For two days, media professionals and insiders got together at the Mx3 Innovation in Media event in Barcelona to share their knowledge, expertise and insight. Many told of their ups and downs in the industry, others offered a new and fresh approach. All relished the off-the-record, informal format (no slides were allowed – at least not until the very last minute) and networking. Adri Kotze writes about the themes that struck her, delegates’ conversations and event side-line interviews. Anyone quoted directly has given their permission.
Great content
Time and again, discussions on and off the podium returned to content. There was no question that “content is everything”. There was also no doubt that the focus should be on quality content.
But what is GOOD content in the context of struggling news media, AI, false information, and hostile social media platform bosses?
The answer, many speakers and delegates agreed, is in specialism. Jacob Donnelly, founder of A Media Operator and formerly of Morning Brew, told Mx3 in an event side-line interview that while mass-scale consumer media “is screwed” and “in for a lot of pain”, the profits are in specialist media.
Advertisers will value specialist media as contextual targeting will gain momentum, he said.
“You’ve got to serve a specific audience,” Jacob emphasised. “Focus on what you can control. You can control creating great content. You can control collecting good first-party data, so you know who your audience is.”
Content is only good if it serves an audience and a community, speaker after speaker explained. You have to understand your audience and create content tailored to them.
Most audiences are not interested in the “what”, but the “how and why”. Some want to be entertained, others want to “feel something”. They like explainers.
The audience doesn’t care where or how media businesses make their money, whether it’s “digital, print, or at events”, an industry insider argued. They pointed out that audiences care about how they get information and how that information helps them make better decisions faster and better predict what is coming their way.
Helen Coetzee, founder and CEO of London-based B2B marketing experts MPG, said in a side-line interview that good content is “relevant, valuable, and delivered in a way that is easy for people to use when they need it.
“It’s the format. It’s simple mechanism delivery. Content and product go together. They need to be integrated.”
Great content will, for example, make the audience find you despite social media platfoms’ clampdown on driving website traffic and the decline of search engines, one speaker emphasised.
Read Piet van Niekerk’s take on day one of the Mx3 Innovation in Media event and Ashley Norris’s take on day two.
Fighting digital fatigue
One of the main themes that emerged was digital fatigue, whether with newsletters, looking at ads, or any of the other ways of engaging with media. The question is how to get rid of the fatigue.
Speakers reiterated the need for face-to-face meetings and events, and some suggested there is life in print yet, with physical copies making a comeback in specific niches, such as high-end beauty. But for now, at least, publishers are still grappling with how to address digital fatigue.
A targeted, clever newsletter strategy is crucial, boosted by, for example, high-profile writers. Personalised journalism and intimacy with the audience may form part of the solution, and without providing value and building audience engagement and communities, publishers will simply disappear in the overcrowded digital offering.
It’s all about personality (and brand)
Key points on and off the podium were the importance of building brands and having a strong, human voice that “cannot be confused with anything synthetic”. And while creators inside newsrooms may know exactly what they stand for, one speaker pointed out, publishers do not invest in or communicate their brands to the outside.
“Look, journalism – human, quality journalism – is important. It is a real skill. It has value,” they said.
In a sea of content, speakers argued, individuals hold increasing value. Creator media may have relatively small audiences (excluding megastars such as Gary Lineker and “The Rest Is Football” phenomenon), but they build loyal communities.
“The key word is brand. People trust people. If you have built trust with your audience, they will seek you out,” a media expert told the delegates. “Your audience will inherently be smaller, but that is not a bad thing. How many publishers are there in the world? Millions. Therefore, should I really have millions of people hitting my website every month? Probably not.”
Publishers could provide individual media creators with a platform, gaining the intimacy, personality, individuality and audiences they bring in return for bigger reach.
One speaker highlighted how media companies could boost their journalists’ profiles, although there were questions about whether that could launch media stars who would then be poached or go independent.
Artificial Intelligence: the tectonic shift
Regardless of how you see AI, it is a tectonic shift forming a new foundational basis for how our lives are led, how we operate, and how organisations and companies operate.
The difficulty, however, is that we’re at such an early stage that we “can’t re-tool everything now” because AI is so complex that we don’t know what is to come, an industry expert explained.
The strategic issue is publishers’ relationship with large language model (LLM) providers. Building these LLMs requires a lot of computing power and high-quality content, which gives the media industry “extraordinary leverage”. Therefore, now would be the time to collaborate and negotiate, the speaker advised.
While several speakers stressed the dangers of LLMs, called content scraping blatant theft, and warned against the lack of AI monitoring, they also pointed out the opportunities AI brings.
AI is not an “inherent evil” and can provide significant value to our businesses, even through content creation.
“If you put smart content into an LLM, for example, what will come out will be good, it will be trained off your content,” Jacob Connelly argued in his sideline interview.
Maanas Mediratta, CEO of Bridged Media, told us in another interview that it is crucial to distinguish between AI and generative AI. We could use AI to generate value. Machine learning is an example, he explains. Or we could use AI to help get rid of digital fatigue and find out where our audience is most likely to interact with us.
While AI is a must-have to stay competitive and relevant, it is more important to find what part of your business AI can help, Maanas pointed out.
Look past the doom and gloom
Is the apocalypse upon us? Despite caution and a good dose of reality, speaker after speaker said there are plenty of opportunities.
Publishers need to be quick, flexible and clever, but there was a buzz around niche and specialist media, especially in the business-to-business sector.
“If you get niche media right, and you get your content right, you will have people’s attention,” Helen Coetzee told us.
“What excites me is that tech data and data will be absolutely critical to business’s success. First-party data needs good tech; it needs good data, it needs companies to invest strategically in their tech stacks. If they invest well, and they get it right, they can scale, they can serve their customers better, they can monetise better, they can improve their profit margins, because their costs should be more under control. And they should be able to grow faster. IThat’s very exciting in terms of the potential that is still there.”
