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You might have heard: Mobile is now the majority of traffic for most news sites, and U.S. advertisers are scrambling to spend on mobile
But did you know: Mary Meeker warns that mobile user growth is slowing, but mobile ads are still an area of growth (Wall Street Journal)
In her annual Internet trends report, Mary Meeker says that Internet and mobile user growth is “solid, but slowing.” Meeker emphasized mobile ads as an area of growth, estimating that there’s an opportunity for $25 billion in mobile ad growth in the U.S. According to Meeker’s slides, Americans spend 24 percent of their media-consuming time on mobile while mobile ads make up just 8 percent of overall ad spending.
+ An overview of the most important points from Meeker’s report: The top Internet companies are platforms, messaging apps are the portal to mobile, and video viewing is growing fast, especially in vertical (TechCrunch)
+ Noted: BuzzFeed has plans to go public one day, but as for the future of BuzzFeed video, it won’t be a TV network but it will be on TV (Re/code); Politico is creating Politico Focus, a department that will create content for brands (Advertising Age); Fortune launches The Chat, a video interview show featuring business leaders, at Facebook’s offices (Fortune); New AP Stylebook is released with more than 300 revised or new entries (Poynter); Google will start indexing iOS apps (VentureBeat)
Why publishers should ‘bite the bullet’ and digitize archives (Journalism.co.uk)
At Thomson Reuters, head of archives Tim Redman oversees the digitization of Reuters’ archive. Reuters is mostly processing video and film, and Redman says Reuters’ digital archives will complete its “end to end news service” by making news articles, photos and videos available within one platform. Redman says: “It’s very satisfying to have material that is not literally locked away in a cabinet.”
German publishers lose legal challenge against Adblock Plus (Guardian)
In another win for Adblock Plus, a German court ruled that Adblock Plus software is not anticompetitive. The court concluded that Adblock Plus does not have enough market dominance to stop online publishers from finding enough users who would see ads. Publishers RTL and ProSiebenSat1 are considering an appeal against the decision, and Axel Springer is also in the middle of a legal battle against the ad blocker.
+ Facebook is making exclusive content deals with Indian video creators, offering free ad credits in exchange for making their content exclusive to Facebook for 48-72 hours before uploading it elsewhere (Medianama)
How to make staff meetings more engaging (Fast Company)
Bad meetings can do more harm than good, but Jason Shah offers tips on how to make staff meetings more engaging for employees. Start out with a clear plan for what will be accomplished in the meeting, which will help keep the meeting fast-paced and concise. Set goals for what will be accomplished in the meeting as a team, allowing everyone to pitch in and keeping it from turning into a lecture rather than a conversation.
+ Earlier: Three steps for more efficient and meaningful meetings and more from our collection of insights on how to hold better meetings
Vox’s acquisition of Re/code raises questions about the viability of standalone media (Fortune)
In the flurry of media deals lately including Vox Media’s acquisition of Re/code and Verizon’s of AOL, Mathew Ingram says bottom line is “size still matters for media companies.” Being small or hyper-targeted can work or being really huge can work, Ingram says, but staying between the two extremes isn’t a viable plan for success. Ingram says: “For some, the end game might even include being acquired by Comcast or Verizon or some other deep-pocketed tech company. But what does that mean for the media and journalism those companies will produce?”
+ More on Re/code: The sale makes a subscription-based model for news sites look better than an advertising-based model (Bloomberg View) and why Comcast, an investor in both Vox Media and Re/code, could end up buying them both (Quartz)
+ Why aren’t there more African-American journalists? The economic downturn in the news industry may be part of the reason, but the industry stands to lose a lot if it ignores diversity (Deseret News)
How a college newspaper abandoned its website in favor of Medium and Twitter (Nieman Lab)
At Mt. San Antonio College in California, the staff of The Mountaineer newspaper dropped its print edition two months ago, changing its name to SAC.Media. Since then, SAC.Media’s content has been hosted exclusively on Medium, focusing on real-time coverage on its Twitter feed and Medium without artificial deadlines. SAC.Media’s managing editor Talin Hakopyan says: “Students don’t really care about reading campus news. They don’t really care about picking up the print newspaper. It’s just so much easier through a tweet … We’re speaking the language of our generation.”
+ How Time Inc. is trying to make paywalls work: It’s providing payment tiers and registration options, but protecting traffic by keeping articles reached through social media outside of the paywall (Digiday)
+ Chicago Sun-Times explains why it ran a controversial photo of two white police officers with rifles standing over a black man on his stomach who has deer antlers on his head: “This photograph will offend people, as it offends us. We also know it can be a tool to raise the level of constructive discourse to make our city better. In the end, that’s what the residents of this great city and this newspaper all want.” (Chicago Sun-Times)
The post Need to Know: May 28, 2015 appeared first on American Press Institute.
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