The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity has wrapped up for 2023, with the event having brought together those that work in creative communications and advertising from every corner of the planet.
Mediaweek has been on location in the South of France, and spoke to some of the most influential people in both Australian and global media. Today is Paul Blackburn, director commercial data, video and product for News Corp Australia.
News Corp in Cannes
It’s been an important business trip for the News Corp team, and at a particularly crucial time. Blackburn describes the current retail media landscape as “an arms race,” with News Corp Australia making its presence felt amongst it all.
“It’s important to be here, because we think have a really good play in this space. We’ve been able to convert all of our engagement and our content into commerce outcomes without having to click off to another page.
“Everyone who’s everyone is here from across the world to share ideas. It’s very validating to see that we are innovating ahead of the curve in Australia.”
Australia is a big player on the world stage, but there’s no denying that it’s a big trip for those Down Under. For Blackburn, the fact that it’s a long trip is just another reason why flying to France is worth it.
“Being able to make those connections, meet other people, find other ways to iterate our product with different ad tech vendors – you just can’t get that kind of traction from Australia. So many of these big companies are based in America or overseas, and video chat is just not the same as sitting down one on one, really hearing and listening to each other.”
Australia’s presence on the world stage has also been front and centre at Cannes, with Blackburn saying that “it’s been really good to see that we are on top of things” when compared to the rest of the world.
“What I’ve also found really interesting is just the scale of our business in Australia. I’ve been speaking to a lot of other publishers over here – we spoke to a Spanish publisher, we spoke to an Indian publisher, and they all have the same challenges that we do. But they don’t have the same scale of brands and as strong a network as we do.
“On the Ipsos numbers, in terms of scale there’s Google, there’s Meta, there’s Microsoft, and then there’s us. That is so important and valuable, that audience is everything.”
When asked what his biggest takeaway from the festival has been, Blackburn says that it has been validation – “we’re on the right track.”
“Everyone is trying to solve shoppable media, all the ad tech vendors are not quite there yet. We came over with our commerce supplier, Vudoo, and they are really innovating ahead of the market.
“We know we’re on the right track, everyone we’ve spoken to over here is saying ‘wow, you’ve got something’. It’s not often I suppose that News Corp Australia innovates technology in the ad tech space, and when you’re on the pointy end, we know sometimes the take-up isn’t as fast as you’d like. It doesn’t become a multi-million dollar play overnight, so it’s hard to see if it’s going to pay off. I think we’re on the verge of something really special, and now is the time to strike.”
News Corp D_Coded
In March, News Corp Australia held its annual D_Coded event, lifting the lid on some of the biggest innovations the company has been working on in the 12 months prior.
“We made some really bold announcements, we bought our product and capability a long way,” Blackburn says of the 2023 event. “We were focusing on finding consumers that are in the market to buy now, to see the content they’re consuming, as well as segment them and activate against them. “
With other players in the market now turning their attention to topics that News Corp Australia has already covered, Blackburn returns to his point about being assured that they’re on the right track.
“Walmart has their Walmart Connect data platform. They were talking about how they have 150 million individual shoppers each week and the power of understanding SKU-level purchase data – which is what we were talking about at D_Coded.
“With such a big business like Walmart saying the same things as us and building a Walmart Connect data platform that is very similar to ours, I felt like we were ahead of where they’re at, which was really exciting.”
With so much focus on finding high-intent audiences, shoppable video to activate against those audiences, and News Corp’s content proposition, Blackburn says that the work unveiled at this year’s D_Coded will work together to make life easier for marketers.
“There’s Amazon, Cartology, Coles 360, all these amazing retail media networks are very closed loop – that’s going to create some fragmentation for marketers, because you’re going to have to work with each of them individually. For me, content commerce – which is the space that we’re operating in – is the way to avoid that fragmentation for marketers, so we can open the loops.
“Our native proposition, vertical video, and shoppable video as the as the way to engage with audiences even in those retail media networks, that is where I think we’re leading the way.”
Looking Ahead
When asked what the future holds for the News Corp team, Blackburn says that people can expect “a lot more video.”
“We’ve shown a lot of other digital publishers our vertical video player and how we’re leaning into the video itself being a first class asset – meaning that instead of writing a long-form story on the web and then putting a video in, the video is the story. It’s full-screen mobile, and so much more engaging. That’s where we’ll be focusing.”
As well as video, Blackburn and the News Corp team will also be making the most of the data insights they collect.
“The fact that we’re on the open web means that we have something special with our data products from an insights perspective, as well as a data and measurement perspective.
“If you look at TikTok and Instagram reels, they’re in-and-out experiences, and measurement is made very difficult because of the way that Apple has approached privacy. Therefore, the same sort of measurement and tracking of outcomes are no longer possible on iOS. So we’re in quite a good spot because we’ve gone with an open web opportunity for our vertical video, and I think it’s going to absolutely take off.”
–
Top Image: Paul Blackburn in Cannes