#MediaRevenue - David Clinch

Welcome to my weekly review of all things #MediaRevenue.

I spent part of this week visiting news publishers in New York, and these discussions affirmed my belief that three pillars are needed to secure a sustainable #MediaRevenue business strategy:

—Reader Revenue: It is more important than ever to own your own audience and “retention is the new acquisition” in the sense rhat Search and Social are broken so you need to retain and monetize your existing audience as a priority.

—Advertising: Build new AI-powered processes to enable selling advertising against contextual targeting and attention time at far higher CPM rates.

—AI: Whether or not you have, or hope to get, a content licensing deal with an AI company, you need to build safe and scalable use cases for AI technology in every part of your business now, but only tech to support journalism, not replace it.

If you need more detail on any of these three categories, or the media technology solution that I recommend in each area, let me know via email: [email protected]

Here are some of the interesting #MediaRevenue stories from this week:

For news publishers and tech sites looking to both entice and engage users, games are serious business.: For media companies, games are a way to attract new customers as their sites face declining traffic from Google, X and Meta, which have backed away from emphasizing news. For tech companies with editorial offerings, the puzzles are a way to entice new subscribers while engaging existing users who may not return to the apps daily. - New York Times.

‘Devastating’ potential impact of Google AI Overviews on publisher visibility revealed: The dramatic impact of Google‘s AI-written summaries on search result visibility for publishers has been revealed through exclusive new research. A Press Gazette-led investigation has found that AI-written summaries were returned for nearly a quarter of news-related search queries in mid-May in the US, with the result that organic links to publisher articles were pushed far down the page. - Press Gazette.

How we’re moving forward with the Canadian news ecosystem: Today, we’re announcing that we have reached an agreement with a collective that will be responsible for distributing our $100M CAD1 annual contribution to those news businesses identified through the open call we ran earlier in the year. - Google Blog.

Dark money news outlets outpacing local daily newspapers: The number of partisan-backed outlets designed to look like impartial news outlets has officially surpassed the number of real, local daily newspapers in the U.S., according to a new analysis. - Axios.

Conservative Cable News Channel Newsmax Wants to IPO: The conservative cable news channel Newsmax is planning to go public, and is also seeking to raise as much as $225 million in a private placement, in a push to expand its presence in both cable TV and in streaming. - Hollywood Reporter

Perplexity was planning revenue-sharing deals with publishers when it came under media fire: Perplexity, the AI search startup that recently came under fire from Forbes for allegedly misusing its content, was already working on revenue-sharing deals with high-quality publishers. Perplexity has not announced the details of those partnerships, but the company aims to unveil its plans soon, the company’s chief business officer, Dmitry Shevelenko, said. - Semafor.

Artifact’s DNA Lives on in Yahoo’s Revamped AI-Powered News App: Artifact, the news app startup from Instagram’s cofounders, was purchased by Yahoo earlier this year. The web giant then used some of Artifact’s AI smarts to supercharge its own mobile news app. - Wired.

AI news reader Particle adds publishing partners and $10.9M in new funding: news-reader startup Particle is teaming up with publishers to seek out a new business model for the AI era, where AI summaries of news don’t have to mean lost revenues. The startup, built by former Twitter engineers, offers a news-reading app that helps readers understand all angles of the story by leveraging AI to summarize news from across a range of publishers. - TechCrunch.

Washington Post aims to boost local coverage: Sir William (Lewis) and co. are floating an idea called "Local+," a new offering for readers who want to pay extra for premium local content, sources tell me. The nascent idea includes building a subscription model with premium newsletter(s) and "exclusive experiences" for locals. - Axios

Morale plummets inside The Washington Post as staffers express alarm over publisher’s attempts to squash story: At The Post, according to more than a half-dozen staffers who spoke with CNN Thursday, morale has fallen off a cliff since Lewis abruptly ousted Executive Editor?Sally Buzbee?on Sunday. “It’s as bad as I’ve ever seen it, truly,” one staffer said Thursday, noting that The Post has hit “rough patches” before, but that the stormy atmosphere hanging over the Washington outlet is unprecedented. - CNN.

Business Insider’s Peng on how AI and Google have changed web traffic: Our new AI-powered smart paywall is driving 75% more subscriptions than our legacy hard paywall. - Talking Biz News.

In 2023, nonprofit news continued to grow — but the audience picture is more complicated: While the sector is still growing, that growth is slowing, by some metrics. And audience data for 2023 shows that across all outlets surveyed, average monthly web traffic fell. - Nieman Lab.

How newspaper giant Mediahuis aims to reach 70% digital revenue by 2030: They are calling it the 7-7-7 strategy: “to go from 70/30 to 30/70 in seven years. And if we are there by 2030 then we can say that we are a digitally sustainable company.” - Press Gazette.

AP, SHORTTOK TO DEVELOP ADVANCED AI-POWERED VIDEO CAPABILITIES: The Associated Press and ShortTok today announced they are working together to integrate AI-powered content discovery and video curation into AP’s news production. - AP Blog.

New York Times Union Urges Management to Reconsider 9 Art Department Cuts as Paper Ramps Up AI Tools: The New York Times Guild is urging management to reconsider cutting 9 of the 16 positions from its art-production department, expressing concerns over what the union says amounts to an AI-based replacement, according to an internal memo obtained by TheWrap.?