Month: August 2018

The Media Minute 08.28.2018

The person talking about the tremors in the WordPress world—thanks to Gutenberg—is none other than Edwin Toonen, an Editor at Yoast.

In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve entered an era of on-demand media consumption. And due to its mobility and being a natural accompaniment for multitasking, audio has emerged as a favorite among the on-demand public.

One finding: “Need-to-know material converts (related to how to live your life, understand the world), while nice-to-know (guides, arts, reviews) converts badly but is key for retention.”

It’s not especially groundbreaking to report that teens are largely abandoning books and magazines in favor of smartphones. What is notable about the American Psychological Association’s new report on adolescent media use in the U.S.—one of the most comprehensive studies of its kind to date—is the accelerating rate at which its findings indicate screen time is displacing legacy media consumption.

Continuing its charm offensive with news publishers, Facebook has been testing a tool with five publishers including BuzzFeed to help them improve their reach on the platform.

Engagement time is defined as the total time a page is open and a user is deemed to be active, and it’s what forward-looking publishers are starting to focus on instead of looking at more ‘traditional’ viewing metrics.

The Media Minute 08.21.2018

Engagement time is defined as the total time a page is open and a user is deemed to be active, and it’s what forward-looking publishers are starting to focus on instead of looking at more ‘traditional’ viewing metrics.

So you’ve mostly been a print publisher up until now. Maybe you’ve added a couple new revenue streams like a special edition book and a sponsored event or two. You know it’s time to really put some focus on digital ad sales. But where do you start without getting overwhelmed by the vastness of all things digital?.

In a time when fakery seems to expand to every corner of the internet (including fake Amazon product reviews and YouTube views), it seems like academia is the last bastion of unadulterated truth, right?

The Washington Post, The Guardian and Mic have discontinued their chatbots, according to their spokespeople. Others such as Business Insider and The HuffPost appear to have done the same, as evidenced by their Messenger accounts not responding to messages or directing people to email them instead.

At the beginning of next year, magazine publishers will be paying about 25% more for paper than they did just 18 months earlier — assuming they can find any paper to buy.

Although magazine media got plenty of attention earlier this year due to the blockbuster deals made by Meredith and Hearst to acquire Time Inc. and Rodale, respectively, as well as the ripple effects each deal caused, the months that followed were relatively quiet. And as the expression goes, no news is good news.

 

The Media Minute 08.14.2018

The 92-year-old publication booked 10 new advertisers and sold 100 ad pages for its September issue.

So we’re agreed? Reader revenue is the way to go. We’re over traffic-at-scale and ad-only funding models. Subscriptions probably won’t pay all your bills, but a healthy mix of subs and ad sales is what we’re all about these days.

Recently, many online publishers woke up to welcome news, with vast jumps in the size of their estimated audiences. For example, Australia’s Daily Mail more than doubled its audience in the space of two months

The use of premium days as a tactic to grow audience revenue has caused customer relationship issues, and many publishers are seeking ways to maintain the revenue while moving away from the practice.

More publishers are feeling under pressure to adopt a consent-management platform to be compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation, publishers and ad tech vendors say.

Meredith’s Shape magazine spent the last year thinking over and creating its own evolution. Shape, which is published 10 times a year, reaches a rate base of 2.5 million and an audience of 14 million across platforms, focuses on healthy living for the 21st century woman.

The Media Minute 08.07.2018

Today, we’re excited to announce an additional $4.5 million investment in programs that support news publishers.

Publishers — especially commerce-focused publishers — can’t beat Google, Amazon and Facebook. They’re just too big, too powerful, and all-pervasive. To be successful, digital publishers need to augment the experiences that start and end with Google, Amazon, or Facebook. It’s time to stop competing and start complementing.

Condé Nast, the company behind Vogue, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker, became one of the world’s most successful magazine publishers with a formula built on a heady mix of old-world glamour and all-American pizazz.

For the first time in its 45-year history, Dennis Publishing has been sold. The London-based publisher of The Week and Mental Floss, among numerous others, has been acquired by British private equity firm Exponent, both parties announced Tuesday.

Apple’s subscription business is already big, but it’s about to get even bigger. Apple has sold more than 300 million subscriptions to its own and others’ apps, an increase of more than 60 percent in the past year alone, Apple CEO Tim Cook said during the company’s latest earnings call on July 31.

Recently, many online publishers woke up to welcome news, with vast jumps in the size of their estimated audiences. For example, Australia’s Daily Mail more than doubled its audience in the space of two months.