2017 will be the year measurement companies get with the times and focus their roadmaps on working with publishers, platforms, and advertisers to create more comprehensive measurement solutions that reflect the state of modern media.
At Vox Media, we build brands, not websites. That’s not to say we don’t build them — we do — rather, the website is not the sun of our solar system. This isn’t something that’s new or unique to us; this is what many modern media companies and advertisers consider the new world order.
If you look back even a few years, the model was very different:
But that model is deteriorating. The things we create are now being discovered and viewed and monetized on other platforms as well, sometimes without that audience transaction.
It’s not the platforms’ fault, though some would like to argue it is — it’s mostly the result of human behavior. When people love something enough — a public figure, a loved one, a media outlet — they’ll follow them anywhere. In modern media, that increasingly means not to a website.
So why then are we still handcuffed to third-party measurement solutions that don’t reflect this?
Over the last few months, some smart media people such as Jonah Peretti and Julie Hansen have publicly asked or addressed variations of this same question.
Why?
The digital advertising climate has been evolving into one that prioritizes quality and context over cheap scale; one that values media brands with influence, that are trusted and publishing content of a particular caliber — and are using both to reach big valuable audiences. In most cases, these are media companies that reach far beyond their own sites. This is what Julie refers to in her post as “distributed reach,” but what we’re really talking about here is “distributed influence.”
For example, in October, comScore reported Vox Media as reaching our highest month for U.S. traffic, placing us above BuzzFeed and most of our competitive set. Great news, you might say. That is until you consider our actual U.S. unique visitors, per Google Analytics, was 70 percent larger; international traffic was another 53 million uniques across desktop and mobile; factor in unique monthly reach across Facebook video, Google AMP, Twitter, YouTube, and newsletters and now you’re at a number that is meteorically larger, sure, but more importantly one that better represents the range of our audience and the gravity of our influence.
If media is only becoming more distributed, then it requires an equally distributed solution for measuring its influence. But I’m inexplicably optimistic. For the measurement companies, this is a big opportunity to be innovators and thought leaders and to work toward a more transparent platform for media brands and advertisers alike.
Jonathan Hunt is vice president for international at Vox Media.
Cory Haik Navigating power in Trump’s America
Rachel Schallom Stop flying over the flyover states
Megan H. Chan Cultural reporting goes mainstream
Sue Schardt Objectivity, fairness, balance, and love
Kawandeep Virdee Moving deeper than the machine of clicks
Dannagal G. Young The return of the gatekeepers
Joanne Lipman The year of the drone, really
Andrew Ramsammy Rise of the rebel journalist
Melody Kramer Radically rethinking design
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen News after advertising may look like news before advertising
Renée Kaplan Pure reach has reached its limit
Juliette De Maeyer and Dominique Trudel A rebirth of populist journalism
Nushin Rashidian A rise in high-price, high-value subscriptions
Tanya Cordrey The resurgence of reach
Helen Havlak Chasing mobile search results
Dan Colarusso Let’s make live video we can love
Ray Soto VR moves from experiments to immersion
Emily Goligoski Incorporating audience feedback at scale
Matt Waite The people running the media are the problem
Andrew Losowsky Building our own communities
Gabriel Snyder The aberration of 20th-century journalism
Lam Thuy Vo The primary source in the age of mechanical multiplication
Robert Hernandez History will exclude you, again
Jon Slade Trusted news, at a premium
Liz Danzico The triumph of the small
Ryan McCarthy Platforms grow up or grow more toxic
Mario García Virtual reality on mobile leaps forward
Vivian Schiller Tested like never before
Mathew Ingram The Faustian Facebook dance continues
Sarah Wolozin Virtual reality on the open web
Nathalie Malinarich Making it easy
Rachel Sklar Women are going to get loud
Kathleen Kingsbury Print as a premium offering
Ken Schwencke Disaggregation and collection
P. Kim Bui The year journalism teaches again
Dan Gillmor Fix the demand side of news too
Annemarie Dooling UGC as a path out of the bubble
Rebekah Monson Journalism is community-as-a-service
Eric Nuzum Podcasting stratifies into hard layers
Ole Reißmann Un-faking the news
Erin Pettigrew A year of reflection in tech
Jim Friedlich A banner year for venture philanthropy
Lee Glendinning A call for great editing
Claire Wardle Verification takes center stage
Tressie McMillan Cottom A path through the media’s coming legitimacy crisis
David Weigel A test for online speech
Emi Kolawole From empathy to community
Scott Dodd Nonprofits team up for impact
Julia Beizer Building a coherent core identity
Caitlin Thompson High touch, high value
Molly de Aguiar Philanthropists galvanize around news
Laura Walker Authentic voices, not fake news
Tracie Powell Building reader relationships
Matt Karolian AI improves publishing
Francesco Marconi The year of augmented writing
Priya Ganapati Mobile websites are ready for reinvention
Asma Khalid The year of the newsy podcast
Doris Truong Connecting with diverse perspectives
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Earn trust by working for (and with) readers
Sarah Marshall Focusing on the why of the click
Sydette Harry Facing journalism’s history
Sara M. Watson There is no neutral interface
Almar Latour Thanks, #fakenews
Pablo Boczkowski Fake news and the future of journalism
Bill Adair The year of the fact-checking bot
Jonathan Stray A boom in responsible conservative media
David Chavern Fake news gets solved
Liz McMillen The year of deep insights
Taylor Lorenz “Selfie journalism” becomes a thing
Burt Herman Local news gets interesting
Jonathan Hunt Measurement companies get with the times
AX Mina 2017 is for the attention innovators
Geetika Rudra Journalism is community
Guy Raz Inspiration and hope will matter more than ever
Andrew Haeg The year of listening
Umbreen Bhatti A sense of journalists’ humanity
Javaun Moradi What can we own?
Carrie Brown-Smith We won’t do enough
Olivia Ma The year collaboration beats competition
Mike Ragsdale A smarter information diet
David Skok What lies beyond paywalls
Steve Henn The next revolution is voice
Amy Webb Journalism as a service
Andy Rossback The year of the user
Michael Oreskes Reversing the erosion of democracy
Ariane Bernard Better data about your users
Christopher Meighan Unlocking a deeper mobile experience
Margarita Noriega From pinning tweets to tweeting pins
Tim Herrera The safe space of service journalism
Katie Zhu The year of minority media
Tim Griggs The year we stop taking sides
Mary Walter-Brown Getting comfortable asking for money
M. Scott Havens Quality advertising to pair with quality content
Mira Lowe News literacy, bias, and “Hamilton”
Samantha Barry Messaging apps go mainstream
Juan Luis Sánchez Your predictions are our present
Aja Bogdanoff Comments start pulling their weight
Libby Bawcombe Kids board the podcast train
Sam Ford The year we talk about our awful metrics
Millie Tran International expansion without colonial overtones
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Truthiness in private spaces
Corey Ford The year of the rebelpreneur
Jeremy Barr A terrible year for Tiers B through D
Mary Meehan Feeling blue in a red state
Mandy Velez The audience is the source and the story
Ashley C. Woods Local journalism will fight a new fight
Anita Zielina The sales funnel reaches (and changes) the newsroom
Elizabeth Jensen Trust depends on the details
Moreno Cruz Osório The year of transparency in Brazilian journalism
Peter Sterne A dangerous anti-press mix
Carla Zanoni Prioritizing emotional health
Rubina Madan Fillion Snapchat grows up
Cindy Royal Preparing the digital educator-scholar hybrid
Alberto Cairo Communicating uncertainty to our readers
Nicholas Quah Podcasting’s coming class war
Maria Bustillos “It’s true — I saw it on Facebook”
Keren Goldshlager Defining a focus, and then saying no
Amy O'Leary Not just covering communities, reaching them
Swati Sharma Failing diversity is failing journalism
Richard Tofel The country doesn’t trust us — but they do believe us
Hillary Frey Forests need to burn to regrow
S.P. Sullivan Baking transparency into our routines
Andrea Silenzi Podcasts dive into breaking news analysis
Adam Thomas The coming collaboration across Europe
Amie Ferris-Rotman Вслед за Россией
Errin Haines Chaos or community?
Michael Kuntz Trust is the new click
Dhiya Kuriakose The year of digital detoxing
Alice Antheaume A new test for French media
Reyhan Harmanci Bear witness — but then what?
Erin Millar The bottom falls out of Canadian media