Merry Christmas from Media Voices

December 21, 2022

Good morning! With Christmas falling right at the end of this week, there have been some great things published since our last edition that we didn't want to miss out on sharing, so we've done a quick list below.

Following the news that Revue, our newsletter platform, is closing, we also just wanted to say we'll be moving to another provider when we re-start in January. It may look a little different and we'll almost certainly be making some tweaks. Of course we always welcome feedback on what you do and don't like ([email protected] gets all three of us). In terms of receiving the newsletter, we hope you won't have to do anything. But do keep an eye on spam boxes if you haven't heard from us for a few days come Jan.

It's been a rollercoaster of a year for us, but after our summer letter, we've had some advice and help which has been a real game-changer. We've got some exciting plans for the new year including a practical automation report with United Robots, the Publisher Podcast Awards in April, our next season of the podcast, more writing from the team, and (fingers crossed) a new community platform.

If you would like to get involved with Media Voices as a guest, sponsor, contributor or other collaboration, we're always open to chatting. Sponsorships are a key revenue stream for us and help keep us doing what we're doing, so if you're interested in seeing our info pack or would like to find out more about working with us, we'd love to talk.

Thank you for all your support and for continuing to read The Media Roundup. Have a lovely Christmas, and see you in the New Year!

Esther, Peter and Chris

Some good links from this week:

A new report from National Research Group and Toolkits explores the current state of subscriptions in the space of digital publications. It shares the latest subscriber behaviour data and insights on how publishers can attract new subscribers and retain existing ones.

Some strong but very much needed words in this. I could pick out many favourite quotes but will leave this one as a teaser: "Gone was any acknowledgement that journalism has a duty to stand up to power and to hold a lens up to society, not just broadcast the circus".

With Meta going all-in on the metaverse, Instagram relentlessly cloning TikTok and Twitter in chaos, the days of reliable social media publishing strategies are over. This is the latest roundup of the year in platforms as part of our Media Moments 2022 report.

From FT Strategies’ advice for setting up an effective framework for a subscription model, to case studies about experimentations from the Irish Times and audience diversification at the Hamburger Tageblatt, there is a lot to be inspired by.

Google and Meta are expected to bring in less than half of all U.S. digital advertising this year for the first time since 2014. Amazon is rapidly catching up, but so are other smaller ad markets, which together are starting to put pressure on the duopoly's dominance.

Peter went on journalism.co.uk's podcast to talk to Jacob Granger about four big movers of 2022: advertising, subscriptions, trust and newsletters. While ad revenue has made a bounceback from the covid crash, subscriptions look to take a hit amid the cost of living crisis.

Vice Media is expecting to miss a 2022 revenue goal by more than $100 million, a blow for the new-media company as it pursues a sale. The company presented a revenue target of over $700 million at an off-site with senior employees earlier this year. The expected shortfall would leave Vice with around $600 million in revenue for the year, roughly flat compared with 2021.

Reach has increased its efforts to connect with younger audiences with the launch of a new social-first brand, Curiously. It's an interesting time to be building a brand solely on social media platforms, but at least there's a limit to how many ads they can pack on a page...