Semafor Woos Advertisers With Promises of Depolarization

The business news publisher Semafor launched Tuesday morning after months of anticipation, debuting in the process a number of original editorial and commercial elements that the startup hopes will help differentiate it in the eyes of both readers and ad buyers. The 60-person team, founded by the former chief executive of Bloomberg Media, Justin Smith, and former New York Times media columnist Ben Smith, will structure its articles using a template called a Semaform, whose design draws clear distinctions between fact, analysis and opinion. Implemented with slight variation across its newsletters, events, videos and website, the proprietary framework seeks to cultivate a news ecosystem whose emphasis on nuance and transparency creates an advertising environment with significantly less polarization, said chief revenue officer Rachel Oppenheim. The publisher plans to generate its first-year revenue through advertising, branded content, events and bespoke ad experiences, such as a text-message interview format sponsored by Verizon. Its overall advertising strategy rests on a key thesis, which argues that corporate brand advertising is moving away from product marketing and toward articulating the purpose, place and expertise of a company, said Oppenheim, who will also talk more about the company at Adweek's Publishing Week tomorrow. “We have been engaged with brands across every single category and are putting a lot of emphasis behind corporate branding, corporate reputation and purpose-building solutions,” she said. “We have a lot of clients who are recalibrating their marketing and communications to meet this moment.” Semafor, in its attempt to remedy a broken digital news ecosystem with a novel format, resembles a number of innovative publishers with a similar mission, including Grid and Axios. But the startup, due in part to the pedigree of its founders, the global scope of its ambitions and its $25 million in financing, will launch into immediate scrutiny, subjecting its unproven hypothesis to rigorous examination. News Publisher Grid Aims to Differentiate Itself Through Its Interconnected Approach The Semaform template Semafor will use a number of visual cues designed to help its audience better understand its reporting, including a distinctive yellow backsplash to connote brand identity and a prominent byline to emphasize the identity of the author. But the Semaform template, with its designated sections—The News, Reporter’s View, Room for Disagreement, The View From, Now What and Notable—aims to be its calling card. Using this structure, authors will be able to communicate the hard facts underpinning a piece of reporting, as well as offer context they find relevant, insights from expert sources and alternative angles that offer new perspectives on the issue. Unlike a traditional article, which blends these components together, Semaforms will compartmentalize them in an effort to make them more apparent. The Semaform template is designed to "crack open the black box of the traditional news article," according to Smith. Through this process, Semafor aims to not only mitigate its own reporting biases, but actively depolarize the act of news consumption itself, said Justin Smith. “Corporate brand marketers who are looking to reach opinion leaders are very interested in non-polarizing environments—let alone environments that are actually trying to depolarize,” Smith said. The pitch has resonated with a number of brands, and sponsors at launch include Hyundai Genesis, Verizon, Qualcomm, Tata, Pfizer and Mastercard, as well as strategic partners Gallup and Twitter. "The world we work, play and live in is changing at an unprecedented speed,” said Mastercard chief marketing officer Raja Rajamannar on partnering with Semafor. “It has never been more important for my team to feed their intellectual curiosity, stay agile and collaborate with partners that challenge us to do the same.” Advertising, branded content and bespoke ad products Semafor will offer clients a number of surfaces for advertisers at launch, with plans to expand into additional channels over time. The publisher will not list inventory on the open programmatic market, according to Oppenheim. After its first year, Semafor will begin rolling out a paywall. The startup will feature advertising on its website and in its eight newsletters, two of which, Flagship and Principals, arrive daily. Semafor also plans to create and serve ads against original video content, led by former Vox Media producer Joe Posner, though its first forays into the medium will serve mostly to see what resonates with the Semafor audience, Smith said. Additionally, the publisher plans to generate 25% of its first-year advertising revenue through its experiential business, which will range from curated roundtables to larger events facilitated by partnerships with the Knight Foundation and YouTube. Already, Semafor has hosted around 10 events, including a controversial conversation with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson. A Blended Portfolio: How Publishers Are Integrating Their In-Person and Virtual Events To create its branded content, the publisher has an in-house team of around a dozen staff, which will let it create custom campaigns for clients, particularly in the realm of thought leadership. It plans to use the Semaform template as a vehicle for marketers to share their perspectives, as well as offer clients the opportunity to weave themselves into a Semaform retroactively if it aligns with their brand identity, according to Oppenheim. In other instances, Semafor plans to work closely with brands to create custom ad experiences that match their objectives. In addition to the Verizon text-message product, Semafor is partnering with Hyundai Genesis to use its Genesis House in New York City as the home for several of its events. “A lot of brands are increasingly trying to be seen as leaders in their industry, and they want to be perceived as honest brokers,” Oppenheim said. “So the Semafor notion of offering a wide range of perspectives––being able to apply that form, from a branded content perspective, is incredibly exciting.”