Few industries have been hit as hard as the media and publishing industry. Newspapers, trade journals, magazines and more have lost circulation or closed. Book publishers battle over ebooks and their distribution rights. Streaming is now standard and Blockbuster, famously, is no more. Most everyone knows what happened: digital technology provided an easier, faster and cheaper medium to relay the same information.

Still, the media and publishing industry lives — even if it has drastically changed from only ten years ago. But how has the industry adapted to today’s digital-first world? Over the past few weeks, we’ve investigated the high-level changes to the industry and surveyed our media and publishing customers for their opinion on the state of the industry. You can find the results of the survey and data on the use of webinars within the industry in our report, “ON24 Webinar Benchmarks Report: Media and Publishing Trends.”

What we found is an industry recovering and growing more resilient to digital changes day by day. Still, there are some key areas of concern — from subscriptions and ads to digital experiences — that the industry needs to figure out if it’s to remain competitive with its digital-native counterparts. Here’s a brief recap of our findings:

The Customer Comes First

Digital audiences have high expectations, especially when it comes to the overall experience of interacting with an outlet. Search and discovery should be simple. Ads should be absent or, if they must be tolerated, unobtrusive. Desktop and mobile sites should provide equally high-quality experiences.

For the media and publishing industry, developing high-quality, seamless experiences is new territory. But establishing a good digital experience is important as consumers and customers flock to outlets that respond to their needs and interests. To make the shift from content and distribution to experience, outlets need to take advantage of what’s immediately available to them: data. By using data, media and publishing companies can sift through interests, better target ads and provide a consumer with the experience he or she desires.

The Subscription/Ad Problem  

Many companies in the media and publishing industry made revenue from paid advertisements in their printed materials. But the ad-based revenue model doesn’t translate well to the digital world. The cost of advertising online is much, much lower for one. Ad buyers, for another, have a cost-effective — and data-rich — alternative with auction-based media buying outlets. Finally, consumers can, easily and cheaply, find the information they’re looking for without paying for an outlet.

As a way of staunching the bleeding, some media outlets have turned to subscription-based models. These models offer consumers the opportunity to pay a flat fee for an ad-free experience. While this is a popular option among consumers, industry analysts suggest subscriptions are not sustainable in the long run and that a blended model — one with subscriptions and ads could likely succeed if the company extends a customer-first approach to ads.

Bringing a Seamless Experience Together

The media and publishing industry has a twofold task to remain competitive in a digital age. First, it needs to provide consumers with the content they want when they want it. Second, the industry needs to provide a unified, seamless experience that anticipates the consumer’s needs. To do this, industry organizations will need to focus on customer experience and how customers interact with both content and advertisements.

For media outlets and publishers, focusing on customer experience means making ads and content distinct, but seamless. Ads must be relevant to an individual’s interests and non-intrusive. Content needs to be distinct from ads, but of enough caliber to justify both subscribing to an outlet and tolerating ads. Finally, put together, the two elements need to become a part of a brand’s identity — one which puts the consumer’s wants first and adapts to them in an agile fashion.

Across all sectors, the role of technology is shifting from driving efficiency to being an enabler of innovation, and the media and publishing industry is no exception. The boundary between media and technology is blurring every day – some see it as a crisis in the making, others are convinced it opens up unprecedented opportunities. One thing is undeniable: technology can help build better digital experiences for media and publishing companies — the kind audiences crave.

Learn How Informa Mastered Webinars for More Than 100 Brands

Leading companies in this space have adopted a tech-first approach from the very beginning and have stayed true to their tech-powered roots. For Netflix, the technology is just as important as the content and this is what gives the company an edge over its competitors. Technology and data underpin everything Netflix does, as it uses anything from powerful recommendation engines, to AI-powered compression algorithms to ensure the best possible picture quality using the smallest amount of bandwidth, to a content delivery network specifically tailored to its needs. Netflix’s success has led to ‘content bingeing’ becoming a normal and enjoyable way in which audiences consume media.

Three Ways To Build Better Digital Experiences for Media and Publishing Now

The ads of the future will be highly immersive and non-intrusive

Advertising is not defunct, but its future hangs in the balance. Bring advertising and storytelling together in a way that resonates with your customers and is an extension of their media experience.

Keep the communication going with your customers

Providing high-quality content is no longer enough to build a successful media brand. Your audience expects you to have an in-depth understanding of their wants and needs, and go the extra mile to deliver a seamless experience. Use webinars to open a dialog with your customers and build a customer-centric experience based on robust engagement and content performance insights.

Use technology to build a direct relationship with the consumer

With the direct-to-consumer race heating up, getting ready for a tech-driven future is critical. Explore how emerging technologies can help you transform content creation and distribution processes, attract and retain fickle viewers, and deliver personalized media experiences that make them feel known and valued.

The Power of Technology

“One of the things that’s really challenging in our space,” said Chris Goss, Director of Studio Technology at Netflix, “is the fact that the business of content creation is very, very slow to adapt to new technology. Bringing in these two sides gives us a unique opportunity to fuse the world of Silicon Valley and Hollywood together. It comes with a lot of challenges, and one of those challenges is the fact that traditional IT has always been seen as ancillary, not integral to our process, [but] there’s all this room for growth and innovation in entertainment.”

Discover how Thomson Reuters Extended Its Summit Reach by 73% at a Fraction of Its Cost

Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and virtual reality (VR) are expected to revolutionize the media and publishing industry and influence all parts of the value chain. Pioneering brands have already started to reap the rewards. Swiss news publisher Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) and the Wall Street Journal used machine learning to build flexible paywalls and individualize the experience. Intel and NBC provided the first ever live-VR experience from the PyeongChang 2018 Games, with more than 50 hours of live VR content.

How Media and Publishing Can Execute

Technology use cases in the media and publishing industry are far-reaching, such as automating workflows and processes, supporting data-driven decision-making, personalizing the customer experience and predicting demand. Most importantly, technology will help boost creativity – arguably the power engine behind any media business – and optimize content monetization strategies. According to Guy Finley, Executive Director at the Media and Entertainment Services Alliance (MESA), organizations equipped with an “AI-enabled feedback loop based on real-time, consumption metrics will up their creative batting average, which will thus increase production and commercial ROI”.

Discover how webinars can help media and publishing professionals improve their digital experiences with the ON24 Webinar Benchmarks Report for Media and Publishing.

Media and publishing organizations, particularly those in the news sector, have struggled with diminishing returns from advertising for several years. By some estimates, US newspaper advertising revenues have declined by more than 66% from 2005 to 2017, so the future of the industry hinges on digital growth.

Time and again, we’ve seen that having a single revenue model, particularly one built around ad-funded content, is difficult to sustain in the long term as a sharp increase in customer churn or a major economic downturn can change the rules of the game in the blink of an eye.

Even among well-established business titles – many having built their success on a promise of reaching buyers through controlled circulation – ad revenues struggle when auction-based media buying provides an easier, more measurable and cost-effective way of reaching tightly defined target audiences. On the flip side, readers who perhaps would have turned to such sources in search of information can now simply use a search engine to locate the content that meets exactly their needs.

The Subscription-Ad Conundrum

Even so, while audiences understand that ads are often part and parcel of the media experience and are willing to watch some ads in exchange for free access to content, the majority believe that ads are intrusive and complain about the sheer number of ads. Unsurprisingly, they are willing to pay a subscription fee to have an ad-free media experience: 44% of respondents cited ‘no ads’ as a top reason for subscribing to a new paid service.

However, industry analysts increasingly argue that these models are not sustainable and using consumers’ resentment towards ads as a guiding principle is one of the media industry’s greatest fallacies. Ad-funded content still has a major role to play, and those premium publishers than both serve ads while growing subscriber numbers have proven that a blended model actually works. These organizations are successfully building a sizeable ad-funded segment outside of subscriptions by extending their customer-first approach to advertising.

For decades, media and publishing organizations have focused on delivering high-quality content but severely neglected the ad experience. As a result, readers and viewers have become frustrated with the advertising component of their media experience (one in four US internet users block ads and 27% of global news users block ads on any device) and this led to an apparent demise of ad-supported models.

The Future of Ads in Media and Publishing

But recent success stories show that it is possible to drive long-term growth with advertising by creating engaging ad experiences. Using a combination of strong creative, non-intrusive formats and optimized frequency capping, and finding the right balance between relevant and creepy, leading organizations ensure that ads contribute to the media experience instead of interrupting it.

One key area of potential lies in the careful and considered use of native advertising and commercial partnerships. As Margaret Sullivan remarked while working at the New York Times:

“Advertising and news content have always run side by side in printed newspapers. Now, with most readers seeing The Times on digital platforms and with print advertising in a long-term, irreversible decline, the company is seeking new revenue sources… The close collaboration between news and advertising, though, comes with a need for particular care. And sponsorships – which closely tie a particular advertiser to a particular piece of journalism – come with their own special set of concerns.”

As such, maintaining the integrity of content while allowing sponsors and advertisers to connect with audiences, offers a fruitful way of boosting revenues. But the delivery of these messages needs to be done in a way that both respects the viewer and gives them a compelling reason to tune in.

Discover how webinars can help media and publishing professionals improve their digital experiences with the ON24 Webinar Benchmarks Report for Media and Publishing.

The media and publishing industry is still undergoing a fundamental transformation, one that started more than a decade ago when the rise of digital streaming services and digital-only publishers sent ripples through the sector. The distinctions between different types of media are blurring, technology is redefining the competitive playing field and new entrants are becoming more eager to get in on the action. Media and publishing’s challenges are high — and so are the stakes.

In the US alone, people are spending almost half (44%) of every day interacting with media while nearly seven out of ten homes now have a device capable of streaming content. On the consumer side, last year was the first time that more US households subscribed to a video streaming service than to a traditional pay-TV package (69% versus 65%). Competition is fierce but the industry is exhibiting continued growth, with global media and entertainment revenues forecast to reach $2.4 trillion in 2022, up from $1.9 trillion in 2017.

Building a successful brand in this dynamic ecosystem is not without challenges. In an effort to compete in an overly fragmented marketplace, media and publishing companies are creating more content and introducing or partnering with more distribution platforms. But this is leading to even more fragmentation and significant levels of frustration among once-loyal audiences as they try to assemble a coherent media experience across multiple platforms and devices.

The New Media Experience Problem

Readers and viewers believe that the search and discovery experience is sub-par, ads are intrusive and the whole experience is disjointed and not tailored to their individual interests and needs. They are increasingly demanding a better overall media experience, high-quality content options, easier and more flexible ways to search, discover and access content, and more relevant ads that feel organic rather than intrusive. But are media and publishing organizations primed to address the operational challenges of today, while planning for a future where individuals will have even more control?

Companies operating in this sector have traditionally competed on two dimensions only: content and distribution. The continued shift in power to audiences provides the impetus to focus on a third dimension: creating a seamless, personalized customer experience. Organizations need to do more than react to trends; they need to be agile, anticipate change and adopt a customer-first approach in everything they do.

Create engaging, personalized experiences using a blend of content and data

The media and publishing industry has witnessed firsthand how technology has been changing the way content is accessed and consumed. The captive audiences of the past have taken control over their media experience, demanding maximum flexibility in terms of how, when and where they access their chosen content.

While today’s media consumers have a high appetite for high-quality content and enjoy having access to a wide range of choices (the average video consumer subscribes to three paid streaming services), they are increasingly perplexed about the abundance of options. Their media experience is fragmented across multiple platforms and devices, but they still expect it to be frictionless. Subscription fatigue is slowly setting in: nearly half (47%) of US adults are frustrated by the burgeoning number of subscriptions and services they need to piece together to access their preferred content. Additionally, 48% say it’s harder to find the content they want to watch when it’s spread across multiple services.

Content discovery optimization is more important than ever as over two-fifths (43 %) claim they give up on their search for content if they can’t find it in a few minutes. The challenge for media and publishing companies is twofold: cutting through the clutter and vying for attention while maintaining or even increasing content quality. They need to create a seamless experience, making viewers feel it’s been tailored specifically for them, and present it in the right context, at the right time.

The opportunities of a seamless media experience

While meeting individuals in that exact moment of need during their search and discovery experience seems like an onerous task, the rewards are considerable. Experience-driven media and entertainment organizations are 1.3x more likely than their less mature peers to increase customer lifetime value. They also boast 3x year-over-year growth in repeat visitor rates compared to others and are 1.5x more likely to significantly exceed customer experience expectations.

Media bundling, one of the industry’s solutions to subscription fatigue, has been gaining momentum as content providers and media distribution platforms take a leaf out of Amazon’s book and increasingly join forces to offer services at a discounted price. However, not all companies welcome this development with open arms as they see many risks down the line, such as losing control over relationships with customers and having access to minimal insights, if any, into how their content is consumed.

The launch of Apple News+ has been particularly controversial as some premium and business publishers believe it sets a dangerous precedent. According to an executive working for a publisher that decided against joining the new subscription service, “it totally commoditizes news and undermines publisher pricing, Bundles always dilute the brand visibility and brand narrative of a publisher by dint of being thrown together with everyone else. It will not be a ‘sticky’ read for any one publisher.”

What’s Next for Media and Publishing

While the industry is still experimenting with ways to tackle subscription fatigue and compete in an increasingly crowded marketplace, media and publishing organizations shouldn’t lose sight of the most important differentiator: creating customer-centric experiences around great content, delivered at the right time and in the right context. There’s no substitute for flawless experiences tailored to individual preferences and interests, and success will depend heavily on gaining insights into customers’ likes, dislikes and behaviors, and putting that first-party data to good use.

Or, as Karen Benson, EVP, Director of Media Planning at Deutsch New York, contended: “Consumers are going to flock to the content that they want to receive, when they want to receive it, how they want to receive it. That’s the most important thing.”

Discover how webinars can help media and publishing professionals improve their digital experiences with the ON24 Webinar Benchmarks Report for Media and Publishing.