Oct 24Message to GenAI: How the Hell Do You Plan on Making Money?Undoubtedly, Generative AI is causing structural changes to the digital world, revolutionizing it even as you read these lines. As billions worldwide gear up to embrace GenAI, the market is flooding with over 9,000 GenAI offerings to date. GenAI holds immense economic potential, estimated between $6.1 and $7.9 trillion annually…Generative Ai Tools7 min readGenerative Ai Tools7 min read
Jul 17Consumers to Publishers: “Why We Won’t Subscribe”A new research report from Journalism Studies explains in detail why consumers as a whole — and younger audiences in particular — are so unwilling to pay for news when the only option is to subscribe. I still struggle with the idea that anyone could be surprised by this. Until…Publishing4 min readPublishing4 min read
Jun 18The 2023 Reuters Digital News Report Is Out, and Things Aren’t PrettyRecently, the Reuters Institute published its latest Digital News Report for 2023. As in past years, it provides not only an informative overview of the state of the news industry today, but also offers vital statistics and facts about consumer attitudes towards the consumption of digital content, and their willingness…News3 min readNews3 min read
May 21Power to the People — did Elon Musk just save the media industry?Elon Musk made headlines when he announced that Twitter would soon enable publishers to charge users for access to individual articles. Commenters seem evenly spread between thinking this was a great idea and thinking that Musk had got it all wrong. I believe that Musk is (again) lightyears ahead of…Media6 min readMedia6 min read
Apr 17Make the User Great AgainIn his 2009 Time article, entitled “How to Save Your Newspaper,” Walter Isaacson famously wrote: In 2009, most content was available on the internet for free, paid for by increasingly intrusive advertising. Publishers were only just starting to explore alternative monetization models and had begun to fix on the…Walter Isaacson4 min readWalter Isaacson4 min read
Apr 9Freedom and Choice: How to Strengthen Democracy and Skip the Lunchtime BluesAccess to information has been a right that anyone could afford since everybody was able to buy a newspaper at a newsstand. By putting information behind a subscription paywall, however, that access effectively becomes a privilege — you can access the information if you can afford the subscription. And when…Subscription4 min readSubscription4 min read
Mar 26Subscription Cannibalization is here. Just not as you think.Let me ask you a question: how many of you jumped onto a new subscription because of a low-price promotion? Take a look at what I came across just in the past week: The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times are offering deals of $1.00 a week for…Subscription4 min readSubscription4 min read
Mar 19Subscription Nomads: A WarningThe subscription economy has been on the rise for a while now, but it seems to be facing a new challenge: Subscription Nomads. These are consumers who subscribe to a service, get what they want, and then cancel their subscription and move on to the next service. Let’s highlight this…Subscription Economy5 min readSubscription Economy5 min read
Mar 12Subscription Fatigue — Why everybody loses (II)You can’t build trust and loyalty by hitting people up with subscriptions. You build trust and loyalty by giving people a choice of how to consume and pay for content. A subscription in its current form is not a choice — it is a condition. It turns an opportunity into…Publishing3 min readPublishing3 min read
Mar 5Subscription Fatigue — Why everybody loses (I)Have you ever been interested in reading an article but were immediately hit with a paywall? You’re not alone. I’ve come to notice a significant problem that many publishers seem to overlook — user centricity. Despite the industry’s claims that their readers are their one true focus, no one ever…Paid Content3 min readPaid Content3 min read
