Articles by: "Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN"

Digital publishing revenue declined 2.3% year over year against Q1 2019, according to the latest quarterly Digital Publishers Revenue Index (DPRI) from the Association of Online Publishers (AOP) and Deloitte. During the first three months of the year, income from subscriptions experienced strong growth of almost 20%. However, display and recruiting advertising both suffered significant declines, falling by 22.5% and 12.8% respectively in Q1 2020.

Diversification

Publisher revenue diversification efforts helped offset the ongoing decline in digital ad revenue for publishers, as the duopoly continues to account for the vast majority of growth in this sector. This decline was, of course, intensified by the pandemic.

On a 12-month rolling basis, subscriptions and miscellaneous revenues performed strongly, growing by 18.8% and 25.9% respectively. Online video revenue grew by 10.7% and sponsorship experienced a slight increase of 3.2%. Growth in these areas however failed to offset the substantial reduction in revenue from display advertising formats — down by 17.1% year-over-year. Overall, digital revenue fell by 4.0% on a 12-month rolling basis.

Despite downturns across multiple revenue areas, the B2B sector was able to maintain revenue by growing sponsorship (10.9%), online video (10.6%) and subscription (2.3%) income.

Priorities

A growing number of AOP board members reported prioritizing non-advertising revenue growth and cost reduction strategies. According to the DPRI, almost 90% of publishers cited non-advertising revenue growth as a high priority for the next 12 months, up from 78% who said the same in Q2 2019. Meanwhile, 78% of publishers identified cost reduction as a high priority for the next 12 months, up from 44% who were focusing on this area in Q2 2019. None of the publishers surveyed reported seeing expansion by acquisition as a strategic priority over the next 12 months, reflecting their need to focus on existing business operations.

As Richard Reeves, Managing Director, AOP, commented, “Ten years ago, display advertising made up 58% of digital publisher revenue and subscriptions only 7%. Subscriptions now account for 22% of total revenue; with display advertising having shrunk to 42%. As income from display continues to decline, the shift towards subscriptions and other diverse revenue sources is only set to grow, accelerated in part by the pandemic. The publishers that adapt to this change will be the ones that have the most to gain when the storm passes.”

Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of August 27, 2020

August 27, 2020 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

Here are some of the best media stories our team has read so far this week:

ArsTechnica | Unredacted suit shows Google’s own engineers confused by privacy settings (3 min read)
Poynter | Blessing in disguise? How the biggest live media events have embraced the change to virtual (11 min read)
Deadline | Network Comedies’ Future Threatened By Outdated Broadcast Business Model (6 min read)
Digiday | Google Chrome’s new ‘heavy ads’ blocker catches some publishers by surprise (5 min read)
BBC | News publishers fight tech giants for better deals (3 min read)
Poynter | How premium, ad-free subscriptions are working in local news (11 min read)
CNBC | Why news publishers are pushing for Apple to change app store terms (3 min view)
Columbia Journalism Review | Journalism’s Gates Keepers (18 min read)

Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of August 20, 2020

August 20, 2020 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

Here are some of the best media stories our team has read so far this week:

The Wall Street Journal | How Covid-19 Has Transformed the Amount of Time We Spend Online (4 min read)
Deadline | Newly Revised Map Charts Media, Entertainment And Technology Universe (2 min read)
Slate | Google’s Advertising Platform Is Blocking Articles About Racism (7 min read)
The New York Times | The Week Old Hollywood Finally, Actually Died (9 min read)
MediaPost | California Privacy Regulations Gain Final Approval, Enforcement Begins (2 min read)
The Wall Street Journal | Marketers Extend Their Social-Media Scrutiny Beyond Facebook (4 min read)
Digiday | How a new order of commerce is increasingly coming to the rescue for publishers with advertising challenges (6 min read)
The New Yorker | What Can America Learn from Europe About Regulating Big Tech? (19 min read)

Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of August 13, 2020

August 13, 2020 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

Here are some of the best media stories our team has read so far this week:

Digiday | ‘A shady move’: Apple News+ Safari change automatically redirecting traffic to itself infuriates publishers (4 min read)
The Washington Post | Disinformation for profit: How a Florida ‘dealmaker’ turns conservative outrage into cash (9 min read)
McKinsey & Company | Building a digital New York Times: CEO Mark Thompson (19 min read)
Reuters | U.S. judge ends decades-old movie theater rules governing Hollywood (2 min read)
Poynter | The pick is in. It’s Kamala Harris. Now how will the media cover her? The attacks on Harris will come. Some will be fair. Some will not. How the media handles the unfair ones will determine just how far we’ve come. (8 min read)
GeekWire | Filing shows where Microsoft is really making its money; reveals M&A spending; adds Netflix, Hulu, Tencent to list of rivals (4 min read)
ZDNet | Nine in ten Americans view data privacy as a human right, according to new report (3 min read)
NBC News | Sensitive to claims of bias, Facebook relaxed misinformation rules for conservative pages (8 min read)

Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of August 6, 2020

August 6, 2020 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

Here are some of the best media stories our team has read so far this week:

The New York Times | More Than 1,000 Companies Boycotted Facebook. Did It Work? (5 min read)
Wired | Can Killing Cookies Save Journalism? (13 min read)
The Bullwork | The New Network (4 min read)
Current Affairs | The Truth Is Paywalled But The Lies Are Free (19 min read)
NiemanLab | Newsrooms can prosper with remote work — but they have to make the right adjustments first (4 min read)
ComProp Research | Follow the Money: How the Online Advertising Ecosystem Funds COVID-19 Junk News and Disinformation (20 min read)
The Cut | The Newsroom Where Politics Is Not About Men (10 min read)
The New York Times | Digital Revenue Exceeds Print for 1st Time for New York Times Company (4 min read)

Perspectives

DCN’s must reads: week of July 30, 2020

July 30, 2020 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

Here are some of the best media stories our team has read so far this week:

The New York Times | Lawmakers, United in Their Ire, Lash Out at Big Tech’s Leaders (7 min read)
The Markup | Google’s Top Search Result? Surprise! It’s Google (20 min read)
Wired | Follow the Money: How Digital Ads Subsidize the Worst of the Web (14 min read)
Digiday | ‘Accelerated the need to get there faster’: 5 changes that will drive the future of media post coronavirus crisis (4 min read)
Poynter | Are digital startups the great local news hope or a disappointment? (10 min read)
Folio: | “The Inbox Is the New Doorstep,” As Newsletters Evolve, Publishers Adapt Their Tactics (8 min read)
Axios | Scoop: Facebook boycotters lobby lawmakers on antitrust (3 min read)
Digiday | ‘Keep the medium premium’: Podcaster creators mull raising their ad loads while preserving high listener engagement (3 min read)

Industry-Research

Cord-cutting accelerates in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic

July 27, 2020 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

From business model shifts to consumer behavior, the pandemic has accelerated changes in the media business. Many of these shifts were already underway, of course. And it is likely many of these changes are likely here to stay. A new report from Roku confirms that streaming media consumption and binge watching are up. However, while traditional television also experienced a lift during the early months of lockdown, Roku sees an uptick in the trend towards cord cutting and cord shaving.

Roku’s annual study found that approximately 32% of U.S. households don’t have a traditional pay TV subscription. Another 25% of households, which Roku identifies as Cord Shavers, have cut back their service. Amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, financial woes and concerns about the economy are driving further interest in cord-cutting and cord shaving. Roku reports that 45% of these Cord Shaver households stated they are likely to cut the cord fully in the next six months.

Roku’s 2020 annual Cord-Cutting Study found that:

TV audiences are watching more ad-supported content and flocking to extended free trials of subscription services.
About half of all TV households surveyed said they are streaming more free-TV during the Covid-19 pandemic than they did before.
Binge watching is on the rise in 2020. More Americans say that they regularly stream many episodes back to back in one sitting.
Americans say reducing home entertainment expenses is the number one reason for cutting the cord.
Despite 28% saying that the loss of live sports prompted them to cut the cord, the majority of Cord Cutter households say that the return of live sports won’t entice them back to traditional pay TV.

Streaming is even more appealing now. Consumers cite convenience, a growing selection of content – including free, ad supported options – and on-demand access as reasons to cut the cord. Around 40% of recent Cord Cutter households shared that free TV or extended free trials to a streaming channel helped convince them to cut the cord. And more households than ever are watching free, ad-supported movies and TV shows. Roku’s research shows that Cord Cutting is accelerating is the U.S., and at a greater pace in 2020 than in previous years – a trend that is not likely to slow even as the economic impacts of the pandemic eventually diminish.