These campaigns can be seen as an effort by publishers to raise their consumer awareness and perception at a critical juncture in their negotiations with AI firms, according to Upwave chief executive officer Chris Kelly. The volume, quality, and awareness of a brand could help inform the market rate for its data.
One of publishers’ main arguments in these discussions, that an answer engine without their data would be inferior to one with it, hinges on consumer demand for that brand. By making, say, Reuters a more top-of-mind source of news, an answer engine without Reuters content would be less enticing to a user.
Increasing favorability at a critical moment
AI is not the only external force roiling the news media industry.
In recent months, President Trump has levied broadsides at a broad swath of publishers, taking legal action against The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, ABC News, and NBC News.
These assaults come at a particularly vulnerable moment for the news industry, as trust in the media continues to plummet and the industry as a whole struggles to find commercial sustainability.
Many of these brand campaigns, particularly the ones from NBC News and Reuters, are meant specifically to engender trust in audiences. More broadly, they all aim to raise audience affinity for the brands, according to Kelly.
In any contest between the president and the media, the court of public perception is a critical battleground. A successful effort to win over audiences could prove to be valuable insurance in future disputes.
Investing in subscriber acquisition
On a more prosaic level, every publisher that launched one of these brand campaigns has a consumer subscription business.
Some of these offerings differ from one another in meaningful ways. The Guardian, for instance, solicits donations but does not paywall its content. Reuters only launched its digital subscription product last October, and NBC News is expected to launch its consumer subscription offering this quarter.
Taken together, all of these publishers have a means of turning consumer support directly into recurring revenue, which means that top-of-funnel efforts are ultimately key to their bottom line.
All good marketers know that investing in brand equity is integral to, and upstream of, paid acquisition efforts. David Carey, senior vice president of public affairs and communications at Hearst, referred to the company’s brand marketing efforts as “preparing the ground” for its subscription business.
These kinds of efforts can seem like expensive luxuries, as the return on investment is harder to track. But time and again they are proven to be essential, according to Kelly, the Upwave CEO.
“These companies all have ad sales teams that offer brand lift measurement services to their advertisers, so they should have the mental frameworks and vendors lined up to track whatever upper-funnel KPIs they have set,” Kelly said. “Ultimately, if a consumer has a chance to read a version of the same story from four different outlets, that is the news media version of the shelf that a consumer is grabbing a product from.”
The intangible made tangible
The benefits of brand marketing campaigns are often difficult to point to specifically, which is why they are rarer than performance campaigns.
But in some instances, the value of that brand equity makes itself very apparent. Consider the recent story of Hearst Corp. acquiring The Dallas Morning News, which I have covered in depth.