Newsy's Ken Ripley on Best Practices for OTT Advertising

Michael Smith:  Is OTT now a necessary part of every advertiser's media mix?

Ken Ripley:  Definitely.  What's becoming increasingly difficult for any ad buyer is reach, and as consumers continue to shift their TV consumption out of a Nielsen-rated world and into a cloud-delivered world, achieving that reach strictly using Nielsen metrics becomes much more difficult for brand marketers and for brands themselves.  Whether you're a consumer-packaged goods company or a pharmaceuticals marketer that needs to reach a mass audience and needs to look at OTT to supplement or replace lost impressions from the linear plan, or you're looking to be more targeted in the way you're buying television, OTT needs to be a part of your plan.

Smith:  Let's talk about two issues that have traditionally plagued digital advertising -- brand safety and viewability.  What are the best practices you've learned?

Ripley: It's important for us to control 100% of what shows up within our app on our screen.  Brand issues result at sites that simply put a message into a digital environment where the publisher doesn't have control over what shows up on the screen.  Since Newsy is a linear experience, ads take up 100% of the screen, which should be a marketer's and media buyer's priority.  Their commercials aren't competing with anything else.  Best practice is a non-skippable ad, so they're seen in their entirety.  Our length of view on OTT is an average of 50 minutes, and people are staying with us and watching all the commercials.  It's a metric every buyer should consider.

Smith:  Why did the E.W. Scripps Company purchase Newsy in 2014, and why is Scripps so bullish about streaming?

Ripley: While I can't speak for Scripps, it's a pretty simple story.  Scripps has a 140-year history of always following the consumer.  Scripps started as a newspaper company that became one of the first players in radio, that became one of the first players in local television, that became a huge player in cable television.  In that same manner, they're investing in OTT because it's clear that the consumer is embracing it.  In order to stay relevant, you must follow the consumer.

Smith:  Newsy's success in OTT news has invited new competition for major news brands like CBS and ABC that have all recently launched ad-supported streaming services.  What does this mean for you?

Ripley: Newsy is a true digital native.  We see an opportunity to redefine what a news network is in the OTT space.  It's our intention to be the news network of record, not just in this space, but ultimately, in the broader media world as well.  The way you do that is to stick to the facts, which is what we do every single day.  We do not have a bias.  We are not left-leaning.  We are not right-leaning.  We don't have any opinion programming.  A big hole in the market from a genre perspective is just delivering news.  We do this also with an eye towards the younger audience that's driving the adoption of OTT.  We are something that's relatable to a younger news viewer and that's not an easy thing to do.

Smith:  What's been the Newsy strategy for leading in ad-supported streaming?

Ripley: We've been at it since the very early days of OTT so I think that you could call it first mover's advantage.  Since we got started years ago, we've made our product available to any way a consumer might be able to receive OTT.  We have been picked up by virtually every original equipment manufacturer, every device, every vMVPD, and nearly every skinny bundle that's been available.  We'll let the consumer decide if there's a technology platform that emerges as the winner; chances are we're already there now.  We've also been leaders in ad-enablement, creating solutions for reducing load time and pre-fetching ads so that the consumer's experience is the same as the linear viewing experience. 

Smith:  Where does Newsy sit in the overall advertising ecosystem?

Ripley: We can deliver scale.  We can deliver broad demographics, or we can do advanced targeting.  We can do it with all the flexibility of digital.  Plus, a significant component of our business is local.  We're kind of a unicorn that can play for digital video dollars and national TV dollars while delivering all the ROI that marketers expect.

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