In our latest podcast, I asked Jo Allan, chief executive at Newsworks, what news media could learn from the success of the big social platforms.
The answer – they make advertising so easy to buy.
News and magazine media has enormous reach but it’s dispersed across hundreds of media brands, which obviously makes the purchase process complicated and ‘complicated’ is a massive turn-off for media buyers.
Greater collaboration has been a stated ambition of senior publishing executives for a while now.
The Ozone Project and Team Nation initiative have shown that media brands can work together effectively to provide commercial partners with a simplified buying process and both have potential to be extended further.
In a wide ranging interview, Jo also touched on the challenges and opportunities facing news media.
One of the challenges was the age of agency media buyers. They’re too young! Increasingly, media buyers are young people who have grown up with social media and in an era where newspapers and magazines were no longer the only show in town. They are digital natives who are very unlikely to tolerate complexity because they are familiar with beautifully designed sites with optimal UX.
Newsworks is working to educate them on the relevance and reach of news media and their recent piece of research that found that young people are increasingly turning to mainstream media brands to fact check what they’d read on social media should help.
If news and magazine media can continue to work together to simplify their offering, while demonstrating their reach, then this challenge could morph into a massive opportunity.
(Finally, the Sep/Oct issue of InPublishing magazine, which includes a special extended feature on ‘new subscriber acquisition’, has gone to press. If you’d like to be added to the free mailing list, please register now.)
You can catch James Evelegh’s regular column in the InPubWeekly newsletter, which you can register to receive here.
