Vahe Arabian’s Post

Another cracking day at #iMediaFOMNZ!!! Check out the highlights from Day 2!

As you see from my content I am reading, watching and thinking about challenges, opportunities and future of news media industry a lot. And sometimes completely unrelated pieces of information create a unique perspective on a certain subject. That's one of those cases. In the comments below you can find first a hilarious Bill Maher's video where he is crushing a modern trend of catastrophizing and exaggerating the news to create click-bating titles that will generate maximum possible page views. Highly recommend to watch. Very funny and very true :) Completely unrelated is the recent interview between Deputy CEO of RTL Group Elmar Heggen and RTL Magyarország CEO Gabriella Vidus Vidus discussing different topics, including the consolidation of the media industry. And by the way, from this interview, I found out that the attempted merger with DPG Media België in the Netherlands was blocked by the competition authorities. Returning to my original thoughts, it's important to note that the growth of most modern big news media companies is not primarily due to the organic growth of the audience and overall ad revenue. In rare exceptions, it's because of the ability of smart people to create quality content and, with the right audience management strategy, generate significant subscription revenue. However, the majority of growth in big companies like RTL, Ringier AG, DPG, and Bonnier Publications A/S is driven by mergers and acquisitions. These companies are expanding their portfolios through acquisitions of sports portals, classifieds sites, e-commerce platforms, and other ancillary niche media sites & newspapers. It means that if you are not among these big groups and don't have massive traffic, as news media, you won't be getting traffic from Google (search of Discover), you won't be getting interest from advertising media agencies, your programmatic eCPM will be very low, and any attempts to generate click-bate titles will not help you. It didn't help BuzzFeed News with its massive investment or VICE Media with all its scale. Your only options are to sell your business to a bigger player, move into specialized content, and make money directly from your audience through newsletters, industry reports, etc. Specialization and a niche audience are your mantra for survival. #newsmedia #onlinemedia

Mass content can bring in quick bursts of traffic, but ultimately you want relevant evergreen content that attracts a loyal demographic to sustain your traffic

O“VICE Media shutting down their site…was the only decision VICE got right in over a decade.” - John Martin, Former Vice Publisher John’s recent LinkedIn post goes on to make a very powerful and persuasive argument about the fallacy of scale. Agregating huge audiences and hoping advertisers will put dollars against those eyeballs was the false premise of so many digital publishing businesses, many of whom were inspired by VICE to begin with. “Scale can be an expensive boondoggle, especially at traditional digital media companies where scale means more real estate for ads, rather than actual paying customers…if the sales team can’t fill the inventory, all the scale is worthless.” quoting John’s post again. Invested audiences. Engaged audiences. Audiences willing to pay for content, or even better, those willing to establish an authentic relationship with the community or brands surrounding that content. This is what’s important. Advertisers have migrated from digital publisher scale to investing in micro-influencers via more efficient, more targeted buying on platforms like TikTok and YouTube. This shift is logical and notable, yet our friends in traditional (long form television) programming don’t see the obvious warning signs. Can’t see how building content for scale without considering deeper connections to the audience, either to the creatives themselves or to the community surrounding any given piece of IP, carries a similar risk profile. In the earlier days of my career, when I was licensing content for transactional windows - physical and TVOD - the calculation was always about the audience and their willingness to “own” a specific piece of content. Those windows have vanished, and I am not suggesting media companies return to selling individual copies of IP (as much as they surely would love to - those were glorious days where money literally grew on trees), but the framing of how audience invests in end product, emotionally - passive “lean back” versus active and passionate “fans” is an area to spend much more time considering. The advent of celebrity brands and bespoke curators like A24 achieving, perhaps for the first time since Disney, a loyal following of audiences willing to pay for their relationship with content are affirmations that we must apply to our own thinking - both as creatives and as a business holistically.

Read more below!

The Independent is set to take over BuzzFeed and HuffPost through a deal bringing together several online media brands. BuzzFeed and other brands included in the deal will continue to operate as separate sites under the agreement but will be managed by the Independent, which will also take on staff. The move comes after BuzzFeed and the Independent have each struggled financially in recent years, with each appealing to younger audiences but the former failing to convert these to profits and the latter being hit by the shift to online. “Our partnership with BuzzFeed represents a new leap forward for our business,” Independent chief executive Christian Broughton said. “The synergies between our companies have been clear from day one, and we know this partnership will unlock new business, drive growth and ultimately take both companies’ brands to the next level in the UK and Ireland,” BuzzFeed’s Alan Reid... More at #Proactive #ProactiveInvestors http://ow.ly/2gyl105nG6g

In case all my advocacy and public affairs friends missed the news last week, LinkedIn announced its new #CTV product. Outside of the recent trends we've seen with everyone jumping into the CTV mix, here are a few reasons I'm keeping a watchful eye on this for advocacy clients... ↘ LinkedIn has emerged as a top tool for driving engagement with decision maker and business leader audiences, but one of the challenges has always been scale (especially when trying to talk to highly customized audiences). This potentially opens up a new line of inventory that will expand scale to those audiences and allow planners to dedicate more budget to the platform. ↘ Because you can buy this CTV inventory directly from LinkedIn's campaign manager, it opens up the possibility of more holistic buying and gives planners the ability to efficiently allocate dollars from one channel to the next. We've seen a lot of other Beltway news publishers entering the CTV market for this same reason, but LinkedIn's massive reach turbocharges this approach. ↘ The prospect of leveraging Kantar brand lift studies alongside this deployment could be huge, and help organizations that are investing heavily in LinkedIn demonstrate real, measurable impact. Like most new CTV offerings, we'll see how all of this pans out. But for now, I'm excited about finding ways to test it out for upcoming advocacy campaigns! https://lnkd.in/e3CsYFD8

SPECTACULAR move by a key indie agency.... Mediahub Worldwide US CEO Sean Corcoran joins BarkleyOKRP to lead the large indie's media and analytics practice. Mercer Island Group thoughts: - Sean's leadership adds a compelling element to an already impressive set of capabilities. - The BarkleyOKRP media stack includes everything from brand awareness to performance media (accentuated by the Adlucent acquisition), slotting very competitively next to Holdco offerings that are bigger but have their own baggage (principal buying, focus on giant accounts, etc.) - There simply aren't many indie media agencies of scale. Horizon Media of course is the largest. PMG has grown quickly. Several fine performance shops have pivoted to full media offerings (New Engen, Inc., Tinuiti, etc.). The US market needs more large full-funnel options that can change the game. BarkleyOKRP is well suited to be one of the few that can do that. - The challenger spirit he spearheaded at Mediahub will serve Mr. Corcoran well as he joins an organization committed to providing the industry a compelling indie alternative. Love this move!!! Your thoughts? Jason Parks Association of National Advertisers Nathaniel Swift 4A's