Publishing plus: Industry transformation laid bare

In a session that will be properly announced in the near future, Facebook’s Australian news lead Andrew Hunter will discuss how the social network and news industry are finding new ways to work together, from original TV-style programming to subscription growth strategies and a new place for news on Facebook.

Content marketing has become one of the hot topics of the last few years. Publishers are scrambling to create offerings that complement their traditional business models while marketers are looking high and low to discover how best to incorporate content marketing into their strategies. 

But The Brag Media CEO, Luke Girgis, would argue that there is a significant disconnect between what content marketing can deliver, particularly from a team within a publisher, and what marketers think they want content marketing to deliver. Australian CMOs are being hyper conservative. 

After seeing how content marketing is delivering in the US, Girgis is adamant that it is not performing how it should in Australia and it’s time the industry sat up and took note. 

In this upfront session, The Brag Media boss will explain how and why it has happened, and what needs to take place to turn it around. 

As the media landscape becomes more fragmented, with more choices available to consumers from around the globe, it is vital for news organisations to represent something to their audiences and to create a community around an identifiable brand.

The goal of most media companies is to engage an audience and fulfill a brand objective which will earn appreciation from potential consumers. But, how do news brands attract loyal readers? How should they be engaging with their audiences?

In this session, hear from three news organisations that focus on subscription and rewards programs to create a community around their news mastheads and how they engage and deliver journalism to them. 

What if you could remove redactions from a classified document? Or uncover hidden connections in a 50,000 page data dump? Or automatically index, transcribe and translate your entire video archive on the fly? This is not science fiction – publishers are already experimenting with these tools to tell better stories and push their businesses forward.

Microsoft News Labs’ US-based Managing Director Ben Rudolph will speak at Mumbrella Publish to explain how journalists and newsrooms can use AI and other innovative technologies to foster collaboration, unlock insights, dramatically scale human creativity, and drive transparency, trust, and loyalty with audiences.

This discussion will give you a glimpse into journalism’s future, where a reporter’s natural curiosity and tenacity is augmented with the immense processing capacity of modern computing, giving rise to new modes of storytelling, new ways to discover those stories, and new ways to drive value for publishing businesses.

Earlier in the year LadBible announced its expansion into a publishing landscape where redundancies are common and businesses are folding. But, for the social media and entertainment publisher, the youth media space is a perfect industry for disruption.

With the intention of leveraging social media and video content, LadBible intends to work with Australian brands to provide local collaborations and branded content. So, how is the social-centric publisher planning to extend its international success into Australia and is there really opportunity in this market when the likes of other youth publishers including Buzzfeed and Pedestrian have recently made cuts?

In this session hear from LadBible’s general manager Joseph Summers as he explains how the business is able to see its videos regularly reaching into the tens of millions of views and why the Australian market is ripe for disruption.

Each year Mumbrella Publish delivers the biggest names in the Australian publishing industry to speak about the most pressing issues and opportunities. This year’s conference will feature a concentrated dose in a single session with leaders from the most well-known publishers.

Each will take the hotseat individually to provide quick-fire answers to some of the most pressing questions facing their business and the publishing industry in general.

There is no time for filler in this not-to-be-missed session.

When technology giant Apple announced the launch of Apple News+ in March it was met with mixed reactions, with some opting not to participate in the news aggregating subscription product. While some legacy publishers argue Apple will eat into their subscription businesses and erode their relationships with consumers, others declared that the subscription service will give them mass reach. So, is this good or bad news for the publishing industry?

With the technology behemoth promising to deliver current events coverage from trusted sources, there are still questions about the company’s ability to help publishers increase their revenue opportunities. What can publishers learn from Apple’s new subscription model? What should Apple be learning from publishers? How should Apple work with publishers and what will this do to revenue?

In this session hear from some of the industry’s most senior leaders as they unpack what Apple News+ means, who should be signing up and what the industry can learn about subscriptions from the tech giant’s news play.

Custom content has long been seen as a significant opportunity for publishers to boost revenue, but is the real win one step further down the path?

In an age where content can come from anywhere, publishers have had to fight hard to maintain their audiences and capitalise on their strengths. It’s led to some interest pivots and new business models in the industry, none more so than the opening of creative agencies and studios by publishers.

Marketers are now not only turning to publishers to create their desired content but some such as VICE and Bauer Media have created in-house studios and agencies, born from journalistic roots, to further service those clients far beyond traditional custom content.

Does this mean publishers are becoming a threat to ad agencies? In this session hear from publishers who have pivoted their business model to service these new opportunities and the brands that have worked with them.

In an industry where newsrooms are shrinking, The Guardian has seen an expansion, doubled its revenue over the last three years and grown its unique audiences 29% month on month to 5.38m.

But, with a new strategic goal to reach two million paying memberships within the next three years, how will the publisher track, analyse and develop its audience funnel? Essentially, how do they think they are going to reach two million paying members?

In this session, The Guardian Australia’s managing director Dan Stinton will reveal the different ways The Guardian is monetising journalism, how a business model which doesn’t revolve around advertising can be successful and why The Guardian believes it can be successful with a reader revenue business model.

As automated buying has eroded ad rates and brands demand hard proof their ads have been seen, some publishers are starting to think about new revenue models. One of the more popular options is reader revenue.

Chasing this option means publishers must double down on customer experience, quality journalism, trusted advertising and subscription models. Once that happens, then comes the big question – should businesses be pricing their subscriptions to ensure they scale their audiences and drive revenue?

In this session, leading consulting firm on strategy and pricing, Simon-Kucher & Partners, will unpack a market excellence framework which includes pricing strategy, product design, price setting and price optimisation.

E-commerce has become one of the key revenue drivers for certain parts of the publishing industry. As publishers across the globe look to diversify their revenue models, some are seeing success by using their editorial expertise as the foundation of an e-commerce strategy, bridging the gap between content and sales.

While in the formative years of e-commerces strategy for publishers, the line between editorial and sales was particularly tricky to navigate, publishers have now found ways to keep the content quality high while driving sales through e-commerce in a relatively natural way.

This has arguably been achieved best in the US and UK. In this session, hear from Marie-Claire’s UK-based head of fashion affiliate, Emily Ferguson, who works specifically on Marie Claire Edit, as she unveils how to successfully integrate e-commerce into a publishing strategy and work with affiliate, advertising and editorial partners.

Previously the e-commerce business development manager at The Telegraph, Ferguson will draw on her strategy and content experience to explain how to lead a successful e-commerce site to build more audience data, engage readers, drive e-commerce revenue and maintain editorial tone of voice.

In today’s media landscape brand safety is one of the biggest issues advertisers are having to consider when deciding where to place their ads. In the wake of recent Facebook and YouTube brand safety crises, agencies and brands are increasingly looking to buy directly from premium and quality content owners, providing print publications with an opportunity to assert themselves as the trustworthy option for brands.

Last year, Thinkerbell and NewsMediaWorks joined forces to reinforce quality journalism and combat the issues of mistrust and fake news in media by targeting advertisers and agencies in a print campaign. The print ads were featured across national print, digital and regional titles to prove that “the truth builds trust”.

In this session hear from the brains behind the campaign as they share the insights used to create this campaign, why reinforcing trust in print is important, how brands are currently engaging with print and what the feedback has been from the pivotal campaign.