British media group Reach – which publishes the Irish Daily Mirror, the Sunday Mirror and the Irish Daily Star newspapers – is not the only news publisher having a rough time trying to make digital advertising revenues go in the right direction.
A trading update issued ahead of its annual meeting on Wednesday revealed that its digital revenue has declined 14.5 per cent year on year in the four-month period to April 23rd, with the company once again pointing the finger at a “page view slowdown” prompted by “recent changes to the way Facebook presents news content”.
This change – which saw the Meta-owned social media platform end its mobile-friendly, revenue-sharing Instant Articles format – has caused “a reduction in referred traffic across the sector” at the same time as macro-economic conditions in the digital advertising market remain “challenging”.
It was not too long ago that Reach’s news titles were making decent digital gains on the back of its strong Facebook presence. This was a savvy move, but only in the short term. Any long-term dependency was always going to be risky.
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Indeed, all news companies that set about making social media and search engine distribution a core part of their digital strategy about a decade ago have found out the hard way that this meant the key factors controlling their online performance effectively lay elsewhere.
If damage didn’t spring from the demise of formats that were relatively attractive to publishers, such as Facebook’s Instant Articles, then there were unfavourable adjustments to algorithms to contend with – each one a reminder of their exposure to the whims of more powerful others.
For many, the ascent of BuzzFeed and the recent closure of its US news operation have bookended this era of social news distribution. BuzzFeed was the king of social news. Its vulnerability seemed obvious. But its chief executive Jonah Peretti admitted last month that he had been “slow to accept” that big tech platforms wouldn’t provide the support needed for “premium, free journalism purpose-built for social media”.
Reach’s plan to reinvigorate its digital revenues includes the launch of US websites, though this expansion of its footprint is taking place against a backdrop of broader cost cuts across the company. Last month, it experimented with letting artificial intelligence (AI) tools produce articles for its UK-domained website In Your Area, irking some staff. It now says it will take “strategic actions” to combat the decline in page views, which appears to mean using data for better customer targeting.
But the business of online journalism – both the paywalled kind and the paywall-free variety offered by Reach – is only getting tougher.
