Friday 31st May: Talent and brands will win out in a world of infinite content

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The Press Gazette Future of Media Awards celebrate the best websites, podcasts, newsletters and commercial innovation in news media. They are FREE to enter and the deadline for submissions is 14 June.

Here’s a cheery interview to end the week on. Sean Cornwell has been CEO of Immediate for nearly a year now, and has spoken to Press Gazette’s Charlotte Tobitt about their strategy since bringing all their niche and specialist titles under the umbrella of a new company, Our Media, which has now been sold.

Now, they’re focused on three “mega verticals” of food and nutrition, entertainment, and knowledge. Cornwell is betting that two things will help them stand out in an infinite-content world: brand recognition, and talent.

It’s an interesting contrast to what we’ve so often heard (and preached) recently that those thriving are in niches. Immediate’s big brands are still thriving in print, the podcasts are now a 7-figure business and they have more digital subscribers than ever before.

⭐ We’ve got three Immediate Heads taking to the stage at the Publisher Podcast & Newsletter Summit on June 12th talking about video podcasts, premium podcasts, and newsletters for conversion & retention. Want to hear them live and ask questions? Be there!

A great write-up of one of the sessions at Newsrewired last week, featuring Journo Resources’ Jem Collins, The Telegraph’s Maire Bonheim and The Times’ Henry Bird. Different newsletters require different metrics, curation strategies and frequency of output. Publishers need to test and learn to see what works best, or adjust according to wider contexts. If this piece is up your street, Jem and Maire are both speaking at the Publisher Newsletter Summit. Be there!

The number of hours Brits spend listening to podcasts has grown 139% between 2018 and 2023, according to data from the BBC shared at The Podcast Show. Some fascinating stats here but in short, everything is growing, and there’s still a vast way it can grow yet. Here’s yet another opportunity for a shameless plug of the Publisher Podcast Summit happening the week after next. Be there!

I can’t find a way to shoehorn a Summit plug in here…! But my goodness me if you’ve missed the complete mess that’s been made of Google’s AI Overviews launch, from seriously advising eating rocks and putting glue in pizza, this is a great summary. But as tempting as it is to jeer at the seeming incompetence of AI, as I was reminded recently, it’s only going to get better. And that has consequences for us all.

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