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You might have heard: Publishing platform Medium has raised $57 million in its latest funding round, valuing Medium at about $400 million (Re/code)
But did you know: While Medium raises more money, Facebook is looking to establish itself in web publishing and become more like Medium (Fortune)
As online content moves away from individually hosted blogs and toward distributed content, Medium has established itself as a leading platform for web publishing, Mathew Ingram writes. That’s likely why Facebook’s redesign of its notes feature looks a lot like Medium as it tries to establish itself as a distributed medium platform. Ingram writes: “Just because Facebook has redesigned Notes and is partnering with media companies, of course, doesn’t mean that it will be able to attract the readers and partners it wants to, or that its attention won’t wander and eventually be directed elsewhere. But for Medium and other content platforms, it can’t be counted out — which is perhaps why the startup decided now might be a good time to raise some cash.”
+ Why Medium might be worth its $400 million valuation for being this generation’s version of PR Newswire: “Medium has become a dumping ground for a different generation’s press releases. … If Medium can succeed at turning these cleverly disguised press releases into a profit stream, it’s obvious why it would be worth $400 million” (Business Insider)
+ Noted: Axel Springer buys 88 percent of Business Insider for $343 million (Bloomberg Business); Politico plans to expand to all 50 states and major world capitals in the next 5 years (Huffington Post); Huffington Post names Liz Heron, Facebook’s former head of news partnerships, as executive editor (Wall Street Journal); New York Times appoints senior editor Trish Hall to work with advertising and editorial, and she will work with newsroom and opinion departments to determine what articles and projects “might lend themselves to sponsorship” and develop “new projects that would be attractive to readers and advertisers” (New York Times)
Tips for how smaller publishers can combat fraudulent web traffic (Nieman Lab)
To differentiate their ad offerings, some publishers are touting their relative lack of fraudulent web traffic. However, a study from Digital Content Next found that publishers with less traffic overall were more likely to have higher “sophisticated bot” rates. As part of its tips to combat that traffic, Digital Content Next recommends not relying on viewability as the sole measure of whether an impression was from a human or bot and strictly monitoring third-party traffic for fraud.
+ Why New Jersey hyperlocal New Brunswick Today was digital first, print second and bilingual third: After launching as a website in 2011, New Brunswick Today added a print edition to reach a different set of readers, and then started translating stories from English into Spanish to reach the city’s Latino immigrant community (MediaShift)
Financial Times is launching sponsored content through a new branded unit (Digiday)
Sponsored content is coming to the Financial Times: FT is launching a new unit called FT Squared, which will bring together FT’s existing content marketing options with its new sponsored content. FT’s global advertising sales director Dominic Good says: “We’re launching Squared and paid posts to show advertisers we’re serious about content marketing. We’re not racing to predict that it will become 30+ percent of our revenues by a certain date, but it’s an important step forward.”
Why Viacom says what you know about audience engagement is wrong: Consumers believe their ability to pay attention is either improving or remaining constant (Fast Company)
The conventional thought in marketing today is that consumers’ attention spans are getting shorter and shorter thanks to social media and smartphones, but a new survey from Viacom says that may not be true. The survey by Scratch, Viacom’s creative consultancy division, found 75 percent of consumers believe their ability to pay attention is either improving or remaining constant. Scratch SVP Anne Huber says: “What we see is a really important shift in the dynamics of attention in this economy because consumers are in charge. They’re not just idle audiences sitting back receiving what’s pumped out — they’re actually calling the shots of what they’re going to hear or not.”
Ad-blocking, ‘the biggest boycott in human history,’ could improve the relationship between marketers and consumers (Doc Searls Weblog)
Ad-blocking is “the biggest boycott in human history,” Doc Searls writes, but it could work to actually improve the relationship between consumers and marketers. Searls says marketers will have to think about new, more genuine ways to reach consumers. Once they do that Searls says, they’ll realize “genuine relationships are worth far more than the kind that is coerced” and “volunteered (and truly relevant) personal data is worth far more than the kind that is involuntarily fracked.”
+ More on ad-blocking: Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer says better advertisements are the best way to combat ad-blocking, and consumers might really miss advertisements if ads are blocked en masse (Wall Street Journal) and for the first time since iOS9 was released, no mobile ad blocker is the top paid app in Apple’s App Store (Marketing Land)
+ Tribune CEO Jack Griffin says the move to mobile is short-sighted, and Millennials will eventually start reading print newspapers again: Griffin predicts once they move into adulthood and begin settling into communities, Millennials will turn to newspapers (Re/code); But our research shows even the oldest, most engaged Millennials get most of their news online
NYT’s Sarah Cohen: Data journalism is about people, not just statistics (Downtown Devil)
Sarah Cohen, editor of The New York Times’ computer-assisted reporting team, says data journalism is about more than just statistics — it’s about people. According to Cohen, data journalism investigates the way a system is supposed to work compared to how it’s actually working. Cohen says: “The challenge is to document what’s supposed to happen. Figuring out what’s supposed to happen really isn’t easy, and measuring what really does happen can be even harder.”
+ “You can never have too many role models. We intend to help you find more”: Student Press Law Center’s Active Voice blog is partnering with the blog A Woman To Know to feature influential female journalists each week (Active Voice)
The post Need to Know: Sept. 29, 2015 appeared first on American Press Institute.
from American Press Institute http://ift.tt/1PLjAs4
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