Breaking down made up walls
Org charts can really get in the way of progress
Good morning.
I hope everyone had a great weekend.
It was beautiful here in Austin and we did a lot of bike riding. We also watched the Oscars. Good job by Conan. Good job by Anora (haven’t seen it).
I thought it was a fun show overall even if 2024 was kind of a weird movie year—and even if it was still hard to figure out how to actually watch the Oscars on a streaming service you pay for (thank god I still had one option to start a free Fubo account). Glad I didn’t watch on the streaming service I pay for though!
Because it was Oscars weekend, at dinner on Saturday night, I rattled off my top 10 movies of the last 10 years to my fiancee (as I’m known to do).
The Taste of Things (2023)
The Promised Land (2023)
Avengers: Endgame (2019)
Nope (2022)
One Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)
Phantom Thread (2017)
No Hard Feelings (2023)
First Cow (2019)
Drive My Car (2021)
Everybody Wants Some!!! (2016)
I think this is a good list for being off the cuff.
OK, let’s get to today’s newsletter.
It’s going to be a relatively quick one today.
This story from A Media Operator caught my eye last week. And it caught my eye because it’s kind story that focuses on some of the more boring work that goes into making a successful media business today.
The piece is about how the editorial side and the business side of the Wall Street Journal worked together on a marketing campaign to acquire more subscribers. Yeah, like I said, that’s not the most exciting story in the world.
But it shows (and who knows how this actually goes down at the Wall Street Journal) exactly how editorial or audience teams should work with teams focused on membership, marketing, or acquisition these days. It should be collaborative.
Really, the only reason why those teams are kind of separate now is because of corporate org charts. The days of people expecting some kind of business independence from the voices they read or listen to is kind of over.
Or as the A Media Operator piece says, “Sherry Weiss, the Journal’s chief marketing officer, and Emma Tucker, editor in chief, both joined about two years ago and made a point to reset how the two teams engaged with each other. Today, the relationship between them is strong, while also being very conscious of the need to protect editorial integrity.”
I mean, everyone is kind of running a marketing funnel for a subscription business these days. So, at legacy brands, why shouldn’t the people who are reporting, creating stories, recording podcasts, and appearing on or filming video, each day aimed at audiences also work closely with the teams who create messaging to get audiences to try and subscribe for that coverage?
It’s really the only thing that makes sense.
The Media Operator piece veers a little too much into quotes about reaching audiences that have been used in pieces for over a decade now and that really don’t say much at all, but the part about marketing and editorial working together is good and illustrative of how things should evolve.
A couple quotes about the search landscape changing
“Changing habits among search engine users have begun to take a toll on the biggest players in the search space—namely Google. The tech giant still enjoys an enormous chunk of the search market —89%, October through December in 2024, according to an estimate from Statcounter—but that’s the lowest its share has been in a decade.”
“66% of 18-24 year olds and 51% of 25-34 year olds regularly refer to AI tools for product recommendations; older users are using more traditional forms of search, according to YouGov.
“Gartner projections made in 2023 and 2024 suggested that search engine usage would fall 25% by 2026, and 50% by 2028, owing to the update of gen AI tools including AI overviews and applications like Perplexity.”
“[M]ore web users—particularly younger ones —are choosing to use social platforms as their primary means of finding information online. TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, Instagram and Pinterest have replaced Google as their first port of call, while one eMarketer estimate pointed to Amazon as the first-choice retail search engine for American web users.”
These are all from this Digiday story about how search habits are changing across the surfaces of the internet. The story is focused on what that means for advertisers but, as you can see, there are data points in there that are relevant for anyone working in any role where meeting people where they spend their time online is important.
A couple links to survey the changing landscape
Speaking of changes to the search landscape, The Wall Street Journal reported on a slight change that Google made to how product review sites appear on search engine results pages. This change has dramatically impacted several brands with major affiliate businesses.
Oh, and according to Forbes it seems like AI search engines are going to refer little to no traffic to actual website. Expect plenty more stories around “new shocking data” in this space to come over the next 12 months.
Semafor rounded up some of the key points discussed at their media summit last week.
Digiday covered how YouTube shorts are monetizing for creators.