In a special session at this year’s 46th FIPP World Media Congress being held in Cascais, Portugal, Pugpig’s CEO and Co-Founder Jonny Kaldor will outline the key mobile publishing trends. For more information about Congress, which takes place from 4th – 6th June, click here.
With access to data across 400 media brands, Pugpig has an unmatched insight into mobile publishing and the key trends, innovations and challenges media owners need to navigate.
On the Specialist Stage at the forthcoming 46th World Media Congress (Day One, 12.35pm), Pugpig’s Jonny Kaldor will launch ‘The 2024 State of the Mobile Publishing Market Report’ mixing analytics and interviews as well as taking a deep dive into subjects such as adoption, engagement, retention, audio, video, and more.
In advance of Congress, we caught up with Jonny for a sneak peek of the report including his thoughts on the use of artificial intelligence, key changes from the last report, and his thoughts moving forwards.
Mx3/FIPP: Can you set the scene and tell us a little more about Pugpig, your key solutions, and how you have access to such in-depth data on mobile publishing?
Yes for sure – Pugpig is a mobile publishing platform and we power apps for a large number of news media and consumer magazine publishers. It’s pretty simple really, we hook up to a publisher’s existing editorial systems and then launch and host beautiful apps for readers to engage with their content. The sort of content you can find in our apps ranges from simple articles from the website, digital editions, podcasts, audio articles, video, puzzles, stock tickers… you name it. The idea is to create a hub for a brand’s most engaged readers to come and play on a daily or weekly basis.
As readers use our apps, we collect pretty much every event that they trigger (whether it be tapping a button, reading, scrolling, saving, sharing, watching, playing, etc) and pull it into our analytics platform, powered by Mixpanel, all anonymised and aggregated. This way we can get deep insights into what readers are doing and what elements of the user experience are working best.
Mx3/FIPP: Without giving too much away, what would be one or two of the key trends in mobile publishing you will be disclosing to us at Congress?
Jonny: One of the big trends we’re seeing right now is the use of audio (in its many forms) to engage people and to keep them coming back into the app on a regular basis. This can be in the form of audio articles, podcasts, even audio editions. A lot of our publishers are putting audio front and centre right now and the results are pretty encouraging.
The second is around how apps are evolving from what originally was seen as a retention tool, into something more at the sharp end – i.e as a means to convert casual readers into subscribers.
I’ll cover both of these topics in more detail during the Congress session.
Mx3/FIPP: Has AI played a disruptive role in mobile publishing, or is it still finding its place within the channel?
Jonny: Gen AI is by definition a content thing, and as such tends to play out across the entire editorial output, not just mobile, so while we’re an eager recipient of the spoils of AI, we tend to be downstream of the pointy end of it.
That said, we certainly see increasing use of AI to drive reader recommendations and no doubt these will evolve pretty quickly. Funnily enough, what I expect to see more of in mobile in the coming months is as much about explicit user preference as it is about AI. While the TikTok/IG style of algorithm driven content delivery works for casual browsing, I believe people still want to have some of their own control over the content they consume from publishers – whether that’s based on editorially curated sections or personally selected topics and the ability to follow writers, teams, locations, etc.
Mx3/FIPP: What are your thoughts for the remainder of 2024 and beyond? What do publishers need to know?
Jonny: Given the sheer number of people going to the polls this year, I’m interested to see what sort of technological innovations we see both with reporting on, and delivering results of, the elections.
I also expect a reinvigoration of reader revenue initiatives in the coming year. From the conversations I’ve been having with many of the bigger consumer magazine owners, growing subscriptions and memberships is still a major goal, despite one or two voices suggesting that consumers are losing interest. I don’t believe subscriber fatigue is a thing. What is true is that people have limited budgets and lots of places to spend their money – but that’s nothing new – we’ve always had to fight for share of pocket, we’re just fighting against different people today than we were twenty years ago…
Mx3/FIPP: Finally, can you give us a stellar example of a publisher who is knocking it out of the park in terms of mobile publishing? What has particularly impressed you about them?
Jonny: I’ll give you two – Hearst Magazines and The Independent, for quite different reasons:
Hearst Magazines UK – with fresh energy and perspective from CEO Katie Vanneck-Smith, Hearst have put considerable resources into changing the company from top to bottom, and that includes their consumer products, specifically their apps. Subscription and membership are at the heart of their strategy and they are taking a tiered approach to its execution, with the brands that are the best fit (Good Housekeeping, Women’s Health, Men’s Health for example) getting the lion’s share of the investment.
As a result, you now see their apps evolving from what were very simple digital edition apps into something far more interesting, offering exclusive content, direct access to experts, utility in the form of mobile-friendly training plans for the gym and loads more features that are coming soon, but that I can’t mention just yet! The point is that they are evolving their mobile offerings from a replica of the print product to something that forms the central hub of their audience engagement strategy. It’s pretty cool, so watch this space…
The Independent – we’ve worked with The Independent ever since they went digital-only back in 2016 and their product continually evolves and improves. I think what I find most impressive about the team is that they put so much effort into building the best possible product – it’s never an afterthought, it’s absolutely front and centre. As a result, they have a product which gives readers everything they want from a top flight news brand, including all of the day’s newsroom output, live coverage of unfolding events, audio versions of every article, a video hub with a depth of short form content, a digital edition for those who want a sense of completion and puzzles for those who just want to unwind. All wrapped up in a really well thought through visual design. And it’s fast.
Come and hear Jonny launch ‘The 2024 State of the Mobile Publishing Market Report’ on the Specialist Stage at the 46th FIPP World Media Congress, Cascais at 12.35pm, Wednesday 5th June. Book tickets here!
