6 Ways the Pandemic Has Changed Publishers’ Ad-Selling Processes

Although the sharper edges of the Covid-19 pandemic are beginning to soften in the U.S., many of the changes it heralded in the world of ad selling will likely outlast it. Chief revenue officers from seven publishers––Bustle Digital Group, Condé Nast, Decrypt, Quartz, Salon, Vox and The Washington Post––spoke with Adweek about what adjustments the pandemic forced them to make and what shifts they plan to retain. While each CRO offered responses distinct to their operations, several common denominators emerged. Sales cycles are moving more quickly, brands are working on larger deals but with fewer publishers, the hierarchy of product categories has shifted and many holdovers from the last 12 months of remote deal-making will remain, even as business returns to normal. Below are the trends. Shorter sales cycles set a new bar Sales cycles have sped up for two reasons. First, in the midst of pandemic uncertainty, advertisers hesitated to plan too far in advance, shifting deal timelines from months in advance to weeks away. At Bustle Digital Group, the average sales cycle shrank from 60 days to about 30, said president and CRO Jason Wagenheim. “It's the new bar,” Wagenheim said. “The pace at which we're operating and the speed at which we are closing deals––it's real time; that's the way the world will continue to work.” Second, thanks to the nature of remote deal-making (more on that later), publishers are better equipped to meet these new time frames. After restructuring to make it possible, several executives expressed a desire to maintain this new clip. “If you had asked me a year ago about running our business on a short-term planning cycle, I would have been terrified,” said Ryan Pauley, CRO of Vox. “But our team proved that they could do it, and our clients proved that it works, that it's possible to run great programs on a short turnaround.” Others are less certain about the staying power of these expedited cycles. “What we’ve seen is a trend that went from last-minute weekly or monthly planning in the third and fourth quarters of 2020, to more forwarding-looking cycles reflective of pre-pandemic time,” said Washington Post CRO Joy Robins. Advertisers work with fewer publishers, but on a deeper basis The pandemic triggered something of a survival reflex among advertisers, leading them to hunker down and work more closely with trusted partners rather than seek out new business. Although this shift had been building momentum for some time, like most trends, the pandemic accelerated it. Ad sellers have responded by accommodating brands’ needs, even recycling existing creative to help advertisers wring the value out of their on-hand assets. “Many clients are trying to leverage existing materials that they already had in the pipeline, so we’re taking things like white papers and putting the Quartz spin on it,” said Quartz CRO Natalie Diamond. This extends into programmatic advertising, for which publishers like Salon have experimented with allowing vendors to purchase advertising inventory in bulk in exchange for discounts of between 2% and 4%, said Salon's CRO, Justin Wohl. Advertisers’ desire to secure bigger deals with fewer partners has also benefited publishers with diverse portfolios. “With Vox, brands can reach a sports audience, a tech audience, a food audience, across a variety of formats, all in one place,” Pauley said. Publishers have realigned sales teams, hiring more account managers In line with the trend of concentrated deal-making, publishers have begun bulking up the post-purchase division of their sales teams to boost client retention. This is a moment in time when we need more bodies in digital operations as much as we do in marketing. I don't know if I've ever seen the necessity as equal as I see it right now.Pamela Drucker Mann, Condé Nast Bustle Digital Group realigned its presale team to focus more on industry verticals and hired “a lot more” account managers, Wagenheim said, which has helped the publisher raise its client retention rate, for the third consecutive year, to 72%. Likewise, at Condé Nast, the role of digital operations and client support to the sales process has never been more vital, said Pamela Drucker Mann, the company's global chief revenue officer and president of U.S. revenue. “This is a moment in time when we need more bodies in digital operations as much as we do in marketing,” Mann said. “I don't know if I've ever seen the necessity as equal as I see it right now.” The hierarchy of advertising categories has shifted Advertising categories that disappeared with the pandemic, such as travel, fashion and liquor sales, have begun returning. In their absence, though, a new crop of evergreen categories emerged. Brands in the tech and health industries increased their advertising market share. Audience and advertiser demand during a global health crisis mean that both categories will command more attention from ad sellers going forward. New categories like cryptocurrency flourished during the pandemic, drawing eyeballs and advertisers to publishers like Decrypt. “Media growth isn’t slowing,” said Decrypt CRO Alanna Roazzi-Laforet. “It's just moving, and the audience is moving, some of it to crypto.” Remote negotiations are here to stay While everyone eagerly awaits the return of face-to-face deal-brokering, the pandemic has offered the ad-selling world a glimpse into the future, and it will be impossible to return, making virtual business an integral part of the advertising process. High-ticket negotiations will likely return to some semblance of in-person interaction. Some publishers, such as Vox, expressed an appreciation for the more meritocratic nature of virtual business. “Remote negotiations put the emphasis on the creative and its performance, rather than trading purely on historical relationships,” Pauley said. Brands and publishers rewrite the rules Across the board, revenue executives agreed that the pandemic has ushered in a new era, when all involved parties can combine what worked pre-pandemic with the experimental successes they've seen during the pandemic. As a result, the open-ended feeling of the current deal-making environment led several publishers to cite an increasing sense of creativity in the business. Anything is possible, it feels, because the new rules are being written right now. “I don't think we've ever been this creative, and I don't think we've ever been this efficient,” said Mann. “And innovation is a byproduct of that.” Post-Pandemic, Most Publishers’ Ad Revenues Have Fully Rebounded

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6 Ways the Pandemic Has Changed Publishers’ Ad-Selling Processes

CROs of 7 publishers explain what they do differently now

Mark Stenberg

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Mark Stenberg