How A/B tests are driving media success and how to do them (summary by @WNIP of report by @piano_io and @digiday) PLUS Can Zette deliver a one-stop shop for digital subscriptions

October 24, 2022

What's New in Publishing have a summary of a new report focusing on the A/B testing by subscription technology company Piano and digital publishing industry site Digiday. The results are impressive Inc42, India’s largest tech media platform, increasing monthly sales by 10%, and El Confidencial growing subscriptions by 60%. The report itself has solid advice on how you can use A/B testing.

A/B testing can yield valuable insights for publishers to improve their offerings incrementally. A new report guides them on how to effectively implement A/B testing in their organization. Publishers are increasingly using A/B testing to boost engagement and revenue. Inc42, India’s largest tech media platform with 1.5M monthly users, used insights from A/B testing to …

One of the key bits of advice in the report is to isolate the variable that you're testing so that you can make sure that the element you're testing is directly responsible for the change. And while this might seem like a slow process, the best practitioners A/B testing are frequently if not constantly running experiments. This allows them to iterate their products rapidly and achieve their goals.

Look beyond the print question

"The heightened awareness of the downsides of algorithmic recommendation media is renewing interest in hand-crafted media creation and discovery." It is interesting that he points to Semafor's "recently launched slate of newsletters" as mini-magazines. This may be my old BBC work showing through, but I still think that there is a place for the trusted guide in media. Speaking of newsletters, I think that this is the role that historian Heather Cox Richardson is playing for a group of Americans with her newsletter. And newsletters can be a very intimate format.

Every year, the anniversary of 9/11 comes around again, and news organizations are left wondering how to cover it in a way that has not been done before. Twenty years after the attacks, NPR found an innovative method of telling a story of national grief and exploring what that grief is like for those left behind.

Every once in a while, US public media does something amazingly simple but incredibly powerful - this project definitely falls in this category.

Zette wants to help online publishers make money by making it easier for consumers to access paywalled content.

I have heard a number of publishers (and more than a few readers) pine for a single digital storefront that would allow them to access a wide variety of subscription content. Zette is looking to be that storefront, and this is definitely a project to watch.

When launching new products, media product teams should consider the finances, the credibility, and the ability to abort the mission if things do not go well.

As with any product, financial considerations have to a part of it, and this is one of those powers that a select few product managers develop. Yes, design thinking is really important, but when you're having to sift through priorities, financial realities (even if it's just impact vs effort - or expenditure) have a role to play.

Industry Notes

Automattic-owned podcast platform Pocket Casts has released its mobile clients under an open source license.

Pocket Cast, which was once owned by NPR, and now is owned by Automattic, the company behind the open-source CMS WordPress has open-sourced Pocket Casts. Interesting.

The tech giant upped the stakes in the battle over the online news bill, Bill C-18, warning it could block Canadians from sharing or viewing news content out of frustration over the government’s ‘misguided’ approach

And Jeff Elgie of Canada's Village Media says that we should take Facebook at its word. As he said, Facebook has been pulling back from news for a while now.

Mathias Döpfner is Europe’s leading media mogul; the most influential man you’ve never heard of

A profile of Axel Springer's Mathias Döpfner, and if you don't know who he is, this is definitely a piece that you want to read.

Deal would seal legacy with favoured heirs, but markets question whether companies should merge in the first place

Will Murdoch's reunited empire be more or less than the sum of its parts? The markets will definitely have a say.

The Record by Recorded Future gives exclusive, behind-the-scenes access to leaders, policymakers, researchers, and the shadows of the cyber underground.

In the era of digital empires, regulators around the world and at every level of government are working to reassert themselves.