Media and Advertising in 2015, Trends That Weren’t, Getting Apps to Communicate, the Value of Online Metrics, the Importance of a Cross-Device Strategy, TFP’s Infographic Pick of the Week, InDesign CC Tip: Preview EPUB Interactivity Before Export, Absolutely Brilliant: How to Use the Automatic Page Numbering Feature in InDesign
Welcome to TFP’s roundup of news and tips for media industry pros! This week, we’re sharing stories about questions facing the media and advertising industries in the coming year, trends that were supposed to take off in 2014 but didn’t, the push to get mobile apps to talk with one another, the value of online media metrics, developing a cross-device strategy, and more.
- Heading into the new year, there’s been no shortage of media and publishing projections and retrospects. For its part, The Wall Street Journal not only posed some big questions facing media and advertising in 2015, but also looked at industry trends that were predicted a year ago but never happened.
- With control of mobile device traffic at stake, one thing companies like Google and Facebook will be focusing on is getting apps to talk with one another, according to The New York Times. Mobile apps are proliferating, but without web addresses, they’re cut off from one another and the wider Internet, making it difficult to share the information in them, the report explained.
- While digital media companies strive to reach huge numbers of unique visitors, pageviews, clickthroughs, and such, there’s still little agreement on which metrics actually matter, a Gigaom article pointed out. The author argued that services such as Twitter and Instagram can’t be measured by the same methods because they provide value in completely different ways, summing up the current state of the online media business with a quote from sociologist William Cameron: “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”
- One thing’s for certain: People are moving among multiple connected devices throughout the day, and if you don’t have a cross-device strategy to reach your audience, you need one—fast, according to a post on Search Engine Land. The article highlighted numbers showing that households are not only actively engaged across devices (PCs, smartphones, and tablets) but are highly engaged and responsive to advertising. It offered this caveat, though: Keep the consumer at the center of your strategy, not the device.
- To help you plan for the year ahead, this week’s infographic pick offers a roundup of content marketing projections from industry experts, based on six categories: measurement, technology, distribution, personalization, content supply chain, and organizational structure.
- Also on the Technology for Publishing blog, our latest InDesign CC Tip explains how to preview EPUB interactivity before exporting so you can work more efficiently.
- Finally, when you’re facing tedious, repetitious tasks while working in InDesign, chances are there are built-in solutions to make your life easier—if you look for them. TFP’s Mary Lester explains one of her favorite time-saving features: automatic page numbering.
Photo: Unsplash/Bec Brown
This Week in Publishing appears every Friday on the TFP blog. Every week we compile interesting and noteworthy stories from the publishing world and put together a wrap-up to help our readers stay up-to-date. Think we missed something great? Leave a comment below and let us know!
Posted by: Monica Sambataro
