Friday August 7th: Bringing in the money from virtual events

Happy Friday! Today's Media Roundup is brought to you by Esther.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been speaking to executives at the Financial Times, The Atlantic and Bloomberg about their virtual events strategies in this piece for DCN. Specifically, I wanted to know how revenue generation was going. It's something many publishers have struggled with as sponsors showed initial reluctance to get on board with virtual events, and ticketing for audiences has been a grey area.

All three publishers had evolved their initial offerings, from getting MVP sessions done in March to evaluating what worked, what didn't, and what to do as it becomes increasingly clear few will be doing physical events this side of the year.

With many stories like this, it's tempting to say 'What the heck are we supposed to learn from publishers like these?' Few have the global scale of the FT or the resources of Bloomberg. But within their responses are lessons we can all learn and bring to conversations with sponsors. It comes down to confidence in the quality of your audience, what value your virtual event is bringing attendees, and evolving if necessary.

Long stints at home plus surges in free time and digital consumption have shaken up ingrained behaviours. We're spending a lot more time watching TV, and Disney+ chose a fortuitous time for its UK launch. The big question will be how many of these habits stick as life slowly claws its way back to normal.

Talking of habits returning to normal, a piece from us here at Media Voices looks at whether publishers should be considering putting more resources into magazine subscriptions, or whether it's a short-term trend which will fade as restrictions ease. We'd love to hear your thoughts on where publishers should be investing post-COVID, either on Twitter or by replying to this email.

News UK claims it has audiences to compete with social-first publishers like LadBible and Jungle Creations, and is bringing in the revenue to prove it. With marketing budgets frozen, publishers are experiencing an uptick in shorter-form, quickly completed social branded content campaigns. This one makes my head spin...happy reading!

Every day's a throwback:

I remember this being the toughest edit I ever had to do as Richard spoke for a solid 1.5 hours about the ad industry and publishing. Fortunately for you, I distilled it down to around 25 minutes. Listen to him talk about what easy publishing online means for quality publishers, their Ad Quality Charter, and more.

Sorry Elvis, but we're looking for more conversations not less. We don’t accept ads in our weekly episodes, but if you're a media vendor and you want to reach our audience, you can sponsor a Conversations episode. THANK YOU VERY MUCH 🙏🏻