Take this quick survey to help Digiday improve our products & be entered to win a $50 gift card.
Digiday Research: With ad businesses suffering, publishers turn even more to subscriptions
This research is based on unique data collected from our proprietary audience of publisher, agency, brand and tech insiders. It’s available to Digiday+ members. More from the series →
The impacts of the coronavirus outbreak are still just beginning to be felt on the economy. In media, the global pandemic has meant a forecasted drop in ad revenue and event revenue for publishers. About 88% of them say they will miss their forecasts for the year.
In response, publishers are also ramping up focus on certain parts of their business.
A new Digiday Research survey on the business impacts of the coronavirus outbreak has found that 40% said spending more resources on building their subscription businesses is their biggest priority, while 32% of them also indicated that branded content programs and “virtual events” are now taking up more of their attention and resources.
But for many, spending more resources simply isn’t an option. Some of the publishers who took this survey said that they “aren’t spending resources because we can’t afford to.” Another said: “We’re not reallocating resources, we’re diminishing resources.” Others are cutting any sort of spending radically, including on overheads like office space.
According to our benchmarking research, the priorities before the outbreak were growing direct-sold ads, programmatic ads and branded content revenue. Subscriptions were the fifth priority for most publishers heading into the second-quarter, just as the outbreak started to make its presence felt in the U.S.
More in Media
As platform moderation standards vary, creators eye Twitch as a safe haven
Over the past year, creator platforms such as X and Facebook have explicitly deprioritized content moderation. On the other hand, Twitch expanded its moderator tools last month.
Substack’s video push sees modest bump, but a long road remains to win over creators
At the moment, there is a contingent of Substack creators that is unlikely to ever incorporate videos into its posts.
BuzzFeed to invest $10 million in BF Island – How does it stack up against other social platforms’ launch costs?
BuzzFeed is $10 million of resources into building its new social platform BF Island. To put that number into context, here’s what it cost to launch other social platforms.