Redefining Engagement – Stickiness, Surprises & Sudoku with Thomas Schultz-Homberg
Thomas Schultz-Homberg, CEO of Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger Medien, discusses the evolution of engagement measurement, highlighting that one of the biggest hurdles in engagement is not fully understanding your audience. Learn why engagement is so high on the CEO’s list of priorities and be prepared for some surprises in this episode of our Redefining Engagement series.
If you are too busy or not a big fan of watching recordings, here is a slightly edited transcript that you can browse through at your convenience:
Francesca
Hello, Thomas. Thank you so much for agreeing to chat about engagement with me today. As you know, at Contribly, we’re focusing massively on engagement, but we’re also exploring what engagement means for different people within the media in different roles. And we’re trying to find a way of creating a common definition of engagement that’s going to help move our industry forward.
First of all, thank you so much for giving me your time today. Would you mind starting by telling me your name, your role and tell me a little bit about yourself?
Thomas
I am the CEO of a German regional news outlet called KSTA Media, which is a 400 year old publishing house. So a lot of legacy through hundreds of years. And my responsibility is to take care of three newspapers, seven radio stations and 20 free advertising newspapers which we publish weekly. Those are my main responsibilities.
The challenge is to transform a 400 year old media house into an agile modern digital organization which is something I love to do, but it is in fact a challenge as you can imagine.
I started my career as a journalist and stepped somehow into a tech driven management career. I don’t know how it happened, but it happened somehow. Since then, I’m busy establishing digital news business models and trying to transform this industry and helping companies who are struggling with that. This is my current role here and it has been my role for some decades, and this will be my role until the end of my career, whenever that might be.
Francesca
Digital transformation is such a massive challenge. I guess one small piece of that is audience engagement, especially when it’s digital, it’s completely different to what that might look like in print. What would you say audience engagement means to you?
Thomas
It is a very complicated thing to cover because there are so many KPIs, so many aspects that you could take into account. And everybody has their own definition of what engagement is.
For example, marketers value AI (not Artificial Intelligence), they value ad impressions very highly.
A journalist values the stickiness to the article, so the in -depth reading, how long people read the article, whether they read it through or not.
If you look at a social media manager, as another example, they will have a totally different view. They are more interested in how many impressions they achieved on Facebook, TikTok, or Instagram etc.
So there is no single ‘North Star’ in engagement for me. From a CEO perspective, the overall most relevant definition of engagement is stickiness. To me, it is important how intensively people engage with our platforms. That must not necessarily be only the platforms we own and operate. That can also be our attendance on Instagram, on TikTok or elsewhere. It’s very important to see how often people come back. And if people come back, whether they use us on a regular basis because that’s a foundation of every revenue growth we might ever achieve.
Francesca
That stickiness is something that has come up again and again in these different interviews and yes, it is very hard to measure.
How would you say based on this definition that you’ve just given me, how do you think it has changed? Has your definition evolved in the past few years at all?
Thomas
It used to be more about the uniques you had on your platforms and the visits. Today, we have a closer look at information that we did not have two or three years ago.
For example, how much people read. Not how much they click on an article, how deeply they read, because it affects the ad ‘grids’. We have more high paid ads now within the text. That means, if somebody just glances at the headline and the first five to six article lines, you will not see that higher paid ad that comes after the first or second part of the article, and is embedded in between the parts of the text. So for us, this is a very important KPI that has developed over the last two or three years. Marketers tend to pay more for embedded display ads than they did in the past. Those forms of ads were not as available as they are today.
That’s one example. The other one is that we have a closer look at what people read because the development in advertising over time is that certain ecosystems of advertising are much higher paid than others. So for example, if you only have people or if people on your platform only read articles that trigger, say pet food advertising, which is paid very poorly. This is fine, but not very interesting in terms of revenue growth. If you manage to engage people with articles that are more likely to trigger high paid ads, for example, the car industry, then it makes much more sense to try to point or direct people to those articles and not to the others. So the action fields where people advertise has an impact on our measurement of engagement or on the importance of certain engagement KPIs.
Francesca
So your definition is massively following the advertising’s definition of what they’re trying to achieve. You’re really linking those two. Well, I guess that kind of answers my next question, which was around the aims of audience engagement.
Is it, in your opinion, that advertising, stickiness for advertising, or what are the other aims? And why should brands be doing more engagement? What’s the point?
Thomas
At the moment in terms of revenue, which is from a CEO’s point of view, of course the most important thing, for the time being (or let’s say for the time that we can foresee from here), is more on advertising than on subscription sales. The reason is that to regional publishers, as far as I can survey though, that maybe for the German market (and for the German speaking market, and ‘little Europe’), digital subscriptions have so far been a disappointment for regional publishers, because they have not grown in the way we wanted them to or we expected them to grow.
Advertising still lives and advertising has had a second life, after the hype of subscriptions.
Now people rely once more on ads because ads are more stable than it was thought. Ads still have growth potential, even if we have over-exposure all over the web due to ads. We see an interesting movement from advertisers back to news platforms because on news platforms, they find certain audiences that they might not find on massive scale platforms where they can advertise cheaply, of course, where they have a lot of scale effects, but where they don’t have those revenue effects that they need. So people might look at the ads, even people might click on the ads. But the thing for a manufacturer, for example, is do those people buy my products or not?
So in some aspects, it might be more interesting for advertisers to put their ads on smaller platforms that might not bring such a high scale of displaying the ads, but more on the CPO or CPL page so that they bring leads and orders. That’s an interesting trend we see coming back and we hear that from the advertising agencies.
Francesca
So you’re saying that advertisers are eventually seeing a higher return on investment by going towards publishers. Measuring that is so important so it can not only be done accurately, but also to gather the correct data from readers to be able to prove that return on investment. How are you defining success around that, that measurement and that data collection?
Thomas
So our definition of success is that the more precisely we can target audiences, the more successful we are. The precision of targeting audiences, of building dynamic digital personas, when they are registered, or logged in, or perhaps anonymous. This is our challenge, and this is where we measure success.
If we mix a certain portion of audience, which we think is the right target towards an advertising campaign, for example, and that totally fails, then we are unsuccessful, of course. And that shows us that our data collection and our data interpretation and our persona building is not accurate. And we measure success in those terms.
The same for subscription selling. If we have, for example, a dynamic paywall, which we display to people in different ways whenever the paywall, AI driven, gets the awareness that this person might be able or might be eager to pay, then we show that. And if that does not work, then the targeting wasn’t good enough. So this is where we measure success.
Whether we are able to target and define precisely what kind of personas we have on our platform.
Francesca
Am I correct in saying that engagement is pretty crucial to that as well? Because it helps collect that data?
Thomas
Yes. And whether you are anonymously on our platform or registered, the more you do, the more we learn about you. So, of course, this is where engagement is a very important aspect.
Francesca
If you had to measure it, give it an importance measurement from 1 to 10, 1 being not so important, not as crucial to 10 being, well, this is actually up there. Where would you put engagement on that?
Thomas
In terms of success measuring, I would say it’s rather innate, so very high, because without engagement, as I said before, there is no precise data collection. The precision of the targeting consists of two things.
One is the mass of data you collect, so as much as you can. And this is the engagement part, where without engagement, I won’t gather much data.
And the second thing is the targeting out of that data. So the precision of the machines, of the algorithms you use for that. And this also has to do with engagement, because if you fail on a campaign targeting, for example, then you learn a lot about it. And if similar personas, similar people, all the same people even come back to the platform and do more engagement on the platform, we learn more how to target them better, right? And maybe be more successful in the next attempt to make a good targeted advertising campaign.
I think that’s the reason why it deserves at least an 8.
Francesca
I love how you said even failing is a positive learning experience in a way, in terms of engagement. What would you say the biggest hurdles are in your experience around engagement? What’s stopping brands from engaging better?
Thomas
In my opinion, there are two points. One is that we don’t know our audiences well enough yet.
So we still struggle to understand what is driving people to use a news platform.
Might it be the owned and operated one, or an appearance on social media or an appearance on a gathering platforms like Google News or Microsoft News aggregator? We do not exactly understand why people use news and why people click on publisher branded news and not on other news. So that’s one thing.
And the other thing has to do with the first as well, but it’s a separate action field.
We don’t talk to our readers enough. We have them on our platform, but we don’t invite them as much as other vendors do. We don’t ask them how they feel, if they want to give us feedback on how we performed today. If the article they have read was relevant. If they like the way we display pictures, if they like our photo style, for example, if they like our design.
If you go to an e -commerce platform, a vendor platform, you are often asked, how was your experience? How can we do better? All of that stuff.
Search for a publisher who does that. From time to time, you will see it, but it would be the exception. And I think this is a mistake, we should do more in that field.
Francesca
We’re not very good at it. That’s definitely what we’re trying to achieve on our side, that’s for sure. We’re so used to, in our industry broadcasting out and we’re not so used to pulling more in, I can’t agree with you more. And what about in terms of strategies? From your experience, what has proven the most effective in engaging audiences?
Thomas
What has proven most successful, which has only come up a few years ago, is the personalisation of content. Surfacing topics of interest to the individual. That has paid off most in the past couple years.
I think this is the most successful and the most measurable increase we’ve seen in the last few years. We started curating our websites as 80 % via AI and 20 % editors picks, and the click -through rates on the offer teasers to the individual on the AI part of the platform increased between 50% up to over 80%.
People click 80 % more on teasers they are offered via AI than on the teasers in that are ‘one size fits all’ from the editorial staff. This is not blaming editors. This is just a measurement. Editors do not know who is clicking on the website from one moment to the next. They can’t do an individual program for every person. A man or woman can never achieve this. However, a machine can, because a machine is faster, more effective, and more deeply in analysis than a human ever can be. It has more power in its processors. A processor is much more powerful than a human brain ever can be. That’s the biggest improvement in engagement recently.
Francesca
That is a crazy number.
I can imagine the first time that came out, the editors were sitting in the corner saying ‘I thought I was doing a really good job’, but obviously, you can’t do it for everybody.
And I guess it’s full circle. You have to collect the correct data to be able to feed it to the AI for the AI to then feed the right things to the right people. And in your opinion, at what point in this cycle that we’re creating, especially when it comes to AI, are we considering audience engagement? Within the editorial experience for editors, at what point should engagement be considered?
Thomas
All the time. There is no certain point I think. If you don’t care about engagement, you don’t care about your audience growth, therefore you don’t care about your audience at all.
Somebody who is buying something, for example, let’s take a digital subscriber, who is not using the platform because he or she is not cared for by a publisher – that is engagement. That is where you drive engagement or you don’t.
So for example, asking how we are doing today and how we can do better. I think there is no certain point at which that happens – engagement has to be on the table all the time.
That’s the reason why we have a rather big audience development team in our digital competence centre because we think that engagement is key to building up communities.
Communities are easier to grow, than to keep running, which is the important part. And this is something that is always based on engagement work. Without engagement work, you won’t keep a community alive.
A special interest community on certain topics can be a big environment for advertising as well, for example, you can target the individuals as precisely as possible for the advertisers. I think there is no certain point where engagement should start, engagement should never have to start, it should always be inside from the beginning.
Francesca
I agree so much. It is really interesting that you have such a big audience development team because it’s crucial. Do you have any examples of audience engagement that has surprised you the most? Something that has happened that you just really weren’t expecting when it came to your audience?
Thomas
We started an initiative that we call KSTA Green.
Which is everything we do in terms of environment, climate change, social caring in your community or neighborhood etc.
We created at first, which we started as a one-off, a newsletter which was the fastest growing newsletter we ever had. This was a big surprise for us, and it held and still holds, the highest open rates we have in all our newsletters.
We have some 10 or 20 newsletters on the track, but this one has the highest opening rates.
I never would have thought that such a special interest topic like Green would have so many, and such engaged readers.
We combined this with offline events, bringing people to live discussions and we had crowds of audiences we never would have expected. This was a big surprise and showed us that you can, if you get the right topic and if you set the right tone (it’s important to set the right tone). If you manage to do that, which is something that still has to be done by your journalists (as this is not something AI can do for you), if you set the right tone, then you can, even in a special interest field, get a lot of engagement.
It does not have to be a mass field of interest to be successful. It can be a smaller niche as well. Which is one thing.
And the other thing, which is not something I should say as a journalist, but to be honest, one of the most important and successful engagement aspects in our publishing is Sudoku.
This is a fact.
Ask the guys from other publishers, especially in the Anglo -Saxon speaking room, you will have a lot of agreement!
The fact is that it is so engaging. We became aware of it when we had a technical fault in our e -paper and other platforms where Sudoku and Wordle and other games were displayed.
The games were not playable so you could not input the numbers.
We had a ‘shit-storm’ in our customer service that we’d never experienced before. So we learned, surprisingly, that something that seems so “lightweight”, a game like Sudoku, is not a ‘flat’ game, it’s an intelligent game. People have to think and engage themselves to solve those games.
We were very surprised how important this is to people. This is the reason I’m advocating for more discussion with your readers, asking them what they really do on your platforms and want to do on your platforms and what is important for them.
Maybe something that you think is very important from your position as a publisher or a broadcaster, is totally useless for your readers. Whereas other things that you might think, for example, are a ‘lightweight’ game, could be super important for your readers. And you only will become aware of this if you, like us, fail and learn it then.
Francesca
I love that example. It’s actually making me think of my own experience – I used to be a teacher! So there’s a little bit of that teacher in me that hears these engagement pieces. Sudoku is a challenge.
What things do readers want? Habit building, where they know it happens every day at a certain time. They get excited about it. I think there is a technology side to the engagement. You need tools, you need AI, you need data. When you’re looking at how you’re engaging with your readers, how are you doing that at the moment?
What is the basic tech that you need in your teams to be able to achieve what you’re trying to achieve?
Thomas
So first of all, it’s the simple measurement of course, measuring how often people come, how long they stay, and all that stuff.
We do that via standard products like Adobe Analytics. So this is the base, the grassroot base of measuring engagement on the very first level.
On the second, third and more, we have self -developed tools which we use to measure certain specific KPIs that a standard platform like Adobe Analytics does not.
If you want integration, that’s a higher price. So you may rather do it in-house, which is cheaper.
And you have more control over it as well, which is an aspect that is important as well.
And we use some market survey technologies, where we can find out which topics are high-rated in the general interest in the market, in the German market, in our regional market, and even international markets.
That’s what we are doing for news, of course. That’s what we are doing for e -commerce, for example, as well. You can see if something is very hot-traded at the moment. And then you try to build up a very fast affiliate article where you have some affiliate links in, or you do a product introduction site, with a lot of products that are around this sales trend in e-commerce.
And so, if you’re fast enough, you still get a part of the wave and increase in your e -commerce revenues. So that’s what we are doing as well.
Survey tools, basic analytics, and specialist analytics done in-house and market surveys – these are the main technologies we use to drive engagement.
Francesca
In terms of technology, where do you see the future of audience engagement heading in the next five to 10 years, for example, for our industry? Big question.
Thomas
I don’t dare to look at 10 years, up to 5 maybe.
I think it will become more important to find out and to measure people’s journey throughout platforms.
To become aware that people have a journey from platform to platform, and come across your offerings on many channels (whether that may be TikTok, Instagram, your own platform for example).
It’s important to find out whether you have met the same person.
Whether you engaged a persona on Instagram, for example, and engaged a persona on KStA.DE. and know that this is the same individual. Today we are not able to detect whether these people are the same.
I think this is something which will become more important within the next five years because it makes you able to cross -sell ads, for example.
When I know this, I can target an advertising campaign over multi -channel.
On the other hand, if you find out more about these behaviours, you can also find out how to get people stuck to your own and operated platforms, which of course, for us is the most preferred kind of usage of our offerings.
I think if we could more precisely detect those journeys, then we will get the chance to engage people more on our platforms.
I think this is where it will lead to. Multi -channel detection of user journeys and the engagement in the coming years.
Francesca
And just to finish off…let’s say another brand is going into their engagement journey. Do you have any advice? What’s your go -to piece of advice when it comes to engagement? If someone was to start today, what should the first thing be that they should focus on?
Thomas
They should do what we don’t do well – get into a dialogue with their users from the first moment. Put that deep into your DNA, which you can when you start. When you have 400 years on your back, it is not that easy to implement. You should do that from the first moment. Just be engaged with your users as they are engaged with you.
Then you learn a lot. The second thing is try not to focus on only one platform because the social demographic KPIs and measures of people today are so differentiated that you won’t find enough people on only one channel. That’s what I’m convinced of. I don’t have a chance to get very young people to my old -fashioned news platform, but I have a good chance to meet them or let them meet and greet with my brand on, let’s say, TikTok. And I think what we are doing now is a catch-up game as publishers. So we are trying to get into platforms where we should have been years before and we didn’t recognize it. So my advice is, engage with the users from the first moment on and use as many platforms as you can to find out where your best audience is for whatever purpose you have. You will find that using trial and error. You won’t find out if you just make up your mind and think, okay, that might be the best platform for us. Maybe it’s the worst.
Francesca
Great piece of advice. Thank you so much. I really appreciate the time. Some amazing nuggets of information there, Thank you so much!