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How publishers are growing subscribers by serving specific audience segments: Lessons from WAN-IFRA — whatsnewinpublishing.com

This one takes a while to digest, so grab a cup of tea and settle in. WAN-IFRA sits on a treasure trove of publisher insight, and it's unearthed some of that here for a report into how newspapers are growing their overall audience by focusing on the desires of subsets. The report, "Understanding your audiences in a deeper way", is yet another antidote to the idea that chasing scale for its own sake is a viable and stable business model.

The report is particularly explicit about the need for clever targeting of user interests in local news publishing: "All news enterprises – especially local ones – battle for the scarce time and attention of the people they hope to serve. Success comes only when the news and information provided makes a difference to people’s lives where they live. Publishers can’t do that by serving 'general content for the general public.'"

This WNIP write-up pulls out some insight from individual publishers contained within the report, so it's well worth your time. The most important thing for publisher business models, however, is that a spray-and-pray approach to growing audiences simply doesn't work - and that revenue is grown through focusing on smaller audiences' needs.

Exploring the potential – and threat – of the media metaverse — digitalcontentnext.org

I mentioned in this week's episode (see below) that I was worried publishers' need for new audiences would cause them to overextend into the metaverse without tangible ROI. In this longer-form article for DCN I elaborate on that - but also explain why there's an early-mover advantage to being in the metaverse space for publishers.

Google adopts a new cookie replacement following privacy concerns — www.axios.com

Not long after German publishers launched an official complaint to the EU about Google retiring cookies, the search giant unveils a new plan. Based on FLoC trials, the new solution allows advertisers to target users online based on select topics - Fischer flags "fitness" or "travel" - that a user is likely to be interested in.

Neil Young asks Spotify to remove music over vaccine disinformation — www.rollingstone.com

Sooner or later Spotify is going to have to face up to the fact that it is a publisher, and just as responsible for the comments made by its podcasters as newspapers are for the remarks of their columnists. Fines, regulation, or opprobrium from singer-songwriters will come for us all one day.

This week's podcast:

The Content Marketing Association MD Rob John on content marketing’s role in publishing — voices.media

This week’s guest is Rob John, MD of the Content Marketing Association. He discusses what the CMA does and who its members are, how content marketing might fit within a publisher’s revenue mix, and the panel they’re running at The Publishing Show in London in March.

Buy the Media Voices team a virtual coffee — ko-fi.com

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