Month: May 2020

The Media Minute 05.20.2020

Physical distancing and stay-at-home orders have forced publishers to do things they never thought possible. We will never unlearn the new skills and tactics we’ve had to develop. Nor will your readers.Here are five changes the pandemic has wrought, along with ways publishers can adapt and prosper.

The business world is a very different place compared to just six months ago. Perhaps no more so than in publishing, where we’ve seen the distribution and printing of newspapers, magazines and books all but stop in some markets, while at the same time the audience for news, entertainment – and let’s face it, escapism – has exploded.

News publishers aren’t mincing words in their messages to push subscriptions, directly appealing to readers to support journalism and even make up for lost advertising revenue.

Advertisers are more likely to cut their media budgets for print than for digital, making online outlets more significant for publishers amid the disruptions of the coronavirus pandemic, a study suggests.

Google’s dominance of the $130 billion digital advertising market is harming advertisers, publishers and consumers, according to a new paper that outlines how the U.S. could bring an antitrust case against the internet giant.

t’s a combination of letters and numbers most of us had never seen placed together just a few short months ago. Now it dominates everything we do as journalists, from covering daily press briefings to chronicling the outbreak’s impact on our communities.

The Media Minute 05.13.2020

The writing has been on the wall for years. The decline of display advertising has been well documented in this publication and others. CPM rates for ads have fallen at the same time ad viewability has been called into question. Rather than sit back and wait for the walls to potentially come crashing down around them.

There’s more competition than ever before: literally hundreds of millions of publishers, brands, and individuals are creating and amplifying content in attempts to earn attention. Simultaneously, the content bar has been massively raised: what stood out from the crowd in 2010 would be lucky to get 1/10th the attention 10 years later.

The media industry is mostly in dire straits, particularly those dependent on advertising revenue. A media company that hasn’t rolled out pay cuts, furloughs and layoffs in this period is an exception to the norm. Despite many publishers recording record traffic and viewing figures, the supply and demand economics of the ad market means ad prices have dropped and revenue has plunged.

The coronavirus pandemic has magnified the financial difficulties for many local publications, and it’s not too early to consider their longer-term marketing strategies for when the health crisis subsides. Government bailouts can provide an emergency lifeline, but the industry will emerge much stronger by developing a mix of diverse sources of revenue.

The Rebel Alliance to Amazon’s Empire. A David taking on Goliath. Any way you want to put it, the new ecommerce site Bookshop has attracted a lot of attention for challenging Amazon on its original turf. (What, did you forget Amazon launched as “Earth’s biggest bookstore”?)

Content has always been king for news publishers, but with print readership declining, publishers have had to think creatively with how to reach readers who are moving over to different platforms. Whether it’s through TikTok, podcasts or videos, media companies are experimenting with various ways to entertain and engage with consumers.

The Media Minute 05.05.2020

Marketing leaders around the world are struggling to strategize around the COVID-19 pandemic. Especially top of mind is how to reach and engage your audience. Email might seem like the best option right now. After all, email is a channel your audience trusts, and it lets you maintain consistent voice while reaching people instantly.

The global spread of COVID-19 has had a damaging effect on many publishing businesses. However, “subscription businesses are proving to be resilient,” according to an analysis of over 700 subscription-based companies by Zuora, the publisher of The Subscription Economy Index.

The coronavirus content surge happened across all formats, including video on platforms like Facebook and YouTube, where publishers saw a surge in viewerships in March for virus-related videos. Now, that viewer interest is tapering off, and publishers are inching back to more of their regular programming mix.

Publishers that are planning to reopen their offices as cities and states begin to ease pandemic lockdowns face numerous decisions about how to safeguard workers. As long as the coronavirus is a significant health threat, publishers must determine how to adapt almost every part of their operations.

By the end of 2020, the total number of Facebook users is expected to reach an all-time high of nearly 1.7 billion people around the world. That’s a lot of eyeballs. It’s also a lot of pressure when you have a business and are trying to figure out a strategy for optimizing your tactics for targeting ads efficiently and effectively.

Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper chain and owner of USA Today and 260 other daily publications, announced it was implementing pay cuts and furloughs across the company as the coronavirus pandemic forced businesses to close and local advertising to plummet.

The Media Minute 04.28.2020

Faced with shrinking ad revenue during COVID-19, magazine publishers are being forced to ask tough questions about their upcoming print issues. Some are scaling back circulation or frequency to cut costs, while others are suspending print runs altogether. In most cases, they’re taking a second look at their digital editions.

With the end in sight for third party cookies following Google’s bombshell announcement in January, first party data is set to become the dominant currency in the digital ad market. Publishers are in a unique position to take advantage of this, with direct reader relationships.

Bayer’s in-house agency is changing where the company’s digital advertising shows up, adding more retail media channels to the media mix, after seeing consumer behavior shift to online shopping in mid-March and all throughout April.

There is more evidence that readers have lost interest in news about the coronavirus pandemic, which appears to have peaked in mid-March. The shift signals that publishers should consider highlighting other kinds of content with web traffic likely to remain elevated until the end of lockdowns.

Curating an effective email list for your company is a lot like creating a playlist of songs for a party. It takes time, consideration,and awareness of who you’re trying to connect with. You don’t make your friends listen to a bunch of random songs in an attempt to get their attention.Instead, you hand-pick tunes that you know will get the crowd excited.

As many local newspapers are scaling back or no longer publishing, some hyperlocal news and digital companies are making a profit. One of the more successful has been Patch. Patch covers such localized information as car accidents, criminal activity, store openings, real estate news, weather or school board information.