Own Thy Audience

New York Times is the epicenter or gold standard of journalism, and a huge chunk of the credits go not just to the incredible team of impeccable journalists but the SEO team which is always on its toe to get the perfect content out.

Claudio Cabrera has been working for the New York Times for the last 4 years now. What started with 2 people is now a combined newsroom effort. In this conversation, Claudio talks about his journey at NY Times, his biggest superpowers - having been a journalist and now an SEO expert, and do SEOs really hate paywall so much? 

The discussion also covered the subscription business, and if its the main KPI for NY Times. He also revealed his favorite SEO tools, tune in to discover. 

https://bit.ly/31RHXDj

"Today is an interesting term because it is changing so quickly"

Jonny Kaldor, CEO, and co-founder of Pugpig left us wondering when he said this while discussing the latest trends in the media publishing industry. 

According to him, the most important of them is the use of audio, especially podcasts. And the reason to use them amplifies more especially during these tough times. When earlier a virtual event would see 70-80 attendees, today the number soars to 800-1000.

He also emphasized the benefits of having a separate audience for separate products with separate prices. To know the reason why, tune in.

Veronica Magan who is the Director of Digital Growth and Innovation at Access Intelligence, said, "Audience is the people that you market to." 

She joined us to discuss why media businesses need to go beyond social media and other search engines to reach their audience. Her emphasis lied strongly on email marketing, especially for her niche audience. 

Listen in for more insights.

10 years ago, no newspaper would have thought that one day their daily copies would slowly lose their values. Did we while growing up ever imagine that instead of receiving a piece ever morning on our doorstep, we'll be receiving one ever morning in our inbox? A lot has changed and a lot yet remains to be changed. As for media publishers, one thing is for certain. They know their real asset is their audience and the importance to own it. 

Joining us for this episode of Own Thy Audience is Ben Ilfeld, Head of Product at the Venture Beat. Someone who has been in the digital publishing industry for a decade and now a publisher himself. He well understands audience engagement, retargeting, and audience development.

The major discussion would revolve around these points:

• How is advertising different - today vs then? 
• What did audience development look like in 2010? And how different is it today? 
• How difficult or easy was user acquisition back in 2010 vs today? 
• Getting an existing user back does wonders for a website. They consume more, they engage more. More likely to spend and so on. How is this problem being tackled today?
• Audience ownership vs building following on social platforms. How should media businesses balance this out? 

You spend months and years to gather that audience on Medium. You ran campaigns, gave them offers, and even went so far as to give luscious discounts. But all this to what? What if one day medium just decides to take it all away. Then? How will you showcase all your hard work then? 

For this episode of Own Thy Audience is Ben May, the founder of The Code Company. Someone who has been in the digital publishing industry for more than a decade now and understands the importance of audience ownership.

The major discussion revolved around these points:

• Understanding the concept of ownership on the internet
• How content creation does not imply owning the value generated out of content
• How can creators get maximum value from their content
• Comparisons - WordPress vs Medium. Email list vs Facebook page, your marketing list vs social following

In this episode of Own Thy Audience, Vivek Khandelwal, founder, iZooto, gets candid with Vahe Arabian, founder, State of Digital Publishing. 

Their conversation revolves around the transformation that NewsFeed and Search results have been seeing. 

They compare the past with the present and predict what the future holds. 

Hop in for more!

Did you know that in Tier 3 cities of India, the search icon, or the magnifying glass that you see in the Amazon app was interpreted as a table tennis racquet? Such an irony.  Amazon’s forte is Product Search and Recommendations. This is why Amazon had to reinvent it’s App for it’s Bharat strategy.

There are 100’s of other examples where What-Worked-In-Lucknow didn’t work in Etah. Or What-Sold-Like-Hot-Cakes in Jaipur never caught the user’s eyes in Bhilwara. Cracking vernacular India is the new holy grail for everyone. But it takes more than just translating your app into the regional language. Building any product that hits the masses in a country where 780 languages are spoken and culture changes on every 100th milestone in a daunting task.

The exact thing that the team at News18 seems to have mastered. They have not only built a news and media product that serves this audience, but they have also now started championing monetization of this audience. Sounds almost impossible right? That’s what we will unravel in this conversation with Sudipto Nandy - Head of Product at Network18 and Sonakshi Sinha - Lead on Monetization at News18. 

SEO is critical for any website out there. But knowing that and actually taking the right steps towards it, makes all the difference. Truth be told, it is a tough nut to crack. And it has especially been a pain in the a** for publishers, bloggers & media site owners, irrespective of whether they have a million pages on their site or are just starting from scratch.

In this episode, we have Michael Bertini laying it out for publishers on what they should be doing to ace their SEO game. Here are a few points covered in the episode -

• Does the meaning of SEO change with the size of business?
• Thinking about strategy from ground zero for large media houses. How do things change?
• 3 things that publishers need to focus on for their SEO
• AMP and SEO - How do they go hand in hand?
• What changes Mobile SEO and its importance
• Battling the Google search algorithm updates and how should publishers plan for this
• Importance of repeat traffic/loyalty as a ranking factor for publishers. The strategy of backlinking for large websites

This is possibly one of the ripest times for publishers. People are devoting a lot of time to screens and the base is increasing. Subscribers although have a large content basket to choose from and this makes the competition tough. That is when content recommendation comes in picture. A large chunk of the industry uses this tool and the popularity is increasing each day. Some questions still remain unanswered though.

How critical is content recommendation for digital publishers, and its impact? The dilemma of investing in content recommendation or not and the factors that make this decision? Is personalization a publisher thing or only meant for e-commerce and what is the right time to invest in content recommendations?

Join Sandeep Amar and Vivek in this episode of Office Hours as they discuss all these questions and ponder over more such topics.

Sandeep, a digital leader with a professional experience of more than 20 years, with 10 years of experience of leading large digital teams. Someone who has worked with India.com, ZEE and Penske media JV and is now with Indian Express Digital.

He has Delivered multi-fold growth in audiences and revenue in all roles. At Indian Express Digital, grew traffic by 250% in 10 months and became the number 2 publisher(on comScore) in India(from number 7). Increased revenue by over 100%, and achieved 20% profits in year one.

At Times Internet Limited (as Head of – Marketing, Sales Strategy(B2B marketing) and Audience Engagement), grew traffic by over 250%, and reached undisputed number one on comScore. As the sales strategy leader helped grow the revenue by 2.5x in 2.5 years to 150 crores(in the year 2012)

Name one who has not been affected by Ad Fraud.

It’s everywhere, and everyone has been its target. Hard-earned money has been lost, time has been spent and the results have still been null.

But good news, solutions exist.

This episode of Office Hours, we have Deepankar Biswas joining Vivek.

Deep, who is the co-founder of BotMan, will discuss the various threats and myths around Ad frauds. The intensity of their impact and how well can we overcome them.

Deep is the co-founder of BotMan, a company he started in 2008. Apart from this he is also the founder of Offergrid Private Limited and has served as the director of Astuon Networks for almost 4 years. He is also the winner at ET - Power of Ideas, and has been in the industry for more than 20 yrs and possess a deep knowledge of ads, AdBots and Ad Frauds.