Facebook’s F8 Event, Instant Articles Performance Metrics, BuzzFeed Revenue Projections, Pop-Up Magazines, Women in Media, AEM Mobile Tip: Search Feature
Welcome to Technology for Publishing’s roundup of news and tips for media industry pros! This week, we’re sharing stories about what Facebook F8 announcements mean for publishers, Nielsen’s Content Ratings for Instant Articles, industrywide speculation about BuzzFeed’s reported plan to slash its 2016 revenue outlook, a so-called pop-up magazine making a go of it, and more.
- Yes, more on Facebook: As the social media company’s F8 developer conference got underway, our news feeds lit up with a variety of stories on product announcements and what they mean for publishers. Nieman Lab, for one, offered highlights of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote, with The Verge providing analysis of the rollouts: a bot platform for Facebook Messenger, a new “Save to Facebook” bookmarking button, a quote-sharing tool, more Facebook Live video streaming options, and plans to develop artificial intelligence for reading articles. And, as expected, Facebook officially opened its Instant Articles hosting service to all publishers. NetNewsCheck also offered some interesting commentary on the event, calling it Facebook’s “most intensive reach-out to media” yet, while a Wired piece sounded an alarm on the “false hope” of Facebook’s promise to publishers.
- For magazine publishers, one of the most important announcements to come out of F8 was that Nielsen will soon measure the performance of Facebook’s Instant Articles. Nielsen’s Digital Content Ratings, launched with Adobe last year, will take daily measurements of digital content (including video) across devices—desktop, mobile, and tablet, Folio said. From the start Instant Articles publishers have complained about a lack of performance metrics, the article said, noting that Facebook also recently eased its advertising policies to make it easier for users to make money.
- We also saw a flurry of posts related to reports that digital leader BuzzFeed is cutting its 2016 revenue projections by almost half (though the company maintains that isn’t true). According to The Media Briefing, the news dominated discussions at this week’s Financial Times Digital Media event, with AOL exec Jimmy Maymann telling attendees that part of the problem is innovation in monetization hasn’t kept pace with the huge growth in content distribution over the past several years. Industrywide, digital news companies are “bumping into a wall,” as columist Ken Doctor put it, citing major cutbacks at Mashable, Yahoo, The Huffington Post, Gawker, Al Jazeera, International Business Times, Salon, and others. And BuzzFeed itself offered a report titled “The Digital Media Bloodbath: Hundreds Of Jobs Lost,” which noted that all but the largest publishers are “losing their core identity”—and therefore value to advertisers—as their dependence on platforms grows in the race to capture the largest audience possible. “The cracks are beginning to show,” said Skift EIC Rafat Ali in the post. “If you are just a brand in the feed, as opposed to a brand that users come to, that will catch up to you sometime.”
- Here’s an idea: pop-up magazines, events featuring “ephemeral multimedia performances of never before seen or heard works that are not live-streamed or recorded for viewing later,” as a Forbes post describes the new business model. Journalists present their live narratives, set to original soundtracks, using interactive art, illustrations, and other creative elements unique to each performance, it explains. Afterward, audience members share thoughts over cocktails. Sounds like fun, but of course the question is, does it make any money? According to Pop-Up Magazine founder Douglas McGray, his live-storytelling events raised enough to launch California Sunday Magazine, a complementary print and online publication with a readership of 400,000. McGray says while Pop-Up has been an “official” business for only a year and isn’t yet profitable, he’s secured $3.5 million in funding and is working on ad sales. “We feel good about where we’re going,” he says.
On the Technology for Publishing Blog
- TFP’s Women in Media: Our new installment highlights a woman-owned firm driving changes in Silicon Valley hiring practices, a Q&A with the first female EIC at a major sports magazine, the new hosts of the popular cooking show “America’s Test Kitchen,” The Washington Post’s collection of archived articles about women, and more.
- AEM Mobile Tip: The addition of the Search feature in Adobe Experience Manager Mobile makes it more important than ever to carefully plan content metadata. Monica Murphy explains in this week’s tip.
- Don’t miss: Our latest infographic gives you a 10-year comparison of ad revenue sources for B2B and B2C publishers, showing how magazines have evolved into multimedia brands.
Image: Nieman Lab
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Posted by: Monica Sambataro
