As brands become publishers, so publishers will become agencies. They are competing for talent and briefs and the both standalone business models are in palliative care. Maybe they should have always been an integrated unit. But until now, business was good enough not to care.
Meanwhile, as traditional publishers bring listification to mainstream media, so the list masters, such as BuzzFeed, must innovate.
That’s the view of former Huffington Post honcho turned Fusion Network digital monetiser Jorge Urrutia del Pozo.
Now at millennials-focused US digital cable and satellite TV Fusion Network (a joint venture between the Disney-ABC Television Group and Univision) Urrutia del Pozo told delegates at the ADMA global forum in Sydney that there was opportunity within the niches that others eschew for the lowest common denominator.
Fusion is eight months old and is refining its business model. But Urrutia del Pozo thinks the future publishing model is “branded content and being an agency for my advertisers. We want to be a creative house for people trying to reach our audiences … so we are trying to become an agency.”
Advertisers can buy spots, dots and display in the traditional way “but I am not a big believer in that kind of model going forward,” he said.
The new agency model is the future for start-up publishers and they have to be “promiscuous” in the way they distribute content because they don’t have the audiences that legacy publishers still have. But those audiences will continue to decline, he said, and that will make profitable digital publishers increasingly scarce: Audiences will be attracted to those that serve them the right content via the right channels and the best ideas will win.
Fusion is competing with creative agencies for talent and briefs, he added. “The biggest differentiator [particularly in a fragmenting landscape] is how good the ideas are.” It is hiring content creators, designers and social media strategists “who know very well that the audience resides within YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr” and the importance of message and medium.
“We’ll compete for talent with creative agencies and a lot of creative people are putting forward the best ideas in direct competition with agencies. The advantage the publishers have is that, in theory, they know their audiences better. Maybe agencies were always supposed to be part of publishers, but publishers had a good enough business not to care.”
That is no longer the case. “So we will see who is better at finding ways to engage audiences.”
Media agencies, meanwhile, still have a future, he said, but it was something of a backhanded compliment. As advisers on where to direct spent, return on investment, efficiencies etc., “they often misunderstand actual ROI. They are very focused on metrics they don’t always understand,” said Urrutia del Pozo. “They will continue to have a role because they do a lot of dirty work for advertisers but I think they best advertisers will want to have a direct relationship.”
So where does all of that leave traditional publishers, which have recognised the value of click bait and serving people related content that keeps them on their properties, but arguably at the risk of becoming insular? Increasingly struggling to differentiate themselves, reckoned Urrutia del Pozo.
Even BuzzFeed, one of the quickest publishers to recognise the value of content outside of its own properties, has recognised the limitations of the listicle and is pushing more heavily into video to keep it ahead of the new breed.
“When everything looks like a listicle, it is harder to stand out. BuzzFeed is very good at that but [all the same] is investing heavily in video for the web. So I don’t think they will rest on their laurels…. And video is one answer."
The problem with lists as stories is that they drive towards the lowest common denominator. While veteran advertising journalist and author Bob Garfield shared the same stage in Sydney and declared that journalism and top-down media more broadly “fucked”, Urrutia del Pozo thinks that the reason Fusion has a future is because it will focus on precisely the opposite: Areas that are not well served by traditional media. Disney, ABC and Univision agree.
Disney, ABC and Univision agree. Whether advertisers think their ideas are better than those devised by agencies and delivered by traditional media may soon become apparent.
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