The Media Minute 03.10.2020

The age of the Internet re-wrote all the old rules, making it necessary for publishers to adapt quickly. Ever since then, publishers have had to get used to new trends arriving every couple of years – from e-books to social media to video to audio – and pivoting to stay afloat.

As publishers grow more sophisticated with their reader revenue strategies, one trend in its early stages is the introduction of group calls and meetups as a benefit for subscribers or members. Here, we look at how three publishers have found value in subscriber and member-only calls and meetings, not just for their audience, but as a vehicle for sourcing new stories and connecting with potential new readers.

Hearst has recently taken incremental steps towards digital reader revenue. But Hearst Magazines’ first membership product, Runner’s World+, will act as a blueprint for Hearst’s other enthusiast publications moving into reader revenue.

President Trump’s re-election campaign this week filed its second libel lawsuit within a six-day period against a newspaper, taking a more aggressive stance against the news media the president once described as an “enemy of the people.

With more and more companies asking employees to work remote amid the coronavirus outbreak, we compiled some tips to help keep business running as usual from home.

  • None of the video advertisers who were notified about Facebook’s proposed $40 million class-action settlement over inflated video metrics have objected to the deal, class counsel says in papers filed Friday.
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The Media Minute 03.03.2020

Clearly, publishers are struggling to survive in today’s complex ecosystem, and given the dramatic and consistent changes, it’s understandable. Here are four strategies that can help publishers thrive and drive revenue in the face of this adversity

The Post and Courier of Charleston, South Carolina grew its digital subscriptions by 250% (from 1,700 to 6,000) between 2017 to 2019, reports Digiday. It did so after shifting focus from pageviews to measuring time spent and engaged minutes.

The podcast industry continues to attract a lot of money and attention. For some podcast publishers, local audiences are limited, leading them to look overseas for audience and revenue growth.

The Boston Globe and technology platform Newlab have teamed up to support the development of new data-driven AI-based tools through the Newlab Venture Studio.

St. Louis Magazine , circulation 40,000, hosted a Food Fight voting bracket featuring iconic foods from the city of St. Louis. The people of St. Louis — like those of other cities — have some passionate debates about the region’s most iconic foods. We expected a bracket of this type would drive tons of engagement from our readers.

As our news industry grows and expands beyond paper, we want to profile not just newspapers, but all news publishers that are doing exciting things at their companies. We heard back from 70 news outlets around the world, and we’re proud to introduce the 10 “super” news publishers (along with our honorable mentions) that made the list this year.

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The Media Minute 02.25.2020

Without an effective tracking plan in place, marketers are left in the dark about whether their efforts swam or sank. We’ll dive into five campaign objectives to start with before launching your next programmatic advertising campaign.

The report covers the latest trends in eCommerce, travel, media publications, finance, social media and more. It examines incoming desktop and mobile web traffic, alongside Android app usage for the top websites and brands around the world, between January 2017 and December 2019.

The Information and Bloomberg Media are the next set of publishers to test out a digital subscription bundling model.The two publishers have come together to offer a $499 one-year subscription to both Bloomberg.com and TheInformation.com, which will allow readers to access all paywalled content…

Digital media platforms like Facebook and Google’s YouTube have been criticized for creating addictive technologies that keep audiences engaged by highlighting content that stirs emotions like shock and outrage.

“Experiential” is a trendy word for events right now — but what it really means is making your event so compelling, helpful, interactive, and fun that attendees and sponsors sign up and keep coming back!

Total Market Coverage (TMC) products are regarded by many as a mixed blessing. Virtually all our properties have at one time or another had a TMC. Due to declines in preprints and increasing expense, a few have shut them down.

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The Media Minute 02.18.2020

Barstool Sports launched as a print publication in 2003. Since then, they’ve become a multi-million dollar diversified sports and pop culture media company. Barstool recently sold to one of their advertisers, Penn National Gaming (owner of the Tropicana), for $450 million.

The report reveals that across the 5,000 titles that are available on Readly in over 50 markets, digital issues were read 83 million times throughout 2019.

With Flipboard’s newest venture, called Flipboard TV, the mobile reading app company will pay publishers — and aims to charge its 145 million monthly active users — for access to curated video content.

Publishers could get a bonus from Google. The Alphabet company reportedly is in talks with publishers to pay a licensing fee for news content.
The move would follow Facebook’s decision last year to pay news organizations to license their headlines and article summaries in its news tab.

No matter how much your core brand’s magazine, website, or event is thriving, building in back up revenue streams and maxing your brand’s recurring revenue is your safety net when things get rough.

The America East News Summit is set to return March 30 to April 1 in Hershey, Pa. at the Hershey Lodge and Convention Center. Administered by the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association (PNA), more than 150 people are expected to attend.

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The Media Minute 02.11.2020

Consumers expect to get whatever they want, whenever they want it, delivered how they want it. You can credit (or blame) Amazon for setting expectations so high, but those same expectations extend to online publishing.

Branded content helps audiences connect with brands on an emotional level and is most commonly used to build brand awareness and increase brand loyalty.

In the past couple years, Twitter has worked to position its platform as a destination for livestreaming video. But some news publishers tell Digiday that Amplify’s brand safety rules make it difficult for them to monetize their breaking news videos there, forcing them to forgo revenue they can earn monetizing videos on the same topics elsewhere.

Consumer spending on media grew 4.3% in 2019, which is slightly slower than the 4.9% that advertising and marketing spending on media grew last year, according to estimates released this morning from media industry economists PQ Media.

Is your content just something you send out and call it good? Or are you strategically posting, reformatting, and sharing to drive website traffic, attract new audience, and drive conversions?

For news organizations, selling advertising has become a notoriously complicated endeavor as media companies, tech businesses, and platforms compete for a share of the revenue.

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The Media Minute 02.04.2020

If you haven’t been following recent news, there’s a new marketing push in big media to unite audience data from different digital properties and sell advertising against the unified audience through proprietary ad-targeting platforms.

When we first covered TikTok and its half a billion users, it was to some collective brow-raising. Many felt the app was interesting, but hardly a serious contender in a mature market with well-established rivals.

Publishers’ efforts to comply with the California Consumer Privacy Act have diverged as they parse one of its biggest ambiguities: whether selling targeted ads qualifies as selling California residents’ personal information.

Google’s researchers “evaluated ” a representative sample 273 Super Bowl ads shown from 2015-2019. It says in those ads, men were two times more likely than women to be portrayed as leaders, and guys were more than 2.5 times more likely to have speaking parts than women.

That “fresh start” feeling in the new year means it’s a great time to evaluate your audience data collection efforts — and make sure what you collect actually drives revenue and company growth!

Even today, much of the original reporting on the Trump administration originates at either the Times or the Post, thanks to reporters hard at work competing for scoops (and proudly seeking glory for their accomplishments on Twitter).

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The Media Minute 01.28.2020

Data protection laws and privacy-minded browser updates are forcing publishers to rethink their digital business strategies and communication with users.

Republicans trust Fox News far more than any other news outlet, and Democrats, similarly, place their trust in CNN. These, according to the report, are “the two cable channels that most clearly represent the polarized media universe.”

Minute Media expects its newest acquisition will help it fuel a profitable year and achieve revenue exceeding $100 million…

The Washington Post is the media equivalent of Amazon’s chain of physical bookstores: it pretends it’s a cleaned-up version of a beloved old thing, but in fact that beloved old thing is now propelled by a new engine.

Serious marketers use multi-channel or omni-channel marketing because it works. The Association of Magazine Media tells us you can see as much as a 14% lift in ad effectiveness comes when you combine media in marketing.

In 2019, we saw Gannett and GateHouse Media merge to become the largest newspaper chain in the U.S. We saw more news organizations take a stronger stance against the spread of misinformation and lies.

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The Media Minute 01.21.2020

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that 2020 will see more magazine closures and more experiments with reader paywalls. Here are eight, or maybe nine, not quite so obvious publishing predictions that will help you prepare for the year ahead:

Back in September, I logged onto Twitter one day and saw that the actor Shia LaBeouf was trending. At the time I had only a passing familiarity with the actor; I’d seen him in a few movies, but none of his performances had stood out to me.

Assembly Bill 5 has been in effect only for a few weeks in California, but any hopes that media managers had that they could sidestep its effects have already been dashed.

The Media Rating Council announced it has revoked accreditation for measurement services from Extreme Reach, Hulu and Protected Media, and denied accreditation for a service from DoubleVerify.

Audience and community marketing are more critical than ever for success (and revenue). Melissa Chowning has one of the best plans we’ve seen to get your audience development in the fast lane — check it out.

Arkansas-based Crittenden Publishing Co., Inc., and Tennessee-based Germantown Publishing Co., Inc., have sold their newspapers and related publications to Paxton Media Group, effective Dec. 31, 2019.

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The Media Minute 01.14.2020

We’ve heard all the buzzwords: predictive analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning. But have you done everything you can to wrangle data and find the insights that reliably drive revenue?

Podcasts and AI to play a greater role in news organisations’ strategies, and three-quarters of publishers are confident about their company’s prospects in 2020.

Plus: YouTube would radicalize even without its algorithm, Reddit bans fakes both deep and cheap, and Facebook will let you dial down political ads.

Digital agency veterans Kenny Tomlin (founding CEO of Rockfish) and Dan Khabie (founding CEO of Mirum) are teaming up to launch CourtAvenue, a digital consultancy and product development company.

It’s week two of 2020! And time for Part Two of 20 Ideas for 2020 Niche Revenue! (Did you catch Part One last week with Ad Sales and Event Revenue ideas?)

As part of the 2020 International Newspaper Group (ING) Leadership Networking Summit, ING and E&P have agreed to collaborate on the first annual ING/E&P Operations All Star Excellence Awards, kicking off a powerful partnership. The Summit is scheduled for Sept. 18 to 20 in Chicago.

 

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The Media Minute 01.07.2020

There are big changes looming on the horizon for 2020. They’re predicted on every front. To better adapt to change quickly, we’ll need data.

Organizations as wide-ranging as Amazon, Salesforce, Burger King and Caterpillar have all invested in recurring revenue models as a means of driving predictable revenue, but also of building direct relationships with their customers.

Welcome to Hot Pod, a newsletter about podcasts. This is issue 239, dated December 17, 2019. Hello everyone. Welcome to the last Hot Pod of 2019. We made it to the end of the year! Frankly, I’m a little surprised.

National TV advertising for linear TV networks continues to slip in the wake of growing media competition — especially in prime time — dropping 5% for the 2018-2019 TV season from the previous year.

Happy New Year, Niche peeps! Let’s talk resolutions – reasonable, revenue-generating, growth-driving resolutions. No “lose 20 pounds by February 1st” madness here.

Turn on the television. Pick up a magazine. Scroll through your Twitter feed. Chances are, you’re being inundated with hundreds of marketing campaigns. But news publishers are only producing a fraction of those, and as an industry, we need to do better.

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