Our What We’re Reading blog series is back with a fresh batch of insightful articles for you! In case you need a reminder, this series highlights our favorite articles, topics, and reports relevant to digital publishing to help our readers, publishers, and blog subscribers stay up to date with the latest information and news. If you haven’t already, be sure to check out Volume 1, Volume 2, and Volume 3 for some great additional reads. We’d love to hear your feedback about the articles and how the topics may be impacting your business. Now... let’s get right into it, shall we?
It’s the End of News As We Know It (and Facebook is Feeling Fine)
Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery - Mother Jones
Facebook, desperate to restore its image following controversies with Cambridge Analytica, political ads, and fake news, tried to make Facebook about friends again in 2018. You remember the "We came here for friends" commercial. However, in the process, real news publishers suffered.This great read from Mother Jones breaks down how Facebook's changes affected legitimate publishers.
Multimillion-Dollar Oops! Google Will Pay Publishers For “The Night of the Yellow Ad”
Sarah Sluis - AdExchanger
For 45 minutes on Tuesday, December 4th, publishers saw a strange yellow rectangle blanket their sites. Turns out the yellow ad appeared across the U.S. and Australia because of a training mistake made by a Google team. This piece provides a helpful look at how automation can magnify tiny mistakes, the scale of Google’s oversight, who was affected, and their plan to correct the error. If you’re a publisher and you had the yellow ad on your site, let us know in the comments below!
Digital Influencers Have Changed Advertising. They’re Changing Journalism Too.
George Civeris - Columbia Journalism Review
The Columbia Journalism Review provides a great update on the world of influencer marketing. The article covers both the challenges and advantages of influencer marketing in 2018. We define influencers as individuals who have power and influence over their audiences, can affect purchasing decisions and even sway behavior. However, influencers aren't just posting selfies or raving about their favorite new beauty products. Some present their work as journalism. Their continued rise in popularity and viewership creates new challenges in the online media landscape. For publishers, this means more competition for readers’ attention and an increasing blurred line between journalism and opinion.
How Can Digital Media and Publishing Diversify Audience Acquisition? Part 1
Harry Lancaster - Medium
Disqus is always excited to hear from insightful developers and publishers! This panel, hosted by Bibblio at their event in Berlin, tackles topics such as growth, diversity, how to best gain direct traffic, curating content, and optimizing your content to best fit each distribution channel.