Facebook’s Growing Momentum, Publishers Scaling Down, Boston Globe Announcements, State of Native Advertising, TFP’s Infographic Pick of the Week, DPS 2015 Tip: Preview Content with the DPS Preflight App
Welcome to Technology for Publishing’s roundup of news and tips for media industry pros! This week, we’re sharing stories about Facebook’s continuing push into publishing and video, publishers going back to their core coverage areas, The Boston Globe‘s plan for sponsored content and a new website, how native advertising has evolved this year, and more.
- Facebook’s push into the publishing world is gaining considerable momentum, and you don’t have to look far to find evidence of that. In addition to fully launching its Instant Articles content hosting program over the past week, it just announced in its Q3 earnings call that its video views have doubled since April, shooting up to an average of 8 billion daily, according to TechCrunch. On top of that, it’s moving into the mobile news business alongside Apple News, Snapchat Discover, and Twitter Moments with a stand-alone app called Notify. The Financial Times reports the news notification service is expected to roll out next week with a slew of media partners already on board, including Vogue, The New York Times, Mashable, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and BuzzFeed.
- Some publishers are facing the fact that they can’t do everything—at least not well—and are going back to their core coverage areas to better focus on their target audiences. The Weather Channel, for one, found that in its rush to scale, it had moved too far away from its mission: covering weather and storms. In an effort to get back to its roots, last week it sold most of its reality programming and made a $2 billion-plus deal with IBM to buy its digital and data assets, according to Digiday. As social platforms move into the business of providing broad coverage of general-interest news, smaller publishers especially are finding it harder to compete, the article points out. “One of the ways to ensure that you’re not competing with [platforms] too much is to pinpoint areas of expertise where you can connect with your audience directly and offer something unique,” advises Atlantic Media COO Michael Finnegan in the report.
- Here in TFP’s home state, The Boston Globe made headlines on two fronts. First, following the path of other newspapers, it announced it’s starting to run sponsored content as a way to diversify its revenue stream as print advertising continues to fall off, according to a Poynter article. Boston Globe Media CEO Mike Sheehan says the company has already lined up about 100 sponsored articles and expects the ad model to become “a big business line.” Separately, the Globe detailed its plans for a new website devoted to health, medicine, and life sciences. Called Stat, it will draw on the city’s reputation as a hub for biotechnology start-ups and medical research. “Over the next 20 years, some of the most important stories in the world are going to emerge in the life sciences arena,” notes Globe owner John Henry in a New York Times report. The goal is to provide quality journalism “on science and the business behind it, funding and research, patients, hospitals, and health,” with the aim of eventually going global, the article says.
- On the subject of sponsored content, Digiday polled some publishing executives at its “WTF Is Native Advertising” event in New York to see how the ad format has evolved over the past year. Of note, volume has increased significantly, with Studio@Gawker’s Paul Sundue seeing requests doubling and tripling. “It’s really a hot topic right now,” he says. Forbes VP Ann Marinovich notes she’s seeing a shift from focusing soley on number of eyeballs viewing content to tracking how consumers engage with it. And Lindsay Nelson, global head of strategy at Vox Media, adds that a key change is in the overall move to off-platform distribution as social media companies ramp up their hosting options. “Readers are consuming content from brands on other platforms, and for native advertising, that has a lot of implications,” she says.
On the Technology for Publishing Blog
- The world of typography has a language all its own. Check out our Infographic Pick of the Week for an illustrated glossary of everything from typeface categories and styles to the anatomy of letters.
- DPS 2015 Tip: The DPS Preflight app lets you quickly preview new content and browse layout changes before they are published. Monica Murphy outlines how it works in this week’s Adobe Digital Publishing Solution Tip.
Image: The Financial Times
Check out our blog for highlights of interesting and noteworthy stories from the publishing world every Friday, and sign up for TFP’s This Week in Publishing newsletter. Think we missed something great? Let us know! Leave a comment below or drop us a note.
Posted by: Monica Sambataro
