Paywalls and advertising: Adopting a product-based approach to balancing revenue streams by @EstherKeziaT PLUS How the UK's Independent is getting advertisers comfortable with breaking news

September 27, 2022

I do love days when the media news highlights the role of product-thinking in the media industry, and today is one of those days. The first example from the Press Gazette Future of Media Technology conference from last week by Esther Kezia Thorpe looks at how publishers are balancing paywalls and advertising. In the past, I might have seen this through an audience lens, but now, I realise that a focus on audience is integral to product thinking.

And on that note, there is a great piece about how The Local in Sweden uses product thinking to remain "useful" to their audience.

And today's crop of stories show how product thinking is important to growing audience and revenue.

Press Gazette held its first Future of Media Technology Conference on Wednesday 21st September in London. It aimed to give media industry decision-makers a one-day masterclass on the strategies, solutions and ideas they need to thrive in the digital era. The room was packed, showing UK publishers’ appetite for in-person events is as strong as …

A product focus is an audience focus because product managers start, or at least should start, by understanding audience needs. Last week at the Press Gazette's Future of Media Technology conference, UK Chief Operating Officer David Dinsmore was one member of a panel talking about revenue strategies at media companies. And it definitely isn't one size fits all, and as Dinsmore points out, a time-starved but relatively cash-rich Times reader has very different needs and is a different consumer than a Sun reader.

The international publication listens to its audience before, during and after creating new editorial products

To emphasise the point of putting the audience first, Journalism.co.uk looks at how The Local, which caters to English-speaking audiences in nine European cities, is constantly incorporating user input into their products - before, during and after a product launch. They use a mix of data and surveys to gain these insights. As I have found, data can tell you what users are doing, but you need surveys to really understand why they are doing it.

There is a lot to gain from getting to experiment in different spaces of product work on a team.

A good piece on using LinkedIn Recruiter Lite to find people with a good product management skillset for your team, and I agree that a good product person can come from anywhere in your organisation. And it talks about how many product managers in news organisations learn by doing.

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How journalists in a Chile, Argentina, Paraguay and the Philippines had to train AI systems so that they were relevant to their content.

Total digital publishing revenue was £154.8million in Q2 2022, with 50% of respondents reporting positive growth The latest Digital Publishers’ Revenue Index (DPRI) from the Association of Online Publishers (AOP) and Deloitte reveals total digital revenue for Q2 2022 was £154.8million, up by 12.3% from Q2 2021. During Q2 2022, recruitment classifieds saw the strongest growth for …

Unsurprisingly in this market where competition for talent is fierce, recruitment advertising was a strong driver.

Advertisers are skittish about breaking news, but The Independent's Blair Tapper is trying to humanize the programmatic funnel to keep them spending during a tumultuous news cycle.

With programmatic making up 75% of the Indy's ad revenue in the US, they had to find a way to give brands confidence in appearing next to breaking news. They tried to 'humanise' the programmatic sell and assure brands that they weren't losing placement of their ads.

Press Gazette has been reporting on British journalism without fear or favour since 1965. Our mission is to provide a news and information service which helps the UK journalism.

The goal is to create a plan for serving the news needs of local communities that doesn't necessarily require more money.