Business Insider Is Launching A New Site; The New York Times Is Buying The Wirecutter For $30M

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Data-Driven Journalism

Business Insider is tapping into its new parent company, Axel Springer, to launch a new market data site, The Wall Street Journal reports. The site, MarketsInsider.com, will be powered by data from Axel Springer-owned Finanzen.net, a finance portal that connects to 100 exchanges globally. It will be mobile-first and allow users to create personalized portfolios, watch lists and charts based on market data. Display, native and sponsored content will support the site. It’s not the first time BI has spun off a separate outlet; Insider is BI’s lifestyle and entertainment video outlet. Tech Insider, however, was shuttered in August because its content was too close to that of the main site. More.

Affiliate Revenue

The New York Times is buying consumer electronics guide The Wirecutter for $30 million, reports Peter Kafka of Recode. The Wirecutter and its sister site, The Sweethome (also a consumer electronics guide), make money from affiliate links, an increasingly interesting revenue model for publishers. Given that the Times attributed a 7% drop in revenue last quarter to declines in digital display spending, investing in a new revenue model makes sense. More.

Tower of Babel

“Five years ago our industry accomplished something truly remarkable: the ANA, the 4As and IAB came together to fix digital measurement,” IAB CEO Randall Rothenberg writes in an Ad Age column. Fast forward five years, and digital metrics are still a huge bottleneck in the digital supply chain. Rothenberg is ready to point fingers. The industry could solve the problem, but “because of agency recalcitrance, it hasn’t worked out that way,” he says. “It’s not that there is one bad actor. It’s simply that the agencies (and account teams within the agencies) aren’t taking the time to consider the time and resource drain caused by their lack of coordination and the lack of common business rules.” Read on.

Buying Bulk

Facebook video has blossomed into an industry force this year, but it’s still heavily reliant on a couple of narrow categories (e.g., food porn and viral humor). Tasty, the BuzzFeed group that pioneered the overhead-cooking-video genre, is pulling the whole cart when it comes to BuzzFeed’s video views (and revenue) on Facebook, reports Sahil Patel at Digiday. The analytics firm Tubular Labs tracks Facebook video content performance, and the top two publishers by far are Unilad and the Lad Bible, followed by Tasty. The numbers are eye-popping for those who can make Facebook video work, but how many companies does that include?

Unblock Me

French publisher Le Monde is saying “enough” to ad blocking. After twice asking readers “nicely” to whitelist the site, the publisher will now block content until they do so, with a message that explains its ad-supported model. So far, 14% of readers have whitelisted the site, but that’s only a 1% increase from its first trial in March. Le Monde estimates that 20% of its audience has an ad blocker installed, and that number might continue to increase until the publisher fixes the quality of its advertising. “I totally understand people who set an ad block on Le Monde,” said analytics head Pierre Buffet. “It’s kind of aggressive, not very user-friendly. We know we have too much, but we can’t do without the revenue at the moment.” More.

But Wait, There’s More!