Stop leakage to third party competitors.

Paul Hood, Archant Media’s Digital Director talked why leaking data to third party competitors, like Google is lethal for traditional publishers. Archant Media is the UK's largest regional media company, which has 4 daily regional newspapers, 50 weekly titles, 80 regional and lifestyle magazines and about 200 digital properties.

Hood spoke at the Big Data for Media conference on May 8 in London, sponsored by World Newsmedia Network and Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism,  and said that the challenge in today’s media business is to put the customer at the center of the strategy

“Premium content creates actionable data”, says Paul Hood. It means, that relevant content helps to deliver high impact ads to the readers. That is why, the media houses have to end leaking the user data to the third party sources, which can use that data with much more lower prices.

Much of the web’s content is inactionable data and unrelevant, but the media publishers produce actionable content, which has high value.

Online display ad revenues are growing every year, but the revenues are not going to the traditional publishers. Today’s market is ultra complex to tacle for the publishers. Also the advertising customers buy, where they get the most cheaply and efficiently. The publishers have hard times in replacing newspaper dollars with digital pennies. Third parties have also better tools and reach than the traditional publishers.

What to do then about it?

“Don’t let confusion paralyse you. Don’t wait, but start something right away”, Hood says. “You have to move forward or there is a risk to die.”

The steps for minimizing data leakage:
* Reclaim your online display inventory
* Stop hemorrhaging data into the remnant ad networks
* Embed native ad formats into your sites
* Audit third-party tags on your sites
* Read the fine print on the Terms of Use of third-party ad networks

Minimizing data leakage is the first step to reclaiming fair market share. Big data isn’t about the data, but about the analytics and metrics that matter e.g. demographics, social, contextual, friends, trends, intent, family and interests. The basic data, like visits, is also useful, but do not tell a lot about the customer.

“Premium content creates premium audiences. The value lies in understanding those audiences. Don’t give audience data away for free. Act now and do every month something new, even baby steps are acceptable”, Hood concludes.