editor, Author at Mediastreet

In News

Six Ways To Grow Your Amazon Business In 2020

April 14, 2020 No Comments

By the year 2022, Amazon is expected to earn more than $350 billion in global revenue. And savvy brands and retailers are reaping the benefits of this tremendous growth. However, it’s becoming more complex to manage and take advantage of its capabilities. To help brands do this, I’m sharing six ways to grow your Amazon business in 2020. Keep these recommendations in mind when your brand refreshes its strategy.

1. Embrace Trial And Error

One of the most important things we’ve learned over the years is the importance of trial and error on Amazon. Since the marketplace is always changing, we’ve learned the lesson that what once didn’t work is worth trying again.

Trial and error are important for both new and routine campaigns. And, in 2020, brands should commit to pushing the envelope. In today’s e-commerce landscape, brands must take their strategies to the next level. To do so, in our experience, persistence and innovation are key.

For example, you could test different techniques in Amazon’s back end or on the product detail pages. Through this, you can consistently find new ways to improve the shopper experience and add efficiency to your processes.

Our technical analysts have also unveiled opportunities for clients by testing new bundles and pack sizes. This requires time, research and skill to approach in a way that works for your unique business. Yet, when bundles and pack sizes are popular, it can create impressive momentum for a brand’s catalog.

2. Diversify Your Advertising Mix

I’ve shared the importance of using both programmatic and search advertising before. To reiterate, we have seen the best results when implementing both options. Using Amazon DSP (programmatic) capitalizes on the shopper’s intent captured through Amazon Advertising (search) campaigns. In 2020, we expect more clients and brands to adapt to this practice. We also expect brands and retailers to introduce new tactics such as over-the-top (OTT) advertising and Sponsored Brand video ads.

The results driven by these campaigns are important, but the insights associated with reporting are invaluable. Diversifying your brand’s advertising mix will increase awareness, discoverability and sales. But it will also expand your brand’s knowledge of consumer behavior and allow you to refine your approach if needed.

3. Cater To Mobile Shoppers

Each year, mobile is becoming more important to those of us in e-commerce. Optimizing on Amazon is possible, but it requires specific knowledge of best practices. This can apply to a product’s detail page, A+content, Store, advertising campaigns, and more. Prioritizing this will protect the customer’s experience and benefit other aspects of your brand’s Amazon presence.

For example, the Buy Box is more prominent on mobile devices and brands need to optimize accordingly. Doing so will improve the chances of making a sale. After all, 79% of shoppers make online purchases using a mobile device. We recommend regularly monitoring Buy Box ownership across your catalog and taking your product detail pages up a notch. Remember to include high-quality design and images and keep copy short and easy to read.

4. Practice Data-Backed Decision-Making

As I touched on above, the insights and data available through Amazon are extremely useful if you know how to use it to your advantage. In particular, advertising data is developing and continues to get better. Brands should build the knowledge to leverage attribution, new-to-brand, seller performance and more to regularly refine its strategy.

There’s nothing wrong with trying new things, but using historical data to make strategic decisions almost always pays off. If you don’t reach the goal you were intending to hit, you can still learn something valuable in the process.

5. Harness The Power Of Social Media

Brands can drive traffic to their listings in more ways than advertising solely on the channel. There is a number of social media platforms to leverage and link to product detail pages or Storefronts. I recommend linking through advertisements, social posts or a mix of the two options.

Including social media in your brand’s Amazon strategy expands the reach of your products. It also is an opportunity to gain visibility for your brand without having to compete with listings in Amazon’s search results.

6. Focus On Earning More Customer Reviews

We’ve discussed the importance of customer reviews and user-generated content many times. This year, and well into the future, reviews will heavily influence whether shoppers purchase a product.

In fact, 91% of shoppers are more likely to make a purchase after reading positive online reviews. As it applies to Amazon, reviews are an essential tool to encourage customers to make a purchase if they’re undecided.

There are different steps brands can take to increase the likelihood of receiving positive reviews. But above all, we stress the importance of providing a great customer experience. Many negative reviews on Amazon include feedback associated with being misled or having unmet expectations. Fully optimizing your brand’s listing will allow shoppers to fully understand what your product is and what they can expect. As a result, the chances of receiving good feedback will be greater.

Brands that sell on Amazon will always have something new to try or learn different ways to grow their performance on the channel. These are just a handful of examples to get you started.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Drew Kraemer

Marketplace Strategy is a strategic Amazon growth partner for the world’s greatest brands. Visit Marketplace Strategy’s Website

Sourced from Forbes

In News

A Guide to Driving Traffic to Your Website

April 9, 2020 No Comments

By Jamie Johnson.

Many businesses struggle to drive more traffic to their website. If you’re not getting as much traffic as you’d like, these five strategies will help.

You worked hard to create a website for your business in hopes that it would bring in new customers. But as the weeks and months go by, your traffic never seems to improve. Here are five ways you can begin driving more traffic to your site.

Do a full website audit

If you’re not getting as much traffic as you’d like, you’ll probably want to do a website audit. An audit helps you identify any issues that are preventing your site from getting more visitors and conversions.

You can do this by accessing a website auditing tool. These tools will check for technical problems, identify any broken links and point out duplicate content. It will also determine whether or not your mobile and desktop loading speeds need improvement.

Take advantage of SEO strategies

One of the best ways to bring more traffic to your site is by taking advantage of SEO. This involves strategically using keywords in your page descriptions, meta descriptions, image alt-text, blog posts and more.

A good SEO strategy can help you rank higher in Google, so people who are searching for what you have to offer can find you. Keep in mind, though, that SEO is a long-term strategy and will not result in overnight success.

If you’re not sure where to start, there are a variety of free and paid SEO tools available. These tools can help you identify relevant keywords, perform competitor research and more.

A good SEO strategy can help you rank higher in Google.

Guest post on other websites

One of the best ways to boost your SEO strategy is by guest posting on credible websites. When you guest post on a high-authority website, you’ll gain a backlink to your site. This improves your website’s credibility and can help your ranking on Google.

Guest posting can also drive referral traffic back to your site. Guest posting regularly can be a great way to bring in an additional source of traffic to your website.

Utilize social media

Hopefully, you’re already using social media for your business. But if you aren’t or if you haven’t been as consistent as you would like, now is a great time to start. Utilizing social media is a great way to engage customers and boost traffic to your site.

Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube can all drive a lot of traffic to your website. By assigning someone to be in charge of engaging with your community and responding to comments, your social media strategy will be more effective, and it will help you get ahead of potential problems or customer complaints.

Invest in paid advertising

Social media is a great way to engage with your customers and get in front of new potential customers. But it’s not as easy as it used to be to show up in your customers’ newsfeeds. Thanks to algorithm changes, many of your social media posts may go largely unnoticed.

This is why paid advertising can be so helpful. Using Facebook ads is a great way to get in front of potential customers on Facebook and Instagram. And you can use paid advertising on Google to drive more traffic to your site and increase your conversions.

Just make sure you think carefully about what your goals are before investing in advertising. Of course, you should also keep your customers top of mind and think about the type of advertising strategy that will resonate most with them.

CO— aims to bring you inspiration from leading respected experts. However, before making any business decision, you should consult a professional who can advise you based on your individual situation.

Feature Image Credit: From implementing a solid SEO strategy to engaging on social media, there are several effective ways to increase traffic to your website. — Getty Images/golibo

By Jamie Johnson

Sourced from U.S. Chamber of Commerce

In News

The 4 Key Steps to Creating Your First Ad Campaign

April 9, 2020 No Comments

By Imran Tariq.

How to ensure you’re setting yourself up for success.

Social media and Google advertising campaigns have continued to grow in recent years. Because entrepreneurs and ad managers can generate a highly specific audience based on their customer personas, the ROI to online ad campaigns is substantial. However, to a first-time ad campaign creator, the entire process can feel a bit intimidating.

How do you define your audience? Which advertisement idea will work? How do you set a budget? The process should be iterative, meaning it won’t be perfect on your very first try. But these following four key ingredients will help you create a first ad campaign that you can be proud of: one that you can add onto and change as you receive data.

1. Determine your goal

First, it’s important to understand what your goal is. This will drive all decisions about the advertising campaign. For some companies, sales drive all of their advertising efforts. For others, it’s simply traffic or exposure. Define what a set of successful results will look like for your company.

This is always part of a larger conversation regarding your sales cycle. If you have a funnel that incorporates an email list, a webinar or a Facebook group, perhaps your ad spend is best spent moving potential customers into the funnel rather than trying to immediately take them to the sale.

2. Use high quality visuals

The average person has the attention span of a goldfish, and this is exacerbated during their social media scrolls or Google searches, when they’re overwhelmed with information and so much to look at. That’s why it’s critical to use large lettering and high quality visuals. Paul Getter, the founder of The Internet Marketing Nerds, recommends “using natural, everyday photos and not the more staged, professional-looking pictures. They invoke curiosity.”

If a photo looks too much like a stock photo, your customers will see it as an advertisement. This is also why photos generated by influencers work so well. “It’s important to recognize, however, that catching a person’s attention is an always-evolving art. What worked yesterday might not work today,” Getter added. Make sure to switch up your strategy until you find one that gets you the results you’re looking for.

3. Conduct market research with a split test.

Once you’ve published your first few ad campaigns, it’s a good idea to engage a split test (also known as an A/B test). A split test enables you to put two ads next to each other and see which performs better. This judgment will typically come down to one key performance indicator.

You’ll be able to tell from a split test if one of your advertisements is more effective than another on these KPIs. From there, make a decision on how you’ll invest moving forward. It’s possible that one ad could perform well by one indicator, and the other could perform well by another. This is why it’s important to know what your ad goals are.

4. Continue to iterate on your ad audience

Finally, remember the final key ingredient is your audience specification. If your ad campaign isn’t performing to your expectations, it could be an issue with how you’re targeting your audience. Targeting is both an art and a science.

Some marketers recommend using psychographics to better target an audience. This goes beyond mere demographics and into more specificity, such as a target audience’s motivations and values. These are good to know in constructing your ad messaging generally speaking, so invest time in understanding these psychographics, then apply it to your audience targeting, too.

Advertising knowledge is a muscle that’s strengthened with time and experience. Get started on the social media sites that your ideal customer most frequently visits, and create a detailed overview of data from each campaign. Every data point can be used moving forward.

Feature Image Credit: UpperCut Images | Getty Images

By Imran Tariq

Co-Founder and CEO of Webmetrix Group

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

In News

What is Audience Segmentation and Why is it Important for Content Marketing?

April 9, 2020 No Comments

By Brody Dorland

Getting the right content in front of the right buyer is the heart of well-deployed content marketing. When you know your customers and what’s important to them, the content you develop will be more relevant and boost your conversions.

To do this efficiently and at scale, using audience segmentation to better target customers is critical. Once you can segment your audience, the ability to focus, personalize, and connect will be more easily achieved.

What Is Audience Segmentation?

Audience segmentation is a strategic marketing exercise that involves creating subgroups within your customer profiles based on like characteristics. These segments can be defined by several different aspects, including:

Demographics: location, age, title, industry, income, education, etc.
Behaviors: any interactions with your brand across all channels
Psychographics: beliefs, values, and attitudes
Firmographics: business characteristics like company size, B2B vs. B2C, industry vertical, etc.

We’ll develop these ideas further in a bit, but for now, simply think of audience segmentation as using parameters to organize and sort individuals.

Do You Know Your Audience?

Before you begin to develop audience segments, your first move should be to create or update buyer personas. Your buyer personas represent fictional target customers and include general information, such as demographics, motivations, preferences, and more.

Beyond just having customer outlines, your buyer personas should be integrated with your content strategy. These elements need to be connected to ensure your content themes and plans align with what your buyers expect and need in relation to content.

Knowing your customers requires market research, as well as looking at your own data. By reviewing your content analytics, you can learn which subjects, formats, and phrasing resonated the most with customers.

Why Bother with Audience Segmentation?

Many brands, especially B2B, tend to create content for all (a.k.a one-size-fits-all content). They develop a wide range of blogs, videos, eBooks, and more, without focusing on personalizing the content experience for specific segments or personas.

But content marketing isn’t a one-size-fits-all initiative—not if you want to use it to accelerate growth. If you fail to personalize your initiatives and content assets down to specific audiences, your brand will come off as generic and mediocre. Buyers will quickly recognize that a content piece is irrelevant to them, bounce, and seek out brands that seem to be talking just to them. Segmentation is the most important starting point for introducing personalization into your efforts. Without it, you’ll have no consistent way to ensure the right content reaches the right audience.

Segmenting In-Depth

Looking back at the four different ways in which to segment your customers, let’s go more in-depth and look at some examples.

Demographics

Using demographics is the most common method of segmentation as it’s usually the easiest. A lot of demographic data is readily available to you based on your current customer base. It’s also the most used method because it’s highly effective.

For example, if you sell lawn equipment across the country, segmenting by location makes sense because those in the desert won’t need the same items as those living in areas of lush greenery.

Behaviors

Segmenting by behaviors requires data analysis and a way to track interactions. You’ll be analyzing what they buy, when they buy it, what products they click on, as well as other types of actions like engaging on social media, opening emails, or downloading content. There are hundreds of different interactions, so you’ll need to define which ones matter the most.

Filtering groups based on actions allows you to personalize the content they’ll receive. For example, if you add a tag to your customer list to identify those that requested a quote but haven’t responded. You can then draft a drip campaign that offers incentives or stresses urgency with messages that the quote will expire. Because you know where they are in the customer journey, the content will speak to them more precisely.

Psychographics

Psychographics is the most challenging way to segment, but it’s certainly not impossible. You just have to dig deeper into your data to find patterns that would indicate certain emotional responses. Ultimately, you’ll be trying to align content with your customer segment’s value set so they feel connected to your brand.

For example, if you can determine that a segment of your audience prioritizes corporate responsibility as a differentiator, you can create content that illustrates your brand’s stance. If this is really important to some of your buyers, they’ll be attracted to this type of content and your company.

Firmographics

Segmentation based on firmographics is normally only used within the B2B marketing context. Firmographic data often lives within a company’s CRM and can be easy to aggregate and analyze, provided it’s being captured and stored within the prospect or customer database.

For example at DivvyHQ, part of the registration process for starting a 14-day trial of our software requires prospects to provide the following:

Company Name
Company Size (number of employees)
Company Type (corporation, non-profit, etc.)
Job Title
Their role in their content process (I manage a team, I’m a content producer, etc.)

Later on when engaging with these prospects, we can capture additional information, like industry vertical and whether they are a B2B or B2C company.

Capturing and analyzing this information with regard to your existing customers can provide a wealth of knowledge and contribute significantly to your audience segmentation process.

Audience Segmenting Can Advance Your Content Marketing

Audience segmentation can add fuel to your content marketing tactics and deliver a greater return on investment (ROI) for your efforts in a few specific ways.

Precision Personalization

Relevance is one of the most influential elements when it comes to making a buying decision. Personalized content drives connections and performs much better than content that is not. Now it’s time to look for opportunities for personalization in your content plan. You can direct specific content to buyers via email or use technology to display dynamic content on your website. This level of personalization is sure to accelerate the sales process.

Pipeline-Specific Content

Nurturing your audience is imperative to get them to convert, especially if you have a longer sales cycle. Most buyers want to consume multiple pieces of content before they are ready to buy, so you need to ensure that you have assets available for every step of the funnel. You’ll determine where they are in the funnel based on their behaviors; then, you can launch drip campaigns to move them further down the path to yes.

Expand Your Content’s Reach

Developing highly targeted content delivers additional benefits to help you expand your reach. First, it improves your search rankings for keywords that are specific to how an audience segment would search (i.e., marketing tips for insurance companies). Second, it can also amplify your content on social media with very specific hashtags. Those searching the hashtag may find your content and become a new prospect for your brand.

Audience segmentation is essential to an effective content marketing plan. By defining your audience and what’s important to them, your content marketing will be more relevant, engaging, and consumable.

For more tips, ideas, and inspiration like this on content marketing, subscribe to our blog.

By Brody Dorland

Brody leads the DivvyHQ team with nearly 20 years of experience in the trenches of corporate marketing, advertising agencies, entrepreneurship and establishing himself as one of country’s top digital marketing strategists. Brody’s primary focus is helping companies and marketing agencies shift their mindset, structures and processes so that they will think, act and consistently deliver like publishers.

Sourced from DIVVY HQ

In News

Sales of PCs and Dumbbells, Not Just Toilet Paper, Are Soaring, New Data Show

April 8, 2020 No Comments

By Eric J. Savitz

U.S. e-commerce activity recently spiked 25% from earlier in March, as Americans hunkered down in the face of the rapid spread of the coronavirus, new data from Adobe shows.

The Adobe Digital Economy Index reflects data from the software company’s analytics tools, which are used by 80 of the top 100 U.S. web retailers. The index tracks sales of 55 million individual products. Adobe (ticker: ADBE) said that from March 13-15, daily U.S. e-commerce sales jumped 25% from earlier in the month, largely driven by a doubling of daily online grocery sales.

One thing to note about the data is that each data point covers a different time period. “Many of these product categories are having their inflection points occur at different times, and that’s why the measurement windows are falling at varied time periods,” an Adobe representative said. “The computers category for instance, didn’t really see an increase until mid-March, while groceries experienced their boost in early February, and products like hand sanitizers were spiking as early as late January…so in order to profile the magnitude of the growth swing and consumer buying behavior, we’ve had to set measurement periods, during the time that they occurred, so that we don’t miss their growth trajectory and/or mischaracterize the impact in demand.”

Not surprisingly, Adobe found huge spikes in online purchases of some cleaning products and non-perishable foods.

From January to March 11, Adobe said, sales in the “virus protection” category, including hand sanitizers, gloves, masks, and anti-bacterial sprays surged 807%.
Purchases of over-the-counter cold, flu and pain medicines were up 217%.
Toilet paper sales spiked 231%.
Sales of non-perishable canned goods and shelf-stable goods increased 87%.
From March 11-15, daily orders for fitness equipment (such as kettlebells, dumbbells, treadmills, etc.) were up 55% from the first 10 days of the month.
Between March 11 and March 25, online orders for computers (laptop, desktop and more) increased 40% from March 1-10.
Adobe said average sales at online apparel stores dropped 13% in the March 12 to March 25 period, versus a baseline period of Feb. 1 to March 10. But the company said that overall apparel-category sales were running about flat compared with the period before the virus outbreak, attributable to promotional activity at several larger retailers.
Adobe found a spike in daily “buy online, pickup in store” transactions, up 62% from Feb. 24 to March 21.

Feature Image Credit: Adobe found a spike in daily “buy online, pickup in store” transactions, up 62% from Feb. 24 to March 21. Photograph by Matt Cardy/Getty Images

By Eric J. Savitz

Sourced from Barron’s

In News

BT and O2 fall foul of UK advertising rules

April 8, 2020 No Comments

By Jamie Davies.

Both BT and O2 have been given a slap on the wrist for airing misleading advertisements in the UK aired across the course of 2019.

While the misleading claims from telcos are starting to be weaned out through new regulations, old habits occasionally creep through. Once again, creative marketers are determined to undermine the trust the consumer places in the telcos by making misleading, unsubstantiated or just inaccurate statements.

All of the telcos are guilty of this nefarious marketing practice, though looking at the number of complaints directed towards the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), BT, Virgin Media and Vodafone are particularly underhanded.

Starting with BT, the complaints were made by Virgin Media, Vodafone and fourteen members of the public, suggesting the team made misleading claims for the performance and technical capabilities of its wifi products.

Firstly, the accuracy of two statements were called into question; ‘only we guarantee wifi in every room’ and ‘we guarantee a strong signal in every room’, through the deployment of additional wifi discs which could be placed around the home. BT has said it has data from trials with 1078 customers which prove in 96% of cases full coverage could be achieved throughout the home with one additional disc, while the remainder were satisfied with two additional discs. Only one customer was entitled to a £20 discount as coverage could not be given throughout the home with the additional discs.

The ASA conceded that customers were likely to understand that exceptional circumstances could be applied, however the statements were too bold and promised too much, while the science to back up the claims could not be effectively reproduced on scale. The data was also not specific when it came to devices or time of day.

“…we were concerned that there appeared to be no reliable, reproducible methodology whereby each room or the further points from the router were tested, with no data reporting which rooms of the house had been tested,” the ASA statement reads.

The evidence did not show what speeds were being achieved on the devices, so we were unable to verify that the signal was strong enough to provide the minimum speed needed to carry out typical online activities.”

The second complaint was that BT advertising suggested these devices would not need to be plugged in. BT said it was common knowledge that electrical products would have to be plugged in, but in a world of wireless devices, this is simply not true. BT is either trying to pull a fast one or demonstrating incompetence with this response.

In terms of the O2 complaints, these were from Virgin Media and Three, questioning whether the ‘Custom Plans’ communication was accurate and appropriately comparing the O2 to tariffs to those of rivals.

In short, both complained that the adverts were not making it clear what tariffs were being compared, while Three suggested results of an overpayment calculator on O2’s did not reflect the actual costs charged by competitors and Virgin Media pointed out that it and Sky also offered custom plans. This appears to be a simpler case to consider for the ASA, as all telcos have made efforts to ensure customers are not continually charged for devices once the products have been paid for.

‘Custom Plans’ have been a significant element of the O2 advertising assault over the last 12-18 months, and looking at the financial statements, it appears to be a very successful campaign to entice customers away from rivals.

Naturally, O2 tried to defend its position, claiming it was doing everything possible to compare comparative deals and that the consumer could make their own reasonable assumptions, though the ASA clearly disagreed.

According to the ruling, the explanation below the overpayment calculator were not detailed enough, O2 did not do enough to indicate rivals also have unbundled deals and it could not make such direct assertions as it does not know the prices rivals charged for devices. The advertisement was deemed misleading as much of the claims were based on assumptions and inaccurate statements.

Misleading advertising is not something which is going to go away anytime soon, and unfortunately the telcos don’t seem to want to sort their own problems out. The dreaded ‘up to’ metric has been removed from the landscape, but this was only down to regulatory intervention from Ofcom not the telcos wanted to be more honest with their customers.

Unfortunately the ASA has not been empowered to do anything which would genuinely curb the creative advertisers who seem hellbent on misleading the consumer. Telcos seem to pray on the misinformed, quoting numbers which mean little to many and self-validation techniques which few have the time and/or competence to make use of.

The ASA does not have the power to direct financial penalties to those who fall short of expectations, nor does it have the manpower to react in a time appropriate manner. In these examples, the BT advert aired in July 2019, while O2’s hit the screens in January 2019. These adverts are no longer being used as the telco has already realised the rewards. All the ASA can do is issue a generic statement, dictating the adverts can no-longer be used in their current form; this is redundant action.

With little enforcement, the responsibility to be fair and reasonable falls on the advertisers. Unfortunately, these companies have shown little respect to the consumer to communicate with them honestly and accurately. Telcos are as bad, if not worse, than most and there seems to be little ambition to change for the better.

By Jamie Davies

Sourced from telecoms.com

In News

Newspapers to lose £50m in online ads as firms use coronavirus ‘blacklist’

April 8, 2020 No Comments

By Mark Sweney.

Publishers struggle to make advertising revenue despite record digital readership

UK newspapers face losing £50m in digital revenues as advertisers use “blacklist” technology to block ads from appearing next to all stories that mention the coronavirus pandemic.

When advertisers run digital campaigns they use keyword blacklists – stocked with trigger words such as “attack” and “death” – that automatically stop ads running in potentially problematic stories that feature them. Publishers say that words related to the pandemic – such as coronavirus and Covid-19 – are appearing on blacklists across the industry.

This has meant that while national and regional newspaper publishers are gaining record numbers of digital readers seeking to keep up to date about the pandemic, publishers are struggling to make ad revenue from their interest.

Advertisers’ blacklist technology is also indiscriminate meaning that even positive or innocuous pieces such as those on the Joe Wicks YouTube PE phenomenon, family activities for the housebound, or articles recommending TV shows, films and books to read in isolation are also shorn of adverts.

“While we have seen a huge surge in demand from readers for trusted, accurate reporting, advertising ‘blacklists’ are preventing adverts from appearing alongside online stories with the word coronavirus in them,” said Tracy De Groose, executive chair of Newsworks, the campaigning body for the UK newspaper industry.

“If the pandemic lasts for another three months the total loss across our news brands is expected to be £50m, threatening our ability to fund the quality journalism that is vital to ensure that the UK public is accurately informed during the crisis.”

The UK’s national and regional newspaper publishers have put their rivalries to one side and published an open letter calling on advertisers to rethink the addition of coronavirus-related words to blacklists.

In the industry letter scheduled to be published on Wednesday, De Groose says: “We understand many marketing budgets are under real pressure now. All we ask is that when you launch your next campaign you check you’re not unknowingly blocking trusted news brands from your plans.”

Publishers also feel they are not being treated fairly as other platforms flooded with coronavirus content, such as social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, are not treated in the same way by advertisers.

“The same advertisers [blocking ads on newspaper sites] are running campaigns on radio and social media, where all the chat is about the virus, which is inconsistent, to say the least,” says Nick Hewat, commercial director at Guardian News & Media, publisher of the Guardian and the Observer.

“Publishers are the only ones who are punished, in an advertising sense, for reporting and distributing the news that society desperately needs. The system needs an overhaul, the technology needs improving.”

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We have upheld our editorial independence in the face of the disintegration of traditional media – with social platforms giving rise to misinformation, the seemingly unstoppable rise of big tech and independent voices being squashed by commercial ownership. The Guardian’s independence means we can set our own agenda and voice our own opinions. Our journalism is free from commercial and political bias – never influenced by billionaire owners or shareholders. This makes us different. It means we can challenge the powerful without fear and give a voice to those less heard.

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Feature Image Credit: Newspapers have gained record readership online but that isn’t translating into revenue. Photograph: Matt Dunham/AP

By Mark Sweney

Sourced from The Guardian

In News

3 key ways to reduce news product friction

April 7, 2020 No Comments

By Twipe

Coming off recent industry discussions on the importance of product thinking, this week we are exploring three key ways publishers can reduce news product friction in their digital strategies.

Registration walls increase conversion

More and more publishers are adopting registration walls to help solve some of the new problems of today, including legal obligations, de-anonymizing users, and improved user experiences. We heard recently from Peter Doucette of FTI Consulting that he believes that registration walls are a matter of when, not if, for most publishers.

Today more and more legislation requires explicit user permissions, such as GDPR in the EU or CCPA in California. Many publishers have decided to abide by these rules through a variety of pop-ups asking for permissions, however this can impact the reading experience. Combine those pop-ups with the ever common newsletter signup pop-up (like the one you probably just closed), browser notification requests, and intrusive ads and it can take more than your readers are willing to tolerate before they actually are able to consume any content. By requiring users to log-in to access content, these pop-ups can be avoided since the user permissions will already be saved every time, no matter if they access from a new browser or device.

Furthermore, registration walls are a great tool for de-anonymising users. With the future looking like a third-party cookie-less world, this ability to gather data directly from users will be increasingly important, as will the ability to build a first-hand relationship with audiences. Of course, it also improves the publisher’s ability to market subscription offerings as well.

Finally, registration walls can help to ultimately reduce subscription friction down the line. It’s true that requiring users to give their email address to access content does provide a layer of friction, however it is a necessary layer that can increase conversions. To make the benefit of logging-in even more clear, some publishers today are offering features only to logged-in users such as commenting, saving articles, or a personalised feed. Ultimately it helps to reduce the friction at the moment of conversion since the reader does not have to create a new account or give their email address again when they decide to actually subscribe. This also ties into the importance of ‘incremental commitment’: it is psychologically easier to give a credit card number if you have already given an email address a while ago.

Clarity in language matters

The news media industry is interesting because almost everyone has personal experience of consuming news, which leads to them having an opinion on the industry. However there seems to be a bit of opaqueness surrounding the industry. Most readers don’t actually understand the realities of the news industry today. That is why it is key for newspapers to take the time to make sure they are communicating openly and clearly to their audiences. For example, the average layperson might not realise the newspaper industry is in a critical moment of change. When conducting reader interviews last year, we were surprised at how many said they didn’t understand why they were being asked to pay for a subscription when they were already “paying” through the advertising (even if they acknowledged they had an ad-blocker!).

This lesson can be applied to converting paid subscribers, something The Wall Street Journal did when they experimented with the language in their subscription offering ads. They found that they were often taking for granted certain benefits, so did not promote them when showing subscription offerings. For example, we’ve heard before about a feared “subscription fatigue”, and we know that signing up for a new subscription can be a bit anxiety-inducing. The Wall Street Journal was able to increase subscriptions 10% by simply highlighting the ease at which subscribers could cancel (which had no impact on the average tenure of subscribers).

We also have to be conscious of the terms we use to describe our readers. While membership programmes seem to be making a splash in Europe, with the success of The Guardian being a key standout, this term does not always translate in the United States. Mark Campbell, Chief Marketing Officer of Tribune Publishing, shared recently that their research shows American subscribers have viscerally negative reactions to being called ‘members’. This was backed up by Yasmin Namini, former Chief Consumer Officer at The New York Times, who explained that their subscribers thought if they were ‘members’ it meant they had to also agree with the editorial or opinion articles in the newspaper. It would be interesting to see if this is a cultural difference between the American and European news markets, or if it holds true in other regions as well. Still, this does not mean that American publishers cannot learn from successful European membership programmes, they just might need to avoid using the membership term explicitly.

At INMA’s third Subscription Summit last month, Yasmin Namini had further advice for publishers who are starting to explore a new paywall strategy. She believes that dynamic paywalls can be difficult to explain to readers, while hybrid models can be better explained. Having premium articles that are locked for subscribers only, with the rest being metered, makes it more clear to readers what value they would get from subscribing. Ultimately, it comes down to the fact that news organisations need to be transparent, not only with their coverage but also about their business models. With a dynamic paywall, how is a reader supposed to understand why they cannot access a story that their friend is able to access? During these discussions at the Summit, there seemed to be a divide between American and European publishers: American publishers had no qualms about dynamic price offers, with Newsday even adapting the billing cycle for each new subscriber to best optimise for retention. However European publishers were more uneasy about this set-up, preferring to have very clearly defined subscription offerings.

Make it easier to cancel, but not too easy

No matter how frictionless we make the subscriber experience, there will always be some subscribers who want to cancel. Recently at the INMA Subscription Summit, the question of just how easy, or hard, we should make it for subscribers to cancel came up. While the majority of attendees said we should make it easy for subscribers to cancel, this tune changed when asked if they actually had made it easier.

It is clear that the harder it is to cancel, the longer a subscriber will stay before being able to cancel. But what does this mean for the long term? If we are moving toward a reader-focus, we need to be looking at the long game and be optimsizing for reader relationships, not short term monetary gains. Plus there are signals that this reader-focus can also have a positive business impact: recently on the INMA Study Tour, Kate Piselli (Product Director of Subscription Growth) shared that The New York Times found the easier they made it to cancel, the more likely those churned subscribers were to re-subscribe later on.

Furthermore, as the industry has made it harder to cancel, regulators have started to move in and take away this choice from us. For example, in California it is now against the law to not allow someone to cancel their subscriptions the same way they originally subscribed. So if you want to offer digital subscriptions directly on your website, you have to allow them to cancel on the website as well (no more requiring a phone call during limited hours).

Still that doesn’t mean we should make it so easy to unsubscribe that people who didn’t mean to cancel end up churning. Patrick Appel, Director of Research at Piano, found that 35.3% of cancellations are passive, meaning the payment method on file didn’t work when it came time to renew. Simply retrying the credit card on file can save a third of payment failure-related cancellations.

Brain snacks for those who read until the end

The Wall Street Journal found that using link texting for app downloads led to 450% increase in app downloads.
New threat on the horizon: It is not just publishers working to reduce friction. A new Chrome extension was just released to make it easier to share passwords for online subscriptions to services such as Spotify and Netflix. Publishers will undoubtedly need to keep an eye on ‘DoNotPay‘.
The New York Times found that allowing users to login via clicking a link in an email (“magic linking”) had a 2% lift in successful logins.

Mary-Katharine Phillips
Media innovation analyst @ Twipe

By Twipe

Twipe is a SaaS platform for edition distribution, creation, and analytics, used by leading newspapers across Europe. It is an innovation leader helping publishers like The Times, Le Monde and DuMont in the area of digital edition publishing. Every month more than 8 million digital editions are downloaded from its platform.

Sourced from WNIP What’s New in Publishing

In News

WhatsApp group chats can be found on Google and could be less private than people realise

April 7, 2020 No Comments

By Andrew Griffin.

WhatsApp group chats can be easily found through Google and may not be as private as the people in them might think, it has emerged.

Chats could be found on the search engine and then joined, without people necessarily knowing they were part of a chat that was publicly accessible and could be easily found through Google.

Once someone is in a WhatsApp chat – even if they have found a link through a search engine, and haven’t been explicitly invited – they can see all the messages shared in a group and all the numbers of those people who are in it.

WhatsApp says the feature is working as intended, and is not a bug. But it has led to warnings that people should be careful about what is being shared in ostensibly private groups, since they could be seen by people they don’t know.

The issue has arisen because WhatsApp offers the ability to create an invite link for WhatsApp chats, in the hope of making it easier for people to join conversations. If someone in a group wants to add another user, they only need to share that link, and the person clicking on it will join the conversation.

But if that link is then posted on a publicly accessible website, it will be spotted by Google, and added to its index. Once that happens, people can find the link through Google.

If they click that link, they will then be able to join the group, without needing permission from anyone inside it.

That means that a conversation may appear private, but could actually be discovered and seen by anyone looking for it on Google.

In a statement, WhatsApp said that the feature was working as expected – and that users could avoid the problems by avoiding posting links.

“Like all content that is shared in searchable, public channels, invite links that are posted publicly on the internet can be found by other WhatsApp users,” a spokesperson said. “Links that users wish to share privately with people they know and trust should not be posted on a publicly accessible website.”

When a WhatsApp user creates a group link, the app shows a message indicating that the link should only be shared with people they trust. They are also notified that once the link is created, it can be used by anyone to join the group.

WhatsApp also sends a notification to all users in a chat when someone new joins.

Feature Image Credit: File photo of the WhatsApp app icon on a smartphone ( Nick Ansell/PA Wire )

By Andrew Griffin

Sourced from Independent

In News

AI tools developed to predict COVID-19 case severity: research

April 7, 2020 No Comments

Sourced from Global Times.

An artificial intelligence (AI) model which can predict whether a COVID-19 patient will experience a severe illness has been jointly developed by researchers from China and the US. The research was based on 53 patients from China and its findings were 70 to 80 percent accurate.

“The predictive model learns from historical data to help predict who will develop acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), a severe outcome of COVID-19,” read a research article by Jiang Xiangao, Megan Coffee and others published in Computers, Materials & Continua Magazine on Tuesday.

Among all clinical symptoms, “a mildly elevated alanine aminotransferase (ALT) (a liver enzyme), the presence of myalgias (body aches), and elevated hemoglobin (red blood cells), in this order, are the clinical features, on presentation, that are the most predictive,” read the article.

Meanwhile, key diagnosis characteristics including fever, lymphopenia and chest imaging were not as predictive of severity, it said.

The coronavirus pandemic has spread rapidly across the world in recent days, with a total of 857,957 confirmed infections and 42,139 deaths as of 8:58 am (US time), per data from the Johns Hopkins University. The US topped the list with 188,547 confirmed cases.

Given the rapid spread and increasing caseloads, there is an urgent need to develop clinical skills to rapidly identify which mild cases could progress to critical illnesses, according to the research.

Based on 53 patients from two hospitals in Wenzhou, East China’s Zhejiang Province, the research intended to establish an AI framework with predictive analytics (PA) capabilities applied to real patient data, to provide rapid clinical decision-making support.

AI technology has been widely used during the period of virus prevention and treatment in China, including the use of thermo detectors and disinfection robots.

Though the research did not use a large data base, the article noted that overall accuracy among the included cases was 70 to 80 percent.

Feature Image Credit: A researcher works at a laboratory of the disease prevention and control center in Nanyang, central China’s Henan Province, (Xinhua/Hao Yuan)

Sourced from Global Times