Companies look for digital publishing solutions to three issues facing the industry
While the problems publishers deal with can seem to multiply with each passing week, the good news is that technological advances, best practices, content innovations, and other digital publishing solutions are keeping pace.
Digiday recently ran three articles covering pressing challenges that publishers are responding to.
Ad Blocking a Real Problem for Publishers to Solve
Ad blocking might not be on your radar, but it’s rearing its ugly head again.
“The global ad-blocking user base has ballooned to 144 million monthly active users, according to a recent report from Adobe and PageFair, which measures ad-blocking rates. That number more than doubled in 2013 alone. Along with that expansion in the user base, the types of sites hit hard are also metastasizing,” writes Ricardo Bilton.
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“While ad-blocking rates are highest among video game (30-50 percent) and technology (25 percent) sites, the rates among publishers in business news (15-20 percent), entertainment (15 percent) and sports news (10-15 percent) are also on the rise, according to PageFair.”
So, how are publishers addressing the issue? With better ads. Specifically, abandoning “welcome ads” and autoplays in favor of native ads and sponsored content.
Is Specialized Platform the Answer for Travel + Leisure?
We count the niche website model itself among digital publishing solutions, but even the biggest and best must grapple with the right content strategies.
Travel + Leisure is now experimenting with a platform approach that eschews populism for expert contributors. All writers will be paid.
“The approach to paying outside contributors has also varied widely across sites. Some publishers pay nothing, while others, like Traveler, pay based on traffic goals. Entertainment Weekly said it would pay some of its bloggers in prestige only,” writes Digiday‘s Lucia Moses.
“The T+L approach is a safe bet for a publisher whose reputation is built on a luxury, not mass image. The potential downside is that the site won’t grow as fast as it would if it opened the floodgates to contributors.”
Travel + Leisure is going from 12 posts a week to 100, Moses reports. The magazine had 1.3 million uniques in February.
Defy Media Cultivates YouTube Audience for Growth
According to Digiday, Defy Media sees 80% of its video views take place on YouTube, but 80% of its monetization take place off of it. Still, it’s a major vehicle for audience development because it acts as an incubator for Defy’s content, which the company shifts from the site when it reaches popularity.
“YouTube has the most video views of any site in the world, so clearly if you’re a content creator, you should be dominant on YouTube. But if you’re not developing your own distribution channels, you’re missing out on an enormous paradigm shift in the media world,” Defy Chief Executive Matthew Diamond told Eric Blattberg.
“It’s a bet that is so mitigated because you can fail multiple times. We are a content-creation company, so none of this means anything if you don’t create good content.”
Are you facing challenges as a digital publisher? Checking out the Mequoda Digital Magazine Market Study to find out what consumers are looking for can provide some clues.
To read more about digital publishing solutions, visit Digiday.
