If The New York Times can get 70 percent open rates for its email newsletters, why can't every news organization? The Times’ strategy seems logical: let readers “self-personalize” emails by indexed topics, keyword search strings, even specific reporters.

On the advertising side, Seth Godin coined the term “permission marketing” 15 years ago, but until 2015, we had yet to see this reader-centric innovation become affordable and easy to implement at scale.

Following my 2013-2014 RJI Fellowship at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute, I began to research news site issues such as rising ad-blocking rates, anemic email open rates, the bloat of embedded third-party trackers, and the steady drop in retail advertising.

Intelligent Triggered Alerting technology emerged in 2015 from companies such as MyAlerts.com, and offered similar functionality and value propositions to what The New York Times achieved with its “permission-based” one-to-one personalized email strategy. In retail advertising, the same technology can let readers specify their criteria for receiving advertising notifications only from certain retailers and specific products, brands, reviews and offers.

Some media organizations will be piloting this reader-centric strategy in 2016. Here are three questions to consider in evaluating this strategy for your own company:

1. Why do news sites embed dozens of third-party trackers in their sites, many aimed at guessing readers' intent and following them around the Web? Why not just ask them?

MondayNote found 20 news sites bloated with 516 trackers from nearly 100 third-party tech companies. Among the trackers' functions were detecting user profiles, serving targeted and real-time bidding (RTB) ads, and following readers around after leaving. Is this complicated business eco-system really necessary?

Worth noting here are the new European data laws that will require media companies and advertisers to measure “clear affirmative action” by consumers before using their personal data. This can include ticking a box on a website, but pre-ticked boxes and inactivity do not constitute consent. Advertisers will also need to give specific and clear information on what will be done with personal data even when consent is granted.

I believe the Europeans will develop new innovations around managing consumers’ intent. U.S. media and advertising enterprises should monitor these innovations, which likely will use opt-in consent data as a new way to monetize their best readers and customers.

2. With many of these trackers trying to predict better monetization, is this technology working?

VentureBeat recently covered the burgeoning analytics market by noting the following: 

“Marketers are spending well over a third of their budgets (on average) on analytics. This in spite of the report finding that levels of confidence in analytics’ ability to generate insight are mediocre, at best.”

Doesn’t “predictive” also mean “guess”? Again, why not just ask them?

3. All retail advertising screams at viewers to “buy now,” yet media sites and advertisers know that nearly every viewer on his or her path to purchase is not ready to buy. So why not help them on the journey?

A Synchrony Financial 2015 consumer study found that for product categories common to retail advertising such as electronics and furniture, consumers spend an average of 68 days considering and researching what to buy. At the end of these treks, what percentage of total audiences are actually reached with “buy now” advertising?

I’m currently working on Intelligent Triggered Alerting technology to deliver viewer-activated consent for news content and marketing communications. I’ll be covering these innovations in depth during my talk at RJI’s Collaboration Culture Symposium, which is March 21 and 22, 2016, in Columbia, Missouri.

Kim Garretson  
 
Nonresidential fellow



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