Hybrid media models that blend traditional content with user-generated material, along with strategic partnerships and advanced data analytics, are emerging as essential strategies for success in today’s media landscape. According to new research by KPMG LLP, The Future of Content Spend and Business Models in Media, individual creators and streaming platforms are gaining influence, and AI tools are becoming increasingly important for both data analysis and content creation.
Content spending by top streaming platforms
The 12 leading content players studied for the report – which include Disney, Amazon, Paramount, Netflix, Comcast, and YouTube- spent about 210 billion dollars on content in 2024. This represents a 10% compounded annual growth rate since 2020. Comcast led the way in 2024 with 37 billion in spending, followed by YouTube at 32 billion, Disney at 28 billion, and Amazon at 20 billion. The top 12 spenders were primarily U.S. based platforms and media companies.
Among the big takeaways:
Investments in live sporting events continue to rise, while investment in scripted and reality programming has slowed.
The rising popularity of free streaming platforms such as PlutoTV and Tubi is poised to accelerate content expansion.
The future will rely on a blend of traditional high budget film and television series material with nimbler user-generated content.
The rising impact of user-generated content
User generated content, enabled by social media platforms, has become an essential part of the media content landscape and one that increasingly overlaps traditional studio TV and film models. A few takeaways:
The rapid expansion of user-generated content is outpacing other content categories and that trend is expected to continue.
User-generated content has become its own genre. As such, rather than replacing traditional TV and film material, it has become a critical part of a hybrid media model.
The line will continue to blur between traditional studio models of financing content and social media and streaming platforms that enable individuals to profit from content through ads, sponsorships, and memberships.
Fierce competition for influential individual content creators is likely to heat up in the future, requiring innovative collaboration and partnership strategies.
Partnerships at home and abroad
To remain fully competitive, major media companies will need to partner with individual content creators, as well as other media entities, technology companies, and telecommunications outlets. It’s also essential to interact effectively with global markets.
International audiences prefer lower price points and ad-supported structures. They also gravitate towards local content, which can mean “localization” of exported U.S. material to suit international markets. To be competitive in the global marketplace, media companies need to tailor their content and services to include flexible pricing and audience customization.
AI and data analytics influence strategic content spending
Data is the key to gaining insights and making decisions that drive return on investment. The ability to leverage consumer data to enhance personalization and target content investment wisely will be critical going forward. AI utilization will be integral to this process, with AI tools increasingly relied upon to automate, enhance, and extract insights from data.
AI isn’t just playing a role in data analytics, however; it’s also impacting content. This report lists “Choose-your-own adventure narratives, automated local dialogue, and ultra-low-cost formats” among the content AI could generate. However, the authors opine that, due to the importance of human talent and fandom, AI will augment rather than take over the content production process.
Smart choices for content spending
As media continues to evolve, content leaders face pivotal choices. The blending of studios, platforms, and creators, alongside the growth of ad-supported streaming and AI-powered personalization, is changing how content is made, shared, and monetized.
To stay competitive, leaders need to adopt flexible business models, invest wisely across formats, and connect directly with audiences. Success will hinge on spending smarter by leveraging data, technology, and partnerships to grow new value in the shifting media ecosystem.
The reality of digital publishing means that audiences are exposed to a wider variety of voices. Newspapers compete for attention with Tumblr, Facebook, individuals’ newsletters and countless other sources of information. This requires media companies to periodically reassess their appeal. They must also consider how they can best use new platforms to build audience and revenue.
This has been especially true for broadcasters. Where once their competition for video content might have been a handful of terrestrial channels, they now compete for time and attention with digital video platforms. That has led to concern among commercial broadcasters, as advertisers seek to reach those younger audiences – often at the expense of ad spend on traditional broadcast channels.
Globally, media buyers GroupM predict that linear television revenue will decrease by 3.4% over the course of 2025 as ad spend shifts over to streaming television. And, while linear TV still accounts for a significant portion of viewing, streaming is nearly equal. Millennials and Gen Z viewers are driving the move toward streaming and social video platforms, favoring the flexibility to watch content on-demand and across devices. These factors put pressure on traditional broadcasters to accelerate the shift to digital-first strategies that will satisfy audiences and advertisers alike.
Programs and priorities
The form of video content audiences choose to watch has been altered by new platforms. Short-form video has become the standard for many viewers, particularly those who are spending increasing amounts of time on platforms like TikTok. That’s especially true for younger viewers: fewer than half of Gen Z viewers in the UK watch broadcast television. The 48% that do spend roughly three times as much time watching video on platforms like TikTok and YouTube. In the US the trends are similar: TikTok has roughly ten million more users than linear TV in the Gen Z demographic.
In particular, YouTube is too big for broadcasters looking to recoup those audience and revenue shifts to ignore. When it comes to competition, the video-sharing platform is now literally encroaching on traditional broadcasters’ territory: as of earlier this year more time is spent watching YouTube on TVs as on users’ phones.
That has led to radical shifts in production and distribution strategy. So, how are major broadcasters keeping up with those changing audience habits – and using their expertise to stay ahead of the pack when it comes to taking advantage of new platforms – YouTube in particular?
YouTube: A channel for video discovery
Ashley Hovey is Chief Digital Officer for the CW Network. She explains that YouTube is a priority for the company as it seeks to create new means by which audiences can discover its programs: “YouTube is a part of the broader fragmented media ecosystem, which plays a role in driving audiences that can complement our [owned and operated] platforms. YouTube is a great place for discovery and sampling, while owned properties can drive deeper engagement and brand advocacy.”
That speaks to the need for broadcasters to approach YouTube in a way that does not cannibalize existing video audiences or ad revenue. Despite the headlines, traditional broadcasting still attracts a vast amount of ad spend overall. Thus, it is vital to protect that revenue as broadcasters experiment with new platforms.
A Channel 4 spokesperson affirms that the strategy is to find complementary audiences on the platform, rather than migrating existing audiences over: “The audiences on YouTube are additive. So, it is a great way to direct people to content that we think they’ll enjoy and engage a larger, younger-skewing audience.
“We experiment heavily with the great data that YouTube generates. It is at the heart of everything we do. On YouTube, video distribution and views are as reliant on algorithm science as they are an entertaining format.”
As a result, that discovery flows both ways: through the use of YouTube’s tools – designed specifically for digital distribution – broadcasters are able to find out more about their audiences online. That informs not just ad sales, but commissioning strategy as well.
BBC Studios is the commercial subsidiary of the UK’s first public broadcaster. Its Digital Commercial & Partnerships Director Anaïs González Espinosa explains: “Through the YouTube Content ID tool, we’ve also been able to only not protect our content, which is very important for us, but also use the data as a demonstrator of consumer demand to inform our content pipeline and some of the choices we make.”
Space to experiment
For many broadcasters, YouTube is also a staging ground for new formats. That can range from content specifically created with digital video in mind – such as Channel 4’s upcoming “social-first short-form channel focused on cooking and food.” It also offers an opportunity to repurpose existing content.
Some broadcasters, for instance, upload entire episodes of their stock of programming to YouTube. That can be entire season, series, or “taster” episodes designed to entice viewers to seek out the rest of a season on their owned-and-operated channels. Others, meanwhile, create short highlight videos with the same goal in mind, but geared towards short-form social sharing.
The Channel 4 spokesperson shared that “One area we saw go from strength-to-strength in 2024 was full-episodes on YouTube, with an increase of 331% for UK views in the first nine months of 2024. Key titles that pulled in audiences were entertainment series… and documentaries including Click for Murder and 60 Days on the Estates, plus made for YouTube shows such as Minor Issues and Tapped Out.”
Compared with broadcast television, in which audiences were largely separate, watching from their own sofas, YouTube and other digital video platforms allow more opportunities for viewer interaction. Taking cues from livestreaming specialist platforms like Twitch, YouTube has prioritized live audience chat alongside much of its content. Espinosa says: “We use posts and community tabs to engage with our fandoms, enhancing their experiences with our content on the platform. Views are important but engagement on YouTube is key to success.”
Hovey confirms that the CW Network is also set to experiment with those “live” features soon, as a result of the increased engagement it can deliver.
However, she also notes that the platforms’ other creator-led features allow for experimentation with distribution: “The CW tests out new YouTube features depending on the content type. For example, we use the Thumbnail Test & Compare feature for our sports clips. This allows us to test different thumbnail designs for WWE matches and NASCAR races and helps optimize overall watch time for both.”
With YouTube’s increased focus on AI to translate its content to other languages, and further changes to memberships on the platform on the horizon, there is plenty of scope for broadcasters to continue experimenting. And thy have the added advantage of not needing to invest in those tools themselves.
Considered and careful
Traditional broadcasters, then, are approaching YouTube with both commercial and audience considerations in mind. The platform itself is too big to ignore. In fact, there would be an opportunity cost to not at least have a presence on it.
However, what is especially apparent in 2025 is that broadcasters are being highly considered when it comes to YouTube. It is a competitor for ad revenue, but also a collaborator when it comes to discovering new audiences and new opportunities for engagement.
As a result, broadcasters are constantly reappraising their strategy for publishing to the platform, as ad spend continues to shift and new tools and formats emerge. With the rise of features such as content locked behind memberships and in-app merch stores on the platform, broadcasters have access to new revenue and engagement models via YouTube – and are finding ways to do so without diminishing their opportunities on more traditional platforms.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing how news organizations produce and distribute content. Newsrooms use AI to generate headlines, curate stories, automate writing, and optimize content for digital platforms. Rather than simply supporting journalists, AI is actively reshaping editorial workflows, impacting how newsrooms select, edit, and present information. In short, AI is reshaping the newsroom process and the news itself, which has broad impacts on the business of media and audience perception.
Shifting controls
As AI takes on more editorial roles, it shifts control from individual journalists to automated systems optimized for engagement and scalability. Felix M. Simon’s research on how the use of artificial intelligence shapes the way news gets produced and distributed explores this shift. Instead of relying on human judgment, experience, or what’s best for the public, news decisions are now more focused on numbers, data, and technology. This change is part of a bigger trend of running things in a more controlled, predictable, and measurable manner.
Editors are using tools like algorithms and performance stats to decide what news to publish rather than just their instincts or values. This raises concerns that news is becoming too uniform, that editors have less freedom, and that journalism may not serve democracy as well as it used to.
Simon explains this type of change using the “gatekeeping theory.” The theory views news production as a series of choices, like gates, where people decide what becomes news. In the past, journalists mostly made these choices using their judgment. Digital tools and social media platforms now play a significant role in shaping those decisions.
Reshaping journalism
Simon’s study analyzes AI’s role in reconfiguring journalism processes. Based on 143 interviews across 34 news organizations in the U.S., U.K., and Germany, he identifies how and where AI integrates into news workflows. He structures his research around these central questions:
How does AI shape the gatekeeping process of the news in terms of production and distribution?
Where do news organizations use AI in editorial processes?
What effects result from its adoption in news production and distribution?
Simon’s questions guide his investigation into how AI reshapes gatekeeping and journalism’s role in the public sphere, revealing three key patterns. First, AI boosts efficiency by automating routine, time-consuming tasks such as transcription, translation, and content formatting. Second, it enhances effectiveness by enabling previously impractical tasks, like large-scale data analysis and personalized content delivery. Third, AI supports greater optimization, particularly in refining distribution strategies and managing dynamic paywall systems, ultimately transforming how news reaches and engages audiences.
AI reconfigures gatekeeping
In many cases, AI systems influence news judgment not by replacing human editors but by steering their attention through data-driven cues. These cues include story performance metrics, SEO recommendations, or algorithmic predictions of audience interest. These subtle nudges shape editorial agendas and shift newsroom priorities over time.
Additionally, AI’s influence extends into ethical domains, where concerns emerge about bias in training data, transparency in automated decisions, and the implications of delegating journalistic choices to opaque systems. These challenges push newsrooms to assess the values embedded in AI tools and develop policies for their responsible use.
Further, researchers and practitioners continue to explore how AI alters productivity, quality, and editorial judgment. Simon’s findings show that AI is not revolutionary but evolutionary and deeply embedded in journalism’s digital transformation.
AI retools news production and distribution without changing journalism’s core goals.
Its impact is often subtle and only becomes clear over time or at scale.
AI is a mix of technologies used across the entire news process, not just in editorial work.
It continues a broader trend of automation and digital transformation in journalism.
While its effects are real, they’re still hard to measure or quantify fully.
Notably, Simon’s study shows how AI transforms journalistic gatekeeping and connects AI’s rise to a broader trend of automation and efficiency in journalism. While effects vary and remain difficult to measure, AI is shifting decision-making power and newsroom practices and media leaders need to be mindful of these shifts and their implications.
Any publisher will tell you how costly it can be to create innovative, attention-grabbing content that resonates with audiences and moves them to engage. But the stakes are even higher when it comes to distributing this content: failing to deliver content effectively can mean depriving it of the attention it deserves, undermining the utility of your initial content investment.
Distributing content is a critical step for publishers and media organizations of all types in delivering quality news and entertainment to audiences and driving revenue through advertising or subscriptions. Yet the channels most often used are noisy environments where user attention is limited and competition is boundless. When not approached strategically, using data as a guide, content distribution can be a laborious, frustratingly inexact science with erratic results.
But publishers are increasingly adopting an effective solution: Artificial Intelligence (AI). Providing immense value in many operational aspects of the newsroom, AI is also transforming how publishers distribute content to maximize reach and performance. Below we’ll look at four key ways in which AI is driving this transformation.
1. Automate content delivery workflows to save time
Frequent and repetitive processes can often be broken down into discreet actions which can be automated to save time.
Consider the example of social media publishing:
Despite the significant changes underway at social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter in recent times, social media is still one of the preeminent means for publishers to distribute content to audiences, offering an efficient way to reach billions of people of all ages across the globe.
Publishing content to different social platforms is a manual, time-consuming process. It involves selecting the best content to share, creating posts, writing adapted share messages, selecting hashtags, choosing images, analyzing performance and extracting insights for your publication’s social media content strategy. And, of course, all this should be done with specific social platforms in mind (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and a growing list of newer platforms). By applying AI, publishers are able to automate this entire process, saving immense time while ensuring content is optimally delivered to audiences across social media platforms.
Another increasingly common example is with email newsletters, a burgeoning area of investment for many publishers. Where applications of AI were previously restricted to send time recommendations, AI is now transforming the entire process of delivering content via email by fully automating the creation, sending and optimization of emails. Publishers are now employing AI to automatically curate, build, send, test and optimize their newsletters, all without requiring human input. The time gained from this level of automation is evident, and can be reinvested into the creation of new, engaging content.
2. Optimize content performance with powerful machine learning
Determining which content will perform best at any given moment, in any given channel, is something that arguably exceeds human ability. But unprecedentedly powerful algorithms can now integrate audience data and real-time trends. This offers the ability to pinpoint which content will attract attention and engagement, and the best time to publish to capture this attention.
By applying AI in this way across key channels, publishers are maximizing their content’s performance:
Machine learning algorithms deliver newsletters with personalized content, sent at optimal times determined by machine learning, to achieve higher open rates and click rates.
AI determines which content is most likely to go viral on social media, and determines the precise optimal post time to gain higher visibility and more user engagement.
Machine learning systems identify which creative elements are likely to generate the most advertising clicks, and tailor ads to viewers on the fly.
AI understands visitor behaviors and personalizes website content for a tailored user experience.
There are many other examples of how AI is transforming the content distribution strategies of publishers and media groups, with exciting new applications of AI surfacing every day.
3. Automatically maximize your content’s lifetime value
A key aspect of any content distribution strategy is knowing when, on which channels, and how often to redistribute existingcontent. In addition to planning and managing the distribution of new pieces, publishers must also constantly think about opportunities to recycle and redeploy content from their archives, whether these are evergreen pieces or seasonal features that can be reused each year. Republishing content in this way is an effective strategy for maximizing the value it can drive across its lifetime.
Publishers can use AI to fully automate this republishing process and ensure that relevant content is reused at the opportune time. One example is the automated resharing of content on social media: AI algorithms monitor current social audience data and trends on each platform, then check a publisher’s content archives to determine which existing pieces should be republished, and the precise moment to generate a new wave of traffic and engagement. Leveraging AI to effectively and automatically manage content redistribution can help publishers squeeze the most return from content over its entire lifespan.
4. Test and learn with AI-driven insights
Running tests is a critical practice to optimize performance over time. But planning and executing tests, collecting and cleaning data, and analyzing results, then transforming them into action has traditionally been laborious. Publishers are now using AI to gain efficiencies with the testing process on various content distribution channels.
Email newsletters are a prime example, given that they have multiple elements available to test such as layout, font, colors, image size, content order, subject line and more. Implementing tests on each email blast, then collating data and identifying trends and larger patterns can be expertly handled by a machine. And in most use cases, AI can be employed to not only collect and analyze test data, but also to automatically iterate and implement improvements based on test results, ensuring content achieves continuous increases in performance.
Unlock content’s full potential with AI-powered delivery
Distribution is a decisive stage of the content life cycle, with the potential to make or break the performance of a piece of journalism. Getting distribution right – and across an increasing number of channels – is time-consuming and requires data and strategy to execute properly.
Fortunately, with AI technology, publishers and media organizations can bypass much of the cumbersome, manual work involved in delivering content at scale. Adopting AI for content distribution can mean more accuracy and consistency than a human can provide, and this enhanced intelligence can have a significant impact on your publication’s bottom line.
About the author
Ashley Kibler is the Marketing Director at Echobox, the leading solution for publishing automation used by 1,500 publishers and media groups worldwide to automate and optimize content curation and distribution.
Some publishers are evaluating the impact of a Twitter implosion on their website traffic. By Apr 2023, Meta will be sunsetting Instant Articles after seven years of serving fast news and meandering listicles. Who knows if Google AMP will have a similar destiny? It’s not unlikely.
In Jun 2020, New York Times left Apple News over a lack of reader connection. “Core to a healthy model between The Times and the platforms is a direct path for sending those readers back into our environments, where we control the presentation of our report, the relationships with our readers, and the nature of our business rules,” wrote COO Meredith Kopit Levien in a memo to NYT employees. “Our relationship with Apple News does not fit within these parameters.”
The platform problem
It makes you wonder if promoting articles to audiences on platforms is really worth a publisher’s while. As a publisher, distributing content via audience platforms sounds like a good strategy to “meet audiences where they are.” However, it’s laden with inherent risks.
First of all, there are way too many platforms: BuzzFeed, Medium, Apple News, Google News, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Spotify, Apple Music, Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc. And let’s not forget the fact that audiences, formats, and platforms change. For a publisher to port audiences from one platform to another or maintain audiences on multiple platforms is almost impossible.
Then there’s the fact that, as platforms grow in size, the share of revenue per publisher is bound to decrease over time. The math is simple: As more publishers join the network, the user’s share of time spent on any one publisher’s content decreases and hence the revenue-share for the publisher decreases.
Hence, the best strategy for every publisher is to leverage any audience platform with the express goal of building a direct relationship with audiences they find there. Then, they need to focus on ensuring that these audiences are monetized through direct-to-consumer (D2C) models as quickly as possible.
Individual creators and journalists are the earliest movers breaking free from walled gardens and there are clear lessons for publishers. Let’s uncover some examples of individuals who have leveraged their audiences inside walled gardens to eventually build direct consumer relationships and monetization models.
Mr. Beast
Jimmy Donaldson has officially broken the record for the most subscribers for an individual male on YouTube with his channel Mr Beast. It has amassed an unbelievable 112,193,139 subs, as verified on 17 November 2022.
For direct-to-consumer monetization, Donaldson has moved his audiences offline. Leveraging the trust he garnered on YouTube, he is now selling them burgers, chocolate bars, and merchandise.
Nas
Nuseir Yassin is an Arab–Israeli vlogger who is most notable for creating over 1,000 daily one-minute-long videos on Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram under the page Nas Daily.
Leveraging his fandom with aspiring creators, Yassin found a way to capitalize his own learnings to offer services, courses, and community platform to advertiser brands and up-and-coming creators. He has found the path to directly monetize his audiences outside the walled gardens.
Glenn Edward Greenwald
Glenn Edward Greenwald is an American journalist, lawyer, and author of four New York Times bestselling books on politics and law. He has won numerous awards for his investigative journalism.
After working as a journalist at Salon and The Guardian, Greenwald co-founded The Intercept in 2013 along with Poitras and journalist Jeremy Scahill. He resigned from The Intercept in October 2020 over debates around editorial freedom. Subsequently Greenwald started publishing on Substack and currently has tens of thousands of paid newsletter subscribers with whom he has a direct connection.
Key takeaway
The walled garden of an audience platform provides a springboard for early experimentation and finding your niche as a publisher or creator. But without the ability to build a direct relationship with your audiences, you risk eventual irrelevance on the audience platform.. Finding unique ways to directly monetize your audiences will improve your chances of building a sustainable publishing business.
It is possible that publishers will start to offer their journalists a community management engine where journalists can develop direct relationships with their niche audience. A platform where journalists can offer merchandise, courses, newsletters (of course with publisher co-branding) for their specific niche audiences. Effectively, every journalist could be operating as a creator running mini-businesses inside the walled garden of the publisher.
About the Author
Abhishek Dadoo is a Co-founder & CEO of Fewcents, fintech-for-publishers that brings incremental reader revenue from ‘Never-Subscribers’. He is a seasoned business leader and technology product manager. He has worked in management consulting with PwC and Altman Solon in Boston, USA before moving to Singapore permanently. In Singapore, he started his own venture, Shoffr, a digital marketing solution that provides online to offline attribution for digital marketers. In 2019, Abhishek sold Shoffr to Affle, a publicly listed ad-tech company in India. After solving the advertiser’s offline attribution problem, Abhishek has now set his eyes on solving the content monetization problem for online publishers.
In an era of fragmented, news-hungry consumers, it’s become increasingly challenging for brands to cut through the noise and reach their target audience. New competitors and new strategies have forced established players to reassess their businesses and take action. This has resulted in new partnerships, products, and strategies that are yielding exciting results.
One strategy that is gaining traction is podcasting. According to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in July 2021, around a quarter of U.S. adults (23%) say that podcasts are how they get news, at least sometimes. One of the most successful brands in this space is FOX News, whose audio network is currently number 11 in Podtrac’s list of top publishers.
Launched earlier this year, FOX Audio Network combines all of FOX’s leading news, sports and entertainment podcasts into a diverse portfolio that aims to capitalize on the collective power of its large audience. With a catalog of more than 40 on-demand news podcasts, the network delivered record high numbers in 2021, with nearly 180 million unique downloads and 29.9 million unique listeners. A growth of 18% and 15%, respectively, from the previous year.
Interestingly these numbers run counter to research from Reuters, which found that news fatigue is setting in. Less than half (47%) of the Americans in the sample were very, or extremely interested in news, compared with 67% in 2015.
“Post Covid our podcasts are still showing year on year growth, in terms of unique listeners and downloads,” says John Sylvester, Vice President of FOX News Audio.
Two-pronged attack
So what is Fox News Audio’s strategy to keep its audience engaged in a world that may just be tired of news in general?
“We take a two-pronged approach to our news podcasts,” explains Sylvester. “First, we aim to satisfy the needs of our listeners by taking an ‘anytime, everywhere’ approach across multiple platforms. FOX News Audio continues this journey. So whether they are working out, or walking a dog, our podcasts make sure they are staying connected.
“Second, we provide a full gamut of information in the news space. This includes hourly news updates to longer news podcasts, such as FOX News Rundown, which is a deep dive into the news story of the day. There is also weather, business, tech – every need is covered, throughout every aspect of their day. FOX News Audio offers a total solution.”
Their strategy is bolstered by a loyal fan base. Fox News averaged 1.4 million total viewers in July of this year, and was the only basic cable network to exceed the one-million viewer benchmark. It also has the largest audience among 25-54 year olds, averaging 200,000 total demo viewers and 281,000 during primetime. This demographic is coveted by advertisers, and also the key demographic for podcast listeners, making their podcasts a highly attractive marketing tool.
“We create every type of content for every type of advertiser out there,” says Sylvester. “By creating the FOX Audio Network we have provided a unique opportunity for them to reach our broad and loyal podcast audience.”
Perfect brand extension
The network’s advertising is managed by its advertising sales team. However, in a bid to maximize its potential FOX has teamed up with Megaphone, which hosts all content. Since its launch in 2015, Megaphone has been one of the leading podcasting platforms, and in March last year it was acquired by Spotify. With its publishing and monetization tools, the platform better empowers FOX Audio Network to monetize, measure and maximize FOX’s podcast content.
One of those tools is a service called Megaphone Targeted Marketplace (MTM) which tracks listener behavior and pairs it with Nielsen Media Research Segments, to insert targeted ads into podcasts. This innovative technology has seen a backlash, however, as audiences have balked against tracking. As a result, certain blocklists have added Megaphone to them. This means listeners cannot play podcasts if they use certain privacy tools and tracker blockers.
However, Sylvester says dynamic ad insertion hasn’t been a problem in Fox Audio Network’s podcasting space. Their revenue is still heavily driven by advertising, which is built on the loyalty of their audience.
“Our podcasting platform is the perfect brand extension for FOX News fans, and they trust our news and content,” says Sylvester. “We offer a best-in-class product, with a fair and balanced perspective.”
Unlike the viewability challenges often associated with digital video, satellite TV, and cable, these advertisers can rest assured that the vast majority of consumers actually listen to ads on their favorite podcast. An impressive 80% of listeners tune in to all, or most of every podcast episode they start. Furthermore, almost half of these ‘super listeners’ believe that podcast hosts actually use the products/services mentioned on their podcasts. Advertisers are making the most of these engaged listeners by creating relationships with podcast hosts and onboarding them to their service or product.
Trust also comes from the careful selection of the podcast host. While it may seem obvious, many brands neglect the importance of having a clear host for their podcasts. Ideally, brands should consider a host who has industry expertise, can speak to the target audience, and can bring something unique to the table. Bringing in established names, such as Bret Baier, Will Cain and Martha MacCallum, is another key element of FOX Audio Network’s strategy, to attract and retain big audiences.
“Podcasting is a very intimate experience,” says Slyvester. “Our audiences connect with the host on either a daily or weekly basis, which creates trust. They learn to understand their ideology, and rely on them to bring them interesting, relevant content.”
Multi-channel approach
According to Sylvester the main challenge FOX Audio Network faces is to “distinguish yourself and your brand from the robust content out there.” Aside from creating varied, quality content, Sylvester says the key to growing and monetizing your audience is to expand into a multi-channel marketing strategy.
“It’s vital to look at all platforms out there and create monetization levers across all of them,” he advises. “We have partnered with satellite radio, terrestrial radio, audio apps, smart speakers, and more to make sure we really are everywhere, anytime. It’s all about creating multiple areas of monetization opportunities.”
Given that more than half of Americans (56%) say they never get news from podcasts, Sylvester believes there are still opportunities for growth for this nascent industry. One exciting growth area is with video podcasts, which offer a great way to differentiate a brand and attract new audiences.
“We are starting to utilize video as part of our podcasting strategy,” says Sylvester. “Video gives us the opportunity to populate the social media space, so it’s another way to market our podcasts and reach that 56% which is not yet listening. It’s often when consumers discover a podcast on video platforms, such as YouTube or TikTok, that they are then converted to subscribers of the podcasts.”
Certainly, FOX News benefits from its massive audience numbers and the significant investment it is making in its audio strategy. But there are lessons to be learned for organizations of all sizes and at different phases of audio experimentation. Their audio network provides a useful example for brands trying to navigate the ever-growing podcast landscape and reach their target audience in a unique way.
Fox News has done an impressive job of leveraging its brand power to expand into the podcasting space. Indeed, the network has managed to replicate some of what has made it so successful in prime time, while also carving out a unique space for itself in this new medium. Their podcast strategy raises the network’s profile, which helps it grow its overall audience while deepening brand loyalty for existing ones.
As the Chinese social giant recently boasted over a billion active monthly users worldwide, even the White House is turning to TikTok influencers to deliver news to young audiences. And, given TikTok’s popularity, older social media sites like Facebook and Instagram are making big changes to their algorithms and content to compete. Because more people of all ages are getting news through social media, these shifts could have significant impact on delivery of news and information. However, there are steps media organizations can take to address this impact.
TikTokification includes:
Focus on quick video clips: In 2020, Facebook added “Reels” to user feeds. Reels are 60 second video clips – the same length as the current TikTok limit on video length.
Less social, more media: Social media platforms are tweaking their algorithms to de-emphasize social connections, as TikTok has proven the “friends” angle isn’t necessary to engage users. Instagram recently rolled out changes giving less priority to content by users’ friends and family in favor of automatically “recommended” short video reels like those of TikTok.
Focus on fun: As TikTok’s stated mission is to “inspire creativity and bring joy,” other platforms are shifting to emphasize lighter content.
De-prioritizing news: News article links constitute only about 4% of what users now see in their Facebook feeds, a spokesperson from Meta told Today, adding: “We have learned from the data that news and links to news content are not the reason the vast majority of people come to Facebook, and as a business we can’t over-invest in areas that don’t align most with user preferences.” Facebook changed the term “News Feed” to “Feed” in February.
Misinformation concerns grow
A related concern is the number of Gen Z adults using TikTok as a search engine. A recent study by Newsguard analyzed 540 TikTok search results on prominent news topics – including school shootings, elections, and vaccines – and found that 19.4% turned up misinformation. The study also found TikTok results to be more polarizing than similar searches on Google. (However, TikTok did detect and remove several false or misleading videos planted by Newsguard as part of the study.) TikTok’s website states its content is vetted by technology, with a “safety team” to evaluate some flagged content.
Social media features problematic for news providers
As entertaining content captures more engagement from users, platforms are incentivized to deprioritize serious news, wrote Navene Elangovan for Today. Her interviews with experts in academia and journalism highlighted social media issues problematic for news providers: emphasis on engagement over content, emotion as a driver of engagement, and the opacity of social media algorithms.
Social media platforms are geared to maximize engagement by having as many users as possible. The goal is to have users spend as much time on the platform as possible, engaging in as many ways as possible. Because strong emotions trigger engagement, social media algorithms reward upsetting content- the opposite of the objectivity valued in traditional news journalism. “Outrage fatigue” can then lead to news avoidance.
Another problem is the opacity of social media algorithms. Changes made to reduce emphasis on quality news should be communicated to audiences. If users are aware of social media platforms downplaying news, they may be more likely to seek reputable news sources elsewhere.
Tips for news providers
Experts interviewed by Elangovan suggested steps newsrooms might take in response to social media TikTokification:
Separate marketing from journalism so that journalists can focus on content, not views.
Create incentives for viewers to return daily to news sites to build a habit.
Diversify channels of news distribution.
Find ways to draw viewers from “lighter” platforms to more serious content, accepting social media sites as conduits rather than main sources of delivering news.
Newsrooms may consider setting up their own social media platforms as a means of diversifying how content is communicated.
Will outrage fatigue turn to fluff fatigue?
When Instagram changed its algorithm and content to align more with that of TikTok, a flood of user complaints forced Instagram head Adam Mosseri to defend the decisions at length on Twitter. In the wake of this pushback, Instagram rolled back some of the changes.
When it comes to news content on social media, some experts surmise that outrage fatigue may give way to fluff fatigue. As users are increasingly bombarded with frivolity in their social media feeds, they may turn to more traditional news outlets for deeper and more reliable coverage of major events.
You probably have a presence on YouTube, but do you have a specific strategy for the platform? If you don’t, then it’s time to address that.
With close to 2.5 billion monthly active users, YouTube is the second most popular social network in the world. Only Facebook, with 2.9 billion users each month, enjoys greater reach.
Despite this, many publishers’ presence on YouTube can often feel like an afterthought. The popular video-sharing network sometimes seems like an also-ran when compared with the content strategies (and resources!) being deployed across newer, shiner, networks like Instagram or TikTok.
It’s time for that to change. Here are three key reasons why.
1. YouTube is too big to ignore
Originally created way back in 2005, YouTube is not exactly a new kid on the digital block. Yet it’s also far from being an internet dinosaur.
According to Semrush, a software-as-service (SaaS) platform used for keyword research and online ranking data, last month YouTube was the second most visited website in the world with 60.9 billion visits. The average session visit was a whopping 29 mins 42 seconds.
Image: Screenshot(s) via Semrush, 22 August 2022
“YouTube is a seriously undervalued part of most publishers’ audience development plans,” Nic Newman, the lead author of the annual Digital News Report, recently told me during an email conversation about their 2022 study.
The latest findings, which were published in June by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, found that across the 46 countries covered by the report, YouTube “is the second most important network for news after Facebook,” Newman says.
Because this is a global study, there’s considerable variance on a country-by-country basis.
Nonetheless, in the United States, YouTube is the second most popular social channel for news in a typical week (19% of the sample). That puts it behind Facebook (28%) but some way ahead of Twitter (11%).
It enjoys similar popularity when figures are aggregated across 12 major markets. This reflects the universality of its appeal and begs the question of whether publishers are giving the platform the attention it deserves.
2. YouTube is a versatile platform
User habits for news and other content on YouTube might also surprise you. As Micaeli Rourke explained in a feature for Digital Content Next last December, YouTube is something of an audio powerhouse. (Disclaimer: She interviewed me for the article.)
YouTube was the leading platform for podcast consumption in the Ulast year, the 2021 Digital News Report found. They don’t provide comparative data for 2022. However, the latest study does note that YouTube is the second biggest platform for podcast consumption in Germany (19% of listeners) and the top source in Spain (30%).
Video-led podcasts are part of the reason for this popularity, as well as the opportunity to access content on multiple devices. This includes desktop and Smart TV consumption, which allows YouTube to play in the background, as well as more active “lean in” viewing.
The rise of YouTube viewing on TV sets is one reason why mobile increasingly makes up a smaller percentage of overall views in many developed markets. This presents opportunities for content creators to reach audiences in new places and spaces.
Meanwhile, the ease of publication (and lack of a requirement for a broadcast licence) has resulted in the emergence of YouTube TV-style shows and commentary alongside popular formats such as WIRED’s Autocomplete Interview (where celebrities answer the internet’s most searched questions about themselves) and Vogue’s 73 Questions video series. It also creates opportunities for historically text-centric outlets, such as Portland-based newspaper The Oregonian to go deep with long-form investigative stories. And it enables the Guardian (and others) to produce highly effective short explainer videos on issues du jour.
Looking ahead, Podnews revealed in March that YouTube is working to improve promotion, discoverability, and monetization opportunities for podcasters, including audio ads and “new metrics for audio-first creators.” Similarly, YouTube Shorts, its “TikTok clone,” is also a growing priority for the platform and another space that publishers may look to capitalize on.
Collectively, these formats, along with more traditional video content found on the site, present a variety of means for publishers’ to harness YouTube as part of their engagement and revenue strategies.
YouTube generated around $20 million in advertising revenue in 2020, CNBC reports. Arguably, that puts it in competition with publishers for ad dollars. However, creators can join the YouTube Partner Program (YPP) to earn income through mechanisms such as advertising, sponsored content, channel subscriptions and online shopping. YouTube’s revenue share model means that publishers typically take home 55% of the revenue from ads shown against their videos, Digiday stated back in 2020.
That said, some of these returns might be less than publishers hoped for. Digiday notes that “news publishers, in particular, have a harder time attracting ad dollars because advertisers remain wary of their ads appearing next to controversial topics.”
Nevertheless, when it comes to both content and opportunities for revenue, the platform’s versatility means you don’t have to deploy a cookie-cutter model to be successful on it. There’s scope for variety, experimentation and avoiding the “one size fits all” approach, which you sometimes encounter on other platforms.
3. YouTube effectively reaches younger audiences
Reaching a youth audience has long been the Holy Grail for many brands and media companies. For publishers interested in reaching Millennials, Gen Z, and even Generation Alpha (a cohort born in the past decade), YouTube should feature prominently in their plans.
New data from the Pew Research Center demonstrates how YouTube usage is virtually ubiquitous among American teenagers. Teenage boys are more likely to say they use YouTube than teenage girls. However, in terms of those who have tried the service, there’s actually surprisingly little variance across a wide range of different indices.
Moreover, when looking at teens overall, Pew’s “Teens, Social Media and Technology 2022” report discovered that nearly one in five (19%) say they use YouTube almost constantly. That puts it ahead of both TikTok (16%) and Snapchat (15%). Collectively, around three-quarters of U.S. teens (77%) visit YouTube on a daily basis, some way in front of its rivals.
Roll credits
This isn’t a piece extolling another “pivot to video.” We’ve been there. We know how that worked out. Instead, it is a recommendation to take a look at YouTube and whether you are using it as effectively, and comprehensively, as you could.
Of course, the platform is not without its challenges. Its recommendation engine can drive viewers away from your channel to other creators. Publishers might prefer to keep traffic (and its associated ad revenue) on their own properties. And last year The Information argued that programmatic ad sales were also hurting midsize publishers. Companies like BuzzFeed and Vice receive less money via YouTube’s revenue share arrangements than if they sold the spots directly, they said. Nonetheless, despite these real considerations, YouTube’s size, versatility, and reach with younger audiences are all major plus points.
Press Gazette has outlined how the biggest publishers on YouTube—in terms of subscribers and all-time views—are typically broadcasters. Many of these providers will post copies of reports, bulletins and shows, or offer a livestream, on the platform. But that doesn’t mean non-broadcasters can’t punch through. Press Gazette’s research also shows how Vox has broken the paradigm with a distinctive approach to high-quality (and often quite evergreen) video.
Vox, along with Vice News and Insider, have also achieved success on the platform despite publishing considerably fewer videos than many of their more broadcast-led peers. This makes it clear that this isn’t just about volume of content.
In a separate discussion with video leads at UK newspapers, The Sun and The Guardian, they also posited how a clear voice, a willingness to experiment and “building trust with the casual audience,” are all potential ingredients for YouTube success.
Thus far, tapping into YouTube’s potential isn’t something that many non-broadcast publishers have done well. Yet.
But, if publishers are able to look beyond platforms like Twitter, Instagram and TikTok (channels that either fall into the media’s longstanding issue with “shiny object syndrome” or spaces that might also seem more natural hubs for their content), then that might change in the not-too-distant future.
Certainly based on its audience, reach and breadth of content you can post, there’s an argument to be made that YouTube merits more of many publishers’ time and resources than it currently enjoys. If you want to ride the next digital wave, this trusty steed may not be a bad one to back.
Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) promised a faster and better user experience on mobile while helping publishers boost traffic and generate more revenue. Recently, however, a number of digital publishers have announced that they are reassessing their usage of AMP.
Google introduced AMP in 2015 presenting it as open-source code available for developers. Before AMP’s announcement, Apple, Facebook, and Snapchat announced content partnerships (e.g., Apple News, Instant Articles, Snapchat Discover) which focused on improving the consumer experience but shifted the publisher’s content to their platforms. Each of these proprietary, closed services promised consumers easy access to content but offered limited publisher monetary upside.
Industry executives feared that publisher brands would fade in the background on platforms. Others debated that these channels would provide a path to new and younger audiences, which seemed like a fair trade-off for content control. However, AMP had a unique proposition for publishers: They would keep publisher’s content on the “open web” and, maybe more importantly, they’d also gain a special shortcut to the top of Google search results through a new carrousel.
Fast forward to 2022, and publishers increasingly question the value of these partnerships because they add overhead and offer limited revenue or consumer benefit. In particular, AMP appears to restrict some mobile page functionality like detailed navigational paths and search icons. Given these disappointing results, some publishers are testing life without AMP, while others are phasing it out altogether.
It is important to note that, in December 2020, a lawsuit filed by multiple states accused Google of “anti-competitive conduct” in the digital advertising ecosystem. An unredacted version of the court document became available in January 2022, offering additional details. The added information explains that AMP pages hosted on Google’s servers made it difficult for publishers to use auction platforms other than Google’s ad exchange. It also alleges that Google made non-AMP pages load with a one-second delay. This gave publishers even more reason to be skeptical.
Publisher’s response
Digital Content Next (DCN) surveyed its membership earlier this year to provide insight into publishers’ experience with AMP, its impact, and its use in the future. The results show that most respondents use or have used AMP (96%), with the majority re-evaluating (57%) their AMP usage. Close to half (48%) report that they have they stopped or will stop using AMP.
Respondents report that their top reasons for using AMP were the promise of more search traffic, faster website performance, attracting new audiences, and industry pressure. Unfortunately, respondents reported mixed results in some core benefits like increased search traffic and audience development.
AMP’s reassessment
A recent Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article, Publishers Move to Abandon Google-Supported Mobile Web Initiative, essentially confirms the DCN survey results. WSJ reports that Vox Media, BuzzFeed, Complex Networks, and Bustle Digital Group started “testing or are considering using their versions of mobile-optimized article pages.” These publishers are in addition to The Washington Post, which stopped programming AMP pages last year.
Many publishers said they started to review their AMP usage after Google made algorithm changes in 2021. According to the WSJ, Google made changes “so that pages’ loading speeds, interactivity, and visual stability became factored into its search rankings.” Also, AMP content was no longer exclusively featured in a top-stories carousel in search results. Further, as publishers started testing, they learned that dropping AMP did not affect their load time or search ranking.
Reassessing the benefits of using AMP is triggering many publishers to rethink the control of their content, page designs, ad formats, and paywall. Publishers are rightly taking a harder look at content partnerships to evaluate how they fit their editorial and business strategies and monetization goals.
Streaming is popular but competition is fierce. It seems like every major network and media company has launched a streaming service.
Last week, Netflix released its 4Q 2021 earnings. The company closed the year with 221.8 million subscribers. However, Netflix fell short of its Q4 new subscriber forecast. Pivotal Research Group analyst Jeff Wlodarczak comments that streaming services are adjusting to the new norm of subscription growth compared to the accelerated sign-ups witnessed during 2020’s lockdown. Wlodarczak believes, “Streaming is not over; it is the future.”
A number of industry analysts have identified strategies and offer insight into the streaming marketplace’s next steps.
International growth
MarketWatch points to global programming investment as a top priority for streaming services. And the investment in content only bears this out.
Netflix’s hit series from South Korea, Squid Game, is one of many international success stories and a clear winner for the platform. Expect more foreign-language series to be developed as Netflix turns international growth, especially in Asia, India and Latin America.
Amazon’s Prime Video will offer more programming in India’s Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu languages. It’s India service registered tripled its viewing hours over the past two years there.
Apple TV+ will debut its first Russian-language show, the thriller “Container,” in the spring.
Disney+ plans 50 Asian originals by 2023, as it expands to South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
HBO Max debuts in Europe in early 2022.
Paramount+ also debuts in South Korea and Western Europe.
Peacock expanded to Europe (on Sky platforms), with more than 50 Spanish-language projects with Telemundo.
Mix and matching viewing strategies
While Linear TV marathons introduced us to binge viewing, Netflix’s flexible nature made it an everyday behavior. TheRinger identifies the different episode distribution strategies to keep viewers engaged and coming back to view more. As noted with Netflix, flexibility is essential and a reminder that different approaches offer different results. A buzz-worthy binge (all episodes released at once) can be great PR for a new series release. Additionally, a scheduled infusion of new episodes can draws viewers back week after week.
Apple TV+ offers a “demi-binge” strategy, debuting with a batch of three episodes, then airing the remaining seven one at a time.
WarnerMedia’s HBO Max uses a hybrid approach, breaking up seasons into packs of two or three episodes released over several weeks.
Interestingly, Peacock’s promotes binging but at higher pricing for specific series. Seasons 1 and 2 of The Office are available at the lowest-priced monthly subscription price of $4.99 a month. To unlock every episode, extended cuts, never-before-seen-footage, and watch commercial-free, consumers pay $9.99 — the highest tier.
Amazon’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel will switch from releasing all eight episodes at once to two a week for four weeks. Fear not, the binging release strategy is far from over. Rather, this is simply different viewing models in play. And they are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Merger, acquisitions, and differentiation
As Netflix invests in gaming, Amazon looks to its NFL and Thursday Night Football. Both are clear points of differentiation. Other services look to corporate and sibling-studio deals to offer HBO Max, Peacock, and Paramount+ access to new movies releases 45 days after they open in theaters.
CNBC Tech Reporter Alex Sherman points to the significance of mergers. He believes that Paramount+ and Peacock won’t last as standalone streaming services, and a merger is likely in their future.
Discovery Inc.’s acquisition of WarnerMedia (expected to be complete in mid-2022) will combine the streaming platform of Discovery+ and HBO Max. Combined, they will have approximately 100 million subscribers.
Streaming platforms are making significant investments in new and innovative content and unique deal-making to differentiate themselves from competitors. They need to keep their customers consistently engaged, especially as consumers begin to reevaluate their multiple subscriptions to access the content they want to watch.
Video is the hottest thing in audio right now. Don’t worry, this is not another “pivot to video.” However, an interesting fact emerged as Reuters Institute was formulating the 2021 Digital News Report: YouTube is currently the number one podcasting platform in the United States. According to the report, the video platform is responsible for 26% of podcast consumption in U.S. markets, compared to Apple Podcast’s 22% of listenership, and Spotify’s 17%.
So, why is a platform pretty much synonymous with video dominating the podcast market? We spoke with Damian Radcliffe, digital media analyst and Professor of Practice and Carolyn S. Chambers Professor in Journalism at the University of Oregon, to better understand how publishers can tap into “platform agnosticism” and capitalize on the momentum of this video podcasting trend.
At stake: the ability to deepen audience relationships and build subscriber numbers. Oh, and let’s not forget the $1 billion dollars in ad revenue predicted for the podcasting industry this year ($2 billion by 2023).
Ease of podcast discoverability
Discovery has always been a huge challenge for podcasters. As Radcliffe points out in the report, if you aren’t on the iTunes top 10 or not in the ‘top picks’ on a homepage, it can be really hard to reach audiences.
However, by diversifying away from audio-only products, and incorporating audio into supplemental forms of media, publishers can address that discoverability issue, simply by being in more places. Video platforms like YouTube not only make podcasts easier to discover, they also make them easier to share and to share on social feeds.
“Word of mouth has always been the most powerful marketing tool,” explained Radcliffe. “Being able to tap into the power of peer recommendations is potentially a really powerful and potent tool that podcasting could be doing more with.”
If a dedicated listener is learns from their favorite podcasting platform that they are in the top one percent of This American Life listeners, for example, they may want to let their social network know. When shareability and discoverability are predicated on distinctions or superlatives, as Spotify’s “Wrapped” feature has so deftly demonstrated December after December, the potential reach of the program within that individual’s network is exponentially expanded.
“People are sharing podcasting recommendations with their friends. But that kind of conversation is happening off-platform and podcasters don’t know where those referrals or audiences are coming from,” Radcliffe points out. He thinks that if podcasters can “find a way to close that loop and reward people for spreading the word around their podcasts, I think that could be a really interesting development.”
Widening your distribution strategy
Despite YouTube’s unexpected dominance of podcast distribution, most podcasters aren’t sharing their programs on video platforms exclusively. Rather, they use sites like YouTube as a secondary distribution channel. As a platform with an existing audience base of over two billion users and robust content discoverability, YouTube offers an attractive means for individual podcasters and established media players to reach new audiences.
“Think about this in terms of being a part of the wider distribution strategy for your podcasts and trying to find as many different ways for audiences to find you,” Radcliffe explained. For example he suggests that publishers use RSS feeds to distribute content to as wide a variety of places as possible. And that “video podcasting is just a part of that mix.”
When watching a video podcast that audiences would otherwise only consume through audio, audiences may also feel they are privy to certain “behind the scenes” elements, particularly when watching video versions of their favorite interview podcasts. As an example, Radcliffe cited a 2019 episode of Hotboxin’ with Mike Tyson, featuring Tyson Fury.
“It was a video podcast, and you could absolutely just listen to it. But there was something quite intimate about being able to watch it and see the interaction and pick up on some of the body language nuances that you can’t necessarily get just through audio alone.”
Leading interview podcasts like Crooked Media’s Pod Save America, the Black Girl Podcast, SmartLess, and others have leveraged video to make audiences feel almost as if they are in the room or ‘part of the gang’ as the interview transpires. Given the increased isolation of audiences at the start of the pandemic, that inclusion has become a value proposition for podcasters.
The advantages of micro-content
As print and online media continue to distill content into easily digestible micro-formats, the same appetite for bite-sized content abounds in video podcasting. (This may be credited, in part, to platforms like TikTok that amplify short video clips across the internet.) This shift in format is something many podcasters have learned to use to their advantage.
“There are opportunities to atomize content to produce clips. [Podcasters] can take an hour-long video podcast and break it up into a series of smaller clips. And those smaller clips may well yield larger audiences than the entire full piece,” Radcliffe explained. “That’s going to help in terms of SEO and search results.” It also helps “in terms of content potentially being shared or reaching different audiences.”
By “atomizing” content and creating shorter, standalone clip videos of key moments from full episodes podcasters are more likely to go viral and gain wider audiences who will then go through and relisten to their archive of episodes. (A great example is this clip from Glennon Doyle’s We Can Do Hard Things podcast.)
“Creators have figured out how to make podcasts work on a platform that wasn’t designed for them, leveraging YouTube’s search algorithm to meet new audiences, make more money, and expand into a medium that’s expected to grow rapidly in the coming years,” The Verge’s Julia Alexander wrote back in 2019. “Creating a separate channel for clips lets podcasters take advantage of YouTube’s recommendation algorithm, which surfaces content on specific subjects a viewer is already interested in.”
Bonus: It’s free!
Another big draw for audiences to consume podcasts on YouTube is a simple one… it’s free. According to Edison Research, the number of Americans paying for audio subscriptions has doubled since 2015. With more and more podcasts and platforms going behind paywalls, and more and more consumers encountering subscription fatigue, YouTube is a (seemingly) egalitarian platform where podcast audiences can consume as much content from shows as they desire, regardless of any paywalls the full-length podcasts may be behind.
Lights, camera, action!
If you don’t have video as a part of your podcast offering, don’t panic. “The thing I would advise against is thinking that you 100% need to do this right now,” cautioned Radcliffe. “You can still have a successful podcasting strategy that doesn’t include video. But increasingly, we will see video as a part of that mix because it enables [podcasters] to reach audiences in different places. It also opens up further opportunities for engagement and interaction.”
Podcasting in the digital age is more than simply audio content, just as written stories are much more than text-only these days. As our digital appetites shift towards brief, shareable video, other media products are certainly not destined for obsolescence. But multimedia is irrefutably the name of the digital game. So it’s only natural that, as podcasting matures, it is branching out of our headphones and onto our screens.
Seems like everyone is a podcaster these days. There are millionaire teens on TikTok and it seems like every yoga instructor has a million subscribers on their YouTube channel. You see big media companies rejoicing about their fan following on Spotify, YouTube etc.
These platforms share their audience, advertising revenue, and subscriptions revenue with the original content creators. They allow publishers and creators to grow their following and create their fiefdom of anonymous fans. Most of these platforms have started accepting voluntary contributions and passing back a portion of the contribution to the creator. Twitter calls it Tipjar, YouTube calls it Applause, Twitch has Cheer, TikTok has Gifts. However, this fiefdom is limited within the walled gardens of the platform. There is absolutely no way for a publisher or creator to port over their fans to another platform or build an email relationship with the platform’s audience.
The winner-take-all dynamics are just as prevalent on these platforms. Very few pieces of original content will garner outsized views or listens, enough to justify significant monthly payouts. Having spoken to 100s of creators and media companies, we have learned that the platform payouts and terms of revenue are riddled with opaqueness. It’s just like how Heinz (analogous to original content creator) does not have any control over their revenue terms with Walmart (analogous to platform). For most creators their primary source of income is actually through sponsorships; either as influencer marketing campaigns, podcast readouts, or mid-roll video placements.
Relationship business
In all of the above scenarios the original content creator does not own a direct relationship with the platform’s audience but rather with a non-traceable user of the platform. Some creators try to link-out from these platforms in an effort to build a direct relationship with the user and start building a reader revenue stream.
Some of the most common Link-In Bio companies like Linktree (Linktr.ee), Later (Linkin.bio) or Buy Me A Coffee provide a landing area for creators to start building a direct reader revenue relationship. On the flip side, almost all platforms curb the use of external links primarily to restrict monetization inside the walled gardens of the platform. Instagram for example does not allow web-links in posts. Creators can have only one link in their Instagram bio. In late 2017, YouTube tightened rules around videos with external links.
In the context of audio and video content, few publishers and creators have dared to branch out and go direct-to-consumer (D2C). Beyond plugging in standard advertising revenue options through various ad-networks, the D2C decision hinges on sustainable reader revenue potential. This has intensified in light of the ongoing regulatory discussion around solving for “dark patterns” or subscription traps. Globally, regulators (Federal Trade Commission in the US; Competition & Markets Authority in the UK; Reserve Bank of India in India) are revising consumer protection policies around recurring payments and mandating subscription renewal reminders with one-click cancellation options.
The business of engagement
This would bring mayhem for direct-to-consumer publishers and creators whose subscriber base is filled with zombie subscribers. Almost half of U.S. podcast listeners are lighter, casual users who listen to less than 3 episodes (across podcasters) in a month. This raises concern over their propensity to subscribe to a paid podcast subscription. A recent study by Northwestern University’s Spiegel Research Center shows that:
49% of digital subscribers do not access their paid subscriptions even once
54% have accessed their paid subscriptions just once in one month
Given the regulatory headwinds, it is becoming crucial for publishers to diversify reader revenue sources beyond all-you-can-eat subscriptions. One of the top five reasons subscribers cancel their subscriptions is because of the inability to consume all the content their subscription offers. So, while reader revenue is on everyone’s mind, subscription alone will not suffice. Unbundling audio and video for pay-per-content requires sophisticated technology.
Every publisher and creator with quality audio or video content starts off with piggybacking on platforms. They consider sponsorships as their main source of revenue. But the moment of truth comes when the sponsorship gravy train stops and platform revenues do not add up compared to the cost of production for quality audio and video. That’s when a clear direct-to-consumer and reader revenue strategy takes its rightful place in the limelight.
About the author
Abhishek is a Co-founder & CEO of Fewcents, fintech-for-publishers, that brings incremental reader revenue from “Never-Subscribers.” He is a seasoned business leader and technology product manager. He has worked in management consulting with PwC and Altman Solon in Boston, USA before moving to Singapore permanently. In Singapore, he started his own venture, Shoffr, a digital marketing solution that provides online to offline attribution for digital marketers. In 2019, Abhishek sold Shoffr to Affle, a publicly listed ad-tech company in India. After solving the advertiser’s offline attribution problem, Abhishek has now set his eyes on solving the content monetization problem for online publishers.
