2018 Offers New Publishing Growth Opportunities

Business and consumer publications face some pivotal audience- and revenue-building challenges, but there are also growth opportunities in 2018. We note three potential positives recently highlighted by Publishing Executive magazine. Audiences are increasing their demand for quality content, and advertisers are seeking publishers who can deliver that quality, so there is a lot of untapped revenue potential for publishers who commit to quality. This is especially true since the free-information era is ending as readers become wary of free but low-value content and increasingly willing to pay for reliable quality. For digital publishers, the downside of a shift to paid content can be a shrinkage of circulation, forcing them to balance potential subscription revenue against lower ad page-views. The Publishing Executive article offers mitigating tactics: leaky paywalls; metered paywalls; charging only for premium content; allowing only paid subscribers to comment or participate in an online community; early access to certain articles for paid subscribers, etc. Meanwhile, with daily access to vast amounts of information in print, online, media and social, mass-market-oriented print and digital publications have been struggling, and niche publishers proliferating. Readers want to focus on what’s relevant to their specific interests, and many advertisers want to reach the right pool of people more than just the largest pool of people. The trick for publications is to embrace niche demand without sacrificing too much circulation. The Publishing Executive article offers some suggestions. Digital publications can create a product-within-a-product on the website, for example, with content targeted to a subset of the normal audience and attractive to new sponsors who want to reach that specific audience. For print publications, there are niche-targeted inserts, bonus sections, customized covers, polybagged special reports, or ad packages that combine a full-page magazine ad with a niche-targeted cover wrap or insert. Finally, brand advertisers have become concerned about aligning with publishers who tolerate fake news, violence, extremism, or other offensive content. This means that respected publishers can court advertising revenue (and circulation) in 2018 by stressing brand quality and safety in their promotions. On that point, Publishing Executive quotes from an Advertising Age piece in which Shelagh Daly Miller of AARP declared: "Only when brands partner with reputable publishers can they have full confidence in where their ads are being placed. That’s a message that should be all over our industry’s media kits. And tattooed onto the foreheads of our ad reps." For more on publishing opportunity trends, see http://www.acculistusa.com/2018-offers-new-growth-opportunities-for-publishing-marketers/