What are the biggest challenges facing media owners today and how are they diversifying their revenue streams as a result?
A panel of industry experts gathered in Cannes recently to discuss the current state of play for media owners. NDA’s editor Justin Pearse chaired the discussion, where he was joined by: Duncan Chater, Managing Director, Bloomberg Media; Tia McPhee, Global Brand and Partnerships, FT; Andrew Demaria, VP & Global ECD, NBC Universal; Samantha Adams, VP, Advertising Sales, BBC Studios; Lena Arbery, Director of Global Partnership Solutions, Tripadvisor; Grégory Blay-Desforges, Head of Uber Advertising France, Uber; and Lauren Dick, Executive Director, Media & Data Services, Mail Metro Media.
According to Dick, one of the biggest challenges facing media brands is the fragmentation of the media marketplace: “Our audiences are growing on platforms where we’re not in control and the range of platforms continues to get more and more diverse. That gives us limited control of our own destiny, in terms of our audience strategies, our monetization strategies, our engagement strategies.
“Rather than sort of shying away from that, how do we lean in and make sure that the strategies that we have in relation to our owned and operated channels can be replicated and applied across those fragmented audiences to create a singular, omni-channel conversation?”
When you own the brand and the IP, said Dick, it’s your decision how partner platforms fit into and align with your plans: “You have to flex and lean in or lean out depending on what suits your interests.”
Addressing the fragmentation of the media marketplace, Arbery of Tripadvisor said: “Digital audio, CTV, AR – as media owners we are constantly being bombarded with the shiny and the new and whatever’s coming next. The temptation is always to rush toward the new but you’ve got to work out how it aligns with your core proposition.
“When we work with a brand advertiser, we talk a lot about ‘shared purpose’. What can we co-create together? Where are the sweet spots for collaboration? Leveraging our first-party data assets is increasingly a key component of some huge partnership we have running at the moment.”
Personalisation and diversification
Demaria of NBC Universal pointed out how the digitisation of commerce has led to almost all of our experiences now being customised or personalised to some extent.
“If you’re not agile enough to adjust to that environment and deliver your content in a way that adds up to a tailored experience for your audience, you’re going to lose out to those who can. Developing that kind of agility, without losing your core values or sense of identity as a media owner, is absolutely essential.
“What we’re noticing more and more is media owners tapping into the rise of fandom on social media to create curated events, aligned to a particular show, personality or theme. A good example of that is the way that the US Bravo channels, home to a lot of big reality shows, has created its own very successful BravoCon event in Las Vegas, where the public can engage with reality stars directly.”
McPhee agreed that media owners need to cultivate alternative revenue streams that align with their brand.
She said: “The FT is always looking for opportunities to diversify in ways that stay true to ourselves.” We are hugely diverse as an organisation and I get the joyful job of trying to make sense of the brand that sits above all the activities.
“We were really early to market with paywalls and that has continued to be a very successful strategy for us. But we’ve also got events business, networking businesses – we managed our own digital transformation so well that we now have our own consulting firm to help other people do it!”
Blay-Desforges believes that trust in the Uber brand has been hugely important to the success of their in-app advertising business. “We could be taking the exact same proposition to market, offering the exact same benefits for advertisers, but if it wasn’t under the umbrella of the Uber brand, we wouldn’t be as successful. We’re a trusted B2C brand and now we’re leveraging that trust to become a successful B2B brand.
“We’re a bit different from other media owners in that we don’t produce our own content, meaning there are no brand safety issues for our advertisers. That can be a ‘good foot in the door’ for us when we’re trying to be part of the media budget conversation.”
The magic of media
When marketing budgets are tight, said Adams of BBC Studios, advertising budgets become more focused on return on investment: “It’s important that we, as traditional media brands, continue to talk about the value of brand building and how we remain a relevant channel to achieve that.
“I’m not sure that people appreciate how innovative legacy brands like the BBC have been. You don’t last 100 years without innovating. iPlayer launched years before Netflix, but it’s Netflix that’s seen as the great disrupter to the market. Likewise, newspapers and magazines were operating subscription models successfully years before the streaming channels.”
Adams added: “The BBC is a big organisation so a key challenge for us is being able to pull on all those different assets to create the right proposition for the right client. Increasingly, we are working more as ‘one BBC’ and I think that’s going to lead to some really exciting partnerships in the near future.”
Chater of Bloomberg Media argued that with media owners trying to be “everything to everyone” across a variety of channels and everyone doing similar things, it’s important to distinguish your unique value proposition.
“There’s more content out there than there’s ever been in the world. How do we cut through that? A lot of our time is spent zeroing in on our audiences and understanding our content, how we deliver that content, and the impact it has on our audiences. The value that we offer is in our unique understanding of our audiences.”
Chater provided the example of a Swiss building firm he recently worked with who wanted to promote their sustainable credentials. Rather than design content that promoted the brand directly, Bloomberg Media created a “utility for our audience” focused on the circular economy.
“When a media owner uses their brand reputation and their understanding of their audiences to elevate other brands, that’s when the magic happens.”
