July 9, 2014 Presentation on The Elkhart Truth's Niche Product Flavor574 at Local Media Association's Native Advertising Summit in Washington, DC. Session Title: Niche Opportunities & Native Advertising Native lends itself to the creation of niche products. The Elkhart Truth recently launched Flavor574, a new product designed with a native advertising business plan as a core advertising feature. The product includes desktop, mobile and tablet strategies along with email and social elements to deliver high advertiser ROI and high consumer engagement. In this session publisher Brandon Erlacher will talk about the strategy behind Flavor574 and also how they are pricing, producing and marketing it. Presenter: Brandon Erlacher, publisher, The Elkhart Truth

1. Food Niche & Native
Brandon Erlacher
@bserlacher
Publisher
The Elkhart Truth
Native Advertising Summit
July 9,2014

2. Today
 Flavor574
 Concept & Strategy
 Products
 Metrics
 Packaging
 Next Steps

3. Concept & Strategy
 Niche Content Play: Food
 Geographical boundaries (574)
 Strengths
 Build off of Elkharttruth.com and Radio reach
 SEO play
 Same CMS
 Leverage packaging across brands
Huge differentiation advantage to publishers! Organic SEO and Trust…

4. Content Types
3 Content Types
 Content Marketing (Native or
Sponsored)
 Journalist created
 User-generated (Columnists)
Sections
 Eat
 Drink
 Make
 Guide
 Events
We are able to offer our advertisers/sponsors the opportunity to get in front of a highly
engaged community of ‘foodies.’
The challenge now is educating our advertisers that the value of that engagement
Outweighs smaller readership.

5. Newspaper Food
Content & Flavor
 How does it work?
 All food content originates with Flavor
 Story lives on Flavor

6. Newspaper Food
Content & Flavor II
 How does it work?
 All food content originates with Flavor
 Food critic and blog live on Flavor
 Bylines in newspaper have Flavor
 Elkharttruth.com shares Flavor stories
via social
 SEO
 Larger audience, drive traffic
 Lends credibility
**Rule: We never post the same content on Flavor574.com and Elkharttruth.com
A digital asset only lives in one place. Link to it from other brands…

7. Social and Email
 Twitter
 Pinterest
 Facebook
 Google+
 Daily Newsletters
0 20 40 60
Eat
Drink
Make
Full
Email Open Rates by List
Niche product
engagement is very high:
53% on Facebook!

8. Other Items
 Have a dedicated seller, but also make packages
available to media reps
 User is first stakeholder. Quality content is key. Not
advertorial. Evergreen content. Native is a win/win. Think
Quality Score!
 Staff includes a Project Manager who reports to Creative
Services, a dedicated seller and shared reporting
resources with newsroom for those who are passionate
 Trusted, local, independent contractors (correspondents)
are used to create the native content

9. 0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
900
1000
DESKTOP
MOBILE
TABLET
Flavor Traffic
(by Device and Time of Day)

10. Flavor Traffic
(New vs. Returning by Month)
78.5
67.4
57.2 53.9
21.5
32.6
42.8
46.1
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
March April May June
% New % Returning

11. Traffic Origin
(by Device)
0
2,000
4,000
6,000
8,000
10,000
12,000
14,000
16,000
Direct Organic Referral
Desktop
Mobile
Tablet

12. Products
Cross-Selling
Newspaper
elkharttruth.com
Truth Radio
Events
Content Marketing (Native)
Sponsored Articles
*Video
*Audio
Digital Advertising
Display Email
*Pre-roll
Video
*Deals
Digital
Publication
• Google Play
• App Store
• Amazon

13. Content Examples

14. Digital Publication
 Published June 2014
 Quarterly
 Live Demo

15. Flavor Next steps:
 Native video and audio (cooking shows)
 Rebuild Recipe Engine
 Reverse publication to a subscriber list
 Event Integration
 Extend into new area codes that have traditional media
support (i.e. Flavor260)

16. Elkharttruth.com
Learning from Flavor

17. Discussion