Shifting Local News Metrics Changes How Ads Are Sold
By: Chris Sutcliffe
The newspaper industry is only just beginning to wean itself off the pursuit of reach above all else. For years, circulation figures were a good if blunt measurement of a newspaper’s influence – and therefore its value to advertisers. The more eyeballs across a print ad, the better.
Even with the advent of digital publishing and the opportunity for more accurate metrics, reach was still paramount. You only need to look back a few years to see that ‘audience numbers’ or traffic were still seen as the primary means of measuring a newspaper’s health.
If you’ve been in the industry for a while, you’ll remember the traffic growth forecasts put out by local news companies, which promised a bright future for the local news industry.
Unfortunately, that bright future has not – yet – come to pass. In part, that is because the changing economics of digital publishing meant that no amount of digital ads served would compensate for declining print revenue. As a result, the reach-based metrics that were once a good proxy measurement of success became unmoored from reality.
In the UK and across Europe, that has led to a digital advertising ecosystem that rewards an excess of MPUs and other ad slots on local papers’ sites, which harms the user experience and can hasten the underlying trends that cause local papers’ advertising efforts to fail. Edward Malthouse, research director of the Medill IMC Spiegel Research Center, explains: “You see more and more [ads], and that drives you away. If you’re using an ad blocker, you don’t see that effect.”
Happily, some local news publishers and the trade bodies that support them have had the foresight to focus on different metrics when speaking to advertisers. While audience figures are still a vital part of that conversation, they are now one among a variety of metrics rather than the most important. Instead, local titles are prioritizing metrics that demonstrate influence among smaller, more valuable audiences.
Relevance and influence
An August 2023 report from Enders Analysis found that local publishers are weaning themselves off the chase for scale by focusing more on engagement metrics.
Speaking of the Scottish news and magazine publisher DC Thomson, the report states: “Like many publishers, DC Thomson used to focus on users and page views, but they switched to engagement: time spent, frequency of visits and how recently people have visited. Not all content considered important by an editor and the community will drive huge traffic, which is why regular, additional engagement with the community will always matter.”
The rediscovered focus on community and engagement has a significant impact on how local newspapers operate. Managing director of local news publisher David Floyd explains: “These are things that are going on which are important to the public and important to society, but aren’t necessarily going to generate millions of clicks beyond that local area.”
America’s Newspapers Advertising Network comprises more than 720 newspapers, and has spent the past few years (especially in the run-up to elections) highlighting the increased engagement of its audiences around vital subjects and flashpoints. Its research found that 66% of newspaper readers vote ‘nearly every time’ or ‘most of the time’ in local elections compared with only 40% of non-readers, for example. That is a proxy for influence that can be parlayed into conversations with advertisers.
Similarly, in the UK, the trade body News Media Association has been quick to point out the correlation between major events and local papers’ influence. NMA chairman Danny Cammiade said: “As we enter the age of misinformation supercharged by increasingly sophisticated technology, the role of trusted sources of news and information will become even more important than it is today.
“At the core of this is UK local news media – local newspapers and their websites – which serves communities with trusted local journalism on an hourly, daily and weekly basis across a wide variety of platforms, acting as a powerful force for good.”
As a result of that recognition, some titles are developing new ‘impact’-based metrics. As far back as 2017, the Journal Media News Group in New York was developing an Impact Tracker, a proprietary tool to measure the effectiveness of local journalism. As its executive editor Traci Bauer noted: “if we become a slave to those metrics at the expense of not knowing about impact, we’re going to wake up one day and be very regretful as an industry.”
Changing selling strategies
As a result of that changing focus, prioritizing engagement with a local audience over emulating the scale- and reach-oriented strategy, ads in local news publications are being sold differently.
Idaho’s BoiseDev, for example, is doubling down on making sure it only speaks to those audiences – even in its advertising. Noting that it is “probably leaving money on the table,” the BoiseDev team points out that “we do not accept any programmatic or non-local advertising here. While we are probably leaving easy dollars on the table, we have calculated that this costs us in brand reputation and reputation with advertisers.
“We emphasize that we only run local news – and only run local ads. This messaging has won us more business than the programmatic dimes we’d get and sets us apart.”
The focus on relevance to a local audience – even in advertising – is also proving to be an antidote to the ‘pink slime’ problem of algorithmic ‘local’ news sites that are anything but.
While the move away from third-party cookies has been halted, the potential of it has some advertisers thinking about their relative value compared to first-party data. Last September, Shawn Riegsecker, founder and CEO of digital ad platform Basis Technologies, told a crowd of players in the local news space: “As for ad agencies, no one gives a shit about buying local news. The end of cookies could change that — we should all thank Google. This is the opportunity. When the cookie goes away, who can garner the depth of audience better than local news organizations?”
And that means local newspapers needing sales teams that can communicate those benefits to advertisers. PJ Browning, publisher and president of The Post & Courier in Charleston, says: “We added a digital agency with a different staff and digital-only sellers. It has been the biggest game changer for us to compete in the digital space. We tried to teach our core print sales reps how to sell digital, but we discovered, as other news outlets have, that you need separate digital reps who are consumers of digital content to sell it.”
The clever thinking by the teams at BoiseDev and the other local news outlets focusing on impact over reach allows for a USP to genuine advertisers in the local area and a marketing message to would-be readers and subscribers.
Even if BoiseDev still sells on a CPM basis, that is a world away from the play-for-scale, sell-ads-at-any-cost approach that was taken by many local news outlets in the initial rush into digital. There is a growing recognition that local papers should not be emulating their national counterparts, which can sell ads at a scale that pays the bills.
For local newspapers, the onus is on both their editorial and sales teams to redefine how their articles are valued by advertisers. Local audiences have already proved they are more engaged with relevant local content – and the BoiseDev team’s work suggests that extends to local-flavored ads as well.
