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1、GUIDEThe State of Productat PublishersIntroduction The current state of product Funding issues Finding alignment The websites demise has been greatly exaggerated The partnership path The Al challenge and opportunity2Contents3568101112In December 2012,The New York Times publishedSnow Fall:The Avalanc

2、he at Tunnel Creek,a six-partmultimedia package that not only won a Pulitzer Prizebut also a Peabody award for its trailblazing approachto interactive storytelling.It spawned many imitationsas publishers began to take cues from Silicon Valleyand establish product functions.Fast forwarding to today,t

3、he Snow Fall days seemquaint.The product functions that grew insubsequent years have become core parts of thepublishing function,as critical as content and sales.The function has morphed to drive business goalswell beyond storytelling.The Rebooting surveyed 52 product executives atpublishers and fou

4、nd that back-to-basics ethos thatskips the flash of Snow Fall in favor of what oneproduct leader called smaller wins throughout theyear.That prioritizes blocking and tackling likewebsite performance and data management.This is,of course,happening against the backdrop of severe challenges facing the

5、publishing business,from steep traffic losses,a hyper-competitive admarket,the loss of ad targeting signals,and slowing subscriptions.3IntroductionBrian MorrisseyIts no surprise that many product leaders rated theirorganizations as immature and underfunded,often stymied by misaligned incentives.We d

6、ont have a modern product function,said one.Groused another:Product at my company is a set ofglorified project managers taking orders from theirnewsrooms and leadership,with no product vision orstrategy to speak of.Few feel prepared for the coming Al era,with efficiency as the biggest promise identi

7、fied.The role of product will undoubtedly morph in an Al era.Many respondents report depending heavily on externalpartners,a trend likely to continue as product plays the roleof connective tissue among departments and partners todevelop audience-centric sustainable business models.Thanks to WordPres

8、s VIP for sponsoring this research andto David Kaplan for contributing writing and research.4Like most modern business trends,productmanagement emerged from Silicon Valley.Theinherent complexity of software created a need for a discipline that would tie consumer needs with business goals when buildi

9、ng tech solutions.Its arrival at publishers was an inevitable outgrowthof software eating the world,as Marc Andreessenput it.Its also not without its challenges.None of our respondents rated their current productimplementation as excellent,and just 12%percentrated it as very good.By contrast,the mos

10、t commonrating was needs improvement(38%)and fine(38%).We dont have a modern product function,said one respondent,but we have recognized the needfor one and are in the process of designing it andhiring for it.5The current state of productHow would you rate your currentproduct implementation?Excellen

11、tVery goodFineNeeds improvementPoor010203040Respondents to The Rebootings survey indicatedthey struggle to get the proper level of investmentneeded to maintain a performant,modern techproduct.Over half of respondents rated theirorganizations investment in product as too low.TheNew York Times is an e

12、xception,with hundreds in itsproduct division.Everybody else has to be more scrappy,moretactical,and do more with less,said Brian Alvey,CTO of WordPress VIP,an enterprise-grade CMS.Publishers are facing a multitude of businesschallenges,which have a cascading effect.The windsof change in the industr

13、y have shifted from chasingshiny objects and the fleeting sugar-high of socialtraffic to building sturdier foundations based deeplyunderstanding audiences through loyalty.6Funding issuesHow would you rate yourorganizations currentinvestment in product?Too highCorrect levelToo lowAbysmal0102030405060

14、Were sitting across all of the businesses within media and thinking critically about how well we understand whoour audience is,said Marissa Zanetti-Crume,global head of product at Bloomberg Media.How do we make our newstruly relevant and timely?We talk directly with subscribersabout that.Its what in

15、spires the design and product work we do.That takes investment.Bloomberg is uniquely positionedwith an ingrained product ethos thanks to its position withinBloomberg LP,home of The Terminal.For other publishers,the challenge is accomplishing similar goals without asmuch investment.7Lack of investmen

16、tTalent/tech acumenMisaligned incentivesLeadership supportOthers05101520253035Historically,news publishers have needed toovercome a church and state divide between theeditorial and sales sides.Thats even morecomplicated in modern publishing,as publishersnavigate different departments with different

17、goals.Product groups are often caught between competingpriorities.On the one hand,they are tasked withcreating audience-focused products.On the otherhand,they are charged with driving forward businessgoals.As one respondent put it there is a generalmisunderstanding of the importance of product.“Ther

18、e are essentially two product teams at a mediacompany,said Angus Macaulay,COO of Stat,ahealth news brand launched by The Boston Globe in2015.One is the editorial team and the news theyproduce-and they dont want to be called product.But that is the product that people are paying for:thewords on the p

19、age,not the page itself.So thenewsroom comes first,and you as the product headcome second.Both are important,but at the end of the day,somebodys going to subscribe or cancel primarilybased on whether or not the news they get isapplicable.No ones unsubscribing because the pagedidnt load fast enough.8

20、Finding alignmentWhat are the biggest challengesyou face in developing product?Staffing up for a product role within a publisher requires agreat deal of diplomacy and a considerable degree ofmedia insight that makes the job very different fromhandling engineering and design within any other type ofe

21、ntity,Macaulay said.When Macauley was interviewing for the head of productrole a year-and-a-half ago,one thing he made clear fromthe get-go with candidates who came from a tech companybackground was the recognition that the hierarchy anddynamic is very different at a media company.Said one responden

22、t:Product managers tend to bepromoted from project managers,which is a completelydifferent skillset.The most common issue identified was,again,lack ofinvestment.Many also struggle with attracting talent andmatching the pay offered by tech companies.9The open web is under pressure from all sides.Face

23、book has all but ceased sending traffic topublishers,Google is sending less and undergoing its own generative Al makeover,and digital admodels are challenged by targeting issues and ahyper-competitive market.Yet the website,the core of the open web,is still themain area of investment for publishers.

24、The vogue for distributed models and a fish where the fish are has given way to a return to drawing people toowned-and-operated websites and apps.In effect,publishers are opting for depth over breadth.Just over half of respondents ranked their websitesas the top product development priority.The home

25、page is a hub that reflects and supportsBloombergs other audience points of connection.Zanetti-Crume emphasized that the homepage as a product succeeds in concert with Bloombergsmobile app,its ad and data products,along with its video franchise Screen Time and event-related products.10The websites d

26、emise has been greatly exaggeratedRank each of the following inarea of importance for yourproduct development:Website55%AI26%Data management9%Apps6%Video4%There was a time when some prominent publishersfavored homegrown technology with grandiosenames,presenting themselves as part technologycompany w

27、ith the promise of future SaaS margins.Those days are mostly over,as evidenced by VoxMedias move in late 2022 to mothball Chorus,itsCMS that powered its portfolio of sites and otherpublisher sites.Media companies have realized that they dont haveto fight two wars at the same time,Alvey said.Maybe we

28、 could just focus on doing one thing reallywell,which is journalism.That message is sinking in.A majority of respondentsto The Rebootings survey indicated they reliedmoderately or heavily on external partners in theirproduct development.Her Campus Media,a 15-year-old media companythat reaches Gen-Z

29、readers and contributors througha mix of news/community media properties,is retiringa custom CMS it inherited when it acquired food-focused social site Spoon University.Wereinvesting more than ever in product this year,saidWindsor Western,president of Her Campus.11The partnership pathHeavilyModerate

30、lyNot muchNot at all01020304050How do external partners factorinto your product development?CustomWordPressDrupalOthers010203040What is your current contentmanagement system?Half of respondents indicated they were eitherunprepared for the changes Al will bring or unsure.That tracks with conversation

31、s across thepublishing landscape.The general belief expressedis the field is changing too fast,forcing publishersinto a reactive mode.I dont think leadership quiteunderstands how much a foundation-shiftingimpact Al could have for their current businessmodels,said one.Much of the narrative around pub

32、lishing and Al hasbeen fear-driven.On the one end,Als intrusion intosearch threatens publishers with less traffic,particularly to lucrative evergreen content.On theother,Al companies like OpenAl and Perplexityhave trained on publicly available publisher dataand often give users answers.Yet like all

33、companies,publishers are exploring howto embed Al within their existing workflows.Forexample,WordPress VIPs Content Helper helpsorganizations use their content and analytics datato get bespoke,performance-driven Al suggestionsinside the WordPress editor.This past May,TheNew York Times created an AI

34、Initiatives Teamwhose mission is to craft Al products for itsnewsroom,and(potentially)license these tools toother companies.Zanetti-Crumes team atBloomberg are also looking at how Al fits into amedia companys product arsenal.12The Al challenge and opportunityDo you feel prepared for thechanges AI wi

35、ll bring?No46%Yes29%Unsure25%PersonalizationMonetizationE?ciency010203040506070When it comes to Al,the question we all have to ask ourselves is,How does it help our users?Howdoes it help our workflow?How does it help us besmarter and be more efficient?Zanetti-Crume said.All of these things are open

36、questions.What is most critical for us though is that we do it in a waythat is responsible to our users,to the brand,and to who we are.The biggest opportunities identified by respondents sit between a better user experience(personalization)and workflow(efficiency).Of thelatter,respondents noted the

37、ability to help peopledo jobs faster and get rid of the noise and providemore room for second and third order thinking.Still,WordPress VIPs Alvey warns against publishers ignoring the basics surrounding theirunique offerings and the benefits of a simple,positive user experience.In two or three decad

38、es,theyll still be trying tofigure out a three-column layout and how to create a grid showing related stories,Alvey said.Publishers really do spend a lot of time reinventingthe same thing,which is one reason why many arestarting to wake up:Maybe we dont have to have ateam thats building the same thi

39、ng that everybodyelse has.They recognize it as a cost center,an extraweight on their business.And factoring those costsis what publishers have to do when charting theirproduct strategy.13Which areas do you believe AI willhave the most positive impact?WordPress VIP combines the ease and flexibility o

40、f WordPressthe CMS that runs 43%of the webwith unmatched scalabilityand security for the enterprise.Our solutions are trusted byiconic media titans,major brands,and government agencies likeCNN,Salesforce,News Corp,The White House,NBC Universal,Capgemini,and Bloomberg.With WordPress VIP,brands canscale their web presence,enable their teams to produce moreweb content,and use data to continuously improve contentperformance,eliminating wasted effort while maximizing ROI.Learn more at .The best companies run the web with WordPress VIP.