by James Clive-Matthews | 27 Jan, 2020 | Marginalia
Great to see a copy of the Culture Trip magazine in the flesh on Eurostar. A slick, matt finish cover and perfect-bound spine screams quality, while the prominence of adverts for other Culture Trip formats (and lack of much other advertising) reveals this to be a piece of brand awareness marketing more than just a shift to a new, retro format for an established digital publisher.
Getting a travel magazine on Eurostar is quite the distribution coup as well – finely targeted to a (likely) receptive audience.
I’d not be surprised to see more digital ventures going physical for ad hoc print editions like this in the coming years. The shift towards longform and digital editions, the revival of vinyl, plus the growth in sales of physical books and independent publications suggests a rising demand for tactile, physical content formats alongside the convenience of digital.
With good design and production values, a print magazine or book can be something to both treasure and show off – a powerful, prestigious tool for driving brand loyalty.
Don’t get me wrong – digital is great. But every format is worth considering in the marketing mix – if it’s got potential to drive results rather than being mere vanity.
by James Clive-Matthews | 18 Jan, 2020 | Systems & Technology
More on the death of the cookie. Good (likely accurate) quote here too:
“the next two years will be characterized by ‘madness and transition’ as the [media] industry devises an entirely new infrastructure”
FWIW, I’m pretty sure that, in the long run, this will be a good thing for everyone. Adtech has long promised more than it really delivered, while programmatic ads are really little better than spam – microtargeting claiming sophistication, but really just encouraging lowest-common-denominator, purely transactional digital nagging.
And because hardly anyone *willingly* clicks on those adverts, bounce rates on accidental clicks are mad high, making it harder to spot which things are actually performing well, so hiding potential opportunities to identify trends that could help you boost organic growth.
We’ve long needed more sophistication in digital advertising – this will hopefully be the kick up the backside that sees this start to happen.
by James Clive-Matthews | 15 Jan, 2020 | Systems & Technology
This move will reshape the internet, and change how publishers, advertisers, brands and marketers operate.
“View-through attribution, third-party data, DMP and multitouch attribution will be ‘dead’ under the proposals. We’re now facing a world with significantly less measurement and targeting.”
What does this mean? Initial thoughts:
- Less audience targeting from 3rd party cookies => more need for audience insights from other data sources. Owned web properties will become more important.
- Google’s stranglehold on advertising will tighten, as Chrome will track engagement metrics instead.
- Throwing money at supposedly targeted distribution will stop appealing to advertisers, many of whom are already suspicious of the purported ROI of such campaigns.
- Digital ads we see will become less obviously personalised to us.
- Instead, marketing will need to work on its merits – attracting audiences via sustained campaigns based around creative concepts rather than algorithms.
- Yet another revenue source will be cut off for publishers, making it harder than ever to fund traditional journalism.
- This will in turn either open up more gaps for niche non-profit publishers (and brands) to fill, or lead to a decline in the amount of content produced.
Interesting times…
