It’s time for a look at the landscape of content in 2017. Tom has worked with content businesses large and small, and will walk through the trends and technologies that shape content distribution today. Looking at different platforms, business models and influencers, there will be insights for anyone who publishes content to the web.

1. The State
of Content
Feb 2017
By Tom Critchlow

2. Outsourced SEO to India in 2006, joined
Distilled in 2008, moved to NYC in 2011
and went all-in on content strategy.
Joined Google in 2012 and ran
innovation projects, TV ad campaigns
and content campaigns at Google scale.
Quit Google in 2014 to build an
independent consulting practice
advising content companies on digital
strategy.
@tomcritchlow
tjcritchlow@gmail.com
tomcritchlow.com
Who is this guy
anyway?

3. Intro

4. In 2012 I realized content marketing was
about to take off...

5. “
Tom Critchlow - The Time for Content Marketing is Now
As some are lamenting
the death of the
publishing industry,
publishing for brands is
undergoing a revolution.
And I said this:

6. But, I forgot to ask what kind of
publishers brands would become?
Would it look more like
The New York Times or more like
Buzzfeed ?

7. “
The Atlantic - What the Death of Homepages Means For The Future of News
The New York Times lost
80 million homepage
visitors—half the traffic to
the nytimes.com page—in
two years

8. BuzzFeed Distributed, which it described
as a team of 20 staffers who would “make
original content solely for platforms like
Tumblr, Imgur, Instagram, Snapchat, Vine
and messaging apps.” In other words, a
team of people producing content that
will never even appear on buzzfeed.com.
“
NiemanLab - A wave of distributed content is coming — will publishers sink or swim?

9. Of which 94% are on Facebook -
looks like the Buzzfeed distributed
strategy is scaling well. Buzzfeed
Tasty, launched in 2015 received
1.6 billion video views in January
2017.
Each video averaged 15mm views
30 days after publishing.
Source: Tubular Labs
Buzzfeed Tasty had 1.6 Billion video
views… in January 2017

10. All told, a series of three sponsored
clips reached 369 million people
with 310 million views and 1.8
million shares. Newell paid in the
mid six-figures for the flight.
Source
And they’re selling cross-platform
native ads that work

11. tastybook.com
Oh and by the way, they created one
of the best selling recipe books ever

12. 1. Who is making content?
Where does content come from?

13. Bloggers
Independent voices, niche sites, passion projects and of
course classic bloggers
Content is made by...
Brands
Brands like GE, Redbull, Nike, IBM and more generate
large volumes of content
Publishers
The media industry still dominates the narrative online
for the most part.
Platforms
Consumers posting content on platforms (not just
Facebook) faster than we’ve ever seen.

14. 247 personal finance blogs started in 2016 - source
Blogging (like SEO) is not dead. It’s
changed but still alive and kicking

15. Brands are launching into content
marketing like no tomorrow
2017 B2B content
marketing trends
89% 86%
Percentage of B2B marketers
using content marketing
Percentage of B2C marketers
using content marketing
2017 B2C content
marketing trends

16. And the media is “having a moment”
as it scales up...
The Atlantic - How Many Stories Do Newspapers Publish Per Day?

17. Consumers produce content in
staggering quantities

18. And this content is starting to get
harnessed by brands & platforms
Source: Olapic

19. 2. How is content made?
The business models of content are changing faster than ever

20. Content gets made because there’s a
business model to support it.

21. And the ways to monetize content are
shifting dramatically

22. And so the ways to monetize content
are changing too...
source

23. “
Gabe Leydon - CEO Machine Zone - source
[media] buyers are going to get
more sophisticated and
everything is going to get
repriced
Importantly, almost no one thinks
display ads are the future...

24. So we’re going to see new forms of
advertising, including native ads, explode
Native advertising is estimated
to reach around 75 percent of
The Atlantic’s ad revenue this
year
“
Digiday - How sponsored content drives 60% of the Atlantic’s ad revenue

25. In Dec. Gawker founder and Chief Executive
Nick Denton told the WSJ that in 2014
Gawker’s e-commerce business generated
$150 million in sales, and about $10 million
of revenue for Gawker -- just under a quarter
of the company’s $44.3 million total revenue.
“
WSJ - Vox to join other media companies in ecommerce push
Commercial editor is the brand new
oldest digital job around

26. Expect this space to heat up - the NYT
acquired the Wirecutter to double down

27. And new kinds of people good at
making content selling content.
source
(psst you’ve all read their content
marketing handbook too right?)

28. What modern marketers need from
content today is not one-off tactics. They
need to find agencies who can layer on
strategy and communications planning to
create larger platforms that are integrated
into a cohesive strategic go-to-market
plan.
While the traditional ad world is mulling
the concept of a content AOR
“
Lindsey Slaby - It’s time to get a content agency of record

29. A sweeping wave of acquisitions has decimated
the ranks of independent agencies and formed
two clashing clans. On the one side are the
giants of advertising and marketing and on the
other the titans of management consultancy.
Meanwhile the market over which they are
fighting is in the midst of a multi-faceted
existential crisis.
Management consultants are disrupting
the ad agency world.
“
Jules Ehrhardt - State of the digital nation 2016

30. Partly because buying power is shifting
in organizations as technology matures
“
Avi Dan - Consultants are eating the ad agencies three martini lunch
It is not difficult to understand what is attracting
management consultants into marketing services: By
2017, Gartner, the technology research company,
estimates that the largest portion of a company's IT
spend will be controlled by the CMO instead of the
CIO, from data and analytics to front and back-end IT
spend. The management consultancies see the
future of technology spend coming from the CMO.
This is what they are after.

31. The “Creative content” that the SEO
industry creates has evolved...

32. And the gold standards of interactive
data viz is on par with the best
source

33. Meanwhile a single talented interactive
creator can light the internet on fire
source

34. But it took the New York Times 5+ years to
integrate interactive into the newsroom
2007
The NYT interactive
team is founded
2012
The iconic interactive
story Snowfall is
produced
2013
The interactive team starts
to integrate into stories
that follow the news cycle

35. And so much content on the web is still an
awful homogeneity

36. Thankfully we’re seeing exciting CSS
progress towards art directed articles
source

37. The size of what we’re making is
unknown until we know what we’re
putting there. So, it’s better to come up
with an arrangement of elements and
assign them to a size, rather than the
other way around. We need to start
drawing, then put the box around it.
And the real exciting work is seeing the
web as it’s own fabric
“
Frank Chimero - The web’s grain

38. 3. How does content get distributed?
How is content consumed?

39. “
Ev Williams - CEO Medium - source
There’s going to be a
convergence of
distribution points for
media

40. That’s true, but new distribution
channels are emerging all the time
Digg Apple Spotlight iOS Google Now

41. “Refreshing the verge” - source
And it’s only going to get more
fragmented

42. “But traditional web analytics are fundamentally unable to
capture what actually happens on the social web today; they
obliterate its inherent tree structure.[...] In fact, clicks from
Twitter represent only a quarter of the total downstream visits
rooted in the BuzzFeed Twitter account!”
Introducing Pound: Process for Optimizing and Understanding Network Diffusion
Existing analytics is unprepared to cope
with influence in this new world...

43. This world rewards the ends of the
smiling curve
source

44. Content aggregators are growing and
aggregating profits
Content aggregators & platforms
(think Google, Facebook,
YouTube) provide smaller value
exchanges with huge audiences.

45. While independent & niche focused
sites are thriving
Independent content producers
and niche focused publications
(like Stratechery) can provide a
high value exchange with a
focused audience.

46. But it’s not looking so good for those
in the middle...
While “traditional”
publishers are stuck in the
middle with small value
exchanges and mid-size
audiences struggling for
revenue and audience at
the same time.

47. So to compete, maybe publishers
need to think more like platforms

48. Influencer marketing saw
explosive growth in 2016, with
86% of marketers having used
the tactic, 94% of whom found it
effective.
And, influencer marketing is still new
but about to explode...
“
Linqia - The State of Influencer Marketing 2017

49. 4. What about SEO?
A few trends I’m seeing

50. We’re seeing the domination of search
by aggregators
source

51. The reasonable surfer model is
increasingly less reasonable
Facebook and Twitter first grew on the web but
exploded on smartphones, their endless scrolling
feeds positioned fortuitously for touchscreens.
Snapchat, Instagram and Vine, which grew later,
were designed first with phones in mind. On
those services, activity is fueled exclusively by
things people are typing, shooting or recording
themselves. They owe very little to the web, in
both senses of the word
“
The Awl - Upload complete

52. In short, it’s very possible that
Google reacts almost instantly
to big traffic increases coming
to your pages.
Which is why links are starting to matter
less. So what signal does Google use?
“
CodeinWP - Transparency report

53. No one knows where the knowledge
graph ends

54. And how long before Google gives
AI-content the head nod?
(psst - check out this fun demo of writing with a
neural net - writing with the machine by Robin Sloan)

55. I think they have already actually. So long
as the quality is good they don’t care.
In November 2016, Heliograf
created more than 500 articles,
with little human intervention,
that drew more than 500,000
clicks
“
Wired - What News-Writing Bots Mean for the Future of Journalism

56. Meanwhile, for media orgs the truth is
everything is always trending

57. Or, maybe they need to double down
on niches?

58. “
Dan Gillmor - Google is going to speed up the web. Is this good?
AMP wouldn’t be
necessary — assuming it is in
the first place — if the news
industry hadn’t so
thoroughly poisoned its own
nest.

59. Some very large publishers are seeing
almost 50% AMP traffic
AMP
Non-AMP

60. Sure, the poisoned nest - but really it’s all
just a crutch to progressive web apps
source

61. 5. How to win
Some winning strategies & theories

62. Social media technologies collapse multiple
audiences into single contexts, making it difficult
for people to use the same techniques online that
they do to handle multiplicity in face-to-face
conversation.
“
Alice E. Marwick & Danah Boyd - source
Context Collapse explains why content
is hard on the modern web

63. The problem is not lack of context. It is context
collapse: an infinite number of contexts collapsing
upon one another into that single moment of
recording. The images, actions, and words captured
by the lens at any moment can be transported to
anywhere on the planet and preserved (the performer
must assume) for all time. The little glass lens
becomes the gateway to a blackhole sucking all of
time and space – virtually all possible contexts – in
upon itself.
“
Mike Wesch - source
An infinite number of contexts
collapsing into one audience

64. Forget your generalized audience. In the
first place, the nameless, faceless
audience will scare you to death and in the
second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t
exist. In writing, your audience is one
single reader. I have found that
sometimes it helps to pick out one
person—a real person you know, or an
imagined person and write to that one.
“
John Steinbeck - source
Steinbeck said this in 1962...

65. “Compelling voices and stories, real and raw talent,
new ideas that actually serve or delight an
audience, brands that have meaning and ballast;
these are things that matter in the next age of
media.[...]
We’ll have to learn a thousand hard lessons, most of
them centered around the idea that if you want to
make something really great, you can’t think about
making it great for everyone. You have to make it
great for someone. A lot of people, but not every
person.
Joshua Topolsky - Your Media Business Will Not Be Saved
Joshua Topolsky said this in 2016...

66. Attention has become aggregated
through narrow channels (i.e. FB)
Ben Thompson - The Great Unbundling

67. I do believe that brands with
reader and audience connection
and loyalty are the evolutionarily
fit cockroaches
“
Steven Kotok (Bauer Media Group CEO) - peak content
So what’s the winning strategy? This
is my favorite quote:

68. The NYT believes this too - a mission
& vision for your content
Our most successful forays into
digital journalism [...] have
depended on distinct visions
established by their leaders —
visions supported and shaped by
the masthead, and enthusiastically
shared by the members of the
department. [...] These departments
with clear, widely understood
missions remain unusual. Most
Times journalists cannot describe
the vision or mission of their desks.
Journalism That Stands Apart

69. Most messaging (and most brands are
built on messages) suffers from an
acute form of narrative deficiency: for
no reason, nothing happens to no one.
Narrative deficiency cripples almost
all messaging campaigns
“
Brian Dell, Director Quartz Creative

70. The businesses that stress a storytelling approach that
prioritizes delivery through credible, authentic and proximate
peer faces vs faceless brands will be more successful. [...]
Franchises are reignited over and over again through prequels,
sequels and "requels." [...] it seems our attention-starved world
favors narrative continuity over clutter.[...] As more businesses
begin to invest in creating their own content assets, they will also
need to embrace a similar long-term approach. Feed
fragmentation is real and they will need to adapt by investing in
consistent signature content assets.
We can build audience connection
through “faces & franchises”
“
AdAge - Why Brands Need Faces And Franchises in the Platform Age

71. Whether your employer is a publisher, a brand, or an agency. If
you’re making garbage, help them do better. The good ones will
listen to you and incorporate your expertise. In my experience,
most of them really do want to do it right.
And believe it or not, super engaged communities often want to
hear from the brands who serve them. And super engaged brands
want to provide communities with things other than just “content”.
So if you find yourself writing pablum, narrow the audience to a
core group of smart people who care about what the brand has
to say. And then convince the brand to say something
meaningful to that small, smart audience. Godspeed.
How do you create better content for
engaged audiences?
“
Kyle Monson, partner Codeword Agency - twitter rant

72. Hire someone with real editorial
experience - an editor in chief.

73. Thanks!
Twitter
@tomcritchlow
Web
tomcritchlow.com
Coffee
Brooklyn, NY

74. Appendix
Random slides that didn’t make the cut

75. For example, a New York Times food article may
be published as a medium-to-long-form piece
on the website, as a headline with bullet points
on the NYT Now app, as a one-sentence story
on the Apple Watch, and as a standalone recipe
on Cooking, not to mention the various formats
required for platforms like Facebook or Pinterest
or Twitter.
“
NYT Labs - The future of news is not an article
New CMSs might enable new
experiences

76. The point was that a great idea, now, is boundless. Things are
made -- some big, some small, some made by the public, some
privately, some are liked, responded to, shared, edited, re-edited,
appropriated, stolen, emboldened or bought
.
Achieving this requires a change in agency mindset.
Great ideas must manifest. We can't stop at catalyzing this. We
must participate in the complete journey of our ideas, embracing a
mentality that refuses to recognize a boundary in what we provide,
in both making and cultivation.
I call this the new world of "infinite production."
Infinite production is part of the
answer but not in ad agencies DNA
“
David Rolfe, Welcome to the new world of ‘Infinite Production’

77. Offline/online is the future. From a
network of monolithic destinations...
source

78. You may already know that Foursquare
location data powers Twitter, Uber, Apple,
Pinterest and 100,000 other services. Today,
we’re adding yet another technology
juggernaut to that list with the announcement
that Snap is partnering with Foursquare to
utilize our location intelligence data.
And watch for Foursquare to bring
this dream into reality
“
Source: Oh snap

79. Prediction: buzzfeed microgames studio
will be the next media format to take off