SODP Dispatch - 2 June 2023

Happy Friday!

Today, let’s discuss monetization strategies for digital publishers.

Our managing editor, Andrew Kemp, discusses the subject in his weekly Editor’s Note column:

Time’s decision to remove its paywall was a surprise, given that Time was one of less than 30 publishers to have successfully cracked the 200,000 subscriber mark. Time CEO Jessica Sibley boiled the decision down to a desire to reach a younger and more diverse global audience.

Time still needs to keep the lights on, however, and aims to produce ad-supported digital content that complements revenue from its print and digital magazine editions as well as Time Studios.

The magazine’s decision mirrors a similar move from Quartz last year, which had a great deal less success in converting visitors with just 25,000 subscribers. Time will hope that its decision yields a significantly better result than Quartz, whose multi-year decline in traffic continued even after its paywall came down.

The deputy editor-in-chief of Swedish daily Aftonbladet, Martin Schori, agrees that the subscription model locks out younger audiences, but argues that an ongoing subscription slowdown needs to be addressed through content innovation. Claiming that many publishers simply make online newspapers, Schori argues that reaching new audiences and convincing them to subscribe requires new formats and approaches.

He makes a compelling case.

Continue reading

FROM STATE OF DIGITAL PUBLISHING

^ADVERTISING
WHAT IS AN AD EXCHANGE?

Ads are an integral aspect of online life. Appearing as banners, video spots and social media feeds/stories, digital ads are everywhere. Ad exchanges play a vital role in the distribution of these ads, and yet, very few people can answer the question: What is an ad exchange?

That is a $600 billion question in 2023, and its value will keep increasing with each passing year. The global eCommerce industry is growing at a rapid clip, with sales expected to climb to $9.4 trillion by 2026 from $6.5 trillion in 2023. And the amount of money companies spend on digital ads is projected to hit almost $680 billion in 2023, a rise of 10.5% year on year.

At the same time, the global economy continues to teeter on the brink of a recession. Slashed marketing budgets are the norm as at least 30% of advertisers face increasing pressure to boost ROI with less.

As the stakes keep rising, a working knowledge of ad exchange platforms is essential for any professional or entrepreneur whose business involves online marketing in some form. This article will take a deep dive into the world of ad exchanges and explore how they work, their advantages and the role they fill in the digital advertising landscape.

Read more

^FEATURE
AOP: PUBLISHERS, ADVERTISERS MUST COOPERATE OVER DATA SCRAPING THREAT

The death of the third-party cookie is supposed to benefit publishers, better positioning them to extract greater advertising value from their first-party data.

However, between preparing for the “cookieless future”, fighting Facebook and Google for compensation over news snippet sharing and trying to identify the emergent risks posed by AI, some publishers may not be aware of another potential issue on the horizon.

The UK-based Association of Online Publishers (AOP) printed an open letter in March warning the publishing and advertising industries of the dangers of content verification vendors’ unauthorized data scraping.

The letter, which was signed by AOP Managing Director Richard Reeves, argues these vendors — either through packing hidden tags into authorized in-header wrappers or using crawlers — are building “contextual audience segments for their own commercial gain”.

To better understand the AOP’s concerns and the potential dangers to publishers, State of Digital Publishing (SODP) reached out to Reeves with some questions. What follows is a lightly edited version of his response.

Read more

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BITE-SIZED INDUSTRY NEWS

^{AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT}
WordPress.com is taking on Substack and others with today’s news that its Newsletter product will now support paid subscriptions and premium content. Read more

^{BIG TECH}
Meta is preparing to block news for some Canadians on Facebook and Instagram in a temporary test that is expected to last the majority of the month. Read more

^AI
New survey finds half of newsrooms use Generative AI tools; only 20% have guidelines in place. Read more

^{SOCIAL MEDIA}
A study finds TikTok outperforms Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts in user engagement and content frequency, while Reels leads in watch time. Read more

^AI
A look at the media's coverage of generative AI over the past six months, as journalists and academics criticize the hype and provide ways to improve reporting. Read more

^SEARCH
Google explains how to use Search Console's new bulk data export feature, which enables analysis of large data sets via Google BigQuery. Read more