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Big tech is breaking up with publishers

The New York Times published an overview of all the ways that large tech platforms have moved away from news distribution, a trend that’s accelerated in recent months:

Top news sites got about 11.5 percent of their web traffic in the United States from social networks in September 2020, according to Similarweb, a data and analytics company. By September this year, it was down to 6.5 percent.

“The disruption to an already difficult business model is real,” Adrienne LaFrance, the executive editor of The Atlantic, said in an interview. Ms. LaFrance noted that while social traffic had always gone through boom and bust times, the slide in the past 12 to 18 months had been more severe than most publishers expected.

“This is a post-social web,” she added.

The question I still have is whether users will shift their browsing habits in such a way that keeps their news consumption steady. For instance, would a Facebook user notice the lack of news in their feed and then make a conscious effort to seek out other news distribution channels like newsletters, news apps, and media outlet homepages? Unfortunately, these articles that cite a dip in social traffic rarely indicate whether publishers are seeing an increase in other source of referral traffic.

It’s not just tech companies that are breaking up with news publishers

One of the biggest reasons that digital advertising has never been profitable for the news business is that brands really don't want their ads appearing next to news:

One of the hot topics was the idiocy of crude keyword block lists that keep advertising off news by blocking an array of terms … These lists keep advertisers away from terms like “Muslim,” “LGBTQ” and “domestic violence.” This creates a perverse incentive for publishers to avoid covering the social issues the CMOs go on and on and on about feeling so strongly about.

The response from one agency exec is that the CMOs don’t even know about these lists. They’re a checkbox in a DSP, and the 25-year-old media planner is working for the weekend and doesn’t want to suffer the consequences of The Screenshot. Now, the screenshot is also a recurring character. The screenshot is when the CMO does get involved. It’s when someone finds an ad next to a beheading video — why were they watching beheading videos? — or in some place deemed “unsafe” for brands. This gave rise to an entire brand-safety industry, which is incentivized to have this “problem” continue.

ICYMI: Can a hit YouTube channel thrive after its founder departs?

The King of Random had 8 million YouTube subscribers when Grant Thompson suddenly decided he didn't want to create videos anymore.

The rise of philanthropic support for local news

Philanthropic organizations are allocating a greater and greater portion of their grant money toward local news startups:

As media companies slash staffs in search of ever higher profits at a time of ever lower ad rates, household-name philanthropies—Ford, MacArthur, Knight—are steadily increasing their spending on local news, and their regional counterparts are joining in. The American Journalism Project … requires that a new publication establish partnerships with local foundations before it will even consider awarding funds. In its first four years, AJP, as it’s known, has raised $134 million to back forty-one local media organizations. “It’s a paradigm shift in the world of philanthropy,” Loretta Chao, AJP’s vice president for strategy and startups, said. “What we’re suggesting is that, given that newsrooms are part of the fabric of society, it makes sense that they should be a thing that philanthropists who love their communities also care about.”

How to use Instagram for news distribution

WashPo published a fun profile of a Miami-based Instagram account that started out as a crowdsourced humor page but quickly found itself breaking local news:

Its wacky, endearing or alarming videos also get picked up by the local news, forming the basis of more traditional reports. And along the way, Only in Dade’s staff — a team that largely came up through marketing, digital production or comedy — have learned some of the basics of producing news. “There has been a lot of trial and error,” Carter said.

Now, what started as a meme page a decade ago has become a media company that inks deals with local hospitals, UFC fighters and colleges, and catapulted one staffer to “Saturday Night Live” fame.

I keep talking to more and more publishers that have become adept at packaging news for Instagram's audience. The key to doing so is to utilize captions within the images and videos themselves so that the news can be easily digested while scrolling through the feed.

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How influencers breathed new life into a dying sport

GQ goes deep on influencer boxing and what it's done for a sport that was, until recently, on the decline:

Crossover boxing’s modern history starts in 2017, when two YouTubers, Joe Weller and Theo Baker, boxed in an almost empty gym for #content. Olajide “KSI” Olatunji joked on Instagram that he’d fight the winner. The resulting bout between Weller and KSI sold out and has been viewed over 23 million times, for three rounds of boxing that looked like two men trying to swat mosquitos off each other. Gen Z drank it up like it was the Rumble in the Jungle.

KSI won, and challenged the Paul brothers—Logan and Jake—two influencers then best known for a series of controversies and viral stunts. KSI’s fight with Logan Paul made an estimated $200-plus million, and has been described as the biggest amateur fight ever. The professional (meaning no headgear) rematch in 2019 at LA’s Staples Center reportedly sold two million pay-per-views and earned KSI and Logan Paul each a guaranteed $900,000, with their total payouts said to be in the millions.

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