‘Buying massive clicks does not yield genuine audiences’ | Mumbrella360 video
In this video from June's Mumbrella360 conference, Fairfax's Kate Cox and Beth van Koesveld break down how the company's content marketing arm recently twisted in a whole new direction.
Fairfax’s decision to stop purchasing from third-party click providers has saved the publisher millions of dollars on its branded content, and hasn’t resulted in a sizeable drop in traffic or engagement as a result.
“We found out that buying massive clicks does not yield genuine audiences,” says Kate Cox, Fairfax’s commercial content director during this Mumbrella360 session on content marketing.
Cox references third party native advertising platforms such as Taboola and Outbrain, which many publishers use to increase traffic via external sites.
“It never made sense for us to buy random audiences,” says Cox. “When we looked at the audiences that we had been buying, their profile, their device behaviour and their habits were different – as in worse – than those of our core audiences.”
“What we’re discovering now that we’ve made this strategic decision is they’re more loyal, they’re more likely to act, they’re more likely to spend more time and they’re more likely to come back.”
“We thought this was a pretty brave move, we thought it would be a lot harder, but to be honest we haven’t seen a drop in traffic or engagement in branded content resulting from this shift in strategy.”
Cox explains how in order to keep both clients and readers happy, Fairfax’s content had to be created with its true audience in mind.
“We’re backing our own loyal, smart, interested, quality and above all, real audiences. We’re putting our money where our mouths are and we’re valuing the people, the actual humans, who engage with us and communicate with us everyday, rather than going out and purchasing eyeballs from who the hell knows where.”
This video is from a session at June’s Mumbrella360 conference. To see more videos from the conference, click here.
… as it has been for around 15 years.
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