HuffPost and Fairfax Media joint venture in doubt
HuffPost Australia’s joint venture with Fairfax Media could come to an end, Mumbrella understands.
Should the joint venture end, Mumbrella understands a series of redundancies could occur but the future of the publication is in the hands of HuffPost management.
The US-based company – which launched locally in 2015 – is in “high-level discussions” with JV partner Fairfax Media.
A spokesperson for the HuffPost Australia joint venture said no “definite decisions had been made”.
“The joint venture partners of HuffPost Australia are having high-level discussions regarding the future of the JV,” the spokesperson said.
It comes a week after HuffPost’s joint venture with The Times of India ended. HuffPost India continues to publish with reduced staff.
When HuffPost Australia launched in Australia in 2015 founder Arianna Huffington told Mumbrella the market was “very fertile ground” for the publisher’s commercial model.
At the time of launch, the company was led by Chris Janz, now managing director of Fairfax Media’s Metro Publishing division. He was later replaced by RocketFuel managing director, JJ Eastwood.
Ahead of the company’s launch into the Australian market, Koda Wang, the general manager overseeing HuffPost’s international expansion, said the company intended to become the market leader in Australia within three to five years, and was on the hunt for a local partner. Fairfax Media was confirmed as the local partner in August.
Since then, the company has been jointly owned by Fairfax Media (49%) and AOL (51%).
The company also named Lisa Wilkinson, former Today Show host as editor at large.
But in November last year, HuffPost Australia signalled the joint venture may come to an end, announcing it would form its own commercial team. Two months ago, HuffPost named Sammy Lewis its first commercial director.
The discussions come as the same time as speculation of global redundancies at Oath – which represents Yahoo and AOL.
There has also been widespread coverage this week of what some describe as digital media crash – with several publishers missing their revenue targets and making redundancies.
a very big proportion of those HuffPo audience numbers are driven by links from Fairfax sites. Watch for those audience numbers to plummet if the pin gets pulled on this partnership, and with it , any real chance of commercial success
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“At the time of launch, the company was led by Chris Janz, now managing director of Fairfax Media’s Metro Publishing division. He was later replaced by RocketFuel managing director, JJ Eastwood.”
Doesn’t look like Janz left HuffPo in great shape. Now he’s helming Fairfax Metro – let’s see if he works his same magic here.
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Let’s get real for a moment. Digital news brands with cut and paste “journalists” simply thought they could waltz into Australia and collect from the new rivers of Gold. News.com.au already has that market covered.
We don’t have the population or time to invest in these brands wholeheartedly and snacking on news here and there does not make for a profitable outcome.
The legacy brands will continue to dominate. News, Fairfax, ABC and the TV Networks.
Even the NY Times has slashed its subscription price in AU. Did they really think we were that gullible?
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As far as I know, Huffpost use DFP and obviously Adx. I would also bet that their number one DSP is DBM. I’d love to know how much Google have been making off the back of their journalism. Same goes for Facebook. The challenge isn’t so much the market, it’s the 85c of every incremental dollar (that old stat) that our two frenemies are making that’s strangling publishers. Any pub with 2m+ UUs should have a solid business here. I wish the team in there all the best, they’re a great crew.
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44% of the Huff Post sites traffic here in Australia is from Google organic search
16.4% is referral sites, of which nearly half is The Age. (less than 8% overall) – is that what you mean by Fairfax traffic?
14.98% is social media and Facebook is 65.52% of that
0.1% of total traffic is from display ad’s
According to Similarweb: https://www.similarweb.com/website/huffingtonpost.com.au#referrals
Can anyone account up to 100%?
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Do you not have a ‘stories to read’ function on your smart phone? I have been introduced at a plethora of great sites, some broad, others highly niche. Mobile traffic from recommendation engines works. Google’s is getting really good.
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All I know is that it majorly p*sses me off when I click on a Fairfax link and get taken – with no prior warning – over to Huffpost.
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Looks like someone has confused traffic with audience.
Sigh. When will the digerati learn the difference?
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