Media. It's such a dirty word
Focus in a fragmented world
The worst thing about media is the word media.
Every year, Edelman releases its annual Trust Barometer. Every year, there is anguish about trust in media. But which “media”?
We see regular headlines about job cuts in the media, stories about brands in critical care, and eulogies for brands that died. You’d be forgiven for giving up.
M&A trends and media/tech
Last month, investment banker and author Reed Phillips, CEO of Oaklins DeSilva+Phillips, wrote an op-ed for Mx3 about the M&A Outlook 2024 (and what it tells us about media). He provides a great sector-by-sector breakdown, which I’ll briefly group as
The Rising Stars: AI and the Creator Economy
High Growth Potential: Events and Book Publishing
Moderate Growth Potential: Digital Media and B2B Media
Low Growth Potential: Magazine Media and News Media
Yet…
* A few results from an old-school Google search for “Is the media industry in turmoil”?
Going on this, you’d miss several opportunities Reed discussed above.
All because “media” is screwed. Except when it’s not.
Fragmentation = opportunities
Platforms are today’s ad-driven mass media.
For those in publishing, mass media is done. No publisher can compete with platform scale.
The Internet fragmented audiences. People congregate around shared personal or professional interests. Connections and authenticity matter.
Being in the creator, consumer vertical or B2B media business is far better than the generalist news business. You’ll have to stop suffering from delusions of grandeur about media business. Those days are gone, but plenty of focused publishers are seeing success.
Here (Media wasteland? Nice, B2B [and Semafor] show the way), I wrote about what we see, hear and read about niches and B2B. Nice niche, and When small really means big were two promotions for Mx3 Barcelona on the subject. Here, Brian Morrissey, the prolific newsletter writer and podcaster on the industry, wrote about the Flight to Niche.
I wish I had kept a document I wrote for the then-leadership of an international media association with print legacy about the rise of vertical media. I never even got a response, which is telling. There is a tendency to follow pervasive trends of the time slavishly. Everyone wanted to be a #BuzzFeed or a #Vice.
The ‘death of millennial media’
“The digital media revolution is over,” according to CNN. “Its two leaders, Vice Media and BuzzFeed, are in a frenetic retreat, surrendering much of their online empires as they try to protect what remains of their core assets. Having once threatened to upend the entire industry and usher in a new era of news distribution and monetisation, the former digital media darlings are now merely attempting to survive in any form they can.”
Big Tech again gets blamed (if you Google Vice management, there are several stories pointing fingers there) for past and future sins. “All digital publishers have struggled in recent years as they navigate brutal industry headwinds, brought on by a softened advertising market now [Now?!!] dominated by Big Tech titans and plummeting referral traffic. Not to mention the looming threat of artificial intelligence, also brought on by Big Tech titans.”
For a deeper conversation about it, listen to this Media Confidential podcast, where former editors Alan Rusbdridger (Guardian) and Lionel Barber (Financial Times) speak to BuzzFeed’s former UK editor Janine Gibson, now with FT.
BuzzFeed, Vice and others do not have to define “publisher” media. Here we reported about another BuzzFeed era publisher that’s, let’s say, buzzing.
It’s not “millennial media” that’s daying, it’s media that relied on platform-fueled traffic to prop up their ad-driven models.
Don’t miss the nuances
The game is creator, vertical, or B2B media with the ability to operate efficiently and diversify the revenue lines thanks to their close audience relationships. Sure, the mechanics are different from the past, it’s not as “glamorous” as before, and it’s bloody hard work, but there are many success stories out there.
You just won’t find them if you believe the news about “media” and miss the nuances.