Content-first now the focus
Many regional and national newspaper groups have, or are in the process, of transitioning from split print and digital teams to a content-first organization. Covid-19 has no doubt accelerated work-from-home, which for journalism, means relying on the most secure, cloud-based technologies.
Writing, photographing and capturing stories without physically reporting back to the copy desk will increasingly be the norm. Collaborating internally and publishing cross-platform externally is driving media companies to think about how journalists can most effectively and efficiently deliver on their brand’s mission.
Subscription acquisition and retention
More often than not, the real motivator behind this is a subscriber-centric content strategy. In this strategy, KPIs that are centered around subscriber revenue generation are analyzed by papers, teams or even individual journalists.
Marketing teams are turning the study of propensity models into an art form to understand how engagement, conversion and CLV is driven. Examples of this include analyzing certain types of content or exclusive newsletters and evaluating the subscriber landing page UX or the latest App launches UI. Having the flexibility to tailor offers, incentives, promotions and discounts is also key to gaining and retaining subscribers.
Moving them from anonymous to paid, then from low-price to premium, is now a case of fine-tuning for many larger mastheads, but for smaller regionals, or more print-centric markets, there is still a strong need for digital experimentation.
Advertising Bounce
In Q2 and Q3 2021, we have seen a solid bounce in publishers’ interest in our Advertising and Events CRM solution, reflecting a desire amongst advertising clients to enter consumer’s consciousness alongside your trusted news brand.
Across many developed markets, we’re hearing print advertising declines have slowed or stabilized, content marketing / native ads are up, and events – both in-person and hybrid – are selling well for newspapers, B2B and B2C magazines.
How advertising is sold is still changing – and like with journalists – many Ad sales professionals will continue to work from both office and home making hyper-secure, efficient, and cloud-based solutions key when confidential client data, contracts and invoicing are involved.
Not to mention how for top-end deals, customized packages including print, digital, events, native content, video, audio and a myriad of other sponsored revenue streams are concerned.
Although at the lower end, your high volume, more transactional ad sales are increasingly self-serve – while those advertisers want simple, transparent and quick deals which are done online, on any device, at any time.
Industry investment – long term partnerships
Businesses all over the world are always looking for efficiencies and publishing is no different. Publishing companies all try and find ways to leverage technological innovations to preserve revenues, maintain margins, and reduce costs in order to keep newspapers alive so they can continue to serve their communities.
AI & ML is driving huge opportunities for print newspapers by enabling whole editions to be automatically created and delivered to readers. Beautiful daily papers have been crafted using Naviga Publisher x Sophi.io for nearly two years now with readers not noticing that 99% of pagination, copy fit & production is handled by robots. Those papers using our technology have redeployed to more revenue-generative roles, and have often hired more journalists, on the back of the cost-efficiencies delivered by our automated content platform.
Our holistic approach to product development and innovation means that we’re continuously investing in R&D, expanding our product suite, and making leading acquisitions. Over the past few years, increasingly more newspaper publishers have trusted us with more and more of their solutions requirements as they see our products that put content-first are revolutionizing the industry.
Many newspapers want to consolidate with a solution to deliver everything they need… creating print editions, engaging websites, monetizing through paywalls, managing ad sales cross-platform. Naviga’s solutions offer that, and more, as your long-term partner that is committed to growing and serving readers together.