Friday 18th September: LA Times and Condé Nast on diversifying your revenue stack

September 18, 2020

Good morning, TGIF! Today's Media Roundup is brought to you by Peter.

I absolutely love the idea of revenue stacks. I'm immediately thinking about Scrooge McDuck diving headlong into the piles of gold coins. Luckily this piece from FIPP's Virtual Congress is way more practical than that image would suggest.

Focusing on the numbers, Lee Fentress, VP: Business Development at the LA Times wants smart publishers to start to thinking more seriously about unit economics. His starting point is to know what a piece of content costs and its potential is to generate revenue.

That could mean advertising and subscriptions, but also commerce. "If you are already selling subscriptions to your audience it is not out of the realm to also sell more products to them,” said Fentress.

Markus Grindel, MD for Global Licensing at Condé Nast UK, agreed, explaining how merchandising continues to grow as part of Condé Nast’s strategy to increase consumer revenue. He pointed out what we sometimes forget - media companies know how to advertise, sell products, and have access to consumers. Build that stack!

After six months running his paid newsletter, Simon Owens is focused on the the value exchange that a paid subscription model brings - high quality, niche content in return for a longterm relationship with his audience, and some of their cash. He says success comes from differentiation, clever calls to action, sweat equity and a willingness to play the long game.

Australian media's battle with Google continues. News Corp has accused the tech giant of misleading regulators to avoid paying for news content. "It is obvious that the figure of $10m is incorrect", News Corp Australia has said in a 93-page submission to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

In an open letter to Apple chief executive Tim Cook, the world’s leading media and advertising trade bodies have urged the iPhone-maker to talk to them about its plans to introduce opt-in requirements for tracking. Apple has already delayed the update until next year, but the ad industry still has 'widespread questions and concerns'.

This week's podcast:

This episode Josh Schollmeyer, co-Founder & Editor-in-Chief of online men’s magazine MEL, takes us through working at the legacy print behemoth Playboy, why that convinced him men’s magazines needed to change and the branded media business model that is at the heart of MEL’s success.

We are accepting entries for the second year of the Publisher Podcast Awards. The deadline for submissions is Friday November 27th 2020, but why wait? Enter now, it’s FREE!!!