Long seen as the engine of digital publishing revenue, programmatic advertising is now facing existential pressures—from privacy regulations and platform changes to falling yields and brand safety fears. The model isn’t dead yet—but its dominance is waning.
As media businesses seek to grow subscription revenue, bundling with other publishers is becoming increasingly popular. But beneath the appeal of shared reach lies a critical question: do you gain loyalty—or lose leverage?
In a media landscape obsessed with reach and virality, it’s easy to overlook the real engines of engagement and revenue—carefully cultivated micro-audiences whose value lies not in their size, but in their specificity.
You’ve done the hard work of building a loyal audience and converting readers into subscribers, but suddenly, growth slows to a crawl.
In an era of content saturation and crumbling attention spans, it’s not the consumer-facing media giants that are seeing the most consistent reader engagement—it’s the often-overlooked world of B2B publishing.
Younger audiences aren’t rejecting the news—they’re rejecting how it’s delivered. For publishers still applying legacy assumptions to emerging habits, the gap in engagement is one of understanding, not interest.
As single-revenue strategies grow brittle, the most resilient publishers are embracing complexity—not choosing between ads or subscriptions, but building integrated ecosystems where multiple streams support, and reinforce, each other.
Publishers need more than compelling prose to thrive; they need to attract and retain paying audiences. And that’s where marketers come in.
Here’s a controversial take on why it might be time to rethink—or even abandon—your email marketing efforts.
Infinite scrolling often traps users in a loop of disengagement, leading to poor user experiences, high bounce rates, and missed conversion opportunities.
The truth is, simplicity sells. By focusing on clarity and prioritisation, publishers can turn their homepages into powerful conversion tools.
The truth is, aesthetics are secondary to usability. For publishers, focusing on user experience (UX) and functionality is not just a strategy—it’s a necessity.
