SODP Dispatch - 16 June 2023

Happy Friday!

Today, let’s deviate a little bit from digital publishing and discuss the potential of print.

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

As someone who has solely worked in the digital side of the publishing industry, I’ll freely admit that familiarity bias has tainted my perspective at times.

It becomes easy to discount the future of print publishing without experience in the space. There are numerous stats and studies out there that speak to the continued rise of digital content consumption, driven by widespread mobile phone adoption and the ongoing rollout of 5G internet speeds.

And yet, when I geared up to talk about a book I’d started rereading after more than 20 years on my Kindle, I found that I was quite considerably in the minority when it came to ebook adoption. Let me explain.

After watching the recent trailer for Dune 2 (the first film was great and I’d highly recommend it to anybody with an interest in sci-fi), I had a hankering to reread Frank Herbert’s Dune. While there might have been a time I would have bought the book (I used to be a hardcore advocate for physical books — the tactile experience of leafing through pages and all that) the Kindle Paperwhite converted me.

No screen refresh? Check. No bluelight? Check. Ease of transport/storage? Check. Backlit to avoid bedtime arguments over the lamp? Check! No matter how much I love physical books, it’s hard to argue against these advantages.

And then you have Dune’s publisher forward, which talked about how the “realities of commercial publishing” meant that “vast troves” of classic science fiction and fantasy would never be physically reprinted. The advent of digital publishing has mitigated this, according to Orion Publishing Group, enabling the distribution of classic and modern sci-fi backlists.

And yet, given all these advantages, print books are still far more popular than ebooks.

Continue reading

FROM STATE OF DIGITAL PUBLISHING

^{TOP TOOLS}
5 BEST CONTENT ANALYTICS SOFTWARE FOR PUBLISHERS IN 2023

The fast-paced nature of the digital publishing landscape means leveraging data-driven insights to optimize content strategy is essential.

Exact figures are hard to come by, the number of new blog posts each day count in the millions. After all, WordPress powers more than 40% of the world’s websites and claims that its users publish 70 million new posts every month. Suffice it to say, leveraging data-driven insights to optimize content strategy is essential.

With the help of content analytics, publishers can gain valuable insights into how their content is performing, who their readers are and what type of content resonates most with their audience.

But with so many software options available, how to select the right one?

Let’s explore what a content analytics tool is, how it works, why publishers should use it and then review the best content analytics software solutions available in 2023.

Read more

^MONETIZATION
MGID: WEB STORIES ENRICH PUBLISHERS’ ADVERTISING OPTIONS

When Google announced the AMP story format back in 2018, the goal was to create a new tappable, visual story experience similar to those seen on social media platforms, but one that publishers could host on their websites.

Fast forward two years and Google rebranded the format as Web Stories and allowed Discover to access it. Since then, Web Stories have spread to Google Search and Images.

While the format offers audiences a social media-like experience, publishers found their monetization options limited. They could monetize through direct ad sales and affiliate links, but their programmatic advertising options were limited to Google’s first party solutions. This was notable, given programmatic advertising’s increasing dominance of global digital ad spend over the years.

The situation changed this year, however, when global ad platform MGID announced in April that it had integrated Google Web Stories into its offerings, becoming the first third-party platform to do so.

To learn more about MGID’s support for Web Stories advertising, we spoke with MGID’s Head of Publisher Acquisition (North America), Ryan Stewart.

Read more

RECOMMENDED NEWSLETTERS

Niche Media Publishing’s weekly newsletter shows you how to produce the best content for your audience, grow with the best paid and organic traffic tips, monetize your content & get paid, and lots more…

Scrappy Podcasting – all the podcast advice you don’t want to hear… but is necessary if you want to grow. Packaged into a refreshing, 2-minute weekly newsletter.

The Content Strategy Reader will help you create wow-worthy content that raises eyebrows and revenue.

Tubefilter sends must-read creator economy news. Every. Day.

TOOLS AND RESOURCES

^SPONSORED
Check out Superdesk – an open-source, web-based, headless CMS for news organisations and publishers with powerful workflow features for end-to-end news creation, production, curation and distribution. Learn more

Query Hunter is a free WordPress plugin that shows under-served queries that you’re already being found for. Learn more

BITE-SIZED INDUSTRY NEWS

^{AUDIENCE GROWTH}
Post launches an iOS app and says 440K+ users have joined the news-focused social network that lets users make micropayments for news from various publishers. Read more

^RESEARCH
Reuters' 2023 Digital News Report: fragmentation in users' social media choices yet more reliance on the platforms for news; Facebook drops and TikTok grows. Read more

^{BUSINESS OF DIGITAL PUBLISHING}
Penske Media Corporation plans to launch a new media brand Wednesday under its She Media portfolio that's focused on women's health. Read more

^MONETIZATION
Insider is weakening its paywall: “In the near future, all of our work will be behind a ‘smart paywall,’ which will ask people to pay only if a very smart algorithm thinks they are likely to pay.” Read more

^AI
Google’s plan to launch its artificial intelligence chatbot, Bard, in Europe has hit a regulatory roadblock. Read more