Small is beautiful

Couple things to know about:

• We are conducting a research project in collaboration with Omeda. We are trying to better understand the audience strategies of publishers as they navigate what I call below the Great Realignment that’s shifting publisher models to focus more on deeper audience ties than raw traffic. It should only take 10 minutes to fill out, and as a thank you, we’re going to give five participants TRB Pro memberships. Take the survey.
• Speaking of audience, we are conducting our next Online Forum on Feb 26 at 1pmET with our partners at True Anthem. It is focused on how to publishers can win at social media in 2025. I’ll be joined by True Anthem CEO Chris Hart and Valnet director of marketing for gaming James Kosur. We will zero in on the tactics James is using to grow engagement and traffic from social platforms to Valnet’s suite of entertainment, gaming and tech properties from social platforms. These are interactive discussions that get into actionable tactics, like how the Facebook engagement bonus program changes publisher approaches. Join us on Feb. 26. Registrants who cannot make the live session will receive a link with a replay. Sign up. 

How does your email engagement stack up?

The numbers are in—7.6 billion emails were sent through Omeda in 2024, and Omeda analyzed the data to uncover key trends. Now that Q4 is wrapped up, it’s the perfect time to assess your performance and fine-tune your 2025 email strategy.

This quarter's report, dives into newsletter performance and subject line length—two critical factors that influence engagement, deliverability, and conversions. Are your emails performing as well as they could? See how your metrics compare, uncover actionable insights, and optimize your approach with Omeda’s latest Email Engagement Report.

Small and simple is beautiful

There’s been an interesting change in much of publishing: Big companies envy smaller companies.

Last night, at a private dinner we held with Omeda, two different executives from different large media companies expressed their wishes that their companies were smaller. The context was discussing how publishers simplify their businesses during great volatility. Operating businesses often means running the existing business while building the new business.

The Great Realignment in media is the shift to an audience model that prioritizes high engagement with intentional audiences. The most promising new models invariably are smaller, focused and built around direct ties to an audience, if not a community. The reality is most legacy publishers – and that encompassing digital publishers now – were built for a different era.