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Why some of the largest publishers are breaking up with ad tech middlemen — digiday.com

I just wrote a tl;dr post for Spiny Trends that touched on this subject. It references a Press Gazette article that said both The Telegraph and The Independent have cut back ad counts for the sake of their readers (and their first-party data).

The thrust of this Digiday piece is exactly that - how publishers are winning and retaining more subscribers by shielding audiences from the low quality advertising. Seb Joseph rightly says that, a few years ago, it would’ve been unthinkable for a publisher to leave money on the table from an tech vendor. But he points at Bloomberg ditching content recommendation engine Taboola to support its ‘audience first’ mentality.

This chimes directly with The Independent’s Jo Holdaway telling Press Gazette that she thinks putting less ‘weight on the page’ will deliver a better user experience, better engagement and, probably, more revenue. Here's to the ad-tech shake out.

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Ben Smith says it will take 10 years to get Semafor right. — www.vox.com

Here's some post-launch Semafor chat between Peter Kafka of Vox and Semafor's Ben Smith. Kafka doesn't pull his punches, but Smith is up for the fight. Well worth a read/listen if you have any interest at all in the ongoing discussion around how to fix some of the things that are unarguably wrong with online media.

Twitter is losing its most active users, internal documents show — www.reuters.com

Underlining the challenge faced by Elon Musk in making his Twitter takeover work, the number of 'heavy tweeters' has been in "absolute decline" since the pandemic began, according to an internal researcher. These super users account for less than 10% of monthly overall users but generate 90% of all tweets and half of global revenue.

Axios’ Sara Fischer joins CNN as on-air media contributor — www.adweek.com

Don't worry, Sara isn't leaving Axios, she'll still be doing her weekly media newsletter. But she will now also be commenting on the media beat for CNN as an on-air contributor. It might be tough commenting on both Axios and CNN stories cross-channel, but congratulations Sara!

This week's podcast:

Newsletters are finally growing up: how publisher email strategies evolved in 2022 — voices.media

One of the oldest digital delivery systems of all has continued to dominate industry headlines in 2022 as publishers rethink the way they work with email newsletters. This week we're joined by Adweek's Senior Media Reporter Mark Stenberg to explore newsletter trends, from worldwide readership to how creators are driving publisher strategies.

Media Moments 2022 — voices.media

There's just over a month until we're setting loose our annual report on you all. If you'd like to pre-register to get it as soon as it's live on Wednesday 30th November, you can sign up here. It's excellent bedtime reading 😉