The Axios Sports newsletter recently hit a major milestone: 100,000 subscribers, up nearly tenfold in less than nine months. But this is not just growth for growth’s sake, said Ernesto Arrocha, associate director of growth and engagement at Axios, which publishes just under 20 daily and weekly newsletters. Its sports newsletter maintains a 42% open […]
A successful article at HuffPost doesn’t have the most traffic – it has the most traffic from loyal readers with the highest engagement time. HuffPost overhauled its audience strategy last year to super-serve its most faithful readers and increase their numbers. The publisher is also diversifying its revenue through subscriptions. In April, it soft-launched a […]
If all goes according to plan, America’s two largest newspaper chains will become one by the end of the year. Earlier this week, New Media Investment Group, parent company of GateHouse Media, announced its intention to buy USA Today publisher Gannett in a deal valued at $1.4 billion. If antitrust regulators approve the merger, GateHouse […]
NBC News, whose portfolio includes Today.com, CNBC and MSNBC, doubled the clickthrough rate (CTR) on its branded content when it used tech that fine-tuned distribution of the content on its sites. The branded content tech, Polar, automatically tested different pairings of headlines and images, optimizing how it pulls readers into a story, and automating more […]
Hearst is building a self-serve ad platform so advertisers can overlay their audience data against Hearst’s to reach readers across sites like Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Elle and Car and Driver. Designed for smaller advertisers, the platform – dubbed Hearst Audience Select – is slated to launch in time for Q4 ad campaigns. Audience Select will also […]
Creative automation is proving to be just the ticket as StubHub earmarks more of its marketing budget for video. Historically, StubHub has spent a lot of money successfully on lower-funnel tactics, such as paid search and retargeting, to encourage ticket sales. But there’s a lot more to performance than simply pointing in the direction of […]
Slow-loading ads are still a perennial problem for publishers. Wise Publishing, a Toronto-based publisher of personal finance content with around 5 million monthly unique visitors, acquires a significant portion of its traffic through paid channels. But if an ad loads slowly and a visitor leaves, so does that monetization opportunity. “Dealing with latency is incredibly […]
CalMatters reports nonpartisan, in-depth stories about California state politics on a nonprofit budget – and it needed a tech stack to fuel that vision. The site is shifting this week to use a suite of publisher tools bundled together by The News Project. Founded last year, The News Project wants to serve the wave of […]
Brands must be ubiquitous across platforms to remain relevant to their consumers. That requires producing content consistently and quickly – a trick publishers know well. Gallery Media Group, the media umbrella within Gary Vaynerchuck’s holding company, VaynerX, aims to help brands solve their content needs by applying its distributed media playbook across Fortune 1000 clients. […]
The digital advertising business ain’t easy – just ask any traditional publisher. But there are bright spots. The New York Times had its best year last year for ad revenue – $709 million – in the roughly 15 years since print writ large really started to suffer, said NYT COO and EVP Meredith Kopit Levien, speaking Tuesday at […]
Dotdash, a top destination for millennial women, lacked bridal content. So the digital publisher, which rebranded from About.com in 2017, purchased Brides magazine from Condé Nast Wednesday for an undisclosed sum. The 85-year-old magazine will fit well into Dotdash’s verticalized online portfolio, said CEO Neil Vogel. Dotdash’s properties are each devoted to specific categories like […]
Publishers of all sizes are cutting ties with programmatic resellers. Just as buyers are employing supply-path optimization to eliminate exchanges that provide little value, publishers are removing ad tech intermediaries that clutter their setups or harm monetization. By working with fewer partners, publishers are prioritizing control over their ad setup and site experience over the […]
College-age consumers shouldn’t be too hard for advertisers to find, since many are, not surprisingly, on college campuses. But most college newspapers don’t have a systematic way to sell their inventory. Student-run outlets generally have reps to pound the pavement, visiting small businesses – their bread and butter – one by one to drum up ad […]
Hearst Magazines named Mike Smith as its first chief data officer Thursday. When Smith joined Hearst in 2013, he introduced programmatic to its sites and oversaw programmatic buying. As chief data officer, Smith will oversee data use in programmatic campaigns, branded content, direct sold campaigns, sales operations and editorial. “When Troy [Young] became president of […]
Meredith’s overall Q2 ad revenue grew like gangbusters, but digital ad revenue performance was draggy – and will likely be the same next quarter, the company told investors Monday. Advertising-related revenue nearly doubled year over year to $488.9 million – a 111% increase – and digital represents more than $400 million of Meredith’s revenue for its national media […]
The battle between buying audiences and buying context is over. Glossy, splashy magazine brands know they’ve lost the cheap CPM game to Facebook, Instagram and Google. But they’ve regrouped in recent years, figuring out how to connect with advertisers and consumers and shore up revenue by diversifying away from advertising. At Tuesday’s American Magazine Media […]
While some of digital media’s biggest stars and flashiest names make big cuts to make their businesses profitable, others are weathering change just fine. The difference? They’ve always focused on sustainable growth and profitability. Venture-backed companies typically made three key mistakes, according to these publishers. First, and most importantly, they grew costs before revenue. Second, […]
Lately, one of the most popular pieces of apparel worn by professional football players and coaches is a t-shirt featuring NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell wearing a clown nose. It’s a blatant sign of disrespect, and a popular way for people to signal their opinion of the unpopular NFL exec, particularly after he makes a controversial […]
The New York Times once worked with thousands of advertisers, but it’s now narrowed its focus to the top 100 global brands. “The business is shrinking in terms of the overall number of advertisers, as there are more places to do longtail advertising,” said Sebastian Tomich, global head of advertising and marketing solutions at The […]
BuzzFeed, Verizon Media and Gannett all had layoffs this week, as the media business struggles to find its way in a digital climate. Over 1,000 jobs went away. BuzzFeed laid off 200 people (15% of its staff), Verizon Media laid off 800 people (7% of its staff) and Gannett laid off more than two dozen […]
Does the world need yet another tech company to combat malvertising on the internet? “Well, do you still constantly see malvertising when you browse the internet?” said Seth Demsey, co-founder of Clean Creative, an anti-malware company started by a handful of security experts and Oath vets who exited before the name change. Touché. Based in […]
Facebook will distribute $300 million across multiple news projects over the next three years to support local newsrooms and help publishers create new business models, the platform announced Tuesday. Donations include a $5 million endowment gift to the Pulitzer Center, $6 million for the UK-based Community News Project and a $20 million expansion of Facebook’s […]
Don’t tell Paul Slavin that book sales are stagnant. Slavin is the CEO of Open Road Integrated Media, a digital marketing company founded in 2009 by HarperCollins global CEO Jane Friedman. “When we put a book in front of somebody, when we market that book, you will see it grow,” said Slavin, who became chief […]
In the past year, advertisers on The New York Times have bought ads with increasingly sophisticated targeting parameters, such as “adventurous” content, stories about to go viral or brand-safety keywords. To make that in-depth content targeting possible, the Times built its own ad tech – Alice, shorthand for ad library service – a year ago. […]
Verizon will take a $4.6 billion goodwill impairment charge in the fourth quarter, acknowledging that its Oath business unit has underperformed, the company said Tuesday. The hit nearly eliminates the $4.8 billion goodwill balance Verizon carried after it acquired and merged Yahoo and AOL and assorted technology holdings into its Oath business unit back in […]
Condé Nast will execute its turnaround with a new leader. Its longtime CEO Bob Sauerberg is departing after 18 years with the company, including eight in the top spot. He’s leaving just months after he announced a turnaround plan for the publisher of Vogue, Wired and The New Yorker that would see it diversify away […]
In-market auto is one of the most prized data segments – and it’s notorious for being inaccurate with artificially large scale, which makes it emblematic of the problems with third-party data. First-party in-market auto data, however, is another story. VerticalScope, which operates over 600 niche automobile sites about various car makes and models, knows what […]
Two years ago, the Timehop app – which aggregates and resurfaces old social media photos – was running on the remaining fumes of its VC cash, enough to stay afloat for just three months. It needed revenue, and, although it had 20 million monthly active users, its inventory was severely undervalued. “We had no real […]
A dozen local news publishers participating in Facebook’s Local News Subscription Accelerator, including The Denver Post and the Minneapolis Star Tribune, flew to New York, Austin and San Francisco this spring for a 12-week program to learn the intricacies of running a digital subscription business. Facebook has had strained relationships with publishers, which hit a […]
As more people use smart speakers, publishers are establishing their own voice. News organization Al Jazeera is exploring how to position its brand on voice, which it believes will be the gateway to an internet-of-things-driven world, said Michael Weaver, SVP of business development and growth at Al Jazeera Network. “Voice assistants are the first entry […]
