Media
3 mins read

Jacob Donnelly: How digital publishers will survive in a post-platform world 

As media platforms tighten their grip on content distribution, publishers must focus on what they can control, says Jacob Donnelly, founder of A Media Operator and former publisher of Morning Brew. 


In a post-platform world where digital platforms will be increasingly restrictive in how they control content and traffic, publishers must invest more money in creating great content.

If you create great content, people will find you, said Jacob Donnelly, founder of A Media Operator and former publisher of Morning Brew, in an on-the-record interview on the sidelines of Mx3’s Innovation in Media conference in Barcelona. 

“AI isn’t an inherent evil for media companies. It’s just going to change how we do things. And it can provide a lot of value to our businesses, even with content creation. If you put smart content into a proprietary AI engine, or an LLM, what comes out will also be good, because it’ll be trained off your content.”

Shifting traffic sources

Jacob warned that publishers must accept that the mass-scale era will not always be there. It was a “false situation” in the first place, he explained. Now, social media is a reducing source of traffic and “search is potentially a reducing source of traffic”.

“I think that people (read: legacy publishers) thought the internet would allow them to grow forever. They did not understand the dynamics (of what) they had been working with. Originally, before the internet, they had geographic and logistical monopolies. There was only one newspaper in one town, so therefore you had no competition and a monopoly in which you could do whatever you wanted.”

It was expensive to print magazines and newspapers, but with the arrival of the internet, these barriers to disappeared. “You could, with a publication based in London, tell a story that somebody based in South Africa can read. That was not the case before the internet. The problem is that because everybody else could also create content much less expensively, the competition increased considerably.”

In addition to creating great content, Jacob said, media companies must realise that the only way to win “is to niche back down”. That means they will have to focus on specific topics.

Serve very specific audiences

As for the notion that almost all media companies are facing an imminent apocalypse, Jacob cautions that this is not true. Admittedly, though, the outlook is not good for mass-scale consumer media. “They are in for a lot of pain. Their cost structures are all sorts of screwed up. The content these publications make is undifferentiated.” 

However, for specialist media, like most businesses that attended Mx3 Barcelona, the outlook changes. “A lot of these operators are likely running profitable businesses because they serve very specific audiences… But if you don’t know who you are serving, how are you going to build a business?”

The “reach model” created a false economy

Only the best news publishers are likely to survive, Jacob predicted.

“News is a tough business,” he said, “because people don’t have an inherent desire to pay for it.” 

Furthermore, the so-called “reach model” created a false economy. “The model was (to) give away the product as cheaply as possible, and you’ll make all the money on the advertising. That just doesn’t work as much on the internet because there are better ad products on the platforms. Google, Facebook, not Twitter, but Google and Facebook, they have better ad products.”

Focus only on what you can control

In this environment, publishers must focus on the factors they can control, advised Jacob. “You cannot control the platforms. The platforms are going do what they are going to do… But you can control creating great content. You can control collecting good first-party data. You know who your audience is. You can control trying to grow a subscription business or an advertising business. You can control how you monetise (your business).

“Stay calm, knuckle down, and do not feel overwhelmed. Media is a consistency business. You have got to show up and do the same thing every single day over and over and over again. And then, years later, you’ve built a great brand.”

See edited extracts from the interview below: