The 2023 Media Trends Horse Race
What will The Answer be this year?
Good morning.
I started this blog or newsletter in 2020 when I was feeling stuck at my last job. Artsy, the company I was working at, had shifted its focus, rightfully, away from investing in its media or editorial arm. The nature of my job had changed and I wanted an outlet to talk about the things that interested me professionally: namely what the latest trends in media were.
What I didn’t realize at the time was that all the work I didn’t really want to do as my job shifted is actually extremely valuable to me now that I work at Conde Nast overseeing audience development for Bon Appétit and Epicurious. I could get into what all that work was but it basically boiled down to product marketing, brand marketing, and merchandising for an app-based online luxury marketplace.
Writing this newsletter was useful in sharpening my thoughts and POV as a professional working in media. I’m not really interested in doing that all the time here anymore since I spend every week thinking of ways to push a legacy media brand forward into the uncertain future.
But from time to time it’s just fun looking at the current state of the media trends horse race. The prize of the horse race? Why figuring out The Answer of course: Coming up with the single solution to make a media company a sustainable and successful business. Every year there are multiple Answers but there can only be one Answer and everyone has to chase every one down to figure out which one is going to be The Answer except that there never is The Answer. The answer is always be practical, don’t over-invest in one thing, and balance your revenue streams.
So, I’m going to look at the trends so far this year. Your racing form may look a little different than mine but I’ll let you know who’s running, how they started the race, where they’re at right now, and what their odds are to be The Answer.
Artificial Intelligence (aka A.I.)
What’s the trend
ChatGPT, ever heard of it? Bard ring a bell? An omniscient super computer that will destroy our entire race and planet even faster than we can? Yeah, you know this one.
How it started
Well, there were distinct 2021 NFT vibes to start out the gate. Skepticism, a “yeah, sure, artificial intelligence—computers can’t even drive cars yet” kind of attitude was in the air. Out of the gate, the pace was slow. But then it started to sink in: Wait, these things have deep dark personalities that are terrifying? Maybe they can make our teams and businesses more efficient and make more content for us! Everyone loves a chatbot don’t they? If we don’t do it, Google is gonna do it. And even if Google does do it people will still like our chatbot better! From there, AI jumped out to a large lead.
How it's going
Middle of the pack. You can’t overstate how much damage The Entity in Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part I did do the momentum behind AI.
AI is clearly a complicated topic. I remain skeptical of its practical uses and particularly its usefulness in the media business. Outlets will come up with policies on how to use ChatGPT or Bard and some will get good at using it to save time in synthesizing original information to use to start as outlines for stories and will be smart enough not to use it for reporting or churning out crappy content. Others will develop their own chatbots as services to readers.
What I’m encouraged by is the potential lawsuit The New York Times is considering bringing on OpenAI. We already did this once: the Internet changed under the feet of publishers and they just gave the store away. You at least have to fight this time. What will most likely happen is that there will be some kind of settlement for short term gain with an undisclosed longer term agreement that will further build a moat around The Times; meanwhile Google will squeeze out almost all the other publishers in favor of their own results and engagement with Bard as well as an arrangements they make with Amazon to drive visitors to shop on Amazon product pages. What it clearly won’t do is become The Answer for media companies.
Current Odds as The Answer
Long shot to T2: Judgement Day
Creators
What’s the trend?
You could also call this entrant in the race “Off-Platform” or “Off-Platform Commerce” or “The End of 2010s Social Media.” But basically the trend is that everyone wants to be in the Creator business now. Everyone wants to have a Creator Network and everyone wants to throw money at Creators to make content to entertain people or sell them products through social video because that’s all any social media platform wants to promote. All the platforms want to be each other—but they all especially want to be TikTok because TikTok has come the closest to shifting the attention economy away from streaming video apps to something else.
How it started
Fast. Working with Creators or Influencers or just plain old Creatives has been around for a long time in the world of Social. In fact, there have been reports of a Creator Economy out there for quite a bit. So people had a feeling the odds were good. But the fact that so many places are betting on this one has me worried. What is BuzzFeed’s actual plan for creator content? Big time 🤷.
How it's going
Currently leading but only because AI has faltered a little on the back stretch and no one else is really standing out from the pack yet; though there are several strong moves being made. By default, this is the safest bet. Social platforms are rewarding video content—right now. TikTok is the place where key demographics are spending the bulk of their time—right now. Advertisers are starting to move to social video as ad capabilities are developed and sales teams are noticing—right now. The iron is hot. The issue is people may just pivot to video all over again and try to be creator agencies or something or try to throw money at creators to get advertising dollars while they are available over the next (licks finger and holds it in the air, discerning wind) oh, six months or so. But that ain’t it. Long term, sustainable, and equitable relationships with actual individuals who are talented at multimedia storytelling, who have a track record and catalog of work that can be mutually beneficial for a brand and the individual, that’s closer to it.
Current Odds as The Answer
As good as anyone’s.
FAST
What’s the trend?
While we’re on video. Let’s talk about everyone’s favorite (eh) trend: Free Ad Supported Television (FAST). Now, you might be saying to yourself, “Free ad-supported television? Isn’t that just regular TV?” And you’d be absolutely right! We’ve somehow come full circle back to talking about regular ass TV or regular ass cable TV like it's a brand new thing.
Basically, video streaming apps and services figured out that there was a limit on how many subscribers they could get. Without an ad revenue stream, that gets you into trouble with Wall Street. Paramount+ has been gouging me with their ad supported tier for awhile now but I’m a glutton for punishment when it comes to getting all the content I want so it's fine. But, seriously, these guys pulled the NFL out of my subscription by taking CBS out of Paramount+ and now want to charge me extra for that. But in terms of the major streamers, Netflix entered the ad supported game first and now Disney+ is all-in according to demi-god CEO Bob Iger.
How it started
What’s a FAST?
How it’s going
Making a very strong move on the outside. The May 2023 Upfronts were a seminal moment in the media business. That’s when advertisers said: “You know what, people are spending a lot of their time on these new fangled Social media apps with their addictive video. And you know what else is another thing? People spend a lot of time on streaming apps and now those have advertising. We should spend some money there.” Basically, no one is spending time—truly spending time—on websites any more. This pains me to say, but it's true. Think about your own media consumption habits: How often are you going to a website to read a full article? And I don’t mean just going directly to a domain. I also mean going through Social media to a link. You’re most likely reading via IG captions, newsletters, comments sections or forums or some other kind of community with the odd article link sprinkled in. Getting unique visitors to websites is hard. There’s too many other surfaces where people focus their attention and advertisers are starting to catch on.
Current Odds as The Answer:
Go ask Bob Iger, he gets paid way more than I do.
Scalable Event Series:
What’s the trend?
The pandemic is over and people want to be with people again. Events are a meaningful way for a brand to interact with its audience. But is everything going to be at the level of The Met Gala? Absolutely not. Smaller, recurring events may be a way to generate smaller, but recurring, chunks of revenue throughout the year.
How it started
Back of the pack. No one was really thinking about events, until all of a sudden they were.
How it’s going
Trailing the middle of the pack. I’m honestly not an expert on events and event strategy. But the very smart Brian Morrisey and he covered this trend in his wonderful newsletter/independent media outlet The Rebooting earlier this summer. He uses Semafor’s early success in using events as a core revenue strategy to show how they can be effective for publishers at scale—not in terms of size, but in terms of frequency and consistency.
Current Odds as The Answer
Not likely
Community
What’s the trend?
With the collapse of Twitter and the long, ongoing shift of social media platforms going from places to connect to becoming places to be entertained, there is an opportunity for media brands to find an edge by becoming a better place for community building. Whether that’s through direct interaction of writers and editors and personalities with the audience or the audience among themselves.
How it started
Just behind the lead. Community has been a long sought after solution for brands for a long time. The New York Times had famously had success and major failures with community management. Reddit has gone through major turmoil this year. Substack has actually made a major shift from being a content management system with distribution capabilities to attempting to be an app-based community. When there isn’t one place to talk anymore (and even then, that one place wasn’t that popular) having a non-toxic space for people to exchange ideas and things they’ve created that functions pretty smoothly can give you a leg up on the competition. It can also bring you closer to audiences and keep those audiences more engaged with your content, your properties, and your brand(s).
How it's going
Neck and neck with whoever is leading. As audiences are less loyal to specific surfaces or brands, as there is more confusion around where the daily conversations are happening on the internet, as things on social media become more about entertainment rather than connection, people are going to want to look for a place to habitually visit every day to talk about stuff. If you can provide that, you might discover something lucrative. Reddit still hasn’t and they’ve been at it for awhile and Twitter, well, you know.
Current Odds as The Answer
Looks more like The Answer than anything else.
What these trends really break down to, to me at least, are four main facts:
The center of the internet for the last 10-15 years, social media, is breaking down and changing into just another way to watch video or be entertained.
People aren’t spending their time on websites, they are spending them in apps: whether they are streaming video apps, cooking apps, gaming apps, social media apps, it doesn’t matter. That’s where people are. They aren’t on true website properties anymore.
Because of this, there are more and more places you need to look in order to understand what audiences are interested in, what people are talking about, and what is relevant.
There are only so many people who can pay for so many things.
And, because of those four facts, everybody in the media has no idea what to do in order to make sure they build a sustainable business. The New York Times is doing the best right now and they may be the one with the best collection of The Answers but who knows. Everyone once thought Bob Iger had The Answer and look at him now.
Nobody knows anything.
All I know, is that if I hear about Athletic Greens one more time, I’m going to scream.