Meredith Corp., founded over 110 years ago, now reaches more than 110M women across its premium brands which include Allrecipes, Better Homes & Gardens, Parents, Martha Stewart Living and SHAPE. But just a few years ago, Meredith was viewed as a print company that happened to have websites. Today, digital growth outpaces print declines, and despite stiff competition from the duopoly, the company continues to thrive.
In this session, Meredith Chief Digital Officer Matt Minoff will share lessons learned and pitfalls to avoid while enacting your own digital transformation, from the importance of building a great team to how to grow revenue without sacrificing editorial integrity.
11. What Did It Bring Us?
Talent
Native Digital
Know-How
New Proprietary
Products
New powerful
brands in areas
where we lacked
strength
New
Revenue
Streams
Entrepreneurial
Mindset
12. June 30, 2015
Digital is
21%
of Total Advertising
Revenue
87%
of Digital Revenue is
Standard Display
64M
Unique Monthly Visitors
(2.5X+ Growth)
2015
2012 8%
21%
87%
Standard
Display
20152012
25M
64M
13. Index of Percent Rating Media Brands 7-10 on a 10-point Scale
Criteria in Order of Overall Importance
And We Were in Last Place…
Cost/Pric
e
Ad Results Image/Envi
ronment
Value Audience
(Net)
Targeting
Capabilitie
s
Optimizati
on
Source: Advertiser Perceptions, Wave 21.
AVERAGE
INDEX
Meredith Net
Competitive Set
20. Interest & Intent
Deep Commitment to Understanding Her
visit register email follow subscribe
share search list watch buy
3 billion >6 million new >6 billion 25 million
'I made it'
'I did it'
profiles
Add to Shopping List
Print/Save/Build Collections
Video Views
7 'Shops'
Local Offers
INTEREST
INTENT
Home
Services
200 Million Monthly Actions
66 million
125 Million
Consumer
Database
90 Million
Digital Consumers
First-Party Data
>25,000
Attributes
enter
50 million
22. From “Ad Display Network for Women” to Something Ownable
Shifting the Tide
Standard Display vs. Non-Standard Display Revenue
23. Above Industry Benchmarks for All Aspects of Direct Sales
Today…
Source: Advertiser Perceptions, Wave 23.
Meredith Net
Competitive Set
147
142 139
167
117 117
124
117
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
Knowledge Customer Service Creativity/Innovation Sales Skills
24. March 2017
Digital is
30%
of Total Advertising
Revenue
55%
of Digital Revenue is
Standard Display
81M
Unique Monthly Visitors
2015
2012 8%
21%
55% Standard
Display
20152012
25M
64M
2017 30%
2017
81M
This is who we are
Beloved magazine publisher
Large digital footprint
Digital was an afterthought - separated across 8 business units!
Still in the middle of our transformation
Loads of assets, under-monetized
Native Digital company
Scale to build upon
You need change agents
Four key levers to ad revenue diversification and consumer revenue growth
Target: ~$2.50+ in Average Revenue Per User each year (vs. $1.75 today)
Branded Experiences
Audience Scale
Cheap reach is a race to the bottom
Need segments of value beyond women (Affluents,Connected Consumer, Millennials)
First party data (address across platforms)
Proprietary Technology platforms
I wasn’t there, but the board bought in
Independent reviews by different third-parties (consultant, banker, data specialist) > this is the right strategy, now go execute!
What Did Bring Us?
New talent/people
Reality: Legacy business it hard to hire top people - I was at a startup!
Top talent wants to do their own business, or work at Google or Facebook
Entrepreneurial mindset
Brought Entrepreneurs into Meredith, giving these fast-paced leaders meaty enough roles to be interesting, paired up with people who can navigate the larger culture
Native Digital Know-How
New Proprietary Products
New Powerful brands in areas where we lacked strength
Digital was an afterthought - separated across 8 business units!
Still in the middle of our transformation
Loads of assets, under-monetized
[Built new teams ]
Playbooks
Getting teams work together and on same page
360 Approach
GTM includes all of these offerings
Proprietary to Meredith
And we proved it worked every step of the way
Even put skin in the game with our own “Sales Guarantee”
And we also got our own data in order…
To innovate in a holistic way, we needed to unlock value of our data
No consistent set of metrics, different CMS, some 10+ years old
When I took over, we didn’t have a seamless way to deliver advertising across channels in a standardized way
Created a centralized data team across all properties and channels
Part of what differentiates Meredith is our expertise in combining and applying the vast amount of interest + intent data we possess.
Beyond simply gauging her interest through site visits, registrations, email opt-ins, sweepstakes entries and subscriptions, we make it truly actionable by marrying that information with 200,000 million monthly actions—or intent indicators—across our digital audience and consumer database.
Whether she sharing her successes through an online profile, creating a shopping list, watching a how-to video or buying through an online shop, we leverage that data to extend opportunities and drive value for our partners.
Actual audience data
Site and campaign data > better optimize
Operational data > what’s working/not
Talking points:
80% of revenue tied to display
Other people selling our inventory (mobile)
Perception: “Ad network for women”
Race to provide cheap efficiency; we were acting as ad networks, not solutions providers
We would never win in that race long-term-- devalues assets and brand equity
We have trusted branded with large reach
Never tried to “hack” our way to huge scale
We became good at SEO, Social and Email - now it’s paying off
Takes discipline not to just try to grow at all costs -- everyone out in market touting reach #s
And it’s a balance -- still need to be a Top 10 player - 90% ad revenue goes to duopoly, so have to shift share within what’s left
Digital was an afterthought - separated across 8 business units!
Still in the middle of our transformation
Loads of assets, under-monetized
360 Approach
GTM includes all of these offerings
Proprietary to Meredith
360 Approach
GTM includes all of these offerings
Proprietary to Meredith