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Content marketing in particular is responsible for a big chunk of the marketing efforts we see on a daily basis. In fact, “88 percent of business-to-business companies incorporate content marketing into their overall marketing strategy.”
Digital publishing revenues in the UK fell to £96.6 million in Q2 2020, down by 14.3% in comparison to Q2 2019, according to the latest quarterly Digital Publishers Revenue Index (DPRI) from the Association of Online Publishers (AOP) and Deloitte. This drop was less steep than anticipated, given the UK was in lockdown for much of the period.
Even prior to Covid-19, premium publishers were turning to audience revenue, mainly in the form of subscriptions, to grow profits. In an uncertain ad market, consumer offerings are critical for publishers. In fact, Reuters Institute confirmed this strategy in early 2020 reporting that 50% of digital leaders identify reader revenue as their income focus for the year.
Who wants to exist in a world without cookies? Apple, apparently. With its recent release of iOS 14 for iPhone and impending release of macOS Big Sur for desktop devices, Apple continues to move full steam ahead with its anti-tracking measures, giving pause to cookie-using publishers everywhere.
We are still in the middle of the pandemic, and while that makes it difficult to predict the future, some media trends seen in the past 6-9 months look set to continue. Elsewhere, the consequences of the coronavirus crisis will continue to reverberate and impact the sector.
As publishers begin making plans for 2021 and looking for ways to slim down their sales organizations, many are looking to give more responsibility to their sales teams’ account managers, partly to cut costs but also to nurture the kind of always-on relationship that many publishers are trying to forge with their clients, particularly in an era of compressed planning cycles, fewer RFPs and more pressure on buyers to prove that their spending is driving results.
The subscription model is not new, but it has taken on a new significance. Over the past seven years, revenue for all subscription companies – from software to healthcare – grew by 321% on average. In the case of apps, this positive trend was bolstered by a 32% year-over-year increase in the number of users who sign up for a subscription after installing an app.
The “retail apocalypse” of the past few years grew much worse in 2020. The pandemic led many people to avoid stores and shop from the safety of their homes. The upheaval in the retail industry will continue to shape the role of publishers next year as content and commerce become even more seamless.
Creating the perfect content marketing strategy for your brand is no small feat. No matter how well you know your audience or how long you’ve spent optimizing your content, every content marketer has faced the challenge of gaining readership and brand awareness.
A new browser war is here, thanks to how Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and a slew of startups have positioned themselves in the data privacy debate. While the third-party cookie is the obvious casualty, we can’t overlook the Balkanization of the internet and the hard choices small and medium-sized publishers will have to make to compete.
In response to an initial coronavirus news bump, a number of outlets witnessed record traffic to their sites, as well as a growth in subscribers. At the same time, however, they also had to contend with a major slump in advertising revenues as marketers shut their checkbooks.
As the war between the largest online media owners and the governments of the world heats up, marketers are notably sat on the sidelines. They learned a long time ago they can’t have their cake and eat it too when it comes to openly fighting these platforms while directly funding them.
For quality publishers with strong consumer relationships, a content-to-commerce strategy offers a valuable revenue diversification approach. The International News Media Association’s (INMA) new report, Content-to-Commerce Brings Revenue in Post-Advertising World, outlines key considerations, strategies and their implementations to help publishers build this line of revenue.
Newspaper publishers have seen a drastic drop in advertising sales this year, underscoring the need to diversify their revenue as much as possible during the recovery from the pandemic recession. They have suffered disproportionately, compared with other media outlets, according a Pew Research Center study.
As the ways we consume content, media, and technology continue to evolve, so too do the ways companies market themselves and showcase their brands. Similarly, consumers are starting to look beyond simple advertising tactics and now crave more unique and engaging online content.
User privacy is the largest trend shaping the direction of digital advertising. Governments are creating and enforcing new regulations that impact how advertising works, browsers and app stores are limiting how data can be shared and users are demanding more control over their data.