Was Jezebel a victim of keyword blocking?
Welcome! I'm Simon Owens and this is my media industry newsletter. If you've received it, then you either subscribed or someone forwarded it to you. If you fit into the latter camp and want to subscribe, then you can click on this handy little button: Let’s jump into it… Was Jezebel a victim of keyword blocking?You’ve probably heard by now that Jezebel is essentially being shut down by its parent company:
My sneaking suspicion is that Jezebel is a victim of programmatic keyword blocking. G/O Media is almost entirely reliant on open programmatic advertising, and a site that constantly writes about hot button issues like abortion access just can't thrive in an open programmatic world. Mark Stenberg had a good piece the other week about how keyword blocking is essentially defunding the news. Speaking of Jezebel…Ernie Smith wrote about the broken advertising model that’s wreaking havoc upon the media outlets that chased scale at all costs:
ICYMI: How an engineering student accidentally started a thriving science news siteHüseyin Kilic grew Interesting Engineering into a media behemoth with over 15.5 million social media followers. Subscriptions never became the media industry’s silver bulletThe Rebooting surveyed 200 publishers about their subscription operations and found that most of the low-hanging fruit is gone:
Subscriptions are incredibly important to the media industry in a way they weren't 10 years ago, but they never became the silver bullet we hoped they'd be. The Information continues to see robust subscription growthIt’s been over a decade since Jessica Lessin launched The Information, and while we don’t know the exact size of its subscription business, Adweek reports it’s still experiencing robust growth:
I’m looking for more media entrepreneurs to feature on my newsletter and podcastOne of the things I really pride myself on is that I don’t just focus this newsletter on covering the handful of mainstream media companies that every other industry outlet features. Instead, I go the extra mile to find and interview media entrepreneurs who have been quietly killing it behind the scenes. In most cases, the operators I feature have completely bootstrapped their outlets. In that vein, I’m looking for even more entrepreneurs to feature. Specifically, I’m looking for people succeeding in these areas:
Interested in speaking to me? You can find my contact info over here. (please don’t simply hit reply to this newsletter because that’ll go to a different email address. ) The enduring influence of Hot OnesHow ingenious was Complex Media when it launched the Hot Ones series on YouTube? It's the only video series in the entire BuzzFeed portfolio that potential advertisers ask for by name:
How pro athletes are benefiting from the rise of the Creator EconomyThis is a great trend: it used to be that pro athletes didn't have great career prospects after retiring from their sport, but now they can leverage their stardom to launch their own media brand:
Do you sell a product targeted toward marketers, media executives, or professional creators?What a coincidence! That’s exactly who reads my newsletter. You can find out how to reach them over here. Writing fiction doesn’t payThis is a great deep dive into why it's so difficult to make a full-time living as a novelist:
In fact, most book publishing doesn’t payReading this story about an author who struggled to earn out her $20k book advance in two years, the thing that struck me is she could have achieved the exact same result in the same amount of time by converting 100 of her readers into newsletter subscribers paying $100 a year:
Want a daily dose of media industry news?I only send this newsletter out twice a week, but I curate industry news on a daily basis. Follow me on one of these social platforms if you want your daily fix: Invite your friends and earn rewardsIf you enjoy Simon Owens's Media Newsletter, share it with your friends and earn rewards when they subscribe. |
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A better alternative to micropayments
Tuesday, November 7, 2023
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How the Sunday Long Read newsletter built a thriving membership by curating longform journalism
Tuesday, November 7, 2023
Don Van Natta Jr. and Jacob Feldman grew the newsletter to over 25000 subscribers.
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PLUS: More content = more traffic
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Simon Carless carved out a niche in the gaming industry by tracking the metrics around game releases.
The creator “middle class” does exist
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