The positive changes that the pandemic brought to publishers from @INMAorg PLUS how publishers are tweaking their events and commerce strategies as inflation bites

September 20, 2022

I'm going to lead off with a piece from INMA in which the group looks back on positive business outcomes for publishers as a result of the pandemic. It has often been said that the pandemic accelerated digital trends so a decade of change happened over this period. INMA looks at what that means in a practical sense. One observation of note: Subscriptions became an important source of income but were not enough on their own to sustain the business.

Also, now in-person events are happening again, but this return to face-to-face also coincides with inflationary pressures on business so Digiday looks at how publishers are trying to deal with or offset these rising costs. And while e-commerce has become one of the new revenue streams that are supporting media businesses, it would seem that not all such efforts are meeting with success. Publishers will need to learn lessons from retailers on building brands. (It seems obvious but also important.)

We also have important industry news from Semafor and Buzzfeed plus a bumper crop of articles about social media, research into reducing news anxiety by purposefully missing out and questions about the NFTs after the crypto crash.

For the first time in more than two years, INMA is back with a conference where you can actually chat over lunch, exchange business cards, and share a beer with colleagues from around the world. But those two years weren’t ordinary years. INMA Executive Director Earl J. Wilkinson looks back.

It accelerated digital transformation at many publishers and they became less concerned about confronting legacy issues. Moreover

The cost of hosting in-person events has increased due to inflation, pushing publishers to find ways to mitigate the higher prices.

Before the pandemic, events had become such an important revenue pillar, especially for B2B publishers, that it became the core of their businesses. But with higher rates of inflation, they are finding higher costs for in-person events than before the pandemic. Digiday reports on how publishers are trying to cut costs, just as everyone is.

Turning readers into shoppers has not been as easy as some publishers hoped, but for the few successful media companies, it's less about ease and more about brand affinity.

Commerce has been one of a clutch of new sources of revenue for publishers, but it would appear that some of these efforts are struggling. As media companies become retailers, they will have to learn lessons from retail businesses.

While on-site and traditional ad revenue declined for many local publishers during the pandemic, newsletter revenue actually grew. As third-party cookies go away, newsletters’ importance becomes even clearer, offering local publishers a direct, first-party route to audience engagement and, crucially, monetization, writes Adam Berkowitz, Chief of Staff, LiveIntent As local publishers seek to grow revenue post-pandemic, …

As the major tech platforms - Google and Apple - start to eliminate third-party cookies, companies will need to develop closer relationships with their audiences, and newsletters are one important way to do that.

Industry News: Semafor, BuzzFeed and the end of the crypto craze

Justin Smith, CEO of the soon-to-launch global news publisher, and executive editor Gina Chua on how the company is ‘reimagining’ publishing for global and regional audiences.

One of the more detailed reviews of what Semafor will be and what it's launch strategy will be. They will be looking to sequence their launch with their premier product being Flagship, an aggregator and 'distiller' of news from other sources. They will also not be covering regions for a Western audience but covering regions for news consumers in that region.

BuzzFeed is conducting a strategic review process, plans to present its three-year goals at an investor day in Q1 2023 and is eyeing potential acquisitions of companies with less than $100 million in annual revenue.

BuzzFeed is looking for smaller companies to acquire, which continues the trend of consolidation in the digital media space. However, there is a hint that all of these plans are contingent on an increasingly uncertain economic outlook.

A lot of studios are running away from NFTs. But a few producers and executives aren’t ready to give up on them.

Now that crypto assets are crashing back to earth with rising interest rates and less capital to invest in riskier asset classes, media companies and news organisations are also pulling back from issuing NFTs and covering them.

User behavior on TikTok has been evolving as its popularity grows. We’ve seen the app go from dancing teenagers to influencing shopping behavior across the world. Now, the next step for TikTok seems to be turning into the next big search engine. What does it mean for SEOs?

This piece follows Betteridge's Law, which says that if a headline asks a question that the answer is usually no. However, even if TikTok isn't going to take over the search crown from Google, it still is competing with a lot of existing services for attention.

Knight commits more than $9 million to uplift vital networks for nonprofit, for-profit, diverse local news publishers Sept. 19, 2022…

The Knight Foundation in the US has announced a multi-million dollar investment in groups that are supporting local news groups including LION Publishers, the Institute for Non-profit News and the Center for Community Media at CUNY. The hope is that these groups can help scale efforts to rebuild local media.

"Obviously, I could be a little bit more into what’s going on and look myself...Knowing more about it doesn’t do anything about it, does it?"

This research resonates with me. A younger me felt that knowing more about news gave me some control over it or empowered me to do something about it. An older me is much more sceptical about this point of view.

Ad Market Declines For Third Consecutive Month In August - 09/19/2022

More data about the softening media economy at least on the ad side.

Search Thriving: Least Likely To Be Cut From Ad Budgets - 09/19/2022

As the general ad market softens, there will still be areas - like search - that are resilient.