Editorial and Sales: A Tentative Alliance?
Posted on Saturday, July 29, 2017 at 1:02 PM
In the news: How one digital media company is redefining traditional
interdepartmental relationships.
Bauer Xcel Media US, which
oversees online operations for various magazine brands including InTouch
Weekly and Woman's World, is bending traditional media
dynamics to maximize profitability. The company, writes Mike Shields of
BusinessInsider.com, "encourages its editorial and sales teams to share
intel." This tearing down of longstanding interdepartmental walls
establishes could threaten an editorial team's independence in choosing
what to cover and how to cover it.
But, as Shields notes,
magazine brands continue to struggle with profitability, and a collegial
atmosphere between editorial and sales could help editors home in on
content that will pay off in the long run. At Bauer Xcel Media, this
approach is changing the way their editors work and expanding their
skill sets. Shields writes, "Each piece of content gets a 'monetization
score' which editors and sales teams use to judge whether an article or
video or photo is likely to pay out. Editors are also well versed in how
platforms like Facebook Instant Articles and Google AMP are resonating
with readers, and paying advertisers."
Read the full article here.
Also
Notable
Magazine Editor Confessions
On
Thursday, Lucia Moses of Digiday.com published confessions of a magazine
editor, headlined. "'It's a mix of fear, frustration,'" reads the
headline. The article is a Q&A with an anonymous magazine editor about
struggles at an anonymous magazine brand. The interview hits hard right
out of the gate as the editor reports, "The fear is that one day it's
just going to end, and you put out good work every day and someone three
floors up might decide to sell off your title. I don't think the
management really knows what it's doing." Read the full interview here.
Measuring
Reader Attention
Last week, the staff at Folio:
published an infographic showing where readers are directing their
attention. The graphic highlights what readers are consuming and how
editors and publishers are engaging them. Citing Statista, the first
frame of the graphic tells us that readers spend 15 minutes per day
reading magazines next year (down 3 minutes from 2010). Farther down,
another frame tells us that 37 percent of marketers "plan to add
messaging apps as a distribution channel in the next year." See the full
graphic here.
More Changes
at Time Inc.
Time Inc. continues in its trajectory away from
print and toward digital. Tanya Dua of BusinessInsider.com reports that
the publisher is looking to sell three magazine brands: Coastal Living,
Sunset, and Golf. Dua also shares a sample internal memo
similar to what leadership sends out when an asset goes up for sale.
Read the article here.
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