The excellent site What’s New in Publishing has put out a new report titled The Publisher’s Guide to Navigating Covid-19, looking at eight trends that have emerged globally, as well as strategies that publishers have implemented as a result of increased web traffic.   Let’s take a look at four of those trends and see how they affect smaller publishers.   COVID-19 has changed our media habits. We’re spending more time with streaming services, social media and messenger services. Gaming has also seen a major pandemic bump. “Many people say that they expect their new habits to continue after the COVID-19 outbreak passes too,” said Simon Kemp. “One in five internet users say they expect to continue watching more content on streaming services, and one in seven (15%) say they expect to continue spending more time using social media.” Given this, they say, publishers need to find more ways in which they can make thei ...

“It may seem to be verging on madness to make this move during such unusual times, but we have found this new currency, properly communicated, has given everyone involved a new sense of purpose at a strange time.”   That quote comes from Tim Part, a manager at FT (Financial Times) Strategies in London, in an article on the INMA website yesterday.    The new currency he is talking about is the introduction of a reader lifetime value (LTV) into their editorial lexicon. “Long ago we realized the story of reader engagement was a better one to tell to the newsroom compared to a simple volumetric yarn about pageviews,” Part wrote. “Quality reads and RFV (revenue, frequency, volume) scores have long been embedded in the newsroom, but it was important to move toward LTV as a key metric.”   Interestingly, I looked up reader lifetime value and came across pre-pandemic research from Northwestern University’s Spiege ...