Don’t you hate it when a friend starts dating someone you just can’t stand? That’s how I feel about Apple’s new ad sales deal: Ad tech giant Taboola has struck a deal with Apple to power native advertising within the Apple News and Apple Stocks apps, Taboola founder and CEO Adam Singolda told Axios. Taboola is one of the companies that power those “more reading” boxes at the bottom of articles. You know the ones, the clickbait-filled chum boxes that say things like “Doctors think every 50-year-old in Horsham should do this!”. They have been slowly, slowly, slowly training us all not to click ..read more

It's become received wisdom that the days of social media traffic are over. The problem? It's not true. Oh, sure, the days of easy traffic are over, and the days of huge traffic are done. But social remains — and is likely to remain — a classic top end of the acquisition funnel play; a place where we encounter new readers and encourage them to our site, where we can work to engage them further. I'm in the middle of teaching a social media course at the moment, and I was looking for examples for a session today of posts that were working, so we could discuss why. It's notable that, comparing g ..read more

Social media’s evolution can leave an ecological niche behind it. The recent Reuters Institute Digital News Report emphasised that many of the biggest social media platforms are evolving towards video, under Darwinian pressure from TikTok. But what of the niche that they left behind? What of people who want to find interesting conversation, and interesting things to read that spark those discussions? Those people do exist, and they make up a substantial chunk of the potential audience for journalism. Even ever-evolving Meta seems to have acknowledged that, in part, with Threads. But even ther ..read more

The return of the video podcast Those of you of a certain age might remember the brief rise of the video podcast. After Apple introduced its first video iPod in 2005, a small group of video podcasts became briefly poplar, before being essentially swept away by the all-consuming power of YouTube. Names like Rocketboom, Tiki Bar TV and Geek Brief TV were the stars in this short-lived firmament. But anyone who has been tracking podcasts over the last 18 months will be aware that the video is very much back on the agenda for podcasters. For most, it's about short video snippets from the recording ..read more

Act fast. From Monday, Google will be deleting old Google Analytics data, all the metrics held in Universal Analytics. As many of you will be aware, Google forced the move to GA4 last year, which is a very different product to the old Google Analytics. One, that I would argue is much less suited to editorial use than its predecessor. But that’s not today’s subject. You have until Monday, July 1st — literally only days away — to find some way of backing up your historic data before Google bins it. Why should you bother? Historic traffic data is invaluable in audience work. For example, I’d be ..read more

In a nice postscript to Friday's post about the success of print outdoors magazines, comes news that Alex Roddie, whom I mentioned in that post, has a new one in planning. But don't expect to be popping into magCulture to pick up a copy anytime soon: Alpenglow Journal is destined to be a print adventure magazine, most likely bi-annual or tri-annual, because I believe that real stories are best read on paper. However, it’s going to take time to get there. And it won’t be quite like any other adventure magazine – certainly not the ones I currently work with. He has a years-long plan t ..read more

The New York Times, reporting on the corners of magazine publishing that are still thriving: There are sprouts of life, even profitability, on the landscape of print media and magazines, cratered by the pixilated bombardment of the digital age. High-end niche periodicals are popping up, but the trend might be most evident in a burst of small-batch, independent outdoors magazines like Adventure Journal, Mountain Gazette, Summit Journal and Ori. They are crowding into quiet spaces of narrow lanes — climbing, surfing, skiing, running and the like — where quality is key, advertising is minimal an ..read more

Some years ago, one of my former students explained the reason she’d moved from an audience-related job at a national newspaper with no little frustration. Whenever search or social algorithms shifted, she said, the higher-ups rejected any attempt to experiment, just insisted that the team did what they’d always done — only harder. It sounds like a joke, but it isn’t, both because it’s both true and because too much of the industry is still trapped in this thinking. If they’re not, then they’re trapped into thinking of things like search and social as necessary evils, to be run away from as s ..read more

Notes from the final panel at the Publisher Newsletter Summit, sharing lessons from people who have won awards for their newsletters. The Panel Jillian Macmath (Audience Editor, WalesOnline) Anders Swaffield (Digital Marketing Manager, Think) Jem Collins (Director, Journo Resources) Lauren Indvik (Fashion Editor, Financial Times) Chair: Joanna Cummings (Editorial Director, The Grub Street Journal) ?‍? These are live-blogged notes from a session at the Publisher Newsletter Summit. Prone to error, inaccuracy and howling crimes against grammar and syntax. Post will be improved in the coming d ..read more

Notes from a discussion between Tobi Oredein, CEO & founder of Black Ballad, and Joanna Cummings, editorial director of The Grub Street Journal. ?‍? These are live-blogged notes from a session at the Publisher Newsletter Summit. Prone to error, inaccuracy and howling crimes against grammar and syntax. Post will be improved in the coming days (and this part of the warning removed). Using newsletters to drive commercial success Black Ballad has two newsletters: The Friday night members' newsletter, with news roundup and events Founder’s newsletter — written every Sunday night (bar three ..read more