SODP Dispatch - 10 March 2023

Happy Friday!

Let’s talk about the state of the subscription economy.

INMA expects digital subscriptions to climb by 52% in July-September 2023, compared with the first quarter of 2021. Digital subscription revenue, meanwhile, will expand 47% over the same period. INMA has, however, cautioned that the increase in cancellations observed in 2022 may continue.

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

For months I’ve considered canceling my Netflix subscription, struggling to justify its value proposition. While I might not be interested in the platform’s steady stream of reality shows, the sheer size of its catalog continues to win me over. There’s always something to watch even when “there’s nothing to watch”.

This feels like a hangover of the COVID era, when consumption of digital content soared and the streaming services, digital publishers and social media platforms all cashed in. Easy access to content was of paramount importance to consumers with little else to spend their time and money on.

With the world firmly in the post-pandemic phase, I’ve begun to wonder whether a slump in the subscription economy is coming; especially considering central banks’ predilection for interest rate hikes as a means of quashing inflation.

And yet, that doesn’t seem to be the case, according to FIPP and Piano’s Snapshot Global Digital Subscription Q4 2022 report.

Continue reading

ANNOUNCEMENT

GROW ENGAGEMENT & REVENUE WITH GOOGLE – A 2-MONTH IMMERSIVE PROGRAM FOR NEWS PUBLISHERS

We have an exciting announcement!

We partnered up with Google News Initiative to offer our community a 2-month educational program on reader engagement and reader revenue.

The program:

• Four 90 minute training sessions on NCI Shift

• Working collaborative group sessions

• Provision of personalised website audits & content deck on reader engagement and reader revenue funnel

• Demonstration of Subscribe with Google

There is no participation fee. If you are a news publisher, make sure to grab your spot!

Read more and register

OFFICE HOURS

MARCH OFFICE HOURS: DOMAIN SEO STRATEGIES

Domain SEO is the practice of optimizing owned domains to make them more accessible to human visitors and search engines. Common concerns publishers face is the launch and acquisition of sites for accelerating growth, as it involves picking between a simple phrase, an optional subdomain, and a top level domain (TLD) to create the perfect web identity.

Join the March edition of SODP Office Hours. In this session, we will go through the common questions and considerations of domaining strategy including:

• When to use Google's domain migration tool

• Impact and effective use of expired domains

• How to choose a domain - phrase, subdomain, tld and more

• Are hyphenated domains a sign of low quality?And more...

WHEN: 15 March 2023 (Wednesday) at 8 AM New York | 1 PM London | 2 PM Paris

Read more and grab your spot

FROM STATE OF DIGITAL PUBLISHING

ADVERTISING

A SNEAK PREVIEW OF TV ADVERTISING’S FUTURE

The TV advertising industry has witnessed an explosion of premium video inventory. Subscription streaming services are adopting hybrid models and more ad-supported video channels are emerging to satisfy audience demand for accessible, quality content.

Bloomberg, for example, recently launched Bloomberg Originals to offer audiences newly commissioned content such as documentaries, live events, and video podcasts via its CTV app. Advanced TV, which includes connected TV (CTV), linear addressable TV, over-the-top (OTT) TV, and video-on-demand (VOD), will continue to be a dynamic space with 70% of UK marketers intending to spend more on these channels in the near future, according to AudienceExpress’s latest survey.

Considering that this investment will accelerate progress in TV advertising, how will buyer expectations shape Advanced TV and what will the next phase of premium video’s evolution look like?

Read more

TOOLS AND RESOURCES

TOOL

Check out the YESEO app that you can add to Slack. The YESEO app includes the ability to analyze published stories as well as unpublished stories. It also features GPT-3 generated data for use in your workflows and supports four different languages. Learn more

TIP

See a few strategies that you can implement if you want to take advantage of location-based SEO. Learn more

BITE-SIZED INDUSTRY NEWS

AIWired publishes its generative AI rules, saying the outlet won't publish text written or edited by AI but may use AI for headlines, social media, or story ideas. Read more

ADVERTISINGA new Google Ads feature lets you access the GA4 audience builder directly in the Google Ads UI. Read more

SEOGoogle Now Says Google Discover Impacted By The Helpful Content Update Since October 2022. Read more

RESEARCHStudy of nearly 6K Americans aged 16 to 40: 60% pay for or donate to news, including 47% for independent content and 22% for traditional sources like newspapers. Read more

JOURNALISMGoogle Said on Wednesday it will launch a T$300 million ($9.8 million) fund over the next three years to help boost the Taiwanese media's continuing operations and digital competitiveness. Read more

TECHThe Guardian returns to Apple News in UK as commission terms improve. Read more

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