Over the past few years many traditional things have been shaken up, and the media industry has not been immune. There are likely many contributing factors leading to change, but two that stand out are fluctuations in media consumption habits and privacy standards. Late last year Broadsheet Communications published State of Media 2022-2023, an industry report that examines various segments of today’s media landscape. The report digs deep into specifics, but in general, it finds that the industry is in a period of flux driven by fragmentation across media channels, data signals, and measurement methods.

In this episode of the PRovoke Media Podcast, Megan Keogan, head of content partnerships at PRovoke Media is joined by Broadsheet Communications’ Principal Analyst and Vice President of Strategy Alex Wolf, to talk about changes in the way content is monetized and how that’s leading to massive changes across the industry landscape. These changes are predicted to have lasting impact from big media companies to small boutique firms and eventually across the communication industry as a whole.

“The way publishers  and software and content creators, make money has a great deal of bearing over the communications profession,” Wolf said. “At the end of the day, earned media presumes healthy and solvent ecosystem of publishers. Anything that changes in their ability to make money and the ways that they’re incentivized to relate to their customer base, that’s going to change the way that media works.”

Throughout the conversation Wolf references the State of the Media report, which he authored. The report is geared to agencies, publishers, ad tech companies and intermediaries with a vested interest in helping their partners navigate this newfound complexity. This podcast episode touches on a number of areas that organize the report:

  • Buy-Side - brands and agencies
  • Sell-Side - publishers and networks
  • Enablement - identity, ad tech and data
  • Conversion - payments and retail
  • Oversight - regulators, analysts, and media

One of Wolf’s main objectives with the report is to break down trends and rumors. What works for one company will not necessarily work for another, he says.

“One of the things that you see is that publishers are pivoting away from advertising altogether,” he said. “This has been a trend that has gone on for a long time. The New York Times was one of the first to have a successful paywall, so was The Wall Street Journal. That’s viable for high-end publishers that can really command subscription. The trouble that paywalls are not viable for the majority of publishers. There’s a select few at the top that can really do it. Same with streaming subscriptions. There’s only so many of those things that we can really afford, really get value from. The point is there’s a ceiling to how much of that media ecosystem can translate transition away from ads altogether.”

Key moments

0:00 Introductions
1:00 The Role Of An Analyst In PR
4:56 How Value Moves Through The Industry
13:43 The Layers Ff Fragmentation We’re Experiencing Today
18:30 The Impact Of Losing Cookies
23:32 What Happens In Advertising Matters
28:17  What Do We Do After Cookies?
31:59  Every Company Is A Media Company
34:48 To Be Successful Lean Into Your Category Expertise
41:42 At The End O The Day, It’s Going To Be About Quality




The PRovoke Media Podcast is produced by Markettiers.

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