Tuesday 20th July: Most publishers will miss out on digital subscriptions revenue

July 20, 2021

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Writing in Press Gazette, Axate's Dominic Young compares the task of growing a digital subscription business to the tribulations of Sisyphus. He is doomed to push a boulder up a hill only for it to roll back down at the top. Publishers face a similar fate in trying to build and retain sustainable subscription businesses.

He illustrates this with a mildly depressing statistic: Only 28 English language news sites in the world have over 100,000 subscribers; 21 of those are in the US; and three account for more than half the total number of subscribers. And, he says, the challenges of tiny conversion rates and a shrinking market act as blocks on future growth.

As head of micropayment platform Axate, Dominic has an axe to grind. But that doesn't change the fact that an article-level payment mechanism might be worth serious consideration as an alternative to monthly subs. And to sweeten the pot, Dominic adds newsletters distribution as an interesting wrinkle in the the micro-payment debate.

We led on this piece from Wolfgang Blau in this week's podcast and I'm re-surfacing it here because it feels like an important moment in the conversation about climate journalism. It draws parallels between the all-hands on deck approach that media took to COVID coverage with the specialist approach to climate reporting. The bottom line is that to properly cover the climate crisis, everyone needs to tackle the issue as part of their beat.

We were talking about the complete absence of audio tweets in our timelines this week, then I read this about the rise of shortform audio networks. It seems several startups are subverting the Clubhouse trend and ditching longform conversations for sub 90-second audio clips. The rise of audio messaging might play into this, but I'm seriously unconvinced.

Synthetic media or deepfakes are not uncommon in Hollywood where the technology is used to dramatic effect. But using deepfake technology to simulate Anthony Bourdain’s voice in the new documentary Roadrunner has raised some ethical issues for journalists and documentary filmmakers. Fictional fakes are one thing, but it looks like news fakes demand a conversation.

This week's episode:

In this episode Future’s chief audience and ecom officer Aaron Asadi tells us about where the ecommerce function sits within Future, how it relates to audience development, and creating content for affiliate ecommerce revenues across a huge range of brands.

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