With renewal rates in the 90s and data heading their offerings, founder and CEO Guy Cecala is pleased with where Inside Mortgage Finance stands and where the 37 year-old company is headed with new leadership next year. Mortgage lending did well during the pandemic, and that led to a good year for his company. “We stick to our knitting,” he said.
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SIIA Expresses Support For National Deepfake and Digital Provenance Task Force
New Legislation A Critical First Step to Combat Digital Forgeries
Washington, D.C. (July 29, 2021) – Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) President and CEO Jeff Joseph issued the following statement today regarding the Deepfake Task Force Act introduced today by Senators Rob Portman (R-OH) and Gary Peters (D-MI):
“The bipartisan Deep Fake Task Force Act introduced today is a critical step toward combating the scourge of so-called deep fakes – an abuse of artificial intelligence to create realistic-looking fake media. The goal is simple and important: Establish a National Deepfake and Digital Provenance Task Force to explore ways to verify digital content and begin to create and implement a national strategy to address the growing threat of digital content forgeries.
“Our members include trusted sources that provide an array of accurate, beneficial information that helps fuel business, drive financial markets and improve outcomes in education and healthcare. The spread of misinformation presents a legitimate threat not only to our member organizations but to our democracy itself, eroding public trust in our institutions and communications channels. This proposed legislation seeks to create a government partnership with the private sector to leverage expertise on both sides to fight misinformation, using the ability of the government to convene experts across different sectors. This strategic partnership is both pro-innovation and pro-democracy.
“Trust in facts is a cornerstone of American democracy and a free and open society. Disinformation and distrust of the media have been major contributors to our socially, politically and economically polarized culture. Our society cannot function without accurate information and the fundamental ability to trust what we are seeing, hearing and watching. The spread of misinformation is real and it is harmful. We support this landmark effort to begin to restore trust.
About SIIA:
SIIA is the only professional organization connecting more than 700 data, financial information, education technology, specialized content and publishing, and health technology companies. Our diverse members manage the global financial markets, develop software that solves today’s challenges through technology, provide critical information that helps inform global businesses large and small, and innovate for better health care and personal wellness outcomes – they drive innovation and growth. For more information, visit www.siia.net.
There’s an old saw in baseball that incredible success for a batter still means failing seven out of 10 times. Now, of course, we can’t do that in business, but it does say something about becoming accustomed to failure and learning from it for the next time. Getting hybrid events right will require experimentation from some of the leading media companies.
So the question becomes, amidst all that data we’re getting, is there still a place for failure and intuition? Absolutely. I often come back to this quote from Rajeev Kapur, CEO of 1105 Media, from a couple years ago.
“I tell everybody that works for me that I’d rather have them try and fail than not try,” Kapur said. “And that I want them to make a decision. We can fix a bad decision; we can’t fix a no-decision. No one will ever get fired for trying something new or for failing at something they tried to do. I reward people who try, people who think outside the box. I am doing everything I can to empower my team all the way down the chain to say, ‘Look, this is what we need to do for the customer.'”
One of those people, Troy Schneider (pictured), is 1105 Media’s editor-in-chief of both FCW and GCN (originally known as Federal Computer Week and Government Computer News, respectively), two of the oldest and most influential publications in public-sector IT.
A former managing director for electronic publishing at Atlantic Media, Schneider will speak THIS THURSDAY on an AM&P Network webinar and discussion titled, Mining Success from Adversity: 1105 Media Shares Its 2022 Game Plan for Hybrid Engagement. (Register here.) 1105 Media was one of the first to pivot to virtual events back in March 2020, and I suspect that they will be similarly ahead of the game in planning hybrid events.
“We’re going to talk about how we made the pivot from live events to virtual almost on a dime when COVID hit,” Schneider tells Performedia president Peter Hackes in a video promo for their Thursday talk. “What we’ve learned over the last year-plus in doing that and how we’re taking those lessons and moving forward as things open up, and we start bringing live events back in the mix. But certainly keeping the benefits of virtual and hybrid events going forward.”
Given the culture that Kapur has created at 1105 Media, it will be most helpful to hear how they are approaching hybrid events. Kate Lucey, a former digital editor for Cosmopolitan UK, agrees with Kapur, that there are advantages to both success and failure. “If something [messes] up, you can look at your stats and figure out what went wrong,” she said. “Try new ideas—if they work, how can you expand them? If they fail, why did they fail and what have you learnt about your audience that you can apply to future work? It’s constant learning, constant adapting—and a constant headache… but it’s FUN.”
On a Sterling Woods Group CEO Campfire Chat a few weeks ago, Sam Yagan, vice chairman of Match.com and co-founder of OkCupid, Tinder and SparkNotes, was asked by Rob Ristagno, “What was one of the first things you did when you became CEO?”
“When I took over Match, I realized that they use data, but the expectation—which was always data-driven—was that tests will all succeed,” Yagan said. “It wasn’t built in a culture of failure. For me, that failure was a requirement of learning, a corollary of ambition. ‘What is this? That’s the failed SpaceX launch.’ Is [something great] realistic without failing along the way?
“I compare never failing with not having ambition,” Yagan continued. “[So the question became,] how do we let ourselves test out our intuition? The intuition has to inform what data you get.”
He said that one of the keys to OKCupid’s success was the level of trust that they built with their audience. That reminded me of something Tim Hartman, CEO of GovExec, once told us. “Create a culture to build trust and collaboration, and breaking down silos. Think ambitious experiments and trust each other. If you look around and don’t see that, you have a problem.”
Learning about 1105 Media’s culture from Schneider should be eye-opening. And while publishers and media companies are looking forward to getting back to in-person events as soon as possible, it also will be good to hear from Hackes on keys to the virtual segments of events. With travel restrictions still in place for so many countries—including Canadians coming to the U.S.—it will be important to keep the international audience that we’ve all worked hard to get.
Again, register here for Thursday’s exciting event, which will leave plenty of time for discussion and Q&A.
“So if you’re taking an election break with us or listening after the fact, there’s plenty to get from today’s episode, brought to you by our friends at TRIMEDX. Now let’s hear from Rich [Daly] and Chad [Mulvany – pictured here].”
That’s the start of the 2021 EXCEL Gold-winning, single-episode podcast from the Healthcare Financial Management Association’s Voices in Healthcare Finance. With the votes still being counted, the two HFMA staffers—Daly a senior editor and Mulvany a policy expert—went on to discuss what would be happening in the coming months in their industry.
When podcasts come up, a common refrain, in the B2B media and association world, is “can they produce revenue?” They can and they do—some tips are below—but there are other reasons to deploy a good podcast: attract new members and subscribers, promote other initiatives within your organization; add diverse voices to your content; give your organization a different feel; and amplify your own editorial voices—as HFMA does here.
Of course, many podcasts also weave ads seamlessly into their broadcasts. In an interview on the ASBPE site, John Heltman, editor-in-chief of American Banker Magazine and winner of the Grand Neal in 2019 for his narrative podcast series Nobody’s Home, was asked: What kind of sponsorship opportunities do you offer to clients? How do you seamlessly weave sponsorships and maintain editorial integrity?
Handling sponsorships. “Our sponsorships run through the sales department… but last year we started what is known as pre-roll and mid-roll ads in the podcast,” Heltman said. “That just means that we run an ad before the episode begins and in the middle. For the mid-roll ad, we just lead up to it by saying ‘And we’ll find out more about that after this quick break.’ And the ad rolls. Sometimes I read it, sometimes it’s read for us, but if I read it there’s music in the background so it’s easily distinguishable from the program. I’d say ours is a pretty typical approach for this kind of podcast.
Maintaining integrity. “As for maintaining editorial integrity, I don’t think it’s different from other advertising. And advertising has pretty clear rules: don’t give preferential treatment to sponsors or represent something as editorial when it’s advertising. Some podcasts have the hosts kind of ad-lib a pitch for the thing they’re selling, but that hasn’t come up for us.”
Addressing your DEI commitment. Arizent’s American Banker won the Neal Award (B2B’s version of the EXCELs) for Best Podcast for its amazing 5-part series, Access Denied: Systemic Racism in Financial Services. I listened to an episode on “The Financial Media” recently, and it is eye-opening. It was so engrossing that, of course, I then moved on to a second one and encountered a paywall. It flashed very tempting “special introductory pricing” for subscriptions where you can choose from $41 a week for a month, $29 a week if you subscribe annually—highlighted on the page—and $35 a week if you subscribe for 6 months.
(The publishing vendor Piano recently published its Subscription Performance Benchmark Report found that 74% of annual subscribers remain loyal to a brand after one year, vs. 46% of readers who pay monthly.)
Speaking of pre-roll and mid-roll, an article on the site Lower Street says that, before approaching a sponsor for your podcast, you should know these things:
What is your inventory? “Podcast ads are often broken up into pre-roll, mid-roll and post-roll ads. It’s a familiar format. The mid-roll is the most valuable, since people are already engaged in the podcast by that point… Pre-roll ads are often the shortest, in order to keep listeners on board. Post-roll is often less valuable.”
What’s your pitch? “Simply put: why should a brand advertise with you?” They recommend creating a media kit and a podcast trailer. (There’s a link below to the trailer that Overdrive did.)
What are the demographics of your audience? Who listens to your podcast? “Knowing this is very helpful in determining how to get sponsors for your podcast.”
What’s your advertising rate? “Even if the prospect of earning anything at all from your podcast is exciting, you don’t want to undervalue your show… Rates are typically calculated as a CPM (cost per mille). It’s not all that rare to see CPMs reaching as high as $40 or even $50. Somewhere in the $20-$25 range is fairly average per Midroll and AdvertiseCast.”
Another Neals finalist for Best Podcast, Crain Communications’ Automotive News Daily Drive, features sponsorships—during the podcast itself (the brief intro of the sponsor sounds warm and friendly)—and also ads on the website. And another finalist, Bobit’s Heavy Duty Trucking HDT Talks Trucking, has a sponsor, Fleet Management, and talks up their own events during the podcast.
The other Neals finalist was Randall-Reilly Overdrive’s Over the Road, an eight-part series that gave “voice to the trials and triumphs of America’s long haul truckers.” One thing they do that an expert once recommended to me is to have a separate website and url for your podcast. Here’s a link to the trailer that Overdrive did for Over the Road.
Let’s hope that your podcast gets nominated as an EXCEL finalist next year—and accomplishes some of these goals.
The idea of different paywalls for different visitors makes sense, judging someone’s likelihood to pay by the type of content she or he is reading. Of course, it helps that now with systems like The Globe and Mail’s Sophi, the process takes a lot less time and manpower. “We had been leaving money on the table for years,” wrote Sonali Verma, G&M’s senior project manager.
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