The Publishers Guide To Navigating COVID-19

INSIGHT REPORT
THE PUBLISHER'S GUIDE TO
NAVIGATING
COVID-19
Supported by:
Written by:
Damian Radcliffe
Sponsored by:
THE PUBLISHER'S GUIDE TO NAVIGATING COVID-19 I

Contents
III Editor's note

IV About the author
V Acknowledgements
VI Sovrn: There's reason to be optimistic
THE PUBLISHER'S GUIDE TO NAVIGATING COVID-19

1 COVID-19's impact on the media in ten charts
11 What COVID-19 means for subscription strategies
18 How eCommerce, memberships and donations are helping diversify

revenues during COVID-19
25 Four ways publishers are building loyalty during COVID-19
33 Tactics to generate engagement during COVID-19
41 Navigating COVID-19 and ad tech
51 The legacy of COVID-19 for publishers
69 FURTHER READING
70 APPENDIX
THE PUBLISHER'S GUIDE TO NAVIGATING COVID-19 II

Editor's note
We at WNIP had a long list of ideas for reports we wanted to
write this year to help publishers. This was not one of them.
The pandemic is one of those rare events which has touched
every aspect of our lives. Our day-to-day routines have
changed beyond recognition, with the lines between family
and work life completely evaporating. Most of us still don't
know if or when we will be able to resume 'normal' life.
But what has been encouraging is that people have turned to
you, the publisher, in this crisis. Whether it's for vital, trusted
news and updates about keeping safe and healthy, or for
entertainment during the long summer evenings in lockdown,
publishers of all shapes and sizes have seen huge boosts @EstherKeziaT
in traffic, susbcriptions and support. All whilst managing
disruption within your own businesses and personal lives.
We've been following the pandemic's impact on publishing
closely over the past few months. While it has been sad
to read of the inevitable closures of titles as margins are
squeezed, there have also been some really encouraging
successes.
Our intent with this report is to bring together all the best
examples we've seen of how organisations have risen to meet
the challenges of Covid-19. Damian Radcliffe, the report's
author looks at a range of tips and tactics to help all kinds of
publishers, from subscriptions to eCommerce, the state of ad
tech, and tools for building loyalty.
We hope that this upheaval will accelerate a process that
many of you have already been undertaking over the past
few years; broadening revenue streams, reducing reliance on
advertising, and renewing focus on your audience. This year
has proved that there are media models that will weather
even the most challenging of circumstances.
WNIP will continue to bring you the success stories, best
practice and tools to build a truly sustainable publishing
business. You can see our previous reports, including The
Publisher's Guide to eCommerce, 50 Ways to Make Media Pay,
and The Publisher's Guide to Podcasting on the website under
the 'Resources' tab. We also have our annual Media Moments
report launching soon, looking at the defining developments
of 2020 and what they mean for publishers.
Stay safe, and best wishes from the whole team at WNIP for
you and your business over the following months.
Esther Kezia Thorpe

Deputy Editor, What's New in Publishing
THE PUBLISHER'S GUIDE TO NAVIGATING COVID-19 III

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Damian Radcliffe is the Carolyn S. Chambers Professor in

Journalism, and a Professor of Practice, at the University of
Oregon.
Alongside holding the Chambers Chair, he is also a Fellow of
the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University,
an Honorary Research Fellow at Cardiff University’s School of
Journalism, Media and Culture Studies, and a fellow of the
Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures
and Commerce (RSA).
An experienced digital analyst, consultant, journalist, and
researcher, Damian has worked in editorial, research, policy,
and teaching positions for the past two decades in the UK, Damian Radcliffe
Middle East, and USA. @damianradcliffe
This includes roles in all media sectors (commercial, public, damianradcliffe.com
government, regulatory, academic, and nonprofit/civil society)
and all platforms (print, digital, TV and radio).
Damian continues to be an active journalist, writing monthly
columns for ZDNet (CBS Interactive) and What's New in
Publishing, and frequently appears in other publications such
as journalism.co.uk and IJNET.
He writes about digital trends, social media, technology, the
business of media, and the evolution of journalism. Damian is
the author of 50 Ways to Make Media Pay (available in English
and Spanish), The Publisher’s Guide to eCommerce and the
The Publisher’s Guide to eCommerce: Case Studies, special
insight reports sponsored by Sovrn and published by What’s
New In Publishing in 2019-20.
ABOUT US
Founded in 2008, What’s New In Publishing provides a single
destination for independent publishing businesses looking for
news, advice and education across a wide range of publishing
subjects.
We cover developments in digital publishing, magazines, and
newspapers, focusing on the issues and technological advances
confronting the industry at a time of profound disruption, of-
fering practical and useful advice from “What’s New?” to “What
Next?”.
With many thousands of publishers worldwide subscribing to our
weekly e-newsletter and many more visiting the site regularly,
WNIP is one of the world’s longest running and leading B2B web-
sites covering the publishing industry.
whatsnewinpublishing.com
@wnip
THE PUBLISHER'S GUIDE TO NAVIGATING COVID-19 IV

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This report was made possible with the help of additional

financial support for the author provided during summer
2020 by the School of Journalism and Communication at the
University of Oregon.
About the University of Oregon
Nestled in the lush Willamette Valley, with an easy drive to
both the Pacific Ocean and the Cascade Mountains, the
University of Oregon is renowned for its research prowess
and commitment to teaching. The UO is one of just two
Pacific Northwest members of the prestigious Association of
American Universities, a consortium of 62 leading public and
private research institutions in the United States and Canada.
It is also a Tier 1 national public research university.
Find out more: www.uoregon.edu
About the University of Oregon School of

Journalism and Communication
With a century-long history, the University of Oregon School
of Journalism and Communication (SOJC) is one of the first
professional journalism schools in the country, the only
accredited comprehensive journalism program to include
advertising and public relations in the Pacific Northwest, and
one of only 112 accredited programs worldwide.
The SOJC is a community of media scholars and professionals
dedicated to teaching, research, and creative projects that
champion freedom of expression, dialogue, and democracy in
service to future generations.
Our home in the Pacific Northwest and the opportunities
of our location are reflected in our explorations of media,
technology, and the human condition.
Through our undergraduate and graduate programs in media
studies, journalism, public relations, and advertising, we
conduct research and craft nonfiction stories on such critical
and global subjects as the environment, diverse cultures, and
international issues. We facilitate relationship building that
entails respect for consumer advocacy, transparency, and civic
engagement.
By integrating theory and practice, we advance media
scholarship and prepare students to become professional
communicators, critical thinkers, and responsible citizens in a
global society.
Find out more: journalism.uoregon.edu
THE PUBLISHER'S GUIDE TO NAVIGATING COVID-19 V

There’s reason to be optimistic.
The publishing industry is showing signs of

rebound in the wake of COVID-19, and new
tools and strategies have helped insulate
publishers from the economic effects.
From eCommerce to data, this report details

the ways that publishers are successfully
navigating the pandemic. Diverse, stable
revenue streams and the ingenuity required to
take advantage of new opportunities are
crucial to success in this new, challenging
ecosystem.
The resources within are adaptable for all

publishers—we hope they serve you well.
Power to the publisher.
THE PUBLISHER'S GUIDE TO NAVIGATING COVID-19 VI

COVID-19’s impact on the
media in ten charts
It’s too early to understand the full implications of the COVID-19
pandemic and its impact on publishers.
For some, it could be an “extinction-level event”1 with outlets around
the world2 being affected. Others may emerge stronger, as a result of
increased digital subscriptions, revenue diversification, and reduced –
or hollowed-out – competition.
Whatever happens, it’s likely3 that the industry will look very different
on the other side of this crisis. Given all of this uncertainty, what do we
know about the current media landscape?
THE PUBLISHER'S GUIDE TO NAVIGATING COVID-19 1

IMPACT ON THE MEDIA
Although there are some data-lags, we can discern some notable

trends. Here are ten of them:
1: Marketing Budgets are down worldwide

“Almost all product sectors will record a decline this year,” WARC
predicted this summer, “with the most severe falls seen among
travel & tourism (-31.2%), leisure & entertainment (-28.7%),
financial services (-18.2%) and retail (-15.2%).”
The company published the data in a recent Global Ad Trends
report4. This makes for sobering reading for those publishers who
remain heavily advertising dependent.
For newspaper publishers, in particular, these challenging
prospects were further compounded in PwC’s Global
Entertainment and Media Outlook report for 2020-20245.
According to the Press Gazette6:
“The report forecasts that global newspaper advertising
(print and online) will fall from $49.2bn in 2019 to $36bn in
2024, a decline of more than a quarter (27%) over five years…..
[alongside this] global circulation and subscriber revenue is
expected to fall from $58.7bn in 2019 to $50.4bn in 2024.”
“In the digital economy, the newspaper industry is having to
adapt or face irrelevance,” the authors remark, a message - of
course - that’s also applicable to other publication areas.
One of those segments, Newspaper revenue 2019-24 (print and online)
consumer magazines, saw
overall revenues slumping by
more than 14%, PwC reports,
with COVID playing a key
role in this. “That said, digital
offers a silver lining,” PwC
predicts7, “a tipping point for
consumer magazines in 2023
will see their global revenue
from digital advertising
overtake that from print
advertising.”
Despite this challenging
backdrop, “opportunities
can come from this, both for
advertisers and for media
owners,” writes8 Brian Wieser,
Global President, Business Via PWC / Press Gazette
Intelligence at GroupM (WPP).

“Every brand should be looking for opportunities, and questioning
assumptions about their company’s competitive position. What

IMPACT ON THE MEDIA
are the ways in which you can reinvent the category? That the
economy will be weak is a given, but any one business’s outcomes
are not, and shouldn’t be taken as given.”
Addressing this should be a priority for publishers, as well as the
brands we work with.
Marketing Budgets Index, worldwide and by key regions
Note: A value above 50 indicates growth, a value below 50 indicates decline. Larger/smaller
values signal severity.
Via WARC Data Global Marketing Index
2: COVID-19 has changed our media habits

Declining marketing budgets come as no surprise. Neither does
the finding that, with much of the world on lockdown for large
periods of time, our media behaviours have evolved too.
Research from Kantar9 indicated in late-May that one in five UK
homes signed up for a new video streaming subscription during
COVID-19 lockdown, although much of this was led by Disney+
which was scheduled to launch during this time anyway. How
much of a bump it got, as a result of the pandemic, is hard to say.
What we can say, however, is that globally, the data consistently
found that we were spending more time with streaming services,
social media and messenger services. Gaming has also seen a
major pandemic bump10.

IMPACT ON THE MEDIA
Notable here, as Simon Kemp identifies11, is that:

“Many people say that they expect their new habits to continue
after the COVID-19 outbreak passes too. One in five internet
users say they expect to continue watching more content on
streaming services, and one in seven (15 percent) say they
expect to continue spending more time using social media.”
Given this, publishers need to apply further thought to ways in
which they can make their new relationships with audiences as
“sticky” as they can.
This strategic consideration matters all the more, given that there
is some evidence to suggest COVID’s digital bump may be on the
wane.
“Surprisingly, though, our digital existence has lost some of

its charm lately with media consumption, including social
media, having fallen considerably since the end of April, despite
having enjoyed a surge at the beginning of the pandemic,”
Kantar revealed in September, using data from their 60-market
COVID-19 Barometer12.
“Perhaps the sensory deprivations of an increasingly digital
lifestyle will find future counterbalance in an uber-analogue to
come,” they speculated.

IMPACT ON THE MEDIA
All media, including social media, have fallen off after enjoying an
initial surge
Via Kantar COVID-19 Barometer
3: Publishers are producing new products

In response to our new media habits and changing information
needs, many publishers have experimented with efforts such as
dropping their paywall (with the hope of converting some fly-
by’s into subscribers) and launching new products like (but not
exclusively) coronavirus podcasts, alerts, and newsletters13.
According to members of WAN-IFRA’s Global Media Trends Panel,
more than half of the editorial executives they surveyed had
launched new products as a result of the pandemic14.
“Newsletters are the most common product,”
they found, “with some 55% saying they have
launched them, followed by infographics (49%),
and videos and live blogs (30%).”
4: Some local outlets are seeing a

coronavirus bump
“While publishers are yet to release digital
subscription figures which shows their
performance since lockdowns started, internet
traffic numbers hint that local news publishers
might be the biggest beneficiaries of changing
internet behaviour,” observed James Hewes, New products launched as a result of COVID-19.
President and CEO of FIPP earlier this year. Via WAN-IFRA
Hewes, cited an article15 from the New York Times which

revealed: “Among the biggest beneficiaries are local news
sites, with huge jumps in traffic as people try to learn how the
pandemic is affecting their hometowns.”
“These figures suggest a welcome consumer shift for more
locally focussed news media, who have been struggling to grow

IMPACT ON THE MEDIA
their subscription bases as rapidly as The search for updates on the virus has pushed up reader-
market-leading national news outlets ship for local and established newspapers, but not partisan
and specialist content publishers,” FIPP sites
commented in their Global Digital
Subscription Snapshot 2020 (Q2)16.
By Q3, FIPP had the data to back up
many of these earlier assumptions.
“Tribune Publishing, with its large
network of local and regional news
outlets, saw a 293% increase in digital
subscription sales in March alone,” they
reported17.
Elsewhere, “traffic to the San Francisco
Chronicle is up 150%, the Seattle Times
is up over 120% and the Boston Globe
is up nearly 100% over the last month,”
they said in August. “These figures
suggest a welcome consumer shift for
more locally focussed news media,
who have been struggling to grow
their subscription bases as rapidly as
market-leading national news outlets
and specialist content publishers,” they
contended.
Unfortunately, increased traffic does
not necessarily equate to increased
subscribers. So, while some local
publishers have seen a subscription
bump, that’s not true of everyone.
And despite record audiences at many
outlets, in the USA alone, more than
36,000 news media workers have been
impacted by COVID-1918, with jobs lost,
journalists furloughed and over 30 local
newsrooms shuttered19.
March averages are through the 24th.
A similar dynamic is playing out across

Via New York Times / SimilarWeb
the globe, driven by the fact that increases in subscription

revenue (where applicable) seldom offset lost advertising and
other revenues.
5: Pandemic-led subscription gains are holding

steady
The shift to reader revenue has already encouraged many
publishers to focus on reducing churn. After all, finding new
subscribers is more expensive than keeping existing ones.

IMPACT ON THE MEDIA
With the coronavirus driving new subscriptions, for some outlets

(and advertising projected to be in the doldrums for some time),
then this need has become even more paramount.
So far, early signs of subscriber growth are favourable. Although,
as the Atlantic and others have found20, subscription growth
is not necessarily a panacea for wider business and revenue
challenges.
Writing at the end of May, Digiday’s Lucinda
Southern observed21:
“The curve in subscription growth is starting
to flatten for some22 but still remains higher
than before coronavirus. Still, publishers
including Bloomberg Media, The New York
Times and The Guardian anecdotally say they
are seeing signs of stronger retention rates
from subscribers who have signed up since
February and March.”
“Most say it’s too early to declare this as a win,”
Southern cautions, reminding us “Publishers
measure churn in their own ways and
discounted monthly trial periods often need
longer for data collection.”
Nonetheless, “Segmenting by geography, Europe
is where the real churn improvement happened
— dropping by about 34%,” Piano noted23 on
their blog in May (the last time that they’ve
shared this data on their site). “In the US, churn
was flat overall. But even flat is impressive, given Active churn in March decreased by 17% for monthly subscriptions.
the big increase in acquisition.” Via Piano
The company – whose software is used by publishers such as

GateHouse, Business Insider, NBC, Condé Nast, The Economist,
and Hearst – highlights onboarding, encouraging repeat visits
and strategically managing trials and price, as “fundamentals”
that “Publishers looking to improve retention should focus on…
regardless of the pandemic surge.”
6: Consumers want brands to run “normal” ads

Insights from GlobalWebIndex (GWI) offered some interesting
additional perspectives24 on coronavirus-shaped attitudes and
behaviours, based on a survey of more than 17,000 internet users
in 20 countries.
For publishers, perhaps the most notable takeaway from
their fourth multi-market study25 saw consumers in favour of
“widespread – and growing – approval of brands advertising as
normal,” a trend that held steady throughout the start of summer.

IMPACT ON THE MEDIA
As Jason Mander, GWI’s Chief Research Officer, wrote26:

“Across the 20 countries surveyed, only 12% of consumers
disapprove of brands running “normal” advertising. That dips to
as low as 6% in New Zealand.”
“Conversely,” Mander said, “we’re seeing small but consistent
decreases in approval for coronavirus-related advertising.”
More widely, GWI also highlighted increased interest in
staycations, on-going financial concerns and environmental
sustainability, all of which publishers should be aware of.
Support for normal advertising steadily increases
Via GlobalWebIndex
7: Global advertising down in 2020, but digital

remains strong
Despite this consumer optimism for advertising to return
to normal, data from WARC paints a less rosy picture. Their
latest freely available Global Ad Trends report27 concludes that
advertising spend looks set to fall 8.1% – $49.6bn – worldwide this
year.
Interestingly, this is a lower percentage than during the start of
the Great Recession in 2009, when the advertising market fell

IMPACT ON THE MEDIA
by 12.7% ($60.5bn). In 2020, some sectors - notably social media,

online video and search - are still growing.
Moreover, traditional media channels like newspapers (-5.9%)
and magazines (-5.6%) were already declining year-on-year, pre-
pandemic; with this trend exacerbated by the coronavirus.
COVID-19 has also had an adverse effect on traditional channels
– such as TV, Radio, Out of Home Advertising (OOH) and Cinema
– which had previously been projected to grow this year.
Looking ahead, Dr. Daniel Knapp, Chief Economist for IAB
Europe, reflected28 how difficult it can be to make predictions in
the current climate. “The basic dynamics are known,” he writes.
“Advertising expenditure does not just follow economic trends
– it amplifies them. This is particularly the case if GDP growth is
flat or negative.”
“All three advertising recessions in Europe over the past 20
years – the dotcom crash and 9/11 in 2001, the financial crisis in
2008/09 and the Eurozone crisis in 2012, showed this dynamic,”
he states.
“However, history is not always a good guide. The current
crisis lacks precedent in its combination of factors from
epidemiological to policy and economic issues, all while
embedded in a global environment that is impossible to control in
a local setting.”
Global, Year-on-year % change, US dollars, 2020
Note: Data are net of discounts, include agency commission and exclude production costs. Online
display includes social media and online video.
Via WARC Data, Adspend Database, International Ad Forecast

IMPACT ON THE MEDIA
8: Consumers, more than ever, need a broad

content mix
Although the coronavirus outbreak produced a bump for many
news organisations, it wasn’t long before that appeared to be
over29.
One key reason for this, as the Pew Research Center shared30, is
that: “About seven-in-ten Americans (71%) say they need to take
breaks from news about the coronavirus, and 43% say the news
leaves them feeling worse emotionally.”
News avoidance and fatigue, as the Digital News Report % of U.S. adults who feel...
has shown31, was already an issue pre-pandemic.
Abstinence, the authors previously suggested, “may be
because the world has become a more depressing place
or because the media coverage tends to be relentlessly
negative – or a mix of the two.”
To address this, I argued at the start of the year32, that
it would be incumbent on news outlets to do things
differently.
This may involve telling stories in fresh and innovative
ways, changing the tone of content, engaging with
audiences online and offline, as well as exploring new
beats and approaches to storytelling (such as solutions
journalism)33. Source: Survey of U.S. adults conducted April 20-26, 2020.
Via Pew Research Centre
In the world of COVID-19, those words seem more

pertinent than ever.
To this, I would also recommend looking more at the power of
your archive, evergreen content, and highlighting stories from
the past 3-4 months which may have been overlooked as a result
of the pandemic.
The coronavirus isn’t going away any time soon, so publishers
need to recognise that the “new normal,” for advertisers and
consumers alike, may not look that different from where we are
today.

What COVID-19 means for
subscription strategies
Prior to the coronavirus outbreak, publishers were already pivoting to
subscriptions.
At the start of the year, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism
(RISJ) found that 50% of digital leaders identified reader revenue as
their major income focus for 2020.
“Reader revenue specifically, has very positive prospects,” Jon Slade,
the FT’s Chief Commercial Officer, told RISJ, as part of their annual
predictions report1. “Advertising revenue remains a major concern,” he
noted.
Those concerns have multiplied in a COVID world, where advertising
spend has been decimated, making the need to focus on subscriptions
and reader revenue more important than ever.

COVID & SUBSCRIPTIONS
With that in mind, here are seven trends and strategic

considerations for subscriptions in the COVID era:
1: Advertising revenues hit by short – and long –

term trends
Globally advertising revenue will drop by at least 7.4% in 20202,
predicts the research firm Omdia. This “best-case scenario” is
based on an assumption that the global advertising market will
pick up in the second half of the year.
In the United States, GroupM said it expects advertising3 to
decline by 13% this year (a figure which excludes political
advertising for 2020’s presidential and other elections).
The impact of this will be felt across the board. In June, eMarketer
reported that4:
“For the first time since we began estimating ad revenues at
Google, the company’s net US digital ad revenues will decline in
absolute terms. Facebook and Amazon will continue to grow but
at severely depressed rates compared with earlier expectations.”
Advertising spend is dropping, and has dropped, at a much faster
rate for publishers.
In Canada, Postmedia, the Best case scenario: Correlation between GDP and total global
country’s largest newspaper advertising revenue growth
chain, has seen print
advertising fall by 36.6%
($23.7 million)5, and digital
advertising by 37.7%. The New
York Times reported6 that
overall ad revenue fell in Q1
2020 by more than 15%, with
digital ad revenue down 7.9%
and print ad revenue down
20.9%. In Q2 the figures were
even more striking7, as “digital
advertising revenue decreased
31.9%, while print advertising
revenue decreased 55%.”
Many publishers have also
been hit by advertisers using “blacklist” technology to ensure that
their ads don’t appear on stories mentioning the coronavirus8.
In the U.K. alone, it’s estimated that this could cost newspapers
£50m in lost digital revenues9.
Meanwhile, AdAge, citing10 a report from the cybersecurity
company Cheq, reported that “incorrect blocking of safe content
on premium news sites” in 2019 already resulted in $2.8 billion in
lost ad revenue, a figure which may be superceded in 2020.

2: COVID-19’s subscription surge

At the same time as advertising has been falling, numerous
outlets have reported record traffic during the pandemic, with
audiences hungry for news and updates.
In March, around 15% of all web traffic was coronavirus-related11.
Some of this interest has been successfully parlayed into
subscriptions:
• The New York Times now has more than 6.5 million
subscribers (print and digital), adding 669,000 digital
subscribers in Q2 2020. In March, The Times had 240 million
unique visitors and 2.5 billion page views, up from 101 million
uniques in January.
• CNBC’s website hit 1 billion page views for the first time
in March 2020, more than doubling traffic from February.
Subscriptions to CNBC Pro, a premium product costing $29.99
a month or $299.99 a year, were up 189% since January 202012.
• As we have already noted, Tribune Publishing experienced a
293% increase in new digital subscriptions between March
and February 202013. This included an increased conversion
rate, from users hitting the paywall, of 109%.
According to Zuora’s latest Subscription Impact Report14, in
comparison with the previous 12 months, subscriptions in
Digital News & Media grew by 110% between March to May
2020, although that rate is slowing. This was the second-fastest
subscription segment behind OTT Video Streaming.
Who are these new subscribers? Well, that appears to vary by
publication. AdWeek states that new subscribers differ from
publications’ usual readership, and getting to know them is key15;
whereas in a report for INMA, Grzegorz Piechota finds16 that
subscriptions tend to be from existing users, not new COVID
readers.
Subscription growth rates since COVID-19
Via Zuora

3: Focus on building a long-term relationship

As MediaPost’s Rob Williams observes17:
“At the risk of sounding too cynical, the increased digital
readership is an opportunity for publishers to tout their vital
role in providing news and information to their communities —
and to form ties that can last after the crisis subsides.”
Tien Tzuo, CEO and Founder of Zuora, and author of Subscribed:
Why the Subscription Model Will Be Your Company’s Future –
and What to Do About It, agrees, arguing18, “If the Subscription
Economy is about anything, it’s about a fundamental return to
relationships.”
The most obvious way that many publishers
have sought to cultivate a relationship with
audiences has been through dropping their
paywalls for COVID-19 related content.
Alongside this, many publications have launched
free coronavirus newsletters, with the hope that
these – along with partial paywalls – are a means
of coaxing audiences into a paid relationship.
It’s not a strategy everyone agrees with.
“The newspaper industry seems to think that
Tweet from Nick Thompson, Editor in Chief, Wired
public service can’t coexist with revenue,”
argues Howard Saltz , Knight Innovator-in-Residence at
19
Florida International University’s School of Journalism and Mass

Communication. Saltz, who until recently served as the Publisher
and Editor-in-Chief of the Sun Sentinel Media Group in Fort
Lauderdale says:
“That’s a mistake — at a time when the beleaguered industry
can’t afford to make one…”
”We hope the community will develop a journalism habit that’ll
continue when we start charging for access again, but we may
be instead reinforcing the habit that news should be free.”
4: Make the case for subscriptions

To counteract this risk, a number of publishers have emphasised
why news and other media content needs to be paid for. As part
of this, publishers are stressing the value of their work (and the
cost of creating it) in their own marketing.
“There’s nothing quite like a crisis for a news brand to show how
we are really good at working quickly,” Suzi Watford, the Wall
Street Journal’s chief marketing officer, told The Drum20.

The Trusting News project showcases a number of these

approaches21, highlighting how outlets – ranging from the
Guardian to the Coloradoan (Fort Collins, Colorado) and the
Fort Worth Star-Telegram – have made the case for taking out a
subscription. These efforts are not just being made on their own
properties, but offsite on Facebook and YouTube too.
Interestingly, the Star-Telegram in Texas, like some other
providers, began by making all coronavirus content free. But, in
April, they started to take a different approach. As their executive
editor Steve Coffman explained22:
“We will continue to make stories critical to your health and
safety available to everyone. But some of our coronavirus
work will begin to migrate behind the meter, or paywall. Some
examples are longer-form accountability and feature reporting,
as well as tangential stories about the effects of the coronavirus
on our economy.”
“This is a matter of survival for the Star-Telegram and other local
newspapers,” he added.
5: Build on wider subscription habits

In asking consumers to pay for Entertainment subscriptions add up
content, it helps that subscription Paid media and entertainment subscriptions per consumer
habits are already becoming more
commonplace.
According to Deloitte’s latest
Digital Media trends survey23, “U.S.
consumers had an average of 12
paid media and entertainment
subscriptions pre-COVID-19.” That
figure was even higher for some
audiences, with millennials averaging
17 subscriptions.
And although many people have less
money in their pockets, Deloitte’s
data shows that consumers are busy
adding new subscriptions (often
taking advantage of trial pricing and
ad-supported services), cancelling
old ones, and also trying out new
Source: Digital Media Trends, 14th Edition (pre-COVID-19 survey), via Deloitte Insights
services.
These wider subscription behaviors represent an opportunity,
and a threat, that media organisations must be cognizant of.

6: Don’t overlook the need to convert non-

subscribers
Alongside this, companies also need to look at the reasons why
the majority of their consumers do not subscribe and double
down on efforts to convert that audience.
The market research company Resonate identified24 four potential
target groups for publishers:
1. Those who do not have a digital subscription because they
feel there is already plenty of free content.
2. Those who do not have a digital subscription because they are
not interested
3. Those who do not have a digital subscription because it is too
expensive.
4. Those who are engaged with newspapers online.
Understanding the information needs and consumption habits of
these audiences is vital, as is creating compelling offers to reach
out and convert them into subscribers.
There’s no agreement about what Younger consumers plan to cut entertainment subscriptions as
constitutes best practice. Tactics fatigue mounts
such as the deployment of special
sign-up offers, whether you do or
do not provide COVID-19 content
for free, subscription costs, and
deviating from a “one-size-fits-all”
subscription model, will vary from
publisher to publisher.
That said, especially for news
publishers, the pandemic has
arguably created an environment
where consumers may be more
receptive to subscribing, and where
the reason for doing so can be
more readily understood. It’s an
opportunity that publishers need to Source: Digital Media Trends, 14th Edition (pre-COVID-19 survey), via Deloitte Insights
capitalise on.
7: Become an audience first organisation

“Digital and print media companies wondering how best to keep
new subscribers who signed up during the pandemic will need
to prove to readers that their publication is invaluable after the
crisis,” writes AdWeek’s Sara Jerde25.
“Businesses that focus on the audience first and advertising
second will be better equipped to handle the consequences of the

pandemic,” argues Curtis Huber, Senior Director of Circulation

and Audience Revenue at the Seattle Times.
For companies who have seen a bump in subscribers as a result of
the coronavirus, retention will be key.
That may mean deploying dynamic pricing, bundling and other
techniques, such as highlighting non COVID-19 related content,
which may appeal to a subscriber’s wider interests.
Reducing churn, developing strategies for building loyalty, and
generating recurring income from subscribers, is essential if an
“audience first” approach is your new revenue model.
This is especially important given that advertising revenues are
not expected to return to previously projected levels for some
time. As a result, subscriptions and reader revenue are only going
to become more important to publishers as we all adapt to this
“new reality”.

How eCommerce, mem-
berships and donations are
helping diversify revenues
during COVID-19
If nothing else, the impact of the coronavirus has highlighted the
fragility of digital publishing. There’s a certain financial irony that
although online traffic is up - with many outlets enjoying record page
views - for a majority of organisations, overall revenue is down.
Given the challenge of current advertising markets, it’s no surprise
that many publishers are looking to increase their revenue from
subscriptions. However, this isn’t the only way they can generate more
reader revenue.

BEYOND SUBSCRIPTIONS
It’s a cliche to say that advertising delivers digital dimes

compared to print dollars. But for evidence of the magnitude of
this difference, look no further than earnings data from The New
York Times.
• At the end of Q1 2020, The New York Times Company had
840,000 print subscribers and just over 5 million subscribers
to its news and other digital subscription products
(crossword, cooking and audio).
• Yet print advertising revenues were worth $55 million and
digital advertising revenues $51.2 million (48.2% of total
company advertising revenues) during this period.
• Print subscription revenues were also worth more: $155.4
million versus $130 million.
Advertising revenues by category for the first quarters of 2020 & 2019
Only in August 2020 did the New York Times Company report1
that, for the first time, quarterly revenue (Q2 2020) was led by
digital ($185.5 million in revenue for digital subscriptions and ads
vs. $175.4 million for print).
What these numbers so clearly demonstrate is the continued
value of print to many publishers, as well as the challenge of
preserving print income (which is nonetheless in decline) while
also growing digital and other revenues.
Here are three ways that publishers and media companies are
going beyond subscriptions and advertising to bring in revenues
at this time:
1: eCommerce
Not surprisingly, lockdowns and quarantine have had a
substantial impact on eCommerce, as consumers increasingly
shop online and from the safety of their own homes.
As a result, “the performance of the online economy becomes the
performance of the retail economy overall,” Vivek Pandya, lead
analyst for Adobe Digital Insights told Bloomberg2 during the
early stages of the pandemic.
We’ve written extensively3 about the eCommerce potential for
publishers4, as outlets move to close the gap between providing
the inspiration for consumer purchases to offering a conduit for

The evolution of shoppable content, which offers potential for publishers

Via Styla and Digital Doughnut
them. It’s a strategy that we are seeing across verticals ranging

from motoring to recipes and food, travel to fashion, as well as
homes, beauty and DIY.
During the pandemic, a number of publishers have begun to
further realise some of this potential.
In March, Hearst sold 1 million products through site content
across its 30 brands. Their stable includes
titles like Men’s Health, Good Housekeeping
and Cosmopolitan. Sales for April were likely
to double again, they revealed5 to Media Post,
representing a 358% year-on-year increase.
“We didn’t suddenly create a bunch of
new content,” explained Kristine Brabson,
executive director strategy and editorial
insights. Instead, the company ensured that
editors audited high performing traffic, and
followed this up by checking to see if the
products being recommended were in stock
and appropriate for the pandemic.
“We started to see an increase in certain
categories among what we produce day to day
and month to month,” Brabson added. Hearst One of Cosmopolitan's most popular stories this year, '10 Best At-Home
then “created more content in real time to Laser Hair Removal Devices That Actually Work'.
answer some of those needs.”

It’s a similar story at Meredith and Condé Nast, notes Folio6.
“We’re on track to drive over $500 million in retail sales this
year,” said Andy Wilson, SVP of consumer revenue at Meredith

Corp, with cooking supplies as well as home essentials - such

as cleaning supplies and home office furniture and accessories
- driving much of this growth.
At Condé Nast’s Epicurious and Self, eCommerce increased by
more than 70% in March, compared to 2019, again driven by
people being at home cooking. Since the start of the pandemic,
sales of recommended kitchen scales, for example, increased
tenfold.
2: Memberships
“As a general rule of thumb, publishers who are
covering the coronavirus pandemic should feel
comfortable asking readers for financial support
during the time,” writes7 Stephanie Miles,
Director of Digital Content at Web Publisher
PRO. “Publishers who are not covering the
current crisis may want to take a more nuanced
approach.”
“Digital publishers are seeing surges in website
traffic as people search for information about
COVID-19, but capitalizing on that interest and
asking visitors to pay for online memberships
or subscriptions is a delicate proposition,” Miles
cautions.
Mary Walter-Brown, CEO of the U.S.-based
News Revenue Hub agrees, telling the
Membership Puzzle8, “I think it’s important not
to appear opportunistic in this moment after
we've worked so hard to build audience trust.”
In the article, Ariel Zirulnick shares how a
number of outlets around the world have
responded to the crisis, sharing lessons
from Red/Acción (Argentina) Krautreporter
(Germany) The Daily Maverick in South Africa
and El Diario (Spain). elDiario.es outline their emergency plan to guarantee the survival of
the publication, which included cutting the highest salaries by as much
as 30%, and increasing their annual membership prices.
Of particular note, is that El Diario added 9,000
members (36,000 - 45,000) over a ten-day period in March,
despite increasing their annual membership from 60 euros to 80
euros.
“Behind eldiario.es there is no bank, no great fortune, no political
party, no large communication group. We need your help because
we have no one else to turn to.” said journalist Ignacio Escolar.
“They were transparent with their readers about this, detailing
revenue losses, cuts they made to the salaries of top editors, and
other budgetary adjustments,” Zirulnick observes9.

“Subscription and membership aren’t the same, and the

difference is more than semantics,” Kate Myers and Emily
Goligoski reminded us back in 201810.
“A membership model invites audiences to give their time, money,
connections, professional expertise, ideas, and other non-
financial contributions to support organizations they believe in.”
An example of how a successful membership site, Daily Maverick (South Africa) outlines the
benefits of membership.
In contrast, subscriptions are a more “transactional relationship,”

and the value proposition of each differs. Nonetheless, “both
can — and will continue to be — critical to the future sustainable
models that we so clearly need in this industry,” they add.
3: Donations
In some countries, members of a publication can benefit from
their support being tax-deductible. In the U.S., an example of an
outlet that highlights this possibility is The Rivard Report, a 501(c)
(3) nonprofit11, which covers San Antonio in Texas.

The site, which started as a community blog in 2012, became a

501(c)(3) nonprofit enterprise in 2015. According to its website12,
“it now features a staff of 18 full-time journalists and business
team members and publishes a number of freelance contributors.”
It offers four different tiers of membership, each with different
benefits.
The website also prominently features a button in its toolbar
encouraging readers to donate. During the pandemic, the team
has also used an email newsletter to encourage donations13.
In a similar vein, the Portland Press Herald (Maine, USA) offers
users the opportunity to subscribe, gift a subscription, or make a
tax-deductible donation.
The Portland Press Herald's support options
As Stefanie Manning, vice president of circulation and consumer

marketing, divulged to the Local Media Association14:
“We have been very focused on our digital subscription strategy.
…When the pandemic hit, we thought really hard about how do
we not get off that road while at the same time expressing our
need for support from our community beyond subscriptions…
We very quickly put up a support message saying that we
needed support and that our coverage was going to be free but
not free to produce.”
The paper is part of Masthead Maine, the state’s largest media
network, which includes five dailies and 25 weekly publications
and six specialty publications.
At the start of the year, before the coronavirus outbreak hit the
U.S., the company had already announced15 that it would stop
printing Monday editions for 4 of 5 papers in March, moving them
to online only. According to CEO Lisa DeSisto, the cost-saving

measure stemmed from the fact that the Monday papers aren’t
profitable (other days are). They also have the lowest circulation
and least ad revenue.
Of note here is that donations to The Portland Press Herald go
to a program called the COVID-19 Local News Fund16, which
is administered by Local Media Foundation, a Section 501(c)(3)
charitable trust affiliated with Local Media Association (LMA).
The program is only available for independent and family-owned
media companies, with the express aim of increasing coverage of
COVID-19 issues in local communities.
“All money raised by this effort will go directly to support
COVID-19 reporting, to make sure the public has essential facts
on this important topic,” the donation page for The Portland Press
Herald states17.
More than 100 other local news outlets across the
States have also signed up18.
Alongside administering the fund, the LMA also
provides participants with other forms of support,
including “a library of turnkey marketing and
promotion assets,” as well as “customized campaign
page(s)” and best practices, important angles to cover,
and tips for remote reporting.
“Publishers who are being direct, honest and
empathetic with readers about their challenges are
seeing previously unthinkable levels of support from
local communities,” writes19 David Grant Manager,
A map showing some of the locations of fund participants
Facebook Journalism Project Accelerator Program. Via Local Media Association
In the same post, Lynne Brennen, a former marketing executive at

Dow Jones and The New York Times, and a coach in the Facebook
Journalism Project Accelerator Program, argues that “the impetus
for contributions needs to be clear and compelling.”
“Connect donations to specific funds or newsroom initiatives,
even in the context of supporting coronavirus coverage. Readers
are suspicious of vague requests for support, at best, and see it as
a reflection of mismanagement, at worst.”
These principles apply to all three of these revenue efforts:
eCommerce, memberships and donations.
In each instance, there needs to be a clear value proposition for
audiences and transparency (at times lacking in the eCommerce
space20) about financial relationships and where the money goes.
This approach is essential if publishers are looking to embrace, or
grow, these potential revenue streams; especially at a time when
some audiences may have less money in their pockets.

Four ways publishers are
building loyalty during
COVID-19
Loyalty is a rare, but valuable, commodity for publishers.
Acquiring new paying customers and members can be an expensive
business. As a result, we’ve seen numerous outlets invest heavily in
retention efforts in recent years, as content creators look to reduce
churn1 and retain existing audiences2.
In the COVID-era, many publishers have seen spikes in traffic as
consumers have sought out coronavirus related information, or
alternatively, distractions from the crisis.
As publishers increasingly pivot to reader-revenue, finding ways to keep
new (and existing) audiences on board is a strategic priority.

BUILDING LOYALTY
Here are four ways that publishers are endeavouring to build

loyalty during the pandemic.
1: Launching new coronavirus products

With COVID-19 rapidly circumnavigating the globe, it didn’t take
long for publishers to seize the potential to create, and launch,
coronavirus-focused news products. As Nieman Lab’s Hanaa
Tameez noted3 at the start of March, “If you’re itching for more
information about coronavirus and its specific impacts, there’s a
product for you and it’s probably free.”
The most common of these have been coronavirus-themed
podcasts and newsletters. These new products don’t just meet
audience needs for information, publishers also hope that they
will offer a pathway to subscription for non-subscribers.
Sometimes this aspiration is implicit, but more frequently than
not publishers are including a specific call to action within
their content. The New York Times’ daily Coronavirus Briefing
newsletter, for example, makes the ask clear and simple.
It’s an approach that they’re weaving into other non-COVID
content too. NYT’s The Daily, is one of the most popular podcasts
in the world. In the middle of each episode, you’ll now typically
find an explicit call to support the NYT’s journalism with a
subscription.
In seeking to drive and develop subscriptions, a key goal for
media creators is to build habit and loyalty. Consistency, such as
publishing to a regular schedule, which many newsletters and
podcasts do, can help with this.
COVID-19 related products can also play
a vital role as a gateway to other content
and services. Coronavirus newsletters,
for example, do more than just meet an
immediate consumer need. They’re also
an opportunity for publishers to highlight The New York Times' newsletter call-to-action
non-COVID content. This is important if
you want to try and build a long-term connection with new users;
ideally, a subscription-based relationship that lasts beyond the
pandemic.
Nic Newman, in a deep dive into “The Resurgence and
Importance of Email Newsletters,”4 as part of 2020’s Digital News
Report, also comments how newsletters can go beyond being a
fishing expedition for new subscribers. “...They can be equally
valuable in providing regular prompts for existing customers to
use the product more regularly.”

BUILDING LOYALTY
And lest we forget, these platforms - even during the COVID

crisis- are also ripe for monetisation.
In the States, podcast advertising revenue is expected to grow by
14.7% in 2020, the fourth annual IAB Podcast Advertising Revenue
Report reveals5. However, that's a substantial slowdown from the
48% growth in advertising revenues the format saw in 2019.
“Despite COVID, which has slammed everyone, we’re still seeing
growth in podcast advertising,” said Zoe Soon, VP of consumer
experience center at the IAB6. “It’s definitely a resilient media.”
Meanwhile, Digiday observes7 how The Washington Post’s
coronavirus newsletter has created new sales in the form of
sponsorship opportunities with companies like Goldman Sachs,
Slack and Salesforce.
IAB/PWC - FY 2019 Podcast Ad Revenue Study, July 2020
2: Hosting digital events

Pre-COVID, a number of publishers were heavily invested in the
revenue potential of events.
As HubSpot commented back in 20168: “As a media company, one
of your biggest strengths is your ability to create communities of
people… Why not extend your value and offer in-person events to
complement your content?”
“Even small independent publishers find events and publishing
natural bedfellows,” FIPP observed9 at the time, highlighting the
success of Embassy Magazine, a niche publication catering for
“news and views from the London diplomatic corps.”

BUILDING LOYALTY
Before COVID-19 upended these prospects, publishers were

confident about the role that events would play in revenue
growth this year.
In January, a Folio: survey of 182 industry professionals found10
that live events were seen as the second biggest driver for
revenue growth in 2020, with more than four in ten respondents
identifying events as a driver for revenue growth. This was the
second most popular revenue vertical after digital advertising and
branded content.
Lockdowns and quarantine orders kiboshed many of these

ambitions, although this hasn’t stopped publishers from pivoting
to digital events11.
Esther Kezia Thorpe, in an article12 for What’s New In Publishing
examining how Hearst Live and New Scientist ran successful
virtual events, shared takeaways from their pandemic experience.
This includes monetising virtual events and using digital delivery
as a means to overcome the geographic boundaries which many
physical events face.

BUILDING LOYALTY
Looking ahead she quotes Nikki Clare, Head of Events and Client
Service at Hearst Live, as saying that the pandemic experience
will carry over into their post-COVID events strategy.
“In the short to medium term, we’re looking at virtual events as
our core products, but then our medium to longer term strategy
will be hybrid events,” Clare said. “We still believe very much in
the power of live experience, but we also believe that we can
translate a lot of that into virtual or hybrid events. It’s a really
exciting time for the industry in some ways.”
3: Dropping paywalls
As the spread of COVID-19 gathered speed, many publishers
made the decision to drop their paywalls for coronavirus related
content. However, there have been notable exceptions, such as
the Boston Globe and the Los Angeles Times, to this trend.
In Poynter, Kelly McBride and Rick Edmonds debated the ethics
of this, with Edmonds noting13:
“Legacy newspapers have a business imperative to build
revenue from paid digital subscriptions. It could turn out to be
a matter of survival. But dropping the paywall in a time of crisis
makes essential and comprehensive local coverage available to
the whole community, not just those who can pay.”
At the same time, citing Poynter’s writing coach Roy Peter Clark,
McBride rightly warns us: “If you are out of business, the great
journalism you had been doing is not going to be available to
anyone.”
Acknowledging this, numerous news outlets, whether they
dropped their paywall or not, have used the crisis as an
opportunity to remind audiences14 of the cost of producing
journalism, and why financial support is imperative.
This is important because as Joy Mayer at the
Trusting News project reminds us15, most people
don’t know how journalism is funded, or the
financial state that it is in.
In doing this, publishers have not just to deliver
on their public service responsibilities, but
they’ve also hoped to parlay this renewed reader
interest into subscriptions. Some magazine
publishers, like Condé Nast, Dennis Publishing
and Bauer Media, have reported growth in
subscriber numbers16. Courtesy of INMA, via journalism.co.uk
News sites, as Grzegorz Piechota, researcher-in-residence,

INMA, demonstrated at May’s INMA Virtual World Congress17 saw
an initial subscription spike. Although that has slowed, at the time
the current rate of growth remains higher than pre-COVID.

BUILDING LOYALTY
One major challenge, of course, is that even with increased

subscriptions and donations, these revenues do not get even
close to the revenue losses that publishers are seeing from other
income streams (such as advertising and events).
In response, some publishers, like the U.S. newspaper group
McClatchy have reinstated their paywalls. At the end of March,
Axios reported18 that the company was letting local editors
determine which stories would be in front of the paywall, and
which ones would be behind it.
4: Offering premium content and new services

At the same time as many publishers have tweaked their paywall
during this crisis, others have used the pandemic to launch new
paid-for products.
This is most obviously true of streaming services. Disney+
launched in the UK during the pandemic. (The timing was
incidental.) In the U.S. NBC launched Peacock, it’s long-planned
OTT channel, which also - like Hulu - includes a premium ad-free
version19.
Not surprisingly, many of us are watching a lot more content
during lockdown, and streaming services have been the main
beneficiaries of this.
GlobalWebIndex’s Coronavirus Multi-Market Study finds20 that
in a number of major markets more than half of internet users
are spending more time watching shows and streaming services.
They also found 13-16% are listening to more podcasts too.

BUILDING LOYALTY
Alongside these long-planned streaming launches, other content

creators are also unveiling premium services at this time.
In July, Skift, the travel industry intelligence site, launched a
new membership product, Skift Pro. Costing $135 a quarter,
or $365 for a year (and $595 for 2 years), benefits for users
include unlimited access to news stories, a members-only
weekly newsletter, conference calls with Skift editorial staff and
guaranteed access (plus a discount) for Skift events.
According to co-founder and Chief Product Officer Jason
Clampet the product had been in the pipeline for over a year. Its
launch, however, comes at a time when the travel industry has
been heavily impacted by furloughs and layoffs. Marketing and
advertising spend for the travel vertical have been one of the
most hit by the coronavirus.
“It’s hard to know what is a good time right
now for anything,” Clampet told Digital Content
Next21. “The reality of business is that direct
from consumer revenue is vital to just about any
media business.”
“We also know that there are people who are
still at companies in Europe and Asia, which is
waking up again. They need actual information
to do their jobs better and make smarter
decisions. We’re still here providing that, so in
that sense, it is a good time [to launch].”
The move, CEO and founder Rafat Ali said on Twitter22, means
that “Skift is now officially a Subscription-First business
information company.” “This is an important shift for Skift,” he
wrote. “This decision builds a key revenue stream that will be
more resilient to industry down cycles.”
Takeaways
What these examples demonstrate is that many publishers are
using tried and tested techniques to serve audiences and build
loyalty.
Other efforts, such as digital events, are more experimental, but
are an opportunity to pivot existing revenue models (events being
an area many publishers have invested heavily in), harness digital
platforms to meet existing - and pandemic-emerging - needs.
Deloitte, in their report “COVID-19: Maintaining customer
loyalty and trust during times of uncertainty,” stresses that the
foundations of customer loyalty are trust and confidence23. These
“are being put to the test,” they observe, “and people are scared.”
“By putting your customers’ interests first, this can be a time for
your company’s brand to lead,” they advise. “Even though you

BUILDING LOYALTY
might be taking a short-term hit to your bottom line, putting

flexible refund, pricing, and change policies in place, and finding
other ways to help your customers through this crisis will be
beneficial to the long-term health of your company.”
This guidance isn’t aimed specifically at publishers, but as we
have seen many outlets are putting these ideals into place with
new products, changes to their paywalls and new services which
meet consumer needs, as well as on-going revenue requirements.
Publishers should optimize for loyalty, Content Insights’ Milos
Stanic argued last year24. Many players have already made that
move, or begun that process. For all publishers, regardless
of where they are in this transition, COVID-19 has made this
strategic imperative more relevant and important than ever.

Tactics to generate
engagement during
COVID-19
Publishers have deployed a range of means to generate loyalty during
the pandemic.
By harnessing new products and services, as well as pivoting old ones
to meet COVID realities1, content creators are using a number of
different techniques to pique the interest of audiences2.
Building consumption habits is a key driver for creating loyalty. But it’s
not the only tactic that publishers are using. Alongside these efforts,
they are also exploring other ways to deepen the experience of their
users. One key reason for this is that loyal subscribers are more likely to
stay subscribers3.
At a time of financial stress (with consumers having less money in
their pockets), and an expanding subscription economy4, not only is
reducing churn a priority, publishers also want to find ways to super-
serve their most loyal audiences.

ENGAGEMENT TACTICS
Here are four ways that publishers are generating engagement

during the coronavirus crisis.
1: Encouraging eCommerce
With large swathes of the world on lockdown at various points in
the pandemic, many of us have needed to change our shopping
habits. Where possible, consumers have shifted to online
transactions. And although that’s starting to decline a little as
restrictions on physical shopping have eased, eCommerce has
been a clear beneficiary of the COVID crisis.
Compared to our pre-COVID world, as data captured by Simon
Kemp in his Digital 2020 July Global Statshot report5 shows,
“ecommerce transactions have increased across almost every
category.”
Data from Contentsquare shows6 that overall eCommerce
transactions are up nearly 19% compared to the same time last
year, and conversion rates (the ratio of transactions to sessions,
expressed as a percentage) are up nearly 25% since the outbreak
began.
Contentsquare's global dashboard, August 8th 2020
Given this trend, it’s no surprise that some publishers are trying
to capitalise on these behaviours.
Cosmopolitan and The Strategist are two publications who have
explored new ways to drive eCommerce during COVID-197. To do
this, both outlets have focussed on special events as a means to
drive online sales.
The Strategist’s Two-Day (Actually Good) Sale, ran from July
29 - 30, offering deals on 30 different products, ranging from
vibrators to dog carriers, reading glasses to noise machines, as
well as a $1,400 ”smart bassinet” for new parents8.

ENGAGEMENT TACTICS
Deals were launched hourly on the site.

Newsletter subscribers also had access to other
offers, which were not publicised elsewhere.
“Though it’s the first deals event for the
Strategist,” the company noted in a press
release9, “the site has previously experimented
with IRL retail, launching a holiday pop-up shop
in 2018.”
Cosmopolitan devised Hauliday, “an exclusive
two-day shopping extravaganza” in partnership
with the eCommerce platform Klarna. The
online shopping event features discounts of up
to 50 percent between 8-9 August for purchases
made with brands such as Sephora, Adidas, and
H&M.
“While virtual shopping festivals are nearly
nonexistent in the U.S., these events have seen Illustration: Joe McKendry, via The Strategist
huge success from consumers across the world,”

WWD’s Alexandra Pastore writes10.
Cosmo’s 72 million monthly readers spent more than $9 billion
shopping online last year, according to David Sykes, head of U.S.
at Klarna, which helps explain why the publication is keen to try
and get a bigger slice of the eCommerce pie.
“Beauty will be a winning consumption category for Hauliday,”
predicts11 Nancy Berger, SVP, and Publishing Director at
Cosmopolitan, “with an opportunity for our readers to treat
themselves to a new fragrance, a luxury skin care regime or their
favorite makeup products.”
Research from the NPD Group12 shows that although overall
sales of prestige beauty products have been down during
the pandemic, online sales grew by 90% during Q2 2020,
representing about 61% of industry sales volume, and a great
space for publisher-retailer partnerships.
As we noted in our special report13, The Publisher’s Guide to

eCommerce: Case Studies, a number of publishers - such as Marie
Claire UK and POPSUGAR - have moved into the beauty space
with their own branded products.

ENGAGEMENT TACTICS
“Moreover,” Simon Kemp says, “research from GlobalWebIndex

shows that almost half of all internet users expect to make
more use of eCommerce even after the outbreak is over, with
consumers in some of the world’s largest developing economies
most likely to foresee increases in their online shopping
activities.”
Given this, more publishers may want to explore eCommerce14 as
both a revenue source, and a means to deepen their relationship
with their audiences. It's worth noting that the data from this also
offers further monetisation and partnership opportunities.
2: Highlighting non-COVID content

eCommerce is a good example of a vertical which isn’t explicitly
about COVID-19, but one which caters for evolving consumer
habits and needs during the pandemic.
Similarly, I believe that publishers should be Proportion that (always/often) avoids news by
investing more effort in evergreen content and gender, UK
recirculating stories which may have been lost
during the early COVID-noise.
One key reason for this is that the audience's
appetite for coronavirus stories has dissipated
as we have adjusted to the “new normal.” As
their needs change, so publisher strategies must
evolve.
Driven by a desire for news and information
related to this new disease, many publishers saw
an early bump in traffic during the early days of
the pandemic15. However, some outlets found
that this didn't last long as coronavirus fatigue
began to set in16.
In the U.K., research17 from the Reuters Institute
for the Study of Journalism at the University of
Oxford revealed that “after an initial surge in
news use, there has been a significant increase
in news avoidance.”
“News avoidance is evenly distributed across
different social groups, with small differences
based on income, education, and political
orientation,” the researchers said18. Key drivers
for news avoidance include the effect it has on
their mood (66%), volume of news (33%) and
distrust in the news (32% rising to 49% of those who identified as
right-wing).
We’ve seen a similar story in the United States. In late-April the
Pew Research Center commented that19 “the continuous news

ENGAGEMENT TACTICS
churn has had an impact.” “A majority of Americans say they

need to take breaks from it, many say it makes them feel worse
emotionally and half say they find it difficult to sift through what
is true and what is not,” Pew said.
It’s worth noting that this trend of news avoidance, and many of
the drivers behind it, are nothing new. The Digital News Report
201920 observed that “avoidance continues to be a real issue…
almost a third (32%) say they actively avoid the news.”
Given that the study’s sample consists of news consumers, this
statistic should give publishers pause for thought. It’s not just
coverage of the coronavirus crisis that audiences find exhausting.
With trendlines which pre-date the pandemic, this is a media
habit which publishers should be taking more seriously than they
arguably do.
Active news abstinence “may be because
the world has become a more depressing
place or because the media coverage
tends to be relentlessly negative – or
a mix of the two,” the Reuters Institute
speculated back in 2019. Sound familiar?
Either way, news avoidance is a trend that
most publishers cannot ignore.
In a COVID world, this may mean
placing a greater emphasis on producing
“feelgood” or non-coronavirus content, Pre-COVID data (May 2019) on WIRED's evergreen content.
looking at where this is placed and Via Parse.ly
introduced to audiences (online, on social, in newsletters

etc.), making better use of archive stories and creating more
pandemic-proof content.
Publishers need to be looking hard at their content mix, and
determining how they can publish and circulate more evergreen
content21, along with topical COVID-related stories.
This is important if outlets want to retain relationships with
audiences - especially those introduced to your work, perhaps for
the first time, during COVID - after the pandemic ends.
To do this, showing that you’re about more than just serving
audiences' immediate coronavirus needs is an essential attribute
that publishers need to be able to demonstrate.
3: Answering questions
In a pandemic the need for service journalism is more important
than ever. Audiences have many questions about what’s
happening and the implications for their lives. Publishers can
address this need by listening more and addressing head-on the
concerns of consumers.

ENGAGEMENT TACTICS
Not only is this incredibly valuable as a means for generating

content and insights, but it’s a technique which can help to build
trust and demonstrate value. This, in turn, may also encourage
audiences to be more likely to support your work.
Many outlets have turned to explainers as a popular format for
addressing common concerns.
A visual piece of explainer journalism, “Why outbreaks like
coronavirus spread exponentially, and how to ‘flatten the curve’,”
is The Washington Post’s most viewed story of all time22.
The Guardian has seen something
similar23. Their coronavirus explainer, first
published on January 20, is their most-
read piece ever. A separate coronavirus
video explainer is the third most popular
video on their YouTube channel.
Nevertheless, especially in this period
of upheaval and disquiet, publishers and
journalists alike shouldn’t simply assume
they know what questions audiences
want answered.
“In the face of uncertainty, ask. Ask often,
and ask everywhere. Ask your current
audience and ask people you don’t
regularly reach. Ask over and over again
and never stop asking,” recommends
the Solutions Journalism Network and
Hearken24.
Pre-COVID data (May 2019) on WIRED's evergreen content.
To help them do this, content creators Via Parse.ly
have been utilising a range of tools and techniques.

In March, NPR created a show based entirely on audience input
and questions related to COVID-19. Listeners were able to submit
questions through a questionnaire posted on their website25.
‘New York NOW,' New York state's Emmy-winning, in-depth
public affairs program from WMHT, has done something similar
using a tool powered by Hearken, while the New York Times has
used machine learning to help develop a giant FAQ based on
questions from readers26.
Text messaging also offers opportunities for interaction,
including two-way communication.
“Texting is a low barrier to entry,” says Andrew Haeg27, founder
and CEO of GroundSource. It is also more inclusive, given that
not everyone has internet access.

ENGAGEMENT TACTICS
According to an interview with Current28, a news service about

public media in the USA, his company is working with 42 clients
to harness the immediacy and intimacy of text messages as a
response to callouts on specific COVID related topics.
“Your story may become a radio feature or digital post on our
website,” explains one client29, KCUR, an NPR affiliate serving the
Kansas City region. “It may resonate with the stories of others
and warrant a virtual town hall or Facebook Live. We might ask
you to work with us on an audio diary. Who knows, hopefully,
down the road, we'll be able to gather in person for a face-to-face
conversation!”
In California, the KPCC–LAist newsroom has also used texting as
a means to ask questions in Spanish, a language spoken by 38 per
cent of residents in Los Angeles county.
This was part of a suite of efforts used by Southern California
Public Radio (KPCC) and the website LAist, which has also seen
their engagement team receive over 3,300 pandemic-related
questions from audiences. By June, they told Nieman Lab30, using
the Hearken platform, they’d already addressed over 2,900 of KCUR using GroundSource
them.
They also created bi-lingual coronavirus
mailers31, with essential information (and kids
activities) which they distributed to just under
13,000 households in zip codes where less than
half of homes have access to a computer and
fixed broadband.
4: Opening up
As well as organisational efforts to
communicate with audiences, individual
journalists are also using the pandemic to
engage directly with audiences.
We have previously shared32 how Diya
Chacko, an audience engagement editor for
the Los Angeles Times Metro desk, has been
specifically encouraging questions about the
outbreak, addressing them in the LA Times’
Coronavirus Today newsletter.
Other outlets have used Facebook Live33 as a
means to talk about their work and approach
to covering COVID-19, as well as a means
for reporters - or expert guests - to address
questions from audiences.
KPPC / LAist's mailers in English and Spanish
The Albany Times Union, in New York State,
has hosted discussions on topics such as New York’s reopening,

ENGAGEMENT TACTICS
Governor Cuomo's meeting with President Donald Trump, and

what the pandemic means for schools and education. Meanwhile,
Illinois Public Media hosted an hour-long COVID-19 Q&A With
Local Public Health Officials And Medical Doctors.
Alongside this we have also seen
numerous publishers, large and small,
frequently make the case for taking out
subscriptions or giving donations.
It shouldn’t have taken a pandemic to get
outlets to talk so openly with audiences
about the need for direct support, but
hopefully, one legacy of the coronavirus is
that publishers will continue to talk about
this (and perhaps feel more comfortable
doing so).
These efforts come against a well known
A Facebook Live with the Albany Times Union’s Rachel Silberstein talking to
backdrop of declining advertising members of the Shaker High class of 2020 about the fundraising efforts and work
revenues and reduced capacity to deliver packaging meals for families in need during the COVID-19 pandemic.
on many other monetisation efforts,
such as live in-person events. As a result, with the emphasis on
reader revenue being more important than ever, we are seeing
publishers be much more open with audiences about their
business and revenue model.
Throughout this period, and beyond, publishers need to
consistently make the case for the cost of creating content, and
why audiences must pony up.
With advertising revenues on the wane, the pivot to reader
revenue won’t just be a passing fad. It’s the only way that many
organisations will survive.
Stressing the need for financial support, and what it buys,
coupled with other engagement efforts - such as deepening
relationships through eCommerce, offering more evergreen
content, developing strategies to both listen to audience needs
and tackle news avoidance - should outlive the pandemic.
Implementing these efforts offers the potential to provide
products and a content mix which meet defined consumer needs.
In the process publishers can support both new and established
consumers, as they start planning now for their survival during
the COVID crisis and beyond.

Navigating COVID-19 and
ad tech
In response to an initial coronavirus news bump, a number of outlets
witnessed record traffic to their sites, as well as a growth in subscribers.
At the same time, however, they also had to contend with a major
slump in advertising revenues as marketers shut their chequebooks.
This meant that despite some publishers benefiting from increased
reader revenue, this income did not act as a like-for-like replacement
for the revenue losses being felt from other income streams (such as
advertising and events).
Moreover, as we shall see, the nature of modern-day advertising
technology (ad tech) also further compounded the financial challenges
that publishers were experiencing.

AD TECH
Here’s an overview of the key ad tech issues that publishers have

had to contend with while navigating the COVID crisis, and seven
potential solutions to them.
Challenge 1: Keyword blacklisting

In March, BuzzFeed News’ Craig Silverman reported1 that Integral
Ad Science, a digital ad verification company, had over 3,000
advertisers blocking the term "coronavirus."
This double-whammy followed reduced ad spend in many
categories, like travel, which had already hurt publishers’ revenue
streams.
Chart via Craig Silverman / Buzzfeed News
Moreover, as the team at Branded, a newsletter written by Claire

Atkin and Nandini Jammi, reminded us2:
“Blacklisting keywords without whitelisting legitimate news
sites deprives news organizations of ad dollars. By doing this,
we are keeping ads away from real eyeballs. Worse, where do
those ads go? They are likely ending up on fake news sites that
know to avoid the word “coronavirus.”
Research from IAB has reinforced this3, finding that “news
publishers are twice as likely to be blacklisted vs. others.”
“This extraordinary event is exposing how brand safety tech
works — using stupid keyword lists — it is not happening more
often, it is just more evident,” ad fraud researcher and consultant
Augustine Fou told Digiday4 earlier this year.

AD TECH
“Previously it was not as visible how bad

keyword blocking was for legit publishers,” he
said.
Fou’s comments came in response to moves
from some advertisers to ensure that their
ads didn’t appear on websites mentioning
“coronavirus.”
As a result of keyword blacklisting, publishers
including Der Spiegel, the Guardian, The New
York Times, The Wall Street Journal, as well
as countless others, have all been impacted5.
In the UK it is estimated that news publishers
lost around £50m in online ad revenue
between April and July due to this practice.
Challenge 2: Declining
programmatic revenues
Globally, according to Zenith, more than two
of every three display ad dollars are being
spent programmatically6, with the worldwide
market for programmatic advertising
predicted to be worth $98.2 billion (pre-
COVID estimates) in 2020.
Put another way, around 68% of worldwide
digital ad spend is now programmatic, up
from 44% in 2015, a figure which rises in
markets like the USA (84.5%) and the UK
(88.9%).
COVID-19, however, has demonstrated some
potential pitfalls for publishers who may be
dependent on this advertising model.
In the United States, at least one major local
news publisher witnessed sudden declines in
per-view programmatic revenue as a result of
the coronavirus and keyword blacklisting.
McClatchy's Vice President of News Kristin A Twitter discussion started by Ari Paparo, CEO of Beeswax, a New York-
Roberts told staff, in a memo to staff obtained based start-up building real-time bidding software.
by Axios7, that "the money we get every time
someone reads or watches an individual story (“programmatic”
revenue) is declining, rapidly - that per-view rate of revenue has
dropped more than 15% in a single week."
It’s not easy to determine the impacts at other organisations,
but other outlets may have seen similar numbers. Outside of the
U.S., other markets and publishers have been similarly affected,

AD TECH
but not necessarily to the same extent, Programmatic % of Display Spend - 2020
given their reduced dependency on
programmatic revenues.
As the President of the German
Association for the Digital Economy
(BVDW), Thomas Duhr, explains8:
"One reason [for this] is that
programmatic advertising is less
advanced in Germany than in Anglo-
American markets, thus the extent of
automatic inclusion of brand safety
technologies isn't comparable yet.”
Source: Zenith, "Programmatic Marketing Forecasts 2019," Nov 19, 2019 (includes search and social)
How publishers have responded to these

challenges
In response to these twin challenges of reduced programmatic
revenue and keyword blacklisting, publishers have explored a
number of different options. Here are seven of them:
Solution 1: Doubling down on subscriptions

After initially dropping paywalls for COVID content, some
publishers, like the U.S. newspaper group McClatchy reinstated
them. The move to subscriptions and reader revenue is a long-
term financial driver for many publishers. But, the need for
this emphasis was reinforced by sudden declines in per-view
programmatic revenue.
In a memo to staff, McClatchy’s Vice President of News Kristin
Roberts explained:
"Since our coronavirus coverage began, 13% of views were by
people who would have been stopped by the paywall if it had
been up. If we converted even a tiny fraction of those people,
we would have generated more in subscription revenue than we
are earning on the per-pageview (“programmatic”) revenue."
In response, Axios reported9 the company allowed local editors
to determine which stories would be in front of the paywall, and
which ones would be behind it.
This decision, which other publishers will also have wrestled with,
saw the company trying to balance the provision of public health
information with an imperative to drive subscriptions in a bid to
meet shortfalls from advertising and other revenue streams.

AD TECH
% change YoY in programmatic ad spend, April-July 2020
Research by MediaRadar in the States found that ad dollars began returning by May, but that
there were huge differences on an industry-by-industry basis.
Solution 2: Getting more creative

Although the coronavirus crisis had a positive impact on website
traffic for many news publishers10, they were not necessarily able
to monetise it through digital advertising in the way that they
would have liked.
As a result, this has encouraged some publishers to think
differently about the ways in which they can work with
advertisers; and perhaps emphasised the need to avoid going “all
in” with ad tech solutions like programmatic.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) highlighted11 some of
these opportunities in a report at the end of April, which included
sponsorship and other content adjacent opportunities, as well as
lower rates and pushing campaigns back to later in the year.
Elsewhere, in a webinar moderated by Dan Rua, CEO, Admiral,
and Christian Hendricks, President, LMC (Local Media
Consortium), publishers offered their thoughts on additional
strategies and approaches12.
Mike Orren, at The Dallas Morning News, for example
recommended that publishers “carve out some of the premium
inventory and offer it to local/premium advertisers for free to
create goodwill.”

AD TECH
Solution 3: Working with Big Tech

Recognising the challenging economics that many publishers
faced (and the pressure they were under to help), platforms
stepped in to offer funding and other forms of support for
publishers.
The Google News Initiative, for example, distributed funding
to more than 5,300 local publications via their Journalism
Emergency Relief Fund13.
They also agreed to an ad-serving fee waiver on Google Ad
Manager14.
“Many news publishers around the world use Google Ad Manager
to support their digital businesses with advertising,” Jason
Washing, Managing Director, Global Partnerships - News wrote in
a blog post15.
Acknowledging the impact of the pandemic on the global
economy, he announced in April that Google had “decided to
waive ad serving fees for news publishers globally on Ad Manager
for five months.” These cost-savings, although only temporary,
were no doubt welcome for publishers given the overnight impact
of COVID-19 on their finances.
Nonetheless, there were understandable calls for the tech sector
to do more. One such advocate, Jason Kint, President and CEO of
Digital Content Next, argued that16:

AD TECH
“At the same time newsrooms have necessarily shifted coverage

towards informing the public on this global pandemic, immature
tech platforms are blocking the funding of this journalism.
We repeat our call for the advertising technology and
verification platforms, including Google and Oracle, which
have a strong history of reducing friction, to dedicate urgent
resources towards solutions here, including exempting or
encouraging trusted news organizations as a default.”
Solution 4: Encouraging advertisers to be

advocates for acts of journalism
Recognising the challenging economics that many publishers
faced (and the pressure they were under to help), platforms
stepped in to offer funding and other forms of support for
publishers.
In response to the level of keyword blocking that publishers were
seeing, David Cohen, President of the Interactive Advertising
Bureau (IAB), offered some stark words for “brands, agencies, ad
verification firms, and other companies in the digital advertising
supply chain.”17
“Please immediately instruct your brand and agency teams to
update your programmatic and all other media buying to enable
advertising surrounded by topics you would have previously
avoided, including "crisis," "COVID-19," "coronavirus," etc.” he
argued. “The faster you do this, the more lives you will save.”
“Every dollar you spend on credible news sites helps save lives,”
Cohen said, identifying three key benefits:
1. It ensures that credible news organizations can afford the
staff required to provide critically vital information.
2. It ensures that reckless disinformation efforts will be blunted
by news that is accurate, fact-checked, and reliable.
3. It ensures that the public at large — the people who buy your
products — stay alive and well.
In a joint statement18, the News Media Alliance and Digital
Content Next made a similar call.
Alliance President & CEO David Chavern stressed the important
life-saving work that news outlets were producing. “Keyword
blocking serves to punish publishers for this very same coverage,
with potentially catastrophic effects,” he said.
“America needs a vibrant, ad-supported news industry, and it has
never needed it more,” IAB’s Cohen added19. “Open the floodgates
of advertising dollars to support credible news sources. Don't
debate. Don't delay. Do it now. The stakes are too high to do
anything less.”

AD TECH
Solution 5: Whitelisting and ad blocking recovery

According to the 2020 PageFair Adblock Report20, by the end of
2019, 763 million devices around the world were blocking ads.
This includes 527 million mobile devices, as ad-blocking becomes
platform agnostic.
COVID-19 has once again identified the need for publishers to
address this situation, by encouraging whitelisting, Adblock
recovery (whitelisting + ad-reinsertion), as well as the need to
serve better ads.
This is particularly important given the paradox whereby
audiences were spending more time with media, yet publisher
revenues (especially from advertising) appeared - in some cases -
to be in freefall.
Against this backdrop, publishers can ill afford to miss out on
potential income as a result of unserved ads.
“We’ve been engaging adblock users for almost a year now,” David
Rowley at Advanced Local told an industry forum21, “and we’ve
seen our adblock rates significantly reduced over time. I’m very
grateful in the sense we did this before this pandemic and now
we can monetize almost every user that comes to our sites.”
It should not have taken a pandemic for other publishers to also
embrace this need, but in some cases COVID-19 has acted as a
catalyst for reviewing these issues.
Via Blockthrough / PageFair

AD TECH
Solution 6: Showing the impact of your ads

At the same time as addressing these issues, publishers arguably
also need to make a better case for the impact that ads on their
sites are having.
"Ads placed next to coronavirus content are getting more
attention than they would normally," Mike Follett, managing
director of the London-based Lumen Research, told German
media giant DW22.
Brands are shooting themselves in the foot by blacklisting around
keywords associated with the coronavirus Follett said.
Eye-tracking research conducted by his company revealed that
two-thirds of digital ads were being noticed, compared to just
over half six months prior to the pandemic.
New research suggests23 the global eye tracking market will grow
at a CAGR of 24.5% from 2020 to 2025, to become a $1 billion
industry by 2025 from $368 million in 2020, with APAC expected
to be the fastest-growing region for the technology.
Opportunities in the eye tracking market
Via MarketsandMarkets
Solution 7: Next gen programmatic

Finally, another technological advancement is also worth noting.
As ad tech evolves, AI and semantic understanding look set to
offer potential solutions that will benefit publishers and enable
advertisers to move away from crude one-size-fits-all blocking
lists. In its place comes contextual targeting, whereby ad tech
recognises that words can mean different things in different
settings.

AD TECH
One example of this in action is Mantis, which IBM describes24 Consumers open to contextual
as “an AI-powered screening tool that understands the context targeting
of articles and images to help publishers unlock more ad-safe
inventory.”
Created by Reach plc, the UK’s largest commercial news
publisher, the platform harnesses IBM Watson Natural Language
Understanding and Watson Visual Recognition on the IBM Cloud.
In testing for coronavirus and COVID-19 related stories, Mantis
reduced adblocking between 70-75%, the company said in a press
release25.
Moreover, customers are seemingly more open to this
technology, according to new data from DoubleVerify’s 2020
Global Insights Report26. This suggests that better ads, more
relevant to the content that they are reading, is more likely to be
seen, improving both viewability and potential clickthroughs.
“The message is clear,” Michael Feeley writes for The Drum27.
“If your brand safety strategy is still based predominately on
a keyword blocking strategy, it’s time to talk to technology
platforms about the other sophisticated options and tools they
can offer.”
“The COVID-19 pandemic shook the world, but it also helped
bring many of the flaws in our advertising to the surface,” says
IBM Watson Advertising's Jeremy Hlavacek28.
For publishers, this may have reiterated the need to deploy a wide
range of strategies to improve the delivery of digital ads, as well Via DoubleVerify
as the creative relationships they have with advertisers.

Alongside this, the pandemic has shown how publishers can
be advocates for change both in terms of reshaping the supply
chain of digital ads, as well as getting marketers and agencies to
think differently about their relationship with content and the
adjacency of their respective brands.
When it comes to advertising strategies and their relationship
with ad tech, COVID-19 - as it has with engagement and
subscription strategies - may be another instance where the
coronavirus crisis acts as a catalyst for publishers to do things
differently or reinforce the importance of existing strategies.
As Hlavacek advises, “It’s now up to us to make sure we’re flexible
and ready for anything else that may come our way.”

The legacy of COVID-19 for
publishers
We are still in the middle of the pandemic, and while that makes it
difficult to predict the future, some media trends seen in the past
6-9 months look set to continue. Elsewhere, the consequences of the
coronavirus crisis will continue to reverberate and impact the sector.
Many of the foundations of these developments are not new. However,
COVID has accentuated and accelerated underlying structural issues,
catapulting the industry into a new and uncertain future much quicker
than anticipated.
With that in mind, here are 19 COVID-19 inspired developments that
publishers, researchers and policy makers need to be aware of.

THE LEGACY OF COVID-19
Cuts and job losses

This is the most obvious impact of the crisis. As Bloomberg
summarised1:
“Many media companies are struggling during the pandemic
with the sudden loss of revenue from advertising and other
businesses, like live events. While some turned to furloughs and
pay cuts, layoffs have become unavoidable as the crisis drags
on.”
Digital doyens and legacy players alike have been impacted in
this manner. Vox Media lost around 6% of staff2, the Guardian
determined that with revenues down by more than £25m it would
cut about 180 employees3, and the New York Times shed 68 jobs,
largely on the advertising side4.
These types of layoffs, furloughs and
closures have been seen across all media
sectors around the world.
In South Africa, for example, 17
magazine titles disappeared as a
result of the closure of two publishing
houses - Caxton and Associated Media
Publishing (AMP) in May5. Two months
later, Media24 - another South African
company - announced the closure of five
magazines and two newspapers6.
It’s a story we’re seen time and time
again, regardless of the country7. The
one constant being that no type of
media organisation appears to be going
unscathed.
Smaller titles and outlets, as well as
larger and seemingly well established Tweet from the Financial Times' Lydia Tomkiw, reacting to the Tow Center COV-
players like Condé Nast and BuzzFeed ID-19 Newsroom Cutback Tracker
in the USA , London’s Evening Standard

8 9
and Reach the UK’s largest newspaper publisher10, have all been
affected.
Expansion plans are (mostly) curtailed

Although we have seen examples of publishers expanding during
the pandemic, these moves have gone against the grain.
Typically, publishers and media companies have curtailed their
plans to grow their businesses by moving into new verticals and
international markets11, areas often previously touted as essential
for growth.

Telegraph Media Group in the U.K. revealed plans12 in the summer

to "significantly downsize" its branded content arm Spark, while
Quartz laid off staff and closed physical offices in London, San
Francisco, Hong Kong and Washington13.
Bucking this trend, however, there have been some instances of
companies who have expanded during the pandemic, including
Vice14 and CBS News, although Vice also laid off roughly 155
employees - prior to this - in May15.
"It's always chicken and the egg with international," Christy
Tanner, Executive Vice President & General Manager of CBS News
Digital, told Axios, noting the need to build audience volume to
create a robust advertising business.
Distributed newsrooms are here to stay

Quartz’s decision to close physical offices, while continuing “to
employ people in all of those cities and beyond,”16 is part of an
on-going trend to reduce physical overheads and unlock the cash
value of these assets17.
In August, Tribune Publishing in the
States disclosed that it would be
permanently closing the physical offices
of five newspapers (the Daily News in
New York, the Capital Gazette and the
Carroll County Times in Maryland, the
Allentown Morning Call in Pennsylvania
and the Orlando Sentinel in Florida),
although the titles continue to operate.
The move led to ruminations18 on what
would be lost, including a physical
presence in their communities,
newsroom mentoring and face-to-face
engagement with colleagues.
At the same time, however, the need
to cut costs, coupled with the desire
of many employees to continue to be
able to work from home19 - or enjoy
more flexibility in the location of their
work - means that this trendline will
only become more pronounced, driven
by a mixture of financial and personnel
considerations.
Pressure on platforms continues to grow

The advertising downturn has had a catastrophic effect on many
publishers. For the big platforms, however, it’s a different story.

“It’s true the duopoly has been impacted,” notes Arnaud Créput
the CEO of Smart AdServer20, but “even now, they remain
enormously profitable.” Créput highlights how ad revenues were
down 8% year-on-year at Google, but up 10% at Facebook and
40% at Amazon.
“This demonstrates their unshakeable position and the way in
which they are able to take advantage of situations where other
industry players can’t.”
As a result, we can expect to see renewed demands for platforms
to help the sector - as we’re seeing in Australia21 - as well as more
antitrust investigations22 investigating whether their dominant
positions disadvantage others. Whether the emergency funds23
they have established for the sector during COVID24, and other
long-running support efforts, help to offset some of these clarion
calls, remains to be seen.
Via the Google News Initiative
Reduced dependence on advertising

Prior to the pandemic, many publishers were already diversifying
their revenue streams. COVID-19, and the advertising downturn
associated with it25, has reinforced the need to embrace this
strategy.
Particular efforts have been made by publishers to grow their
subscriber base, pivot to digital events26 and expand eCommerce
efforts27. Although some of these non-subscription elements
are quite embryonic, it’s likely that all three of these trends will
continue.
Reader revenue has been a growing focus for publishers for some
time28, and outlets are deploying a range of strategies to try to
unlock its potential.

At The Dallas Morning News, one

approach they’ve recently been testing
uses reporter-specific promo codes to
encourage followers/fans to subscribe29.
Events are not only likely to continue
to have a strong digital presence due
to social distancing protocols, but also
because of the larger audiences they can
potentially unlock.
That won’t work for everyone, but it’s a
good strategy for larger marquee brands,
like The Atlantic. They hope to attract a
million “attendees” this year30, compared
to the 2,000 who normally attend their
Tweet from Mallorie Sullivan, Audience Engagement Producer at The Dallas
in-person festival. Morning News
Flexibility with ad products

At the same time as these moves, Digiday’s Max Willens has also
identified that publishers are whipping up quicker, cheaper ad
products for advertisers31.
In one example, Willens shared how “instead of accepting that
they couldn’t execute elaborate branded content productions,
The Players Tribune and Minute Media pivoted to content shot by
athletes on their cell phones.”
Separately, his colleague, Lucinda Budget clarity remains elusive for 2021, and at least 70% of
Southern discussed32 how the Wall buyers still have 2021 ad dollars in flux
Street Journal had halved turnaround
time for clients working with their
content studio, The Trust. Campaigns
are now typically going live within four
weeks, instead of the pre-pandemic
average of eight.
This twin track approach - blending
diversification with a more fleet footed
approach to traditional advertising
- makes sense given the likelihood
of continued uncertainty around ad
budgets next year33. Via IAB 2020/21 COVID Impact on Advertising, Survey #6 Results
Partnerships and collaboration

The impetus for collaboration is greater than ever when
resources are more scarce. As a result, during COVID, where
consumption habits, revenues and personnel numbers have all
been affected, collaboration has taken multiple forms.

Stefanie Murray, director of the Center for Cooperative

Media at Montclair State University has identified editorial
collaborations34, including content-sharing and promotion by
news organisations across the state of Oregon, and a digital guide
to reframe reporting on coronavirus35, produced by Resolve Philly
in consultation with their partners.
Commercial partnerships are also becoming increasingly
important36. In September, The Washington Post and Financial
Times announced37 a special offer giving new readers of either
publication 90 days access to the other the outlet as part of their
subscription package.
The Post also launched38 a new section in September,
concentrating “on stories of success and struggle as individuals
and businesses seek to repair the damage caused by illness and
an economic shutdown.” The Road to Recovery, is supported by
AT&T and JPMorgan Chase, and available via their native apps,
Apple News and as a Flipboard magazine.
Revisiting your content mix

The Posts’ new COVID section offers an opportunity for
fresh narratives around the pandemic. This matters given the
continued presence of the coronavirus, coupled with the rapid
drop-off of an initial COVID news bump, and the levels of COVID
news avoidance which can be seen in many markets39.
Proportion of top ten most-read stories that were about COVID-19
(3-day rolling average)
Via Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism

Against this backdrop, other approaches - such as Solutions

Journalism - potentially become more valuable to audiences. And
publishers. As Liza Gross, Vice President of Practice Change at
the Solutions Journalism Network, explains40:
“Traditionally, newsrooms have excelled at reacting quickly
when there is an emergency or disaster to cover. They are
masters of the 100-meter dash.
But a sustained, ongoing response to a massive crisis with
uncertain outcomes and undefined timelines requires the
mindset and capabilities of a marathoner.”
One initiative putting this into practice is a solutions journalism
project, Reasons To Be Cheerful, founded by the musician
David Byrne (formerly of the Talking Heads). In September, they
launched a new six-week-long series called “We Are Not Divided,”
designed to share “projects and initiatives that bridge divides and
facilitate discussion and understanding — at a time when pretty
much all we hear is how divided we are.”41
Refreshing a potentially redundant editorial

proposition
“We’re Going to Run Out of TV,” The Ringer warned in July42,
noting the impact of production shutdowns as a result of the
pandemic. For some publishers an equivalent challenge involves
producing content in spaces, such as sports, which have been
adversely affected by the coronavirus43.
The Athletic announced it had laid off
8% of its staff and mandated across-
the-company pay cuts, in early June44.
However, by September the sports
website announced it had hit 1 million
paying subscribers.
“It certainly helps that sports are back,”
said CNBC also noting45 The Athletic's
subscription-only business model,
development plans and innovations
such as bundling subscriptions with
Bloomberg’s business website46 and
giving away a free 1-year subscription to Via T-Mobile promoting free subscriptions to MLB.TV and The Athletic
T-Mobile and Sprint customers47.

Elsewhere, outlets like ESPN and Deadspin have moved away
from sports only coverage, to look at how their industry also
traverses other issues.
“The media has long struggled with how to cover the intersection
of sports and politics,” notes CNN’s Kerry Flynn48. “But amid a
pandemic that forced sports to go dark and a national reckoning

over race, sports journalists are learning that the firewall between
sports and politics has vanished, if it ever existed.”
Supporting audience aspirations for a post-

pandemic future
Travel publications too have had to adjust, focusing instead more
on inspiration for future travel, domestic road trips, the view
from x (often produced by writers on lockdown in that location49)
as well as travel news and armchair travel50.
The travel sector saw a sharp advertising downturn at the start of
the crisis, plunging by 90% in the USA alone during March51.
In response, the loss in travel related revenue was identified as a
leading reason for lay-offs at BuzzFeed, and the New York Times
temporarily paused52 its Sunday sports and travel sections. The
Grey Lady replaced these print sections with “At Home,” a vertical
described as “a new print section for a new way of life.”53
Travel specific publishers, like Nat Geo Travel, also pivoted54. In
this instance moving “from reporting on the journeys of travelers
to reporting on the journeys of places,” according to travel editor
George Stone.
Other publishers have followed suit.
Condé Nast Traveler has offered a focus on the human side55 of
the travel industry, with angles such as a cruise ship entertainer’s
perspective from quarantine and the impact on poaching in
Tanzania. And Atlas Obscura has created live, hosted, experiences
on Zoom - with tickets sold “per device” - to offset revenues lost
from some of their face-to-face activities.
Virtual experiences offered by Atlas Obscura

In AdWeek, Andréa Mallard, chief marketing officer at Pinterest,

shared56 how users initially used the site for “immediate help.”
“Searches like ‘pantry recipes’ and ‘how to entertain bored kids’
spiked,” she wrote. “But then, surprisingly quickly, people are
getting back to future optimism. They’ve returned to searches
about travel, event planning, summer, weddings and more.”
It’s a mood that Travel + Leisure magazine has tried to tap into.
“Travel is never going to stop, and the magazine is all about
dreaming and inspiration,” says Aindrila Mitra, Editor-in-Chief,
Travel + Leisure India and South Asia. “There is no quarantine on
dreaming.”
Making dough by tapping into lockdown

lifestyles
Other publishers have doubled-down on efforts designed to cater
for quarantine-era media habits and lifestyles.
Some publishers, like Trusted Media Brands, already have
established properties which were well placed to take advantage
of this. Taste of Home and Family Handyman, for example, saw
record traffic in April 2020, as audiences embraced more home
cooking and baking, as well as DIY and home improvements.
Taste of Home enjoyed a 22% increase
in uniques from the previous month,
coupled with an average view per visitor
of 7.2 pages, which they reported “is two
times more than the average site among
its competitors.”57
Family Handyman witnessed a 38%
month-on-month bump, and revenues
from online courses offered by their
Family Handyman DIY University were
up 53%. Meanwhile, a sponsorship deal
with Fluidmaster enabled the site to
make its bathroom plumbing free for the The Family Handyman DIY University website
remainder of the year.
Leaning into changing media habits

Alongside this, outlets are also investing in new verticals, covering
areas - such as gaming58 and esports59 - which have grown during
the pandemic. As CNN explained60:
“The Washington Post, Bloomberg, and Wired have each
announced investments in gaming coverage in recent months.
These publications and others are looking to capitalize on
this booming industry with the same rigor they've shown in
reporting on Hollywood and Silicon Valley.

The plan is to investigate the business and culture of the gaming

industry with stories that appeal to gamers and non-gamers
alike.”
These were already substantial businesses, but the pandemic
has perhaps helped more publishers recognise the need to cover
these beats in more depth.
Moreover, COVID has also sped up participation in these
mediums. "What we're seeing is an acceleration of pre-existing
trends," Mat Piscatella, a gaming analyst at NPD Group, told
Axios61. "It's like we jumped ahead two years."
According to Nielsen Games Video Game Tracking (VGT), the
number of gamers has increased62 since March 23, 2020 due
to the COVID-19 pandemic. Nielsen found that 82% of global
consumers have played video games and watched video game
content since the start of the pandemic.
Daily Twitch viewership in the US more than doubled in Q1 2020
Viewership increase in hours watched measured across top 50 games

Via The Nielsen Company (US) LLC
Embracing eCommerce
Online retail is another area which has benefitted from growing
its user base during the pandemic, especially among older
consumers.
A number of publishers were already embracing the potential for
eCommerce63. During COVID, however, more media players have
come on board.

The top 50 U.K. publishers generate £86 ($113.42) average revenue

per article, up by more than 100% in the past five months, Dunia
Silan, vp revenue for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at
Skimlinks, said at the end of August64.
One of these publishers, The Sun, a British tabloid, now employs
five people dedicated to producing Sun Selects65, a collection of
buying guides and product recommendations, as well as 10-15
freelancers.
On the other side of the pond, GQ U.S.
launched its first ever eCommerce shop
in August66. It’s owners, Condé Nast,
described the initiative as “the next
logical step in the brand’s eCommerce
ecosystem.”
The move builds on the success of
GQ Recommends, which launched in
January 201867. These editor-picked
selections generate affiliate sales,
and revenues from this are up over
100% YTD compared to 2019, the
company reports68. Revenues from the
subscription based GQ Best Stuff Box
are also up over 150%.
Innovation and
experimentation
If necessity is the mother of invention,
then one striking characteristic of
the pandemic has been the continued The GQ Shop's quarterly GQ Best Stuff Box, on sale for $50
emergence of new products and
services. We have already seen some examples of this, but here
are few other ideas which caught my eye.
Newsletters had a creative shot in the arm. Running short courses
- and challenges - via newsletters having emerged as a pandemic
format69 parlayed by the Wall Street Journal, CNN and Wirecutter.
“As publishers look for pockets of audience engagement wherever
they can find them, limited-run educational newsletters are a
gambit gaining some traction,” Digiday’s Kayleigh Barber notes70.
Another newsletter product also continues to go from strength to
strength.
Substack continues to have its moment in the sun, with the
newsletter provider now allowing you to find new publications
from people you follow on Twitter.

Another seemingly old technology is also being reingorated: text

messaging.
As What’s New In Publishing has previously noted71, publishers
such as BuzzFeed News and the Arizona Republic both launched
COVID-related SMS services during the pandemic72. Into this
mix comes The New Paper, an Indiana-based publication whose
entire business model is predicated on curating and summarising
the day’s top stories into a daily text message.
Audio also continues to expand and be a source of investment for
many publishers.
The Correspondent launched an audio only app73 (one in English
and the other in Dutch) as part of a move designed to support
members directly, and avoid them having to use third party apps
like Spotify.
Interestingly, on the subcontinent, Audible Suno, Amazon's audio
streaming service in India, attributes a lot of their growth to the
lockdown. Audible India Country Head Shailesh Sawlani argues74
that “screen fatigue has led a lot of people to proactively explore
audio content.” A sample SMS bulletin from The New
Paper
News deserts and 'Pink Slime'

On the flip side, the crisis has also seen the emergence of some
less welcome innovations.
Among them is the emergence of ‘Pink Slime’ local news outlets,
highly partisan sites, which distribute algorithmically generated
articles and conversative talking points on topics such as voter
fraud.
An investigation by the Tow Center
for Digital Journalism at Columbia
Journalism School in 201975 unearthed at
least 450 of these sites, forms of political
advertising that Tow said “masquerade
as newspapers,” and which may
“manipulate public opinion by exploiting
faith in local media,” which tends to be
more trusted than national media.
These types of outlets often flourish
in “news deserts,” areas devoid of local
media. Unfortunately, for consumers,
the impact of COVID-19 on local
Tow’s Priyanjana Bengani shared how “a single algorithmically generated story
newsrooms has not been good76. Local with different stock photography that appeared across over 850 domains."
journalism matters more than ever
during a public health crisis, but the sector was quickly among
those most adversely affected by the advertising downturn77.

The Los Angeles Times was just one of a number of publications

who recognised this risk at the outset of the crisis. “It’s bad and
it’s going to get worse,” they quoted industry analyst Ken Doctor
as saying78, with Doctor predicting COVID would be “the 2009
recession on steroids.”
By August, new research from Tow79 showed the size of this "pink
slime" network had “increased almost threefold over the course
of 2020, to over 1,200 sites.” As job losses and shuttered titles
continue, the risk of more “pink slime” sites80 (and the need for
reputable publishers to offset this) grows.
Tackling an explosion of disinformation

“In an increasingly polarized and impoverished media landscape,
the accusation of “fake news” is often flung across the political
aisle, but the phenomenon of fake news websites raises questions
about the future of journalism and democracy to a new level
of urgency,” notes Andrea DenHoed, Managing Editor for the
website NonDoc81.
At the same time, globally, there has
been mounting concern about the rise
of digital disinformation. As with the
emergence of “pink slime” sites, this isn’t
a new phenomenon, but it’s taken on a
fresh complexion during the pandemic.
These efforts include false claims
and information (e.g. the installation
of 5G networks contributing to the
coronavirus' spread82), snake oil cures
(ranging from eating garlic to unproven
drugs) as well as other rumours83.
“We’re not just fighting an epidemic;
we’re fighting an infodemic,” said
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus,
Director-General of the World Health
Organization (WHO), in mid-February,
suggesting fake news “spreads faster and
more easily than this virus.”
In response, many public health
agencies, publishers and platforms
have put steps in place84 to counter
incorrect - and potentially dangerous -
misinformation.
“Much like the pandemic, we need to Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres
understand the infodemic if we are

going to address it. We are still a long way from a solution for
either,” observes85 Alistair Reid at First Draft.

Building trust and long-term relationships

For publishers, the need to build trust with audiences and ensure
the delivery of accurate factually correct information should be
paramount. Arguably, it always has been.
But in a public health crisis, for many publishers, that matters
more than ever, and it’s an editorial and business imperative that
isn’t likely to go away any time soon.
“COVID has taught us that the hunger and need around reliable
relevant information has never been bigger,” Marc Walder, CEO of
the Swiss media group Ringier, says86.
“If the internet is a very loud place with a lot of content for
people to consume – like rain pouring down on you – those
media brands who clarify, explain, who are relevant and
credible, they will win the race in the end. It’s about helping
people find their way in a life that’s become complicated.”
To do this, publishers have responded by launching new COVID-
related products87, debunking disinformation88 and finding fresh
ways to explain developments, including to younger audiences89.
Conversely, as COVID-fatigue has begun to set in, outlets are
also exploring ways to introduce new and existing consumers
to non-coronavirus content, harness their archive and deepen
relationships with audiences90.
COVID bump and beyond: Traffic to selected news sites
Record traffic and subscription numbers at many publishers

shows that if you can build trust, and meet readers’ needs, you
can grow your audience and revenue streams even during a

pandemic91. Although, whether that’s enough to offset other

potentially declining income sources is a moot point, a publisher's
paradox which COVID has so clearly highlighted.
Addressing the risk of subscription fatigue

“The best organisations know what their most loyal members
want, but they also know what’s coming around the corner,”
argues strategy consultant Robbie Kellman Baxter92.
“Don’t fall too much in love with the way you’ve done things in the
past,” she adds93. “Remain focused on the mission: it’s not about
any one thing, but about helping customers solve a problem and
delivering on the promise you’ve made to them.”
Kellman Baxter’s words seem particularly apposite when
exploring whether existing pandemic-level media behaviours will
continue. Or not.
Evidence in the U.S. shows that during lockdown consumers are
not only consuming more media, but also a wider range of media.
“Customer acquisition has accelerated, especially in paid
streaming video, music, and gaming subscriptions,” Deloitte
found94. “People have more time on their hands to watch, listen,
and play games, and they are adding new services to get new
content.”
Percentage of US consumers who have tried a new digital activity
during the pandemic
Via Deloitte's Digital Media Trends Survey

Yet, at the same time, their research has also identified that it is
hard to keep customers.
“Introductory offers of free or reduced rates, along with
compelling original content, are attracting subscribers. But
they’re likely to cancel a service if the content dries up and they
can’t justify the full price,” they add.
Although these conclusions are led by streaming behaviours,
they offer a cautionary tale for more traditional publishers too,
emphasising the need to focus on deploying different tools and
tactics95 to build and preserve loyalty96.
“Many consumers have signed up for more services than they
can handle or afford,” Deloitte’s data suggests, “For providers,
customer churn may become a growing problem.”
Planning for potential behavioural resets

For many media audiences, working from home and COVID-19
lockdowns, has created more opportunities to consume content.
And as we have seen, data from Deloitte’s 2020 Digital Media
Trends Survey found that consumption habits have broadened
too, perhaps as a result of having more time, a desire to try
something new and compelling new offers.
Via IAB
"It's unclear to what extent these new behaviors will continue

once lockdowns have been lifted and people are able to socialize
in person again," notes Simon Kemp97, CEO of Kepios and chief
analyst at DataReportal.
"But with many people now using these [different digital]
platforms multiple times each day, it's likely that significant
numbers of people have already overcome key barriers to trial
and adoption," Kemp predicts.

“People are going to spend a lot of time online for the foreseeable
future,” suggested98 Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Director of the Reuters
Institute for the Study of Journalism, during the early days of the
pandemic. “And so far, we have few examples of people returning
to offline media once they have embraced online ones.”
In the short-term, we are already seeing the impact of this trend
in terms of media buys.
Traditional media advertising in the USA will decline around 30%
this year compared to 2019, according to data from IAB. Within
this, content reaching people in public places (out-of-home) takes
a notable lockdown hit, but so too does other mediums: print
(-33%), radio (-31%), TV (-24%) and direct mail (-17%).
Whether these advertising trends continue post-pandemic,
remains to be seen. But their short-term impact will clearly be
felt by those sectors experiencing this level of downturn.
New consumer and advertising habits may prove to be sticky and
resilient, as both parties preserve some of their new pandemic
preferences. And even if they’re not, it’s unlikely that we’ll see
either pendulums swing back to their pre-COVID starting points.
As the market research company Nielsen notes, in their analysis
of American media habits:
“The longer Americans work from home—regardless of whether
by choice or not—the greater the likelihood that their recently
developed media habits will stick around, ultimately changing
the playing field for how publishers and advertisers are able to
engage with audiences.”
What people are doing during work hours
Via August 2020 Nielsen Total Audience Report

Moreover, flexible work schedules and the lack of commute has

already resulted in “”less structured media consumption and an
interweaving of work and play.”
“Whether it's streaming video content, listening to podcasts or
browsing social media, a majority of consumers have reported
partaking in these behaviors during work hours,” Nielsen
reports99. “That means more windows of opportunity for content
creators and advertisers alike to reach audiences outside of the
traditional primetime, as well as potential new, creative ways to
engage with consumers.”
Final thoughts
The outbreak of the pandemic sent large ripples through the
industry at the start of the year. And although these initial
shockwaves have eased, it’s clear that the road ahead will remain
long and bumpy.
For better, or for worse, COVID has ushered in a brave new digital
world. Publishers need to respond to current content needs,
and anticipate how they may change and evolve as the pandemic
continues, and when it hopefully ends.
Despite the advertising downturn, as well as the titles and jobs
lost, there is some potentially good news for publishers to emerge
from the pandemic, in terms of the number of consumers willing
to try new things and pay for it.
Nonetheless, the continuation of this trend cannot be taken for
granted. Boredom, predictability, cost and changes in personal
circumstances (such as employment status, health or working
habits and locations) can all have an impact. Subsequently,
attraction and retention of audiences must remain twin-concerns
for publishers.
Arguably, they are more important than ever - meaning that
efforts to become audience-first, build trust, engage with new
audiences, and super-serve existing subscribers will remain
strategic priorities.
As this report shows, publishers large and small have put into
place a range of ideas and strategies to make this happen and to
navigate “the new normal.” We hope the ideas captured here offer
inspiration and affirmation, so that we can all weather this storm
together.

FURTHER READING
231 ways publishers can make media
pay
COVID-19 has reinforced the need for publishers to diversify their
revenue sources. With advertising proving to be both problematic
and unreliable, for many outlets right now, the race is on to find
other ways to make media pay.
Here, we've compiled 231 hyperlinked ideas cutting across areas
such as: Advertising and Sponsorship, Content, Business Models,
Philanthropy and Memberships, as well as Partnerships and
eCommerce.
Read more here
5 digital subscription trends for

publishers, in charts
For many publishers, a key priority for the year ahead involves
growing revenues from readers. This is nothing new. In recent
years, the rise of paywalls and move to subscriptions has been a
major trend across the media landscape.
In this two part series, we look at the lie of the land and
determine the most important strategic questions that
publishers – large and small – need to address.
Read more here
Digital subscription strategies: the

seven questions you need to ask
For an industry where revenues have historically been
advertising-led, the pivot to subscription is a major shift. And it’s
not necessarily an easy one.
Here's our take on the seven most important questions
publishers need to be asking.
Read more here
8 steps to strengthen your newsletter

strategy
The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a myriad
of changes for publishers. Based on an analysis of more than 20
newsletters (including several COVID-19 focused products), here
are eight recommendations to slay your newsletter strategy.
Read more here

APPENDIX
COVID-19’s impact on the media in ten charts

1. US newspapers face 'extinction-level' crisis as Covid-19 hits hard, The Guardian
2. Covid-19 could trigger 'media extinction event' in developing countries, The Guardian
3. What will the coronavirus pandemic mean for the business of news?, Reuters Institute
4. Global Ad Trends: COVID-19 & Ad Investment, WARC
5. Global Entertainment & Media Outlook 2020–2024, PWC
6. Report predicts five years of steep global decline for newspaper industry revenue, Press Gazette
7. Pulling the future forward: The entertainment and media industry reconfigures amid recovery, PWC
8. Every brand should be looking for opportunities to grow during this recession, WARC
9. One in five UK homes signed up for a new video streaming subscription during COVID-19 lockdown, Kantar
10. Gaming Usage Up 75 Percent Amid Coronavirus Outbreak, Verizon Reports, The Hollywood Reporter
11. Digital 2020: April Global Statshot, Datareportal
12. COVID-19 Barometer shows consumers are in for the long haul, Kantar
13. Not to alarm you, but coronavirus-focused news products are spreading very quickly, Nieman Lab
14. How newsrooms are coping with coronavirus: A global survey of editors, WAN-IFRA
15. The Virus Changed the Way We Internet, The New York Times
16. Global Digital Subscription Snapshot 2020 Q2, FIPP
17. Global Digital Subscription Snapshot 2020 Q3, FIPP
18. News Media Outlets Have Been Ravaged by the Pandemic, The New York Times
19. The coronavirus has closed more than 50 local newsrooms across America. And counting., Poynter
20. The Atlantic Lays Off 68, Citing ‘a Bracing Decline in Advertising’, The New York Times
21. So far, publishers are keeping subscribers gained during the coronavirus crisis, Digiday
22. The publisher subscription ‘corona bump’ is flattening, Digiday
23. Churn Decreases Following COVID-19 Subscription Surge, Piano
24. Coronavirus: insights from wave 4 of our multinational study, Global Web Index
25. Coronavirus Research | May 2020, Global Web Index
26. COVID-19: 6 key takeaways for brands, Global Web Index
27. Global Ad Trends: COVID-19 & Ad Investment, WARC
28. IAB Europe’s Chief Economist Discusses The Impact of COVID-19 on Ad Expenditure and The Digital New
Normal, IAB Europe
29. The coronavirus traffic bump to news sites is pretty much over already, Nieman Lab
30. About Seven-in-Ten U.S. Adults Say They Need to Take Breaks From COVID-19 News, Pew Research Center
31. Digital News Report 2019: The five essential charts for publishers, What's New in Publishing
32. In charts: 9 trends that will define media in 2020, What's New in Publishing
33. Demystifying Why 'Solutions Journalism' Matters with David Bornstein, YouTube
What COVID-19 means for subscription strategies

1. Journalism, Media, and Technology Trends and Predictions 2020, Reuters Institute
2. Global advertising market set for tough 2020 as COVID-19 impact hits global economy, Omdia
3. Ad spending decline won’t be as bad this year as it was in the 2009 financial crisis, new study predicts, CNBC
4. Google’s US Ad Revenues to Drop for the First Time, Insider Intelligence
5. Postmedia revenue down more than 25% amid Covid-19 advertising pullback, J-Source
6. The New York Times Tops 6 Million Subscribers as Ad Revenue Plummets, The New York Times
7. The New York Times Company Reports 2020 Second-Quarter Results, The New York Times
8. UK publishers losing digital ad revenue due to content 'blacklists', The Guardian
9. Newspapers to lose £50m in online ads as firms use coronavirus 'blacklist', The Guardian
10. Publishers complain about media buyers blacklisting coronavirus content, Adage
11. Coronavirus dwarfs 2020 election content online, Axios
12. CNBC Digital Doubles Traffic, Grows Subscriptions, MediaPost
13. How Tribune Publishing is growing subscription revenue, Digiday
14. Subscription Impact Report, Zuora
15. Publishers Evolve Marketing to Keep Subscribers Brought in During Pandemic, AdWeek
16. Report - News Subscriptions In the Age of Coronavirus, INMA
17. Digital News Subscriptions Grow During COVID-19 Crisis, MediaPost
18. The impact of COVID-19 on the subscription economy, ZDNet
19. Removing paywalls on coronavirus coverage is noble. It also makes no sense., Poynter
20. What news giants are learning about subscribers during lockdown uptick, The Drum

APPENDIX
21. Trusting News: Advertising and Funding, Trusting News Org

22. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram needs your support to continue coronavirus work and more, Fort Worth Star-
Telegram
23. Digital media trends survey, 14th edition, Deloitte
24. Publishers Evolve Marketing to Keep Subscribers Brought in During Pandemic, AdWeek
How eCommerce, memberships and donations are helping diversify revenues during
COVID-19
1. Digital Revenue Exceeds Print for 1st Time for New York Times Company, The New York Times
2. Americans Adopting E-Commerce Faster Than Ever Amid Pandemic, Bloomberg
3. How eCommerce is becoming a key part of publishers’ emerging revenue strategies, What's New in Publishing
4. The Publisher’s Guide to eCommerce: Report Download, Sovrn
5. Hearst Sees Triple Digit Ecommerce Boost Across 'Men's Health,' 'Good Housekeeping,' 'Cosmo', MediaPost
6. Lifestyle Publishers Are Experiencing an E-Commerce Boom, Folio:
7. How to Use Free Archives to Attract More Subscribers, Webpublisher Pro
8. Here’s how 15+ member-driven organizations are adapting membership appeals, events, and more for
coronavirus, Membership Puzzle Project
9. Un plan de emergencia para garantizar la supervivencia de eldiario.es, eldiario.es
10. Demystifying ‘membership lite’: Why membership and subscription serve different goals, Poynter
11. Meet Our Members, San Antonio Report
12. Welcome to San Antonio Report, San Antonio Report
13. Newsletter, Rivard Report
14. How Portland Press Herald has promoted susbcriptions and donations, Local Media Org
15. Portland Press Herald owner to stop printing Monday editions for 4 of 5 papers in March, Bangor Daily News
16. Learn more about the Covid-19 local news fund, Local Media Org
17. Portland Press Herald - COVID-19 Local News Fund, Givebutter
18. State by state list of participants in the Covid-19 local news fund program, Local Media Org
19. How Coronavirus Is Changing the Way Publishers Ask for Reader Support, Facebook Journalism Project
20. Why trust, consistency and transparency are essential for publishers’ eCommerce strategies, What's New in
Publishing
Four ways publishers are building loyalty during COVID-19

1. Lessons in reducing churn from some of the world’s biggest publishers, What's New in Publishing
2. When chasing reader revenue, if you churn, you burn, FIPP
4. The Resurgence and Importance of Email Newsletters, Reuters Institute
5. U.S. Podcast Advertising Revenue Study, IAB
6. Podcast Ad Revenue To Grow Almost 15% In 2020, Despite Pandemic, AdExchanger
7. In two months, The Washington Post’s coronavirus newsletter is its most popular, Digiday
8. Publisher Events: The Future of Media Revenue?, Hubspot
9. How publishers are unlocking value in events, FIPP
10. Publishers Bullish on Talent, Tech and Growth in 2020, Folio:
11. How three media companies are approaching virtual events and monetization, Digital Content Next
12. 8 lessons from Hearst Live and New Scientist on running successful virtual events, What's New in Publishing
13. Do news sites have an ethical duty to remove paywalls on coronavirus coverage?, Poynter
14. Letter from the editor: There has never been a more important time to support the Daily Echo, Daily Echo
15. Need financial support? Talk to your community about the cost of your journalism., Medium
16. Is the COVID magazine subscription bump a short-term trend or a long-term bet?, Media Voices
17. What news publishers need to know now to survive the COVID-19 ripple, INMA
18. McClatchy puts coronavirus paywalls back up, Axios
19. Peacock free vs. Premium vs. Premium Plus: What's included in each plan and what isn't, CNet
20. Digital use around the world in July 2020, WeAreSocial
21. Why Skift is putting reader revenue in the pilot’s seat, Digital Content Next
22. Rafat Ali, Twitter
23. Covid-19: Maintaining customer loyalty and trust during times of uncertainty, Deloitte
24. Why publishers should optimize for loyalty: Loyal readers consume 5x more content, and stay subscribers,
What's New in Publishing

APPENDIX
Tactics to generate engagement during Covid-19

1. 4 things you must get right when you move physical events to digital, Fast Company
2. Newsletters, podcasts: COVID boosts publishers' attempts to directly reach readers, WAN-IFRA
3. Why publishers should optimize for loyalty: Loyal readers consume 5x more content, and stay subscribers,
4. Rise of the subscription economy - and what that means for your pocket, The Telegraph
5. Digital use around the world in July 2020, WeAreSocial
6. The COVID-19 eCommerce Impact Data Hub, Content Square
7. ‘Take back some market share from Amazon’: Publishers are testing their own versions of Prime Day, Digiday
8. The Strategist’s Two-Day (Actually Good) Sale, NY Mag
9. The Strategist Launches Exclusive Two-Day Sale, New York Press Room
10. Klarna and Cosmopolitan Team to Launch ‘Hauliday,’ a Virtual Shopping Event, WWD
11. Cosmopolitan + Klarna Launch Hauliday Virtual Shopping Event, Cosmetic Executive Women
12. Prestige Beauty: Dramatic Declines in Q2, happi
13. The Publisher’s Guide to eCommerce: Case Studies, What's New in Publishing
14. How eCommerce is becoming a key part of publishers’ emerging revenue strategies, What's New in Publishing
15. Traffic Increases 60% To Publishers' Sites Amid Coronavirus, MediaPost
16. The coronavirus traffic bump to news sites is pretty much over already, Nieman Lab
17. Coronavirus: a growing number of people are avoiding news, The Conversation
18. Initial surge in news use around coronavirus in the UK has been followed by significant increase in news
avoidance, Reuters Institute
19. About Seven-in-Ten U.S. Adults Say They Need to Take Breaks From COVID-19 News, Pew Research Center
20. Digital News Report 2019, Reuters Institute
21. The Complete List of Evergreen Content Ideas for Your Blog, Buffer
22. Coronavirus simulator becomes Washington Post's most-read story ever, Interhacktives
23. Record numbers and consumer trust, The Guardian Advertising
24. Stop drowning alone, start sailing together, Solutions Journalism
25. Have Questions About The Coronavirus Pandemic? Share And We'll Find The Answers, NPR
26. Answers to your new Coronavirus questions, The New York Times
27. Current.org
28. Newsrooms ramp up audience engagement tactics for coronavirus coverage, Current
29. Text Us Your Pandemic Work Story For Our Series The Next Normal, KCUR
30. KPCC is finding a new role as LA’s COVID-19 help desk. Here’s what it’s learned along the way., Nieman Lab
31. How to reach thousands of families without Internet during COVID-19? Try snail mail, Medium
32. 8 steps to strengthen your newsletter strategy, What's New in Publishing
33. APAC Newsrooms Co-host Facebook Watch Town Hall and Educate Millions of Viewers, Facebook Journalism
Project
Navigating COVID-19 and ad tech

1. Coronavirus Ad Blocking Is Starving Some News Sites Of Revenue, Buzzfeed News
2. Blacklisting “Coronavirus” is not helping anybody, Branded
3. Impact of COVID-19 on Ad Revenue & Spend, IAB
4. Publishers find coronavirus keyword blocking drops ad demand for homepage placements, Digiday
5. Keyword blacklists: why our ad dollars aren't reaching the news, Branded
6. 2020 International Report on Programmatic In-Housing, IAB
8. Coronavirus: When using the c-word gets you blacklisted, DW
10. Media Consumption during the Coronavirus Pandemic, Comscore
11. Coronavirus: Ad Revenue Impact On Publishers & Other Sellers, IAB
12. What publishers can do now to drive revenue continuity: Key takeaways from a roundtable of top publishers,
13. Providing emergency funding for 5,300+ local news organizations, Google
14. Fee relief to support our news partners during COVID-19, Google
15. Fee relief to support our news partners during COVID-19, Google
16. Statement: Ad Tech Companies: Stop Journalism-Harming Keyword Blocking Practices, News Media Alliance
17. How Brands and Agencies Can Save American Lives in The Coronavirus Crisis, IAB

APPENDIX
18. Statement: Ad Tech Companies: Stop Journalism-Harming Keyword Blocking Practices, News Media Alliance
19. How Brands and Agencies Can Save American Lives in The Coronavirus Crisis, IAB
20. 2020 PageFair Adblock Report, BlockThrough
21. What publishers can do now to drive revenue continuity: Key takeaways from a roundtable of top publishers,
22. Coronavirus: When using the c-word gets you blacklisted, DW
23. Eye Tracking Market with COVID-19 Impact Analysis by Offering, Tracking Type, Application, Vertical, and
Geography - Global Forecast to 2025, Research and Markets
24. Case Studies: Reach plc, IBM
25. Reach Teams Up with Tech Industry to Solve “Coronavirus Blocklist” Challenge for News Sector, IBM
26. Global Insights Report 2020, DoubleVerify
27. Keyword blocking, context and Covid-19: time for brands and adtech to accentuate the positive, The Drum
28. Using AI and advertising technology in a post-COVID-19 world, ClickZ
The legacy of COVID-19 for publishers

1. BuzzFeed Lays Off 50 After Pandemic Hurts Lucrative Ad Deals, Bloomberg
2. Vox Media to lay off about 72 employees as advertising revenue slumps amid coronavirus quarantines, CNBC
3. Guardian announces plans to cut 180 jobs, The Guardian
4. Memo: The New York Times lays off 68 people, mostly in advertising, Axios
5. A gap on the shelves: the loss of iconic South African magazines, Flow Communications
6. Media24 CEO confident of future of media, despite closure of publications, fin24
7. Here are the newsroom layoffs, furloughs and closures caused by the coronavirus, Poynter
8. Condé Nast and BuzzFeed Announce Additional Cuts Due to COVID-19, Subscription Insider
9. Evening Standard to cut one-third of staff as Covid-19 hits advertising, The Guardian
10. Mirror publisher Reach to cut 550 jobs in response to Covid-19 revenue hit, Press Gazette
11. ‘Not enough money to go around’: US digital-media publishers curb international expansion, Digiday
12. Telegraph to 'significantly downsize' branded content arm Spark, Campaign
13. Quartz to Lay Off 80 Employees, The New York Times
14. Vice Media Expands Global News Footprint With Vice World News, Coverage Of Social Justice Issues, Unveils
Series At NewFronts, Deadline
15. Kerry Flynn, Twitter
16. Quartz CEO Seward: We’re closing office spaces, execs cutting salaries by 20%, Talking Biz News
17. Sun Times moves out, clears way for Trump, NWI Times
18. The newsroom was the beating heart of a local newspaper. What’s lost when the owner shuts it down?,
Washington Post
19. When to Stop Working From Home? How About Never, Workers Say, Bloomberg
20. Will COVID-19 ultimately strengthen the duopoly?, WARC
21. Australia wants to force Facebook and Google to pay media companies for news, CNN Business
22. U.S. Is Said to Plan to File Antitrust Charges Against Google, The New York Times
23. Journalism Emergency Relief Fund - How to apply, Google News Initiative
24. Providing emergency funding for 5,300+ local news organizations, Google
25. Coronavirus rips a hole in newspapers’ business models, Financial Times
26. A Comprehensive SEO Checklist for Digital Publishers, Webpublisher Pro
27. Hearst reports significant ecommerce upturn during Covid-19 lockdown, FIPP
28. 5 digital subscription trends for publishers, in charts, What's New in Publishing
29. The Dallas Morning News is testing out reporter-specific promo codes for readers on the fence about
subscribing, Nieman Lab
30. How The Atlantic is moving its biggest festival online, Digiday
31. ‘Nothing quite like being forced’: Publishers whip up quicker, cheaper ad products for advertisers, Digiday
32. ‘Without the luxury of time’: The Wall Street Journal rolls out new products for the fast-tempo ad market,
Digiday
33. 2020/21 COVID Impact on Advertising, IAB
34. How journalists are working together to cover the COVID-19 pandemic, Nieman Lab
35. Reporting on Coronavirus, Reframe
36. Strength in numbers: Dow Jones and The Atlantic on how commercial partnerships drive growth after Covid-19,
FIPP
37. The Washington Post and Financial Times announce joint digital offer for new subscribers, Washington Post

APPENDIX
38. The Washington Post expands covid-19 coverage with new section dedicated to recovery stories, Washington
Post
39. Coronavirus: How much news is too much?, BBC
40. How three news collaboratives are tackling the COVID-19 crisis with an eye toward what’s working, Medium
41. We Are Not Divided, David Byrne
42. We’re Going to Run Out of TV, The Ringer
43. What do sports journalists do when there are no sports to cover?, Nieman Lab
44. The Athletic lays off 8% of staff, implements company-wide pay cut, Axios
45. The Athletic says it hits 1 million subscribers after surviving sports shutdown, CNBC
46. Scoop: Bloomberg and The Athletic to bundle subscriptions, Axios
47. Free MLB.TV is Back in T‑Mobile Tuesdays, T-Mobile
48. ESPN and competitors ditch their 'stick to sports' mantra. Politics is now fair game, CNN
49. In Barcelona, the Applause Starts at 8 p.m., Conde Nast Traveler
50. 101 Ways to Travel Without Leaving Your House, Conde Nast Traveler
51. U.S. Travel Ad Spending Plunges 90 Percent in March, Skift
52. The New York Times Will Pause Printing of Sports and Travel Sections, Cheddar
53. A New Print Section for a New Way of Life, The New York Times
54. Travel Publishers Pivot Editorial Strategy Amid Pandemic, MediaPost
55. Condé Nast Traveler’s Corina Quinn shares the brand’s pandemic content strategy, What's New in Publishing
56. Consumers Are Looking to the Future—Brands Need to Do the Same, AdWeek
57. Trusted Media Brands' Taste of Home, Family Handyman Have Biggest Month Ever in April 2020, Cision
58. Video gaming growth soars thanks to pandemic, Axios
59. Global Esports Market Report 2020-2030: COVID-19 Impact and Analysis, Cision
60. Bloomberg and The Washington Post are betting big on gaming. Here's why, CNN
61. Video gaming growth soars thanks to pandemic, Axios
62. 3, 2, 1 Go! Video gaming is at an all-time high during COVID-19, Nielsen
63. The Publisher’s Guide to eCommerce: Report Download, Sovrn
64. Beyond the boom and bust cycle: How The Sun grew and stabilized its e-commerce revenue haul, Digiday
65. Sun Selects, The Sun
66. The GQ Shop, GQ
67. Introducing GQ Recommends, Our New Online Shop, GQ
68. GQ U.S. launches merch shop, Conde Nast
69. ‘The second wave’: Publishers see the value of providing education through newsletter courses, Digiday
70. ‘The second wave’: Publishers see the value of providing education through newsletter courses, Digiday
71. Can text message-based news work? Indiana’s The New Paper thinks so, What's New in Publishing
72. Publishers Try Sending News by Text, The Wall Street Journal
73. “It’s a more intimate way of consuming journalism:” Why The Correspondent launched an audio-only app,
74. Audible Suno: Inside Amazon's audio streaming bet for India, YourStory
75. Hundreds of ‘pink slime’ local news outlets are distributing algorithmic stories and conservative talking points,
CJR
76. COVID-19 has ravaged American newsrooms – here’s why that matters, The Conversation
77. Local newspapers are facing their own coronavirus crisis, Fortune
78. Coronavirus crisis hastens the collapse of local newspapers. Here’s why it matters, Los Angeles Times
79. As election looms, a network of mysterious ‘pink slime’ local news outlets nearly triples in size, CJR
80. Partisan Websites Fill Media Void, VOA
81. Partisan ‘pink-slime journalism’ sites target Oklahoma, NonDoc
82. How the 5G coronavirus conspiracy theory went from fringe to mainstream, Recode
83. Coronavirus: Fake news crackdown after 'terrifying' post says parents can't accompany children to hospital,
Yahoo News
84. Coronavirus: How are the social media platforms responding to the ‘infodemic’?, First Draft
85. Tracking the infodemic: Charting six months of coronavirus misinformation, First Draft
86. Lessons from Week #3 of the FIPP World Media Congress, What's New in Publishing
88. Here's A Running List Of The Latest Hoaxes Spreading About The Coronavirus, BuzzFeed News
89. Here’s how 4 news organizations are building new ways to inform (and comfort) kids about coronavirus,
Nieman Lab

APPENDIX
90. Introducing The Membership Guide, a practical handbook for launching and growing membership, The Lenfest
Institute
91. Publishers have attracted more readers during the pandemic, and seen subscriptions boom: Art of retention
through community building, What's New in Publishing
92. Publishers “are just sitting on this goldmine”: Lessons from Week 2 of FIPP World Media Congress, What's New
in Publishing
93. Use Netflix principles, to build a forever transaction with your readers, What's New in Publishing
94. Digital media trends survey, 14th edition, Deloitte
95. A study of 600 top media brands identifies 4 key strategies publishers can use to boost audience engagement,
96. Are You Undervaluing Your Customers?, Harvard Business Review
97. Digital 2020: April Global Snapshot, DataReportal
98. What will the coronavirus pandemic mean for the business of news?, Reuters Institute
99. Balancing Act: With more time at home, work days and media habits merge, Nielsen

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INSIGHT REPORT

THE PUBLISHER'S GUIDE TO

THE PUBLISHER'S GUIDE TO NAVIGATING COVID-19 I

III Editor's note

THE PUBLISHER'S GUIDE TO NAVIGATING COVID-19

11 What COVID-19 means for subscription strategies

18 How eCommerce, memberships and donations are helping diversify

25 Four ways publishers are building loyalty during COVID-19

33 Tactics to generate engagement during COVID-19

41 Navigating COVID-19 and ad tech

51 The legacy of COVID-19 for publishers

THE PUBLISHER'S GUIDE TO NAVIGATING COVID-19 II

Esther Kezia Thorpe

THE PUBLISHER'S GUIDE TO NAVIGATING COVID-19 III

Damian Radcliffe is the Carolyn S. Chambers Professor in

THE PUBLISHER'S GUIDE TO NAVIGATING COVID-19 IV

This report was made possible with the help of additional

Find out more: www.uoregon.edu

About the University of Oregon School of

Find out more: journalism.uoregon.edu

THE PUBLISHER'S GUIDE TO NAVIGATING COVID-19 V

The publishing industry is showing signs of

From eCommerce to data, this report details

The resources within are adaptable for all

Power to the publisher.

THE PUBLISHER'S GUIDE TO NAVIGATING COVID-19 VI

THE PUBLISHER'S GUIDE TO NAVIGATING COVID-19 1

Although there are some data-lags, we can discern some notable

1: Marketing Budgets are down worldwide

Intelligence at GroupM (WPP).

THE PUBLISHER'S GUIDE TO NAVIGATING COVID-19 2

Marketing Budgets Index, worldwide and by key regions

2: COVID-19 has changed our media habits

THE PUBLISHER'S GUIDE TO NAVIGATING COVID-19 3

Notable here, as Simon Kemp identifies11, is that:

“Surprisingly, though, our digital existence has lost some of

THE PUBLISHER'S GUIDE TO NAVIGATING COVID-19 4

Via Kantar COVID-19 Barometer

3: Publishers are producing new products

4: Some local outlets are seeing a

Hewes, cited an article15 from the New York Times which

THE PUBLISHER'S GUIDE TO NAVIGATING COVID-19 5

A similar dynamic is playing out across

the globe, driven by the fact that increases in subscription

5: Pandemic-led subscription gains are holding

THE PUBLISHER'S GUIDE TO NAVIGATING COVID-19 6

With the coronavirus driving new subscriptions, for some outlets

The company – whose software is used by publishers such as

6: Consumers want brands to run “normal” ads

THE PUBLISHER'S GUIDE TO NAVIGATING COVID-19 7

As Jason Mander, GWI’s Chief Research Officer, wrote26:

7: Global advertising down in 2020, but digital

THE PUBLISHER'S GUIDE TO NAVIGATING COVID-19 8

by 12.7% ($60.5bn). In 2020, some sectors - notably social media,

Global, Year-on-year % change, US dollars, 2020

THE PUBLISHER'S GUIDE TO NAVIGATING COVID-19 9

8: Consumers, more than ever, need a broad

In the world of COVID-19, those words seem more

THE PUBLISHER'S GUIDE TO NAVIGATING COVID-19 10