I’m enamored with the growing conversation around media product development this year. It’s an exciting moment that reflects a real shift in how we think about value. We create products and experiences that people connect with, trust, and choose to invest in, that makes the work feel more purposeful and alive! Our industry has moved past channel distribution and now focuses on the human and social reasons people connect with journalism.
Understanding the why: evaluation
I’ve spent a lot of time studying how readers engage with news content, not just as consumers but as participants in a broader cultural ecosystem. In earlier decades, a newspaper or broadcast station was more than a source of information. It was part of daily life that blended local and national updates, insights, and experiences that helped people feel connected. People didn’t just pay for access to facts. They invested in a shared identity that reflected their values, routines, and sense of belonging. That relationship between value and identity continues to shape the future of media and its products. What excites me most is how the media’s current focus on product development gives us the freedom to create new models that honor both the integrity of journalism as a public good and the creativity to build products that people invest in.
To get this right, media leaders need to step back to view content through the lens of “product.” Product thinking brings clarity, focus, and a more objective sense of value. We’re in a hyper-digital consumer era, where every choice, every interaction, and every piece of content lives within an ecosystem of constant evaluation. Certain social and economic forces still support journalism as a public good grounded in truth and trust; However, there’s a growing expectation of transactional value. Audiences assess everything from experience to convenience to relevance. That makes the creation of media as a product both a significant challenge – and opportunity.
Testing assumptions: validation
Media teams now apply a product mindset to evaluate goals with intention and clarity. The process asks clear, purposeful questions:
Is there a real problem or opportunity, and can it be defined?
What is the hypothesis, and how does it align with the organization’s main mission or north star?
What does the current environment reveal, and where might there be room for adaptation or improvement?
How can the idea be tested quickly to bring sharper insight and direction?
What would success look like, and why?
What milestones matter most along the way?
From there, the focus turns to research and practicality.
Does a market already exist for something similar?
What resources would the concept require, and what is the expected return on investment?
This dynamic reveals something timeless about market fit and audience need. At its height, news media succeeded because it offered both utility and identity, a practical product built on trust and relevance. As the industry rebuilds, we’re returning to those roots with a modern sensibility. We rediscover how journalism can serve as a true resource in people’s lives. It reflects renewal, not nostalgia.
This is the time to test as many assumptions as possible, measure real behavior, and make informed adjustments that strengthen product-market fit. Propensity modeling plays a big part here because it helps identify early signals of interest and likelihood of engagement. By studying data patterns and connecting intent to action, organizations understand not only what audiences say they want but what they actually do.
What matters most is that validation gives you proof, not just possibility. It’s how we separate assumptions from evidence and shape news and media experiences that reflect the true behavior and expectations of the people we serve. When done well, it transforms journalism into a living resource that meets audiences where they are while guiding them toward what they need next.
Building for people: amplification
Every interaction, whether through newsletters, video engagement or social participation, offers clues about how people move through the experience. Those insights allow teams to refine quickly and stay adaptive to the needs of the moment. Authenticity remains the constant thread, especially as visual and social storytelling become even more influential. Video, personality, and voice all shape how audiences connect and return.
This process helps organizations build experiences that feel personal, intuitive, and essential. Every insight becomes a chance to fine-tune the relationship between audience behavior, editorial vision, and product design. It reinforces that product work is more than features or clicks. It’s about designing systems that anticipate needs, remove friction, and deepen value with every interaction.
This is why propensity modeling matters. It offers one of the most practical ways to understand how people connect with content and how their actions reveal what truly matters to them. Propensity modeling uses patterns in data to identify the likelihood that someone will take an action, such as subscribing, donating, or returning to engage again. It helps teams recognize not just what people do, but why they do it.
A product-centric approach guides media innovation
When combined with thoughtful product development, propensity modeling can transform how media organizations serve their audiences. It shows how often people engage, what keeps them returning, and what causes them to drift. With that understanding, teams create user journeys that feel natural and affirming, inviting people deeper into the ecosystem.
This approach builds an ongoing feedback loop. Each iteration becomes a chance to learn more, improve relevance and strengthen the experience in meaningful ways. It’s not about volume; it’s about resonance. By pairing data with empathy, organizations design products that feel human, responsive and alive. That’s the kind of innovation that keeps journalism connected to the people it exists to serve.
Media product leaders are navigating uncharted territory in 2025, where generative AI is reshaping audience behavior and attention has become the scarcest commodity. Yet a consensus is emerging that the path forward isn’t about choosing between user needs and commercial success. Instead, it’s about aligning them.
Six senior product executives from Gannett, FOX, People Inc., The Economist, The Atlantic and The Wall Street Journal share how they’re navigating AI disruption, multi-generational audiences, competing for scarce attention, and aligning user needs with business goals.
Generative AI impacts everything
All of the executives DCN spoke with cited generative AI as the most disruptive technology shaping their product strategy. However, their thoughts and approaches varied.
“From a product perspective, we need to be sure that anything we do is beneficial to the reader,” explained Taneth Evans, head of digital for The Wall Street Journal. “One good example is our AI summaries at the top of articles. We first articulated a hypothesis, then we ran A/B tests and spoke to readers in order to make sure the WSJ audience was always at the heart of our ultimate decision.”
Adam McClean, chief product officer at People Inc. says generative AI is disrupting user behavior and audience acquisition, pushing media companies to diversify how they reach people. However, he points out that “It also opens up new opportunities to improve efficiency inside our organizations. People Inc. is no exception, and we are adjusting our strategy to meet both the challenges and the opportunities this technology creates.”
At The Economist, Chief Product Officer Liz Goulding says that generative AI is influencing both how people consume content and how they create products. “These two forces may look separate, but in reality, they reinforce each other,” she says. “As discovery habits shift, the need for our products to stand out… becomes even more critical. The tools available to product teams — from sharper analytics to generative design aids — are helping us respond to those needs faster and with greater precision.”
Kara Chiles, senior vice president of media products at Gannett | USA TODAY Network, explained the company is experimenting with automation and AI-based systems, anticipating it will have the greatest impact on their product strategy and business. “This isn’t new – we’ve been experimenting with this technology for some time. What is new is awareness across the board that this moment is different,” she says. “It’s opening up some bold thinking about how we create and sustain differently.”
FOX’s product teams are identifying where generative AI can enhance the consumer experience, help to personalize user journeys, and improve operational efficiency, explained John Fiedler, EVP of product & engineering at Fox. “We are being intentional. We’re prioritizing use cases that make our products more intuitive without adding unnecessary complexity. The goal is to integrate these technologies in ways that genuinely elevate the overall experience.”
Put users first
The media product leaders we spoke with consistently emphasized that putting audience needs at the center of product development didn’t compete with commercial goals, rather, it drove them. But how that alignment played out in strategy and practice varied across organizations.
Adam McClean and Liz Goulding emphasized strategic alignment, that user needs drive commercial value.
“If you are building products the right way, commercial objectives should enhance the user experience rather than compete with it,” says McClean. “At People Inc. we think of it less as a balancing act and more as an alignment exercise. When we design features that truly meet user needs, they naturally create value for our business.”
Whereas Goulding explains she’s always viewed user needs and commercial objectives as far more aligned than they’re sometimes portrayed. “Meeting user needs makes a product more desirable and reduces churn — that’s a win commercially. At The Economist, we approach this systematically. We assign tangible value to user needs within our internal prioritization framework.”
Other executives focused on practical execution, explaining how to implement that alignment through research, feedback, and iteration. Great product experience builds audience and brand loyalty, which drives monetization over time.
Gannett incorporates user needs at multiple points through new product creation, Chiles explains. “From identifying the task we are looking to accomplish, understanding the target audience, and validating whether the concepts we’re excited about are reaching the intended user. It’s challenging when you put something fresh and different in front of an existing audience – change is friction.”
Fox starts their product discovery process with the consumer in mind, then brings in commercial considerations to ensure every feature is evaluated for both impact and sustainability, Fiedler says. “Striking the right balance means building thoughtfully, listening to users, analyzing the data, and being ready to adjust if something isn’t delivering for both the audience and the business.”
At The Atlantic, the product team is focused on producing the best, highest quality reporting for their audience and delivering it in the most intuitive and creative way they can, says Gitesh Gohel, chief product officer at The Atlantic. “When we nail that product-market fit with The Atlantic’s values baked into everything we’re thinking about, we end up serving both sides really well,” he says. “We also know what we’re really good at – helping people understand the why behind the stories – and we don’t try to be everything to everyone. That focus is key.”
The biggest challenges in media product strategy
This year, media product leaders are facing complex challenges, from audiences spanning generations, to delivering seamless experiences, all without compromising quality or brand trust.
The Atlantic’s Gohel says they’re always exploring how they can expand what the publication can do for its readers or what it can help them with. “We’re spending a lot of time right now thinking about our mobile app experiences and building direct relationships with our readers. We’re thinking about moving our audience through all the different experiences and products The Atlantic has,” he says.
At The Wall Street Journal, Evans explains that their audiences and their expectations are shifting significantly. “We now span many generations with different preferences in how they want to consume our journalism, and we have to be there to meet them all. That means thinking about text and text-adjacent formats, as well as video, audio, graphics, conversations and more,” Evans says. “And the great challenge facing us all: how do we integrate all of this into a seamless experience fit for our many differing audience needs?”
Yet, for others, the challenge is about balancing speed, quality, and brand.
“We have to move fast to keep pace with the market, while still protecting the brand equity and product quality our users expect from us,” says McClean.
“For us, the biggest challenge is focus,” says Fiedler. “With so many emerging technologies, platforms, and potential partnerships, the most challenging hardest – and most important – decisions are often choosing what not to pursue. That discipline allows us to concentrate our efforts on what matters most to our audience.”
Another challenge product leaders spoke about was competing for audience attention and time, particularly as they consume news in so many places, says Goulding.
“Attention is scarce, and our audience has endless options at their fingertips,” she says. “For The Economist, the opportunity lies in deepening the connection between our journalism and our readers. [We must ensure] that when people choose to spend time with us, it feels not only rewarding but indispensable.” That means creating products that meet The Economist’s audience where they are, in formats that suit their lives, without compromising on quality.
It also means addressing the challenge of creating useful and meaningful content for audiences that empower audiences. “I can’t think of a time where having accurate and credible information has been more important,” says Chiles. “Our goal is to provide that information through an experience that makes users feel confident they have the tools to be informed, entertained and make better decisions for their lives.”
Design for people, teams, and purpose
For product executives in media in 2025, every decision ripples across audiences, teams, and platforms. Successful product leaders have discovered that true alignment, where great user experience drives revenue, isn’t just better strategy, it’s the only sustainable path forward. As audiences fragment across generations and platforms, and AI reshapes how people discover and consume content, the complexity facing product executives is undeniable.
However, these leaders have found clarity. When user needs drive everything, the challenge shifts from managing trade-offs to orchestrating alignment across strategy and business objectives. In a landscape where attention is currency, this isn’t just good product philosophy, it’s survival.
Ever since Wordle became a household name, later acquired by The New York Times, it’s been impossible to ignore the huge potential of games as a draw for the digital media business. The September 2025 study “Exploring Gamification in Online Journalism: Perspectives from Media Owners Through Interviews” offers fresh insight into how gamification is being utilized and debated within newsrooms.
Gamification involves applying interactive game mechanics to non-game environments, such as news platforms, to drive user engagement and loyalty. Gamification can include more complex activities such as crossword puzzles, but also simpler interactive features such as quizzes, point collection systems, leaderboards, badges, hashtags, rankings, “like/dislike” options, and sharing, which may be more feasible for certain settings.
While most gamification studies focus on user experience, this one explores executive-level perspectives from media owners and editors-in-chief. Originally published in Journalism and Media, the study focuses on how Greek news media leaders are exploring and utilizing gamification strategies. The study’s authors conducted and analyzed interviews with a variety of digital media decision makers to uncover key trends and actionable insights.
Opportunities abound
Games are synonymous with fun. But gamification can have serious business benefits for digital media platforms, such as:
Increased user time-on-site and repeat visits.
Deeper user interaction, not just as a novelty, but fostering audience retention.
Generation of analytics on user behavior, which can inform editorial strategy and content personalization.
Appeal to younger, tech-savvy users- potentially without alienating long-term audiences.
Most of the media owners and editors interviewed perceive gamification as a promising strategic approach for increasing user engagement while enriching the digital news experience. Leaders emphasized the need to uphold professional ethics while adapting established journalistic practices to accommodate the interactive and participatory nature of today’s digital media environment.
Potential pitfalls of media gamification
As much promise as gamification holds, some media executives express ethical concerns, such as credibility risks, especially among long-term users who value tradition. Some noted that older audiences may perceive gamification as gimmicky or inappropriate for news, possibly alienating core audiences. They stress the importance of maintaining editorial integrity and journalistic standards, especially in hard news contexts. Concerns about aggressive monetization were discussed. Finally, some leaders interviewed expressed concern about potential manipulation: the possibility that gamification could be used to prioritize clicks over informed citizenship.
Practical concerns also surfaced in interviews. Smaller newsrooms may lack technical capacity, design expertise, or budget to implement gamification effectively. Internal pushbacks from staff can occur, especially among those who view gamification as incompatible with traditional journalism values. Some executives question whether gamified features can be maintained over time without becoming stale or losing relevance.
Researchers also point out that while many participants in the study were able to recognize and assess individual gamified elements, they often lacked the training to conceptualize gamification as a planned, strategic approach. This indicates a need for professional development to help media leaders build skills to design, assess, and apply gamification in meaningful ways.
So, is gamification right for your media business?
Research indicates the importance of building internal buy-in before launching gamification innovations. Organizational resistance can hinder results, so ensure that all staff understand the value of proposed changes. Invest in training and be ready to assure stakeholders that ethical and practical issues have been thoughtfully considered to maintain integrity and mitigate potential pitfalls.
One caveat: the study data is drawn from ten in-depth interviews with media executives in Greece, including owners and editors-in-chief of Greek newspapers, radio stations, television channels, and online news platforms. While the interviews were thorough and represented diverse media venues, the research is drawn from a modest quantity of participants within a limited geographic area.
Nevertheless, this study offers fascinating insight from those with real-world expertise in the field. The perspectives shared highlight the promise and complexity of merging gamification with journalistic practices. Digital media leaders seeking to innovate through gamification while upholding editorial credibility will find this research particularly relevant.
Research framework
The study uses a Normalization Process Theory (NPT) framework to analyze how gamification can be integrated into newsroom culture. The results point to a clear need for intentional design, strong editorial governance, and regular impact evaluation.
Research authors outline how frameworks like Normalization Process Theory (NPT) can guide adoption:
-Coherence: Make the purpose clear.
-Cognitive Participation: Get buy-in from staff.
-Collective Action: Assign roles and resources.
-Reflexive Monitoring: Evaluate and adjust.
The NPT framework can also be used to guide introduction of other emerging technologies.
Lately, I’ve found myself frequently saying variations of the same concept: “I like to see all the marbles fall at the same time,” or maybe “I like to see all the marbles moving in the same direction.” It’s a simple image, but it captures something critical that media leaders are grappling with.
Right now, both for-profit and nonprofit news organizations are pulled in multiple directions, sometimes in ways that feel conflicting. There’s the urgent pressure to meet short-term revenue and development goals. There’s also the equally critical responsibility to build a scalable, high-quality content product that earns long-term trust and engagement. On the surface, separating those efforts can seem logical, even principled. Many media organizations intentionally silo revenue from editorial to protect independence, maintain credibility and avoid the perception of influence.
But here’s the problem: That separation, while well-intentioned, often leads to organizational disconnect, inefficiency, and even burnout. Editorial teams operate without a clear understanding of audience needs or funding realities. Revenue teams chase dollars without being fully connected to the mission or the product value that fuels those relationships. When these efforts are misaligned, the result isn’t integrity. It is inertia.
The most resilient and forward-moving organizations are the ones that challenge that separation. These media companies don’t treat building an audience and driving revenue as separate (or even competing) goals. Instead, they invest in infrastructure and culture that make it possible for product-led and sales-led strategies to operate in sync. They build systems that allow each side to inform and strengthen the other without compromising editorial independence. It is a deliberate tactical shift and a shift in mindset reset that has become essential in today’s climate.
Leading with product or sales
While coaching organizations through infrastructure strategies, I repeatedly run into a familiar question: In an early startup environment, how do you appeal to potential sponsors when your audience is incredibly valuable but statistically small?
It’s not quite a paradox, but it does expose a frustrating contradiction at the heart of early-stage media revenue and audience growth. It strikes a nerve and speaks directly to the false binary of whether an organization should be focused on building or selling. The truth is, you can–and should–do both. When the entire team is grounded in the heart of your mission and has a clear understanding of who you are and what you offer, it actually becomes easier to move forward confidently on both fronts.
A product-led approach focuses on the quality of the news product, including its content, features and the consistent delivery of value to the audience. It helps media companies drive growth and can convert into revenue through subscriptions, memberships or recurring giving. This strategy emphasizes seamless content design, audience segmentation and member benefits, using clear calls to action to increase engagement and improve retention. Success requires research, surveying, behavioral analysis and continuous assessment. While typically slower and more intentional, product-led growth is essential for long-term sustainability.
What I’ve learned and often emphasize is that sales is not a mad scramble. It is a system. It is an opportunity to design and execute a strategy where effort, decision-making and influence come together to create real value for partners. Strong sales strategies lead to stronger sponsorships, better partnerships and long-term retention. Just like product development, this requires time, intention and strategic alignment.
Understanding the nuances of both models and how product-led and sales-led growth can operate independently as well as together is critical. A dual-engine model that integrates both allows organizations to be nimble and intentional at the same time while building something sustainable, scalable and mission-aligned.
Leading with product and sales
We see this logic applied in the tech world. Companies known for product-led growth, especially in the startup space, don’t shy away from integrating a sales function. A product-led approach drives user acquisition and early traction, much like how a news organization might use free content or limited-access models to grow engagement. According to McKinsey research from 2023, companies that pair product-led strategies with traditional enterprise sales often outperform peers in both revenue growth and company valuation. That hybrid model, often referred to as product-led sales, allows organizations to serve both individual users and high-value institutional clients at the same time.
This shows something very clear. Building and selling are not competing forces. In reality, they are most effective when aligned through shared infrastructure. They are like marbles in a well-designed marble run. Each follows its own track with different curves, drops and timing. But when the system is aligned, all the marbles arrive at their destination together. That kind of coordination, guided by clarity and discipline, allows organizations, especially in news media, to grow with intention instead of remaining stuck in cycles of reactive decision-making.
When a newsroom builds systems that allow both models to operate in sync, everything becomes more intentional, more measurable and more resilient. A robust CRM connects audience data with donor and sponsor relationships. Strong analytics make it possible to track which content is performing and which audience segments are most engaged. Brand development provides both editorial and revenue teams with a shared language and a clear point of alignment.
When this kind of integrated infrastructure is in place, product-led strategies such as newsletter personalization and loyalty programs help surface warm leads. At the same time, sales-led efforts like sponsorship pitches and donor stewardship can be guided by real user behavior and remain connected to the overall product experience.
The landing point
Too many for-profit and nonprofit mission-driven media organizations are being forced to choose between building a content product that earns trust or hustling for revenue that keeps the lights on. That false choice is costing more than just money; it is costing momentum. When product-led and sales-led strategies operate in silos, teams burn out, missions stall and infrastructure cracks under the weight of missed expectations.
A hybrid growth strategy, anchored in infrastructure, is sustainable, scalable and adaptive. It helps organizations become more responsive to opportunity and less reactive to disruption. By definition, marble runs help us explore how forces interact to influence motion, momentum and timing. They offer a powerful visual for how systems can be designed to create coordinated outcomes. That is exactly the kind of growth news media needs right now. This is not just about generating revenue or building an audience. It is about creating alignment so that every team, every strategy and every mission-driven decision moves with purpose and arrives exactly where it is meant to, together.
To stand out in the “AI-age,” media companies are emphasizing direct relationships with the audience. We’re also seeing the resurgence of the homepage, the emergence of AI-powered editorial workflows, and an increased need for strong data management. As we wrote last month, this is being driven by the fact that quality is of utmost importance as generative AI drives the cost to produce generic content down to zero and Google search shifts to focus on offering “answers” instead of driving traffic.
Now, we’ll walk through trends we’re seeing in media product management, and how teams are aligning to drive results in this new paradigm.
The ascendancy of product management
As media organizations refocus on delivering content of the highest quality, combined with an excellent user experience (that people want to pay for), the role of the product manager is changing somewhat as various teams try to institute changes on the digital experience.
These changes might be editorial teams creating new workflows, revenue teams adding more ads and popups, engineering teams building fancy bespoke front ends—normal stuff that has been part of media forever. What’s changed somewhat is product management’s share of voice. Do product managers just take orders and make it happen, or can they say no? Who is speaking for the user? Who is advocating for a clean content experience? What makes your subscription stand out?
As direct relationships and the homepage get more important, product management is finding itself in a more strategic position. The challenge is in balancing the needs of discrete teams with the needs of their audience—and the needs of everyone with the needs of the business.
Focus on innovation and fundamentals
Organizations are taking an extremely hard look at where they spend their engineering dollars. These organizations are assessing how much of their team’s work is dedicated to maintenance versus creating new revenue-generating features.
For example, the ability to handle traffic spikes. If they’re doing all the maintenance of keeping the site up for traffic spikes and similar occurrences, leadership are thinking about whether that can be outsourced to a managed platform that specializes in that work and can thus do it more cost-effectively.
This focus on innovation introduces the drive towards open-source. With open source, you can let the community maintain the software, for free. You just customize on top of it.
Those not using open source are burning money and missing out
If the engineering team is celebrating introducing something like Authors and Permissions to the tech stack, it’s time to ask critical questions. These features have been available in open-source CMSes for more than a decade. Why is anyone reinventing the wheel? “We’ll make it ourselves and it’ll be better” is a common trap. Couldn’t something more productive have been done with those engineering hours?
Besides embracing open source, we’re also seeing more consolidation in tech stacks—a broad organization with many distinct properties might be moving from having four CMSes down to just one. This reduces friction from new feature releases and enhances learnings across publications or business units.
The most interesting thing we are seeing in this area is a major spike in contribution back to the open source community in terms of code, best practices, and more. This is perhaps a tacit acknowledgement that content, not technology, is the real differentiator for media organizations.
Headless architecture is losing steam
Headless was all the hotness in engineering for a while. Now we’re seeing media organizations choose monolithic (or “full stack”) implementations. Simply put, the bet on headless hasn’t paid off for many media use cases.
Frequently, the needs of these sites are pretty simple—serving written content to the end user. Most open-source CMSes can power both the front end and the back end. Choosing to develop their own headless front end is choosing to create costly tech debt—and most media engineering teams don’t have money to spare. This change opens up all the time they spent creating and maintaining basic front-end technology for reprioritization towards revenue-generating engineering.
The “desire line” we’re walking
A desire line is an “unplanned route or path (such as one worn into a grassy surface by repeated foot traffic) that is used by pedestrians in preference to or in the absence of a designated alternative (such as a paved pathway).” Frequently it’s because this path is simply the most efficient path between points A and B.
With media products, the desire line is straightforward: the platforms are unreliable sources of traffic, and there isn’t enough money to fund anything but the most efficient paths forward. This is why we are seeing organizations across the industry align on direct, subscriber-based relationships. And, to support these efforts, media organizations are focused on the efficient use of engineering resources via open-source technology. The most exciting part here is that—because we are not all just producers but also consumers of news and media—the reader experience itself is getting better. It has to be better, in order to justify a subscription.
Digital media has experienced a near-constant evolution in consumer behavior, preferences, and expectations over the past couple of decades. And things show no sign of slowing down. Many media companies are not just at a crossroads, they are at a point of no return. How they respond now will likely shape whether they survive or not.
Of course, some media companies have adapted skillfully to these changes. It’s now possible for consumers to watch TV on half a dozen devices whenever and wherever they want (possibly all at the same time if you’re my kid). We can read the news from anywhere, and the news now often comes packaged with games, recipes, communities, podcasts, and even in-person events.
Meanwhile, advertisers can track viewers across platforms, and measure engagement on a deeper level, with more robust data than anything offered in the Nielsen era. Even the programming has changed, as media companies adapt to changing audience preferences.
As media companies continue to evolve and experiment, the challenge is to do this without potentially alienating their customer base. It requires the right mix of innovating with a product mindset to create something new: viewer experience, insights into customer wants and needs, and consumer engagement.
It all starts with product
What do companies need to consider to move the needle? They need to constantly shift with – and shift – consumer expectations. There is a cost in every decision that media companies make, and every action or inaction has consequences.
All of these decisions ladder up to the product itself. Product development never, ever stops, because if it does, it leads to stagnation (and even irrelevance). For example, media companies like National Journal have made their investments to differentiate, not just improve. Category leaders like Netflix, Instagram, and TikTok offer products that look very different today than they did a few years ago because they continued to evolve. They updated to both shift and meet consumer expectations and as a result, have remained the best at what they do.
For media companies looking to follow a similar pattern, there are three key considerations:
Viewer experience
Insights into customer wants and needs
Consumer engagement
Viewer experience
Developing cutting edge products requires alignment with users, because every innovation has to improve the experience. Every product must be highly-intuitive and easy to interact with. As companies push the boundaries on what’s possible, they also need to ensure that new functions work seamlessly.
If you are a consumer, there’s nothing worse than loading a new application or website area only for it to raise questions in your mind. This extends beyond the technical components to other consumer touchpoints, including user support and billing.
At the core, media companies need to design products that their customers love, and not just simply use.
Insights into customer wants and needs
The goal of every media company is to build an experience that consumers love. To do that, companies need to constantly research and design for needs. The biggest insights in media consumption habits are the rise of free ad-supported TV (FAST) channels on streaming platforms and the dominance of short-form content.
Consumers accept advertising because they know that it funds the media they are viewing, reading, or hearing.
Media companies have looked for a way to layer advertising on top of their offerings in a way where advertisers see value, and consumers understand that the ads they see are funding the media they digest. FAST channels seem to strike this balance perfectly, much to the surprise of the ad industry.
Short-form content offers another, similar opportunity. TikTok’s massive adoption shows that consumers are ingesting information at a dizzying pace. Media companies should be seeking out ways to create and capitalize on this new form of content.
Consumer engagement
The natural benefit of designing for needs is that it improves user engagement. One of the biggest learnings about the FAST adoption described above is that consumers actually use ads as a way of engagement. This creates opportunities for media companies to use these ad slots to get consumers to engage with new forms of content.
Ads are now interactive, with surveys or the ability to click to watch something new. By using data signals and programmatically serving tailored ads to customers, media companies can help drive consumers to other products and content offerings, building greater engagement.
Engagement goes much deeper than watching ads, of course. Media companies want consumers to spend time with their content, whether that’s as simple as watching a video or reading another article, or as deep as attending an event or paying for a subscription with unique benefits.
Streaming TV is largely viewed as TV in the traditional sense, but consumers don’t always engage with it on their couch in the living room. Some watch on the subway, some just run a TV show in the background and listen to it like a podcast. Media companies need to adjust their user experiences to better meet the evolving needs of these different audiences.
Learn without asking
As media companies work through the three considerations above, they need to keep one thing in mind: consumers aren’t necessarily going to tell you what they want. In fact, they may not know what they want. So if you adopt a product mindset and continue to evolve and push forward, it’s critical to analyze all of the data signals you have on consumer behavior and build something that meets the trends.
Product development never ends, and that’s especially true in the media space. A decade ago, no company would have been able to predict our current situation. It’s unlikely that any single enterprise can accurately predict the next 10 years of change, either. Regardless, evolution is key, so that media brands can remain in business and help define the next iteration of the industry.
With the rapidly changing media landscape organizations must constantly evolve or die.
In a recent BCG study, only 35% of companies achieved their digital transformation objectives.
Where are you?
Companies in the media ecosystem, including publishers, broadcasters, streaming platforms, and ad-tech providers, are under ongoing pressure to keep pace with the speed of innovation and new market demands. Many are struggling to sustain their business, which may support millions of users, while still innovating to stay ahead of the next technology wave.
This task has been exacerbated by conflicting priorities of executives, value vs velocity, which leaves CPOs and CTOs in need of a desperate alignment to build an optimal foundation for an ecosystem of digital products.
You must build for outcomes
Fortunately, the path to solving these issues is achievable, albeit one that requires a fundamental change in thinking and execution. By taking a product mindset philosophy across the entire business, media leaders are able to design for outcomes such as: changing consumer behavior, making informed decisions, and growing top- and bottom-line revenue. This holistic approach for all stakeholders helps align priorities with outcomes to achieve results.
The product mindset helps define individual product launches and conflicting stakeholder priorities. When applied to the entire enterprise, it can help media companies adapt for the future while also still serving their current customer base.
How to achieve the product mindset
Defining the product mindset
The product mindset establishes a link between product principles and company characteristics. It provides a shared experience that connects people at every level of an organization and allows them to communicate and make data-driven decisions. Central to the product mindset are three core concepts:
Digital products must be self-funded.
Digital products need to be chosen by the customer.
Digital products are never done.
Thinking about products along these lines can help a company clear away some of the roadblocks and challenges of maintaining pace with media evolution. But putting them into practice can be a challenge. The following five steps can help make the product mindset the core philosophy across a media enterprise.
1. Define the vision
Every product needs to create and communicate a clear vision that addresses a market problem, and every company needs a vision for what it aims to do. Does every product unite under a single vision that the company wants to push forward? If a product doesn’t fit the vision, then CTOs, product leads, and even CEOs need to have the discipline to say “no” to a new idea.
2. Prioritize customer needs
User-informed products solve specific problems for specific target customers. The more a business knows about its target customer, the better it can define its overall business strategy and, specifically, its product strategy. This requires careful research into questions that may seem obvious, but aren’t asked often enough in the development process. Who is the customer? What are we solving? What’s the best design to achieve the goals? Solid research ensures companies solve the right problem in the right way.
To fuel this line of inquiry, media companies must develop a strong user feedback loop that tests assumptions early, often, and regularly, through the use of analytics, UX testing, and user surveys. These are repetitive, quick, and inexpensive methods that will point the way forward for product development and revenue opportunities.
3. Practice a lean and agile mindset
The goal of any organization is to practice its core values to the point that the process becomes invisible. The agile mindset requires predictable development and deployment processes. When all products have to unite under the umbrella of a single vision, serve a target customer, and are built on predictable processes, then everything starts moving like clockwork.
The lean build process operates similarly. Products are built in the smallest, fastest way possible, without being tied to specific commitments. That helps spot failures early, resulting in less time lost and fewer wasted resources as companies move to evolve.
4. Excel at change
The need for the product mindset is ultimately about the need to get really good at the constant change within the media industry. The companies that will define the future can quickly reinvent themselves based on how their users and market change.
When assessing a change, ask, “does the benefit generated from change outweigh the cost?” Again, everything should be based on data and serving the end users, not chasing shiny objects. The more an organization can justify the change to match the vision, the easier the change will be.
5. Employ strong, skilled, empowered teams
The best way to apply the product mindset across an enterprise is to build cross-functional teams that open the door to wide-scale innovation. Encourage smart failure, where ideas are tested well in advance. Sometimes the data shows that a product may be needed, but the development doesn’t quite match the need. That’s OK, as long as the red flag is raised early in the process. By empowering teams, media companies make it quick and easy to change, ensuring that they can maintain their current position while building for the future.
Navigating the future at the speed of change
Media is evolving at a breakneck pace, shifting because of changes in consumer and customer behavior and needs. Even with all of the disrupting factors at work, most enterprises should be able to maintain – if not grow–their audiences in the future.
Maintaining the product mindset will help media businesses find new revenue opportunities, but also excel at change in the future, ensuring that they are ready to embrace the next evolution of media.
Warner Bros.' MultiVersus game leverages a broad range of the company's IP.
While the media and marketing worlds lose their minds over the metaverse, it’s worth bearing in mind that most of the purported benefits of that phenomenon already exist elsewhere.
The metaverse – whatever it ultimately looks like – is being built on the back of gaming audiences. From the platforms that early metaverse experiments were built on, to the community-based nature of interactions between brand and audiences on those platforms… it looks a lot like gaming with a new name. Besides, even if the metaverse actually emerges as a wholly new phenomenon, its audience will still bear a good deal of resemblance to gamers. So, products that serve this crowd are likely to bridge any eventual gap.
Either way, media companies must continuously attract new audiences to monetize in the race for subscribers and advertising spend. It also helps if those new audiences fit a particular profile that merits content development dollars as well. They need to be niche enough to have a community that is deeply invested in the topic and lucrative enough to be monetized effectively.
The largest niche on the planet
Gaming – the most lucrative entertainment medium globally – is certainly appealing in its own right. But importantly for media companies seeking new and valuable audiences, gaming offers scale characterized by numerous niches, each with the potential for product development that will attract, engage, and inform gaming communities.
Craig Levine is co-CEO at one of the largest esports organizations, ESL Gaming. He says: “There are so many niche communities within esports – and here ‘niche’ doesn’t mean small. I think ‘niche’ means focused. There are some very, very large niches in competitive gaming.”
Unsurprisingly, media companies with valuable IP continue to develop their esports plans. Warner Bros, for instance, has a hit on its hands with the platform fighter Multiversus, which sees exciting IP crossover. Meanwhile the latest Pokémon Presents on August 3rd opened not with information about its upcoming games, but the competitive scene that surrounds them. Esports titles like DOTA 2, CS:GO and Fortnite are perennially popular, with some achieving widespread brand recognition outside the gaming sphere.
Sports brands like Manchester United and the NBA have invested heavily in esports, from both grassroots and professional level. They recognize a growth industry when they see it.
According to the latest annual predictions from esports research specialist Newzoo global esports revenues will exceed $1.86bn by 2025, representing a CAGR of 13.4%. That is driven in large part by a rise in the size of the esports audience, with the global audience expected to reach 532 million by the end of 2022. The number of what Newzoo classes as “esports enthusiasts” is set to reach 261.2 million. This is this ‘niche’ that should set a fire under magazine publishers.
Charlotte Cook is MD of gaming-specialist agency Calm Consultancy. She says that the niches do exist within gaming: “When it comes to brands, advertisers, you do need to still segment them as different experiences exist on different platforms. A game on a mobile is very different from a game on a console.”
However, she states that the overall competitive gaming audience is growing. It is also broadening into demographics that advertisers are desperate to reach. Newzoo found that 74% of esports enthusiasts are full-time employees (compared to just 56% of the general online population), and around 44% fall in the high-income bracket compared to 33% of the general online population.
So, magazine companies looking to make some money around the world of esports specifically should adopt the role of bridge between brands and the community. Media companies like Future are already reaping the benefits of ecommerce based around high-value gaming audiences. The rise of esports also provides them with the ability to act as a trusted source for information related to high-value competitive gaming products.
Storytelling
Magazines’ core strength has always been around creating a compelling narrative. Just as with real-world sports stars, the focus of that storytelling around esports should be around the individuals within the space. Those esports stars are effective influencers within their community, which influencer-specialist marketers believe delivers the best rate of conversion on any ad spend. Moreover, since magazines are seen as a safe space for brands, it creates a new channel for the brands who seek to reach those audiences but run the risk of appearing opposite unsuitable content on the traditional esports platforms like Twitch.
Levine explains: “We’re currently in a world where players and influencers bring the power of creators, and that means a sort of this infinite distribution opportunity. The superstars of esports that come out are these incredible influencers who create tonnes of fandom around the games they focus on.”
That’s backed up by the rise of the gaming influencer, many of the most popular of whom are in the esports space. Small wonder that brands including Netflix, the NBA, and
Formula 1 have partnered with those streamers to expand their distribution channels for content among gamers.
Eyes on the prize
Much of the focus for the intersection of media and esports lies is still related to broadcasters bidding for the rights for esports competitions. Game companies like EA and Blizzard are betting the farm on esports broadcast rights, and arguably the prices commanded for those licences significantly undervalue the size of the audience.
Daniel Schnapp, esports specialist and partner at Sheppard Mullin, told Variety: “If you look at the most watched [and] consumed esports events over the last five to 10 years, they rival that – in terms of overall eyeballs and audience participation in viewership – of some of the largest sporting events that are put out by the traditional sports leagues.”
But, as with the ecosystem that has grown around traditional sports, there is space for magazine publishers to launch dedicated esports-related brands. The ecommerce opportunities related to the niche communities and ability to boost the profile of the pro players would benefit not just the magazine company, but the esports ecosystem as a whole. That virtuous circle of increased audience, attention and ad spend benefits the entire vertical – and magazines can claim a share of that pie.
For media companies, then, the question shouldn’t be “should we launch an esports title”, but “when should we?”
The U.K.’s DMG is a media heavyweight by most measures and the group’s Daily Mail ranks close to the top on any chart for online newsbrands. In terms of web traffic, it places fourth in the U.K., 10th in the U.S. and sixth globally according to the U.K.’s Press Gazette.
At the FIPP World Media Congress in Portugal earlier this month, the U.K. news giant outlined its adoption of a “launch everyday” philosophy that, surprisingly, owes a lot to the paper’s print heritage. The result was a 300% increase in subscriber numbers in just two years.
Product director Simon Regan-Edwards was unable to travel, but Denis Haman of CMS supplier Glide stood in to explain how the Mail+ team brought a print mindset to the evolution of the Mail+ subscription product first launched in 2013.
Mail+ began by replicating the newspaper experience online. Between its launch in 2013 and 2020, Mail+ secured 40,000 subscriptions as a digital replica available across multiple devices, including Kindle and Amazon’s Alexa.
In March 2020, the decision was taken to begin building out the Mail+ offering and by June 2022 it had 120,000 subscribers in total, with 76,000 digital only subscribers. This level of growth is impressive in itself, but even more so considering the free-to-access Mail Online site sits alongside it.
Two years, nine updates
Over the two years between the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2022, the Mail+ team delivered nine major updates.
These started with the introduction of briefings and newsletters and the addition of content in areas where the audience wanted to see more — TV and radio, food and health. Mail+ today incorporates Best Of sections, ListenTo functions and puzzles.
Moving through a homepage rebuild and a new storefront to improve the subscriber sign-up journey, Mail+ then made the shift to an edition-based format with three daily updates.
Additional releases have since brought author and category pages, new sections, and enhanced search functionality. More recently, the team implemented a second home page redesign to pull together a unified Mail+ offering.
“It’s been actually incredible to watch,” said Haman, “The Daily Mail team has managed to work and rework the product and reconfigure what it means to the customers. I have rarely seen a product move at such a pace and reinvent itself repeatedly.”
Haman began by exploding the misconception that a print foundation will slow digital development, arguing that print is possibly the most agile of all content channels.
“It gets destroyed and remade every single day, with the opportunity to redraw it, reshape it, rework it. And it has to hit the deadlines,” he explained. The Mail digital team brought that print mindset to the rebuilding of Mail+. That meant launching “every day, every week, every month.”
Of course, digital is not the same as print and Haman noted that there are “sensible limits” to digital development, meaning everything takes more time than you might think. Quoting Alan Hunter, former head of digital at The Times, Haman said: “This means you won’t be asking for a new product feature on a Tuesday and expecting it to be in the app by Friday.”
Crucially, the Mail digital team was given license from the very top to keep going until the right formula was found for Mail+. From that foundation and armed with audience data that suggested there was a real interest in the evolving subscription product, the team built quickly following a rigorous framework for decision making.
Ask what problem you are solving
Haman described the sweet spot for innovation between visibility, viability and desirability. He said it was important to be disciplined in asking key questions. Do customers want the features you are developing? Are they financially viable and are they technically possible with the available resources?
“It’s really important to fall back on the process,” said Haman. “If you’re under pressure you can easily find yourself jumping to conclusions.”
Data is crucial in building insight into what is building habits and why people do what they do. But Haman said it is also important to be open to new voices. He highlighted customer-service teams, sometimes overlooked, but often a powerful source of knowledge into what motivates or demotivates readers.
Data also avoids the HIPPO trap — the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion. Haman explained, “without data, it’s just an opinion.”
Networked teams bring together diverse groups with different perspectives and different skills, all the disciplines needed to launch a product. It’s important to give everyone access to the data to understand how it relates to revenue, engagement, and readership.
Haman emphasized the importance of giving everyone on the team a voice, and making sure that they are truly engaged in asking “What problem are we solving?” However, he took care to explain that although everyone should have a voice, “not everyone makes the decisions.”
Be realistic
To separate “should” from “could” and focus on priorities, the Mail+ development team used the MoSCoW methodology:
Must have
Should have
Could have
Won’t have
This helped the development team move faster and, crucially, get data back quickly to provide valuable insights for moving forward.
The team used digital tools across functions to “dig into” designs before development started. Haman compared this to making sure your architect’s plans are solid before starting to build; it’s considerably cheaper to revise plans than tear down half the house to make things right. Then lock designs to prevent changes at the 11th hour. “I love the fact that they would laminate designs,” he said. “It’s genuinely locked until it is released.”
The elegant exit
Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel, said it is important to act on your temporary conviction as if it was a real conviction; and when you realize that you are wrong, correct course very quickly.
Data, again, provided insight to what was working and what wasn’t for The Daily Mail. And if something wasn’t working, Haman said it was important to ignore the sunk cost fallacy — that we have spent all this money and we have to make it work. He explained, “If it’s going in the wrong direction, you need to be brave enough to cut your losses, pivot, or rather elegantly exit and move to a new direction.”
Regan-Edwards made a guest appearance at the end of the session via Zoom and I asked him if he thought at the start of the project he would make nine major updates in two years? He said, “No, but I think what we learned through this whole process is don’t predict what’s coming in two years time, focus on what are we delivering for this next quarter. What makes sense in this next quarter? What do we want to do in the quarter after that?”
He also re-emphasized the importance of being led by feedback from customers. “We have a big focus on puzzles,” he said. “That’s come from the feedback of how people are using the product.”
And finally, he said, overcome the “moonshot mentality” that says, “We’re done now, let’s put it in the cupboard. Instead, get into the mentality that you want to constantly improve.”
For over 100 years, newspaper and magazine publishers made money in three basic ways: advertising, newsstand sales, and periodic payments from subscribers who awaited the latest news delivered to their doorsteps. Most innovation in the publishing space revolved around the editorial content delivered to consumers rather than how people consumed that content.
Then digital hit, and it changed everything.
News and entertainment are widely available for free online. And the emergence of programmatic ad networks and news aggregators have put immense pressure on ad revenue. This means publishers need to shift toward a subscription-based revenue model if they want to survive—and thrive.
Bringing in new subscribers and building durable relationships with them starts with revenue diversification. You need to segment the audience to focus on those subscribers that will drive higher LTV (lifetime value). And you must have a customer-first mindset.
Your north star: delivering value in unique ways across the entire subscriber journey. The path to success: innovation. Here are three ways to deliver compelling digital experiences that’ll not only drive subscriber growth, but also encourage your subscribers to stick around for the long haul.
1. Diversify your revenue streams
Publishers that offer more flexible subscription plans, innovative acquisition strategies, and hybrid offerings will win over those that only offer rigid pricing models or limited product offerings.
Offer newsletters and companion subscriptions
One way to remake subscriptions for the digital era is to provide new offerings that didn’t exist decades ago. Consider, for instance, Morning Brew, theSkimm, and the many successful Substack offerings. Well-written, targeted newsletters are an increasingly popular way to consume information. They are also a great way to drive additional revenue, be it through subscriptions or sponsorships.
You might also consider developing a companion subscription product to your content offerings. GQ, for example, recently introduced its quarterly “Best Stuff Box.” It features electronics, grooming products, and accessories geared toward the same audience that reads GQ.
Drive interest through events
Events are another great way to drive interest in your subscription products (and to drive revenue on their own). You could hold a live event be it free or paid, virtual or in-person. This might be an in-depth interview with a celebrity or luminary. It could also be access to your on-staff experts, or gatherings of like minded audiences. Then you can use the resulting email list to nurture and help add new subscribers to your core offerings.
2. Segment and personalize your offerings to drive LTV higher
While driving subscriber growth matters, you want to focus your efforts on those subscribers who will stay with you for the long term. Segmenting your audience into logical cohorts and targeting the most promising ones will help you both reduce your acquisition costs and ensure more sustainable growth.
Create and analyze subscriber cohorts
Start by looking at your existing subscriber base. Take a deep dive into the data to understand the characteristics of those subscribers with the highest LTV: Are they subscribed to a particular plan? Are they in a particular age range, income level, or geographic location? Perhaps they tend to take advantage of other offerings, like events or newsletters. Look at what’s working and optimize your subscription offerings appropriately for the cohorts you’ve identified.
Understand churn to boost retention
Looking at the “winners” won’t tell you the whole story. A big part of optimizing your efforts for the highest LTV is understanding who’s churning and why. Identify your “subscriber cliff, which is the point at which subscribers tend to churn. Then, work backwards to understand why they’re churning. Whether it’s due to a price increase, the expiration of a promotional introductory offer, or something else, you now have a starting point for your retention efforts.
Make increasing LTV everyone’s priority
Part of driving higher LTV is ensuring every member of your team is responsible for success across the entire customer lifecycle. Reorient people’s roles around the whole customer journey. For instance, compensate your sales reps based on your subscribers’ product adoption and retention rates, instead of just the price of the deal close.
3. Embrace a customer-first culture, even if you have to rethink your product
To effectively digitally transform your business, you need to be willing to blow up your “sacred cows.” Ignore everything you thought you knew about your product offerings. It’s time to rethink every aspect of your offerings and reorient yourself around what your subscribers demand.
Rethink your product
First, your digital subscription need not be a one-to-one remake of your physical subscription. Say you’re a newspaper: instead of forcing subscribers to pay for access to the entire paper, maybe charge a smaller fee to allow them to access only certain sections, a set number of articles per month, or particular features (just the crossword, for example). Others may not care as much about access to your current journalism but crave access to your archives.
Offer bundles
Another way to orient your product offering around your subscribers is by partnering with a complementary brand (whether publishing or not) and offering a bundled subscription. The New York Times, for instance, partnered with Spotify a few years ago to offer a joint subscription to music lovers that was cheaper than the combined cost of both companies’ subscription plans.
Enact a cultural shift
To adopt a customer-first mindset, recognize it requires incorporating a new product culture and retraining your employees. For many publishers used to “doing things the way they were always done,” this will likely feel scary. But staying static in the way you monetize your offerings makes no sense, not when consumer expectations change so quickly or your competitors are able to move on a dime.
The pay off
The shift to digital has brought with it a tidal wave of change in consumer habits and expectations. The playbooks that served publishers so well for decades just aren’t that relevant anymore. By offering innovative bundles, unique subscription offerings, and creative merchandising models, publishers can build durable subscriber relationships and deliver value across the subscriber journey.
The road to publishing subscription success is paved with a variety of revenue streams. It requires a focus on subscribers that’ll drive high LTV. And it requires a rethink — and possible overhaul — of your product and company culture. No one said it was easy. But it is sure to be worth it.
As McKinsey reminds us, great products result when companies build bridges between technology innovation and audience preference. It is critical to deliver a holistic experience across functions and every stage of the customer journey. In media, aligning teams to develop data-informed products that engage audiences is more than a pathway to excellence. It’s essential for survival.
However, it can also be expensive to support. The record number of newsroom closures in 2020 offers unsettling proof that quality content cannot be the only draw. Organizations need to combine content and experience in new ways that decrease friction, increase satisfaction, and adapt to how consumers want to interact and where they are in the journey.
Continuing with our series of DCN video interviews, I talk to Millie Tran, chief product officer at The Texas Tribune. A local news success story, the Texas Tribune has built a sustainable business, employing more than 60 journalists through a range of revenue sources, including thousands of paying members.
Drawing from her experience at the Tribune, as well as The New York Times and Buzzfeed, Tran shares how the Tribune aligns editorial with the back-end processes to adapt content and coverage to what most readers find most useful. She also reveals how her team harnesses audience data and innovative news modules and visualizations to drive a 2x increase in homepage views and keep readers coming back.
Watch the video or read the full transcript below.
Transcript
Peggy Anne Salz: Product is the new marketing, but it’s not a new focus. It is gaining new significance as content companies’ perfect ways to draw from their data, to customize content and measure the results. But what are the business benefits? How can you individualize flagship products to drive views and longer sessions? How should you focus efforts and investments? Tough questions, yes, but we get the inside track here today from The Texas Tribune on Digital Content Next.
I am your host, Peggy Anne Salz, mobile analyst, content marketing consultant and frequent contributor to Digital Content Next. Of course, DCN is a trade association serving the diverse needs of high-quality digital content companies globally.
So my guest today is the chief product officer of The Texas Tribune. So it is a perfect match with our topic. That is where she leads audience, engineering, data, design, marketing, and communications and loyalty teams. Before this, she was deputy off-platform editor at The New York Times and before that global growth editor.
I am so excited to have her here today to talk about how she creates a holistic and successful product. Millie Tran, welcome to Digital Content Next. Great to have you here.
Millie Tran: Thanks for having me Peggy. I am excited to talk.
Peggy: It is a great topic. Product is so important, and I would like to start by understanding the alignment between product and the newsroom.
So, just thinking about your day-to-day routines, strategically and in practice, what does that look like?
Tran: I love this question. You know product can feel really opaque. I think traditionally we think of product as sitting in the center. But at a news organization, the news is the product.
So that alignment between product and the newsroom really manifests in the alignment with me and our editorial director Stacy-Marie Ishmael. I would say we are constantly in communication. And one of our core functions in each of our roles is just making decisions, making a call under conditions of uncertainty, conflict, complexity and increasing and sometimes unknown interdependencies.
We make a decision over here it can affect two things over there. And we are in a process of constantly anticipating those downstream effects so we can make the smartest decision based on our strategy. The balance between editorial decisions, product decisions and revenue decisions.
How I see my job. I think it is a mix of people, process and product. And I think it has to be in that order. It has to be that you understand people, their roles, their jobs, their skills, to work together most efficiently and effectively to build that product.
Salz: I love that because first of all you have people first, that resonates with me and you are thinking about not just the output, not just the articles, videos, podcasts, whatever it needs to be. You are focused on an experience. What you yourself have called a more holistic product. I would like to understand what you mean by that. I think you have also tweeted about that as well.
Tran: Probably. Speaking of tweets, I was just reminded of this tweet that Margaret Sullivan shared the other day about how she is a big fan and supporter of local news. But the websites are so horrendous, and I think that neatly ties up with what you are asking. Holistic to me means the whole experience. All of those things you mentioned, those modules, articles, videos, podcasts. There are micro experiences to each of those things, but all of those add up to the overall user experience.
When I say holistic user experience, I also mean not just the engineering, not just the CMS, it is also the design. It is also the way we write headlines, for example. So it is organizationally something we want to provide our users. I know even the ads we consider putting on our website, are not random ads that are offensive and distracting to the journalism. If you go to our website, you will see right now the ads are very relevant to someone interested in Texas, for example.
Salz: That is very important because relevancy, as you said, it is the entire experience, and it has to fit together. What are the systems I am even interacting with or working with in the first place? It goes far beyond CMS is what I’m hearing.
Tran: It is, and I would say we have a great tech setup here, our CMS is homemade, so that is our engineering team’s biggest product, and that powers our website. We have our data visuals team who are doing one off projects that we can test and learn from.
So we have a way to experiment with new products and a nice process to build it into the broader systems to make it easier. It is this nice feedback loop of experimenting, learning, and then integrating it into how we just do our work.
So our journalists and editors can also make these things easily because that also informs the work product at the end.
Salz: I want to get back to the whole idea of delivering a product, a product is the new marketing. We said that at the top and it is a success when it either acquires audiences or deepens the connection with existing ones. What is it at The Texas Tribune? What is your audience approach? Is it acquisition or retention or maybe, something else?
Tran: That is a great question. I think it has to be both acquisition and retention.
One of our big strategic priorities right now is double and diversify. Doubling our audience and making our audience reflect Texas, be more representative of Texas.
I often think about our membership. We want to grow the number of people who are supporting us through small dollar donations. The way to increase the members is to either have more people come to your site and then you have this natural conversion flow.
A percentage of our total readers are members so there is this natural conversion flow already. So you get more members by increasing the number of people who come to you or you increase the effectiveness of converting them. So at every point, do they come back, do they potentially sign up for a newsletter? We have seen that newsletters are our most effective channel in membership conversion. So: getting a reader to donate to us. I think it is about putting both of those things into a framework that helps you understand the costs and benefits of each at every point.
So, I think it is about having all the data, putting it in a model and framework that helps you balance all of these things. I don’t think you can just choose one or the other. Having that broad view will help you make better decisions.
I said that is a quantitative framework and to loop back to what you said about product is the new marketing. I think people subscribe to things. They support organizations, they support brands for reasons that we can’t always quantify. It is really important also to understand the emotional connection that someone has to your product and your organization, your brand.
I think in addition to having that quantitative framework, you need a way to understand why people are supporting you. I think that goes back to an organization’s mission and values.
Something that I am really proud that we do is have our journalism free to publish for kind of any news organization.
When you support us, you support Texas overall having a better news ecosystem. I think people, that resonates with people. I think understanding that resonates with people is really important, even if you cannot quantify it in that model I just talked about. To your question it is balancing the acquisition and retention, but also balancing the measurables and immeasurables.
Salz: I like that because that is exactly it, it is very holistic. It is about looking at what you can measure, and we will talk about that in a moment.
There are events, there are metrics, there are things you want to optimize too, but you also want to optimize the experience. That is thinking about the people, the audience, what resonates with them, what did they appreciate?
Now I would love for you to unpack that. Maybe you can give an example, walk us through the homepage because that is where the conversions happen. That is where the conversations happen.
Tran: Yes, so let me just pull up my homepage for you. This is The Texas Tribune homepage. There are two things on here already that I can talk through that we just launched within the past year during my time at the Tribune.
So this navbar is something we launched and what you’re seeing here, by the way, these little green numbers are live audience data. We use Parse.ly for this so we can see in the last 10 minutes or whatever time period, what people are clicking on. We can see what is of interest, what is resonating with people, that will inform, not necessarily decide, what we choose to feature.
Going back to what I was saying, about our two teams, the data visuals team, which is in the newsroom and then the engineering team. This navbar was code that was in a previous, I think it was in an election page, a way for us to highlight different topics on that page. We ended up pulling that code and the engineering team made it a part of our core CMS.
So we took something that was a one-off, we learned about how people used it and then saw a need for it. There are so many coronavirus stories that we did not know how to surface all the different lines and angles. We knew that we had the code. We took it and then the engineering team built that feature into our CMS. Now editors can just choose their own topics each day and highlight the most important. I think that is a great example of the culture of experimentation, it is a culture of learning and iterating.
When the most people are on our homepage, we want to optimize for the most important things that they should see.
That was one quick way that we did that. Another way is this coronavirus in Texas model you will see here.
I think the beauty in all of this again, is the flexibility and adaptability. It’s actually not a coronavirus in Texas model. It is a model to feature any kind of series that we choose.
You can imagine this not being here. If you are scrolling through, it would take so long to see all the relevant stories in one place. This in itself is such a great product because it does a lot of things. It gives you the latest coverage in a very skimmable way. So you are not having to scroll so deep because most people don’t, and again, that is understanding the audience behavior and making it a better product, given that information. We also have feature coverage, so it is not just chronological, it is our editorial priorities.
I talked about newsletter subscribers and having that module there is really important to us because if we can get people to subscribe to our newsletters, they can become part of our email universe and therefore eventually hopefully become a member.
Salz: Absolutely. You can re-engage with them and talking about engagement you have some other modules that you were showing me in prep that I was very interested in. How you turned a news story into a module. Can you walk me through that as well?
Tran: Yes, absolutely. This is a story that we did, late last year about how Texas has made it easier and harder for people to vote in the pandemic.
You will see if you notice the order here. This was not the original order and what we did was make sure that we were tracking what people were clicking on, so we can get a sense of what people needed to know most. We ended up moving that question about when was the last day to register to vote first. And again, I think that’s just being responsive to reader needs, working with our newsroom, working with our engineering team, working with our data visuals team to really have an integrated news driven, but reader informed product. And you’ll also see here there’s fiscal support, right?
So April Hinkle who’s our chief revenue officer was able to take it to market and get funding for it. Again, this is just one way that we really tied in, the newsroom, product and revenue.
Salz: You more than doubled your views to the homepage in just one month.
So you went from 400,000 in February to more than a million in March, obviously breaking news, very important. We’re all talking about COVID, but that number is also consistent. So you keep them coming back. We talked about how that works when there’s news, breaking news, but of course it’s not a static world out there.
So I’d like to understand how you adjust to make the changes in the editorial product accordingly to keep that number as high as it is.
Tran: We found that our readers who visit the homepage are just also more engaged with us, right? They’re more loyal. They visit an average of 2.3 pages versus 1.4 of all visitors on site. They stay on the site for longer to 2 minutes, 45 seconds compared to 1 minute and 10 seconds for all visitors.
So they are more engaged. They’re reading more, they’re staying longer. So I really want to retain this audience. If this goes down, that would be a huge red flag to me because there are people who have come to, I would say, depend on us.
So I think it’s one, meeting that editorial promise and mission. And then two, it’s about making that experience better. And that’s all the things we talked through about making the homepage, you get more information in one glance, it’s fast. Speed matters in page loads.
And going back to your very first question about alignment between news and products, that’s one way to bring together that news promise and also making the best product experience for that person looking for information.
Salz: Of course, there’s another side to this. There are the challenges, you see it everywhere. Local newsrooms are crunched, even closing down. I’d like to have an understanding about the investment and staffing necessary to achieve what you’ve been able to do.
Tran: I’ll always say that it begins like starts and ends with the journalism, but I think just as important is having the kind of architecture and infrastructure to support that journalism.
So I think it’s really important to invest just as much in the scaffolding around the journalism to enable that journalism, with a continued focus on the reader and I think it’s important to say also the revenue.
And in terms of investment, we’re hiring two people right now for our marketing team because that marketing function actually serves several parts of the organization.
It serves our republishing strategy. It serves our event strategy, which has a direct line to revenue. And it serves our membership strategy, which has a line to revenue. Thinking about all the things that make things you see at the back end possible is really important. So that’s where we’re focusing our investments for this year.
Salz: I’d like to just think about going forward in a different way. You talk about holistic product and I’m looking at this all the time, what is the next big thing? Although I have to say we have a lot of work to do on the existing products we have.
We haven’t really nailed it in apps, but we are talking about AR, we are talking about voice, both are poised for explosive growth.
So let’s talk about what other innovations you might be looking at or ways you want to make your product or plan to make your product more engaging, more accessible, and increase of course engagement retention in the process. What’s on the horizon?
Tran: You mentioned AR, that’s definitely not in my roadmap. But voice on the other hand, that is more plausible.
With voice for example we have a pretty robust suite of audio products already. We just rebooted Point of Order which is our podcast with our CEO, Evan Smith ahead of The Texas Legislature being in session again. So I think it’s about aligning what we have currently to build off on and then really sizing the opportunity for us. Again, I’m really laser focused on understanding the ROI of every investment, predicting and modeling the outcomes of that. And I think in doing that you’re balancing high risk with high reward. And I think not everything will fall into that. But you also don’t want to limit yourself in not taking those risks. So anyway, to your actual question… I’m thinking about all of it and hoping that we can make the smartest decisions that aligns with our strategy, with the information we have.
Salz: I think you will, because of course you have these very specific guidelines. You’re thinking about people, you’re thinking about process, and you’re aligning to create a holistic experience. Some of these will play a role. Some of them, of course, maybe not. But all of it will be very interesting to watch as it goes forward.
Thank you so much for sharing Millie, for speaking about what you’re doing at The Texas Tribune, showing it as well in your homepage and giving us a little peek into where your thinking is going into the future. Thanks again for being on.
Tran: Thank you so much Peggy. This was great.
Salz: Thank you. And of course, thank you for tuning in and taking the time today. In the meantime, of course, be sure to check out all the great content here on digitalcontentnext.org or join the conversation on Twitter @DCNorg.
So until next time, I’m your host Peggy Anne Salz signing off for Digital Content Next.
Remember the success of the Gameboy? It’s been 30 years since the first version came out in 1989, and Nintendo waited five years before releasing the next iteration of the product, The Super Game Boy, in 1994. This is a far cry from the pace of output of today’s Fortnite, which creates new missions on a weekly basis. Earlier this month, the release of its latest season was followed in real time around the world.
It’s the new speed of change. Facebook went from a Harvard-only site founded in Mark Zuckerberg’s dorm room to a million-member social network available on mobile phones within two years. The first Uber ride was given in San Francisco in 2010; by 2011, the company had launched its international presence in Paris. Instagram grew so quickly that it was bought by Facebook within two years of its release.
The pace of innovation has exploded over the past few years and shows no signs of slowing down. And this is not just change for change’s sake. This acceleration is a response to customer, market, and technology changes, and it’s an exciting time for both consumers and product developers.
Keeping up with customers
However, it also means that companies can no longer take half a decade to develop their next product. In a world of such rapid-fire change, customers have come to expect products that evolve and change along with them. This means that companies that want to stay ahead of the market not only have to move fast, but they also have to realize that the race is never over. For companies to stay relevant to their customers, they have to excel at, and embrace, rapid fire change.
Amazon is the classic example of this. Over the course of 25 years, Jeff Bezos’s trillion-dollar company evolved from being a bookstore for Seattle residents housed in a garage to our go-to online retailer and the producer of some of our most popular entertainment content. Bezos’s success lies in a certain kind of humility. He has a constant willingness to tweak his business model. He has not allowed any one path, design, product or program to be sacred. Instead, he listens to his customers and excels at creating the changes they crave, which in turn creates better business outcomes for Amazon.
Gaming the system
Back to Fortnite. Part of the reason players find Fortnite so addictive is because it renews itself a few times a year. Each new update is called a “season” and introduces a new map and new items for players to use. We couldn’t have imagined these game-changing forms of advertising a few years ago. And they only exist because the developers behind Fortnite are constantly looking for new ways to enhance the user experience. They find ways to push the boundaries of what players expect and redefine what “gaming” means.
Other tech innovators have embraced similar tactics. Netflix and Spotify, for instance, not only keep users hooked by updating their content libraries regularly, but also by generating their own content, like original shows and playlists. Delivery apps like Grubhub and Postmates keep their eye out for new restaurants to ensure that customers have access to the food they want when they want it. Apple’s ongoing revisions ensure that we buy a new iPhone every few years to keep up. Harris Teeter allows customers to shop for groceries, place catering orders and reorder prescriptions on their mobile app.
Change your mindset
So what does this mean for your company? It means you have to adopt The Product Mindset, with change becoming an integral part of the way your company operates. The most successful companies don’t fund research and development on a case-by-case basis. They incorporate it into their annual and monthly budgets, the same way they budget for sales or HR. That way, when a competitor releases a new model, or when research reveals unexpected consumer needs, a company is ready to respond. Its teams don’t need to wait for endless approvals or push forward on obsolete or ineffective initiatives.
At first, this might sound overwhelming, even exhausting. We’re wired to appreciate certainty and clarity. If the product is never done, instability and change become the new normal. But with that instability and change comes opportunity – the opportunity to deliver on consumer desires more rapidly and effectively than ever before. And the good news is that any company, no matter its size or industry, can embrace this approach. All it takes is the humility to accept that there’s always room for improvement and the courage to chase that improvement, wherever it might lead.
