Will Apple’s iOS News App Really Benefit Publishers? Or is the benefit for themselves?
Apple’s News app, which comes preinstalled on all iPhones and iPads, is now available to all news publishers — anyone from Buzzfeed to local newspapers to Joe-Schmo blogger can sign up on the app to monetize the content they create (pending a ‘quick’ Apple approval process).
To make this easy to use, Apple created a formatted document for publishers to upload their content, or they can simply submit their RSS feed to News Publisher, an iCloud app that will push the content live.
News uses an algorithm to determine users’ preferences, much like Facebook’s newsfeed, so the most relevant and engaging content for individuals will show up first.
Apple will supply analytics and allow publishers to insert ads using their internal advertising platform.
When it was first released, only Apple’s partners were able to publish on the app, which included large media companies like Conde Nast, NYT, and CNN, so it’s a big deal that they’re letting other relevant content creators in on the party.
News competes with several other one-stop-shop news apps, most notably Flipboard, and other social media apps, like Facebook’s Instant Articles. It seems Apple is following the trend of capturing local publishers’ content to drive eyeballs to their app (Facebook announced last month they will do something similar with Instant Articles). This allows News to target users who don’t follow mainstream media, but want one place to organize their own media preferences that is tailored to their interests.
They kicked off a brand new advertising campaign to promote their News App — “All the news you want. All in one place.” They make it sound like they’re banking on local publishers jumping on board. It seems like they’re doing this as a way to be friends with local media companies, but what’s their real angle and will their app really benefit local publishers?
The first challenge when answering this question is not knowing exactly how many readers News has. Apple came under fire earlier this year for reporting inaccurate reader numbers to their publishing partners. It seems they still don’t know their exact reader base, which means it’s hard to guess how much money the average publisher will be able to make from the News App (although it is estimated to be around 40 million readers).
Participating publishers get to keep 100% of the revenue from the ads they sell with their content, or 70% of ad revenue if they use Apple’s iAd platform to sell it for them. Selling this locally as a one-off isn’t realistic for most local publishers, so it’s hard to see it as a huge money maker for individual publishers, however with the extra page views Apple will receive as a whole, they shouldn’t have a problem profiting off of the 30% of iAd platform ad revenues across the board.
Serious publishers need to consider the danger of losing control of their audience before signing up with these types of applications. As with Facebook’s Instant Articles, content must be submitted to a 3rd party which gives them control over the look, feel, and most importantly, the audience. Publishers don’t collect reader data or have control over how their content is displayed.
And will this sabotage views to local publishers’ actual websites. Are impressions more valuable on the News app or on their websites (in most cases it’s going to be the owner’s website)?
You should also evaluate how difficult it actually is to submit your articles and the time allocated to it.
It seems simple enough to sign up for, so if you’re a publisher of any kind of content, you could try out the News App and promote it to your readers, especially if you don’t have an app of your own. However as always, beware of the motivations these large companies have when they say they’re going to “partner” with local media companies.
If you are going to try News out, find one or two adventurous advertisers that like to be early-adopters to your digital advertising strategies and give the ad spots away for free for the first month. This will help you get a feel for the types of impressions and ad revenue you can possibly drive using News. After a month of trial and error, if it’s worth pursuing, I recommend building out a pricing model for your top sales reps to use with their top clients and use this as a source of passive digital revenue.
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