Personalisation, audio and highly engaged in-app subscribers: Pugpig's 2022 State of the Digital Publishing Market Report PLUS the end of the innovation team

December 14, 2022

I've spent the last three months elbow-deep in our data at Pugpig. We have access to the app data of more than 350 media brands who use our mobile platform, and it provides us with some unique insights from the aggregated data. We also spoke to dozens of media leaders and analysts about what the last 12 months were like and what they expect in 2023. We've got details about their product roadmaps for the next year, where will they be spending their innovation time, attention and resources. We've got details on the challenges that they are facing and what they will be doing to face them, and we've got data on which subscription segment is the most engaged. It's free to download.

Plus, I've chosen a few of this year's Nieman Lab predictions that caught my eye, including Cindy Royal's look at whether news product managers need to know how to code and Gina Chua's ongoing, positive advocacy for a rethink of journalism formats.

And we also look at Heinekin and Dentsu's project to measure attention in their campaigns. While this is an effort in advertising, the same techniques will have an impact on journalism and content.

Where are we now and what does the future hold? We’ve created a comprehensive industry report covering the state of digital publishing.

We hope to have added to the current understanding of digital publishing, particularly on mobile. A few things stood out for me while we were doing the report. The publishers we spoke to are focused on growing their subscriber base, and to attract more subscribers and keep the subscribers that they have, they are focused on delivering more value to them - not with flashy things like AR/VR or selling NFTs - but through personalisation, the ability to tailor experiences to their loyal, paying customers. There is a lot more in the report, and I hope you take a look.

Lastly, there is an interesting piece from Interhactitives about why data journalism is disappearing in South Korea.

"You might be forgiven for suspecting that news companies are more interested in appearing innovative than actually doing something new."

This prediction more than anything speaks to how innovation teams can become isolated from the rest of the organisation, their innovations lauded but ultimately having less organisational impact than if they were core to the organisation itself.

Thursday’s walkout was part of a bitter contract dispute over wages—but the impasse poses a larger question about how the growing company should invest in its future.

Journalists want the paper not just to invest in technology, acquisitions and executive salaries, they also want a slice of the success at the paper, which has been held up as a model for how to navigate the digital transition.

"They'll need to think of coding as not just a single practice, but a range of related practices."

Cindy Royal is a giant in terms of the field of study of journalism and product management, and here she looks at the question about whether journalist and specifically journalism product managers need to learn to code. As the industry has become more technical, the answer has changed. Tech used to be far divorced from the practice of journalism, but it is now the case that the two are much more intimately linked so that journalists and product managers need deeper digital domain skills.

"Despite huge changes in the technology of news, the structure of a story today doesn’t look hugely different from one in, say, 1932."

Gina and I connected years ago over our blogs when she was writing about her thoughts about new journalism formats, and my wife Suw and I had plans to try something new after I took a buyout from The Guardian. It's interesting to see how Gina is putting her ideas into practice at Semafor, and here she writes about thinking behind those ideas.

The publisher, whose inaugural Africa Week begins Monday, will host 40-plus events in 2023.

And here is some thoughts about how Semafor will pay for it.

How publishers can restore revenue to print levels - media technology Q&A.

While this might be a piece from a the view of a specific technology provider, it is interesting to think about different revenue stream might be able to rebuild the revenue that media once had back in the days of print and broadcast TV and radio before streaming.

Facing decreasing attention from outlets in a portal-oreinted media environment, South Korean data journalists seek

How the media market in South Korea has meant the death knell of data journalism there (or probably more precisely a certain kind of time-intensive data journalism).

Heineken Develops Attention Measurement Campaign With Teads And Dentsu - 12/12/2022

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