Trends in Subscriptions: News Corp extends deal with Apple News PLUS The MediaPost says that the subscription trends point to metaverse business models

February 04, 2022

Today's headlines highlight how dominate a few players have become in the digital advertising space and how many traditional players are seeking to optimise their subscription and reader revenue strategies.

While much of the focus over the past decade was the rise of the duopoly in digital advertising - Google and Facebook - those two companies are not the only digital players raking in cash. In the past year or so, I've see a few stories talk about how Amazon is adding another pillar to its business model, advertising, and now the e-commerce giant has clearly become a major player in the digital advertising space.

In addition to that, there is a story about how digital media companies are split on a bill working its way through the US legislative process. The issue is between smaller publishers and the larger players in the US market.

With the platforms commanding such a dominant position, publishers have shifted to focusing on subscriptions and other revenue directly from consumers. In the early 2000s, it was not uncommon to see major US publishers to earn 80% of their revenue from advertising, and most of the publishers that are surviving or thriving have shifting either to a 50/50 split or an inversion of 80/20 split from earlier in the century. That's why News Corp is extending and expanding their deal with Apple News and why major US newspaper publishers such as Lee (being hunted by the Alden vampire squid fund) are pushing hard to grow their digital subscriber base.

However, one thing I always watch is to what extent digital players are already in these subscriptions spaces, providing competition for time, attention and money. MediaPost has an interesting piece about how subscription options in Instagram may pave the way for the business models of the metaverse, which Facebook's parent company Meta has bet its future on.

PLUS LION - the local independent news publishers group in the US - has launched a newsletter targeting their core membership group of small local news publishers. Snap's stock is struggling mightily in 2022, but they seem to have solved some of the issues that Meta hasn't with respect to digital ad targeting and Apple's privacy changes in the latest version of iOS.

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Amazon's advertising services unit is larger by revenue than the advertising portion of Microsoft, as well as total revenue for Pinterest and Snap.

Alden Global Capital, the company’s hedge fund antagonist in an ongoing hostile takeover fight, characterized the results as ‘disappointing.’

Here’s what we learned from our 2021 reader survey, and how we’re using it to shape what comes next for LION's newsletter.

A proposal aimed at giving news publishers the power to bargain with dominant tech platforms over the distribution of their content is dividing media groups, with some advocates arguing the proposed solution could actually hurt small and

The Subscription Trend May Hint At Future Of Metaverse - 02/02/2022

The developer of the Snapchat app signaled it is adjusting to disruptions in the digital-advertising market caused by Apple’s privacy changes, and its shares rallied after hours.