Hot Topic(s) at Digiday
By Hunter Gebron and Dayna Moon
The Digiday Hot Topic Subscriptions and Memberships event in New York City brought together some of the largest publishers and platforms in the world to discuss paid subscription models from both a business and end-user perspective.
Two MetaX employees were in attendance and jotted down some of their key takeaways.
Dayna Moon
VP Revenue and Client Services
On the path to paid subscriptions, there is no defacto map to success, but one thing is certain; data snippets from all shapes and sizes must be incorporated to make informed decisions. In the context of paid subscription models, it can be boiled down to two fundamental questions, “What works?” and “What doesn’t?” and using data to answer those two questions is the trial and error process every individual publisher must embark on.
Speakers from Bloomberg, Hearst, and Medium relayed their successes as well as their misses on the path to gaining readership and driving revenue, divulging the mixture of approaches both collecting data and in determining what to do with it.
As a consumer of media, we’re measured in behaviors and trends. Our brand loyalty or how much time and currency we spend with a particular publisher are carefully calculated and assigned a value.
The old adage, “If you write it they will read it and ……pay for it..…” may have been true at one point, but publishers in this modern day and age are faced with the daunting task of capturing user attention at a time when it’s at its most fleeting. The number of options available for people to consume content is the highest it has ever been at any point in human history and their attention span is at its shortest.
Given that is the circumstance publishers find themselves in, it is critical to use data to streamline the revenue generation process via subscription models.
Hunter Gebron
Director of Strategic Initiatives
In the realm of blockchain technology and digital advertising, the narrative is continually evolving. Just one year ago most conferences and events were taking a Blockchain 101 approach. Companies were beginning to hear the buzzword for the first time, and so the format was usually pretty basic; What is a blockchain? How does it work? And why are we talking about it?
But at the Digiday Hot Topic Subscriptions and Memberships event, there was a notable shift in the level of understanding the attendees displayed with regard to blockchain and its various use cases.
It became apparent when the moderator asked Nushin Rashidan Co-founder of Cannabis Wire about her involvement with Civil — the decentralized marketplace for sustainable journalism — under the ConsenSys umbrella. Nushin is an advisor to Civil, and she expounded to the audience about the benefits of a platform that is owned and operated by token holders. Her casual use of the word blockchain and the smooth transition by the moderator to the subject made it clear that awareness around blockchain technology has grown significantly since last year when any mention of the word blockchain or tokens would have required a lengthy background explanation and been met with stargazed looks from the audience.
It is a positive sign that blockchain is here to stay. And as more industry veterans like Nashin throw themselves into blockchain projects, we can expect to see more adoption as the platforms themselves get built out and begin to deliver on their promises.
One other thing that is clear is that publishers are looking for answers, especially with regard to generating more revenue independently, or in other words, becoming less dependent on the large platforms that so often dominate the conversation.
The bullish sentiment at Digiday’s event from publishers looking to the blockchain seemed driven by a desperate attempt to get arm’s length from Facebook and Google’s overreaching grasp, even if that means acquiring tokens and learning how to use them.
