Importance of transparency and options for audiences in decreasing adblockers & why publishers should invest in mobile apps

Friday, February 05, 2016      Future Media Lab.       0

  Continuing with our bi-weekly news roundup, Filip Ševčík shares the news that caught his eye over the last two weeks. The news round-up is a way for the Future Media Lab. team and members of the Future Media Lab. network to share articles about innovations and developments in the media sector, including references to relevant media policy debates.

Here are Filip’s choices for this week:

1) The American Press Institute published a white paper on best practices for product management strategies in news companies. The report states that it is increasingly important to think about articles and news posts as a product that aggregates and connects over time – and how it fits users’ needs and contributes towards overall reader experience.

Advertising and adblocking

2) A global study, published by Teads last week reveals what motivates people to block ads. The biggest incentives (69%) to use adblockers are interruptive ads, while 66% of users block ads to improve site performance. On the bright side, 84% of respondents would reconsider blocking ads if they were given a choice to skip or lose the ad.

3) Also, 49% of Brits installed adblockers because of privacy concerns. The results are in line with the situation in the US, where 50% out of 400 respondents told PageFair they would install adblockers if they felt their personal data was being misused to personalize ads. Sean Blanchfield, PageFair’s CEO adds that personalization and engaging ads might not be the way forward, as people don’t like the idea that a stranger could know everything about them. To combat the rise of ad-blocking, Oliver von Wersch, Growth Projects & Strategic Partnerships Manager at Gruner + Jahr, thinks that publishers will have to work on better advertising standards and that we’ll see more native ads.

4) In fact, clearer standards are vital in order for publishers to be transparent and keep their readers’ trust: Audiences need to be able to clearly distinguish between editorial and advertorial articles. As UK’s Advertising Standards Authority already gave out fines for misleading practices, while The Guardian decided to simplify content labelling on its website, shortly after FTC issued new, stricter guidelines.

5) As of January 2016, Google Chrome dominates mobile internet browsers with 41.57% market share, followed by Apple’s Safari browser accounting to 34%. Samsung aims to become a contender by becoming the first Android phone manufacturer to introduce adblocking in its native internet browser app. It is expected that more companies will follow.

Mobile apps and online platforms

6) The online distribution landscape keeps evolving. Apple News attempts to distinguish itself from other distribution platforms by adding subscriber-only content to its offer, however it hasn’t yet specified how it wants to authenticate users. Also, the new Twitter homepage looks more like newspaper sites – the aim is to boost engagement of users who aren’t logged-in.

Facebook ran a qualitative survey among its users and tweaked the algorithm again. From now on, it will show both posts that users might want to react to and posts they might want to see in their newsfeed. It’s uncertain yet, what effect it will have on publisher’s traffic.

7) Because the online platforms environment hasn’t settled yet and distribution strategies last only about three months, Mic’s co-founder and CEO Chris Altcheck thinks that it’s best to be present on all of them to maintain growth.

8) Mobile apps are commonly mentioned as the new homepage – a solution to adblocking or direct contact point with audiences. Specifically, messaging apps are increasingly popular delivery channels for pictures and videos. For example, The Economist distributes its charts via Line and Vogue Netherlands experiments with videos over Whatsapp and Snapchat to grow its readership.

9) According to independent research by Twitter and Facebook, content consumption is faster on mobile phones than on desktops. Also, an older study by Facebook & Nielsen found that almost half of the video campaign value is delivered in the first three seconds.

10) Edward Roussel, Chief Innovation Officer at The Wall Street Journal recognizes that online platforms are integral part of publishers’ distribution channel mix, but at the same time stresses the need to invest in experiences “under publishers’ control” and plans to launch three new specific apps. However, focus on news apps is not a new trend – already in 2015, news and magazine apps were the second fastest-growing app category, with 135% year-over-year growth.

11) Despite that, publishers have to keep in mind highly unequal mobile app market, where the top 0.001% of apps grabs 99% of the value. When looking at news apps specifically, The Monday Note found that 58% of people use only one to three news apps. Twitter was the most used news app, followed by RSS readers and NYTimes.

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