Next to Now: December 9

SELF SHUTTERS PRINT, GOES DIGITAL ONLY Conde Nast’s Self is ending the print version of the magazine, and ramping up the digital brand. Media Post reports, “Since 2014, Self’s single-copy sales dropped from 148,000 to 44,000. Circulation has dropped from just over 1.5 million to just under. “Meanwhile, video viewership experienced triple digit growth compared […]

Next to Now for November 4

  PUBLISHERS RETHINK TABOOLA AND OUTBRAIN They were supposed to be the next big thing in advertising: a kind of native advertising you could book and run programmatically. But the New York Times reports that those “Promoted Stories” style ads with rows of photos and links beneath articles are falling out of favor. While we’re […]

Next to Now for July 28

NATIVE ADVERTISING BEST PRACTICES Smart, clever, informative native ads are one of the most exciting growth areas in advertising. Digiday walks us through the process that has brought significant improvement to Slate’s native efforts. In addition to bringing a more Slate-style voice to the content, the new native ads are more transparent about the sponsorship. This […]

Next to Now for July 21

PREMIUM WEBSITE ADS PERFORM BETTER A new study from ComScore underlines that ads on premium websites—such as the New York Times, WSJ, and various imprints of Condé Nast and Hearst media—deliver better results than ads on non-premium websites. From the Wall Street Journal article on this report: “The study, which comScore said analyzed the ad […]

Next to Now: Welcoming in Summer with New Targeting, Better Engagement, & Mergers that Matter

TWITTER INTRODUCES EMOJI TARGETING Adweek announces that Twitter is set to allow advertisers to target by emoji. From showing a travel book to users of the airplane emoji to a soccer book to users of the soccer ball emoji, there are endless ways to put this new targeting to work for your title. #twitter #emoji #targeting […]

Next to Now: On Streaming, Targeting, and Cheating

    NATIVE AD PERFORMANCE Commenting on a study of native advertising click-through rates, Media Post is surprised to see that native ads do better on mobile. We are not. Mobile remains the best platform for high engagement—and not just because of mistaken clicks: “The research found that click-through rates (CTR) for premium native ads […]

Next to Now: The News from SXSWi, Influencer Marketing & More

Spring 2016 unfolds with exciting new marketing platforms, a digital shout-out for an old but effective ad platform, new developments in looking at what readers want and more . . .     SXSW INTERACTIVE Adweek points to the hot topics at the recently concluded SXSWi, and they’re not a surprise, but they do underscore […]

Next to Now: The View from Here

Thanks to Digital Book World for hosting another engaging conference on the state of the art of book publishing in a digital world. Verso’s Tom Thompson enjoyed the smart, focused crowd on hand for his Master Class on Paid Digital Media and the packed audience for his panel on the Book-Buyer’s Journey with deeply insightful colleagues […]

Next to Now: Trying to Chart New Oceans of Data & More

PODCASTS CONTINUE TO GROW Digiday has an interesting article about the evolution of podcasts and the need for improved measurement. Measurement is still not there yet—even the link within the article to NPR’s proposed measurement guidelines is broken. But we expect it to happen. Fun fact from this article: NPR is working on a podcast that’s like […]