—and other ideas on the new realities in advertising, publishing, and subscription marketing
As the philosophy of clickbait has given way to a business model based on subscriberbait, paywalls have nursed the New York Times back to health, given marginal voices a bully pulpit, reinvigorated journalistic entrepreneurship, blunted the ad man’s power and provided a stream of revenue that allows editors to plan long-term coverage. But… Full article »
The beloved Out of Town Newsstand that has long been part of Harvard Square’s heritage is going out of business. The display of magazine titles from around the world is giving way first to a six-month popup and then to a tourist information bureau, yet another reminder of the fading magazine industry. But new business models are emerging that, if not proven, are at least promising and important to study. Full article »
Local publishers may not believe that they are competing with the Times, but the Times believes it is competing with them. Its rich-get-richer dynamic increasingly provides all the news that’s fit to subscribe to, while publishers both national and local fall further behind. Competing with the energized leadership of a dominant and implacable Times will require leveraging networks, rethinking how content works in a paywalled universe, and unlearning some of the lessons of the open internet. Full article »
Churn is an inevitable fact of life for subscriptions business. You need to keep attracting customers because you will lose some of your customers. This can become acute, as highlighted in a leaked report out of The Wall Street Journal that calls to mind The New York Times Innovation Report of 2014. The authors fret that for all the rah-rah talk of new subscriber numbers, there were sometimes more people dropping off as subscribers than joining at the Journal. Full article »
Media has always influenced people to consume stuff — that’s why companies advertise. Over the past 20 years the world loaded a gigantic product catalog onto the internet, ironed out the process of payments, fulfillment, and service. Now we move from media to checkout with a click. The two businesses, always close neighbors, are now existentially connected — like you and your in-laws. It changes everything. Full article »
One of the news industry’s favorite retention tactics is illegal, the FTC says. The new guidelines around “negative option marketing” — which includes everything from automatic renewals to free trials that convert to paid subscriptions if consumers take no action — go beyond mandating that companies offer straightforward cancellation. Full article »
Unless you’re writing a story in which the context makes it dead obvious, reserve the word “subscribers” for people who actually pay a media company money. Call the people who get a free email “email subscribers” or “newsletter subscribers,” not just “subscribers.” Full article »
Northwestern University’s new Medill Subscriber Engagement Index highlights the need to identify at-risk digital subscribers and find effective ways to reach out to them, from friendly emails to targeted social media to onboarding them better in the first place. Full article »
