#10 - The Power of 'Light Data'
Never before has so much data been available in the newsroom. Dashboards, reports, overviews. Publishers need it to understand how they can grow traffic and revenue. But more data does not necessarily equal better results. In a new whitepaper paywall solutions company Piano explores the challenges faced by businesses banking on data for growth. The report encourages businesses to work with “light data”: data that you know how to use and that you can exploit and maintain with the resources you have at hand.
This and more in this week’s Wayfinder,
IN FOCUS
News product roles and the news product concept are still novel in many news organizations. A new series of guides by the News Product Alliance and News Catalyst are looking to grow the product practice in news organizations starting with 4 guides:
- An overview of newsroom roles and responsibilities and how product fits in.
- An introduction to product development terms and methods.
- How to explain product in a newsroom and get stakeholder buy-in.
- A guide for aligning strategic planning with newsroom mission and values for product teams.
REVENUE
A one dollar offer is driving The Boston Globe’s subscription success. It took newspaper seven years to reach the first 100,000 subscribers but only ta year to add the next 100,000. They’ve found that the key to accelerating growth is an introductory subscription offer so low, they’re practically giving the news away.
On April 20 Mather Economics organizes a free online 'Monetize Your Content' forum. Leaders from Grupo Folha, Mediahuis, and Crain Communications will be covering how best to optimize your products and content to capture maximum revenue
And journalism professor Damian Radcliff continues his '50 ways to make media pay'-series with a good overview of subscription approaches.
SEARCH
Given the multitude of changes since its launch in 2002, surfacing in Google News search results requires a greater degree of expertise and finesse than ever before. This article brings you up to speed with the most up to date practices for search engine optimization (SEO) in a constantly evolving landscape.
The Association of Foreign Press Correspondents in the US has put a video tutorial online on how to best utilize Google Trends to connect with and understand digital audiences and keep up to date on online search trends.
And here is a great collection of tools and websites to help you stay up to date on trending topics, social trends, and viral media.
AUDIO
The new Infinite Dial 2022 is out: unveiling the latest research in digital audio, social media, mobile, smart speakers, and podcast consumption in the US. Something that caught my eye: For the first time monthly podcast listening is going down.
A study commissioned by the Guardian looked at the effectiveness of podcast ads and found they command the highest levels of attention of any media channel. The research showed that 65% of listeners paid attention to podcast adverts, way more than TV or radio adverts which both fell under 40%.
PLATFORMS
EU institutions have reached a final agreement on the DMA - The Digital Markets Act - intended to rein in the power of Big Tech. The details are enough to fill a whole newsletter but it's worth mentioning that it might improve access to data, interoperability and yes, maybe even remuneration of rightsholders.
Google will allow Spotify it's own in-app payment option in a new pilot. Users who’ve downloaded Spotify from the Google Play Store will be presented with a choice to pay with either Spotify’s payment system or with Google Play Billing. For the first time, these two options will live side by side in an app.
SHORT
- SXSW was in person for the first time in three years. Here is a round-up.
- Google announces a new round of the Google Podcasts creator program.
- Snap plans to turn every public space into an AR experience.
- Instagram will add NFTs in the ‘near term’.
- Apple might sell the iPhone as a subscription service
- And Adobe presented its vision and tools for the metaverse.
READ
The Reuters Institute published their annual factsheet on people of colour and leadership in the news media. Ther results are not encouraging. Only 21% of 82 top editors across 100 news outlets in 5 countries are non-white. And ‘None' of the outlets in the sample in 2021 had a non-white top editor in Brazil, Germany and UK.
And here are 10 commandments for creating business value with artificial intelligence based on the experience of 30+ AI leaders in The Netherlands.
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That's it for this week. As always tips and suggestions are welcome and if you like the selection you can recommend Wayfinder to colleagues and friends!
Ezra