{"id":620982,"date":"2023-03-23T09:49:20","date_gmt":"2023-03-23T14:49:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sellorbuyhomefast.com\/index.php\/2023\/03\/23\/how-the-guardians-luis-romero-is-selling-the-legacy-u-k-publication-in-the-u-s\/"},"modified":"2023-03-23T09:49:20","modified_gmt":"2023-03-23T14:49:20","slug":"how-the-guardians-luis-romero-is-selling-the-legacy-u-k-publication-in-the-u-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2023\/03\/23\/how-the-guardians-luis-romero-is-selling-the-legacy-u-k-publication-in-the-u-s\/","title":{"rendered":"How The Guardian\u2019s Luis Romero is selling the legacy U.K. publication in the U.S."},"content":{"rendered":"
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March 21, 2023\u00a0\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u00a04 min read<\/span> \u00a0\u2022\u00a0 By Kayleigh Barber<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Subscribe: Apple Podcasts<\/a> \u2022 Stitcher<\/a> \u2022 Spotify<\/a><\/p>\n

As The Guardian\u2019s fiscal year concludes on March 31, Luis Romero, the publication\u2019s svp of advertising in North America, acknowledged that his team has had a \u201clate start\u201d to receiving RFPs and budget planning with advertisers and agencies for the rest of 2023. However, those conversations picked up in the \u201clast couple of weeks,\u201d with several of last year\u2019s major advertisers starting to talk about renewing deals this year.<\/p>\n

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Outside of the macroeconomic pressure on advertisers\u2019 budgets, Romero\u2019s team has been challenged by keyword blocklists. Advertisers\u2019 brand safety concerns outweigh the desire to market to news publishers\u2019 large and lucrative audiences, causing them to all but eliminate news content from their programmatic buys. But for advertisers still willing to place ads on news publishers\u2019 sites, like The Guardian, third-party verification firms are added to the equation, putting the publishers through the brand safety ringer to grade how safe and reliable that content ends up being before advertisers are willing to commit.<\/p>\n

All this ladders up to The Guardian\u2019s CPMs getting lowered by 25% when content is deemed unsafe, according to Romero on the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast. \u201cTypically [about 1% of] our inventory is flagged for unsafe content on any given day, but when there\u2019s a major news event, like the Syrian-Turkish earthquake, it swells up to 10 to 15%. We lose revenue,\u201d he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With the saga of challenges around the programmatic open marketplace persisting \u2014\u00a0though his team is working with other industry players to try and fix these issues \u2014\u00a0focusing on direct-sold advertising and programmatic direct in the meantime is the name of the game. In tandem with this strategy, Romero\u2019s team is pushing more sponsorships around tentpole world events and less on breaking news content in order to try and resolve some of the advertisers\u2019 brand safety concerns, as well as upsell them on larger, more cohesive offerings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Below are highlights from the conversation, which have been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.<\/em><\/p>\n

Setting up camp at tentpole events<\/strong><\/h3>\n

In terms of our direct sales strategy, we\u2019re focusing on world events and we\u2019re trying to sell sponsorships to people that want to align with some of the coverage that we have. One that I\u2019m really excited about \u2014\u00a0and this is so Guardian-esque \u2014\u00a0is the World Championship of Chess. When we talk to companies about this, they can see themselves being aligned with this kind of mental agility, strategic thinking sport, and for some companies, that\u2019s the messaging that they want to be in.<\/p>\n

The Women\u2019s World Cup [is] going to be a big focus of ours, kind of like these signature tentpole things. I mentioned the World Cup because the Guardian [has] been around for 200 years in the U.K., which puts us roughly starting at around 1820 and soccer was founded in the 1860s. So we literally have been covering soccer, in its formal way, since its inception.<\/p>\n

Selling against legacy events for the first time\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The Men\u2019s World Cup was the first time that I\u2019m aware of in the U.S. that we actually went to market with a sponsorship opportunity. We had one exclusive partner for that and that got me excited about the Women\u2019s World Cup. Trying to break into the budgets [of these events is difficult] because they are planned so far ahead of time, but I really felt like we had the legacy and the expertise which gave us a right to go after people who want to be associated with the World Cup.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Looking ahead to the Women\u2019s World Cup, I think there\u2019s an opportunity to capture budgets that are being planned right now. And I think because of the economic situation that we may be in, people are really looking for ways to stand out, even if they have less money to spend. And so something like a tentpole event, like the Women\u2019s World Cup, or the World Championship of Chess, is a way for them to really stand out.<\/p>\n

Beating the brand safety issue<\/strong><\/h3>\n

[Even tentpole sporting events can still have unsafe and undesirable events happening adjacent to them]. We saw that happen firsthand in the men\u2019s World Cup because there was a lot of controversy about where it was being held and how those workers were being treated in Qatar. We certainly covered that, and we were not going to stop covering it, so I think the way we frame it up to our advertisers is that that\u2019s what we\u2019re about. We\u2019re never going to stop covering this and if it\u2019s part of the World Cup \u2014 or in the case of chess, a cheating scandal \u2014\u00a0then that\u2019s going to be part of our coverage. And there\u2019s not one advertiser that hasn\u2019t said, \u201cthat\u2019s OK.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s another reason why we like selling and working with advertisers directly, because there\u2019s an opportunity to have a conversation about brand safety and there\u2019s an understanding that happens. So it\u2019s not just a click of the box \u2014\u00a0there\u2019s a really true understanding of what\u2019s happening contextually in the environment.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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