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

Each section has a collection of posts on the steps publishers need to take to transform their newsrooms into effective digital news gathering and publishing operations, organised in the following way:

The unbolted newsroom: Several posts giving an overview of unbolting issues.

Getting your newsroom started: Carrying out a newsroom assessment to help set priorities.

Cover events and breaking news live: “Live coverage provides depth, immediacy and interactivity for the digital audience. You should always cover breaking stories as they unfold.”

Unbolt enterprise from the Sunday story: Instead of planning enterprise stories (articles that explain the forces shaping events, rather than simple reporting of those events) for the Sunday newspaper, plan them to appear first on digital platforms at the best time to reach your digital audience.

Cover routine daily news as it unfolds: Change the daily routine so reporters produce content throughout the day, not in the evening for the next morning’s newspaper.

Focus on mobile success: Prioritise mobile.

Newsroom meetings: “Daily planning meetings need to focus on digital platforms, rather than the next morning’s newspaper.”

Leading the unbolted newsroom: Include data and interactive specialists in story-planning, hire staff with digital skills, get the right CMS, let people lead, and more.

Editing: There should be fewer editors but more journalists who can edit their own work.

Measuring success: It’s challenging, but there will be a mix of subjective ratings and measurable metrics.

How the Berkshire Eagle is unbolting: A case study of one ‘unbolting Master Plan’.

Working Digital First: Posts on other issues to consider.

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.”

However, the question remains on how advertisers and news organisations, especially in markets in the early stages of digital development, realise this potential. In major markets both in developed and emerging markets, massive news conglomerates have been able to diversify, building or buying companies to create a multi-platform strategy.

In smaller markets and for smaller news organisations, this strategy isn’t an option. Smaller ad budgets overall and smaller digital opportunities force both advertising agencies and news organisations to be more creative in building sustainable businesses.

The rich, Latin American giants

When talking about digital advertising in Latin America, we need to begin by talking about advertising in Latin America.

When we look at the big picture, we come to one reality: Latin America is a divided market. On one side, there are the bigger and wealthier countries with big budgets, and on the other side are the smaller, less affluent countries with small advertising budgets. This fundamental difference impacts on how digital advertising is developing across the continent.

The Latin American giants, Brazil, Mexico and Argentina, are powering digital ad growth across the region, helping it achieve the world’s second fastest growth rate.

“According to new projections from eMarketer, in 2013 online ad spend in Latin America will grow by 23 percent, more than any other region in the world except for the Middle East”, according to an article on Latin Link, a site that covers Latin American media developments by usmediaconsulting.com.

Mexico will lead this growth with an increase of 32.1 percent in digital ad spend in 2013, Argentina will come second with a rise of 30 percent, and Brazil will grow by 20 percent.

This impressive growth is a result of several factors, one of them being the size of these countries. Brazil, Mexico and Argentina together have 158 m internet users, more than half of all Latin American users, which is estimated to be 232 m, according to a May 2012 projection from Registro de Direcciones de Internet para América Latina y Caribe (LACNIC). Their sheer size makes them attractive to advertisers.

Another factor is the maturity and size of the advertising industries and their competitiveness. Advertisers and advertising agencies, like news businesses, cannot stand still; they must invest in their teams and keep pace with digital innovations in order to achieve a competitive advantage in hotly contested markets.

The industry demand for specialist digital skills is so high in some of the developed markets, that some universities and colleges offer digital communications programmes sponsored by advertising agencies. This is not the case in the less digitally developed markets, where news organisations and advertisers are still trying to come to terms with new digital platforms and how they might be the source of future revenues.

Innovations in sustainability in struggling markets

Another glaring difference between the digitally developed and less developed markets is the size of digital budgets. There are enough digital consumers in the developed markets to allow the advertising industry to charge commercial rates for its work, which means advertisers have specific budgets for digital advertising in addition to traditional ad budgets. This is not the case in the less digitally developed countries where digital budgets must be taken out of the traditional ad spend.

This makes digital advertising financially challenging in the less-developed markets and also means that advertising agencies have to be resourceful, inventive and, most of all, curious. This curiosity has led ad agencies on this side of the Latin American divide to develop some of the most creative and effective advertising in the region.

A huge amount of talent exists in the less digitally developed parts of Latin America, but a lack of knowledge in advertising agencies, advertisers and the media undermine the potential the business has in the region. You can have an international award-winning digital ad, but it can’t command a fee that reflects its sophistication, so it won’t earn a profit for the agency.

While some countries have no idea of what digital advertising is, other countries in Central America, for example, have found a way of making a profit with digital advertising by creating offices with local talent that produce digital platforms for European countries, charging prices only slightly lower than their European competitors.

This shows an inconsistency in how digital advertising is developing even within the struggling side of Latin America. Approximately 95 percent of the digital advertising work in the less developed markets of Latin America could still be categorised as community management, website design and basic app design, while the remaining 5 percent is genuinely creative advertising work that can earn profit for both the advertiser and the advertising agency or digital studio.

Impact on news media

In some of the struggling Latin American markets, legacy media, such as newspapers and TV channels, bundle up their online ad space as a package when advertisers buy space in their traditional media. This makes it more difficult for digital-only media to compete.

Most of the digital-only media in this region that have survived have very defined target audiences. They maintain their editorial content very well focused on that target to build loyalty. These specialist media can defend their costs when selling advertising space, as their selling strategy focuses on connecting brands with specific audiences. This niche strategy allows the sites to sell very targeted advertising based on a narrow content strategy rather than the technology that search engines and social networks use to deliver ad targeting.

One of the known virtues of digital media around the world has been their versatility and ability to reinvent themselves to offer different formats, but a lack of technical knowledge in the less digitally-developed side of Latin America hinders progress. For example, programming limitations mean that the only format on offer is usually the traditional banner ad, which means a media company can’t charge premium prices for a more creative use of ads.

The digital side of news organisations is normally not led by digital experts – most are directed by people with a traditional media background and have limited “know-how” about the potential of this new field. There’s a lack of vision not only in content but also in digital advertising sales. They focus mainly on selling display advertising – banner ads or pop-ups – instead of developing proper and specific digital platforms custom made for the advertiser’s needs. This fuels advertisers’ perception that digital media is all the same, so they end up choosing the cheapest option.

As noted above, digital media and traditional media in the struggling side of Latin America have to fight for the same marketing budget from advertisers, which creates a very confrontational environment, and as traditional media offer digital ads as a bonus for buying traditional ads, there is little room for companies specialising in digital media. The problem is that digital media companies have not yet differentiated themselves from regular digital media placing, and they need to be even more innovative to successfully compete with traditional media.

At the end of the day, if digital media does not offer something truly different and an advertiser has to choose where to spend a single ad budget, they are likely to choose traditional media as it still reaches more people, and they will given some online space for free promote their brands. As digital audiences grow and digital budgets develop, it will be very difficult for these media groups to increase their rates.

Digital education needed

Much of the recognition Latin America has for digital ad spending is due to the few digitally-developed markets. What the struggling side of Latin America needs, is know-how; it needs advertising agencies to invest in technology and education for their teams and clients. Advertisers and digital media need to understand the benefits digital advertising can bring to their businesses, and most of all the relationship that can be established between their brands and their consumers by making them engage through technology and digital platforms.

While I realise there is still only a weak digital culture in most of the struggling side of Latin America, I believe that this represents an opportunity. It is an opportunity for:

• Universities and colleges to open specialised programs focused on digital advertising.
• Advertising agencies to build knowledge, become more competitive and increase income.
• Advertisers to achieve their business objectives and reach their targets in a more engaging manner.
• The developers of digital advertising to be creative in a part of the world that needs people who know what needs to be done.

Digital: Online and on mobile

I believe that digital advertising opens up an entire world of opportunities in emerging markets such as Central America, and this means “digital” not only online. Online will always depend on internet penetration in order for an advertiser to consider it as an important channel that needs more budget, and the growth of internet penetration depends on the capability of technological expansion by every Internet Service Provider, as well as the ability of the population to afford it.

But digital represents many other formats than just online. Mobile is a form of digital advertising and there are more mobile phones than people in these countries. The biggest opportunity will arise when people begin to understand the full potential of digital advertising in struggling Latin America. Advertisers will see something truly different from what they’ve come to think of as community management and online advertising, and start seeing that they are really being offered something that will give them their money’s worth, something that they will believe is worth investing in.