{"id":49724,"date":"2022-01-07T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-01-07T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/?p=49724"},"modified":"2022-01-07T09:59:48","modified_gmt":"2022-01-07T09:59:48","slug":"what-can-publishers-take-away-from-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/what-can-publishers-take-away-from-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"What can publishers take away from 2021?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Last year might have been better than the COVID-19 catastrophe that was 2020, but it still wasn\u2019t business as usual. Media-verification organisation the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/auditedmedia.com\/\">Alliance for Audited Media<\/a>&nbsp;(AAM) has asked its clients to reflect on the challenges of 2021 and share the lessons they will take with them into 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The positives<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Founded in 1914 as the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC), AAM asked its publishing customers to reflect on&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.auditedmedia.com\/newsviews\/survey-publishers-reflect-on-another-year-of-change\">their experiences in 2021<\/a>. With clients in print and digital news and magazine publishing, the survey highlights the long-term changes \u2013 good and bad \u2013 that media organisations saw settle in 2021 and expect to continue into next year.<\/li><li>One of the most positive observations from the survey was the general benefit felt from the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/trends.spiny.ai\/how-covid-19-has-accelerated-key-publishing-trends\/\">flexible working practices<\/a>&nbsp;that developed in the earliest days of the pandemic. Three quarters of respondents saw an increase in remote working as one of the year\u2019s bright spots. Almost two thirds said they had experienced more flexibility in their working day.<\/li><li>With regard to revenue, 66% of survey respondents said their publication had seen an increase in digital subscriptions despite&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/trends.spiny.ai\/retention-is-the-future-focus-for-publishers\/\">fears that reader engagement would tail off<\/a>&nbsp;following the pandemic\u2019s peak. Lockdown inspired online events also settled in as a new revenue line, with one respondent saying: \u201cWe created a new line of virtual events that will serve us well in many markets in the future.\u201d<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The negatives<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Undercutting the benefits of newly added digital revenue streams, some legacy income lines continued to take a hit in 2021. A decrease in print subscriptions was reported by 61% of respondents and 68% said they had lost advertising clients.<\/li><li>Increased flexibility from remote working was also offset by an increase in employer expectations \u2013 39% of survey respondents said their work responsibilities increased in 2021. This may in part be due to difficulty in \u2018onboarding and training\u2019 new hires, a situation exacerbated by a widely reported increase in retirements and resignations.<\/li><li>The \u2018<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/business\/2022\/jan\/04\/great-resignation-quitting-us-unemployment-economy\">Great Resignation<\/a>\u2019 as it has become known saw 4.5 million Americans quit their jobs in November 2021. Reasons for the increased rate of resignations are varied, from health concerns to wage inflation, but whatever the reason, almost 40% of the respondents to AAM\u2019s end-of-year survey had seen a rise in resignations and retirements. Just 23% said they hadn\u2019t been impacted.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Summing up 2021<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Given the opportunity to describe 2021 in one word, AAM\u2019s publishing clients could have been speaking for the rest of us in summing up a strange, but possibly more hopeful year. Single-word descriptors highlighting a tough 12 months included \u2018weird\u2019, \u2018stressful\u2019 and \u2018challenging\u2019. Others underlined the ongoing transformation that publishing is experiencing \u2013 \u2018pivot\u2019, \u2018adapting\u2019 and most popular of all \u2018changing\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Looking ahead to 2022, some of the professional goals expressed see the pressure for change carrying on. Alongside the usual commercial objectives of growing audience and building revenue, publishers expect to have to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Enhance and grow digital products<\/li><li>Keep up with new trends and technologies<\/li><li>Embrace change<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>But of all the professional goals listed, my personal favourite, because it is relevant to us all regardless of the year, is to \u2018hang in there\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:100px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><em><em>This piece was originally published in\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"http:\/\/trends.spiny.ai\/\" target=\"_blank\">Spiny Trends<\/a>\u00a0and is re-published with permission. Spiny Trends is a division of\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"http:\/\/spiny.ai\/\" target=\"_blank\">Spiny.ai<\/a><\/em>, a content analytics and revenue generation platform for digital publishers. For weekly\u00a0<em>updates and analysis on the industry news you need as a media and publishing business, subscribe to Spiny&#8217;s\u00a0Trends weekly email roundup\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/trends.spiny.ai\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last year might have been better than the COVID-19 catastrophe that was 2020, but it still wasn\u2019t business as usual. Media-verification organisation the&nbsp;Alliance for Audited Media&nbsp;(AAM) has asked its clients to reflect on the challenges of 2021 and share the lessons they will take with them into 2022. The positives Founded in 1914 as the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":49725,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,17611],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[21260,16601,1938,1503,2006,5027,1250,1371,1232,30445,4670,1388,1538,2616,2745],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49724"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49724"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=49724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}