Media Tech Roundup

Vertical video is coming to the web. Publishers like TIME and The Arena Group are working with a tech company called Webflix to bring more mobile-friendly video to their sites.  In addition, Outbrain, the recommendation engine that promotes articles at the bottom of so many high-traffic media sites, launched a new Moments feature to bring the video format to the bottom of article pages. The pitch for vertical video is clear: it’s a more popular and immersive format for mobile web readers, plus publishers (and advertisers) can reuse content previously created for TikTok or YouTube Shorts. 

Meta has released a GenAI video tool for advertisers. The new Video Expansion feature lets you “expand” your videos by appending new, generated footage to the end. This move mirrors the earlier GenAI tool, Image Expansion. Meta reports that campaigns using its GenAI ad features have 11% higher click-through rate and 7.6% higher conversion rate. 

How to Disaster-Proof Your Site Migration

Welcome back to our series on preparing a publisher website for a successful content migration. In Part 1, we explored critical questions to help determine if a migration is right for your business. Now that you've (theoretically) decided to take the plunge, it's time to prepare. Welcome to Part 2: Taking Your Website's "Before" Snapshot.

Part 2: Taking Your Website's ‘Before’ Snapshot

A stable site migration requires ample work before a single image is moved. It’s vital to gather data to get a comprehensive “before” picture. Getting “before” data ensures it’s possible to properly:

• Benchmark: Provide a point of reference to assess the impact of your migration.

• Set goals: Determine realistic targets for improvement.

• Mitigate risk: Identify potential problem areas that need attention before the migration.

This helps ensure you’ll know exactly where the migration has impacted key metrics, and will make clear where product leaders should focus technical efforts in the crucial 30-day period after the relaunch.

For example, without noting performance data for your website on its current CMS, after migration you won’t know if page load speed has tanked, so you won’t know how crucial it is to make simple technical changes like lazy loading elements or removing redirect loops.

How do you go about gathering data and what metrics should you measure? Discover the answers below:

Meet our Partner: Pagely  🚀

We’ve partnered with the world’s No. 1 managed WordPress hosting platform to bring clients even better solutions. 

Pagely was the first managed platform for hosting WordPress sites. Back in 2006 they introduced the premise of Managed WordPress Hosting. Their forward-thinking and innovation have made WordPress much better. 

Learn more about Pagely here. 

Refact is a Proud Presenting Sponsor at AMO Summit |  Oct. 15 in NYC

We’re excited to be a Presenting Sponsor at this year’s AMO Summit in NYC. 🎉 

The summit, organized by A Media Operator (AMO), is a must-attend event for media founders and executives. This year’s lineup features speakers from Axios and The Atlantic. Discussion topics include sustainable business models and media mergers and acquisitions.

Refact CEO Saeed Abbaspour and Flexpress CEO Ajay Rayasam will talk about how technical infrastructure can unlock greater value during M&A. They’ll share insights into how improving infrastructure makes media assets more efficient, scalable, and valuable. Learn more about this event here.

A massive shout out to Jacob Donnelly, founder of AMO, for this triumphant gathering of industry pros. 

You can still book your ticket here. If you're attending, let’s connect!

This issue’s Back to Basics explores how publishers can boost conversions by improving CWV on their article pages.

Also in this issue:

🔴 YouTube wants what TikTok’s got: a piece of the social commerce pie 

🔴 Gannett shuts down its product review website amid AI controversy and traffic troubles

YouTube wants what TikTok’s got: a piece of the social commerce pie

YouTube is expanding its partnership with Shopify, countering TikTok Shop's growing influence in the social commerce space. YouTube is allowing creators to earn money when their viewers make purchases from thousands of Shopify brands. This is opening the floodgates; where before, only a few hundred shops could be monetized this way by creators, now all eligible Shopify Plus and Advanced merchants in the US to join the fold. The strategy offers creators more ways to monetize while helping brands reach new customers.

YouTube’s new e-commerce tools

The timing isn’t accidental. TikTok is making aggressive moves to grow its TikTok Shop business, targeting a tenfold increase in merchandise volume to $17.5 billion in 2024. While it’s new to the US e-commerce scene, TikTok’s rapid merchant onboarding and low commission rates (still undercutting Amazon's fees in most areas, despite a recent hike) signal a clear ambition to disrupt the market.

YouTube’s expansion is more than a response to TikTok—it's a way to diversify revenue streams against a potential slowdown in digital advertising and offer financial incentives for creators to peddle products. The platform has reported that more than 30 billion hours of shopping-related videos were watched in 2023; watch time for shopping videos increased 25% in the same period.

Twitter tweet

In addition to this most recent update, YouTube has also introduced new tools, like a Chrome extension that helps creators easily tag affiliate products.

Gannett shuts down its product review site amid AI controversy and traffic troubles for similar brands

Gannett has decided to shut down its product review site, Reviewed, after employees accused it of publishing product reviews generated by artificial intelligence (AI). Back in October 2023, Reviewed’s staff noticed that several reviews were written in a suspicious, mechanical style and attributed to authors who had no verifiable presence on professional networks like LinkedIn. 

screenshot from the Reviews website

The controversy surged when it became clear that AdVon Commerce was responsible for creating some of the site's content. AdVon is the same marketing company involved in the much-publicized Sports Illustrated scandal, where AI-generated content was published under fabricated authors, complete with fake headshots. 

Twitter tweet

The decision might also be tied to the Google algorithm changes that have forced digital publishers of all sizes to grapple with shriveling search engine traffic—particularly for product review content that once drove massive figures in affiliate earnings.

Back to Basics #6: How to boost Core Web Vitals and improve reader engagement on your most important pages

Website performance is important to user experience and SEO. Google “highly recommends” businesses make sure their websites pass web experience metrics known as Core Web Vitals in order to be successful in search. Still, considering the weight of programmatic advertising and other third-party scripts, many publishers have slow websites that are losing out on revenue-earning conversions like affiliate clicks, email sign-ups, and membership onboarding.

A recent test by The Financial Times found that slowing down their website by just 1 second caused a 4.9% drop in article views. A 3-second delay sunk article views by 7.2%.  

Below are three strategies for improving Core Web Vitals and page performance. Need help with the technical work? Refact has a team of engineers and designers who are experts at improving site speed. Let’s chat about how we can help. 

But First: What are Core Web Vitals?

Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics Google relies on to measure the user experience of a webpage. These metrics focus on three main areas: load speed, interactivity, and visual stability. Each one helps paint a picture of how a page performs in the real world on both desktop and mobile. If your pages are slow to load, hard to interact with or have elements that shift around, users are more likely to bounce—hurting a site’s engagement and bottom line.

There are three major Core Web Vitals

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): This measures how long it takes for the main content of a page to load. For a good experience, aim for 2.5 seconds or less.

• Interaction to Next Paint (INP): This checks how quickly a page responds to user actions like clicks or scrolling. You want it to be under 200 milliseconds so users don’t get frustrated.

• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): This looks at how stable a page is while loading. A score of 0.1 or lower means your content isn’t jumping around as elements like ads load onto the page, which keeps users reading.

Need help reaching these thresholds? Contact Refact for help.

Why Core Web Vitals Matter

These metrics are especially important for mobile users who have slower internet connections and less powerful devices. If your mobile pages load quickly, respond fast, and stay stable, visitors are more likely to stick around, read more, and take actions like subscribing or making a purchase. Plus, it seems likely Google is more likely to prioritize your pages over those of a slower competitor.

Some websites are doing a great job at this. The Colorado Sun, for example, has optimized their images and scripts to ensure fast load times, even on slower mobile networks. This approach keeps users engaged with in-depth content (like this piece on Colorado companies making recycling more effective).

Strategy 1: Optimize Images and Videos for Faster Loading Times

The first step to improving CWVs on mobile is optimizing the size and format of images and videos, which are often the main culprits behind slow load times (and failing LCP scores). Compressing images without sacrificing quality, using next-gen formats like WebP, and deferring offscreen images can significantly reduce load times. Additionally, lazy loading images and videos ensures they only load when they are about to be viewed, reducing the initial load burden.

Sites like Treehugger have tackled this by using "lazy loading," which means only loading images and videos as they come into view. This trick speeds up the initial page load, as seen in their article about getting kids off screens during the summer.

Strategy 2: Reduce JavaScript and CSS 

Excessive JavaScript can delay the time it takes for a page to become interactive (which causes INP scores to plummet). Reducing the amount of JavaScript or deferring non-essential scripts can enhance performance. Here are some ways to do that:

• Minify your JS and CSS files to reduce their size while keeping the functionality.

• Prioritize scripts needed for initial content and load the others asynchronously to improve user experience.

• Analyze your JS bundle to discover and remove unused code and unnecessary libraries that can pile up when using registries like npm.

Strategy 3: Stabilize Layouts

No one likes when a page suddenly shifts around as it loads. It makes an article impossible to read and can make people leave your site even if the content is stellar. To avoid this, make sure all your media elements have set sizes and load ads in a way that doesn't cause shifts. For example, a site can reserve space for ads using fixed-size containers. Now, even if the ad loads later, it won’t push the content around when the assets finally pop in.

For ads placed below the fold, there’s the option to use lazy loading—this way, ads only load as users scroll down, which prevents sudden shifts. It also improves initial load speed.

Also, be sure that ads refresh without refreshing the entire page. This is especially useful for content-heavy pages where users spend more time.

Bonus Tip: Regular Performance Checks

Finally, don’t forget to regularly check how your pages are performing. Free tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and the Chrome UX (CrUX) dashboard offer detailed insights on how your website is performing. CrUX may not be as famous as PageSpeed Insights, but it provides a history of your site’s CWV metrics, a considerable benefit if you have not been keeping records.

By focusing on these basics, you can make sure your site is ready to meet the needs of today’s mobile-first audience and turn those visits into loyal followers or customers.

Sites who do it well:

The Colorado Sun 

Treehugger

Prof Galloway

Take a moment to evaluate your website's Core Web Vitals and see how optimizing for mobile can enhance your reader's experience and boost conversions. Fast-loading pages, smooth interactions, and stable layouts are essential for keeping your audience engaged and growing your conversion rates. 

Ready to improve your site’s performance even more? Let’s discuss how we can help elevate your digital presence in the news and media landscape.

Does your site you show readers how they can support your work?

Today’s Back to Basics will help you improve returns by adding dedicated sections and pages to your media website.

Threads adds analytics tools in a bid to grab more of X’s market share

Meta has added new creator tools, including analytics and new draft options. It’s a sensible play before the platform is fully monetized. Once post popularity correlates with payment, knowing how content performs will be critical to creators and businesses. For now, these updates are limited to the web version.

Twitter tweet

This positions Threads to be a worthy alternative to X, which continues to experience a user drop-off—upwards of 30% in the last year. With more than 200 million users and growing, Threads is considered X’s main competition, easily surpassing Bluesky and Mastodon.

It’ll be interesting to see how Threads succeeds with advertising, which is rumored to roll out this year. X has experienced a 50% drop in ad revenue over 2023-2024, according to its largest shareholder Elon Musk. This “exodus of advertisers,” as Futurism writes, is likely a big reason X is now considered (by the Wall Street Journal) “the worst buyout for banks since the financial crisis.”Taking advertisers to court for no longer trusting the platform will probably do little to improve the situation. With some advertisers concerned about brand safety on X, Meta could draw in a considerable part of the ad revenue X has lost this year.

A few updates on AI in journalism

Perplexity, the AI search engine that has been criticized for ignoring publishers’ demands for compensation, has announced it’s donating $250,000 to Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism for an initiative to study the future of AI in journalism.

Twitter tweet

The relationship between AI and publishers is getting more official, with more major publishers making AI content deals with OpenAI and other GenAI companies. Prorata.AI, for example, has already got publishers like FT and Axel-Springer to license their content in exchange for revenue sharing “on a per-use basis,” meaning theoretically, the publishers would get paid every time their content is used to generate new text. (It’s still a bit unclear what happens when AI-generated content is derived from other AI-generated content, which is derived from journalists. Who would get paid in that scenario, and how accurate the text would be after this repeats a few times? How is AI’s recursive self-feeding issue being addressed in these deals?).

ProRata.ai | Home

Fair compensation and credit for content owners in the age of AI

prorata.ai

Back to Basics #5: Show readers how they can support your work

Publishers miss out on potential revenue by failing to make clear all the ways a reader can support the brand’s mission and pay for products. It’s important to highlight opportunities for would-be premium members, sponsors, or advertisers.

It’s simple, but often overlooked. If a media business is looking to become less reliant on display advertising, it’ll need to increase the eyeballs on blocks and pages that encourage readers to become paying members of the community. For paid memberships, a detailed, engaging page that summarizes member benefits is a great place to start. Field & Stream does this really well:

Screenshot from Field & Stream's website

Another example: Firecrown Media’s FlyingFinance.com, a brand that speaks directly to the company’s audience of aircraft connoisseurs, offering easy financing for plane purchases. It’s certainly a creative revenue stream for a media business! The website features a form in the hero section of its homepage. This is a straightforward lead generator, allowing the company to get valuable information about prospective buyers.

Screenshot from FlyingFinance's wbsite

A final example: the Lean In website features several blocks with clear calls-to-action for visitors: lead a group, learn about company programs, or read a report.

Screenshot from Lean In's website

Finally, without dedicated pages for sponsorship or advertising on your website, potential advertisers may get confused or lose interest. It’s vital to at least create a media kit and publish it on your site.

If you need media kit inspiration, check out Travel + Leisure’s, published here.

Pages from Travel + Leisure's 2024 media kit

Other Websites Doing it Well

• Punchbowl’s premium memberships and sponsorships pages

• Industry Dive’s advertising page

How can you leverage simple technical adjustments to improve your news site’s SEO?

This week’s Back to Basics reviews several simple solutions for improving your site’s article page SEO.

Also in this issue:

📍 Flipboard joins the Fediverse

📍 Telegram courts creators with new way to monetize via subscriptions

📌 Back to Basics #4: Articles need these crucial SEO elements

Let’s start.

Flipboard users can now follow anyone using the open social ecosystem known as the Fediverse

Flipboard, the social-media-slash-magazine app, now lets its users follow Fediverse accounts, including those on Mastadon and Instagram Threads. What is the Fediverse? It's basically an open social media ecosystem that allows creators to publish content from anywhere to all of their followers on all their accounts. It's enabled not through a particular platform but by the ActivityPub protocol.  (The Verge explains this best.) 

By leveraging the Fediverse, publishers and creators gain more control over their content and increase their reach. This decentralized system lets publishers avoid the algorithms and rules of big social media platforms, ensuring their content is seen by the people they want to reach without outside interference. Plus, because the Fediverse platforms can connect and share content with each other, publishers can reach a wider audience while still maintaining full control over their data and how it's used.

Of course, it has its drawbacks. Unless publishers find viable alternatives to the current advertising model, monetizing content on the Fediverse will be a challenge. It is platform-less, which means no rev-shares or display ads. However, there are potential solutions, such as direct audience support through platforms like Patreon, or sponsored content partnerships with other publishers in the Fediverse.

Twitter tweet

Other platforms using the Fediverse include WordPress and Ghost. The slow but steady growth of the Fediverse is a positive sign that there is still hope for a more open web. 

Telegram now lets creators build monetized channels

Twitter tweet

The messenger app known for its robust privacy features and the option to reach large audiences through "channels," now lets its creators sell monthly subscriptions to their channels. To join a monetized channel, users pay Stars, Telegram's native currency, when opening the invitation link. 

Back to Basics #4: Articles need these crucial SEO elements

Welcome back to Media Tech Report's Back to Basics series, where every week, we review one easy-to-accomplish solution to an extremely common problem—and highlight the brands doing it best. 

There are two keys to improving search engine optimization for content websites. The first is the content itself: what you're writing about and what words you're using. The second is the tech: how you're presenting those words to readers and search engine crawlers. To improve ranking and clickability on Search Engine Result Pages (SERP) media companies need both. 

Quick Tips for Content SEO

• Article Length: Articles with more than 1,000 words often rank better because they allow for the natural integration of many long-tail keywords. Read more about it here.

• Topic Competition: Where you can focus on topics that have high search volume (meaning lots of people are searching for it) but low competition (meaning few websites are providing the answers).) Tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, and KWFinder can help you discover the ideal topics for your site. Here's a great, 3-minute tutorial on how to do it.

• Keyword Placement: Google wants to connect the best answers to every search query. Make it easy for Google to understand what information is in the article and what answers your article has by using relevant keywords in your title, headers, and the first 100-200 words of your article. Need help determining which keywords are best? This 12-minute video makes the process clear.

• Search Intent: Make sure your content matches what the user needs. Some searchers want straightforward information pieces; others may want the ability to make a purchase or compare products. This article has a few good tips about aligning your content with search intent.

• Relevance to Domain: Focus on topics that align with your site's expertise. This helps build credibility and improve rankings. Google cares about so-called E-E-A-T, so anything that boosts Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness is worth considering.

Quick Tips for Technical SEO

Content is important, but it's just one (admittedly large) piece of the greater SEO puzzle. Making technical adjustments to your article templates can also improve your domain's position in SERP. To give your site the best shot at search traffic, make sure your article templates include the following: 

1. Author Bylines and Miniature Bios

This one is recently controversial. After The Verge wrote an article about how SEO experts "ruined the internet," Google reps took to X to say that author bylines are not a ranking factor. However, there is often a gap between what Google says and what Google does. This was made abundantly clear in the recent Google Pagerank algorithm leak, which, by the way, confirmed the importance of author entities for SEO. 

The reality is that author bylines and bios tend to correlate with higher levels of Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T), which are qualities that Google values highly. (But also maybe not. Thanks, Google.)

Another important point: bylines are absolutely vital for news sites. You need them to join Google News and/or Apple News, both of which can hugely expand audiences for content-based brands. 

2. Category Breadcrumb

Breadcrumbs are an important tool for both user navigation and SEO. They help readers easily find their way around your site by showing the path back to previous pages or categories. For Google, breadcrumbs provide a clear structure, helping it understand how different pages on your site are related.

This is particularly crucial for news and lifestyle media websites, which often host tens of thousands of pages. Each article should be linked to a relevant category, making it easier for both readers and search engines to crawl and index the right content.

Breadcrumbs can have a positive impact on your crawl depth, helping more of your content be discovered and ranked. (You can read more about this here).

3. Article or NewsArticle Schema

Web schema labels components on parts of a webpage so that search engines can understand the content quickly at a glance. When you use the Article or NewsArticle schema, you're giving search engines important details like who wrote the article, when it was published, and what type of content it is. This helps search engines efficiently categorize your content, confidently display it to the right search users, and pull in relevant details into features like quick results blocks.

Using schema markup is important for SEO because Google prefers well-organized content, both at the content catalog level (i.e., taxonomies-like categories) and at the article level (i.e., with clearly labeled Article schema). When your content is labeled correctly, it's easier for search engines to understand, which can help improve how and where the information appears in search results.

4. Subheaders

Subheaders play a key role in making your content more scannable and accessible to both readers and search engines. Here's how they help:

• Improve Readability: Subheaders break down content into smaller sections, making it easier to read and understand. They also make it easier to find the part of the article that most directly answers the search query.

• Support SEO: They provide natural places to use keywords and related terms, enhancing your content's relevance for search queries.

• Enhance User Experience: Because subheaders allow users to quickly find the information they need, readers theyare more engaged and less likely to bounce to a new domain.

For more detailed tips on writing for SEO, check out the full guide by SemEMrush.

5. Interactive or Multimedia Elements

Non-written components like videos, infographics, and audio can encourage readers to engage with your content. Thisincreased engagement and time spent on your website can signal to Google that your content is valuable, which can potentially improve its domain authority and average article ranking. Interactive and multimedia content can also give your content new opportunities to appear in other Google search results, like Google Images or Google Videos.

Plus, YouTube is owned by Google, so it's not impossible for the search engine to rank articles embedding YouTube videos higher on search result pages.

6. FAQs

Like subheaders, an FAQ section can make it easy for readers to digest a long article or complex topic. Plus, if you use FAQ web schema Google may show your answer in the People Also Ask (PAA) section.

Who Does it Well:

https://www.elledecor.com/design-decorate/room-ideas/g2429/small-kitchen-roundup/

https://www.popsci.com/environment/why-do-cats-make-biscuits/

https://www.riverfronttimes.com/food-drink/cate-zone-chinese-cuisine-excels-in-its-second-location-42603399

How do you make sure your content website’s design aligns with your business objectives?

Is it optimized to drive visitors to subscribe, or does it just generate a few cents by serving distracting ads that drive readers away?

💹 This week, we’re going back to basics to learn how to align your media website’s design with your goals to meet your KPIs.

Also in this issue:
📍 beehiiv releases an AI-powered audio update
📍 Sailthru adds an interesting filter to its Audience Builder
📍 Reddit acquires Memorable AI to improve its adtech
📍 Media Company of the Week: KCRW
📌Back to Basics #3 - How to Make Sure Your Content Website Actually Supports Your Business

Let’s start!

Beehiiv releases an AI-powered audio update

Newsletter platform beehiiv released a major new feature that makes newsletters more accessible. Content creators can now use one of five AI-generated voices to narrate their content out loud. I used it for Media Tech Review’s beehiiv newsletter—let me know what you think.

The email service provider also introduced a new webhook feature, which lets premium users automate workflows for important events like new sign-ups.

Twitter tweet

Sailthru adds an interesting filter to its Audience Builder

The enterprise email platform has added a new filter to its audience segmentation tool. Now, Marigold's Sailthru analytics can differentiate between push notification users and in-app notification users. That can help publishers with apps discover which type of messaging drives more conversion.

Sailthru Audience Builder screenshot

Side note: the differences between push notifications and in-app messages has been on my radar recently. Check out this article on push notifications in news media to learn more.

Push Notifications in News Media: Strategies and Benchmarks | Refact

Explore push notifications in news media: strategies for engagement, best practices, and future trends in user interaction.

refact.co/push-notifications-in-news-media

Reddit acquires AI adtech to offer better ads performance

Reddit, Inc. has acquired Memorable AI , an award-winning AI adtech product. This will add new AI capabilities to Reddit's ad services, offering advertisers better tools for optimizing campaign performance.

Twitter tweet

Media Company of the Week: KCRW

Screenshot from the KCRW website

KCRW is an LA radio station that extends its content offerings with its own website and app. The website lets you listen to the radio’s live program and serves up written content as well. It is already a great media company and has considerable growth potential.

Back to Basics #3 - How to Make Sure Your Content Website Actually Supports Your Business

Welcome back to Media Tech Report’s Back to Basics series, where every week we review one easy-to-accomplish solution to an extremely common problem—and highlight the brands doing it best.

Media web and product design can be the difference between meeting business objectives and not. A lot of media companies don’t regularly assess their headers, navigation, homepage, and article template designs to make sure they’re actively supporting their up-to-date business objectives.

Yes, new design can refresh enthusiasm for a brand, but it also can also directly bolster Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), including lifting conversion rates. Here’s how you do it.

Define your business goals

Start by pinpointing exactly what results you want to achieve. Do you plan to increase pageviews per session? Improve ad viewability, enhance data collection, or boost engagement from particular reader segments? Is your aim to drive more traffic to sponsored content, or make it more appealing to sponsors? Once you establish your KPIs, you can start restructuring your site to meet targets.

Place your calls-to-action front and center

Don't be afraid to bend your site's architecture to your business objectives. If increasing newsletter subscriptions is your first priority, consider placing the subscription invite prominently—above the fold on the homepage or as a persistent footer on every page—like Punchbowl News does, as seen below.

In the same way, if product sales are vital, integrate product showcases or recommendations into article templates and category page templates. For example, Consumer Reports adds product recommendations and premium membership opportunities prominently on several different pages.

Many media sites have existing momentum around display advertising, and are thus afraid to try something new in those premium 970x250 and 728x90 placements. Depending on your business model, you may want to consider using that real estate to test net-new blocks that promote newsletter sign-ups, premium membership subscriptions, or the purchase of products from your ecommerce shop.

Who does it best?

Consumer Reports is a fantastic example, but so is Scott Galloway's No Mercy / No Malice marketing newsletter and podcast website. The main subscription box above the fold grabs visitors' attention immediately. The header is sticky, keeping the most important options (Sponsor, Listen, and Subscribe) in the user's view. Another sticky element is the sidebar on the home page that lets users search for content while reminding them to check out the podcast as well as the content on the website.

Consider Incentives

Clearly communicate the benefits your readers will get from signing up or making a purchase. What exactly are they going to get by converting? Morning Brew, for example, promises "quick and insightful updates about the business world every day of the week." This is where having a clear vision of your unique value proposition is critical.

Sometimes offering an incentive like a free ebook or industry report, can significantly boost conversion rates and nudge readers deeper into the funnel.

Evaluate Content

Next, dive into your analytics. Identify which articles are driving the most sign-ups, generating the most ad revenue, or leading to the highest product sales. You will need to set up some analytics tools like GA4 and Google Tag Manager to track all metrics correctly. For expert help in optimizing your analytics setup and ensuring your website is designed for maximum conversion rates, you can reach out to Refact. We specialize in offering bespoke solutions to help media companies grow in a competitive environment.

Don't overlook your email metrics, either. Examine which subject lines and links result in the best click-through rates. Also important (though a bit painful): which subject lines cause the most unsubscribes? This data is invaluable as it guides you on what content resonates best with your audience and what might need adjustment.

Embrace Continuous Testing

Finally, take advantage of A/B testing—and actually analyze the results. Experiment with different templates, block placements, phrasing, colors, and imagery. Even a modest conversion rate increase of 1% can make a considerable difference for most news and media companies.

Let's recap. Aligning your website with your business goals is key to boosting conversions. How to do it: Clarify goals, display goal-supporting components prominently, analyze content, offer incentives, and test strategies to continually optimize your site.

Remember to subscribe to the Media Tech Report for next week's Back to Basics guide for improving your media operation.

How can publishers craft taxonomy pages that improve SEO and UX?

This issue's Back to Basics section provides 3 practical solutions to this common problem, so hang around to the end!

Substack adds Polymarket’s betting embeds

Substack now lets users embed prediction cards from Polymarket. These embeds let users bet on sports, politics, science, and more. However, reaction from the Substack community has been mostly negative. Users' comments show they're concerned about ethics of adding gambling to the service. Polymarket is apparently trying to distance itself from gambling -- it's hard to find the word "bet" on its website.

This seems like a revenue-focused product update just in time for the Olympics' betting fever. 

Introducing prediction market embeds for Substack

A partnership with Polymarket, just in time for the Olympics

on.substack.com/p/dynamic-prediction-market-tables

Shockingly enough, beehiiv hasn’t released any updates this week, going against their promise of 6 weeks of continuous product updates. 

Perplexity agrees to pay publishers per ad-enabled source links

Perplexity had been refusing to respect publishers' copyrights for months, but that's over now. The AI company will start paying publishers per source link when their content shows up in ad-enabled search results.

Perplexity to share ad revenue with signed-up publishers after flurry of criticism

AI search chatbot Perplexity will share revenue made from advertising in search results with the publishers whose content is referenced.

pressgazette.co.uk/news/perplexity-publishers-revenue-sharing

NYT’s Cooking integrates with Instacart for easier shopping 

NYT Cooking now lets users order missing recipe items through Instacart. Basically, you can ingredients to your cart directly from the app and having Instacart deliver.

It seems these secondary apps are becoming increasingly serious and vital for publishers like NYT, the Guardian, and FT. 

Twitter tweet

With Guardian launching its own cooking app last week, it seems publishers are continuing to diversify their business models and lead-generation channels.

New York Times brings commerce to its cooking app

The New York Times has partnered with Instacart, bringing commerce to its cooking app.

www.inma.org/blogs/product-initiative/post.cfm/new-york-times-brings-commerce-to-it-s-cooking-app

This is part of a larger trend of publishers moving away from traditional ad-driven revenue sources to providing more personalized user experiences and closer relationships with partner brands. 

The UX of websites with lots of ads has always seemed awful to me. It is exciting to see publishers finding new ways to use new digital products to fund their business without ruining their relationship with their audience.

Twitter tweet

Historically, publishers have been great at bringing users to their platform and selling that traffic to advertisers. Now, they are taking more and more ownership of their audience and their user experience using digital products like this NYT’s Cooking with its Instacart integration. It extends the user’s experience beyond content consumption and enables them to shop for ingredients at the same place they are getting the recipe from.

Media Company of the Week: Grist

Grist is a nonprofit media company focusing on environmental journalism, talking about the climate, environmental justice, and sustainability. Grist combines journalism with advocacy to influence public opinion and policy on environmental issues. This attention to social responsibility is what makes Grist stand out from the background.

Home

A nonprofit media organization telling stories of climate solutions and a just future.

grist.org

Back to Basics #2 - How to Do Taxonomy SEO Optimization the Right Way 

Welcome back to Media Tech Report's Back to Basics series, where every week, we review one easy-to-accomplish solution to an extremely common problem—and highlight the brands doing it best. 

Taxonomy landing pages—that is, content listing pages by category or tag—offer a huge SEO opportunity. When done right, these pages can reduce crawl depth, clarify a site's expertise, and drive readers to high-ROI content. 

screenshot from Consumer Report’s Appliances category page

Why category pages are vital for publishers

News and lifestyle media websites serve a considerable amount of content—often tens of thousands of pages. The latest or most popular will end up on the front page or a featured sidebar, but the rest? Category and tag pages are indispensable to allow readers and search crawlers a better chance of finding the right piece of content.  

Just having category pages and getting them right are two different things, however. There are a few page structure strategies that can boost your site's standing in the eyes of search engines. How do you make the most of your category pages? Here, we review two best practices for designing category pages that improve SEO.

Strategy 1: Promote subcategories

The biggest advantage of touting subcategories on taxonomy pages is that they reduce crawl depth. Essentially, crawlers are automated programs that search engines like Google use to quickly scan and evaluate a website. The faster it can reach all the pages in your website, the more often a website will be indexed and the more visible its content will be in search results. 

A key part of crawling a website quickly is reducing the number of steps a crawler needs to take in order to see the majority of the site content library. This is what we refer to as "crawl depth." If a crawler needs to "click" on a lot of disorganized URLs in order to find the content, it will not index the site as quickly. (Search Engine Land has a greatsummary of crawl depth and why it's important here.)

Search engines prefer a content catalog that is well-structured with a hierarchical taxonomy (i.e., not just "Science" as a category but rather "Science" as a category plus "Environment," "Space," and "Animals" as subcategories). By promoting links to the subcategory pages on the category pages, a website is providing an express lane for crawlers to find all of their content.

An example would be the website Consumer Reports and how elegantly it handles this in its design. 

Strategy 2: Pagination

There are merits to designing category pages with infinite scrolling. It's easier for users on mobile devices, for example. Plus, when done right, there is no meaningful difference in SEO between infinite scroll and pagination. However, it's much harder to make sure you're not hiding content from crawlers with infinite scroll. That's why, in our product strategy sessions, we recommend pagination over infinite scroll or "next/previous" structures.  Plus, pagination also improves SEO with faster loading times and lighter pages.

So, while it may seem a step back in time, pagination is the right choice for news and media sites.

Bonus Strategy: Selective promotion

There's another way you can optimize your category pages: by putting high-value content in special, high-visibility modules. This is particularly popular among lifestyle brands that create a lot of articles that promote products that drive revenue for the brand, such as buyer's guides. It's also popular for sponsored content. The idea is simple: placing well-monetized articles front and center will drive valuable metrics like views and conversions. Again, Consumer Reports does this well, promoting shoppable content in the right rail of its category pages.

Who does it well?

• https://www.modernretail.co/marketing/ 

• https://www.consumerreports.org/appliances/

• https://lifehacker.com/health 

Take a look at your own site structure and see if these changes could help boost your traffic and reader engagement. Well-organized category pages are a solid foundation for any digital strategy in the news and media industry. Need some product or engineering assistance? We'd love to hear from you.

Follow Refact on LinkedIn and Clutch.

Introducing Media Tech Report's Back to Basics

"Make the website better" sounds simple, but with so many technical opportunities, it's easy for it to feel less like a to-do list and more like an avalanche of everything you're doing wrong.

Introducing Media Tech Report's Back to Basics series, where every week, we review one easy-to-accomplish solution to an extremely common problem.

In this week's issue:

📍 Cookies don't crumble for Chrome

📍 Guardian's new app helps with recipes

📍 Your beehiiv newsletter is now an app (or is it?)

📍 Media Company of the Week: the LAist

📍 Back to Basics: "About" & "Editorial Policies" pages

Continue reading 👇

Cookies dont crumble for Chrome

After a lot of confusion and stress over the death of cookies by 2025, Google has reversed decision. The decision to keep third-party cookies in Google Chrome has caused mixed reactions from advertisers. It is not exactly clear what caused the change in direction or what will replace it, but Google says it will offer users more data control.

Twitter tweet

Forbes speculated that Chrome will offer a choice between third-party cookies, Topics API, and its private browsing feature.

Guardians new app helps with recipes

The Guardian launches Feast, a cooking app with 30,000 recipes, to boost subscriber engagement and attract new audiences. It costs $3.99/month as a standalone app, but it's free with some bundled subscriptions. With over 100,000 downloads, it offers features like hands-free' cook mode' and ingredient-based recipe searches.

Twitter tweet

Guardian’s Feast is the latest example of news and media companies developing new products. After the New York Time’s success with Wordle and gamified finance apps developed by Norkon, publishers will continue to come up with new apps.

Your beehiiv newsletter is now an app (or is it?)

beehiiv announced it’s adding mobile app versions of all newsletters on the platform for free. These “apps” provide more than just access to newsletter content–they allow for push notifications and real-time audience engagement.

Twitter tweet

The name “app” may be misleading. The new beehiiv offerings are not much more than browser shortcuts added to your device's Home Screen.

I tried following the instructions to activate it for Media Tech Report, but it didn't work as it was supposed to.

beehiiv is one of the rare tech companies to start an update streak for its products and create hype. That makes you wonder if it’s more of a marketing tactic than a drive to improve their product.

Media Company of the Week: the LAist

Living in LA, a multi-platform newsroom like LAist is essential. It offers newsletters and radio programs and is known for its strong community ties and careful coverage of local news, arts, and culture. LAist captures the diverse voices of Southern California, making it invaluable for residents.

Back to Basics: "About" & "Editorial Policies" pages

Last week, I highlighted some of Sherwood Media's strengths and weaknesses. I left one thing out: the brand's smart "About Us" and the "Editorial Standards" pages. It sounds too simple to be impactful, but detailed About Us and Editorial Policies pages are vital for establishing authority—for both readers and search engines. If you don't have a robust About page, here's your sign to prioritize creating one.

About Us

The About Us page improves your website's standing in search, clarifies your brand image, and secures readers' trust. A well-crafted page with rich content of around 2,000 words is ideal—it will boost your site's standing with both search engines and readers.

Why You Need an About Us Page

• It tells your story: Yes, your editorial content should speak for itself, but with trust in media at an all-time low, it's crucial to establish credibility for anybody looking for it. Introduce your team and share your story. What are your values? How are you different? Who creates the content?

• Builds trust: Share what drives your team and the values that support your site's content. Without this page, readers may question your authenticity.

• Improves SEO: Google cares a lot about site authority. An "About" page boosts a brand's so-called E-E-A-T scores, a framework Google uses to establish which URLs come up in organic search results. The term stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. An "About Page" is dedicated exclusively to establishing a brand in those terms. In addition, brands can use high-value keywords to boost visibility in search results.

What an About Us Page Needs

You don't need 1,000+ words of fluff. You need 1,000+ words of substance. A stand-out "About" page can include the following:

1. The mission — To be frank, what is the point of your website? Why was it created? What are you offering to the world?

2. The history — Every business has a story, and this is your opportunity to tell yours. As with any good story, be sure to build a world, create tension, and close satisfyingly. Add plenty of color and details.

3. Editorial policies — This can be a part of the About page or a separate URL entirely—it depends on how long and detailed you'd like to be. It could be where you disclose how your work is funded, how research is conducted, and how content is created, edited, and published.

4. Links to popular or high ROI content — Highlight your favorite or most profitable posts.

5. Multi-sentence bios for employees — A masthead is great, but a sentence or two for every employee is better. Thissignals to readers and search engines that yours is a high-value enterprise forged by experts in the field.

6. Shout-out other products — If you have a brand presence outside your website, give it a moment in the spotlight here. This includes podcasts, newsletters, YouTube channels, Instagram, Discords, LinkedIn accounts, ebooks, and online courses.

7. CTA for potential partners, sponsors, advertisers, and/or premium members — Don't forget to give people the opportunity to help fund your business.

Editorial Policies

Defining your editorial values and policies helps build credibility and trust, especially considering Americans' trust in media has recently plummeted to historic depths. An Editorial Policies page boosts reader confidence in its authenticity by

• Supporting credibility: This page shows you're serious about content integrity and standards, which helps build trust.

• Showing professionalism: Explaining how you manage submissions and publishing reassures writers and researchers that your site is a worthy place for their work.

What an Editorial Policies Page Needs

1. Mission and Values — Share what your organization believes in and why you publish. This helps readers understand your main goals.

2. Editorial Standards and Practices —This section makes up the heart of this page, and it can have multiple subsections. Detail standards for accuracy, fairness, and integrity. Include roles of editors, workflow, and practical details.

3. Fact-Checking and Source Transparency — Explain how you verify facts and cite sources to ensure the truth is told.

Websites Doing it Well

• Glossy [About]

• The Verge [About] [Ethics Statement]

• Sherwood News [Editorial Standards]

• The Juggernaut [About]

• LAist [Editorial Ethics and Guidelines]

Subscribe to Media Tech Report to catch next week's discussion on how to boost SEO for taxonomy landing pages.

A deeper dive into Sherwood Media's radical approach to redefining editorial websites

I exploreSherwood News's website to discover its strengths and weaknesses. Follow along for the results.

Also in this issue:

📍LinkedInwill roll out "Accelerate," its AI campaign builder

📍WordPress6.6 adds impressive new features

📍beehiivs Post Dashboard update adds new tools for creators

📍 A new cookie alternative from sports publisherFootballco

📍Optimizelyreleases a SaaS CMS bundled with Visual Builder

📍 Company of the Week: Sherwood Media

Read on.

LinkedIn will roll out "Accelerate," its AI campaign builder

LinkedIn is launching its AI ad tool, Accelerate, globally this fall. This tool will reduce the time for creating ads from 15 hours to just 5 minutes. It also aims to make ads cheaper to run, with a 52% drop in cost per action and makes setting up campaigns 15% faster. Accelerate checks your product URL, your company's LinkedIn page, and past ads to create new ads and find the right audience. However, some users have said it's tough to target specific B2B audiences with it. Even though it's still being tested and only half of advertisers can use it now, those who use it are seeing better results, like more completed lead forms and cheaper costs per lead.

WordPress 6.6 adds impressive new features

WordPress6.6 ("Dorsey") is live. The updated editor layout offers a quick preview of all pages. You can also auto-update all plugins without stress – if a plugin update fails, WordPress will automatically roll it back.

Twitter tweet

A plugin update breaking your website has been an old pain point for WordPress users, so this can be a major moment.The auto-rollback feature is ideal for small publishers without an in-house technical team.

beehiiv's Post Dashboard update adds new tools for creators

The new dashboard shows more detailed data on how content performs. You can see how readers interact with your posts and connect with your best readers. It also simplifies A/B testing and lets readers like or comment directly from their emails.

Twitter tweet

These updates are part ofbeehiiv's plan to bombard users with a lot of new features over the next six weeks to help creators grow.

A new cookie alternative from sports publisher Footballco

The sports publisherFootballcohas launchedFC Precision, a tool for ad targeting without relying on cookies. This tool uses both first-party and third-party data to create detailed profiles of users. It can target users based on interests like fashion and travel, not just football. FC Precision has been tested with some clients and is now available to all. It helps advertisers reach specific audiences with customized ad campaigns, ensuring effective targeting even after cookies are phased out onGoogle Chromein 2025.

Twitter tweet

Optimizely releases a SaaS CMS bundled with Visual Builder

Optimizelyhas launched a new SaaS CMSto enhance its digital experience platform. This service, designed to be headless,includes a Visual Builder that simplifies creating and previewing content. It supports various design functions like drag-and-drop and lets users manage content across multiple channels from one place. Optimizely is a platform that helps businesses test and personalize their digital experiences.

Twitter tweet

With its new Visual Builder, Optimizely's CMS is a late addition to platforms that have been recently adding (AI-powered) website builders to their offerings, includingWeb.com,Notion, and evenbeehiiv.

Company of the Week: Sherwood Media

The financial platform @RobinhoodApp started Sherwood Media in 2023 on the success of their popular financial newsletter "Snacks".

Twitter tweet

They blend finance and usual news stories to present a clear picture of the economy. That is a vital part of Robinhood’s mission to "democratize finance for all."

An overview of Sherwood's website

The homepage utilizes a vertical scrolling design packed with news titles, text, and multimedia elements. News stories are presented in a single column layout similar to @TheVerge.

The bold headlines and teaser images also help keep the users engaged. However, the density of articles on the homepage and the news pages might overwhelm some users, especially if you visit the website via desktop instead of mobile.

The mobile experience of Sherwood, however, is much easier to navigate. The desktop version shows multiple visual elements in the same frame, slightly overwhelming for first-time users.

Subscription and Onboarding

Sherwood has one of the most prominent CTAs: a vibrant yellow banner at the top of the homepage with a clever title that asks users to “Follow the Money.”

Clicking on the banner takes the user to a separate subscription page. This extra step can be avoided by including the email text field on the banner, making the sign-up process easier.

Sign-up Form

The sign-up form is sparse and does not distract from the main purpose. Using a bold, black font on a light background increases readability, while the contrasting yellow subscribe button stands out, inviting clicks.

Copywriting

The copy encourages action. The use of logotypes ("Snacks" and "CHArtr") and the description beneath the email field let subscribers know what to expect. Again, the fresh and in-your-face copy is what stands out the most from Sherwood's CTAs.

After sign-up

Sherwood does not spend too much time with onboarding once users enter their email. For example, there are no instructions for ensuring the newsletter lands in their inbox. However, the copy is as excellent as always, making up for it.

How did Industry Dive get over $100M in revenue with free B2B newsletters?

I explore the answers at the end of this issue.

Plus:

📍 Perplexity adds a new search feature and there's still no sign of respecting paywalled content

📍 TikTok Shop cuts down on promos

📍 Intent IQ is a new cookie-alternative ID tech

📍 Quark Software Inc.'s NextGen leverages Microsoft's AI for enterprise content automation

📍 Media Company of the Week: Industry Dive

Perplexity adds a new search feature, and there's still no sign of respecting paywalled content

Perplexity AI's updated Search Pro can answer more complex questions by breaking them down and finding the info from different sources. This is a good sign for content creators, but the app refuses to respect paywalled articles and copyrighted content.

Twitter tweet

TikTok Shop cuts down on promos

TikTok's native e-commerce product has been a welcome feature since its launch last year. But now TikTok Shop is cutting back on discounts like free shipping. Brands may want to think about continuing to operate on a platform that owns their audience as well as their promo strategies.

Twitter tweet

Intent IQ is a new cookie-alternative ID tech

Intent IQ's identification tech is a new promising alternative to cookies, joining the ranks of Amazon’s Signal IQ and Trade Desk’s UID. Intent IQ’s latest campaign produced 77% more leads and cut cost-per-lead by 71%. These impressive figures will keep Intent IQ in publishers' minds in the next months.

Twitter tweet

Quark NextGen leverages Microsoft's AI for enterprise content automation

Quark Software Inc. Publishing Platform (QPP) NextGen simplifies complex content automation and management using AI. While it is less valuable for usual mid-range publishers, it's perfect for enterprise businesses handling complex content that must follow multiple compliance rules and schedules.

Twitter tweet

Media Company of the Week: Industry Dive

Industry Dive is a D.C.-based B2B media company with over 30 newsletters, 14M subscribers, and $100M in revenue. How did it get here? Founders Sean Griffey, Eli Dickinson, and Ryan Willumson launched the company in 2012 to fill a niche in digital-first B2B news.

The company's business model involves selling native ad space to brands in different industries. With 14M readers, Industry Dive is ideal for any B2B brand from any industry!

Another publication drives income to the company in a different way: DiveWire lets brands use Industry Dive’s content strategy and circulation to promote their company news and PR.

DiveWire is the only asset that the company has ever advertised on Google. It can rely on its owned media to promote the PR publication and DiveMarketplace, its content licensing business.

Reviewing the media company’s website, what stood out the most for me was the identical design and layout of all the 37 publications.

A more branded design, customized for each newsletter, may create more loyalty and increase user experience.

Workweek similarly manages multiple newsletters, each with a branding tailored to its audience.

O’Keefe Media Group creates excellent investigative journalism, but how do they deliver it?

I reviewed OMG’s website for user experience and performance. Read the breakdown below.

Also in this issue:

📍 Adobe's Experience Manager gets a "content hub"

📍 Notion is the latest to offer AI-powered website builders

📍 Criteo’s research suggests Google’s Sandbox will decrease publishers’ ad revenue by 60%

📍 beehiiv buys Typedream after successful funding

📍 Kontent.AI scores $40M in funding

📌 Media Company of the Week: O'Keefe Media Group

Let's start.

Adobe’s Experience Manager gets an AI-driven “content hub”

Adobe’s Experience Manager has a new feature called the content hub, but what does it actually do? It helps you recycle and reuse old content using AI. This seems to help enterprise publishers with a large content inventory. It will have less impact on mid-sized media companies.

NotionHQ is the latest platform to offer AI-powered website builders

Notion has a new website builder, and it's exciting to play with. Notion is following an increasing trend where platforms (including Web.com) are adding AI-powered website builders to their offerings.

Which platform will be next?

Criteo’s research suggests Google’s Sandbox will decrease publishers’ ad revenue by 60%

According to Criteo’s report, publishers’ ad revenue will decrease by as much as %60. Publishers will continue to find alternative methods, something we are already seeing with the increasing popularity of Apple News. Read Kieran Delaney's comments in a previous issue of Media Tech Report.

beehiiv buys Typedream

beehiiv has been in the spotlight these weeks. After raising $33M, it has bought Typeform, the popular survey-building tool. Creators can look forward to adding new forms and surveys to their newsletters.

Kontent.AI scores more funding

The up-and-coming headless CMS Kontent.AI is also having a good week, raising $40M from Expedition Growth Capital. I’ll be waiting to see how their product will improve with this fund injection.

Media Company of the Week: O'Keefe Media Group

The O’keefe Media Group was founded by James OKeefe after his work on the controversial Project Veritas. It focuses on investigative journalism with a twist—using whistleblowers and undercover methods to find and expose corruption.

Product Analysis

I reviewed the website’s user experience and performance and found its strong points and areas for improvement.

Strong Points

Impressive copy: the writing is as good as you would expect from expert journalists: straightforward, persuasive, and impactful.

Minimal design: the mobile version uses a stark, minimalist design that forces the user to focus on the strong copy.

Areas for Improvement

Performance: the website could be optimized to load much faster, giving users a better experience.

Design and readability: The desktop version of the website plays a black-and-white video in the hero section's background, making it harder for users to read the excellent copy.

I also noticed a small hiccup on their website where a video should be playing but isn't displaying correctly.

This suggests there is a problem with the WordPress-Mux integration plugins. Updating the plugins is a good place to start for a short fix. Still, I think they would give their users a better experience if they overhauled the website with a new design and performance boost.

What product strategies does the 19th News deploy to ensure more sign-ups?

June 26, 2024

Discover the answer in my review of 19th News.

Also in this issue:

💡 Meta's half-step into the Fediverse

💡 Substack adds monetization analytics for each post

💡 beehiiv has new monetization tools for newsletter creators

💡 Two product updates from Ghost

💡 WordPress 6.6 is (almost) here

the 19th News Twitter banner with their motto

Let’s dive in.

Meta's small step into the Fediverse

Threads now lets you share posts to Mastodon and other Fediverse platforms. The connection is one-way, though, and you can't post on Threads or other Meta platforms from your Mastodon profile. This could be a first step from Meta in joining the recent Fediverse trend, but it looks more like a half-step.

Twitter tweet

Substack adds monetization analytics for each post

Substack continues to update its product almost every week, and this time, it provides users with their "post stats." This lets newsletter creators check out how much the post has earned them, how many subscribers are paying for it, and so on. The design and UX are impressive.

Twitter tweet

beehiiv has new paywall tools for creators

beehiiv has released three new features, adding new ways to monetize your newsletters. The most vital feature in this product update is "Pay What You Want." It lets your readers pay whatever they think is fair as their subscription fee. This is the correct way if you're trying to avoid a hard paywall that some of your readers won't afford.

Two product updates from Ghost

Ghost has released two updates this week. The first lets you add alternative payment options for your subscribers. The other is a new editorial feature: internal links. You can now add links to your own content without hunting for its URL.

Twitter tweet

WordPress 6.6 is (almost) here

This week, the released the RC1 version of WordPress 6.6. The Release Candidate 1 is for testing, but the alpha version is coming in three weeks.

At Refact, we like to work with the latest WordPress features and other technologies, to create more value for our clients – I'm looking forward to seeing what we can create with this new version.

Media Company of the Week: the 19th News

The 19th is a nonprofit newsroom founded by Emily Ramshaw and Amanda Zamora. It focuses on gender, politics, and policy-making, hoping to empower women and LGBTQ+ people.

The 19th News sign-up page

This week, I looked at the 19th News sign-up page, and the following points stood out.

Strong points

Consistent Branding: The page uses the brand's purple color scheme in different sections, reinforcing the 19th News brand.

Content Preview: Showing a snippet from a recent newsletter and how it looks in your phone's inbox lets potential subscribers know what they're signing up for.

Intuitive Typography: The large sans-serif font of the body makes the description more readable. The serif headings add a visual flair.

Areas for improvement

CTA: The subscribe button could be more noticeable. Making it bigger or using a brighter color might help it stand out.

Terms and Agreements Checkbox: The checkbox is too close to the text, which might lead to accidental clicks. Spacing it out could help.

What companies should I review next week?

Report this article

6AM City is Taking the Local Scene One City at a Time

Discover how 6AM City launch newsletters in new cities.

6AM City Logo

Also in this issue:

📍 Google ’s new SERP look spells bad news for publishers

📍 New AdTech solutions for reducing carbon emissions

📍 LinkedIn 's newsletter product is getting cool upgrades

📍 Substack released a smart video clipping tool

📍 WordPress values and the 2024 mid-year project update

Let's start.

Google’s new SERP look spells bad news for publishers

Press Gazette's post shows a side-by-side SERP comparison that shows just how dramatic the impact will be on publishers relying on organic traffic.

Press Gazette's comparison of Google’s previous and AI-powered SERP

New adtech and standards for reducing carbon emissions in advertising

GARM and Ad Net Zero have introduced new standards for measuring carbon emissions in media. The Global Media Sustainability Framework helps advertisers request and compare carbon data from media sellers. But what about publishers that don’t meet some requirements? The usual answer is that they get black-listed by advertisers.

💡Good-Loop thinks there is a better way:

“We must stop telling advertisers that they are reducing their emissions by blocking publishers: That is wrong and factually incorrect,” Will Luttrell, chief technology officer at Good-Loop, told ADWEEK. That is why the company is making its GARM-compliant measuring tool, Good Measure, available to publishers for free. Others must pay $5,000 a month for the product.

LinkedIn’s newsletter product is getting cool upgradesnbsp;

LinkedIn has added new features to improve its newsletter tool. Users can now design custom cover images with Microsoft’s AI-powered Designer tool, receive better subscriber notifications, embed profiles and pages in articles, and preview newsletters before publishing. The updated reading experience shows comments alongside articles, making it easier to engage with readers. If you’re following Media Tech Report on LinkedIn, you may already be experiencing the new features.

Substack released a smart new video clipping tool – and it looks impressive

Substack has created another video tool for its creator toolbox. The new video clipper uses AI to help you create“shareable clips” faster. It automatically breaks the video into chunks and shows what each one is about. Subsctack has also added a tool to generate transcripts and captions.

WordPress values in the 2024 mid-year project update

Matt Mullenweg took the stage at this year’s WordPress WorldCamp Europe to present an overview of WordPress mid-way through the year. He also shared 11 points to focus on the open-source platform powering almost half the web. The first point resonated with me and how I think about problem-solving and web and product development:

“Simple things should be easy and intuitive, and complex things possible.”

Media Company of the Week: 6AM City

6AM City focuses on rapid audience development when launching in new cities, reaching up to 50,000 subscribers within three months. Their playbook includes a mix of pre-launch strategies, such as content planning and onboarding new people using a specific training app.

Once they start on a new city, they try to launch the local 6AM newsletter within 6 months, and since they have done it a lot, they know how much it should cost or what pre-launch methods are needed. Sometimes they buy up local lifestyle websites as a way to get noticed in a particular city before launching the newsletter.

They rely heavily on email marketing to drive this growth, using targeted campaigns constantly refined through A/B testing to improve their effectiveness.

In terms of expansion, 6AM City is strategically targeting cities where they see the potential for high engagement, using metrics like local pride and economic activity to choose new markets. This strategy has helped them maintain a consistent growth trajectory and build a sustainable business model focused on community engagement.

Top 3 ad strategies Puck News uses to generate paying subscribers

I analyzed their ad copy to find out how they get their subscribers.

Also in this issue:

📌Microsoft Advertising is live – and crushing it!

📌Trade Desk pushes UID 2.0 — should you buy it?

📌LinkedIn now uses AI to optimize your ads

📌Facebook has started treating local news as spam

📌Substack now lets you add videos to your conversations

📌Media Company of the Week: Puck

Let's dive in.

Microsoft Advertising is live – and crushing it!

Microsoft has released a significant upgrade of its ad platform, the Microsoft Advertising Editor. You can now use it to place video and Connected TV (CTV) ads, plus the usual display and search ads. The new ad platform lets you also place your ads on Netflix across ten countries – a step up from its narrow B2B focus.

Microsoft adds video and CTV ads (including Netflix inventory) to Advertising Editor | MarTech

Company will start supporting video and connected TV ads in its Advertising Editor, including Netflix inventory across 10 countries.

martech.org/microsoft-adds-video-and-ctv-ads-including-netflix-inventory-to-advertising-editor

The Trade Desk been pushing its cookieless UID 2.0 tracker to take advantage of the upcoming 3rd-party cookie deprecation. This model relies on email addresses to work creating its own challenges. Since getting readers to provide their emails is an uphill battle for most publishers.

The Trade Desk's 'premium internet' shift stirs concerns among publishers over ad dollar allocation

The Trade Desk reassures that minimal authentication can still attract ad dollars, but many publishers remain skeptical of relying on UID 2.0 and ceding control over their data.

digiday.com/media/the-trade-desks-premium-internet-shift-stirs-concerns-among-publishers-over-ad-dollar-allocation

LinkedIn now uses AI to optimize your ads

LinkedIn is adding AI to its advertising tools.  LinkedIn's AI will analyze user data and suggest the best ad formats and content for each campaign. Has anyone used the new LinkedIn ad platform? Curious to know how it performs compared to their old version.

LinkedIn’s publisher revenue share program is entering its next phase

Business publishers are putting LinkedIn's rev-share program to the test.

digiday.com/media/linkedins-publisher-revenue-share-program-is-entering-its-next-phase

Facebook has started treating local news as spam

According to Press Gazette, Facebook is treating local news posts as spam, causing them to disappear from Feed. Facebook denies that, responding that the posts tried get likes and clicks by false content.

Will this be another push for the gradual adoption of the Fediverse? I'll review Fediverse in depth in an upcoming issue. Subscribe to get notified.

Facebook deleting local news posts and labelling them as spam

Small independent publishers are frustrated and confused about why some of their Facebook posts are being flagged as spam and removed.

pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/digital-journalism/facebook-spam-posts-independent-small-news-publishers

Subsctack now lets you add videos to your conversations

Substack has started 2024 with a focus on improving its product, adding new features almost every couple of weeks. The new chat feature lets you talk to your readers with video.

Introducing video to Substack Chat

Speak directly to subscribers in a space you own

on.substack.com/p/introducing-video-to-substack-chat?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1&post_id=145289251

Media Company of the Week: Puck News

Puck was founded in 2021 by a group of expert journalists, including Julia Ioffe, Jon Kelly. Its great value comes from delivering detailed, in-depth news analyses by senior journalists. Puck's subscription-only model is perfect for the type of expert content they create.

Here are the results: the top 3 strategies Puck uses to supercharge its ad copy

Ad Copy Analysis

Over the previous weeks, I have been looking at the way 1440 and theSkimm have used their ad copy to drive paid traffic to their website. This week, I’m changing up the formula and analyzing the ad strategy and messaging of Puck, one of my favorite subscription-only news companies.

Here are the results: the top 3 strategies Puck uses to power up its ad copy

Insider Knowledge and Analysis: Puck presents itself as a source of deep and unique insights. Phrases like "the story behind the story" and "behind-the-scenes conversations" support this image. You can also see the same approach in their slogan: "Puck begins where the news ends."

Highlighting Individual Contributors: Several ads mention specific authors like Matthew Belloni , Dylan Byers , and Julia Ioffe as a hook. If your writers are famous, this strategy can attract the right readers. It also shows the value of paying for access to exclusive content from Puck's journalists.

Exclusive Content: Using terms like “exclusive access” and “expert reporting” positions Puck as a premium source of news analysis and in-depth reporting. This also gives readers a sense of their own sophisticated taste in news.

For more tech and product updates curated for media operators, subscribe to Media Tech Report.

Why are more publishers trying to move to the Apple News platform?

Read my interview with FlatPlan CEO Kieran Delaney for his insights.

Also in this issue:

• Google’s AI Overview may have delusions

• The FT CEO is optimistic about the future of publishers’ relationship with AI

• YouTube has made Playables free to play – is the NYT the inspiration?

• 404 Media and other publishers are expanding the Fediverse

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Let’s start!

Expert Interview: Kieran Delaney, CEO at FlatPlan

How do you see the increasing trend among publishers to place their content on Apple News+ evolving in the future?

Apple News surfaces content to readers based on signals like interest and ‘on-device intelligence’, which allowspublishers to reach readers that are very engaged with specific topics. Monetisation is based on active time, so in short,creating quality content that draws readers into spending time with content leads to increased revenue. 

With this in mind, we’re seeing an increased trend of publishers producing additional content for Apple News, including ‘mini-issues’ of magazines, sometimes utilizing archive content.

We’re also seeing publishers rely on the free version of Apple News to build audiences of readers engaged with specific topics, which they can then move into mailing lists with calls to action in articles.

As Google rolls out SGE and socials dial down reach for publishers, this route is becoming more important. The combination of personalisation and the fact Apple News is created specially for medium-form content means it’s an audience that offers real value.

Google’s AI Overview may have delusions

Remember how GPT-3.5 was always making things up? The new Google AI Overview is giving users a taste of that again. The Overview search feature is powered by Gemini to help users find the right information. 

Gemini’s standard models are too slow to provide a good search experience. That’s why Google created a faster version for searching. It seems being fast is not essential if you’re wrong. Apparently, the search AI suggested non-toxic glue as a great pizza topping and decided that dogs play in the NBA (maybe it watched AirBud).

The FT CEO is optimistic about the future of publishers’ relationship with AI

FT CEO John Ridding spoke at the WAN-IFRA World News Media Congress, saying that news publishers should insist on payment by AI companies that use their content—the Financial Times signed a deal with OpenAI to allow the AI company access to its content. Ridding believes that publishers and AI companies can form a win-win relationship. Licensing your content may be the first step.

YouTube has made Playables free to play – is the NYT the inspiration?

YouTube’s Playables is a series of simple and fun browser games, but it may not have been successful as a paid feature. The collection is now free for all users, allowing YouTube to keep users on the platform longer and start branching into gaming. After the New York Times’s success with Wordle and its other games, I can’t help but think of this move as inspired by NYT. What do you think?

404 Media and other publishers are expanding the Fediverse

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Ghost and Threads adding Fediverse integrations and how this may be a new direction for news and media. This week, 404 Media and the Verge are also turning to the “Fediverse” as an alternative source of traffic and audience engagement. By joining the Fediverse, publishers can stop depending on big social media platforms like Twitter X or Facebook. The Fediverse lets users from different platforms like Threads, Mastodon, and Bluesky interact without creating new accounts or sharing content and data.

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Media Company of the Week: FlatPlan

FlatPlan is a no-code tool that helps publishers place their content on the Apple News platform from their own Content Management System (CMS). This helps news organizations reach over 145 million monthly readers.

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With a drag-and-drop interface, FlatPlan is perfect for newsrooms without developers. Editors can also use its automated renumbering and reordering features to save time when moving an issue to the Apple News platform.

FlatPlan handles all aspects of Apple News integration, from optimizing the channel for growth to managing the content, making it a trusted solution for many leading publishers​.