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The media has entered a less-is-more era

About a decade ago, the writer John Herrman published an ongoing series at The Awl titled “The John Oliver Video Sweepstakes.” Here’s how he described the column:

Each week, the Content industry observes a sacred ritual: Together, but not quite in sync, dozens of websites embed and then post the longest segment from John Oliver’s HBO show, Last Week Tonight. That John Oliver’s weekly video(s) will go viral is, at this time, a given. Whether or not the posts that embed those videos will go viral is another matter altogether. Each time around there are winners, losers, and mere participants.

Of course, this phenomenon wasn’t sequestered to John Oliver videos; Herrman was describing a much more pervasive trend that governed the entire media ecosystem at the time. On any given day, hundreds of 20-something, entry-level journalists employed across dozens of media outlets would churn out multiple posts a day that did little more than aggregate videos and images that had been deemed “viral worthy.” 

Many of these posts never went viral; in fact, the publications were engaging in a numbers game that assumed that only a small handful of articles needed to win the Facebook algorithmic lottery — which would trigger a traffic windfall that could generate millions of page visits — in order to subsidize the entire operation. Under this dynamic, the more posts an outlet published, the more likely it was to win the Facebook lottery. 

And because these traffic windfalls were both gigantic and unpredictable, the publishers needed a way to capitalize on them before they went away — hence their embrace of open programmatic advertising, which could supposedly scale up advertising demand to a degree that was commensurate with the rise in traffic.

By writing his John Oliver Video Sweepstakes column, Herrman was documenting the silliness of the era, but now, with the benefit of a decade’s worth of hindsight, it all seems especially absurd. How could we not realize back then that these armies of 20-somethings were producing no additive value? And why did it not occur to us that Facebook could turn off the traffic spigot just as easily as it had flipped it on?

Regardless of the media’s past mistakes, it’s clear that the industry needs to adapt to the post-scale reality it now finds itself in. Meta and nearly every other major tech platform are sending less and less traffic to publishers, and programmatic adtech has demonstrated a consistent ineptitude at generating meaningful revenue for high-quality outlets.

We’ve entered the less-is-more era of media in which publishers must decrease their content output, de-prioritize driveby traffic, and focus instead on better monetizing their core audiences. This means less reliance on programmatic advertising and more emphasis on direct-sold ads, subscriptions, and live events.

Just about everywhere you look you see publishers embracing this less-is-more ethos. Earlier this week, for instance, Digiday reported that BDG has drastically decreased its content output — dropping from 150 articles a day to around 40 — in pursuit of deeper engagement with its audience:

BDG hasn’t been immune to platforms’ deprioritization of publishers, and the strategy shift is a reflection of the changing landscape. The company lost about half of its referral traffic from Facebook when the platform made changes to its link posts last May.

As part of this strategy shift, BDG is leaning into more bespoke advertising products, including sponsored content and live events:

Revenue from live event sponsorships has grown by 200% from 2022 to 2024 … BDG runs five large-scale events every year around tentpole moments — including Coachella, Art Basel, both New York Fashion Weeks and F1 — with about 10 to 20 sponsors paying for full activations …

BDG offers guarantees to advertisers, such as the number of attendees and amount of content created around the event, including recap articles, TikTok videos and Instagram Lives, for example. But the company also recently started measuring earned social impressions coming from its events to prove the added value to advertisers.

Then there’s The Atlantic. In the early 2010s, its website was almost entirely ad-dependent, and it ran its own viral content-mill called The Atlantic Wire. Over the past few years, it’s completely reoriented its media operations to focus on publishing longer, deeply-reported pieces that are monetized largely through paid subscriptions. As a result, it recently announced it had crossed the 1 million subscriber threshold and achieved profitability. As the WSJ reported:

Editor in Chief Jeffrey Goldberg oversaw an evolving editorial approach—moving away from day-to-day news coverage and taking bigger swings on fewer, deeply reported stories that appeal to people from across the country and political spectrum.

“We believe as an almost ideological and idealistic notion that we make something worth buying,” Goldberg said in an interview.

Most of its revenue now comes from paid subscriptions, but it’s also moved away from programmatic ads, focusing instead on direct-sold sponsorships and its growing events business.

There are also now more media startups that were founded on the less-is-more principle. The Information, for instance, expressly steered away from publishing commodity tech news, choosing instead to devote all of its resources to original reporting. Puck is another outlet that eschewed virality in favor of publishing a handful of features each week.

That’s not to say that all publishers have given up on the notion of virality — or uninstalled their programmatic adtech, for that matter — but it’s clear that they no longer view the pursuit of infinite scale as a viable business strategy. The John Oliver Video Sweepstakes were the result of a mirage that tricked media companies into thinking that they were building an audience instead of renting it. Now that the veil has been lifted, they can focus on the metrics that really matter — homepage visits, newsletter signups, subscriptions — and build businesses that aren’t as vulnerable to the vicissitudes of a handful of tech platforms.

What do you think?

Quick hits

This survey indicates that most podcasters who post their episodes to YouTube are simply uploading an audio file with the logo as a static image. That sort of content just doesn't perform well on YouTube. [The Podcast Host]

I just don't get the anxiety over tech CEOs bypassing traditional media outlets to go on friendly podcasts that are unlikely to ask them tough questions. It's still entirely possible to engage in adversarial journalism about Meta without having direct access to Mark Zuckerberg. The best journalists cultivate sources within companies, and there's still a robust market need for that sort of journalism. [Bloomberg]

This is a good profile of a UK-based YouTube channel that specializes in explainer journalism and is profitable. [Press Gazette]

This is a great overview of how the sports media space has been completely transformed by the introduction of athlete-hosted podcasts. CJR takes a pessimistic stance that this is crowding out real sports journalism, but I actually think it's great that these athletes are capitalizing on their stardom and extending their careers. [CJR]

A popular YouTuber is releasing a film in theaters without the distribution help of any major Hollywood studio. If it succeeds, then that’ll be a huge milestone for the Creator Economy. [Publish Press]

Platforms like Threads, Bluesky, and Mastadon get a lot of attention for being Twitter alternatives, but I actually suspect that LinkedIn was the biggest landing pad for the Twitter diaspora —especially those who used Twitter to post about business-related content. [Techcrunch]

I have no idea if YouTube is actually worth $400 billion, but it's well on its way to being the biggest video-based business of all time. It's already generating $45 billion a year and is only trailing Disney and Comcast at this point. [Business Insider]

I'm a huge advocate for creators getting paid more, but I'm also pretty skeptical of any legislation that tries to establish rates for creator payouts. This is just legislative rent seeking. [Business Insider]

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