Mark Twain’s famous retort “the report of my death was an exaggeration” would today, you suspect, have been tweeted rather than published in the New York Journal. The newspaper industry, so dominant in Twain’s day, has endured a torrid last decade or so as audiences, attention and advertising revenues have drifted inexorably online. Most titles have compounded their misfortune by giving their online content away for free in the hope that ad revenues might follow to compensate any loss of cover price.
Events of the past few weeks, however, have invited at least a momentary reappraisal of the UK’s news brands, so labelled to reflect their new multi-platform guise, as both advertising vehicle and as advertiser-funded entities.
Too often undone by internecine warfare, the industry’s collective claims are now being better orchestrated and argued than ever, in much the same way as the television industry has fortified and advanced its brand-building reputation in the face of the same onslaught from global, digital media.
A gathering measurement storm in online media, meanwhile, may play into news brands’ hands, or at least offer an opportunity to stem the apparently unstoppable tide towards digital. When no less an advertising player than WPP’s Sir Martin Sorrell declares “a comeback ... ish” for traditional media, as he did at the Society of Editors’ conference last month, it’s time for the industry to sit up and take notice, not least in a week when digital ad revenue growth was finally declared to be slowing.
The “Great Emigration” of classified advertising from analogue to digital media is almost complete. Digital media’s surgical ability to identify and target audiences looking for products has, quite simply, rendered mass or “one-to-many” media largely obsolete in that specific regard. But beneath all the hoopla, it is interesting to observe that display advertising – that is, products looking for audiences – has actually been much slower to migrate, not least because the competitive advantage of digital media in these conditions is less clear-cut, and here the battle between rival advertising media is still playing out.
Two recent developments potentially tilt the pitch back in news brands’ favour. As audiences despair at the invasion of their privacy and the basic lack of manners of much online advertising, ad-blocking technology has reached something of a critical mass. Its mainstream adoption would prove a major headache for anyone over-invested in the sale of online advertising inventory, and by extension a boon for “unblockable” or even welcome formats.
Evidence is gradually emerging, meanwhile, that online advertising measurement has not only been considerably less transparent than its offline equivalent but arguably fraudulently so. Industry estimates suggest as little as 24% of digital brand investment can end up as true working media spend, due not just to opaque value leakage to other parties along the way but to bot traffic and otherwise invalid advertising impressions.
Keith Weed, Unilever’s CMO has likened the value of a bad online ad to an underwater billboard in the traditional advertising space. Sorrell put it more plainly, describing how the online measurement hurdle “is simply not high enough” and concluding unequivocally that “our clients have been paying for views that weren’t there”. America’s Association of National Advertisers has now gone one step further than either, appointing K2 and Ebiquity to investigate media practice and potential malpractice on behalf of its members.
Exposed as they also are now to the slowdown in digital ad revenue growth and the perils of ad blocking, this is nonetheless a moment for news brands to seize. Quality of audience and of audience measurement is back on the agenda, rather than just quantity. The favourable context that news editorial provides and the deeper engagement that the medium lends to its advertisers are being recognised once again, their storytelling advantage likewise. “The creative challenge”, a mobile-wielding Sir Martin pointed out to his audience last week, “is quite difficult on a screen this size.”
News brands’ time-honoured ability to curate advertising space in the interests of both its readers and advertisers might yet serve them well, if they can only map that sensibility and skill on to their newer platforms. More concretely, perhaps, their match with Britain’s older, wealthier demographic might come back to the fore as effectiveness concerns are re-tabled.
None of this, of course, turns the clock back: the digital genie is out of bottle and the vessel long since stoppered. That said, the slowing pace of digital media investment and the question marks over its transparency give other media a rare chance to make their case.
Laurence Green, founding partner at 101
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