Last week was our first ever ONA event, ONA15 in Los Angeles, and we have to say it was an amazing experience.
Throughout the three day event, we had some wonderful conversations with industry insiders on the future of publishing and the role of technology can play in helping publishers connect with audiences. We also presented interactive demos, both at our Midway booth and on the California Ballroom stage, of just a few of the exciting tools we’re launching. The response and feedback we received was truly inspiring and has brought an exciting momentum to our team.
In addition to getting in touch with industry goings-on at our booth, we had some downtime to attend quite a few panels and sponsored talks as well.
Of these, two that particularly resonated with us were:
The Revenue Review: Memberships, Advertising and Events
We’re very interested in revenue models and how our products provide value to our clients. That’s why we thought it essential to understand what’s working and not working in the industry, and where publishers need to go in order to thrive.
It was interesting to note that different types of revenue streams have been adopted in newsrooms to great success in recent times. While the most common monetization method remains advertising, publications are diversifying their portfolios by hosting events and promoting memberships as well.
Joy Robins, SVP of Global Revenue & Strategy at Quartz, spoke about advertising, and the fact that it can still be a very strong contributor to your business. Though she wouldn’t recommend building a publishing business entirely reliant on ads, she laid out four key points that can help you make the most out of your ad space.
- Make your own measurements
- Don’t compromise quality
- Recognize the potential of native ads
- Create ads designed for mobile
- Make your ads experiences that people want to actually share.
Evan Smith, CEO & Editor in Chief of The Texas Tribune, discussed the great success they had generating revenue through events. He emphasized that the foundation of their business was still quality journalism, and the idea was to monetize and make profitable that endeavour. Smith suggested cultivating an authoritative voice in a field and becoming the go-to source for events in that niche, as the Texas Tribune did in policy and politics. He also viewed events as a great opportunity to promote engaged journalism. His key points were:
- Make events impactful by bringing in decision makers
- Make them frequent to gain constant exposure. He suggests holding an average of one in-person event per week for the whole year.
- Make the events free for attendees to ensure a good turnout. The Texas Tribune generates over $30 000 per event solely on sponsorships, with the cost of the event averaging $20 000.
Mary Walter-Brown, Publisher/COO at Voice of San Diego, shared insights on membership and how to progress down that funnel. She suggested implementing a centralized tool to understand the full snapshot of your members, what path they take, and how to market to them. She likened the membership journey to the buyer journey and encouraged utilizing dedicated sales and marketing teams to maximize conversions.
If you want to find out more about any of these streams, watch the session in full below:
A Three-Part Plan for Audience Engagement
This presentation was on a topic near and dear to our hearts at Viafoura — audience engagement and analytics. Presented by Greg Emerson of Newsday.com, Carla Zanoni of Wall Street Journal and Alexandra Smith of the Fort Collins Coloradoan, the discussion revolved around what audience engagement and development means in a newsroom setting. Since we spend a large part of our day thinking about this topic, we were eager learn how those in the publishing field were approaching it.
Here’s what we learned:
- A key issue was the changing roles within a newsroom to address audience engagement. For example, the Social Media Editor position is increasingly turning into a broader Audience Engagement Editor or Manager. This position is often tasked with actively “marketing” stories rather than just hoping people read them.
- As with any marketing initiative, goal-setting with pertinent metrics is key to measuring success and opportunities for growth. The trio pointed out that you can’t be and do everything, and suggested focusing on particular strategies in order to see impact.
- They felt the core metric of value is engaged time, because it’s more important to get an engaged and loyal reader than one that will bounce and never come back. They followed this up with the point that this traffic data tells you about your audience, and should help shape and define your target audience.
All three speakers emphasized that your audience is not monolithic entity — analyzing and segmenting your traffic patterns is key to identifying your entire audience. - Pulling actionable data was also a key talking point, and if you’re using third party solutions, then making sure that data is answering more questions than it’s raising. One way to do this is by using actual benchmark information for lookalike stories in the industry.
- With respect to social, find the network that works for your niche audience (if you focus on business news, Pinterest might not be a great fit). Also, find a way to add value to the conversation on a topic, don’t just routinely share your stories.
- Messaging Apps are gaining in popularity and have high engagement rates (self-serving plug: Viafoura’s Article Share Bar lets you customize sharing in the mobile environment!)
If you’d like to access the full presentation, the slides have been made available here:
Overall, it’s been a wonderful whirlwind few weeks leading up to #ONA15, as well as coming back and sharing our insights with the rest of our team. We had a great time seeing the industry as a whole embracing the importance of content quality and rallying around engagement metrics. We think that’s the key to going above and beyond pageviews and building a valuable and engaged audience.
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