#24 - Mobile Friction

In many markets, the smartphone is by far the most important device with which people consume news. That use brings expectations that publishers clearly haven't quite mastered yet.?A?new subscription benchmark report?by analytics company Piano?shows that though they make up 65% of digital audiences today,?mobile visitors convert at a much lower rate — 19.7% compared to 42.4% for desktop users.?One reason for that? Mobile users are much more likely to?abandon checkout at the first sign of friction. Moreover the user experience, communication, pricing and promotion are set up for?desktop rather than defined for a mobile context of distraction.

This and more in this week’s Wayfinder!

IN FOCUS

This week in Copenhagen, over 301 attendees from 36 countries gathered for the?INMA Media Innovation Week.?On the background of an increasingly difficult media environment, insights and challenges about transformation and innovation were exchanged.

Check out:

• The outlook of INMA CEO Earl J. Wilkinson
• All the presentations from the summit in one place. (behind log-in)
• And a good round-up by the colleagues of Twipe.

AUDIENCES

A good?new piece of qualitative research from the Reuters Institute & Craft?looks at young people’s relationships with the news. "Young people do not need to ‘seek’ news, it often comes to them in snippets, by happenstance.?Algorithms and aggregation are as, if not more, important than conscious content choices."

Better understanding and controlling your editorial mix so it matches user needs?should be a core concern for newsrooms according to David Sallinen. The founder of Upgrade Media analyzed 330,000 headlines from 37 daily regional media outlets, shared on Facebook and found that there is a mismatch on numerous occasions between the volume of articles published and the expectations of the readers.

PRODUCT

The News Product Alliance announced an exciting new Mentorship Program?matching 150 emerging product thinkers with news product professionals.?Mentees can look forward to gaining knowledge and increasing their understanding of news product.?Applications are now open!

The Telegraph has?launched a new interactive puzzles website?access to which costs ￡3.99 per month and which it says?"marks the start of a wider digital transformation" of its puzzles portfolio. A new standalone app is due to launch later this year.

SUBSCRIPTIONS

A growing number of publishers are?breaking apart and repackaging existing subscription?features in an attempt to extract greater revenue from their content and audiences –?moving away from broad, catch-all products and instead offering multiple subscriptions?designed to service the needs of more targeted and granular audience segments..

And the WSJ reports that?month-to-month churn is becoming a normal part of the streaming age.?Apparently the film and TV streaming market is only getting tougher as audiences get in the habit of signing up, watching a show, and then?canceling once they’re done.

SHORT

A?huge 'ad tech' class action legal case has been brought against Google?over its technology powering online adverts which consumers view on news media. Lawyers?seeking up to €25 billion in damages from publishers across Europe?claim the US tech firm deprived the media of revenue through its 'anti-competitive conduct'.

• Leaked Instagram report reveals that Reels isn’t really working.
• TikTok launches TikTok Now. Basically it is just a copy of?BeReal.
• Audiobooks are soon coming to Spotify.
• Twitter is still the place where media publishers collectively have the largest audiences.
• Unicode 15 will bring 31 new emoji's to your screen.
• Disney is in the early stages of building an own ‘metaverse’.

AI

I wrote about it last week and the genie is clearly out of the bottle.?More and more applications of generative AI are being added, especially now that one of the players, Stable Difussion, has open-sourced its code and video-editing tool Runaway teased?an AI-powered text-to-video editing using written prompts.?The result may be a soon-to-com fake-news nightmare because?no one is keeping a close eye on what the technology can be used for.

Related:?A good piece by Ben Thompson?on?how creative AI breaks open the final bundle.?Suddenly the costs of making something become almost zero - only those who really have originality and create value will be able to make a difference.

And Mattia Perreti, from the Journalism AI initiative shares?10 things you should know about AI in journalism.?A good primer if you are new to?the use and potential of AI in the newsroom.

TOOLS

Imagine if?audio stories or podcasts you listen to could adapt to your surroundings.?To the time of day you’re listening to them, whether it’s light or dark outside; or if they could stretch or contract in length to fit with how long you’ve got to listen. The BBC launched an experimental tool and app to do just that as part of a their exploration of?the future of personalised podcasting.

And social media analytics company Hootsuite has released a very useful guide to Social Media Marketing Tools for 2022. Aimed at marketers but a recommended read for any newsroom social media manager.

READ

Toby Shorin, founder of Other Internet argues that the era of life-style brands is over. Brands are no longer trying to fit into the cultural contexts of consumers rather they are shaping culture itself. Products have become secondary, auxiliary, to the production of culture and belief-systems. Fascinating, although it is very long, even for my taste.

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Ezra.