Business Models

07 Nov Business Models

THE PUBLISHER AS A PAID CONTENT PROVIDER

THROUGH ALL the other economic troubles that publishers had to face through the pandemic hit years of 2020 and 2021, it was also a golden age for digital subscriptions. Traffic and interest in news surged as people turned to trusted sources for information in uncertain times, and they proved they were willing to pay for quality journalism. It was a moment, a perfect storm, that seemed to accelerate years of steady growth In digital businesses. People were used to paying for subscription services like Netflix and Spotify and had the time and money to take on more. In 2020, subscription revenue for publishers grew 16%, according to a study by subscription management platform Zuora, while another report by Piano, a competing subscriptions manager, indicated that their largest clients saw an increase of almost 58% in subscribers over the first year of the pandemic. These subscribers also seemed to stick around for longer. One year into the pandemic, 43.6% of post-pandemic subscriptions were retained vs. the pre-Covid average of 40%.

The key question however, is how long this trend can hold. Toward the end of 2021 we already started seeing growing signs of pandemic fatigue and people logging off from digital consumption habits. Writing for The Fix in March 2022, Jakub Parusinski noted that “the past few weeks have seen huge drops from such companies as Netflix, Meta (a.k.a. Facebook) and the home fitness equipment maker Peloton.” The latter in particular seemed to tell a larger cautionary tale about how business models built on pandemic-era digital consumption habits were perhaps set for a worrying decline. The competition for people’s time and money is just becoming much more intense.

So what are the key trends over 2022 and what do they presage for the coming years? Some industry reports, like FIPP’s Global Digital Subscription Snapshot Q2 2022, sound an optimistic note, “When we look at the latest set of data,” writes James Hewes, President and CEO, FIPP, “the real headline takeaway is that publishers seem to be chugging along at a healthy post-pandemic rate.”

The FIPP report covers 121 individual titles with a global reach of 37.8M subscriptions. Though there has been a sense in the industry this year that the global exit from lockdown could have prompted a significant drop-off in publication subscriber numbers, the report notes that so far this does not appear to be the case.

The 2022 Digital News Report from The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, paints a more sobering picture. Despite increases in the proportion paying for online news in a small number of richer countries (Australia, Germany, and Sweden), the report notes, there are signs that overall growth may be levelling off. Persuading young people to pay remains a critical issue for industry, with the average age of a digital news subscriber almost 50.

Moreover, a large proportion of digital subscriptions go to just a few big national brands – reinforcing a winner takes most dynamic that the report has pointed to in previous iterations. In the United States and Australia however, the digital news report found that the majority of those paying for news, taking out more than one subscription. Definitely an encouraging trend.

---

WHO IS FOR? We reiterate that this business model is for everyone and that reader revenue should form at least 40 percent of a successful publishing business. The primary impetus remains to ensure that you have journalism worth paying for. Then you have to look for ways to build deeper connections with your audience so that they are more willing to open their wallets, and continue paying. Focusing on reader revenue after all, isn’t just about bringing in more money; it also enables a publisher to create a higherquality, better-performing product. However, it is worth thinking about whether charging for digital subscriptions is the only way to achieve this, especially given that the bigger publishers In the U.S. and Europe continue to take more of this pie. A number of medium-sized and smaller outlets are also finding significant success with attractive membership offers, seeking reader payments without the pressure of a paywall.

CHALLENGES If previous years brought with them the challenge of retaining subscribers who had taken the plunge during the Covid years, the biggest challenge that news organisations have to deal with now is disengagement. The Reuters Institute Digital News Report, which is based on data from
six continents and 46 markets, finds that Interest in news has fallen sharply across markets, from 63% in 2017 to 51% in 2022.
“Meanwhile, the proportion of news consumers who say they avoid news, often or sometimes, has increased sharply across countries. This type of selective avoidance has doubled in both Brazil (54%) and the UK (46%) over the last five years, with many respondents saying news has a negative effect on their mood,” the report notes in its summary. “A significant proportion of younger and less educated people say they avoid news because it can be hard to follow or understand – suggesting that the news media could do much more to simplify language and better explain or contextualise complex stories.”

Combine this with a recent July 2022 report from Axios which finds that engagement with news content has plunged during the first half of this year in the U.S. compared to the first half of 2021, and in some cases has fallen below pre-pandemic levels. Americans, the report says, have grown exhausted from the constant barrage of bad headlines that have replaced Trump-era crises, scandals and tweets The scope and scale of the challenge is thus clear: in order to sustain the momentum gained over the last two years news organisations have to understand younger audiences, how they consume news and in which formats and structures. There also needs to be greater diversity in the types of stories being reported.

THE PUBLISHER AS A DATA MINER

THIS IS A REVENUE MODEL that is growing in importance, and as an imperative for publishers to pursue, as the impending end of third-party
cookies is coming in 2024 when Google phases them out on its Chrome browser. Remember that Chrome alone accounts for over 65% of the
global desktop browser market share.

The demise of third-party cookies is a big win for online privacy but is a difficult proposition for the publishing industry. Because they track user history and serve up relevant ads, third-party cookies form the backbone of programmatic advertising. A survey by the International News Media
Association (INMA) in April 2020 for instance, revealed that 85 percent of news executives said their online ad revenues depend on thirdparty
cookies.

There have been murmurs, most recently at the 2022 Cannes LIONS festival, where numerous industry insiders felt that the ad tech industry was too discombobulated for thirdparty cookies to be dissolved in the near future. “New estimates ranged from 2024 to 2028, with one influential exec telling us that he “wouldn’t be surprised if it never happened”’, according to reporting from What’s New in Publishing. But rather than rely on a deferral publishers should see this time as a golden opportunity to remake the digital ad market in their favour.

The key is in prioritising the collection of first-party data. Publishers have a direct relationship with their audiences and can collect information directly from their readers, listeners and viewers. This is invaluable information that can be used internally to build better products and plan revenue strategies, but also offered to advertisers. Both media companies and brands want to target and build relationships with actual people. What third-party data held by others offered instead was aggregations layered upon each other to create customer attributes rather than people. There may be a loss of scale initially, but scale never brought in the ad dollars it promised anyway.

Even as the tech industry debates what kind of system might follow third-party cookies, we find that a number of publishers have been thinking proactively about how they mightapproach the collection of data for the future.

INSIDER – SAGA Insider launched its first-party data platform in early 2020 and spent much of that year getting advertisers comfortable with their product. In 2021, over 140 advertisers ran ad campaigns on Insider using Saga data, up from 48 the previous year, the publisher told Digiday. While many of those were first-time customers, a significant percentage were not. What’s more, the advertisers that bought ads from Insider using
Saga had a renewal rate of 48%, and the amount of money those advertisers spent on average tripled, according to a company spokesperson.

On the whole, the amount of revenue Insider generated on campaigns using Saga rose 175%, from a not-insignificant base. “We went from
millions to tens of millions [in revenue],” said Jana Meron, Insider’s SVP of programmatic and data strategy. Above and beyond these very impressive numbers, Meron said that Saga is now being used by different parts of the Insider’s organisation for a number of different initiatives, including audience extension projects designed to drive subscription growth.

JP/POLITIKENS HUS The Danish publisher also developed its own proprietary first-party data platform in 2020. Describing the platform for an INMA report, the company said it organises data into segments, creating buckets of interest, then does audience profiling. How much do they interact, and what are they interacting with? The publisher then tries to get as much descriptive data as possible, asking them questions as they log in about gender, age, and more. JP/Politiken offers 600 audiences/segments for direct and programmatic buying and saw a 70% increase in audience segment sizes by utilising first-party data.

SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST

The Hong-Kong-based publisher launched its first-party data platform Lighthouse in 2019 to better understand its users and provide advertisers with the tools necessary to target audiences with greater precision. Speaking at an INMA conference in July 2021, Ian Hocking, vice president of digital at South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, shared the amazing range and types of data that Lighthouse could offer as audience segments. These were:
1- Preference: A long-term attribute unlikely to change.
2- Opinion: Current way of thinking, which might change based on circumstances.
3- Sentiment: The positive, neutral, or negative feeling about an article.
4- Intent: Declared action to do something.
5- Behavioural: A predictable, usual way of being.
6- Interest: Declared passion for something.

WASHINGTON POST – ZEUS INSIGHTS The Washington Post developed a first-party data ad targeting tool called Zeus Insights in 2019 which is licensed out to publishers and allows them to utilise first-party reader data to sell highly-targeted adverts The platform monitors contextual data such as what article a person is reading or watching, what position they have scrolled to on a page, what URL they have used to arrive there and what they’r clicking on. It currently has over 200 publishers who are at various stages of using the Zeus platform.

---

WHO IS FOR? Any publisher who collects data on their readers can create first party data. Building out a sophisticated system of audience segments to which advertisers hover, would require a large enough reader base as well as some sophisticated data science teams. One way around the potential costs involved is to form publisher collectives to pool resources and share data. Publisher collectives along these lines have already been formed in Germany, Switzerland the Czech Republic.

CHALLENGES Words of caution once again from the Reuters Institute Digital News Report which finds that most consumers are still reluctant to register their email address with news sites. “Across our entire sample, only around a third (32%) say they trust news websites to use their personal data responsibly – comparable to online retailers such as Amazon – and the figure is even lower in the United States (18%) and France (19%),” the report notes. Publishers have to work out ways of getting audiences to part with data while still keeping it a careful and considered process.
Smaller publishers will also feel that they cannot compete in this realigned advertising world. “Without third-party cookies and targeting, they don’t have the scale to compete,” said Fran Wills, the CEO of the Local Media Consortium, a trade group that negotiates preferred rates with vendors and platforms for over 5,000 local news publisher sites in the U.S, told Digiday in an interview. “They aren’t necessarily engineers or digital experts, nor do they have the time or the resources to keep up.”

THE PUBLISHER AS A CLUB
ANOTHER REVENUE MODEL that is gaining in importance and relevance as publishers look to bring in reader payments without going the paywall route. The Covid-19 years accelerated several trends in media that were already evident for years, chief among them being the willingness for people to pay for trusted journalism that brought them clarity in uncertain times. But, as we have recorded previously, figures for overall globalsubscriptions tend to skew toward the bigger global giants like The New York Times, reinforcing the winner takes most trend that the Reuters Institute Digital News Report points out. Couple that with findings showing that, in the face of rising household bills this year, several respondents are rethinking the number of media subscriptions they can afford, and you can see why there is an imperative to reframe the idea of reader payments.
Paywalls can be “blunt force instruments” that may not work for all publishers, Justin Eisenband, a mana ging director in FTI Consulting’s telecom, media & technology Industry group, told Digiday in April 2022. Could we be seeing a significant shift then, toward the membership economy?

EXAMPLES

VOX
Digiday similarly reported that Vox, which launched its contribution program in the spring of 2020 “to mitigate the pandemic’s impact on the advertising business,” has grown its total number of contributors by 40% from March 2021 to March 2022, according to Blair Hickman, executive director of audience strategy at Vox. “It has become clear this has the potential to scale up and become a meaningful part of our business,” Hickman said, though most of Vox’s revenue, however, still comes from advertising.

GAZETA WYBORCZA (POLAND)
A membership experience can also work to supercharge a subscription package. The Polish publisher Gazeta Wyborcza has a premium package that allows readers access to a range of digital content, but it was the launch of Wyborrcza.pl Club that has played a transformative role in the growth of its subscriber base to about 280,000.
Membership to the Club allows direct contact with the newspaper’s editorial team including participation in online meetings. “We know that for many of our subscribers
“Wyborcza” is something more than just published articles. It is a strong bond and a sense of belonging to a community of like-minded people who believe in democracy, human rights, tolerance and the European Union. But also those who are curious about the world, rather kind optimists, who love good books and movies and their little homelands. These readers discuss on our forum, write letters to us, come to meetings. And our Club is for them.,” Bartosz Wieliński, deputy editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza, told What’s New in Publishing.
The results have surpassed expectations, with live meetings attracting anywhere between 300-1,500 people, with many more watching retrospectively ‘on demand’.

---

WHO IS FOR
You need to have a brand that your audience believes in and trusts. And most importantly, your product has to be strong enough across all platforms to foster a sense of mission and connection. Of course, it would also help to generate a robust list of ‘added value’ benefits so that subscribers have preferential access to relevant events, premieres and/or discounts across a range of services. A successful membership or support model also requires a proactive marketing strategy to ensure that readers are satisfied and willing to renew their memberships or keep making donations.

CHALLENGES
If opting for a donations based approach like The Guardian, the inherent challenge is that contributions can be unpredictable. It’s no coincidence that The Guardian is now also testing out a metered paywall on its news app as its financial position with reader revenue strengthens. For other types of membership plans, figuring out a feasible engagement strategy with readers for your organisation can take a lot of trial and error.

EXAMPLES

WASHINGTON POST – ARC XP
Axios reported in June 2022 that The Washington Post is looking to double down on its investment in its tech publishing arm, Arc XP, despite outside sales interest valuing the company in the low nine figures. Arc XP is a cloud-based digital platform that helps a range of companies publish and make money from their content online.
Though it operates as an arm of The Post, it is conveniently hosted on Amazon’s own cloud computing services. A 2021 post from the publisher noted that Arc XP had grown rapidly, establishing itself as an industry-leading, cloud-based digital experience platform. “The platform now powers more than 1,900 sites around the world, reaching over 1.5 billion unique users each month,” The Post noted.
“I personally think that in the long run — and by long run, I mean, three, four years, not 15 years — Arc XP will be the biggest source of revenue for the Post, and certainly the most profitable source of revenue for the Post,”
Shailesh Prakash, chief information officer at The Post, told Axios. Reportedly, Arc XP brings in roughly $40-$50 million in annual recurring revenue. Coupled with its affiliated ad buying and ad rendering platform, Zeus Technology, Arc addresses the entire range of technology needs for digital publishers, from production to monetization. The Post has been licensing its technology to other news organisations since 2016.

AXIOS
In February 2021, Axios launched a softwareas- a-service business called Axios HQ, which developed into a seven-figure software licensing business within a year, according to Digiday. “Axios wants us to read everything in bullet points”, reads a catchy headline in The New York Times, profiling the company and its rapid growth. And indeed that’s what Axios HQ does – it is designed to teach companies how to write with Axios’ trademarked editorial style of “Smart Brevity” for internal communications. After just eight months, according to Digiday, HQ has earned over $1 million in software licensing, which starts at $10,000 for an annual contract, and is projected to hit $1.5 million by the end of the year. To date, as per the Difiday report of October 2021, 30 clients have paid for these services in addition to the software licensing, some paying upwards of six figures for an
annual contract.
“I view this as, ‘Can we be a Bloomberg? Can we have a terminal business and a news business?’ In our case, we would have this communication business and a news business,” Roy Schwartz, Axios’s co-founder and president, told Digiday. Through Axios HQ, Axios provides licensees with email templates for different types of memos (currently there are six templates available); an AI editing program, similar to Grammarly, that provides suggestions for succinct and thoughtful phrasing; and analytics software that tells senders info about any given email sent through the platform, like open rates and engagement.
Currently, HQ has 150 clients, many of which fall in the expected category of smallto mid-sized companies, but also includes blue-chip companies, like Delta Airlines, local governments, and even educational institutions, like Austin Independent School District, which uses HQ to communicate with parents, students and staff.

THE GLOBE AND MAIL, CANADA – SOPHI
After almost eight years in development, Canada’s The Globe and Mail launched Sophi, its homegrown artificial intelligence startup in 2020. Two years and several awards later,
Sophi is one of the most exciting software solutions for the news industry. The Globe and Mail has been using the software to place content as the AI has been trained to understand what belongs where on the website and updates pages with stories that warran increased promotion. Sophi can also help automate print layouts.
Most impressive perhaps, is that Sophi runs a real-time, personalised paywall that considers the content a reader has consumed and understands when to ask a reader for money versus an email address — and for that matter, when to leave them alone and ask fornothing.
Globe and Mail’s chief executive, Phillip Crawley, told Press Gazette that Sophi drives much of the news publisher’s recent subscriber success — the paper now generates 70% of its revenues from subscriptions. Sophi has put itself in position to be adopted by several publishers. More than 50 titles spread across 11 different publishers have already adopted Sophi.

---

CHALLENGES
Sophisticated technology comes at a cost that many publishers may not be able to afford. As the Wall Street Journal reported, “Lining up customers who are willing to pay six- and seven-figure sums for publishing technology may be a tall order in a digital media industry where many players are struggling to meet their financial targets.” Selling outside of media is an excellent option for the select few who can produce sophisticated tech.

THE PUBLISHER AS A BRAND LICENSOR

WHEN A PUBLISHER’S brand has high intangible value, it can be worth licensing the name to other related products or services to bring in income. This could take the form of the publisher lending their name to events or even entering the retail space by creating its own line of consumer products. This direct-to-consumer approach is growing ever more important as media companies around the world move away from traditional forms of advertising. Leveraging insights from first-party data can be key to creating these
partnerships.

EXAMPLES

HEARST
Hearst launched a line of Country Living Magazine-branded mattresses in late 2021, the first product in a multi-brand licensing partnership between Hearst Magazines and Idle Group, which specialises in bedding and home furnishing categories. Digiday reported that it’s the first line of many as more products are slated for rollout later this year tied to data insights from other brands like Women’s Health and Men’s Health.
Hearst’s first-party data showed that its readers are willing to pay for expensive items — and make these big purchases online. Hearst Magazines’ print and digital assets reach nearly 165 million readers and site visitors each month, according to Hearst. “Our affiliate channel data was helpful in selecting categories, as was just watching consumer behaviour on our websites,”
Sheel Shah, VP of partnerships and consumer products at Hearst, said. “For us to get involved in a deal, we lean on our first-party data to make that decision.” “This partnership with the Hearst brands is an interesting combination of performance marketing data, and brands that already have brand equity and customer bases,” Idle Group’s founder and CEO Craig Schmeizer, told Digiday.

PLAYBOY
After Playboy announced back 2020 that it would no longer be selling print editions of the magazine, many wondered where the brand might go in an era of #MeToo and a completely different social climate. FIPP reports that since then, the 40-year-old brand has acquired TLA Acquisition Corp in a bid to further expand into wellness, as well as bolster its brand portfolio, digital commerce, and direct-to-consumer product sales capabilities.
Playboy’s current e-commerce offering includes an online shop with a huge range of branded clothing and other items, and there have been successful collaborations too, such as its Playboy x Missguided collection.

REAL SIMPLE, MEREDITH GROUP
Real Simple, a Meredith magazine, recently announced the launch of Real Simple handbags in partnership with television shopping channel QVC, in a brand extension inspired by Real Simple’s mission to simplify busy modern lives. “This line was created to help women across the country move effortlessly from the grocery store to the office to their best-friend’s birthday party,” said Liz Vaccarello, Editor-in-Chief, Real Simple.

This is just one example of Meredith’s slew of licensing and branded content offerings of which it is a pioneer. Inspired by its Better Homes and Gardens gardens magazine, it has a product line that is at more than 3,800 Walmart stores in the U.S. The products range from seasonally driven products in all major home and gardening categories to linens, towels and home décor.

---

WHO IS FOR?
Brands who have a high recognition factor and credibility high enough to constitute a seal of quality can licence their brand name to develop new products and services. In many countries, media companies have sufficient brand awareness and cultural relevance to achieve this.

CHALLENGES
Creating branded products can isolate a publisher’s ad partners that operate in those areas, as Business Insider pointed out in a 2017 article. It is also crucial to choose your products and partners wisely: there is no guarantee of success.

THE PUBLISHER AS AN EDUCATOR

On their reputation of expertise to offer various classes and courses to their audiences. Interest in online courses offered by MasterClass and Coursera surged during the pandemic years, making this a smart use of journalistic experience and a trend that publishers could exploit. Tie-ups with universities and other digital education companies are also being explored as viable options.for publishers.

EXAMPLES

THE ECONOMIST
The Economist launched its Executive Education pillar in February 2021 as a growth initiative that would allow it to leverage its journalists’ deep knowledge and understanding of global issues. The education sector itself is vast, and there are many routes publishers could take. Writing for Digital Content Next, Esther Kezia Thorpe notes that The Economist decided to focus on its existing audience, and tailor its courses to highly qualified senior executives. “We’re already catering to the needs of mid-career executives who are upskilling, and that’s our target audience for our courses,” Fionnuala Duggan, Executive Director of Education at The Economist Group Media, told her.

Courses currently on offer include International relations: China, Russia and the future of geopolitics; Professional communication: business writing and storytelling, and Fintech and the future of finance. Digiday reported that since the first course was introduced in May 2021, over 900 participants have joined with a 97% completion rate and 96% satisfaction rate. On top of this 73 countries have been represented with the courses earning well over 1 million in the first year.

The Economist decided to focus on quality over quantity, Thorpe notes in a fascinating piece about what The Economist’s push into education can teach other publishers. Each course runs for an average of six weeks, and requires between 6-8 hours a week from participants.

They contain a mix of writing, infographics, video, audio and links. Each is led by a head tutor alongside a team of tutors who guide students through each week.

Further, The Economist decided to take a guided approach with scheduled start and end dates rather than run on-demand courses because it offered a higher quality experience.
Having tutors that can answer questions, stimulate discussion and provide feedback helps participants get more out of the courses, which underpins the value of the four-figure price tag. One key part of the publisher’s approach has been separating the focus of this pillar from the rest of the business. Although there is a great deal of collaboration between the departments, their approach is different. “We’re not in the media business,” Duggan is quoted in the article.
“We’re in the business of education. But we’ve benefited enormously from all the things that The Economist and The Economist Group has.

”THE FAMILY HANDYMAN

The American home improvement magazinelaunched a suite of online classes called DIYUniversity. “More than just your average how-tovideo, DIY University offers curated onlineworkshops in home repair and renovationdeveloped by experts with easy to understandstep-by-step instruction,” the site says.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
In late 2020, the publisher launched its first free, course-style newsletter, the Six- Week Money Challenge, to help people with their finances, followed by a six- week Fitness Challenge with exercises to do at home. Given the success of those campaigns with click rates and bringing in news audiences, the publisher decided to launch another newsletter- based education program in June this year. The five-part course on stock investing is written by the columnists of Heard on the Street, The Wall Street Journal’s financial and economic analysis column.

ROLLING STONE
From 2020, Rolling Stone worked with Yellowbrick, IndieWire and New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts to launch a course around film and TV. Rolling Stone is now working with Yellowbrick on another course focused on writing. Before working together, Rolling Stone was “figuring out” how to engage with students who wanted to learn about the Film and TV industry. “The more a business like ours can offer compelling ways to engage online with our content and our brands — we are always looking to pursue that,” Gus Wenner, president and COO of Rolling Stone told Digiday

---

THE PUBLISHER AS A RECIPIENT OF PHILANTHROPY

PHILANTHROPY IS A GROWING source of revenue for newsrooms, even outside of the US where it has traditionally been strong. In 2021, Press Gazette tallied up the amount of funding provided to newsrooms large and small in the UK to find that at least 55 million pounds had been given to fund journalism as of mid-2021. At the end of 2022 their estimate for philanthropic funding to news had risen to 77 million. The research was based on figures supplied by some funders and recipients as well as publicly available records from the Charity Commission and 360Giving. It also included grant support to journalism from tech giants Google and Meta which is separate to the content syndication fees they pay to publishers.

US STILL DOMINATES To get an idea of the international picture, Press Gazette also looked again at grants reported in a database by US donor network Media Impact Funders. The data show that newsrooms around the world raised a record $619.5m (£518m) from donors in 2020. Though figures are not updated for subsequent years, the figures show that the US leads the world by a large margin.
The leading 16 funders continue to be USbased. The list is topped by the Ford Foundation which has provided $271m to support journalism since 2009. Grantees include the Global Investigative Journalism Network and the Centre for Investigative Reporting. And philanthropic support for journalism in the US continues to grow. Press Gazette reported that a recent member survey of some 300 independent news organisations by umbrella group Institute for Nonprofit News found that foundation and individual giving grew between 2018 and 2021. More than half of outlets reported increases in foundation funding during this period, while individual giving grew by 53%.

EXAMPLES

THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE (USA)
A trailblazer in this category, The Tribune was the first legacy newspaper in the U.S. to transform from a for-profit company to a nonprofit business in 2019. The paper still seeks subscribers and advertisers but its status as a nonprofit allows supporters to make tax deductible donations. And, in November 2021, Nieman Lab reported that the publication had become financially sustainable and, after years of layoffs and cuts, was growing its newsroom.
The Salt Lake Tribune’s transition to nonprofit status has been closely watched in the news industry. “The opportunity for us to prove that this can work is significant and so is the
responsibility,” Executive Editor Lauren Gustus told Nieman Lab.
The Tribune grew its newsroom 23% in the last year and will add new reporting roles focused on education, business, solutions journalism, food, and culture in 2022. Gustus also expects to follow the Utah News Collaborative (launched in April to make the Tribune’s reporting available to any news organisation in the state) with more multinewsroom projects.
The Tribune has about 6,500 supporting subscribers, more than 50 members of its First Amendment Society, and dozens of major donors. The paper forbids donations over $5,000 to be anonymous. Gustus stressed that consistency of support is invaluable.

THE GUARDIAN (UK)
The Guardian — through its U.S.-based philanthropic arm theguardian.org — raised $9 million between April 2020 and April 2021. It continues to pioneer a revenue approach combining subscribers with donors. “For a place like The Guardian, we wouldn’t and shouldn’t be seeking the same kind of funding that nonprofit newsrooms split becausewe have lots of different revenue streams that support the news organisation,” Rachel White, who leads the Guardian’s philanthropic efforts, told Nieman Lab. “We really needed to define why and how we would seek philanthropic support.”
Donor-supported articles are “editorially independent” but supported by a particular donor. So The Guardian and the donor agree the funding will be used to provide extra resources to fund journalism about a particular subject area. “Every one of the ideas that we take to philanthropy
comes first from senior editors at The Guardian. They tell us what they’re interested in and then we see if there’s an opportunity for us to find support for it,” White says

THE MARSHALL PROJECT (USA)
The Marshall Project, which focuses on criminal justice news, wasn’t the first digital nonprofit news outlet when it launched seven years ago. But Nieman Lab writes that it was part of an important wave of single-subject, national nonprofit news sites — a wave that also included education news nonprofit Chalkbeat (launched in 2013) and gun violence news nonprofit The Trace (launched in 2015).
Despite a raft of editorial successes, including a Pulitzer Prize in 2016 for a story that became the acclaimed Netflix series Unbelievable, funding hasn’t been easy and The Marshall Project is turning to its readers for support. Its running cost is still largely covered by grants and large gifts from individuals and family foundations.

---

WHO IT IS FOR?
Operating a nonprofit generally makes more sense when there is a niche area of coverage and where specific donor organisations working in the area can be identified. Finding also tends to be focused around specific areas like investigations. For general news outlets it makes sense to combine philanthropic funding for special projects with other forms of revenue.
CHALLENGES
Though it is catching up in other parts of the world, philanthropic funding for news is a far bigger trend in the US. The leading 16 funders continue to be US-based. For publishers elsewhere, remaining reliant on a small number of big donors means you run the risk of losing your independence. There is also the risk that funding isn’t necessarily consistent or long-term.

THE PUBLISHER AS AN EVENT ORGANISER

MORE NEWS publishers have started to organise events as an additional revenue stream over the last few years, taking advantage of their journalists’ expertise and their brand’s convening power to host topical discussions. We have noted previously that this model could represent 20% oftotal revenues when done right with good brand partnerships and the right management team.
This model seemed to be the most at risk during the Covid years but throughout 2020 and 2021 we saw several examples of publishers pivoting toward virtual or hybrid events and making them work financially as they allowed for participation to be scaled up significantly.
In an analysis piece for Adweek, Mark Stenberg notes that the success of these virtual events has raised the stakes for publishers. “Now, as health protocols allow for the resumption of physical gatherings, publishers are faced with a welcome, if mildly ironic challenge: integrating their virtual offerings back into the landscape of in-person events,” he notes.
Stenberg explains that The emergence of virtual events has raised expectations for inperson gatherings, forcing them to sharpen their value propositions. But key strategic elements, such as distribution strategies and pricing for virtual tickets, remain open questions.
“People have fundamentally recalculated why they attend events,” said Dan Macsai,executive editor of Time. “The standards have gotten higher.”
To attract paying attendees, physical gatherings need to emphasise all the elements they offer that can’t be replicated online, said Candace Montgomery, senior vice president and general manager of AtlanticLive, the events arm of The Atlantic.
The appetite for networking in particular, highlights the opportunity to turn the limitations of in-person events into selling points that justify
the high price of admission. “We’ve all been The Publisher as an Event Organiser 8 away for two years, so there is more respect for what it means to be in person,” said Stephen Colvin, global chief commercial officer for Bloomberg Media.

EXAMPLES

TIME
Time, which turns 100 next March, began hosting its annual Time100 Gala in 2004 and held it yearly until 2019, when it added three other events: the Time100 Summit, which accompanies the Gala, as well as Time100 Next and Time100 Health. In 2020, Time suspended all of its in-person events and launched Time100 Talks, a series of virtual conversations between Time staff and Time100 honorees. Now, as in-person events return, Time will continue experimenting with an extended events slate, and plan to host more than 10 events across 2022.
This year, Time will expand its number of events by extending franchises like Time100 internationally, as well as introducing new series, like the Time Impact Awards. So far,
the publisher has hosted the Time100 Impact Awards in Dubai; Time Women of the Year in Los Angeles; Time events at Davos; and the Time100 Summit and Gala in New York, which occurred Tuesday and Wednesday. Adweek reported that the publisher plans to host Time100 Next and Time events at COP 27 this fall—and the Person of the Year event in December. It is currently developing plans to host Time100 events in Singapore, Ghana and Israel, according to Dan Macsai, vice president of Time Events and the
editorial director of Time100.
At the onset of the pandemic, critics blasted virtual events as dull imitations of their reallife counterparts, Stenberg writes for Adweek. But now, with improved technology, experts believe online gatherings will supplement, not supplant, in-person functions. Time for instance, has bulked up its video production team so it could turn in-person events like the Time 100 Summit into a multi-camera, premium television production, Macsai said

THE ATLANTIC
The Atlantic announced the launch of its newest flagship event in May 2022, a two-and-a-half-day hybrid festival called In Pursuit of Happiness. “Drawing on our celebrated coverage of the practices and principles of happiness from the renowned social scientist Arthur C. Brooks, we convenedexperts from a range of disciplines—neuroscientists
and philosophers, artists and business leaders—to explore methods of and approaches to building a more meaningful life. Along the way, attendees participated in self reflection and connected with others looking to enrich their own life and the lives of those around them,” the publisher described the event on its website.
The event, whose tickets cost $700, will be the first in-person experience the publisher has hosted since early 2020 and the first at a higher price point, Candace Montgomery, GM and SVP of Atlantic Live told Adweek.
The Adweek report continues that The Atlantic, like many publishers, has used the pandemic as an opportunity to reassess its events business, especially as it relates to the larger goal of attracting and retaining subscribers.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Our last example highlights the success that publishers found with virtual events, both in achieving scale and introducing innovative elements. The Wall Street Journal’s flagship event, The Future of Everything Festival, was being held virtually for the first time in 2021. The event achieved significant milestones – bringing in the highest-ever event registration (45K+ ticket sales) and highest-ever country breakdown of participants (115). It also surpassed sponsorship revenue goal by 285.2% & ticket revenue goal by
155%, according to a submission made to INMA Global Media Awards 2022, where it was one of the winners in the category of Best use of an Event to Build a News Brand. “2021’s Future of Everything Festival exceeded all expectations and laid the groundwork for the future of our events business with increased audience reach, new approaches
to content delivery and a hybrid event model,” the team submitted.
The festival allowed participants to immerse themselves on a range of platforms and mediums. The program featured Main Stage Panels, Town Hall Discussions, Classrooms
with interactive workshops, Video-On-Demand, Picture-In Picture players, and an Ask-the- Speaker feature allowing attendees to submit video questions directly to speakers.
To replicate spontaneous networking at in person events, WSJ also virtually curated connections for attendees through one-hour, speed networking sessions and the “Network
Builder”: an AI-powered matchmaking tool, providing personalised lists of matches from preselected interests.

---

WHO IS FOR?
Events business were significantly gaining steam pre-pandemic for a range of publishers and there’s no reason why they can’t again emerge as major drivers of revenue. For all the talk of lower overheads and limitless audience size, the truth is very few companies have been able to make the same amount of money from virtual events,
Lucinda Southern, media editor at Adweek, wrote in May 2021. Previously some publishers generated up to a third of their revenue from events, and matching that through virtual events has been a challenge. Only four in 10 event
teams in the US, she reported, had profitabl pivoted from in-person to virtual. The return of in-person events offers the chance now to build back better, so to speak.

CHALLENGES
As we outlined at the start, the challenge will now be in blending elements of virtual events into in-person offerings. For two years publishers went through a process of trial and error and that sometimes resulted in wildly fluctuating prices for attendance. “Two years of virtual events, which charged a discounted price or were free, have softened consumer demand,” Brian Quinn, editorial director of events for travel news platform Skift, told Adweek. The pandemic also conditioned consumers to wait until the last minute
to buy tickets. A middle ground now has to be found where tickets can be priced up but the benefits of attending in person are really played up and sold.

THE PUBLISHER AS AN AGENCY

PRODUCING ADVERTISING content for brands is a way for news publishers to make extra revenue with their significant expertise in storytelling. A 2020 report by INMA notes that branded content is a strong strategy for consumers influenced by viral videos, on-demand entertainment, and unique experiences. It adds that branded content can create trust and lucrative relationships between media publishers, advertisers, and audiences when it’s done with an authentic voice, across multiple platforms, and backed by data. Given that multiple reports are indicating that ad markets are continuing their strong bounce-back after the difficult Covid-19 years, this would be a particularly good time for publishers to invest in content studios to partner with brands looking for strong campaigns.

EXAMPLES

VOX – VOX CREATIVE
The winner for best content studio at the 2022 Digiday Media Awards, Vox Creative has become a one-stop content shop for advertisers. “From quick-hitting social first programming to premium longform storytelling, the team works closely with partners to connect with audiences wherever they spend their time. In the last year, Vox Creative grew the number of brands with which it worked by 24% year-over-year, expanding the number of brand advertisers it works with on integrated campaigns,” Digiday
noted. Vox Creative has leaned into producing podcasts with partners, helping clients understand the value of connecting with clients through audio. “For Straight Talk Wireless’, it The Publisher as an Agency created ‘the More than This’ podcast with an unprecedented accessibility feature catering to
deaf and non-listening audiences. The second podcast created with Ben & Jerry’s “Into The Mix” is an extension of the brands’ activism, promoting work on criminal justice reform, refugee rights and more

THE NEW YORK TIMES — T BRAND
Another award-winning content studio, over the last two years, T Brand produced important content and programs for major clients such as Tide, Dropbox, Snap and Citi. “The studio’s programs for Tide and Dropbox helped readers navigate changes in daily life and business, while campaigns for Snap and Citi promoted racial literacy in classrooms and supported initiatives designed to close the racial wealth gap.
Additionally, T Brand worked pro bono for the NYC Mayor’s Office on messaging about the importance of masks and social distancing during the summer,” Digiday noted. T Brand advised numerous clients on their response to the pandemic with a consultation entitled “The Business Acts, The Brand Speaks,” designed to give clients confidence to reenter the market. It also found success in the podcast space, creating an original podcast with Invesco that ranks among Apple’s top finance podcasts.

CNN – CREATE
CNN’s Create studio specialises in human storytelling, drawing on CNN’s production heritage to offer cross-platform solutions to meet your brand’s objectives. The studio provides end-to-end creative services from campaign development to optimization. CNN Create was a winner at the Digiday Media Awards Europe. “This year the team has worked on 193 campaigns for 132 clients and its bespoke CMS base solution has enabled 120 high-quality customer sites to be brought to market in just hours for over 50 advertisers,” the citation said.

SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST — MORNING STUDIO
In 2018 the South China Morning Post launched Morning Studio, a dedicated branded content team focused on “strategically connecting advertisers with readers through enhanced content solutions offerings.” Morning Studio uses various channels to put out branded content including video, infographics and animation, and is search-engine optimised (SEO). The content can be integrated with offline offerings such as sponsored supplements, bespoke publications and customised events, the studio’s website says.
Morning Studio can create storytelling for brands across platforms. A prominent example is a campaign created for Qantas airways which, despite serving Hong Kong for a number of years, still had low name recognition.As the national carrier for Australia, Qantas wanted to position itself as the first choice for air travel, particularly to Australia. The airline worked with South China Morning Post and Morning Studio to create a campaign celebrating the 70th anniversary of the first Qantas flight landing in Hong Kong.
Primarily centred on a video titled, “The Past, The Present, and The Future,” the idea behind the campaign was to show the role Qantas had played for culture, trade, and travel between the two countries. It used archived materials from SCMP and the airline, along with original new interviews with pilots. To support the video, SCMP also ran three written articles on connected themes.

---

WHO IS FOR?
You need to have the capability to produce native advertising content and think across formats like video, audio, interactive graphics etc. You also need a marketing team that can sell the company’s creative value proposition to clients and compete with other ad agencies.

CHALLENGES
There will be a lot of competition in this space from both traditional and upstart advertising agencies. Producing high quality campaigns also requires a high level of investment in in-house studios and sales operations

THE PUBLISHER AS AN AFFILIATE MARKETER

THE DRAMATIC INCREASE in e-commerce as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic also accelerated publisher’s interest in its revenue potential. Even though physical shops may be reopening in many countries, it’s clear that some pandemic trends may have become habits, and online shopping is one of them.
WPP’s GroupM predicted last year that e-commerce would account for $7 trillion in annual revenue, equaling 25% of the world’s retail sales at that time. As a result, the report notes that e-commerce is “an increasingly important channel for marketers in almost all parts of the economy.”
“By assuming a bigger role in the customer journey, a publication wants to get closer to the transaction and wants to have a higher take on the transaction,” says INMA Researcher-in- Residence Grzegorz Piechota. “Publishers are seeing they really can’t make a lot of money with advertising because there is too much content available on the Internet. But we have good relationships with customers, and we can upsell them with products,” he adds.
There are various models through which publishers can take advantage of the e-commerce boom. The most common is through affiliate marketing — sending customers to an outside link and earning the media company a percentage of the revenue from any purchase made. Key to making this model work is investing in a quality product review section that customers can trust as being unbiased.

EXAMPLES

FUTURE PLC
Future PLC drove nearly $1 billion in e-commerce sales in 2020 and that growth has carried over into 2021 and 2022. The U.K. media company owns brands like Tom’s Guide, Cinema Blend, Golf Monthly and Marie Claire.
According to Digiday, Future sold $960 million in sales order value (or SOV, the gross value The Publisher as an Affiliate Marketer of a product sold via Future’s content) for affiliate partners in 2020 via Hawk, its proprietary price comparison platform that launched in 2013. Hawk automatically identifies products and vendors that the company has an affiliate relationship with and embeds those links in product review articles, so that readers can see prices and retailers next to products mentioned. Hawk works with big retailers like Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy and Target, as well as smaller affiliate partners.
The number of total transactions driven by Future grew by 109% in the U.S. from April 2020 to April 2021. Future declined to tell Digiday what share of money from each transaction the company keeps. Commission rates can vary widely by product and retailer and can range from single- to double-digit percentages.
“We are able to produce and display realtime price changes for different retailers, for millions of different products and services,” Jason Webby, chief revenue officer for North America at Future PLC, was quoted in the Digiday article.

NEW YORK TIMES – WIRECUTTER
Wirecutter is a product review site acquired by The New York Times Company in 2016 that is one of the pioneers in an affiliate marketing strategy built on product reviews. It focuses on writing detailed guides to different consumer product categories and offering recommendations on the best products. Since it generates revenue from affiliate commissions, Wirecutter is less reliant on traditional advertising. Wirecutter was started in 2011 by editors who were intent on helping solve readers’ problems and giving them recommendationsfor retail purchases across multiple categories. “Compared to competitors, we are not in the business of worshipping products. We are in the business of helping users find out what is worth paying for and what is the best product for the price. We employ a journalistic, methodical process to uncover the right information,’
Leilani Han, Wirecutter’s Executive Director of Commerce, told Digital Content Next in June 2022.
“We make a recommendation – not just a review. We communicate in a way that is relatable and direct – not academic. Wirecutter cuts the time and stress of shopping by providing direct and actionable buying advice. We knew if we took care of the reader experience and prioritised their trust in us above all else, the monetization follows.”

GANNETT – REVIEWED
In July 2021, The Wall Street Journal reported that newspaper publisher Gannett Co. has doubled the number of staffers at its productreview website called Reviewed over the past 18 months, taking direct aim at Wirecutter and BestReviews. “The push comes after e-commerce surged and ad spending declined for a time during the Covid-19 pandemic, increasing pressure on media organisations to hunt for new revenue streams and to shore up their digital businesses,” The Journal notes.
“Top-line revenue has grown 50% every year for the last three years, and our projections for 2021 are around the same percentage,” said Chris Lloyd, general manager of Reviewed, adding that the site’s staff has increased to 80 full-time employees.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
In December 2021, The Wall Street Journal announced plans to get into the e-commerce game by launching an initiative “aimed at providing our users with trustworthy advice when they’re buying products and services.”
Axios reported further details on the new commerce site in June 2022. It will be called “Buy Side from WSJ,” featuring hundreds of reviews for various consumer goods and personal finance products. Unlike The Journal’s news site, Buy Side will remain free, helping The Journal attract new audiences, while also bringing in new types of revenue.
As per Axios Buy Side will have its own product and marketing teams. It will be staffed by a small team of its own writers, editors and subject-matter experts, as well as a group of freelance contributors to provide expertise on topics.
The company will review the types of products and services that cater to a typical Wall Street Journal reader — a professionally driven consumer navigating return to office changes and has an interest in the economy.

THE INDEPENDENT
The Independent’s Indy Best section has continued to expand, in part due to the Covid-19 era shopping craze. The site, which offers product reviews and buying guides, “doubled the size of the team… to 16 people, including ten fulltime editorial roles, during the pandemic,” Press Gazette has reported.
“This is a long-term commitment, and was before the pandemic,” the Independent’s managing director Christian Broughton said. “We are accelerating as fast as we can to grow this and I don’t anticipate it’s going away.”

---

WHO IS FOR
Any publisher can dabble in affiliate marketing. It is not necessary to purchase a whole site, as the New York Times did with The Wirecutter in 2016 you can earn affiliate revenue by providing links from product mentions to retailers whenever you do product reviews. You need journalists who are committed to and passionate about the beats and content areas that they cover.

CHALLENGES
There is a risk of losing reader trust when you are making money from recommending products. Some publishers, suchas the Financial Times, don’t use affiliate linking for this reason. It is crucial to always clearly state when and where you may potentially receive affiliate revenue from links, and whether your journalists have received products as gifts from brands.

THE PUBLISHER AS A RETAILER

SEVERAL PUBLISHERS are now looking beyond affiliate marketing, finding that while it is easy enough to incorporate links into product reviews they were planning to publish anyway, there are limits to how much they can actually earn.
Commission rates from retailer affiliate rates range anywhere from 1-20% for publishers, depending on the product category and the type of deal a media company is able to strike, SHE Media’s CEO Samantha Skey told Digiday in February 2021. The addition of affiliate links into editorial commerce content and product reviews are at the low end of that range, she added. Increasingly, as the e-commerce business model develops publishers are looking to diversify strategy by offering their own branded products or becoming a one-stop shop for online retail with their own content-driven marketplaces. Doing this, of course, involves a higher level of investment and connection between sales and commerce teams, and possibly deep consumer research in order to ensure that a need is being met.

EXAMPLES

GQ – ONLINE STORE
GQ launched its first ever e-commerce shop in August 2020, selling products costing between $40 and $100. “The GQ logo is a global icon— synonymous with great personal style, of course, as well as with a forward-pushing, progressive idealism,” said editor-in-chief Will Welch, in a press release.
“Our audience has made it clear that while it’s great to look or feel or even be GQ, they also want to wear our logo. So today, we’re answering the call with the launch of The GQ Shop. We The opening of the GQ Shop was built on the success of GQ Recommends, which launched in January 2018. By summer 2020, these editor- picked selections generate affiliate sales, and revenues from this are up over 100% YTD compared to 2019, the company reported.

BUZZFEED – AIRPORT STORES
BuzzFeed teamed up with Stellar Partners, an airport retailer, to create premium news convenience stores for airports. The first two stores debuted this year at New York’s LaGuardia airport. The retail move is not the first for BuzzFeed which also experimented with toy stores in New York called Camp in 2018, in addition to having a cookware set under its Tasty brand that is sold at Walmart.
The airport stores will offer travel supplies, snacks, magazines, beauty and lifestyle items and travelers in the stores can also check out news and entertainment from BuzzFeed monitors throughout the space. The stores will support local businesses and carry products based on their region.

GQ – SUBSCRIPTION BOXES
In January 2018, GQ launched their Best Stuff Box, a quarterly package containing apparel, grooming products and style accessories. Revenues from the subscription-based were up over 150% two years later.

Writing for What’s New in Publishing detailing publisher strategies for e-commerce, Damian Radcliffe writes that other outlets have followed suit, with InStyle and The Cut launching55 their first product boxes in November 2021. Meredith’s InStyle magazine offered a limited-edition beauty box, with the contents “tailored to your astrological sign.
Digiday also wrote about the strategy in November 2019, explaining how product boxes “can be a tactile way for a media company to engage with people, show off its editorial curation abilities with products that people want to try out (and for less money — most boxes can be bought at a price lower than the total value of the products inside).” Alongside these consumer benefits, the article notes that they also “deepen relationships with advertisers and diversify its eCommerce offerings,” they note.

TIMES OF INDIA – MENSXP
One of the most interesting iterations of a direct content to commerce model, the Times Group in India acquired a website called MensXP in 2012 and parlayed the trust that readers placed in the brand to create a line of apparel, accessories and cosmetics.
Every month, MensXP, founded in 2009 by Angad Bhatia, connects with more than 30 million men and has more than two million active users a day. It carries content on fitness, clothing, style and entertainment amongst others. Times Group wanted to use the trust of the brand to create private labels. It researched gaps in the men’s grooming category, building brands and products in-house to serve these gaps. Since the company built these products itself, it sees a 70%+ margin, a much higher margin than other affiliate revenue, according to an INMA report.
The model is a combination of offering products of other brands and those owned by the Times. It’s a full-stack e-commerce business; Times Internet controls all touchpoints of the customer journey — from discovery and demand generation to warehousing and logistics.

---

WHO IS FOR?
Writing for What’s New In Publishing, Damian Radcliffe noted that the percentage of revenue that most content creators derive from e-commerce remains small. It’s fair to say that the Covid-19 inspired e-commerce boom has drastically changed the outlook on e-commerce for several publishers who now want to explore avenues other than affiliate marketing, which only provides viable margins to the really big players.

CHALLENGES

Taking on e-commerce giants like Amazon is no small task, and would involve substantial investment in both tech, quality products and most likely building off solid recommendation sections. The strategy would most likely work well when the publisher is able to identify a particular niche in the market that can be exploited.

THE PUBLISHER AS AN ARCHIVIST

LONGSTANDING NEWS publishers are likely to have huge archives which are invaluable records of modern history. In addition to their value to journalists, publishers are now exploring more opportunities to use these resources to generate additional income or provide subscriber benefits?
Across the last two years, we have als seen a range of publishers ally this business model with the more recent craze around Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs). NFTs are digital assets that represent real-world objects like art and music.
They are bought and sold online, frequently with cryptocurrency, and they are generally encoded with the same underlying software as many cryptos. Sounds too gimmicky for you yet?
Although they’ve been around since 2014, NFTs are gaining notoriety now because they are becoming an increasingly popular way to buy and sell digital artwork. And some publishers are jumping on to the gold rush. Could it be the next great source of revenue or the next bubble to burst?

EXAMPLES

THE ATLANTIC
Starting with a more traditional, albeit recent example, The Atlantic announced in July this year that it has completed a nine-month project of digitising its archive of more than 1,900 print magazines, a portfolio of writing that dates back to the founding of the magazine in 1857.
The archive contains original works from American authors and thinkers, including Ernest Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, W.E.B. DuBois, Rober Frost and Mark Twain, all of which will be available on The Atlantic website. The publisher first began uploading its writing to The Atlantic website in 1995, so the new material technically spans a time period of 133 years, editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg said.
Writing for Adweek, media analyst Mark Stenberg noted that while the publisher sees the undertaking as a largely academic endeavour, it does aim to reap commercial benefit from the exercise. Like all writing on its website, The Atlantic will monetize the articles with digital advertisements, and it anticipates that the material will lead to an uptick in digital subscription. Atlantic Chief Executive Nick Thompson told Stenberg he predicts that the venture will recoup its costs within two to three years.

ASSOCIATED PRESS
In January this year, The Associated Press announced that it’s starting a marketplace to sell NFTs of its photojournalists’ work in collaboration with a company called Xooa. According to The Verge, it’s billing its foray into NFTs as a way for collectors to “purchase the news agency’s award-winning contemporary and historic pho tojournalism” and says that the virtual tokens will be released at “broad and inclusive price points.”
The AP actually has history with this, being the first news organisation to sell an NFT, for a work of art titled “The Associated Press calls the
2020 Presidential Election on Blockchain—A View from Outer Space.”

SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
In August 2021, journalism.co.uk reported that The South China Morning Post wanted to turn its historic articles, pictures and other items into digital assets that cannot be tampered with and can also be owned by anyone. The project launched by the publication is called ARTIFACT and it will see items like important historic images or front pages re-created digitally using blockchain technology. These NFTs can then be collected or traded by the members of the publicor institutions.

CNN
In June 2021, CNN announced that it would sell “moments” from its television archives as non-fungible tokens. “For 41 years, CNN has gone to extraordinary lengths to document and broadcast the global stories of our time. Now, the network and digital news powerhouse is opening its archives for the first time to offer collectors the opportunity to own a piece of history, “a release from the company said.
Vault by CNN will house a select set of digital collectibles, or ‘Moments’, from CNN’s television archives, mint them as NFTs using blockchain technology, and sell them at vault.
cnn.com. “Until now, there has been no way to ‘collect’ these moments. Users can often find old footage online, or packaged up in documentaries, but they cannot ‘own’ them or display them in the way they can with a print newspaper or magazine,” CNN said in an FAQ about the service.

---

WHO IS FOR
This model can only work for publishers with a long history and the capacity to digitise archives. And increasingly, for news organisations that have the resources to take big bets on emerging technologies like NFTs

CHALLENGES
It is no small job for a large publication to digitise archives. Organisations as big as The New York Times and Reuters received funding from Google for the digitisation of their archives. The NYT said each person in its archive team had to scan about 1,000 images per day to complete the project in 2019. But if it can be useful to reporters, and bring in some revenue, it could be worth considering.

THE PUBLISHER AS A PURVEYOR OF GAMES

AS THE RACE FOR SUBSCRIBERS and reader revenue intensifies, publishers are searching for more innovative ways for engagement. One route that is very much in vogue currently is the original habit-formation tool for newspapers – puzzles and games.
When The New York Times acquired Wordle, a hugely popular game that has people guessing 5-letter words, it raised some eyebrows. It’s not every day after all that we see publishers buying free online games for a sum in the “low seven figures”. However, when seen in the context of The Times’ ambition to increase digital subscriptions to 10 million in 2025, it makes perfect sense. Millions of people around the world play Wordle and they will now spend more time on the NYT website. If even a fraction can then be converted to paying subscribers it would make for an excellent business proposition.

EXAMPLES

THE NEW YORK TIMES

By April 2022, it turned out that buying Wordle was indeed a great bit of business for The New York Times. When the company announced its quarterly earnings earlier this year, it credited Wordle for a huge jump in new subscribers. “Wordle brought an unprecedented tens of millions of new users to The Times,” Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien said in an earnings release, “many of whom stayed to play othergames” and drove the company’s best gamingrelated quarter ever.
Speaking to Digital Content Next, Jonathan Knight, The New York Times’ General Manager of Games, said he sees a correlation between daily engagement with the games and long term retention. “We see it as a great diversion from the news, when the news can often be quite rough,” he said. “We have a lot of people who are coming to read the news, and then the games are the ‘dessert’ at the end of the meal.” DCN continues that The New York Times has taken a layered approach to its puzzles in order to entice players. Their ‘The Mini’ crossword is free to play for everyone. But if a user wants to be a part of the leaderboard and compete with friends, that’s a subscriber benefit.
“That’s a great example of how we’ve managed to build a huge audience with daily engagement on a game that has a couple of layers to it,” Knight explained. Similarly the Spelling Bee word game has higher ranks of the game that are only accessible to subscribers.
The hope is that newly-acquired Wordle will introduce even more people to the NYT’s stable of games. “We want more people spending more time with the New York Times, and [the Wordle acquisition] plays a key role in that,” Knight commented.
So far, The Times is committed to keeping the popular word game free on the site. “But looking at where the subscriber walls fall on other NYT games, it is not inconceivable that leaderboards or additional levels could be added to Wordle as a subscriber-only perk,” DCN notes.

THE ATLANTIC
The Atlantic launched its mini daily crossword puzzle in October 2018, ahead of the publisher’s wider digital subscription drive. The crossword gets a little bigger and more challenging as the week goes on. “In addition to all the journalism we provide, we were drawn to the idea of giving people a moment of whimsy,” Executive Editor Adrienne LaFrance told Digital Content Next.
As with The New York Times, the publisher sees games as a route to increasing engagement with the rest of The Atlantic’s content. It is taking a novel approach to bridge the gap between player and reader by launching a newsletter written by crossword editor Caleb madison called The Good Word. Madison does a weekly deep dive into a favourite word or phrase from that week’s crossword; what it means, where it comes from, and what led him to “enshrine this bit of language in the grid”.
“We love the idea of creating a closer and more direct connection between Caleb and the people who are fans of the puzzle,” LaFrance told DCN. For these reasons, The Good Word is one of the newsletters The Atlantic is keeping free. “It’s a useful entry point into The Atlantic,” LaFrance explained.
“There may be people who play the puzzle and aren’t deeply familiar with The Atlantic and start reading. In fact, we’ve seen that the puzzle is a real portal to the rest of our journalism.”

THE TELEGRAPH
At The Telegraph in the UK, puzzles play a vital role in habit formation for their subscriber-first strategy. The software and analytics company Twipe reports that Not only do their newspaper crosswords have a loyal following, but they drive retention habits with the answers posted in the following day’s edition. Telegraph subscribers are also now able to play their daily puzzles directly inside their digital edition app and this has helped the publisher to over 544,000 digital subscribers in January 2022. “A fast growing number, this represents an increase of over 150,000 from January 2021,” Twipe reported.

NEW YORK MAGAZINE
New York Magazine announced a new crossword in January 2022, housed under the Vulture brand, which is entirely focused on entertainment and pop-culture.
“We explored a few different avenues. But eventually we realised that what made the most sense was to start with something we already had,” Vulture Editor Neil Janowitz told Digital Content Next.
As the biggest site in the magazine’s network, Vulture made the most sense to house the new puzzle. “There’s a clarity and simplicity to making it a pop culture puzzle that everybody can immediately understand,” Janowitz added.
“You can put 10 crosswords side by side, and you can clearly pick out the one that Vulture published, because it feels like us.”

---

WHO IS FOR?
Not every publisher out there can go out and buy the hottest word game on the market of course. But if the NYT is an exaggerated example it also serves as a guide to other publishers of the potential benefits in investing in games. It’s all about getting and keeping people on your website and since most news publishers traditionally do have a games or crossword section it is worth exploring how these can be expanded or repurposed to be a meaningful part of a reader revenue strategy.

CHALLENGES
Offering games is not a strategy in itself, Digital Content Next notes. “To fully maximise the gaming investment, publishers need to find ways to bring regular puzzlers into a deeper relationship, whether that be through newsletters, social features, or additional layers to the games themselves.” It would be difficult to monetise potential new audiences otherwise.

THE PUBLISHER AS A THINK TANK

PUBLISHERS WHO HAVE INVESTED in experienced and quality staff to build up various coverage verticals can leverage this talent pool to produce high quality reports for industry or government. Aside from being paid to produce the report, the release of the report itself can be leveraged in many ways – by publishing in their own media, having an event around it or getting sponsors and advertisers to associate with it.

EXAMPLES

THE TIMES & THE SUNDAY TIMES
A June 2022 report by The Times of London quoted the Duchess of Cambridge as saying that everyone has a role to play in children’s early life, in response to a survey that found that less than a fifth of people know how important the first five years are in a child’s development.
The report was by The Times Education Commission which called for an increase in earlyyears funding, targeted at the most vulnerable. The Commission was set up in May 2021 to examine the future of education in light of the Covid-19 crisis, declining social mobility, new technology and the changing nature of work. The Commission was slated to run for a year, with an interim report in December and a final report published in June 2022. In May this year The Times organised a summit around the work done by the Education Commission, focused on the skills children need for life and how to teach them.

SKIFT
In a recent report for What’s New in Publishing on “50 Ways to Make Media Pay” Damian Radcliffe identifies publishers conducting paid research as an important emerging business model. He points to the example of Skift, a website which describes itself as “Defining the Future of Travel. It provides global travel industry news, analysis & data on online travel, airlines, hotels, tourism, agents, tours, startups, tech & more,” successfully blends news, newslet- ters and events, with detailed research papers.
“Promising ’50 new reports every year’ and with ‘125 reports in our library,’ the team produces twice-monthly reports on topics such as The New Era of Food Tourism: Trends and Best Practices for Stakeholders30, A Deep Dive Into AccorHotels 2018: Measuring Suc- cess From Asset-Light to Acquisitions31 and the U.S. Airline Sector: Skift Research Estimates.

BUSINESS INSIDER
Axel Springer, which owns Business Insider, bought eMarketer, a highly respected digital research pioneer, in June 2016 and plans were set in motion to complete its integration with Business Insider’s own intelligence unit. That merger took place in 2020 with the unit rebranded Insider Intelligence. “Insider Intelligence is the definitive source of independent analysis based on vetted and transparently sourced data. More than 100,000 corporate subscribers worldwide trust our comprehensive, unbiased approach to providethe context they need to make grounded decisions about strategies, tactics, and budgets,” reads the description on the unit’s website. “We are the combined entity of two research organisations, Business Insider Intelligence and eMarketer, sitting under the Insider Inc. umbrella.
By bringing together the strengths of each – agility and rigorous methodology – Insider Intelligence provides its clients with insight into their industry’s digital leaders and most transformative technologies, as well as how their target consumers are spending their time and money.”
Besides being a successful direct sales business for companies, Business Insider will often feature the highlights of their research in an article on the website, encouraging readers to subscribe for full access to their reports and briefings.

THE ECONOMIST
The Economist started the Economist Intelligence Unit, a service the outlet provides to clients who want to tap into the Economist’s research and audience, as far back as 1946. Digiday reported in 2021 that it had added a content marketing arm to help brands deliver their messages to the Economist audience, beefing that up with the acquisition in the spring of a contentfocused PR shop.

---

WHO IS FOR?

It’s fairly safe to say that this is a business model that can only be operated by publishers who have high brand value, built up over years of quality reporting, research and analysis into various subject areas. That said, for the publisher with the requisite legacy, this could be a very premium offering indeed. Partnering with an established research firm, as with Business Insider, may be a good idea to pursue.

CHALENGES
The challenge for this model is mostly in the preceding years of building up reputation and a body of work that could justify a marketing proposition as a provider of premium research services. Thereafter, there is competition aplenty from sector specific organisations that also conduct research and for whom this might be the primary business model.

---

THE Innovation in News Media World Report is published every year by INNOVATION Media Consulting in association with WAN-IFRA, The report is co-edited by INNOVATION President, Juan Señor, and Senior Consultant Jayant Sriram