Facebook is more important to news distribution than you think, and journalists are freaked out

Poynter reporting:
Facebook’s Liz Heron answered for a litany of perceived sins and slights last week during a conversation with The Atlantic’s Alexis Madrigal and attendees at the Online News Association conference in Chicago. Journalists are anxious about being left out of the loop about how Facebook works, and they want answers...
But there are more existential fears behind this conversation, too: If Facebook isn’t interested in exposing users to content that might be important but won’t result in high engagement like softer news and quizzes do, what will happen to news literacy? What will happen to civic engagement? What happens to The News That Matters, if only Facebook gets to decide what matters?
Facebook would say they’re not really deciding what news matters — they’re just revealing what news really resonates with each individual user. And that’s how you end up with Ice Bucket Challenge videos dominating your News Feed instead of the latest information about Ferguson protests...
http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/271889/facebook-is-more-important-to-news-distribution-than-you-think-and-journalists-are-freaked-out/?utm_source=API%27s+Need+to+Know+newsletter&utm_campaign=89244ee3b4-Need_to_Know_October_3_201410_3_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e3bf78af04-89244ee3b4-31701933

The unbundling experiment: NYT Opinion creates another product on the shelf

themediabriefing reporting:
The New York Times' launch of its fourth new paid-for digital offering today – NYT Opinion – has been coming for a while.
CEO Mark Thompson announced at the FT Digital Media Conference in March the launch of NYT Premier and NYT Now and mentioned a cooking package and a paid opinion product would also be released in the coming weeks.
For some the NYT’s recent approach to its digital subscription offerings represents a clever slicing and dicing of NYT content, answering segmented audiences with segmented products. For others it represents the fact the publisher isn’t innovating as intelligently as it needs to and is finding as many ways to skin the same cat as possible.
NYT Opinion allows access to the “Grey Lady’s” opinion pages alone for $6 a month. That means the variety of digital subscriptions available to would-be readers is as follows:

• $6 /month for NYT Opinion
• $8 /month for NYT Top Stories including the NYT Now app
• $15 /month for NYTimes.com unlimited access + smartphone apps + NYT Now
• $20 /month for NYTimes.com unlimited access + tablet apps + NYT Now
• $35 /month for NYTimes.com unlimited access + smartphone and tablet apps + NYT Now
• $45 /month for NYTimes.com unlimited access + smartphone and tablet apps + NYT Now + behind-the-scenes look at NYT journalism
• http://www.themediabriefing.com/article/nyt-opinion-digital-product-app-innovation-technology-unbundling 

The future of news is anticipation “

Nieman Journalism Lab reporting:

One of the most important trends going into 2014 is the wave of sophisticated algorithms and processes that will forever change how journalism is both created and consumed. They are inherently social, but not in the way you may think. And they rely on the vast repositories of data we generate each time we connect, whether that’s searching Google for a restaurant, wishing friends happy birthday on Facebook, or posting an in-line annotation on Medium.
This past year, we saw the first anticipatory computing opportunities in Google Now, which originally launched as part
of the Android operating system, and an app called MindMeld, created by former MIT
researcher and current Expect Labs CEO Tim
Tuttle. In short, apps like Google Now and
MindMeld observe the last few minutes of your thought process in order to predict the next 10 seconds.
In the case of Google Now, if you’ve been searching Google for information about the new movie Inside Llewyn Davis and then ask it “Where is it playing?” Google Now assumes you want to know the nearest movie theater, times, and perhaps even directions on how to get there from where you’re standing. MindMeld offers something even more exciting. When users are connected, it listens in and begins to populate its dashboard with contextual information to help you have a more informed conversation. So if you’re talking with a friend about Llewyn Davis, MindMeld will automatically show history about the 1960s folk scene, the cast, directors, details about the soundtrack, reviews and more.
In the hands of journalists, these and the other emergent anticipatory computing applications can be harnessed as powerful reporters’ assistants. Google Now can query calendars, traffic, weather, and news to deliver just the right information at the right time. 
http://www.niemanlab.org/2013/12/the-future-of-news-is-anticipation/ 

How news sites are boosting 'stickiness' with personalisation

Journalism.co.uk reporting:
For some time now, news sites have been trying out different ways to offer personalised experiences across platforms, placing the reader and their interests at the heart of the content in question.
Personalisation, in its more usual forms, might be determined by a reader's geographical location, their reading history, chosen areas of interest or even their social network. And news services may include personalised homepages, personalised areas in a mobile or tablet app, or completely personalised social reader apps. Another form of personalisation can be found in the interactive content being increasingly produced by digital news outlets.
But for those offering such features, what does personalisation bring to the table for reader and news outlet? And what lessons can others take away from this experience about the value of such offerings?
Growth in the 'demand for relevance'
In the online world, we are faced with an abundance of information. As a result, "demand for relevant content is increasing", digital strategist Nic Newman told Journalism.co.uk, suggesting there is a positive environment within which personalisation could blossom.
People may already come to news sites for specific reasons, perhaps the outlet covers a particular location or subject they are most interested in, or they just value the brand. Either way, personalisation can help a local or niche site to further appeal to the reader, or by larger news sites.
"People feel overwhelmed so they really feel they need tools to help filter out the noise," Newman said, adding that today "personalisation is easier to do, cheaper to scale and deliver".
"It was hard to do personalisation in the past at scale. That's the other reason we're seeing more of it."
He added that the provision of a "personal addressable device for the first time" in the form of mobile phones, as well as the growth in site registration, are increasing the opportunities for personalisation, or simply the delivery of "more relevant content".
The balancing act for news outlets
But personalisation requires a balancing act on the part of news outlets, with many adopting a combined approach, mixing in some personalisation, but with a significant role still played by the news outlet in sharing content which editors believe the reader should see, regardless of their location, reading history, interests or social network connections...
http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8672091774752856243#editor/target=post;postID=1463230284882541949

Facebook's Dynamic Creative Ads Lead to More Clicks

Adweek reporting: his past summer, Facebook began letting advertisers retarget its users based on their off-Facebook browsing behavior through Facebook Exchange (FBX). Early results released last month were encouraging, with multiple partners claiming that FBX ads outperformed retargeting campaigns run on other exchanges.

But for FBX’s first couple of test months, companies had to queue up relatively generic ads. Macy’s could run an ad targeting a user that had visited its site in the past, but the retailer couldn’t make sure the ad featured a particular dress that user had just looked at—until recently.

On August 20, Facebook began testing with a number of FBX partners the ability to use their own dynamic creative products on the exchange. The performance of those even more tailored ads best the already outperforming standard FBX ads, according to AdRoll and TellApart, two of the first companies to run dynamic creative through FBX. Retargeting firm Criteo said late last month that it planned to roll out the capability by the end of the year.

AdRoll has more than 100 advertisers running static campaigns on FBX. Five to 10 of them are using AdRoll's Liquid Ads product, which retargets users with ads featuring either the product a user had viewed on an advertiser’s site or relevant products à la Amazon’s product recommendation tool.

“It’s basically a personalized ad solution so that instead of our advertisers having to present the same creative, they can automatically and very efficiently change creative on an individual user level,” said AdRoll president Adam Berke.

Starting last month, AdRoll has been trialing dynamic creative with a handful of clients and alternating the dynamic creative equally with static ads. Since then, AdRoll has seen, on average, a 102 percent higher clickthrough rate (CTR) than the static ads, said Berke. Since FBX ads are bought on a cost-per-thousand-impressions basis, the dynamic ads cut advertisers’ cost per click in half, he said.

http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/facebooks-dynamic-creative-ads-lead-more-clicks-144319 

'Golf Digest' Teams with GolfLogix to Create Personalized E-Mags Golf Digest Live tailors content to users' golf games

adweek reporting:

Magazines are always trying to find ways to target their content to readers’ interests and needs. Golf Digest is taking that concept a step further with the launch of Golf Digest Live, a digital magazine that creates personalized issues based on the reader’s most recent round of golf.

By teaming with GolfLogix, a free mobile app that offers GPS, club and stat tracking at more than 30,000 courses, Golf Digest Live gathers data from subscribers’ golf games and uses that to produce a post-game recap and a personalized e-magazine offering tips, tricks and articles from the Golf Digest archive, all of which specifically tailored to the player’s strengths and weaknesses. While most of the content is meant to be read after a game’s completion, certain features—like videos and game rules—will also be available to users while on the green.

Golf Digest Live is available as an in-app purchase within the GolfLogix app. After a 30-day free trial, it will cost $19.99 annually, which includes an unlimited number of personalized issues—it just depends on how many rounds of golf you can fit in. Both Nike and Farmers Insurance have signed on as launch sponsors...

http://www.adweek.com/news/press/golf-digest-teams-golflogix-create-personalized-e-mags-142811 

Washington Post Tests Personalized News Program

Techcrunch reporting: If you’re tired of seeing the same news as everyone else, The Washington Post is now experimenting with personalized headlines.
That experiment is called Personal Post, and it’s available at personal.washingtonpost.com, where you’ll see a river of content that you can customize. If you’re already a member at WashingtonPost.com, you can log in and the site will offer headlines tailored to match your previous activity. If not, you can choose from of The Post’s “starter streams,” like National Pulse, Washington Life, and Sports Nut.
“Out of the tens of millions of readers that come to the Post every month we know that each one wants to consume a particular type of news,” says Katharine Zaleski, Executive Director of Digital News, in the Personal Post press release
For a first-time user, Personal Post can seem like just another collection of articles, albeit one that focuses on a specific collection of topics. Over time, however, readers can give The Post more information about their interests, which in turn will lead to a more customized feed. If there’s an article you don’t like, you can hit a button to remove it from your stream, or to see “less of this,” or to remove the entire topic from your interests. As you’re browsing the site, articles also have a “more” button, which allows readers to say that they want to see more of a certain type of article.
Personal Post uses technology from Trove, The Post’s personalized news aggregator launched last year.
Last fall, The Post launched the Social Reader, an app for reading and sharing stories on Facebook, and it now has 15 million subscribers.
http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/23/washington-post-personal-post/

Eli Pariser: How do we recreate a front-page ethos for a digital world?

Niemann/JournalismLab reporting:
At the top of my summer reading list is The Filter Bubble, Eli Pariser’s new book that argues that the filters we rely on to make sense of the online world can do us as much harm as good.
While the book relies on familiar notions about the perils of the echo chamber, it uses those ideas as a starting point, rather than an ending, focusing on the algorithmic implications of all the echoing. One of the most intriguing aspects of Pariser’s argument is his exploration of the automation of preference — through the increasing influence of the Like button, through Google’s desire to make its results “relevant,” through various news orgs’ recommendation engines, and, ultimately, through media companies’ economic mandate to please, rather than provoke, their audiences.
That last one isn’t new, of course; news organizations have always navigated a tension between the need to know and the want to know when it comes to the information they serve to their readers. What is new, though, is the fact that audiences’ wants now have data to back them up; they can be analyzed and tailored and otherwise manipulated with a precision that is only increasing. Audiences’ needs, on the other hand, are generally as nebulous as they’ve ever been. But they are no less urgent.
...And I think we need people who are smart about journalism to be thinking about how we import a lot of the implicit things that a front page does, or that a well-edited newspaper does — how do we import that into these algorithms that are going to affect how a lot of people experience the world?

http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/06/eli-pariser-how-do-we-recreate-a-front-page-ethos-for-a-digital-world/?utm_source=Daily+Lab+email+list&utm_campaign=a52b6fb241-DAILY_EMAIL&utm_medium=email

Personalized Marketing Brings Rewards and Challenges

emarketer reporting:  

Difficulties in managing data hinder more personalized efforts

Personalized marketing campaigns demand a lot of work. Marketers must have a database sliced and diced in relevant ways and come up with the right creative for each group. But the payoff can be big, with personalized campaigns outperforming mass-market ones.
March 2011 research from web content management provider EPiServer found that a third of US marketers considered personalized campaigns to be “highly effective and measurable,” with another 14% reporting a better response rate than mass campaigns.


But the vast majority (64%) offered no personalized content on their company website. A major reason marketers gave for the avoidance of personalized marketing was a lack of useful tools for implementing it.
The survey found more than two-thirds of US marketers planned to use personalization in their campaigns within the next 6 to 12 months, though.http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1008417