Advertisers, the Future of Hard News Is on You Too
The financial travails of the news industry are a matter of record. Newspapers and news magazines (printed on paper) are dying. Their readers are dying, literally. Other industries have new demography and geography to conquer but no new generation is acquiring a breakfast table habit that has persisted for 200 years, and even in Myanmar where 12 daily newspapers have launched since the start of political reform, only 3 are likely to be economically viable.
For generations printed news has depended on a four-pronged business model, all of which are simultaneously threatened:
- Sell copies (hard when the product is free on another platform)
- Sell display advertising (hard when reach, recency and localization, the great newspaper advantage, are so easily and cheaply available elsewhere)
- Sell classified advertising and create marketplaces for jobs, autos and real estate (a distant memory for an industry that resisted disruption rather than embrace it)
- Be owned by someone rich enough to bridge the gap when 1, 2 or 3 perform below expectation or a new need for capital arises (So far only Jeff Bezos at the Washington Post and Chris Hughes at the New Republic have transferred wealth from the valley to the galleys while Pierre Omidyar is investing in news rather than in an existing publisher).
The irony of all this is that news organizations, those with their roots in newspapers as well as television have enjoyed an astonishing increase in consumption and now are far more current, enriched by multimedia, by social media and citizen journalism, and more widely read geographically and demographically than at any time in their history. Furthermore their content is THE most shared across the internet. (See an earlier post for more on this.)
This suggests something significant. Advertisers and agencies might take note. The digitally delivered news – both hard and soft – appears to combine reach, popularity, engagement and authority like no other collective of digital assets. Further, individual news outlets have high frequency engagements with their readers and viewers.
The uncomfortable truth, however, is that the advertiser has not followed the user. If ever there was a misalignment of time spent and the allocation of advertiser dollars (see any report by Mary Meeker of KPCB) this is it.
Online, the received wisdom is that hard news is a hard sell and that the principal value of the traffic is as a gateway to more brand-friendly but lower-traffic features where the threat of atrocious adjacency is reduced. As a counterpoint to this look no further than page 3 of the New York Times where Chanel, Tiffany and others have held their place a page turn from the triumphs and tragedies of our world on page 1.
News has a flavor for everyone, and by extension for every brand; Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, Vice, Gawker, the Guardian, the New York Times, CNN, the BBC and the Mail Online take different views and use different lenses but all engage and inform and represent a critical public service – the investigation, gathering and distribution of the news that affects us all – and often put people in harm's way to do so.
Advertisers have no obligation to support such public service but doing so would be good for the world and be good for business. Advertisers might reevaluate the news media and decide if authority, timeliness and relationships are worth a premium over some other digital inventory types. Brands that were not the staple of news funding over the last 50 years, as well as those that were, might think about advertising campaigns that can tell stories in environments that are highly valued by readers. As always, consideration of the medium creates a message more appropriate for purpose and in an age of the brand newsroom it may be that the time for hard news supported by great advertising has come.
A version of this piece appeared in the December 30th edition of Advertising Age.
Photo: Hocus Focus Studio / Getty Images
at Mybest Ventures, Inc.
10yAdvertising on newspapers re-morphed into electronic form does seem worthy of consideration. I also think John G. has a point, one reminiscent of part of Solzhenitsyn's 1978 speech "The Exhausted West" in which the then-recently exiled anti-Communist prophet turned his frown upon osteoporosis in the West's moral backbone. News would not be known if it did not sell, and in a morally exhausted west (if readers outside that realm will forgive the focus), what sells isn't always pretty. Rather, it caters to what people want to read and hear. For better and for worse. Or on a flip side, consider another challenge. Years ago a small and local news publisher had to close down. Why? The inside scoop was that the publishers riled some local powers by accusations of corruption; the powers responded by sending troops into action against the publishers to force either closure or bankruptcy. Or whatever one's ideology, consider A&E's recent indelicate position between homosexual lobbyists and social conservatives over Duck Dynasty. News venues actually in business have to have friends, and that may (has) led to sacrificing a bit of truth in uncomfortable places ... some of it rather significant, as was illustrated. Or consider polls in the US which suggest the journalism trade has typically attracted workers with limited ideological commitments ... and corresponding axes to grind. So news is a mixed bag from the vantage point of ethics even if recent technological advances (and court decisions) have given a margin for unconventional publishing competition. For the time being. Advertisers using news media outlets must function in such an environment. But given the caveats, surely the submerged ethical and social rocks of one's given industry are not those of other industries or of the whole, and advertisement attached to news topics relevant to one's industry cheaper on average than advertisement hovering around page one of headline news, while news media providers of lesser stature and reach would as a rule of thumb be cheaper than fishing in bigger lakes. Let the buyer of advertisement space beware. The find a niche if you can.
Senior Project Manager at BirchStreet Systems | MBA | Process Improvement Expert
10yI agree with everyone stating that content is what drives a good magazine, newspaper, etc. However, what is happeneing to the industry is not a bad thing. Competition is forcing honest and more detailed reporting (in some respects). Techonology might be a better call to action here. People are pushing for more easily digestible news on smaller formats of delivery. This forces very plain, USA Today style news. Hopefully we hit a tipping point on this and people demand better news from our outlets.
CEO, Chief Digital Officer, Marketing and Media expert, Adtech ambassador, Traveler.
10yMedia has the content and content is still the king. The biggest challenge for them is to find ways to monetize it just as they did with traditional channels. The new wave of programmatic direct can be the solution for unsold inventory but also they need to re-think their content marketing actions and boost the rich media business which now is still very small at least in our region.
Смотрю вакансии, может найду что то путёвое .
10yI disagree entirely, "...to support such public service...." Was it public service when media did nothing to investigate what is written into Obamacare, to investigate Benghazi, to investigate what Obama is spending to support the radical Muslim Brotherhood, or that Obama has placed the Muslim Brotherhood into much of our government and agencies, or the Bill and Melinda Gates support of Common Core? The list seems endless- the subjects that media does not report objectively and what the media simply doesn't address. Advertisers are hostage to this filth.