaps publishers are just shamefully bad businessmen”.

In Mobile Marketing Daily, Steve Smith reviews the Apple News app and what it means for the news business. He concludes that in user experience terms it’s similar to Flipboard and Zeit – aggregating content from news sites and blogs in an attractive, easy-to-use way – but his diagnosis for the publishing industry makes for grim reading: “The legitimate worry of course is that media brands further lose control of their audience, data, context – and potentially, of their advertisers. I would say “Alert the media,” but in this scenario the media are already dead men walking.”

Writing for Fast Company, Joel Johnson points out that Apple and Facebook are just giving users what they want: a faster, less cluttered experience, compared to the slow load times and multitude of ad forms assaulting users on the sites of news publishers, who are forced into maximizing revenue by any means possible. Aggregators may provide a better – though banal – experience, “but it is unclear if most publications will be able to survive on only the revenue granted by these platform companies alone.” Apple’s attitude that “advertising is always unwelcome, unless it happens to be advertising that Apple itself lords over” is also a serious concern. “With small-to-midsize publishers already dropping like flies, things are looking perilous for readers and writers alike.”

An article in The Wall Street Journal claims that desktop usage isn’t decreasing, as is often claimed. Jack Marshall explains that while the share of the market enjoyed by mobile internet access is growing fast, the total time spent online from desktops isn’t falling and might even be increasing.

However, Thad McIlroy on the Future of Publishing blog says this interpretation is misleading. The data The Wall Street Journal bases its findings on “encompasses all desktop computer usage, the majority of which relates to the Microsoft and Adobe application suites as well as email”.

“The real story is not that the PC usage is up, but that simultaneous device use — usually called ‘multi-platform’ — has changed the device landscape.” McIlroy says that data from another comScore report, The U.S. Digital Future in Focus 2015, shows that the number of people only using desktops to access the internet is declining sharply in all age groups, even the 55+ segment, and that across all ages the amount of mobile-only users is also growing fast.

This interpretation of the data – that mobile is growing at the expense of desktop – seems to be backed up by Google, which recently confirmed that it’s now serving more Google searches on smartphones than desktops in 10 counties, including the US and Japan. To respond to changing demands, Google is “rolling out new, smartphone-optimized ad formats that give users more reason to tap than its traditional AdWords. These include picture-heavy automobile ads that show users a gallery of their dream ride before directing them to dealerships, and hotel ads that sandwich together availability, prices, user reviews, and pictures into a compact mobile format.”

However, while the amount of mobile access might be outstripping desktop, an Outbrain study in the Asia-Pacific region shows that people consuming content on desktop are much more likely to engage with content compared to mobile, especially when it comes to paid content, reports Trak.in.

“In fact, if we compare desktop vs mobile, then engagement level falls drastically to 36% in Australia; and 9% in India. This means that if an Indian accesses a piece of content on mobile, then there is 9% less chance of his engagement compared to accessing content on desktop. Engagement here means sharing, commenting, liking the post or following the author/publication on social media.”

Of course mobile and desktop are both heavily used to access email. Yesware Enterprise examined more than 14 million messages sent by its users earlier this year to produce a detailed pattern of when and on what device people use to read their emails. This slideshow gives an insight into their findings.

Attention measurement (the time spent actively engaging with a page) seems to be a hint of real innovation in this cluttered space of online advertising. If this will change how publishers measure and reward meaningful content rather than just chase after raw clicks and impressions, then not only advertisers are getting a better deal, but also publishers are motivated  to focus on high quality, engaging content rather than volume of content and appealing titles.

A similar effort was initiated in 2012 by IAB to define a “viewable impression” metric. However, attention-based measurement of both content and advertising can be a game changer – both for publishers and advertisers. The Financial Times has already started experimenting with a new way of selling ads based on time spent rather than impressions.

Read more:

Is Digital Advertising Ready to Ditch the Click?

Chartbeat Aims To Move Publishers’ Attention Away From Page Views

Outside Voices: Online Ad Viewability Not Ready For Prime-Time

IAB Viewable Impression Measurement Guidelines

But this is a way in which ‘native advertising’ – a term that first appeared barely two years ago – stands out from many of the latest digital trends: it’s remarkably simple to grasp. Not that this should be in any way surprising. In fact, a cynic would say it’s just ‘advertorial’ resurrected in a digital world with an intriguing new name.

Indeed, native advertising is no wondrous innovation, resting on some form of mystical, proprietary technology such as Google’s search algorithm or Facebook’s social platform. Its origins are humble – and transparent. They lie in every digital publisher’s aims to reverse the downward spiral of banner ad CPMs (a result of heightened competition as well as format standardization) by introducing bespoke advertising propositions to maintain a direct sales relationship with agencies and brands (at a time where the rise of programmatic transactions threatens access) and to shift effectiveness metrics from (often dreadful) click-through rates to more ‘editorial’ indices such as page views or time spent.

At the same time, publishers (think they) are addressing advertisers’ chronic concern about ‘banner blindness’ and ad blockers, as well as brands’ perennial wish to be ever more closely associated with journalistic content. Finally, more by accident and less by design, native advertising is a ‘platform agnostic’ format, in the sense that, unlike banners, it migrates seamlessly to mobile (either in a responsive design or m-optimized approach), which is where an increasing portion of publishers’ audience is moving.

Advertisers appear to be increasingly considering or endorsing the ‘native’ approach – OPA/Radar Research data show that 32% of Chief Marketing Officers have bought or are planning to buy native in the next six months – and yet the fundamental questions remain unanswered. Will native advertising prove to be a tectonic shift in online brand marketing or will it be no more than a fad, a practice soon to revert to the niche market share of the advertorial? And if it does indeed flourish and continue to rise, who will benefit most and what can publishers do to develop and sustain a competitive advantage?

The simple truth is that native advertising is still beset by scale issues which at best can be considered teething problems. First, despite encouraging steps by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, there isn’t yet any substantial or extensive standardization of formats, with the gamut running from grand custom productions at one end to simple, almost rudimentary ‘newsfeed’ offerings at the other. Second, no uniformity (or, sometimes, transparency) in pricing exists, whether this concerns fixed or variable (e.g. per article views) rates or a scale element depending on article length and/or use of multimedia. Finally, there are no commonly accepted appraisal metrics, making it difficult for advertisers to justify a major investment in an activity that they don’t know how to measure effectively.

Still, elements of native’s value are becoming increasingly apparent, especially on the consumer side. IDG Media research found that consumers viewed native ads 52% more often than banner ads (specifically, 4.1 times per session vs 2.7) and a quarter more of consumers look at in-feed native ads rather than standard banners (25% versus 20%). At the same time, one in three said that they would share a native ad with a friend versus one in five that would do the same with a banner ad.  Findings such as these make most pundits conclude that the issues native advertising faces in its embryonic stage are reminiscent of the early days of the banner ad about two decades ago. Just like native today, banner ads then did not have standardized formats, were priced in various (frequently inconsistent) ways, were often built by the publisher to assist the digitally-curious advertiser and had no real effectiveness metrics to be appraised against.

And yet, the fact that all this was resolved as the industry developed and matured is not the main factor pointing to native’s potential. What emerges as critical is the simple fact that the giants of social media, Facebook and Twitter, have endorsed and amplified it – particularly in their mobile offerings – to the point that it is the dominant format, absorbing more than US$1.5 billion last year. In fact, the fundamental point here is that an entire new generation of internet users – those that predominantly have these social media platforms as ‘home pages’ from which they snack content, play games and communicate with their friends – are getting accustomed to this form of (often targeted) advertising and consider it increasingly a natural part or extension of their user experience.

However, if all of the above point to native advertising being a substantial trend, they do not necessarily clarify who – beyond Facebook, Twitter et al – can benefit from it. Nor do they point to a specific ‘best practice’ policy framework for publishers to implement and profit from, and that is indeed a pity as native advertising is an area where publishers could have a relative edge, given their wealth of content and the quality of their brands. In fact, an optimist may argue that, in particular, context-based native advertising could prove to be premium publishers’ answer to search advertising:  a well-placed commercial message blending naturally with an express user preference (targeted editorial content, e.g. a specific article, on the one hand, a keyword on the other).

The first steps towards introducing native advertising rest on three main pillars. But note that any native ad strategy should be based on an initial low-key, scalable approach. Not only because native, despite current trends, may not prove to be the game-changer that some predict, but also due to the fact that it is a practice that can be ratcheted up as demand evolves. The other critical precondition would be a clear, consistent and transparent policy with regards to (conspicuous) labelling: not only is this an absolute necessity in terms of respecting one’s readers but it also addresses criticisms about ‘grey’ advertising. Having assured this, besides sales and marketing, starting with a design and front-end developer as well as a couple of digitally-savvy journalists will do.  Once (or if) advertisers are queuing outside the publisher’s offices, then a ‘Content Studio’ à la NYT or WSJ is the next logical step – but not before.

The principal pillar for native advertising is a segmentation of the sales proposition into three broad offerings, namely:

• A standard ‘newsfeed’ offer, available in (a maximum of) three formats and priced transparently either on article length/features (e.g. photo material), on the time that the story resides on the home page or even article views – though the latter would be less advisable as it puts unfair onus on the publisher for the native ad’s performance. This offer should be marketed heavily in cases where mobile is appealing to the advertiser (e.g. if the product concerned aims at a younger demographic, as they tend to have mobile as their medium of choice) as it migrates into handheld devices in the most seamless manner.
• A ‘reverse engineering’ offer – such as Forbes’s BrandVoice – that provides advertisers with their own editorial page to which they can upload clearly labelled, relevant content under the publisher’s masthead. Not all publishers have the clout to convince brands of the benefits of publishing on their sites, nevertheless it is a highly lucrative approach as it scales perfectly, requires very few resources and is usually priced on a monthly (and often hefty) flat fee.
• A ‘customized’ offer whereby brands are presented with, or ask for, creative ideas as well as execution from the publisher. This is mainly where the aforementioned digitally-savvy journalists come in, usually with a background in ‘brand-friendly’ consumer magazines, to deliver premium propositions that are showcases of high value. These customized solutions can be generators of significant income for the publisher, especially if video material is part of the offer and the ‘native’ piece is pushed (again, clearly labelled) to the social media fan and follower bases of the editorial brand.

A second pillar in getting started with native is a clear segmentation of the advertiser market so that different offers cater to distinctly different communication needs and preferences. This should be centered on two clusters:

• Companies that have a regular flow of press releases to distribute to media, e.g. banks, insurance and telcos. These companies usually hire PR agencies to do the spinning or ‘persuading’ of journalists, usually (regrettably) successfully given the shrinking editorial budgets most newspapers have had to cope with. The ‘newsfeed’ offering alleviates such commercial pressures while bringing transparency and revenues to the publisher.
• Companies that would like to engage more deeply in content marketing. This is where the larger, bespoke productions can be most effective for the brand – and lucrative for the publisher. The publisher’s specific targets would depend on its audience and editorial context, e.g. fast-moving consumer goods and entertainment for the younger demographic, or fashion/beauty for female readers, or health for the older demographic.  However, the prime candidates for such projects are companies involved in major Corporate Social Responsibility activities, as these endeavours often have a content dimension and, at the same time, are particularly difficult to convey through a simple advertisement.

The final cornerstone in terms of an initial publishing strategy on native advertising may prove to be the trickiest and most elusive: alliances. Publishers have a horrid record of coming together (be it in a joint operating agreement or a full-blown joint venture) in business enterprises to try to address a common threat or opportunity, usually to create scale which, especially in digital marketplaces, can prove critical. Finding successful shared publishing endeavours is more the exception than the rule. However, in the case of native advertising, it may well emerge as an imperative: large portals (e.g. Yahoo!) are also starting to invest in native and, at the same time, firms such as Simple Reach, Native Lift and Nativo are coming to the fore as placement networks. There is thus a real risk that scale and the inevitable standardization will lead to commoditization and therefore loss of pricing power, whereby reach will again be the strongest asset.

What can publishers do, at least at a national level, to avoid such a scenario? Their pre-emptive response should be three pronged. To begin with, they should be the first to pursue the ‘race to scale’ and, possibly via industry bodies, take the initiative to set format standards (particularly for the ‘newsfeed’ offering) before portals and aggregators do. An ‘ethics’ corollary of this would be standardized disclaimers, concerning separation of editorial from commercial messages. Second, they should actively engage with advertisers – again, more likely than not at industry level – so that performance metrics are agreed upon and these express also the publishers’ viewpoint, often ignored in a buyers’ market like online display advertising. Finally, they should undertake a joint research effort that aims to prove that native advertising is much more effective when residing on original content sites, rather than any content page. The UK’s Association of Online Publishers (AOP) did just that two years ago by contrasting branding metrics for campaigns that run on premium content sites versus those that rely only on social media.  Findings ranged from encouraging to impressive and there is no reason to think that they would be different in the case of native.

In short, publishers are particularly well-placed to take advantage of the growth of native advertising. Indeed, it’s bound to come as a relief to the industry that finally a form of digital advertising has emerged that values the quality of the brand, its tradition, heritage and news values, as well as the original content that is being created on a daily basis. In addition, the first steps to get a functioning native advertising operation going are not too complex or expensive.

It would be an immense pity if the chronic fragmentation – which is often a euphemism for divisive bickering – of the publishing industry again proved to be the main culprit for another missed opportunity. There won’t be many more.

Educating advertisers

It is one of the paradoxes of digital journalism that increasing the size of your audience doesn’t always result in higher income. Some of that disparity can be attributed to the fact that while advertisers want to shift their advertising budgets from offline media to online media, they also need to learn about the opportunities, Chia said. Educating advertisers about the possibilities of digital advertising is an important first step in building an effective and revenue-earning premium advertising strategy.

Educating advertisers starts with producing rate cards and media kits to fully introduce their site to advertisers. One of the key messages is that digital advertising is not a blind mass campaign, she says. Online advertising is about about measurability and being able to target specific audiences. She said:

You need to have a demographic breakdown (of the visitors to your site). That is the main product you can use to attract advertisers and convince advertisers to come and buy advertisement on your website.

To deliver better targeted and better performing digital advertising campaigns, publishers need to invest in technology that allows them to build a demographic profile of their audience. Malaysiakini has detailed information about the age, income and education of their audiences. They have information about the interests of their audience, such as whether they are into automobiles or online banking. All of this data, which is included in their media kits, provide essential demographic information to advertisers so they know who they can reach by partnering with the site.

In addition to printed media kits, Malaysiakini also has an advertising blog which provides further information about advertising packages and advertiser-focused events. These events and conferences are another way to educate advertisers and communicate to them the opportunities they have with digital advertising.

“We actually have a new media school. We discuss different topics, and we invite advertisers, agencies and advertising department staff,” she said. They sometimes charge for these conferences, particularly when they have high profile speakers who bring expertise in digital advertising campaign measurement, models and services. Some conferences are on very specific topics such as how to use measurement tools like Google Analytics.

Premium advertising strategies

One of the factors contributing to the challenge that news organisations have faced in earning advertising revenue from their digital audiences has been downward pressure on digital advertising rates. Many early stage news websites are reliant on advertising networks for their ad strategies, but falling rates over the past several years have made it difficult for news sites to earn enough revenue from digital advertising alone to cover their costs. Malaysiakini earns less than 10 percent of its advertising revenue from ad networks. Instead of relying on ad networks, they have developed premium advertising strategies based not just on the richness of the demographic data but also on providing new ad formats that appeal to advertisers.

Malaysiakini charges premium rates for premium placement on their site. “It is usually the top spot, and it has very high engagement and is very creative,” Chia says. Malaysiakini does not put ad network slots on the top of their pages because it would undermine their efforts to charge higher rates for those slots.

Premium buy advertising is sold by their own in-house sales team, and the premium pricing is for advanced campaigns. Companies allocate a lot of money to premium campaigns, she said. This is where the demographic data of their audience is key in convincing advertisers to pay more, not just for premium placement but also to reach specific audiences.

Chia says that you also need to have flexible site designs to make sure that audiences don’t suffer from “ad blindness”. Ad blindness occurs when publishers have fixed spots and formats for their advertising. After a while, audiences simply learn to ignore these areas of the site.

Be nimble

News publishers need more than just flexible designs. They also need to be nimble to keep pace with the rapid changes in digital advertising. Real-time bidding is coming to markets like Malaysia. As we’ve written about before, real-time bidding, also known as programmatic or algorithmic buying, uses site visitor data to buy, sell and display highly targeted advertising. Publishers are concerned that real-time bidding, or RTB, will put further downward pressure on advertising rates.

“RTB is one type of ad network,” Chia said, adding, “your ad will only appear to your target audience. … (RTB) is not a blind network but a highly targeted network.”

She gave the example of two computer companies, Acer and Toshiba, trying to sell their laptops. They will enter their bid price, and Malaysiakini will enter their floor price, the minimum price they will sell their advertising for. If the companies bid over the floor price, and if the target demographic visits the site, their ad will appear.

There are concerns that RTB will affect their premium ad strategy, but in this industry, when everyone launches a new technology, “we cannot escape from the new landscape,” she said. “We need to be part of it.”

Major emerging markets and regions will power the next five years of growth in media and entertainment, and in these rapidly growing markets, growth will come not just from digital but also from traditional media such as television and newspapers, according to an annual media forecast by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

Globally, digital media will continue to be the prime driver for growth. PwC defines digital revenue sources broadly, including not just advertising but also consumers buying digital content and digital access. The report finds that:

By 2017, digital revenues (including consumer spending on digital content, digital advertising spending and spending on Internet access) will account for 47% of the total, up from 35% in 2012.

However, digital media is not the only growth story in the report. PwC forecasts that eight core markets – China, Brazil, India, Russia, Middle East and North Africa, Mexico, Indonesia, and Argentina – will see growth rates double that of the entertainment and media sector as a whole over the next five years.

And in many of these markets, especially in Latin America and Asia, television and newspapers will contribute to the growth as well a digital.

Key digital trends for emerging markets

It’s hardly surprising that over the next five years digital entertainment and media will continue to power forward. However, dig more deeply into the global, top-line figures, and media leaders in emerging markets can find a lot of strategic insights.

• Classified advertising – Just as they have in developed markets, the report says that “online classifieds are set to take over from their print equivalents in developing economies in the next five years”.
• Search advertising – On Knowledge Bridge, we’ve covered extensively how targeted search and social media advertising often dominates digital advertising. The report says that search will remain dominant with an important caveat. If Google is not a major player in your market, search advertising isn’t necessarily the king of digital advertising.
• Mobile access – The future is not only digital but mobile – and we cannot stress this enough. Emerging markets are playing a huge role in this shift. “Brazil, China, India and Russia alone will account for 45% of fixed-broadband subscriptions and 50% of mobile Internet users by the end of 2017,” the report found.
• Mobile advertising – Do not be timid about embracing mobile because you don’t see the advertising opportunity. “Mobile advertising is finally set to take off properly, with growth forecast across all regions over the next five years,” according to the report, and by 2017, mobile advertising will account for 15 percent of all internet advertising revenues.

Traditional media to continue growth in emerging markets

While digital access, content and advertising will be one of the highest areas of growth over the next five years, growing middle classes in emerging markets will also drive growth in revenues for traditional media including television and newspapers, especially in rapidly growing markets in Asia and Latin America.

Thus far, TV has been very resilient to the digital disruption rocking other media sectors such as newspapers, magazines, music and books. As the PwC reports says, it continues to deliver not only the mass audiences but also the attention that advertisers crave. The next five years will see little change in that. Free-to-air terrestrial channels will continue to deliver the bulk, 70 percent, of TV revenues, only down a few percentage points from the current mix.

Again, the only real news here is that emerging markets will see the fastest growth. Kenya, India, Indonesia, Brazil and Nigeria will see the fastest rise in TV advertising revenues. Indonesia, Kenya, Thailand and Vietnam will see the fastest growth in terms of pay TV subscriptions.

Another important trend that the report highlighted for emerging markets is the opportunities for regional media to reach diaspora audiences. As Jeff John Roberts says in paidContent, tapping into diaspora audiences in mature markets can be a rich source of revenue for emerging market media players. He highlighted this from the report:

As expatriate communities grow, distributors are increasingly crossing geographical borders to address them. Examples include iRoko, which targets the African diaspora in wealthier markets and has more customers in London than Lagos.

Television advertising hasn’t moved online quickly, and PwC thinks that it is wrong to over-estimate the shift from traditional paid TV delivery systems, such as cable, to so-called over-the-top (OTT), internet-carr lanedelivered services. OTT services will remain a small portion, only 6 percent, of paid TV revenues by 2017.

The digital transition has not been so kind to newspapers, and it is important for publishers to note the shift from print to online classified advertising even in emerging markets. However, newspapers will continue to grow over the next five years across Asia and Latin America. Growth in Brazil, India, China and Indonesia will offset declines in newspaper circulation in mature markets such as the US, UK, Japan and Germany.

Leverage data to benefit from the multi-screen shift

PwC painted a picture of a connected but also a confused consumer. Digital has increased consumer choice, but Roberts at paidContent said:

the report (citing people in Singapore who pay for pirated content even though a legal version was available for free) also suggests that the volume of content is leaving consumers “confused.”

With so many choices, customers might be confused, they might be overwhelmed by the options to them, but the level of choice has led them to expect “my media” rather than “mass media”. The future is increasingly one of multiple screens – TV, tablets and smartphones – but this will pose challenges to media companies. To deliver this personalised content and also targeted advertising to consumers, media organisations will have to constantly innovate, especially when it comes to data about their audiences. Again, Roberts pulled this highlight out of the report about the type of data that media companies will need to use:

granular, small data— derived through analytics—that gives insights into customers’ actual and likely behavior in response to a particular message or experience.

It will not be enough to know who your audience is but also what they are likely to do. As advertisers look to increase the return-on-investment for their clients, they will want to know not just the size of your audience and their interaction with your content but also much richer behavioural data. This is why Amazon has just announced that it will be leveraging its vast mountain of e-commerce data to help target advertising.

While paid content has been a major focus in the past year, PwC still sees a huge opportunity for advertising revenue, but media companies will only realise this opportunity if they embrace a multi-platform approach that leverages not only content but also customer data.

In a statement, Patrick Grove, CEO of Catcha Media was transparent about the goal of the RM60 m (nearly $20 m) tie-up:

Digital marketing is the future; social media marketing is the apex of this future and is the fastest growing media category on the planet.

This new company offers a tremendous opportunity to dominate the future of digital marketing in Malaysia by pairing two clear leaders in the space in a manner that creates a holistic and complete solution for any brand looking to ride the crest of the new media wave.

It is not just a general new media trend that Catcha is looking to ride but rather the group hopes to take advantage of Malaysians’ social media obsession. Says.com is a social news aggregator that crowdsources trending news items from social media users. It encourages these social media leaders to curate and share news items by paying them when they share advertiser-sponsored content. It’s a low-cost editorial model that differs greatly from traditional news sites, but it is a model that has attracted major global brands including Nike, Coca-Cola and Nestlé.

“Says.com is designed to put advertiser content at the centre of social attention, positioning brands to capture the new generation of consumers,” site co-founder and CEO Khailee Ng told Digital News Asia. Says operates country-specific sites, and Ng says the site is looking to expand to the Philippines, Singapore and India, according to the Next Web. Ng added that the two companies saw a number of opportunities for the “future of advertising” in combining Says.com’s model of social media distribution and Catcha Media’s content.

Catcha Media is building what it hopes will be one of the most profitable new media businesses across Southeast Asia, and Grove said that the Catcha Media will be considering an initial public offering in the next 12 months. It operates Microsoft’s online presence in Malaysia, including the MSN portal and Windows Live site. The group also has 15 national magazines, an Asian auto classifieds business and a luxury goods e-commerce site, Hauteavenue.com. The merger of content, classifieds and e-commerce mirrors the international strategies of other media groups such as Scandinavia’s Schibsted and South Africa’s Naspers.

The fight for advertising

While Says.com doesn’t look like or work like a traditional news website, its low-cost editorial model smartly leverages the intense social media activity in South and Southeast Asia.

One of the most damaging mistakes that news groups in developed digital markets have made was to underestimate the impact of non-traditional news sites like Says.com on the business of journalism. Too many editors, journalists and ad teams didn’t realise the competitive threat these sites posed, either because they defined their competitors too narrowly, seeing only other newspapers or broadcasters as competition, or because they sneered at what they saw as low quality content.

With this merger, it should be clear that Catcha and Says.com mean business, and they already count lucrative international advertisers as customers. In the digital era, anyone who competes for digital advertising is your competitor, and as publishers, media executives and sales team leaders, you need to be able to compete not just against your traditional competitors but also this new breed of business.

To respond to this threat:

• Think of how you can fight for the attention of social media users. Develop strategies to reflect, capture and retain the attention of social media users in your audience.
• Don’t narrowly define your competition for attention and advertising too narrowly as digital grows. Newspapers and magazines are producing more audio and video that could compete with broadcasters, and any ad-supported site is a competitor for digital ad revenue.
• Be creative with your advertising products and strategy. The business and advertising model of Says.com isn’t complicated, but it has obviously been attractive to advertisers. How can you make your advertising products more social?
• Know your audience, which in digital means investing in market research and analytics. It will make for stronger journalism and a stronger proposition for advertisers.

It’s also important in the early stages of the digital transition in your market to be proactive in developing not just your digital editorial but also your digital business. This will put you on a better footing to compete with national and international players when they enter your market.

The seminar presented the following topics:

• “Market Overview”. This section provided an overview of the online classifieds market with special focus on recent developments in the Russian and Ukrainian markets. The overview also discussed current trends in global online classified and directory development and presented strategic models for local media to participate in the online classified market.
•  “Business Models: Classified and Directory”. This section presented the common technical and design features common to most online classified sites and then presented a staged approach to building revenue models.
• “Listings and Sales”. A discussion of techniques needed to build the listings volume for an online classified site.
• “Audience/Marketing”. A discussion of SEO and other techniques to generate audience to an online classified site.

The goal of the seminar was to create a base of understanding of the trends in the online classified market and the potential impacts on attendee’s existing classified business as well as provide some tools and techniques to help build listings volume and audience for attendees’ existing classified sites.

Location: Moscow, Russia

Dates: 1 -2 April 2013

Attending:  Russian and Ukrainian media executives

Facebook may be the king of social networks, but it never rests on its laurels or market-leading position. Many social networks have come and gone, and Facebook is constantly tweaking its winning formula and design. It has just announced major changes to its signature news feed, changes that have profound implications for news organisations.

Unlike the changes in 2011, when Facebook launched frictionless sharing, the new changes could help Facebook users find your content, but you’ll need to make a few changes to how you share your content and how your page looks to make your editorial stand out. The key is to use bigger and better images. TV and radio stations and networks will want to consider posting more content as well, as it will be easier for users to filter their news feeds based on photos, music and video.

It will take months for the new design to roll out, but if you want to get an early look, you can sign up for the waiting list to switch here. If Facebook is a key element of your social media strategy, it’s definitely worth it.

Facebook wants to be a ‘personalised newspaper’

It is not a secret that Facebook wants to be the main lens through which its users view the world and the world’s media. In announcing the new changes to the news feed, founder, Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that he wants Facebook to become a ‘personalised newspaper’. Many of the changes are designed to allow users to quickly filter their news feed, not just by their relationship to people they have friended and followed but also based on the type of content, whether the content includes photos, music or video.

On how Facebook plans to deliver this personalised experience, Craig Kanalley, senior editor for “Big News & Live Events” at The Huffington Post, is very excited with the changes and described many of the new features and how they will allow for greater personalisation:

I have topical feeds, interest lists, of “News,” “Hockey,” “Journalists, “Tech,” and more. I have geo-located feeds too that Facebook auto-created for me like friends in Buffalo (my hometown), friends in New York City (where I live). I can browse all of these sections and discover content posted just moments ago, quickly and easily from the sectional navigation of my “personalized newspaper” at the top right. Tiny gray notification bubbles let me know how many new posts have gone up in a section since I last visited it.

Of course, this will require users to invest a bit more in customising Facebook. However, even if people don’t choose to take full advantage of these settings and topical lists, there are other changes that will have an impact on how the content of news organisations will appear and how prominently it will appear for Facebook users.

What this means for news organisations

The changes actually give news organisations more opportunity to catch the attention of your audience, but you might need to make some changes to your current Facebook strategy.

Multimedia matters – The first big change that you will notice is that pictures and images associated with videos will be bigger. When a user shares one of your stories, a much larger image will appear in the news feeds. The content is now front and centre in the news feed. If you want your stories to stand out, you’ll need to share stories with strong, eye-catching pictures. Social media and tech site Mashable says:

Photos now make up nearly half of all News Feed stories, according to Facebook, up from 30% just a year ago. That growth is likely to accelerate now that Facebook is enlarging the size of photos in the News Feed. Facebook recommends publishers use images with a width of at least 552 pixels.

Facebook is doing this because it is bringing to the desktop a lot of features that it already has on its mobile app, and in mobile, images are increasingly a strong hook for readers as they quickly scan their news feeds with a swipe of their finger.

Make the cover image of your page stand out – Keeping with the theme of being more visual, when a fan likes your page, a larger, more visual sharing element will appear in their news feeds so you might want to upgrade the cover image for your page.

Focus on encouraging fans to share your content – This has always been important, but with the new changes, it will become even more important. One of the new ways for Facebook users to filter their feeds is “All Friends”. Kanalley from The Huffington Post describes it this way:

The “All Friends” feed is one of the most addicting parts of the new Facebook homepage. It’s real-time, and it’s easily accessible at all times, just one click away in the top right of the screen. It delivers your friends, and only your friends, no sponsored posts, no brands, nothing else.

This means that if you are running a sponsored post campaign, your content might not be reaching as wide an audience as in the past if some users decide to use the “All Friends” view as their default view. However, they will see when their friends share your content. This is why it will be important to think about ways to focus your Facebook efforts on the most shareable content with attractive images and compelling multimedia.

Related content from pages and people (such as celebrities) you’ve liked – Some coverage referred to this as curated posts, but it really is a new class of “story type”, according to Lavrusik. For instance, if you liked a site such as The Huffington Post, you might see a post in your news feed with the most shared stories from the site. If you are a fan of a celebrity, you might see a post with the latest trending news about that celebrity.

Changes merge mobile and desktop design – The changes to the news feed incorporate some of the features already found on the mobile and tablet apps. If your audience uses Facebook primarily on mobile, adapting your strategy will have added importance.

This isn’t the first time that Facebook has looked to become the default filter for news media. In 2011, Zuckerberg announced frictionless sharing and several major media companies, including the Guardian and The Washington Post, launched apps that effectively replicated their sites within the social network. For a while, Facebook drove large amounts of traffic to their content, but the feature created a lot of noise, a lot of concern and even some embarrassment for users. Within months of launch, Facebook made changes to the way that the newspapers’ content appeared in the news feed. Traffic crashed to the apps, and both the the Guardian and the Post have since withdrawn the apps.

However, this update gives news organisations more opportunity to highlight their content rather than get lost in the noise of automatic sharing. It does require you to focus more on the visual elements of your stories, but with the focus on pictures, this might lead more users to click through to your stories. This could be a very good development, and for TV companies with video ad units embedded in the video, this might also increase CPMs and revenue. This update has the opportunity to benefit news organisations and not just benefit Facebook.

Other resources

For other summaries of the changes:

• The San Jose Mercury News has an excellent summary of the six major features in the news feed changes.
• Vadim Lavrusik, the Journalism Program Manager at Facebook, explained the changes in the news feed.
• The Drum got feedback on the new Facebook changes from marketing, social media and advertising leaders.