Missed MediaXchange? Key Insights for News Organizations

Key Insights from mediaXchange 2017

Rain or shine, we knew mediaXchange in New Orleans would be a great success. The event attracts the top news media executives and covers a variety of topics from key technologies to content strategy. Below we’ll cover our top insights from three of our favorite sessions.

Real Relationships are More Important than Ad Views

In the session, Audience Development: Monetizing with High Integrity Metrics, the Corporate Director of Audience Development for McClatchy, Daniel E. Schaub, highlighted the importance of building real relationships with readers and establishing yourself as a trusted news brand.

Schaub believes this is more important now than ever because news media organizations are being victimized by ad fraud.

While advertisers in the U.S. are spending an all-time high of $83 billion this year, only 3% of the 329 million websites that are competing for ad views are legitimate sites. Some of these websites have absolutely no content, while others contain fake or stolen news content. Either way, this takes away from your ad spend and doesn’t get your ads in front of the right people or in the right space.

Schaub stresses that publishers need to focus more on leveraging their trusted brands to build relationships with readers than on ad views or impressions.

He points out, “You have the opportunity to offer real people, real connections.”

How to Drive Subscriptions

In the session, Cutting-Edge Solutions to Driving Subscriptions, there were three points that resonated with us. First, that readers subscribe due to civic reasons, to gain subject-matter expertise, and to share information with others. They are triggered to subscribe when they encounter discussions of subject expertise, metered paywalls, a lifestyle change and marketing campaigns. That means that news organizations can greatly benefit from encouraging discussions that promote subject expertise on their websites, while putting up paywalls and triggering users with marketing ads and emails.

Second, 36% of people under the age of 35 are paying for news in some form. While older readers are more likely to buy an e-edition, a younger person will want “snappy, quick, personalized news.”

Third, the Executive Director of API, Tom Rosenstiel, highlights that newsrooms should take advantage of the untapped market of mobile coupons.

Strategies for Reader Engagement

In Proven Strategies for Reader Engagement, the Director of Consumer Marketing at Washington Post, Rich Handloff, believes personalization is the key to user engagement.

“At the Washington Post, we ask them to tell us what they’re interested in,” he said. “What they tell you, you will then be able to serve them up worthwhile content.”

They send out an email every Friday to their print subscribers to notify them what’s coming up over the weekend. They also send daily emails about the news that happened since their morning paper went to press.

We’d like to add that another key way to personalize information is with a notification feed that automatically posts information that is important to readers. They can follow authors, comments, and other users, and get real-time notifications in their feed.

Personalization and Audience Engagement With Viafoura

Our Head of Marketing and Business Development, Allison Munro, was also at mediaXchange discussing the Viafoura Viafoura Engagement Cloud that addresses many of these key learnings.

The platform gives news organizations a real-time commenting section that promotes civil discussion and subject expertise from readers. The engagement tools helps users connect to one another, to authors, and to your brand. Whereas the notification feed gives users a personalized view to increase their attention time and online engagement.