Reaching a scaled audience is important for publishers, but scale at all costs is just a race to the bottom in disguise.
When publishers have a deep and direct relationship with their readers, advertisers see stronger performance, says Rachel Oppenheim, chief revenue officer at digital news startup Semafor, speaking on this week’s episode of AdExchanger Talks.
“The partnerships we’re developing are focused on reaching not necessarily mass B2C customers and consumer bases, but rather key stakeholder groups across finance, media [and] policy,” she says.
For advertisers that want to get in front of specific cohorts, “scale is waste,” says Oppenheim, who joined Semafor after eight years at The New York Times.
Semafor, which was founded by former Bloomberg Media CEO Justin Smith and former BuzzFeed News Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith, celebrated its first birthday in October, having launched during what can only be described as a tough time for digital media.
At launch, Semafor’s monetization model was 75% advertising with the rest coming from live events and sponsorships. Now, it’s settled into a more comfortable 50/50 split.
While some news startups appear to be faring well – Semafor, Axios and Puck among them – others have been put through the ringer. Jezebel, for example, was unceremoniously shut down by its parent company, G/O Media, in November and resurrected a few weeks later by Paste Magazine.
Some sites, however, have been forced to close their doors for good, including Protocol and BuzzFeed News (Ben Smith’s previous stomping ground). The Messenger, meanwhile, which launched roughly six months after Semafor, is reportedly planning layoffs and just weeks away from running out of cash (a claim it denies).
All of which begs the question, putting aside the undisputed value of smart, incisive journalism: Is journalism a good business?
“I’m an eternal optimist, and a lover of journalism, so I don’t think I’ve got another answer in me other than ‘yes,’” Oppenheim says. “Like any industry, we’ve faced and will continue to face disruption, and we will need to adapt and evolve in order to be successful.”
Also in this episode: Why Semafor doesn’t sell programmatically (although never say never), balancing the brand safety needs (and fears) of advertisers with the revenue imperatives of news publishers, why Semafor chose yellow to adorn its digital pages (à la the FT’s pink), thriving in the “post social media era in news” and Semafor’s move from the “clam house” to the “penthouse.”
