How Singapore Press Holdings manages its product portfolio - audio, e-paper and a photo marketplace PLUS

November 15, 2022

WAN-IFRA covers the product portfolio and process at Singapore Press Holdings, the establishment powerhouse in the city-state's media world. It is a concise overview of how a product executive from the tech sector has successfully applied research and internal stakeholder engagement to develop a successful portfolio of products. It is well worth reading and saving this piece to your favourite read-later app.

WAN-IFRA also has an excellent report on publishers' plans for newsletters. In their survey of publishers, 82% plan to launch at least one new newsletter this year, and they see a range of reasons for doing so including increasing engagement and driving subscriptions.

Meta's layoffs, which have hit their news partnerships teams hard, but the response amongst news organisations shows the polarising views about Meta's social media platforms and the company's support of journalism initiatives.

Publishers are a lot less pessimistic about subscription revenue going into this period of economic uncertainty, according to Digiday research.

That and a lot of industry news in today's newsletter.

2022-11-14. How does the audience come into play when a news organisation builds a product? Matching user needs with product functionality and commercial aspects is no easy task.

SPH (Singapore Press Holdings) hired away an amazingly talented chief product officer from Asia's 'super app' Grab, which offers not only rides and deliveries but also financial services.

"'It is essential to not only empower your employees, engage your customers, build new products, and optimise your operations, but to be extremely strategic, intentional and systematic about it,' said Gaurav Sachdeva, Chief Product Officer, SPH Media, Singapore."

"Meta had the resources at its peak to do incredible things. Not just the dollars, but the encouragement to think of the best outcome possible, to make the biggest impact we could."

The response to these reports has highlighted the divide in journalism these days in terms of views about Facebook. In speaking with larger legacy publishers, they have grown more sceptical of the platforms over the past few years, but for smaller, more digitally focused publishers who have benefited from Facebook's largesse and training, they have expressed how they will miss that support.

Newsletters are an old tool that continue to be relevant. Many publishers across the world are using innovative newsletter strategies to drive traffic, grow subscribers, as well as generate ad revenue. A new WAN-IFRA report presents multiple case studies featuring actionable insights for publishers looking at launching new newsletters or improving their existing strategies. In …

A survey by WAN-IFRA found that 82% of respondents plan to launch at least one new newsletter in 2022. The motivations publishers cited were to increase engagement, grow audience and convert users to paying subscribers. Interestingly, about half - 48% - said that they do not monetise newsletters directly.

Publishers are clearly pessimistic about how the economy will affect their revenues from ad sales, but there is significantly less pessimism about how subscriptions will fare, Digiday+ Research found.

there are plenty of signs of economic stress from the cost of living crisis to a return to pre-pandemic habits that is challenging the growth stories of tech firms, but with the rise of the subscription economy, publishers are not as nervous as they would be if they were overly reliant on advertising. This downturn will be a good test of the resilience of subscriptions as a revenue source.

Have you got an audience in Europe? Here is what you need to do to be compliant

Privacy regulators used to be lax about enforcing cookie regulations when publishers simply wanted to improve their websites, but that is changing. And this will have an even greater impact as publishers pivot to first-party cookies as the major platforms limit the use of third-party cookies.

SEO is beyond a technical problem, it’s also a user experience problem.

A look at work by Ryan Restivo to create a bot that will help newsrooms with SEO and workflow.

Social Media Today

A summary of guidance from SEMRush on how to forecast SEO.

Axel Springer’s Mathias Döpfner wants to be an old-school press baron for the digital age, part Murdoch but also part Musk. And still very German.

I am surprised that it has taken US media this long to wake up to the role that Axel Springer's Mathias Döpfner is playing in media seeing as how active he has been with M&A in US media. But he definitely has media reporters attention now.

Social commerce debuts for the holidays

Social Media Today

Social Media Today

Regulators continue to target platforms

Under the agreement, which state attorneys general said was the largest U.S. internet privacy settlement, Google must also make its location-tracking practices clearer to users.

Google takes another one on the chin in doing battle with regulators.

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.

Canada is following Australia's lead in forcing digital platforms to pay publishers for linking to their content.

"For $8, they’re potentially losing out on millions of dollars in ad revenue," said Amy O’Connor, a former senior communications official at Eli Lilly who now works at a trade association.

One has to wonder where the responsibility is for this. With Twitter largely dependent on ads, it won't take long for the verification fiasco to put a hole below Twitter's waterline.

TV networks are losing viewers and advertisers at an alarming rate while streaming services are hemorraging billions of dollars.

It was during the height of the pandemic that we were talking about the golden age of TV, or at least video, as content on the small screen exploded with offerings from several streaming services and also improved in quality. That golden age may be dimming.