Daily Beast President Mike Dyer Says He Won't Worship At Facebook and Google's Altar
October 26 2016 - 12:15PM
Dow Jones News
By Steven Perlberg
The growing power of platforms like Facebook, Google and
Snapchat has become one of the biggest topics in digital media in
recent years, and some publishers have enjoyed huge growth as they
pour editorial resources into content that satisfies those
distributors' goals.
But Mike Dyer, president and publisher of the Daily Beast, said
that he is taking a different strategy, and the
IAC/InterActiveCorp.-owned news and entertainment site is not
involved in programs like Facebook's Instant Articles or Google's
AMP.
"If you're going to play in someone's yard, you have to play by
their rules," Mr. Dyer said on the latest episode of the WSJ Media
Mix podcast, adding that the extent to which publishers will be
able to derive meaningful revenue from social media companies is
far from clear.
"We take a contrarian, but we also think evidence-based view of
social media, which is that we do not worship at the altar of the
'distributed' media or 'distributed' audience model. We're not
opposed to the benefits that a Facebook or a Snapchat or a Twitter
can bring to us, but we focus day in and day out on building a
relationship with an audience that wants to come to us
directly."
Mr. Dyer said that about half of the site's traffic is direct,
meaning that people plug in the URL directly to their browsers or
arrive through avenues like the Daily Beast's email newsletters or
a friend texting them a link.
"What is very clear to us is that there is a difference between
doing the hard spadework of building a brand that truly means
something to users" and "easy audience growth for the sake of scale
or for the sake of a large monthly unique number," he said. "We
want to control our own destiny."
Part of that destiny is a big bet on creating sponsored content
on behalf of marketers. Mr. Dyer said that more than 70% of the
site's ad revenue came from such work, and that it uses data from
other IAC-owned publishers such as Ask.com and About.com to help
convince marketers their work is getting results.
For more with Mr. Dyer on the Beast's post-election editorial
strategy and his outlook of the broader media landscape, check out
the episode and subscribe to the WSJ Media Mix podcast on iTunes,
Google Play Music, Spotify or Stitcher.
Write to Steven Perlberg at steven.perlberg@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 26, 2016 12:00 ET (16:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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