There’s no shortage of doom-and-gloom talk when it comes to the future of media in a digital world of abundance. The “content-is-free” crowd doesn’t offer a very appealing business model for professional content creators. Andrew Weissman, a venture capitalist at Union Square Ventures, thinks it’s time media companies get back to standing for something. His thinking goes that in a world of so much information and content, media companies can recapture their mojo by having a point of view and a sense of taste.
If we strip out distribution, promotion and marketing as core competencies, the role of the media company might be, quite simply: curated products chosen by a small group of people who just have better taste than everyone else. In other words, users need to rely on someone or something for taste. Which is hugely valuable. And branded tastemakers make perfect sense. Because taste matters. This is also how it used to work in the past.
Read Weissman’s full post on his blog. Follow him on Twitter at @aweissman.
-
Media Briefing: The case for and against monthly and annual subscriptions in the battle for retention
There are no one-size-fits-all solutions for improving retention in a subscriptions business. While annual subscribers might stick around longer for some, other publishers will have better luck with monthly plans.
-
Digiday+ Research: The economy will hit the media and marketing industries this year, but differently
The economy will plague both the media and marketing industries in 2023, but the hit will be uneven between publishers and agencies.
-
Podcast ad buyers have yet to see a slowdown
Ad buyers have yet to see clients cut their podcast budgets – though the time of podcasts as the shiny new medium may be coming to an end.
-
SponsoredWhy Best Buy Ads sees retail media as integral to its customer-centric purpose
Sponsored by Best Buy Ads Retail media networks have become critical for marketers, with retailers investing in ways that enable advertisers to engage consumers across online and offline channels. Given the wealth of retailers’ first-party customer data and measurement capabilities, retail media networks have become a natural fit for augmenting performance marketing programs. Alongside the […]
-
The programmatic open marketplace is faltering, but publishers see a bright spot in private programmatic deals
Publishers are coming to terms with their open programmatic marketplace RPMs being 20-55% lower than they were this time last year, but the hope is that programmatic guaranteed deals will make up the deficit.
-
Atlas Obscura wants to be profitable before raising funds in a tricky media market
Atlas Obscura wants to turn a profit this year before it raises another funding round, at a time when publishers are facing lower valuations and pickier investors as deal activity slows.
