Building trust: The challenges for publishers in editorial and advertising

"In journalism these days, there are problems with people's straightforwardness and authentic sources of information."

So said BBC presenter and former chief news correspondent Kate Adie OBE, speaking at the AOP Autumn conference in London yesterday.

Adie outlined a quick four step guide that reporters should bear in mind to produce trusted content: get to the heart of the story, be an eyewitness, verify the facts and broadcast or spread the news as soon as possible.

In an afternoon session focusing on building trust between publishers and their readers, as well as publishers and their advertisers, the Wall Street Journal's social media editor for EMEA Sarah Marshall said one of the most important things news organisations can do is publicly admit an error.

"Whenever we make a mistake, even if it's the spelling of a name, we tell the reader," Marshall said, "because if we tell people that we've made a mistake on the small things, then they will trust us on the big things."

She also pointed out the need for transparency and truthfulness on social media, which reporters now increasingly use to break news or share live coverage from the scene of a story with their audience.

"If you're reporting on the ground, ensure that you're always honest with your social media following, by telling people the unconfirmed facts and what you don't know, as well as what you do know," Marshall added.

This is what news organisations can focus on to ensure fairness and accuracy from an editorial perspective, but people's trust in the quality of news sources has also been affected by the lack of transparency in some advertising-based publishing models, with the rise of native advertising and sponsored content.

Display advertising brings news outlets considerably less revenue than print advertising used to before the rise of digital publishing – a study by the Pew Research Center in the US showed that while revenue from digital ads in the past five years has been growing, this increase is not enough to make up for the fall in print advertising revenue in the same period.

On the other hand, subscriptions and micropayments have proven successful only for selected publishers, so many have seen a need to incorporate native and programmatic advertising in their business models.

But does this mean blurring the line between editorial and advertising and moving away from the core idea of doing journalism as a public service?

In 2014, BuzzFeed reportedly made over $100 million in revenue, but the company was scrutinised for deleting posts after advertisers or business clients complained about the content.

According to recent research, some digital natives like BuzzFeed and Vox Media are reluctant to adopt programmatic advertising.

This technological process, which makes the buying and placement of ads automatic, involves tracking readers' habits and often sharing the data with third parties.

However, others are delving deep into this new advertising model – earlier this year, The Guardian announced it was forming the Pangaea Alliance to explore programmatic technology.

The initiative, developed in partnership with CNN International, Financial Times, Reuters and The Economist, aimed to give advertisers access to a combined global network of 110 million readers, thus increasing the outlets' revenues.

But according to Tom Standage, The Economist's deputy editor and head of digital strategy, "the surveillance-based business model of online advertising is simply annoying a lot of people", who are installing ad-blocking software on their devices in response.

This is particularly challenging for news organisations whose audiences are quickly making the move towards becoming mobile-only.

People want to receive accurate news quickly, without adverts to slow down the time it takes to load a page or track their browsing habits.

In the UK, this is the case for the Independent, Daily Mirror, Daily Express and The Guardian, where more than half of their audience now consumes news only on mobile.

A piece published by the New York Times yesterday analysed how long it took for 50 news sites to load content on mobile with and without an ad blocker, as well as how much this costs users in money and network data.

The difference was staggering for some outlets like Boston.com, whose homepage took 33 seconds to load without an ad blocker, versus 7 seconds with one enabled. The Guardian, for example, remained constant at 6 seconds loading time with and without the use of such software.

Some news organisations have begun taking measures towards ad-blockers – when readers access The Guardian website on desktop using ad-blocking software, a pop up notification at the bottom of the page appears, suggesting that they support the outlet in a different way.

A similar approach was adopted by Techdirt, as the site announced it will let its readers adjust the settings on the platform that will enable them to turn off advertising, hoping they will fund the outlet through memberships or alternative methods.

The Washington Post adopted a more drastic strategy last month, when it began blocking people's access to the website if they had ad-blockers installed, or redirecting desktop users to sign up for a six week free subscription via email to continue reading.

This year, native advertising was identified as the main opportunity for publishers, according to the latest AOP Content and Trends Census report released yesterday, and is expected to grow in 2016.

Meanwhile, ad-blockers were second in the study's round-up of threats in the industry, one step behind new and existing competitors.

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