Personalisation a major product focus for media companies PLUS

November 21, 2022

At Pugpig, we're going to release our State of the Digital Publishing Market report on Thursday 1 December, and one of the things that we've found in polling senior media leaders is that personalisation is one of the areas that they will be exploring in terms of innovation in 2023. (It should be noted that not a single leader mentioned AR, VR or NFTs as buzzy as those things might be or might have been.) INMA has some powerful examples of how publishers are rolling out personalisation or how they are testing hypotheses as they develop personalisation services.

The Press Gazette has an article about how football (soccer) network FootballCo looks for new, diverse sources of revenue as the World Cup kicks off.

Another piece about whether we're reaching peak subscription. Are US consumers who only a few years were clamouring for ala carte pay TV packages now rueing fragmentation?

Is the BBC to blame for the collapse in local media in the UK? Neil Benson, a former Reach (Trinity-Mirror) leader believes that is one of the reasons.

And I reluctantly have a wrap of some of the issues swirling around Twitter. I couldn't do all of them or there would be nothing else in the newsletter.

During the final of five modules of the INMA Product and Data for Media Summit, executives from News Corp Australia, Schibsted, and Bayerischer Rundfunk talk about new products developed to meet the audience need for personalisation.

This is a good overview from a recent INMA event about how personalisation is influencing product development. With examples from the Schibsted in Scandinavia, News UK and Germany's Bayerischer Rundfunk, there is a good geographical spread of examples as well as a good spread of motivations for the work. Schibsted's Curate tool is especially impressive for editorial staff.

Soccer media business Footballco has spent most of 2022 trying to make hay while the sun is shining.

This piece touches on another theme for the report that we're doing at Pugpig - revenue diversity. With advertising revenue becoming soft due to economic uncertainty, publishers are looking for new sources of revenue in addition to advertising, and FootballCo is no different.

How many video and audio services do you subscribe to? Do you know how much money month you're paying on media content? Don't feel bad because you're not alone. And there's a growing sense of anxiety and frustration among consumers that they're signed up for too many services and paying too much in the process. There are lessons here for radio broadcasters, and that's how we'll start our holiday week here on JacoBLOG.

Another piece on subscription fatigue from the US. One striking feature in the piece is that after years in which US consumers wanted an all carte package from cable operators that they now are calling for a bundle!

“The accelerated growth in digital consumption continues to open up new advertising avenues and new audiences.” The digital habits people worldwide picked during the pandemic have persisted. A new report shares how the continued rise in the use of digital content creates ongoing opportunities for publishers. “Global digital content consumption continues to soar,”—55% of people …

This is interesting, but a lot of the rise in consumption of digital media is social media and streaming video. The competition for attention continues!

Leading former regional newspaper boss Neil Benson reflects on the calamitous decline of the UK regional newspaper industry.

I had the distinct honour of working a bit with Neil when I did consulting for the company that was then Trinity-Mirror. While as a former BBC employee, I feel that the Beeb shouldn’t shoulder quite so much of the blame, I also know that Beeb does affect the media market dynamics of the UK. This excerpt is worth a read because it does enumerate some of the shocks that have hit regional media in the UK. The question that I have is: What could the regional media have done differently?

The ongoing drama of Twitter

Social media giant ill-equipped to deal with traffic spikes after cuts imposed by Elon Musk, according to former employee

I remember data coming out of Twitter for a past World Cup showing the incredible volume of tweets during the tournament. This would be like trying to sail a ship in a hurricane with half the crew gone and a mad captain running around the deck slashing at the ropes that kept the crew from being swept overboard.

CBS News is pressing pause on Twitter over Elon Musk's turbulent and potentially devastating moves following his takeover of the company.

First advertisers deserted the platform and now publishers are pressing pause until they have some sense of clarity about what happens next.

Goodbye to screenshotted best bits, DMs, "that tweet should be a story"...

One of the most compelling things that journalism will lose is a rich source for the kind of open-source investigations that Bellingcat does, according to the services founder Eliot Higgins on Twitter.

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

And just as seriously, crooks and black hat hackers are exploiting the vacuum of leadership and platform management capacity at Twitter.