News launches integrated media and marketing platforms at Come Together roadshow
Advertisers will be offered 24 new marketing initiatives across News Corp’s mastheads and outlet, the company revealed yesterday at the launch of its Come Together roadshow.
Included in the initiatives are combined advertiser offerings across verticals, exclusivity for sports events, a self-service ad booking platform and improved demographic targeting.
News Corps’ chief operating officer for publishing, Damian Eales, at Come Together 2019 in Sydney
News also announced it would be launching a new podcast group with shows based around topics including true crime, food, sport and travel along with a beefed-up travel site, Escape.com.au.
Key to News’ messaging to advertisers is its positioning as a trusted source of information for Australian consumers, with the group highlighting its community and national mastheads along with Sky News as “the network Canberra watches”.
Chief operation officer for publishing, Damian Eales, told Mumbrella: “People are coming to recognise that what often comes with free content if it’s not written by professional news organisations or by journalists is that it runs the risk of being inaccurate or untruthful or inappropriate.”
At the launch, Eales added that News sees its editorial strengths as delivering for advertisers: “Professional-generated content, not user-generated content, builds brand awareness, builds long-term consideration and builds an emotional connection.'”
Part of the new sales offerings sees News’ sales teams working closer with Foxtel’s MCN and Lachlan Murdoch-owned Nova, with national sales managing director, Lou Barrett, telling Mumbrella: “I’m really excited to be able to give clients access to all of our assets. So the fact that we’re starting to partner closely with MCN is really important. We talk to the Nova guys more than we used to.
“This is what clients are telling us they want. So for me, the fact that we’ve got our business talking to one another now. I think this is really, really important and I think we’ve got the jump on our competitors.”
Part of the pitch to advertisers is News’ increased data integration with Unruly and geolocation service, Near, which the company claims can deliver 1,600 consumer segments. This included the launch of UnrulyEQ, a tool that provides emotional testing and targeting capabilities for creative and media optimisation.
The Code Block product allows advertisers to block book major sporting events across News Corp properties including the AFL and NRL seasons for 2020.
“Say you locked up AFL,” Barrett explained. “Every single AFL article we wrote would have client sponsorship around it. So it allows you to amplify in the marketing sense and lock out competitors.”
When asked by Mumbrella what he hoped advertisers would take from the roadshow, Eales said: “I think the biggest thing is that News Corp is nowhere near the company that it used to be. I want people to walk away saying ‘News is something different to what I thought’.”
Great — just what’s needed across News Corp sites. Still MORE ads. Has anyone noticed the ludicrously high ad load on news.com.au pages, for example? They could not possibly cram more display ads, rich media ads, video ads etc etc onto their pages, not to mention the tsunami of dreadful low-rent ads at the bottom of each story. The ad to content ratio must be something like 80:20. All very well talking up the quality of your professional editorial — but that editorial is becoming very hard to find and consume amongst all those ads!! By all means, look after your advertisers, but don’t forget your readers!!
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As a CMO, I like the concept of sponsoring an entire category (food or sport) but it is true there are so many ads on the pages its not a great consumer experience and we need the audience engagement to remain.
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I think the initiatives from News sound very progressive. Question to Anonymous, do you have a paid subscription to News content?
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@ Cam: news.com.au, where rampant ads are worst, is non-subscription
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