Publishers on Instagram’s video ad-revenue sharing: “We’re getting nothing” PLUS Four reasons why micropayments won’t work

February 15, 2022

Digiday has a couple of great pieces today. The first looks at a project by the Local News Consortium to improve the performance of advertising, and the NewsPassID worked well in cookieless environments such as Apple’s Safari and Google’s AMP sold at higher CPM rates up to 90% and at higher volume. It’s good news that the revenue improvement that publishers saw coming out of the pandemic is durable particularly in the higher-privacy environment.

Another Digiday piece looks at Insta’s video ad-revenue sharing scheme. The results are much less positive with publishers reporting that “it’s not something that moves the dial” or “we’re getting nothing”. I think this is another example of the need for publishers to be very clear about the ROI on social. Yes, the audience can be there, but there are a range of challenges to converting the attention that you might get there into revenue to support your business.

Simon Owens critiques the micropayment platform. The strategies often called iTunes for News face significant challenges. The argument that resonates the most for me is that news is very different from a song. I will listen to song over and over, but the shelf-life of most news articles is very brief so that price point that I would be willing to pay are far below 99 cents.

Jacobs Media has an interesting piece about upcoming research from people in the radio industry about the challenges and opportunities that they see. One thing that stands out was their mention of two years of audience research done at The Atlantic. Jacobs boiled it down to this:

• Why do people seek you out?

• What do they get out of the time that they spend with you?

PLUS Canadian media wants to follow the example of Australia and get Google and Meta to pay news publishers by the end of June. The struggles of web pioneer Slate. A non-profit newsroom in the US shows signs of success.

Most publishers remain wedded to their subscription models and show no appetite for offering a micropayments alternative.

The identifier boosted the value of impressions, even in environments that accepted cookies, by a minimum of 45%.

Last year Instagram finally opened up a video ad-revenue sharing program for publishers. However, the financial floodgates are far from open.

Solutions and action steps to help radio's Alternative format find a pathway to success in 2022.

A good piece on the challenges facing radio in the US, particularly public radio and alternative stations. It also includes a good overview of research done by The Atlantic about their audience.

The Austin American-Statesman will remove its monthly article limit for nonsubscribers, its editor announced.

Readers "who aren’t yet subscribers" of statesman.com and hookem.com will no longer be limited in the number of articles they can read in a 30-day period.

The Statesman wi…

After high-profile departures, the publication is trying to find a new voice.

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 CEO has changed the world – but he faces regulatory, technological and branding troubles in his push to do it again

Newsletter signups went up 60% following the news startup's wall-to-wall coverage of the Marshall Fire. "We will not survive if we’re not meeting the information needs of our community. It’s not a side project we have. It’s just who we are."