Category: Affiliate Marketing Tips

Two years later

The key hits:

The truncated timelines from RFPs to campaign execution are expected to stick around.  In-person events are coming back with a vengeance, but the role that virtual will play is still up for debate amongst publishers.Local media has become a white whale for national publishers thanks to the pandemic. 

Two years have come and gone since the pandemic was first declared. During those first few months, media companies took reactive measures, like canceling events, pausing ad campaigns and improving work from home culture, as people grappled with the fact that two weeks of quarantine would turn into an undefined number of months and years. 

Since then, publishers’ businesses have shifted greatly to accommodate those earlier changes as well as incorporate more proactive strategies, like creating virtual events, becoming more amenable to advertisers’ needs and responding to audiences’ wants. 

But with COVID cases dropping and the possibility of meetings and events being able to happen in-person again, there is a question mark around which pandemic practices will stick around, and which were always meant to be temporary stopgaps. — Kayleigh Barber

The publisher-marketer relationship is moving faster than ever 

Advertising took a hit in the first few months of the pandemic when there was so much uncertainty with how this would impact the economy as well as brand image. But once that business rebounded, publishers were ready to serve their advertisers in any way imaginable with flexibility and speed becoming two of the most desirable assets a sales team could offer.

It was an effort for publishers to win back as much business as possible and stabilize their businesses — and gave them an outlet to channel the immense amount of time on their hands. For nearly two years, people didn’t have a lot going on that kept them away from their computers, said Gallery Media Group’s CEO Ryan Harwood. “There was a lot more bandwidth and brainpower and ability to get things done. I think people took advantage of it.” 

The timeline from receiving a request for proposal (RFP) or brief to execution on a campaign decreased from one to five months to anywhere from five-days to one month, Harwood said. A year ago, publishers sensed the shortened pitch window had become standard practice; a year later, their senses have proved to be spot on. Now, it’s a regular occurrence for Harwood’s team to hear from a CMO or an svp about an idea for a campaign that’s “got to be done in the next two weeks, or else it’s not worth it to us,” he added.

“I don’t think that’s going away anytime soon. The expectations are now like, ‘You guys have shown us this is possible; why would we ever want to settle for less than that now?’” Harwood said. 

Events are back, but the scale appeal of virtual remains

Last week, BDG’s president and CRO Jason Wagenheim told Digiday that as COVID cases continually decrease, he feels more optimistic about the prospect of in-person events being successful this year. This is appearing to be a shared sentiment among publishers who are either reviving their events businesses for the first time since 2019 or have been squeaking out what revenue they can from virtual events in the interim. 

Axios is one publisher that is bullishly bringing back in-person events, including creating its first-ever multi-day summit next month in Washington, D.C. called the What’s Next Summit. Capping it at just around 200 people, Fabricio Drumond, Axios’ chief business officer, said that the on-stage content will also be live-streamed to capitalize on the scale its virtual events business achieved during the pandemic. 

“We’re getting 120,000-plus impressions on some of our events and I think it would be a disservice to the content that’s generated in an in-person format [to not] allow audiences to access it. So that’s definitely a permanent [addition] for us,” said Drumond.

The hybrid approach is not for everyone though. BDG’s 2022 experiential business is primarily happening in-person as of now, though the publisher has not written off virtual event options for sponsors, Wagenheim said. And a month ago, Eric Fleming, co-founder and executive producer of events agency Makeout, told Digiday that his team was only taking projects that prioritized in-person activations.

That said, other publishers are still thinking about the upshot of having both virtual and live elements in their 2022 event strategies, hopefully earning the best of both worlds award as a result. 

“One of the pluses of COVID for that particular line of business was, up to that point, virtual events were not a thing for us and it quickly became an incredible business,” said Drumond, adding that in just two years, Axios has hosted north of 200 virtual events. “But, there’s still a demand for the virtual, like if there’s a quick turnaround, [or] the incredible scale and reach. It also helps in booking the best guests because you don’t have logistics and dates to work around.”

Zoom is still the conference room of choice 

That said, business meetings are likely going to remain on Zoom. Gallery Media’s Harwood said that the need for business travel, especially for one meeting, is likely never going to return, thanks to how efficient and comfortable Zoom has become.

“Executives on both sides almost enjoy the casual nature of [virtual business meetings]. It doesn’t put as much stress and pressure on this big moment in the meeting that you’re trying to accomplish, [like] striking a deal,” he said.

Opportunity still lies in local media 

Local media has taken a beating over the years, but the pandemic re-instilled a need in audiences to know what was happening in their cities and neighborhoods. As a result, some local media companies saw advertising revenue trickle in sooner than expected by the end of 2020, but other national publishers saw an opportunity to create local media brands as a business strategy. 

Axios formed Axios Local in December 2020 with the acquisition of the Charlotte Agenda, and the company expects its local business to grow to cover a total of 25 cities by the end of this year. But as Axios’ audience is made up of “smart professionals,” according to Drumond, the impacts to where and how that audience is working was the impetus for the creation of Axios Local. 

“The emergence of remote work in the pandemic itself actually created an incredible opportunity for Axios Local, because now what you have is all these professionals moving to new cities. [For] example, a massive exodus of folks from New York City and California to Austin — it’s quickly establishing itself as the next Silicon Valley type in the country — and Axios Local is helping those professionals navigate that environment,” said Drumond. 

As one of the four business focuses for 2022 at Axios, local media is going to remain a priority for the newsletter publisher well after the pandemic is wrapped.

What we’ve heard

“We’re not monitoring the traffic like, ‘Oh, is the health of business contingent on how many people show up?’ It’s really not. But we know the health of the business is contingent on people feeling happy and feeling collaborative and seeing their colleagues.”

— Industry Dive chief operating officer Meg Hargreaves

3 questions with The Washington Post’s Instagram editor Travis Lyles

The Washington Post’s Instagram editor Travis Lyles and his team are providing a window into the war in Ukraine via its nine journalists there — its largest team on the ground covering a single conflict since the Arab Spring over a decade ago. Digiday spoke to Lyles to find out what the Post’s strategy and process is for covering what’s happening in Ukraine on the social media platform. A big part of that is carousels with multiple slides to share as much information as possible and to feature the faces of its journalists in Ukraine to talk directly to an audience.

When Lyles first was named Instagram editor back in February 2021, The Post’s Instagram account had 4.5 million followers. It now has 5.6 million. The Instagram team is made up of seven people, up from four last February. – Sara Guaglione

This conversation has been edited and condensed.

What is The Post’s approach to covering the war in Ukraine on Instagram, and how does that differ from the way you and your team have covered big news events in the past?

One of my major goals for this year… is to get more of our journalists on camera and show their faces. When I’m scrolling, even me personally — I have a higher chance of stopping if someone’s talking to me. Having so many journalists on the ground in Ukraine was something we realized early on was a muscle we can really flex. It’s our largest team since the Arab Spring. It allows us to build trust. We have people there who can turn their camera around and talk to their audience, and it’s such an engaging and compelling way to tell the story. Our journalists are driving away from shelling, going to a bomb shelter… and we are taking our audience with us while we’re telling that story. We tell that story on Instagram because there are so many people encountering these images and videos [coming out of Ukraine] for the first time on Instagram. Our audience has gone from seeing our content to caring about our journalists — in the comments, they tell them to “please be safe,” and ask “how can we help you guys?”

You mentioned The Post’s Instagram account has seen “record” engagement as a result of its coverage of Ukraine. Which posts in particular have led to that?

We’ve seen an uptick in views and engagement. We had our largest video ever on Instagram as far as viewership goes. It was [Washington Post video journalist] Whitney Leaming’s video of a boy playing a piano as the attack [in Kharkiv, Ukraine] started. The post has over 10 million views at this point, over 600,000 likes and around 100,000 shares. We saw a major uptick in engagement surrounding posts around the war in general. It’s such a visual war and we just want to meet that moment and use our reporters on the ground to tell the story and really have people come to us on a daily basis and stay informed.

What’s your team’s process for deciding what to post on Instagram, and how does this strategy differ from the one on other social media platforms, like TikTok?

I’m not an expert in TikTok. But we have such an active following base on Instagram. If you look at our comments section, we routinely outpace our competitors when it comes to the number of comments. We have this very active audience who is looking for information about the war in Ukraine, so it just makes sense to engage with them regularly and curate an account on a daily basis.

Our [team in Ukraine] is feeding us information and clips pretty constantly. We look through that and decide what makes sense for our account and [The Post] site in general. [In November], we started being able to put vertical video on the homepage, which is awesome. Some of our Instagram content does make it back to the site. Now that we’re about a year in as a full team, we try to ask each other: If you were a Washington Post follower, what would make a great curated account that helped you feel informed today? Sometimes that’s a vertical video of our journalists talking about how their day went. Sometimes that’s a post of videos that we have verified either by our visual forensics team or video team that we find compelling, that stands out — like the video of the Ukrainian man standing in front of a Russian tank. It’s shocking, some of the videos and images we’re seeing. But we try to think: OK, is this something we should put out to inform people about what’s going on? Do we need to get a reporter on camera to discuss this, or is it something self-explanatory? We just try to think about how we can have a well-rounded account on a daily basis. We usually post 12-15 times a day. We want to really be active on the platform.

Numbers to know

>$4 million: Amount of money that a coalition of journalism groups has raised to support Ukrainian news outlets and journalists.

22.5%: Percentage difference between the median salary of Tribune’s Black female employees and that of their white male counterparts.

>$4.6 million: Amount of money that a group of 40-plus current and former BuzzFeed employees claim the publisher owes them over the handling of its stock market debut.

370,000: Number of active digital subscriptions that Bloomberg Media has.

What we’ve covered

Why Overtime’s Elite basketball league is using social audience interest to find a live TV rights buyer:

Last year Overtime formed its own basketball league for 16- to 18-year-old players.The sports media company hopes to eventually sell live rights to air the league’s games, Overtime’s co-founder and president Zack Weiner said in an interview for the Digiday Podcast.

Listen to the latest Digiday Podcast episode here.

Q&A with Brian O’Kelley on selling ad inventory with a low carbon footprint:

The ad tech veteran’s new startup Scope3 aims to reduce the ad tech supply chain’s carbon emissions.The company is working with Blockthrough to sell publishers’ eco-friendly inventory through private marketplaces.

Read more about O’Kelley’s latest ad tech venture here.

How Fandom is using its insights into fans’ online behavior to pitch advertisers:

Fandom is pulling data from its claimed 300 million monthly unique visitors into a platform called FanDNA.In addition to targeting ads, advertisers can use FanDNA for custom research.

Read more about Fandom here.

How the FT got to 1 million digital subscribers:

The FT decided to prioritize reader revenue over advertising revenue, according to chief commercial officer Jon Slade.In a Q&A, Slade explained what the FT is doing to retain the subscribers it has acquired.

Read more about FT’s digital subscription strategy here.

Media companies open new offices to accommodate for growing headcounts and a new phase of the pandemic:

Morning Brew, Industry Dive and Future are among the publishers opening new offices this year.None of the three publishers will make it mandatory that employees come into the office.

Read more about media companies’ new offices here.

What we’re reading

First Amendment fears concerning fake news lawsuits:
A series of lawsuits filed against news organizations, including Fox News, for reporting false information has some legal experts on edge about how their verdicts could make publishers vulnerable to libel suits and jeopardize their First Amendment protections, according to The New York Times.

Growth spurt for kids’ podcasts:
The market for podcasts aimed at children is ballooning, with listenership increasing as well as the volume of shows, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Publishers call out ad tech firms for data scraping:
A set of publisher trade groups is alleging that ad tech companies, including Integral Ad Science, are collecting data from publishers’ sites and selling the data beyond the bounds of any agreement between the publisher and ad tech firms, according to Marketing Brew.

TikTok creators turn misinformation mercenaries:
The U.S. and Russian governments are recruiting TikTok creators to fight the information war related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to The Wall Street Journal. It should go without saying that the U.S. is briefing the creators to help combat misinformation on the platform, whereas Russia is reportedly enlisting creators to support its side of the actual war.

The Q1 outlook

The key hits:

BDG is starting to see the acquisitions of 2021 pay off in its advertising business.Leaf Group is battening down the remaining hatches for the cookie apocalypse by prioritizing collaboration within the industry.Experiential is coming back into full swing, thanks to relaxed COVID restrictions.

As we near the end of the first quarter of 2022, publishers are already seeing some trends bubble up that are likely to impact the rest of the year.

After the supply-chain strangulation in the fourth quarter of 2021 caused brands to once again cut back on their advertising, publishers are starting to see that money come back, sometimes in unexpected categories. Meanwhile, with the decline of COVID cases, execs are expecting their events businesses to surge back to life fully for the first time since early 2020. And of course, as the countdown winds down to the removal of third-party cookies in Google’s Chrome browser, publishers are seeing this as an opportunity to take back more of the advertising market, and are identifying the need to work together. 

In an effort to better understand those emerging trends, I spoke with a few publishers to get a better idea of what this transitional year has in store for the digital media industry. 

Last year’s acquisitions are already starting to pay off

In September, BDG’s $150 million acquisition of Some Spider Studios, which publishes three parenting brands including Scary Mommy and Fatherly, was finalized, quadrupling the digital media company’s parenting vertical to four titles, including its own title Romper. 

In growing the vertical, BDG expected the number of endemic parenting brands that were interested in advertising with the company to grow, and in just about half a year, that has already started to pan out. According to chief revenue officer and president Jason Wagenheim, the parenting vertical accounted for 8% of the company’s total revenue in 2020, and this year, the expectation is that it will account for 25% of total revenue. This is particularly due to the addition of new endemic CPG, toys and food clients that have begun advertising with BDG as well as those who have increased their deals given the addition of the new parenting sites, he said. 

Wellness is the new ‘it’ category

For one publisher, who asked to remain anonymous for this story, the wellness category has taken off in early 2022 for its advertising business, as it has for wellness publishers. 

“Wellness is the flavor du jour that everybody’s really into coming out of the pandemic, and advertisers know that people want to focus on it,” said the publisher. “People want to focus on it because that was a really rough two years, and so our organic fit within the wellness and the fitness space have really provided some traction for us with advertisers.”

But beyond the endemic fit of health and fitness, other categories are trying to stretch into wellness, the publisher added, including financial institutions looking to prioritize “financial wellness” in the messaging of their ad buys.

The cookie apocalypse is looming and publishers are willing to work together

Leaf Group has been preparing for the day when Google’s Chrome finally wipes all existence of third-party cookies from its browser, and the company’s svp of media Scott Messer is aware that a diversified strategy to audience identification will be necessary when the time comes. 

“There are certain parts of our business that are fairly sturdy when it comes to the cookie collapse, and [they are] really underpinned by contextual, our deep expertise in [search engine optimization],” which brings in audiences that are looking to learn about specific, contextually targeted audiences, Messer said. However, “we know that it’s not the only part of our business.”

The diversified approach that Leaf Group is taking involves working with other publishers, marketers and industry folks to create a set of standards and collaborations that will hopefully solve open auction retargeting, open auction prospecting and measurement. 

“If advertisers can’t measure their campaigns and understand reach and frequency at a basic level, and then attribution at a higher level, they may not spend as much money in digital media and move either to platforms where they can do that, or to cheaper platforms where they still can’t, like out of home,” Messer said. 

A slackening of COVID restrictions are making events more promising this year

BDG kicked off the latest iteration of its experiential business with Art Basel in Miami last December, but Wagenheim is bullish that Nylon’s and The Zoe Report’s activations at Coachella this April will act as a mid-seven-figure opportunity for the two brands that are at the center of the company’s events strategy.  

“With what Coachella has announced with no masks, no vaccine mandates, etc., and with Omicron relatively behind us now, we feel really good about experiential accelerating,” said Wagenheim. 

So far, six brands have signed on as sponsors of the Nylon House and Zoeasis event franchises that are popping up adjacent to the two-weekend long music festival, and Wagenheim expects that that number will grow to a dozen before next month. And while events accounted for about 3-4% of total revenue last year, he said it’s expected to double to 7-8% of total revenue in 2022. 

The crypto influence is deepening 

We’ve seen a lot of blockchain integration into the media industry over the past year, but now crypto entities are starting to take a larger bite out of publishers.

Last month, Forbes announced it sold a $200 million stake in the company to Binance, a crypto exchange platform and blockchain. That equated to half of the commitments the publisher needed for its private investment in public equity (PIPE) initiative that would enable it to go public by combining with Magnum Opus. 

This was a significant move for the publisher, as it in many ways legitimizes the role of crypto and Web3 innovation in the media industry, but it is also a significant move for the crypto space as the digital “new money” takes partial ownership of a legacy media brand. — Kayleigh Barber

What we’ve heard

“Misinformation on TikTok is a whole different beast than on Twitter. It’s almost striking sometimes how [quickly] videos make the rounds on TikTok.”

— Christiaan Tribert, a member of The New York Times’ visual investigations team

3 questions with BuzzFeed Studios’ Richard Alan Reid on its re-entry into podcasts

BuzzFeed is reentering the world of podcasts. In 2018, the digital entertainment and news publisher shut down its in-house podcast production team to put more resources into creating original video content. BuzzFeed’s new podcast strategy mirrors its approach to TV projects: partnering with another organization to produce content. 

BuzzFeed will work with podcast monetization and hosting platform Acast to develop six weekly podcast shows based on BuzzFeed’s brands, franchises and talent, ranging from news, culture, entertainment and lifestyle and identity brands. The first podcast is expected to debut in the third quarter. Acast works with other media organizations, including The Daily Beast, A+E Networks and the BBC.

This doesn’t mean BuzzFeed will put together an in-house podcast team again, though. It’ll outsource the production, distribution and monetization of its podcast slate to Acast, with revenue coming from programmatically-bought dynamic ads, sponsorship, branded segments and from Acast’s subscription offering, Acast+, which listeners pay for to access bonus content. Both Acast and BuzzFeed declined to share financials or deal terms for this multi-year partnership.

Richard Alan Reid, svp of global content & head of BuzzFeed Studios, explains why BuzzFeed is taking another stab at podcasts and what is different about its audio strategy this time around. — Sara Guaglione

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Why is BuzzFeed getting back into audio after shutting down its podcast team in 2018? 

We are shifting strategy to a new format where Acast is handling so much of the responsibilities that will come with us being active in the podcast space, including production, monetization and using their platform technology and expertise. That’s a shift for us strategically and operationally. We are proud of what we did with podcasts in the past and it was clear that our audience responded well to the podcasts that we built. We felt that a strong partner makes sense for this evolution of podcasts for Buzzfeed. We are also working across a slate [of podcasts], which we haven’t done previously. We are working across a committed slate, meaning we can grow and learn with our partner and really take advantage of their expertise and their network. 

What’s different about BuzzFeed’s approach to podcasts this time around that can help avoid some past pain points?

In the last couple years at BuzzFeed Studios as a whole, we’ve really seen the power of smart partnerships. On the feature film side we are partnered with Lionsgate and we are learning from their years and years of experience in the space. It’s a powerful cocktail of our understanding of our audience, the digital space and the brands in our portfolio, combined with their understanding of traditional motion pictures, the state of distribution and the value of specific talent. That combination sets us up for success. We are seeing that on the television side with Universal Television and NBC. It’s that same approach to podcasts now — recognizing that a smart partner can really just bolster and boost the offering. And it’s a way for BuzzFeed Studios to act as a centralized team across the BuzzFeed Inc. portfolio… and work across a high volume of projects and various different mediums of content. There’s a lot that Acast will be responsible for, while BuzzFeed’s main focus will be the protection of our brand, expansion of our brands and supervision over the creative.

Who from the BuzzFeed team will be working on these podcasts, and who will own the rights to the content?

Operationally we will have a project management function overseeing the relationship. We are currently looking for support on the project management side, but that is the only additional role we’re looking for at the moment. Creatively — because [the podcasts] will feature many brands in our portfolio — we will have brand leaders and talent heavily involved. BuzzFeed has a rich internal rolodex of talent and contributors that would feature in these shows and a lot of that talent is attached to specific brands. It would be primarily BuzzFeed staff, but we will also look to feature guest stars and external talent as well. We actually have a lot of staff that have been involved in podcasts in previous stages of their career, or they’re involved in podcasts outside of BuzzFeed, so there will be a mix of some people fresh to the audio space and others that have more experience. The IP would stay under BuzzFeed ownership.

Numbers to know

$62,000: New minimum base salary that GMG Union secured in its negotiations with G/O Media.

404: Number of The New York Times tech workers that voted to unionize.

3%: Percentage share of Vox Media’s overall employee base that it plans to lay off following its merger with Group Nine Media.

9: Number of months during which Gannett reportedly provided inaccurate information to advertisers on where their ads appeared.

4%: Percentage share of ad dollars spent on a programmatically purchased impression that end up going to the publisher.

News organizations react to Russia’s “fake” news law

Last week Russia passed a law that will enable the country to imprison anyone for publishing what the government considers to be false information. A country that has invaded another country under false pretenses isn’t to be trusted to be judicious when it comes to journalism outlets. So with Russia effectively criminalizing independent reporting, news organizations have responded in various ways to protect their journalists based in the country. — Tim Peterson

ABC News has stopped broadcasting in Russia.The BBC initially put its newsgathering inside Russia on hold, but has since resumed reporting in the country.Bloomberg has temporarily stopped reporting inside Russia.CBS News has stopped broadcasting in Russia.CNN has stopped broadcasting in Russia.Condé Nast has suspended its publishing operations in Russia.The New York Times has pulled its journalists from Russia.The Washington Post has removed bylines and datelines from some stories to protect its journalists.

What we’ve covered

How publishers are tackling the Ukraine-Russia war disinformation problem on TikTok:

Disputing false claims or saying a video is fake is more difficult on TikTok than on other platforms.To address the issue, publishers are avoiding viral videos, producing videos that seek audiences’ involvement and keeping high verification standards.

Read more about TikTok’s disinformation problem here.

How publishers are using newsletters to reach readers and attract subscribers internationally:

CNN is working on a newsletter product around the Middle East.Quartz has rolled out a new membership product focused on tech startups and innovators in Africa.

Read more about publishers’ international newsletters here.

High school sports media looks to graduate, but doesn’t yet have the national profile for big brands:

High school sports media coverage has ramped up in recent years.However, it remains a regional concern when it comes to advertisers.

Read more about high school sports media here.

Why podcast agencies are warning about the move to dynamically-inserted ads:

Dynamically-inserted ads accounted for the majority of podcast ads served in 2020.However, the ease with which these ads can be bought and their lower prices could create a race to the bottom for the podcast market.

Read more about podcast ads here.

Wire service Stacker aims to solve content crunch for newsrooms and brands:

In 2021, 40 million people in the U.S.read Stacker’s stories.Local news organizations, including Hearst, McClatchy and Tribune, are clients of the wire service.

Read more about Stacker’s wire service here.

What we’re reading

Axios aims for a growth spurt:
Axios will spend $30 million this year to build its business, which has expanded to include local news, subscriptions and software licensing, according to The New York Times.

Google preps for post-tracking ad landscape:
Google is simultaneously accelerating the shift to a cookie-less ad market and in process of figuring out how to adapt to a potential post-tracking era, such as by developing new measurement capabilities, according to The Information.

IAB Tech Lab opts out of Unified ID 2.0 oversight:
As Digiday previously reported, the IAB Tech Lab has not been keen to become the administrator of the industry’s frontrunning cookie-replacement option, Unified ID 2.0, and now the organization has officially pulled out of the running for the role, according to AdExchanger.

BDG pauses plan to go public:
The SPAC wave has crashed and washed away, as most recently evinced by BDG deciding to put its plan to go public on hold, according to Axios.

Journalists are brands, too:
It’s 2022; everyone’s a brand: companies, people, pets, even journalists, the latter of whom are justified in being brands because it’s a means of attracting attention to their coverage, which is often pretty important, as captured by Gawker founding editor Elizabeth Spiers.