Trying to make sense of all the publishing data piling up on your desk? Let’s see what your peers are up to!
Parsing publishing data has become de rigueur, but doing it well is still sometimes an elusive art.
The payoff is worth it, however, when it comes to audience development, analytics, and more for digital publishers.
PubExec.com, per usual, is on top of it. Let’s see what they have to say with recent coverage!
How Magazines Can Make Publishing Data Accountable
Publishing data is the prize, but once you obtain it, what do you do with it? Well, you analyze it. And you take action on it. Easier said than done, right? PubExec.com takes a look.
“Data doesn’t mean anything if it isn’t driving publishers towards a specific goal. For example, before a publishing company decides pageviews are the most important metric, business leaders should first decide what they are trying to accomplish. Do they want their brand to have the widest reach? The most engaged audience? Do they want to be able to promise a certain demographic to an advertiser? Knowing the answers to these questions will point to the metrics that are most important,” Ellen Harvey writes.
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“The entire publishing organization must recognize and understand KPIs so that different parts of the business can work toward the same end goal. … Most teams within a publishing house receive weekly or monthly reports about how certain brands are performing. But often these reports are too long or cryptic to understand and prevent team members from putting that data into action. Lewis recommended analyzing no more than five KPIs in a report, especially if it’s being delivered to a less data-savvy colleague.”
Wochit SVP on Publishing Data Analytics and More
Interesting interview at PubExec.com with Wochit Senior Vice President of Business Development Drew Berkowitz.
“The media business hasn’t just been shaped by technology, it’s been totally transformed by it. In the past ten years, we’ve seen the total decentralization of content. Where publishers were once able to draw audiences to a single portal or site, we’ve now a host of distribution points, each with its own intricacies,” Berkowitz told Harvey.
“Now that technology has shaken up the entire content/audience paradigm, the groundbreakers will be the technologies that help publishers succeed in this new mediascape. For example, now that consumers want media to be delivered when and how they want it, media companies need solutions that will enable them to meet the audience where they are and on the device they’re using.”
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Can Publishers Capitalize on the Ever-Shifting Facebook Algorithm?
There’s no question that Facebook puts publishers in a bind with its algorithmic acrobatics, but that shouldn’t stop you from distributing content.
“All of these algorithm adjustments do credit to Facebook and its claims of being a consumer-driven enterprise. However they also are likely to lead, as have past Facebook algorithm adjustments, to negative outcomes for some publishers. For those who syndicate content to Facebook (e.g. The Washington Post syndicates 100% of its daily content to Facebook), there will be less reach and less ad revenue to share,” Scott McDonald writes.
“For those who increasingly rely upon Facebook as a source of organic traffic to their websites, there will be fewer referrals. After the April algorithm adjustment, some sites like Buzzfeed and Huffington Post reported dramatic declines in their Facebook-referred traffic.”
Which publishing data points do you prefer? Let us know in the comments!
To read more about publishing data and other news, visit PubExec.com.
