Articles
Paid Growth: A Necessary Tool for Thriving in a Post-Platform Era
There is a snobbish attitude regarding the use of paid growth in newsletters. Publishers that have overly relied on search and social…
Atlas Obscura Ads Are Crushing; But What’s the Story With Experiences?
It’s not every day that I get to write about not one, but two media companies that have transformed themselves over the…
Smaller Publishers Need to Be More Proactive With Their Subscriptions
If you take a smaller media publication and put it up against The New York Times, things are going to look very…
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Making Sense of Puck’s Fundraising
Thank you to everyone who sent me a note for AMO’s four year anniversary. It’s incredible to think that there are readers…
Does Barstool Deal Show Content to Commerce Doesn’t Work?
The vision for content to commerce has always been that if you create a highly engaged audience, you can then create products…
Higher Margin is the Name of the Game for M&A
As I was preparing to write today’s AMO, I realized something. Tomorrow A Media Operator is turning four years old. I don’t…
Bots Account for the Majority of Clicks in Email
If there is one universal truth about tracking things on the internet, it’s that data is never as clean as you might…
Some Life in the Ad Markets
I am starting to futz around with the newsletter and want to start adding a little more structure. At Morning Brew, we…
Unlocking High Margin Revenue With Licensing
After building up a robust advertising and subscription business, the conversation starts to pivot toward other avenues for generating revenue. For some,…
Don’t Let Complex Tech Hold You Back
This is a special edition of A Media Operator, sponsored by The Code Company. In these sponsored deep dives, we dig into…
$125 Million for CoinDesk is Very Rich
Years ago, I referred to Digital Currency Group’s ownership of CoinDesk as the equivalent of Goldman Sachs—or any highly regarded financial institution—owning…
The Requirement for Building a Premium Newsletter
In June, I went to Detroit to speak at an event for the Alliance of Area Business Publishers on building successful newsletters.…
Media Is at a Unique Inflection Point
We’re going to look back on 2023 as a time of major change in media. It’s not just Vice going bankrupt or…
Content to Commerce Only Works One Way
What do Food52, Hodinkee, and MeatEater all have in common? They all sell things to an audience that they built using content.…
NYT and Sports, FT’s Group Subscriptions, and BuzzFeed’s Complex Situation
The wonderful thing about having a week off is that you get to recharge, think, and prepare for the second half of…
Media Needs to Stop Hoping for Subsidies
On June 22nd, the Canadian Government announced that Bill C-18, otherwise known as the Online News Act, had received Royal Assent. In…
The Vice Saga is Over
It has not been an easy half a decade for Vice. It has been in slow decline, trying to overcome rough investment…
1st-Party Data, Reporting, and Improving Advertiser Retention
The second half of 2023 is only a week away and that means my one-man operation is working to fill all available…