Digiday Publishing Summit 2024 recap! Overview: Publishers are facing down the latest existential threats - the one-two punch of GenAI scraping and SEO upheaval - with a blend of grit and resignation, like the heroes in a post-apocalyptic desert epic (“Mad Max: The Open Web”). Overheard: “Is it even organic traffic anymore?” OUT: Metered paywalls. IN: Dynamic paywalls Also IN: Knowing thyself and focusing on thy niche. Exhibit A - Punchbowl News via founder Anna Palmer: “Capitol Hill is not the sexiest place, but billions of dollars go through that building.” The brand has 100% penetration on the Hill, a list of 180K, and rev that's +100% YoY. Heck. Yeah. Exhibit B - Axios via CRO Jacquelyn L. Cameron: Even as the overall news audience is “splintering into different bubbles,” the brand's dogged focus on “Smart Professionals” and “influencing the influencers,” is working: Fourth quarter is closing the gap of a tumultuous CY24, and she reports 3X as much revenue pre-booked for 2025 today, as it was in Sept 2023. Love to see it. Overheard: “All of these vendors, but no one can solve native ad insertion in emails.” And not display ads, or modules that look like display ads. You get it. Bloomberg Chief Digital Officer Julia Beizer says Instagram is driving subs conversion. Also, on performant talent-fronted content that drives ad AND sub rev: “This is a marketing channel I make money on vs spend on.” ←The new math of holistic oversight. Praise be. Business Insider Chief Subscriptions Officer Katie Friedman is seeing success with a dynamic/intelligent paywall (via vendor): Conversions are +60% on content once deemed “non-premium.” Kedar Prabhu of Dow Jones, who is building and buying AI tech to support Ad Ops (with early success), IDs the essence of great media planners: “They can make clients happy.” Thus, those humans will be staying in this loop. S/O to some of the GOATs in this department Colin Sparaco Adam Zakrzewski All over: Programmatic in every shade and hue Barely mentioned: Commerce, Substack, TikTok, DIRECT SALES Vendors who got on my radar: SCUBA, Viafoura Bottomline: Thanks to the leaders who shared knowledge, and the Digiday moderators who asked for receipts. Nothing but love for our industry, and the brilliant folks who are riding the desert caravan in the name of its ultimate survival.
new bar for conference wraps
Power re-cap!
Product Innovation and Market Development Leader, 10x Award, 2x M&A. ex-Conde Nast, ex- Accenture, ex Firework
2moHelpful for those on that bootstrap budget right now (me) and couldn't attend =) although I missed the most important part...the people!