#52 Media Trends & Innovation
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AI IN MEDIA
The Financial Times warns the U.K. government against watering down copyright law to help AI companies
The U.K. government is currently consulting on proposals to introduce an ‘opt-out’ copyright regime for AI companies which would automatically permit the tech businesses to scrape publisher and creatives’ content from the web unless those rightsholders explicitly forbade it. (Source: Press Gazette)
Google adds digital watermarks to images edited with Magic Editor AI
Google will be using SynthID to mark relevant images. Created by Google’s DeepMind division, the feature “embeds a digital watermark directly into AI-generated content, without compromising the original content.”?(Source: Tech Crunch)
Perplexity’s Super Bowl ‘tweet’ increased app installs by 50%
Unlike OpenAI and Google, the AI search engine chose to forgo an expensive Super Bowl ad in favour of a tweet — sorry, an X post — encouraging users to download its app and enter a contest that could result in a $1 million win. Vew users had to ask at least five questions on the app during the big game. Perplexity’s app increased its mobile app installs by roughly 50%, according to data from app intelligence provider Appfigures.?(Source: Tech Crunch)
GitHub Copilot brings mockups to life by generating code from images
Among the notable updates includes a feature called Vision for Copilot, which allows users to attach a screenshot, photo, or diagram to a chat, with Copilot generating the interface, code, and alt text to bring it to life. So for example, someone on a marketing team could take a screenshot of a web page and illustrate some changes they want made to that page. Rather than requesting such changes via text prompts, it’s now possible to upload an image and just ask Copilot to implement the changes as indicated in the file.?(Source: Tech Crunch)
BUSINESS MODELS & PERFORMANCE
At Le Monde, digital subscriber revenue will pay for the newsroom within two years
The French daily newspaper and online newsbrand ended 2024 with 660,000 subscribers, of which 580,000 were digital. (Source: Press Gazette)
The Financial Times quadrupled its email subscribers (“the biggest driver of reader engagement”) in four years
FT head of newsletters, Sarah Ebner: (newsletters) were being used solely as an engagement tool and as part of our loyalty strategy. But we’ve started using them more for acquisition as well and had a lot of success with that…I would say our most successful newsletters are the big personality newsletters that our readers value. The metrics for those are not traffic to the site or traffic at all. They are read in your inbox, with amazing bespoke exclusive content. (Source: Press Gazette)
A third of New York Times subscribers do not pay for its news product
In its full-year results for 2024 The New York Times Company reported ending the year with 10.8 million digital subscribers — an increase of 1.1 million compared with the end of 2023. Of those 10.8 million subscribers, 3.5 million (or 32%) subscribed only to either its Games, Cooking, Wirecutter, Audio or The Athletic products. Another 1.9 million had a conventional news-only digital subscription that provides access past the nytimes.com paywall and a further 5.4 million had either an ‘All Access’ bundled subscription, which buys access to all the Times’ products, or some other mix of NYT subscriptions. (Source: Press Gazette)
The Sun launches ￡1.99 paywall for premium online content
The move follows falling website traffic to The Sun website apparently partly in response to the way platforms like Google and Facebook refer people to the site. (Source: Press Gazette)
Dow Jones reports a rise in revenue and profits
The move follows falling website traffic to The Sun website apparently partly in response to the way platforms like Google and Facebook refer people to the site Dow Jones & Co., the parent of The Wall Street Journal, reported a 3% increase in revenue and a 7% increase in profits in the second quarter due to gains in subscription revenue. (Source: Talking Biz News)
DAY-TO-DAY OPERATIONS
Independent media in Russia and Ukraine lose their funding with USAID freeze
“We risk losing the achievements of three decades of work and increasing threats to Ukraine’s statehood, democratic values, and pro-Western orientation,’ Detector Media, a journalism watchdog, said in a statement on its website.” According to Detector Media Nataliia Lygachova, more than 50% of Ukrainian media receiving foreign grants depend on US funding.?(Source: The Washington Post)
Millionaire accused over 2017 murder of Maltese journalist freed on bail
A millionaire businessman charged with the 2017 murder of the Maltese anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia has been released on bail with no date set for his trial. The family of Daphne Caruana Galizia condemn delays in bringing Yorgen Fenech to trial after arrest in 2019.?(Source: The Guardian)
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