If you’re not busy constructing homemade NP95 masks or getting into fistfights over the last bottle of Purell at the pharmacy, you might wonder to yourself, “Hey—how is the spread of the coronavirus going to affect digital media and advertising, especially news outlets?” A new regulatory filing from The New York Times does not bode well.
On Monday the company claimed a slowdown in advertising bookings could be attributed to “uncertainly and anxiety” over the quickly spreading coronavirus. CEO Mark Thompson said overall advertising at the Old Gray Lady was expected to fall at a mid-teens rate this quarter, with digital advertising down 10%.
The interesting thing here is that Thompson is talking about bookings or reserved inventory. During many crises—think hurricanes, snowstorms, and natural disasters—where people are hitting the Internet hard for information and updates, real-time programmatic revenue has swelled for news sources. And if the coronavirus forces people to stay in their homes for weeks at a time, you can bet they’re going to seek solace in the Internet. So reserved inventory is likely to take a hit, but don’t count real-time programmatic out.
Subscription Fatigue
Where The New York Times is not hurting is subscription revenue, which Thompson said was holding steady in the note. In fact, Ben “Buzzfeed Ben” Smith’s inaugural piece as media columnist was spent wondering if the greatest threat to digital news isn’t… The New York Times! Precisely because the company boasts a higher number of subscriptions than all other paywall-employing news outlets put together. The Times could potentially become a news monolith akin to Facebook or Google! Look at how the NYTimes is absorbing great journalistic talent like Ben “Buzzfeed Ben” Smith!
As arrogant as this may sound, No-longer-Buzzfeed Ben does bring to light the specter of subscription fatigue, which also haunts video streaming services. And a survey conducted by Business Insider and Dynata last year found that most respondents only subscribed to one or two news services—no surprise, NYTimes was the most subscribed to with 47%
Revenue diversification has been the rallying cry among publishers for some time, and subscriptions as an alternative revenue stream has been a popular idea. But the BI/Dynata poll suggests the pool of willing subscribers is limited, and the competition is already fierce. This doesn’t mean the channel is a wash, but publishers need to look into non-traditional or innovative subscription offerings, particularly when it comes to monetizing traffic with ad blockers or those who want “ad-lite” experiences.
Browser Privacy Smackdown: Brave Defeats Opponents With Clean Finish
In line with the company’s tagline, “Experience a faster, more private and secure browser,” Chrome alternative Brave just lived up to its hype as the most privacy-focused browser for searching the internet, according to a recent study by Dr. Douglas Leigth, Trinity College Dublin’s chair of computer systems. He compared six browsers, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Brave, Edge, and Yandex and found Brave to be the most secure—out-the-box.
Safari, Firefox and Chrome followed behind Brave, as they all have identifiers linked to the browser’s instance. Users can turn off autocomplete functionality in the runner’s up browsers, making them more privacy-friendly and limiting how much data they send to backend servers.
As a business model, Brave has made a practice out of attacking Google’s non-privacy compliant ways. Their privacy-friendly response to the current digital advertising model includes blocking ads and then replacing them with ones that won’t track users around the web and also paying users to engage with the ads. They’ll show targeted ads too, but without sending data across the ad ecosystem. As more users continue to adopt Brave, their business model could have a significant impact on the future of advertising.
Extreme Reach: CTV Ad Share Grew 3X Over Last Two Years
CTV is transforming the digital advertising landscape. In just two years, 49% of all video ad impressions were served to CTV platforms last year, more than triple the 16% served in 2017, according to Extreme Reach’s 2019 Video Benchmark Report. The findings from aggregate metrics from Extreme Reach's AdBridge platform also found that advertisers prefer premium environments with 81% of all video ads in 2019 being served into premium environments. 30-second ads have taken the lead over longer formats, driving 67% of all impressions.
The data here is very impressive, given the complexities of CTV advertising. Yet advertisers are starting to follow the eyeballs and are spending more money in CTV. And as inventory increases, it will only ramp up. Emarketer expects CTV ad spending to total $10.81 billion by 2021. But challenges persist with a fragmented inventory, as well as fraud and frequency capping. Extreme Reach’s report does show that levels of IVT have declined among media aggregators.
@PBANNIST
FEB 12 | One of the most valuable datasets that can be used for targeting digital advertising is publisher first-party data. However, over the years it has remained a relatively unused asset for a variety of reasons.
The Big Story: ‘It’s Like They Took Away the Good Toys and Gave Us Educational Toys’
JAN 30 | The Big Story is LIVE at AdExchanger's Industry Preview, with special guests CafeMedia cofounder and EVP Paul Bannister and a recurring appearance from Beeswax cofounder and CEO Ari Paparo. What will the future hold, when Chrome stops supporting cookies?
PubForum — Santa Monica, CA | March 8-11
NYC Meetup—Beyond Optimization: What Moves the Needle?| March 25, 2020
AdMonsters Ops | June 9-10, 2020
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