Each new day, it seems, brings with it another round of bleak warnings about the global economic situation. A global recession, according to the doomsayers, is inevitable and may only be months, weeks, or even days away from starting officially. Some are saying that the recession has already begun. While we all wait to see what exactly the future holds, all indications point to some bumpiness ahead.
Publishers find themselves at the mercy of the same economic headwinds as the rest of us, and according to a recent survey published by the World Association of News Publishers, they’re growing increasingly pessimistic about the next 12 months. With inflation rising unchecked, tightening advertising budgets, and a geopolitical world marked by chaos, who can blame them for a little doom-and-glooming?
The big question(s): how can publishers double down on maintaining maximum viability of their existing revenue streams—and better yet, how can they further diversify those streams to ensure they stay afloat over the next year or two?
We believe the answer lies in tools. Our tools, specifically.
Here’s a quick guide to some of the products and features we’ve built that will help publishers not just stay afloat amidst current choppy waters—but come out ahead of the game. As a wise man once said: you should never waste a good recession.
Engagement is the wellspring
Let's start with a basic truth—good old-fashioned audience engagement lies at the very heart of publisher monetization.
Engaged audiences are loyal audiences. Loyal audiences return to your site and stay on-site, moving from article to article as they hop in and out of different conversations. When they’re not on-site, it’s not for long—they’re still engaging with your content via email or social media, actively being funneled back onto your site and jumping back into the conversation. This creates a cycle of engagement that drives all-important metrics like pageviews and time-on-site through the roof.
As the largest audience engagement platform on the internet, we offer you the easiest and most direct way to engage with your users.
Our engagement tools go way above and beyond the comment section. We provide comprehensive analytics dashboards that offer you peerless insight into your most engaged readers, helping you better understand them and optimize your content strategies accordingly. From engagement metrics that visualize which types of content resonate with your audiences (and which don’t) to Reactions Analytics that capture text-free engagements (remember: our comments sections offer readers more than one way to engage), we help you identify and understand your audiences so that you can give them more of the content they want to see.
Keep it civil, keep it brand-safe
Your on-site communities are precious resources, and you need to protect them.
Disqus was the very first audience engagement platform to offer robust moderation tools, and we haven’t stopped innovating and arming publishers with new weapons for the fight against spam, toxicity, and all-around low-quality conversations.
Just last month, we rolled out a new set of fully-customizable tools as part of our Advanced Moderation features, which combine AI-powered automation and dynamic presets to offer you a multi-pronged solution that goes to battle for you, freeing you and your team up for more impactful work.
An effective moderation policy creates and protects high-quality conversations that entice your readers to join in and stick around while keeping your content brand-safe and attractive to premium advertisers and brands.
Which leads us to the next topic…
We can help you monetize inside AND outside of the comments section
Today, it’s as true as ever—advertising is the commercial backbone of the publishing business. These days, however, successfully monetizing via advertising isn’t as simple as slapping some ad inventory on your site and calling it a day.
Publishers need to have access to dynamic ad solutions that are A) optimized across desktop, mobile, and tablet, and B) fully customizable in order to integrate seamlessly with publisher content. Disqus works hard to establish an ad setup that suits the needs of each of our ad-supported publishers, helping you monetize your embed successfully in a way that doesn’t come at a cost to user experience.
(Note—Ads are NOT required for Disqus publishers. We offer a variety of ad-free plans for interested publishers.)
Disqus’ monetization capabilities extend outside of the embed. We also offer a full-service supply-side platform (SSP) that connects publishers with our vast network of brand and advertiser partnerships.
Publishers need to be doing all they can to maximize their programmatic inventory. Not only does Disqus open up exclusive inventory inside your comments section that targets your most engaged audiences with high-quality, contextually relevant advertising, but we also help you monetize more effectively outside the embed as well.
When the going gets tough, turn towards your comments section
Engagement opportunities that resonate with your audiences and promote loyal users who register, subscribe, and remain on-site. Brand-safe, high-quality conversations that don’t require a whole army (or even a single person) to moderate efficiently. Monetization solutions that drive revenue inside your comment section and plug into the rest of your inventory seamlessly.
These are the ingredients of an audience engagement platform that helps publishers continue to drive diversified and recession-proof streams of revenue—in any economic climate.
Interested in learning more? Come talk to us.