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The Big Impression
Reuters and SAS on trusting the brand and publisher relationship
00:21:01
Josef Najm, director of programmatic and partnerships at Thomson Reuters, and Mibbie Plouvier, head of global programmatic strategy at SAS, join The Current Podcast to describe how their partnership has evolved and how trust plays an important part in that evolution.
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- [00:01]
Ailee Slifring
I'm Ailee Slifring and welcome to this edition of the Current podcast. This week we're excited to be joined by two guests, Joseph Najim, director of programmatic and partnerships at Reuters, and Mivi Plouvier, head of Programmatic at software company sas. Together, we'll explore the publisher and advertiser dynamic at a time when some advertisers remain cautious about appearing alongside certain types of news. The business model for news is under pressure and publishers are looking for better ways to monetize their journalism with effective ads. We'll dive into why things may be changing for the better. Recent research indicates that it's safe for brands to advertise next to quality journalism, regardless of the news topic. Reuters, founded in 1851 and owned by Thomson Reuters, is one of the world's largest publishers. With journalists in over 200 locations Writing in 16 different languages, SAS sits at the intersection of data and AI, delivering analytical insights to brands. We kick off things with Joseph and Mibi describing how they first met and how their partnership has evolved since then. It's so great to have you here today. First off, how did you first meet and how would you describe how your partnership has evolved?
- [01:24]
Joseph Najim
Great. Thank you so much for having us. It's a pleasure to be here, maybe. And I met about five years ago when I joined Reuters. Coming from the buy side, I was just leaving a stint at Diageo and coming in as the programmatic sales specialist. At the time, Mibi was working in Paris and she was, I believe, the global programmatic lead. And everyone was just like, hey, programmatic guy, this is a programmatic person. I think you should connect with them. And at the time we were doing some business with SAS or maybe a little bit. And hearing that she was from Paris and also knowing that I had worked at L'Oreal, I wanted to connect with her from like a French connection perspective and also knowing that she was American. So I shot her an email, reaching out and asking her some questions, like how things were going.
- [02:04]
Mivi Plouvier
It was a fun connection because I was new to Paris and Joseph reached out and was telling me all these fun French antidotes of how Parisians and French people are more like coconuts and Americans are more like peaches. And it was a great analogy to start the intro, but we've had a great relationship. Joseph has been resilient in calling on our business and the more in trust we built up, the greater the partnership has become. And we've been able to do some really great things together.
- [02:29]
Ailee Slifring
I guess it is Like a pretty small world. Programmatic.
- [02:33]
Joseph Najim
It is a very small world. Yeah.
- [02:36]
Ailee Slifring
So it's no secret that the publishing industry is under quite a lot of pressure, along with the eventual death of cookies. One issue publishers continue to come across are brands avoiding advertising on news for concerns around brand safety. Now, these concerns have been challenged as of a May study from Stagwell that found that even ads next to hot button topics performed as effectively as those appearing next to news like sports and entertainment. Can you give us some context around what you're seeing on this topic?
- [03:09]
Joseph Najim
Yes, this is a very important topic. And being at Reuters now for five years, I've had the opportunity to see a lot of different brand briefs and questions that come in around how can we partner together? And in 2020, this kind of all came to a head when Covid and the pandemic took place. So what we found was, you know, a lot of advertisers turn to the solutions that they have around advertising, ad tech, platform blocking tools like keyword lists, pre bid filters, monitoring tags, blocking tags, blocking words like Covid, China, Wuhan. And then it just precipitated after that in almost the spiral effect, because the news cycle and the realities of that was happening continued. So just in the year of 2020, so much happened, whether it was George Floyd's murder, the beginning of the Black Lives Matter movement, the election as well. A lot of people forget the election took place there too. And now, four years later, history is continuing in this really real time. Just to kind of put it from a global perspective, two thirds of the world's democratic populations are going to the polls this year, not just the US And a lot of people just think it's the US but really important countries like Taiwan, for example. And we're covering that. And we're also covering two global world conflicts, Israel and Gaza, as well as Russia and Ukraine. When we're doing all this, it costs a lot of money. And it's important to find brand partners that are willing to support trusted journalism and at the same time understand that when they're partnering with news publishers, that audience that they're reaching is a really important audience. It's an attentive audience, an audience that's willing to engage. I always like to think back, like when the pandemic happened, where did we all turn? We turned to the news. And I'm really appreciative of a lot of these studies that are coming out with Stagwell, for example. But even going back to 2020, when the IAB released this Trust Halo, report 84% of consumers had a positive or neutral impact when they saw an ad adjacent to a trusted source. And I fast forward to now and folks are talking about Gen Z audience and trying to reach that audience. Gen Z cares about the facts, they care about trust. So finding partnership with SaaS and being able to present this audience and showing that you can have adjacency next to the hard news and reach that audience has been leading to successful business outcomes for both of us. And it's really been great partnering with maybe on those activations.
- [05:19]
Mivi Plouvier
And then from our perspective, I'd say I think it's easy to find comfort in blocking certain words. But what we like to do is partner with trusted news sources and award winning news sources because we know that no matter what news they're reporting upon, our brand's going to be safe around it and we know that we're going to be okay no matter what the news is. And I think with the current news cycle and how constant it is, you could almost just go down a rabbit hole of blocking everything. So from our perspective it was let's partner with key publishers that we can trust and then we don't have to worry as much about trying to continue to block things or worry about being somewhere we don't want to be.
- [05:54]
Ailee Slifring
Yeah. And you know, on that point, even like the bad news, I don't think it doesn't hurt your brand as research has shown, brands are still very fearful about that. Was that your original like hesitancy in advertising or.
- [06:09]
Mivi Plouvier
It actually wasn't because for us it's we take the security in knowing how brands, how we're going to be around the right kind of content and Reuters reports on the news in a very fair way. So for us, even if it's bad news, we're okay with being there. It took a while to get there internally, but that was several years ago and I think it was around Covid when everybody was a little fearful of the news. But we're very confident with the partners we have and for us it was also how can we make these things happen programmatically? Because we can buy things a lot easier and smoothly if it's through our platforms. So that was Royal Doors was very good about helping us out in that sense too.
- [06:47]
Joseph Najim
Yeah, I think it goes back to the consultative approach. When I first presented to SAS and to Mibian team, it was always with the thinking of okay, great company culture. Just like Reuters, we have a history, they have a history of innovation too. And at the end of the day as Mibi said, the fairness of how we go to report that unbiased nature, it really creates and fosters an environment for trust with the audience, trust with the content. So when they have a trusted message that they're really trying to deliver to that audience, we just knew that it was going to be a perfect synergy between the two. So I really never had concerns. But I will say, and this is the importance of kind of stepping in and having that partnership with that news publisher partner. If the situation gets a little bit out of control from a hard news perspective, it's important for the news publisher to step in and say, hey, maybe we don't run this campaign right now, but we will come back and we'll make sure that the creative message is appropriate to what's taking place. But also at the same time, hey, we're going to. We're going to protect your brand. And I think in some cases, you know, it happened, for example, with Applebee's running against a CNN ad when I think it was Russia and Ukraine, combat was starting to happen. And what came from it was some rhetoric around, we don't want to be around that content, and why could that have been shut off? And I don't know the full schema behind it, but I really do think it wasn't the intention for CNN to run an Applebee's ads there, but that ad went to supporting journalism and supporting that moment in time that a lot of people were looking at. And my hope is a brand like Applebee's will find a way to come back to running on news again and not say, hey, we're to shut it down and continue not running there.
- [08:19]
Ailee Slifring
Definitely. You know, one common refrain amongst publishers at least, is that advertisers don't ever really go back and like, update keywords or their sites that they're blocked from. What is the fear here?
- [08:37]
Joseph Najim
Yeah, so I do think there's a little bit of foundation of a fear strategy here. And I think that strategy unfortunately comes from the fear of the screenshot, for example, and what that might lead to. And when it comes to exclusion lists, I think one of the funniest things I recently heard was a certain agency had an exclusion list or their exclusion list, which kind of speaks to a problem in itself, where if you're applying words like people's beliefs, religions, communities, whole countries, et cetera, you really run into a situation where is that appropriate for your media campaigns and your paid campaigns? To me, understanding that brand and, like, doing my research, when I go to pitch it's recognizing what is in your keywords doesn't really reflect what your brand is trying to promote from a communication style as well. But I think maybe has some specifics if you want to share from your side that we've been chatting about this a little bit, but they're pretty good, they're relevant to the French culture as well.
- [09:33]
Mivi Plouvier
Well, I think you lose a lot of context when you block keywords. And at some point when Notre Dame was on fire and burning, a lot of people were blocking Paris, they were blocking fire. And now if you don't go back and revisit those lists and you continue to just have these long lists of blocks, you're missing out on Olympics coverage with Olympic torch, with the flame, with even the Paris coverage. So there's a lot that if it's not completely maintained, I think it's a hard kind of road to continue to go down because you there's a never ending way to go if you keep blocking and blocking. So I think that's where you should go more. The curation route, and that's the route we've gone is to curate our sites, curate who we're working with. And so then it's not as fearful and you don't get that email to your CEO, which it happened and it comes down to you if you're the screenshot and then you have to say, well, that's a good point. Why are we here? Why are we running there? So sometimes it says hard lessons that make you rethink how you're blocking things and the approach you're going to have.
- [10:29]
Ailee Slifring
I want to bring up AI here because in a sense I feel like potentially it could help eventually with something like keywords, maybe with marketers, maybe it's a chance to like actually use it to run through keywords really fast and see if it's actually going to actually with terms that aren't like several years outdated or something like that. What do you think?
- [10:53]
Mivi Plouvier
I think it's only going to help our business and help speed the process to your point of going through those massive lists and staying active with what's constantly changing like the news. So I only think it's going to benefit us, but I think AI in general across the programmatic landscape is going to be a benefit instead of more of a hindrance that some people might think it may be.
- [11:12]
Joseph Najim
Yeah, AI is unique because there's generative AI and then there's AI. And I think in the programmatic space we've been playing with AI a lot like machine Learning algorithms, the ability to target the person, right place, right time, right message, that's all AI. And I think the tools that publishers are now getting that maybe they weren't always accustomed to having or the ease of being able to check things or recategorize things or work with their product leads to say, hey, what is happening here in the bid stream? That's going to come out more to make a cleaner path and make sure that the buy side is really saying, okay, let's triage it. Maybe let's say, okay, if this is Reuters and a trusted brand then good to go, but okay, next word that pops up, okay, maybe it's related to this, but because Reuters still. Okay, I don't think those solutions exist. They're a little bit more potential blankets. But you know, with AI you have to understand the risks too. And I think in a gen AI world, working at a news publisher, it's also really important to understand like I sit on the commercial side, so my uses of AI and generative AI are going to be different than the editorial team. And it's important to make sure this is anyone that's on the news side. Like what is your AI and gen AI policies because you don't want there to be conflict with your editorial team and commercial team, but you do want to promote innovation at the same time.
- [12:25]
Ailee Slifring
Now I want to talk a little bit about the campaign that you actually ran and that you pushed through all that hesitancy for and then maybe if you could share some of the results you saw from that.
- [12:38]
Mivi Plouvier
Yeah, so we've been doing a lot of great testing with Reuters. So the baseball campaign was a great example because we owned all their coverage of the World Series, which was great for us as a brand to know that we're there all the way through the end. And it was a good series. But then we've also been doing some testing with Reuters, with LinkedIn. So they've been contextually making videos for us around AI specifically and our ads are surrounding that and we've seen massive increase in our click through rate, exceeding benchmarks, great view through completion. So it's partnering in very smart ways and being able to test together that I think we've seen a lot of great success. And we're also running on their YouTube channel. So another great way to keep our ads in a brand safe environment on Reuters, YouTube instead of all over the place how YouTube can be. So that was a new strategy that we tested together as well. And we also had audio with Alexa and Google Home. So when you ask Google Home what the news is for the day. Our ad would run before that and that was a great way of just getting our brand out there and getting some more awareness of who we are. And the great point of that too is we were able to buy that programmatically. So a lot of these things that necessary. Some publishers wouldn't let us buy programmatically. We were able to run with Reuters programmatically, so that made things a lot more smoother.
- [13:52]
Joseph Najim
Because of mibi's ad tech stack, we have the ability to front the causes via the, the impression delivery and the cost per day for an activation. And then you know, as a publisher behind the scenes, you just have to work through your finance team to how are you going to fund those projects and support the teams. But the LinkedIn wire program, it's a really great success story of how you can combine really great content from a news publisher. And this is all editorial content. So nothing was created bespoke. It was just around the same coverage that our editorial teams would be doing for AI. The message that maybe was trying to deliver and SAS team was trying to deliver, plus the LinkedIn data that was tied to it as well and all those things. And I think this also comes into challenging your partner. It came to a pretty high CPM and cost, but it's the old adage of kind of what you get, what you pay for. And I think the return and what they saw in the engagement and how it compared was really great. And what I also like about being at a publisher for five years, but also having this ad tech background is the way I approach a partner like SAS is hey, we're omnichannel like you think, Omnichannel in infinite places. But you could work with one partner in an omnichannel approach. And this is very much that and some. So it's been really great partnering with maybe and SAS to really test these different things and be innovative. It's fun.
- [15:06]
Ailee Slifring
Now finally to both of you, are you optimistic that news publishers are on the right track to fund journalism at this moment?
- [15:16]
Joseph Najim
There's a lot that's being done in the right way, in the smart way. But it's also important to take stock of all the different revenue streams. So subscriptions is very big. Diversification for news publishers is very big gamification. Right. All these different platforms, whether it be integrating new sports solutions or content that's again related to lifestyle. But not every news publisher is built and runs their business in the same way. So it's important to recognize Even the local hub news publisher who's covering the beat of something that's taking place, they're at risk too. They're at risk of funding. And there's this slippery slope where when it hits them, those impacts might not be felt when I'm living in New York City or in other places, but those local communities, there's impacts there. So I think the onus is on this industry of how we can get back out there. And there are definitely ad tech companies are trying to do that and funnel those dollars there. And you see even the promotion of new technologies with Trade Desk and Advantas Media, which hopefully will drive those revenues to those smaller news publishers. You know, at the same time we're challenged whether it's ads coming from brands, but then even certain algorithm changes that are impacting business lines that had seven figure revenue streams. You're seeing it across the board. So I think the stress is real. I think the stress is real for a lot of people. But it's important that we keep innovating and finding brand partners like SAS to come to the table to speak about how partnering with news is good and you can find opportunity in hitting that audience and driving ROI and driving performance that will only help and hopefully it trickles down to the small guys too.
- [16:53]
Ailee Slifring
What would you tell marketers who say it's not a brand safety issue, but more that their audience just isn't there, that young readers, Gen zers are finding their news on TikTok and only TikTok? What would you say to them? A few months ago McDonald's for instance, said get our audience there and we'll bring back the money, we'll put the money there.
- [17:19]
Joseph Najim
It's a great question and I don't think they're wrong. I do think, however, the communication is not there and the insight that the Gen Z audience and whether it be Gen Z adults or younger Gen Z are getting their information from TikTok is very accurate. We've done that same report. The Reuters Institute, which partners with Oxford, released that same study last year and the new results are going to come out soon to kind of see how those channels are resonating with younger audiences. But. But I asked a simple question, right? Like when the pandemic happened, where did people go? They went to news sites, they went to understand and get facts and information to inform the decisions that they were making, whether it be a mom who's worried about her children and going to school or the professional and the markets and how it's being affected. Now Gen Z Just because they go to TikTok first doesn't mean they stop there. I'm sure they have their trusted sources and I think the challenge is hey brands, you're only giving me 20 minutes to pitch. And it's very transactional right now. When it comes to display ads and video ads, audio ads, whatever it might be, where's the opportunity to be consultative? Give us that platform, let us have that discourse. Because right now the discourse that comes up is we're just like a no news. I don't think that's the case. If you ask any brand like no, we support news. So how do we get them from saying yes we support news but to yes, we support news and the and is that should be filled in by us. How are we going to do something that's a little bit more innovative, more creative to get them back into supporting that platform? But we all have the data to show those audiences are there. Do we have the platform however, to share that insight with them? That's something that needs to be rebuilt a little bit. And I think it's coming there though. And I think the events that happen in Cannes and different studies that came out and rolled out are only going to help. And I really do appreciate that feedback. But sitting as challenger in that room, it's important to challenge. It's very easy to say no to someone who's like your friend but and getting that kind of feedback and going back and forth, that's good. That's where the discourse started.
- [19:14]
Ailee Slifring
Now when it comes to advertising on news, what is the approach when it comes to a B2B company like SaaS versus B2C or even D2C, how is it different?
- [19:27]
Mivi Plouvier
I think we just have to look at what we're trying to advertise and get our awareness out there about. And we're selling a very high end software and for us, that relationship of premiumness with publishers and having that there, we're not chasing cheap clicks because we have a very long sales cycle. So when it comes to B2C that somebody's going to see those shoes and go buy them, it's very different than making a long term decision to purchase a software. So for us we want to have that consistency with the brands and longevity more so than being kind of all over the place searching those cheap clicks or cheap impressions. So we pay a little more just to, to get that consistency, to get that frequency. But also we have to think about sales cycles. And so ours is very long, nine months to a year. So long enough to have a baby. So we really have to have that consistency, right, of being in the same place and having that consistent message.
- [20:22]
Joseph Najim
And that's it for this edition of the Current Podcast. We'll be back next week, so stay tuned.
- [20:28]
Ailee Slifring
The current podcast theme is by Love and Caliber. The current team includes Kat Vessi and Sydney Cairns.
- [20:34]
Joseph Najim
And remember when the pandemic happened, where did people go? They went to news sites. Gen Z. Just because they go to TikTok first doesn't mean they stop there. I'm Damian.
- [20:44]
Ailee Slifring
And I'm Ailee.
- [20:45]
Joseph Najim
And we'll see you next time. And if you like what you hear, please subscribe and leave us a review. Also, tune into our other podcast, the Current Report.