Now’s the Time to Start Thinking About 2023

By Jacob Cohen Donnelly • July 15, 2022

There exists an inflection point at media companies—and honestly, all companies—when they start to think about things farther in advance. Gone are the hand-to-mouth days where you’re just fighting to get to next week. In its place are the longer planning cycles where you’re able to be more systematic with what you’re doing and set yourself up for much greater success. 

But making that transition can be a bit tricky because, in the process, it almost feels like you’re doing twice the amount of work. However, as we settle into the next seven weeks of Summer, it’s an excellent time to start thinking about how you can get yourself positioned for a stronger 2023. And if you want an example in real time, last year, I wrote my “what to expect in 2022” piece in October, so even here at A Media Operator, I’m trying to plan a little ahead of time. 

So, let’s jump in…

Data

Did you think I wasn’t going to mention this in a “preparing for next year” piece? A Media Operator’s unofficial tagline is, “you need first-party data.” And with each day that passes, it becomes even more important. 

According to a Google blog post:

For Chrome, specifically, our goal is to have the key technologies deployed by late 2022 for the developer community to start adopting them. Subject to our engagement with the United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and in line with the commitments we have offered, Chrome could then phase out third-party cookies over a three month period, starting in mid-2023 and ending in late 2023. 

If that’s the case, you have roughly a year before third-party cookies start phasing out. That might seem like a long time, but it’s not. The best time to begin capturing first-party data was when you created your publication. The next best time is today. 

When this happens, and if a new tracking technology isn’t widely adopted, advertisers will have fewer options for targeting prospective customers. That means that whatever data the publisher has will be what’s used to target readers. There’s a reason Google and Facebook are so successful; they have a massive database of data about their users.

First-party data can be thought of in two categories:

  • What the user gives you
  • What you gather about your user

Both of those take time because it requires the user to act and for you to catalog the various things that the user does. I’ve heard some publishers say that it’s taken them 12-18 months to reach any semblance of first-party data critical mass. Suddenly, third-party cookies being phased out by late 2023 doesn’t seem so long from now. Get started now. 

Here are a few pieces I have written about this over the years:

Review audience development strategy

Media companies have made a lot of mistakes over the years. One, in particular, is focusing exclusively on acquiring as much traffic as possible without converting that into an owned audience. I believe this is a primary reason why so many publishers have over-indexed on social media rather than on more stable but slower sources.

Take SEO, for example. It can sometimes take six months to a year to start reaping the benefits. Compare that to social media, where it can be easy to game (see: think bois and their threads), and you start getting engagement almost immediately. So it becomes pretty apparent why publishers chasing traffic opted for social media.

If we look at social platforms for most media companies, the engagement is depressing. This is because social platforms are not built to drive traffic; instead, they want to keep users on their sites. However, publishers are just desperate for traffic, so their social content is garbage. Thus, no engagement.

It reminds me of a story Slate shared back in 2018 about its Facebook traffic:

And at Slate, which agreed to share its internal data for the first time for this story, traffic from Facebook plummeted a staggering 87 percent, from a January 2017 peak of 28 million to less than 4 million in May 2018. It’s down more than 55 percent in 2018 alone.

That hurts. That doesn’t mean Google or search engines are infallible. The search result pages are full of Google-owned assets, which does reduce traffic that comes from Google. But Google is, to a certain extent, built to find answers for visitors and drive people to those sites. And as long as that content remains relevant, it can pay dividends for a long time. For example, CoinDesk’s Bitcoin Price page has driven millions of visitors since it was created in 2013. Not a bad investment.  

But traffic is only the first half of an audience. Whether social or search, you need to figure out how you will convert those people. And even now, in 2022, some media companies do not prioritize this. So, ask yourself: how will you get all that traffic to sign up for something?

I remain convinced that the single most important thing a publisher can have is a great newsletter. Not just a good one, but something impactful. I went to an event yesterday, and when people saw that I work at Morning Brew, they’d respond, “Oh, I love Morning Brew.” That’s special. And I think a big reason for that is because people are receiving our newsletter in their inboxes. 

Review your audience development strategy. Figure out how you’re going to acquire more traffic to the site, but then have a very firm idea about how you’re going to convert them. This takes time, so the sooner you start, the better. 

Here are a few pieces I have written about this over the years:

Starting selling 2023

If you want to talk about hand-to-mouth, let me rewind to two crypto bubbles ago. It’s 2017, and I am selling ads at CoinDesk. I would sell an ad campaign, and ad ops would need to have it running the next day because our advertisers were so last minute with their campaigns running.

But at some point, you start to get ahead of it. You soon begin selling a week before the campaign has to run. Then, you’re 30 days out, and you’re starting to hum. And before you know it, you’re starting to have conversations about upfronts. Only the largest media companies really do them, but the impact on the business can be massive.

Essentially, you plan out what you’re going to create in 2023 and then start selling it months or, in some cases, over a year before that campaign has to run.

The problem with direct sales is that you need more people if you have more stuff to sell. And there are only so many hours to sell all the ads you have. So, if you start selling 2023 ads in 2023, you’re scrambling to fill inventory almost immediately.

But what if you had sold 25% of your 2023 inventory in Q4 2022? Now, you start 2023 with the same number of hours in a year to sell, but only 75% of the inventory remains. It’s hard to get a 100% sell-through, but when you have more time to sell less inventory, it becomes a more manageable challenge.

Another reason this is helpful is it can give you some confidence about what revenue will be like in 2023. So, for example, if you wanted to hit $10 million next year and finish your “upfront” at $2.5 million sold, you’d feel more confident about hitting $10 million than if you started on January 1st.

A final reason to consider this is because your advertisers are also planning their 2023. And since all ad budgets are finite, capturing some of their budget months ahead will ensure you’re not chasing scraps later on.

This is one of the hardest things to get going, though, because so many media companies are hand-to-mouth. So how do you transition from selling week or month-to-month to selling a year in advance?

That first year is going to suck. You’re going to have to work double time to sell this year and next. But when you finally make the transition and can lock up revenue a year ahead of time, it will unlock far more exciting outcomes. It’s hard, but I’d say very worth it for larger media companies.

Here’s some of what I’ve written about sales and monetization:

There is a lot you can do to prepare for next year. There are still hundreds of publishers who aren’t thinking about core web vitals, for example. This would be a great time to get that worked on. But if you want my recommendation on where to absolutely start, scroll up and re-read the data section. The best time to start is now.

Thanks for reading today’s newsletter. This was a different format, but I thought it’d be constructive for newer readers that might have missed some of my older content. If you have thoughts, join the AMO Slack or hit reply. Thank you, and have a great weekend!