Publishers & Declared Data: Why It Matters and How to Drive Revenue in 2018

At this point it’s no secret to anyone in the media industry that traditional publishers have been hurting for revenue. With readers increasingly relying on social media channels to curate and connect them with interesting content, the need to visit a news site for articles they’ll love is at an all-time low.

At Jebbit, we’re confident that the solution for publishers to drive revenue and increase reader time on site is to invest in gathering declared data. What is declared data? It’s first-party data that comes directly from consumers; when invited, they’ll tell you their intentions, motivations, preferences, and more. If you are wondering why it matters for media companies, stick around.

To understand why declared data is essential for publishers and how successful publishers are using it today, let’s first dive into the specifics of the revenue challenge for publishers.

Publishers earn revenue in two primary ways: by selling ad inventory onsite and in-app; and by acquiring paid subscribers. The ability to gather and activate declared data from readers can boost revenue in both cases.

Let’s tackle the ad sponsorship piece first. By launching interactive Jebbit experiences through high impact ad units as well as through sponsored articles, publishers can guarantee advertisers not just impressions but genuine engagement and lead generation opportunities. They can then use insights and performance data to optimize experiences to boost lead capture and engagement in real time.

By launching two sponsored Jebbit experiences onsite and through social for Ryder and Mailchimp, Inc Magazine was able to engage thousands of readers in Jebbit experiences for over four minutes on average with a 60% content completion rate.

How many articles a day do you finish and spend more than four minutes reading? How many pieces of sponsored content do you EVER read on a news site? Now that’s a success story right there.

The second way publishers profit from Jebbit’s declared data is to boost subscriber acquisition. This can be simply done by running a Jebbit experience with lead capture capability that serves strategic questions and subsequently matches readers with relevant subscription offerings.

For example, if you can learn whether someone loves reading about baseball everyday, then suggesting a sports newsletter instead of a generic subscription will logically yield a higher lead capture rate. This is exactly what the Boston Globe did to increase their subscriber conversions by 221%.

Of course, once we know reader preferences there are lots of ways to move a consumer down the funnel. Using AI and dynamic branching, Jebbit can connect readers to more content they’ll love, driving further engagement with the publisher and in turn moving them closer to the paywall.

Armed with leads, which we can capture through Jebbit at a 40% rate across editorial content, and a web of valuable data on reader interests and content preferences, marketers can then go to work using their CRM and social channels to serve relevant reads to readers wherever they may be.

Once you truly know what content your readers crave (because they’ve told you), whether it’s the topics they love or where they dream of traveling on vacation, the possibilities for personalizing their content and improving their ad experiences on site are endless.  

It all starts with asking the strategic questions to gather the right declared data.