Independent’s Day was the Digital Publisher’s Alliance (DPA) inaugural combined Upfronts, featuring insights from more than 20 independent publishers.
Changed content consumption behaviours, social algorithms and the rise of the creator economy are challenges that traditional digital publishers are going to have to overcome in order to find audiences in today’s world, according to Roya Lines, head of strategy and research at Scout Publishing.
In a presentation at Independent’s Day, Lines said that comparisons from Junkee’s annual youth research show that the way in which people consume news content has changed significantly in a short period of time.
“When asked ‘where do you go when you want to be updated on the news?’, Facebook saw increases (49% in 2021 compared to 41% in 2019), but the most notable difference is the huge jump in users going to Instagram (42% in 2021 compared to 5% in 2019) and YouTube (29% in 2021 compared to 7% in 2019), and the decrease in people going directly to a news website (24% in 2021 compared to 46% in 2019)."
Line said that it’s not as simple as cross-sharing content onto each of the platforms to reach your desired audience, however, because each of the social platforms have their own algorithms that benefit their own business objectives.
“Meta in particular creates all of these new products and functions like Reels and Stories and they want you to use them, because the creators & publishers that do get favoured in the feed and are more likely to be seen.
“The fundamental factor of what is going on with the algorithms is that they don't want to be driving audiences to your websites; they want to keep them on their own platforms."
Lines said that the attention economy is how traditional publishers have always existed, with the commodity being the audience.
“You create free content, you find some brands to do native campaigns and adverts and the audience somewhat understands that there's a value exchange in order to get this free content.”
What’s disrupted this model, said Lines, is the rapid rise of the creator economy, as well people reaching ‘peak attention economy content’ due to consuming more content than ever before during the pandemic.
“In the creator economy, the creator is the commodity. Audiences are willing to pay for a creator’s content if they see value in what they're doing. You can see quite a big, dynamic shift in not only how you can make content, but also how we present what we do as digital publishers to our audience and get them to pay for it.”
Line said that there’s four key learnings from the creator economy that publishers can apply to their own organisations.
“Creators are niche – they usually have one topic or passion that they focus on, which makes it easy for audiences to understand what to expect when consuming content from that creator.
“Creators have a multiplatform strategy, and while they may have one platform that is their ‘parent’ platform and another as a supporting platform, they understand that people consume content in different ways and they create unique content for each platform.
“They are human, which means their content is more rough and ready, they tend to talk in first person and they’re relatable - all of this builds trust and engagement. It's this relatability that also allows them to ask their audience to subscribe, to donate and to pay for merchandise.
“Finally, they realise that having an engaged audience is better than reaching lots of people. Having an engaged community builds loyalty and trust, compared to passive engagement with a brand which mostly just gives you reach. Again, engaged communities are what allow creators to ask people to pay for their content.”
Lines said that at the heart of what creators do is producing quality content centred in passion points that adds value to the audience.
“Where you will find your audiences is less about what specific social, video or websites platforms they are on and more to do with the specific passion or niche content topics they are wanting to enjoy.”
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