Slant goes for PPC publishing and pay model; plus, Time Inc. digital makes another investment and GQ digital cuts load time
PPC publishing takes the pay-per-click model for advertisers to a compensatory one for platform contributors, and it’s gaining steam. The shift acknowledges the realities of digital publishing: With so much content available on the web, there needs to be some quantitative measurement of the impact of articles and posts, and the bottom line is a good place to start for digital magazines that depend on digital ad revenue.
Slant News is one of those digital magazines, and Digiday covers their embrace of PPC publishing in a recent story. Let’s start there today!
Slant Takes PPC Publishing to Another Level
Slant, which debuted in June, pays its contributors 70% of ad click revenue, while retaining 30%, Digiday reports.
“With the likes of LinkedIn and Medium opening up their platforms to people willing to trade free content for brand cachet, there’s no shortage of places for people to publish their writing. What’s more rare, however, are platforms that actually pay writers for contributions. Slant does pay, and it hopes this difference alone will attract more interest to its platform,” writes Ricardo Bilton.
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“The idea of paying writers based on how much traffic they draw is nothing new, but it’s still a fraught proposition for publishers, particularly those that cover hard news. The likes of Gawker, Complex and Bleacher Report have all created variations on traffic-based compensation for staff writers and outside contributors over the years. Forbes has taken the pay-per-click model further than most by opening up its platform to hundreds of contributors, whom it pays based on how many people their articles bring in.”
Time Inc. Digital Invests in Snap Fashion
Time Inc. digital keeps its weekly streak of shrewd moves going as it recently announced its major investment in Snap Fashion, a UK-based visual search engine focused on allowing users to upload images that feed into ecommerce content strategy, Digiday reports.
Business Insider Launches Long-Form Video
BI Films is Business Insider’s foray into publisher video, Digiday reports, launched with documentary series “League of Millions.” The production airs via platforms like Business Insider’s own Tech Insider as well as YouTube.
This is not a desperation move for Business Insider, which is a juggernaut when it comes to attracting audience. Rather, it’s a effort to pounce on the success it’s already having with short videos, which have attracted as many as 1.7 million monthly uniques (April). Even if you don’t command the kind of numbers that Business Insider does, you can still capitalize on what’s working well by layering in more distribution methods within a multiplatform strategy.
GQ Slashes Page Load Time by 80%
Yep, you read that right: GQ digital has cut its page load time by a huge percentage after launching its redesigned website with a tortoise-like 7-second rate in July; now, that rate is at 2 seconds after adding new stripped-down article pages, migrating to a single CMS, and cutting its server calls by 400%, Digiday reports.
Load time is emerging as a major consideration for digital publishers in a mobile-first world.
How’s your load time looking? Would you consider clicking through on PPC publishing? Let us know in the comments!
To read more about PPC publishing and other industry trends, visit Digiday.
