Apologies for the break in newsletter service, and I won’t bury the lede. I’ve got a new job, and I’ve been in a job transition since May. That’s taken almost all of my time and attention, winding down my work at Pugpig and spinning up my work at WAN-IFRA, which I’ve just joined as the director of their Digital Revenue Network. My new colleagues described my role like this:

I’ll be guiding “WAN-IFRA’s efforts to help publishers worldwide grow sustainable digital revenue and navigate transformational change,” WAN-IFRA CEO Vincent Peyrègne said.

WAN-IFRA’s AI in Media and Innovate Local initiatives are part of the Digital Revenue Network. These issues are ones I’m passionate about and critical ones for the industry.

It’s an incredible opportunity and a daunting challenge. I won’t do this alone, nor would I want to. As the announcement was made, I heard from so many friends in the journalism community around the world, and I know that working together is the only way we’ll seize the opportunities ahead.

Have we reached ‘peak product management’?

This transition has been in the works for more than a year, and it gathered pace in spring of this year. I decided to attend the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, and WAN-IFRA invited me to the World News Congress in Krakow. Journalism product managers and leaders were out in force in Perugia with an entire track dedicated to product management in news.

However, I’ve also started to hear from someone I truly respect that she believes we’ve hit peak product management in news because product managers are seen as too powerful. Product management in journalism always has tensions because the work cuts across major boundaries between editorial, commercial and technical teams. Tensions are bound to arise as product managers manage these tensions. I also think it speaks to tensions about where product management sits in news organisations. Are they rooted outside of the newsroom, or do they sit with technical teams? In larger organisations, this issue is navigated with product managers sitting inside of the teams that are most relevant to their work, editorial, technical and commercial. For smaller organisations, this isn’t an option.

My friend Nick Petrie, the digital director at the iPaper, says that product management is coming home to the newsroom. Hannah Sarney, whom I had the pleasure to meet in Perugia, embodies this shift. In 2023, she moved from her role as head of audience engagement to become an editorial product director. As she told Christiana Sciaudone at A Media Operator:

The entire interview is worth reading and saving to reflect on. She sees her role as facilitating collaborative problem solving.

I’m so excited that I’ll be speaking to leaders across the industry in my new role, and managing the complexity of modern news organisations will be one of the issues that I dig into. What are you hearing? Are you feeling more tension around product management in your news organisation? I’d love to hear from you.

The critical role of data in media

Without good data, organisations are flying blind, and I’m tracking where publishers are investing to drive their data operations. Across news and consumer publications, it’s fascinating to see media companies partner with retailers to start sharing data. Customer data is so valuable, and news organisations are still just scratching the surface in using it.

Retail media meets publishing: News UK, Future and Ocado tap clean room tech for smarter data targeting

For Ocado the partnership provides valuable access to upper and mid-funnel data to inform its existing customer data. 

digiday.com/media/retail-media-meets-publishing-news-uk-future-and-ocado-tap-clean-room-tech-for-smarter-data-targeting

I’ve been working with first-party data, data that media companies have about their users and their users’ activity, for years. But about 18 months ago, I started to hear about zero-party data. This is data that users give to publishers and broadcasters.

Zero-Party Data Can Drive Broadcast Advertisers’ Success. Here’s How

In my research analyzing thousands of client marketing plans for positive business outcomes, I’ve discovered that only one in 10 local business owners ever reviewed their zero-party data (ZPD) for marketing usage. Ninety percent of these business leaders had not ever dug into their own customer records to find useful directional intel. This ZPD, unlike third-party data, which is often aggregated and prone to inaccuracies, is voluntarily provided directly by customers, offering clear insights into their preferences, intentions and behaviors. In short, it’s marketing gold. Business owners today are bombarded with data from countless sources — demographics, behavioral analytics, third-party …

tvnewscheck.com/business/article/zero-party-data-can-drive-broadcast-advertisers-success-heres-how

Here is a post from John Saroff, the CEO of Chartbeat. Media analysts like Brian Morrissey say we have entered the “post-traffic era”, but the reality is more nuanced, John says. Yes, AI overviews are affecting traffic to content, but evergreen content more than news. However, broadly, search traffic is holding up to news sites in the US.

I’ve been getting a lot of questions lately about Charlotte Klein’s well-reported New York Magazine piece on the so-called “traffic apocalypse.” Most of our customers want to know: Is it really that… | John Saroff

I’ve been getting a lot of questions lately about Charlotte Klein’s well-reported New York Magazine piece on the so-called “traffic apocalypse.” Most of our customers want to know: Is it really that bad? The short answer is: no, not yet. The longer answer is: it could get worse — and now is always the best time to invest in building a direct audience, outside the control of platforms. Our data science team analyzed trends in referred traffic across the U.S., drawing on years of data from thousands of publishers. The topline result? 🅐 Overall referred traffic (Search + Social) is flat year-over-year. 🅑 Since May 2023, Google referrals (from both Search and Discover) have held steady at 24% of page views. 🅒 Facebook, meanwhile, has declined — from ~5% in 2023 to 2.5% now — but it’s been a gradual drop, not a cliff. That said, the aggregate masks real challenges. ● AI summaries are impacting evergreen content far more than real-time coverage like news, sports, or entertainment. ● Google Discover, which now makes up about half of Google referrals, is fickle and a major distraction for audience teams trying to build sustainable strategies. One day it boosts celebrity gossip, the next day, in-depth political analysis. So what should you do? ★ Build a direct relationship with your readers. Deep engagement is the key. One of our earliest insights — from back in 2011 — remains true today: the best predictor of whether a reader will return is how deeply engaged they are during their first visit. To help you understand how you’re doing, we just launched a new product: **Chartbeat Cohorts**. It lets you benchmark your performance against anonymized peer groups across the industry. I’ll be back with data on the rest of the world in short order. If there are other studies you’d like us to run, please leave a comment. We’re here to help.

www.linkedin.com/posts/jsaroff_ive-been-getting-a-lot-of-questions-lately-activity-7353798672075104258-5Koc?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAAQlgMBGsFHXfXgtPL6NkzxRaTIufCZMfc