The companies behind the latest multiplatform media headlines include Time Inc., NatGeo, and Facebook
The beautiful thing about multiplatform media is that the possibilities for a digital publishing strategy are endless. The permutations, tactics, the experiments, the social media strategy, the products, services, vendors, successes, failures. Taken together, it makes this industry a fun way to make money.
But to truly make your digital magazine work, your moves need to be deft. Keeping an eye on the ups and downs of other publishers helps. Digiday is a great source of news on that front. Let’s see what they have for us this week!
Time Inc.’s Acquisitions Reflect Multiplatform Media Strategy
If you’ve been keeping tabs on our digital publishing trends, you’ve seen a lot about Time Inc., because it has been as busy as anybody on the publishing planet. Digiday digests some of Time Inc.’s major moves for minor players, and how they all add up as part of a niche strategy in search of more revenue streams.
“Time Inc. is the steward of some of the media’s oldest, most storied brands. But some of its recent moves have been driven by brands it’s owned for just a few months. The publisher’s recent moves to ramp up its native advertising operations, expand its ability to work with amateur contributors and influencers, and even trim people from its payroll can all be traced back to lessons learned from Fansided, Hello Giggles and xoJane, three sites the company acquired last year,” Max Willens writes.
“Since its spin-out from Time Warner over two years ago, Time Inc. has been busy buying up companies to decrease its reliance on print advertising and subscription revenues. It bought the digital ad targeting tools Viant and BizRate Insights, which Chairman Joe Ripp said are on pace to add more than $100 million in revenues in 2016. It scooped up a suite of events businesses in the U.K., a family-focused productivity app called Cozi, and a several youth sports businesses which it’s since rebranded as SI Play.”
NatGeo CEO on Multiplatform Media Company’s Success
NatGeo knows what it’s doing. But just like other multiplatform publishers, it’s figuring it out along the way. Digiday interviews CEO Declan Moore about the digital magazine’s success on social and beyond.
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“It’s kind of like playing a game of Chutes and Ladders: You’re figuring out how to optimize for this particular journey, then something changes, you never quite know what, and then you’re set back and you’re digging yourself out to climb up another ladder, only to hit another chute along the way,” Moore tells Sahil Patel.
“We weren’t a single-purpose entity that’s solely dependent on desktop or display advertising, and then wrestling with the transition to mobile, and then the increasing concentration of those budgets with the Facebooks and Googles of the world. We have been fortunate to have this diverse portfolio of revenue streams. The challenge for us is in how to optimize that.”
Publishing on Facebook Comes With Social Media Measurement Questions
Is there a Facebook facade digital publishers must be wary of? The frenzy over Instant Articles and Live video has given way to demands for better transparency on measurement, Digiday reports.
“Facebook tells publishers how their content performs by post type — video, text, image. But it doesn’t tell them how posts perform based on subject matter, such as sports or news, said Matt Karolian, social media director for The Boston Globe,” Lucia Moses writes.
“The Globe can tag its content manually to figure that out, but it’s a labor-intensive process and it only tells the Globe how its own content is doing in a vacuum. Facebook has a complex algorithm that determines what kind of content it’ll push in the news feed, but publishers can only guess how to optimize to it. The lack of openness also makes comparisons with other publishers difficult.”
Which multiplatform media news are you monitoring? Let us know in the comments!
To read more about multiplatform media and other industry trends, visit Digiday.
