Deseret Digital's KSL.com goes native
Learn from broadcast native experts
Company: Desert Digital Media
Initiative: BrandView
Key executives: Chris Lee, President; Todd Handy, VP Advertising Strategy and Performance
Challenge: Deseret Digital Media moved towards creating a native model in part as a response to the solving what president Chris Lee calls the "mobile dilemma."
That is, if banner ads have four units, and mobile ads only one unit per page, the media audience has already shifted en masse to a medium that supports only 25% of the ad dollars. And if CPM's for mobile stay lower, as well, this 25% itself could also be cut in half, by the CPM prices.
Much like Facebook, Deseret Digital began to look at native as an ad unit that works well on mobile.
Strategy: Deseret's team decided the new native advertising deparatment would operate from the following basic principles:
• Native Ads would be placed in content
• Sponsorships would be transparent
• Content and production is separate from the editorial team
• Content is high quality; CTR should rival or exceed that of editorial
• Metrics include branding results in addition to traditional direct response - more like television
Staffing and organization:
The DDM product line is called BrandView and the product DDM provides for other publishers is called BrandForge.
The internal organization includes a position of Vice President of Advertising Products, a position held by Todd Handy; BrandView is one of the ad products.
The content manager of BrandForge reports to Handy, but has a dotted line to editorial, since they work together to create a seamless flow.
Finding the next key hire
The manager of BrandForge was an existing employee with a PR and marketing background. "He was aggressive, hungry and excited about bringing brands to the audience," Lee said. Ultimately he was a perfect fit for the new position.
For writers, Lee recommends keeping a staff of freelancers to "variablize costs." He said the department typically pays $50 to $100 per story. This is less than 50% of the newsroom cost per story of $300 to $500 that was confirmed in a recent study of newsroom costs.
Lee says they look for writers who, first and foremost, "can write interesting things."
"They can learn (the subject matter) if they are good at reaching the audience."
Sellers of native play an agency style role: They must understand both the brand and its target audience, establish goals and metrics, then determine budgets, frequency and campaign length.
Where native runs and how long
When the program is sold, the content is promoted in the story queue, running through the queue throughout the day, as well has externally via social, email, partnerships with third parties, and on the client's own site and social media.
Because of the large audience even one post running through the queue receives 582,195 average page views on the home page, with an average of about 13,000 clicks to the article content. The department runs about 2 to 3 post per day out of about 40 editorial posts per day.
Native ads running in the queue are inherently mobile.
"Mobile is so difficult to monetize," Lee said. "Native is a solution to the mobile dilemma."
Comments on native ads are allowed, even if not in agreement.
"Naysayers can be allowed if they are not disrespectful or libelous. It's usually about the content, not the sponsor," Lee said.
Comments are also one of the engagement factors that are tracked.
Reporting analytics is important to Handy, who keeps a spread sheet of some 22 analytic data points on each native campaign - including social shares, scroll, depth, time on site and more - and was a beta-tester for Chartbeat's new native analytics platform. In some cases analytics will include market research on changes in brand recognition and influence.
Customer base:
Clients come from a variety of industries:
Healthcare
Automotive
Legal
Financial services
Utilities
Insurance
Grocery/retail
Consumer packaged goods
As an example, Young Automotive underwrites a number of articles focused around tips for buying a car, plus 100% of the ad units on the article page:
Other auto article headlines in the native campaign include:
• What steps you should take immediately after a car accident
• 5 reasons you should make an SUV your next car
• Spring Cleaning Tips for your car
Typical headlines have use numbers, are seasonal, and provide information that is highly useable in every day life.
An especially popular campaign with readers is Ask A Chef, sponsored by high-end grocer Harmon's. Every Thursday the store runs a recipe as part of its campaign:
The campaign has become so popular with readers that users e-mailed to complain when Harmon's didn't publish for a week.
University of Utah Health Care also has a long running program that includes an "Ask an Expert" feature as well as community health tips (see the image top right).
And KSL.com's deal program and digital services program place their own content in stream to promote their expertise and educate the markets to benefit points.
A BrandView page with a blog-roll of articles shows clients what the program looks like, and the logos of four premium advertisers are included in the right rail "BrandView" static promotion for an additional monthly fee.
Pricing and packaging:
Deseret charges $2,500 for the article creation and site posts, plus additional charges for extending the reach via social and third parties.
While the model is sponsorship based, rather than CPM, Lee backs up its' pricing by comparing the cost of acquiring those same 13,000 engagements using another form of advertising.
"We asked how much display media would a client need to buy to get 13,000 engagements with brand in the form of a click-through?" Lee said, during a speaking engagement at the Local Innovation Conference.
With a .1% CTR - which is ahead of the national average - it would take 13,000,000 impressions, which, at $3 CPM is $39,000.
Hence, even at $2,500 an article, the advertiser is getting exceptional value.
Deseret also gives the client access to the content for its own websites, blogs and social, a double posting strategy that some media do not allow.
And a few brand logos are promoted on the home page in a static position:
These logo views and clicks can be added to impressions and clicks in the analytics, especially if a large advertiser is backing out CPM.
Results:
Key metrics show native performance after 12 months of data are strong. At 2 to 3 posts per day, with 300 days sold, LMI estimated a revenue gain of $1.5 million to $2.75 million.
The average results for an advertiser include:
• 582,495 home page views from the log and position in the queue.
• CTR from home to the article is 2.31%, 200% higher than the performance of a banner ad to the web site.
• Article unique viewers average 10,410
• Article reads average 13,400 per article
• Time spent engaged with article averages 1.59 minutes
• Social shares average 71
• The 13,836 average page views per editorial story is "neck and neck" with editorial.
Lessons learned:
• Do not blur organizational lines. Keep sponsored posts separate.
• Be transparent. Label all sponsored posts.
• Create a clear and consistent ad policy regarding which ads will not be accepted as contrary to the values of the organization.
• Variablize costs using freelance contributors, so as to scale costs to meet specific revenues
• "Publish awesome. Bad, uninteresting content won’t work for anyone and will erode trust."
• Don’t let clients produce and publish their own content on their own. "Use what we know best as publishers: how to reach and engage the audience."
• Be bold internally. "Editorial can be picking at it trying to see that it fails… you have to get past the objectors and get everyone on board."
Many thanks to Todd Handy and Chris Lee of Deseret Media for sharing their experience with the native program, and to the Local Native Advertising Summit and Innovation Summit, where these were presented.
Keywords
deseret digital media, brandview, native
