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When it comes to engaging Gen Z and young millennial audiences, there is a disconnect between publishers’ tactics and audience preferences— leading to missed opportunities for publishers. That’s the big finding of Digiday’s new State of the Industry report, produced in collaboration with Arc XP. Based on surveys of 116 publishers and 114 Gen Z and young millennial consumers, the report maps the current state of publishers’ engagement tactics against the preferences of younger media audiences. Download your copy of the report to learn more.


The AI hype wave has crested: now the reality begins to bite

 

Key message from AI media summit: Let’s move past the hype

At the Nordic AI in Media Summit, speakers emphasised that generative AI is at its peak hype, and media needs to move past it to determine what the technology can truly offer the industry.

In yesterday’s special episode recorded from the FIPP Congress Peter noted that there was inevitably a lot of AI chat. Well for those of you like me who are getting bored of the hype cycle, here’s some insights from Ezra Eeman, change director at Mediahuis, who arguea that the wave has crested:

‘Eeman also laid out the secondary effects he foresees in a world where anyone can use generative AI to gain “creative superpowers.” “Generative AI has the potential to level the professional playing field in terms of content creation, which, in turn, raises the bar for real journalistic output,” Eeman said. “Differentiation and uniqueness is more important than ever.”’

That’s great news! For most, anyway. There are a lot of commodity news sites whose content is suddenly going to be a) bypassed by users using ChatGPT and others, and b) even more easily replicated than it already is, hurting their ad revenue. Digital publishing giveth, and digital publishing taketh away.


 

Publishers’ promotional subscription prices nearly halved in the past year

The average price offered to new subscribers dropped 43% between June 2022 and June 2023, according to Toolkits research.

I’ve just written an article (out soon) on how various publishers are using different paywall strategies. What this data-led article from Jack Marshall demonstrates is why so much experimentation is taking place – competition is fierce, and it’s impacting promotional subscription prices.


 

Privacy trial judge asks why Piers Morgan has not given evidence

A privacy trial judge says he may have to “make inferences” about journalists not appearing in court.

The Prince Harry phone hacking trial is getting messier, with the judge in the case now asking why people like Morgan are happy to offer their opinions outside the court but not in it. Honestly you’d have thought that all the cited journalists would have been happy to shine a light on this deplorable practice where they could, the better to heal the public perception of journalism.


 

Podcasts – to video or not to video?

Video can help with podcast growth, but we might be losing something.

This is a chat we’ve had a few times at Media Voices and, bar a few special episodes, we’ve always shied away from video podcasts. In part it’s because we live hundreds of miles apart from one another, and not recording in a studio defeats a lot of the purpose. But mostly it’s because we record at 7am and haven’t got our faces on yet.


More from Media Voices

 

Big Noises: Jacob Donnelly on why publishers can’t resist the pursuit of scale

On this week’s episode of Big Noises from Media Voices we hear from Jacob Donnelly, founder of A Media Operator and publisher at Morning Brew

 

The Independent’s plan to reach £10m in reader revenue by 2026

The Independent is minimising its reliance on ads, aiming to multiply direct reader revenue by five within two to three years.

 

Media Voices at FIPP Congress 2023: Resilience in the face of disruption

Peter Houston headed back to Cascais for FIPP Congress 2023, and heard from leading publishers about building resilience.

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