june 2014 ● PubExec.com

The Technology Issue

Say Media CeO Matt Sanchez on Building A Robust Digital Infrastructure

Empowering Content

14 Ways to Boost the Marketing Power of Print

Dissecting the New Media Life Cycle

Publishing ExecutiveBuyer’s Guide 2014 TechnoloGy issue

Publishing Executive

Publishing Executive

Publishing Executive

Volume 29, Number 3 • JuNe 2014

Cover Story

14 Empowering Content Say Media CEO Matt Sanchez on the strengths of point-of-view

content and the benefits of publishing platforms that serve readers, editors, and marketers.

By Dan Eldridge

ColumnS

11 Guest Column: By Andrew Davis

Hedge Your Bets or Double-Down? A strategic approach to understanding the

new media life cycle

12 View From The Tree: By D. Eadward Tree

14 Ways to Enhance the Marketing Power of Printed Magazines

34 BoSacks Media Intelligence: By Robert M. Sacks

Media Schizophrenia in the Time of Great Realignment

DePArtmentS

9 Tech Talk: Q&A with Mag+ CEO Gregg Hano

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Buyer’s GuideDigitAl PubliShing & Content mAnAgement SolutionS

18 From One Comes Many As readers migrate from print to digital

platforms, choosing the right vendor can have long-term implications.

21 Digital Publishing & Content Management

Listings

WebinAr & viDeo ServiCeS

24 Show Don’t Tell A combination of technology and

events is helping publishers diversify their revenue streams.

26 Webinar & Video Listings

mArketing AutomAtion toolS

28 New Marketing Tools Allow for Deeper Digital

Interactions29 Marketing Listings

AuDienCe DAtA mAnAgement

30 If You Can’t Segment You’re Dead

30 Fulfillment, Database & Email Marketing Listing

xecutiveBuyer’s Guide

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14 Publishing ExEcutivE • JUNE 2014

Although it was launched back in 2005 as a video embed-ding platform known as VideoEgg, and has spent a good portion of its decade-long life as a digital advertising net-work, New York City-headquartered Say Media has lately been making headlines for its prowess in the online publish-ing space. In fact, there’s a good chance that at some point you’ve been sucked into the digital rabbit hole of one of Say Media’s 16 online magazines, which it refers to as “brands.”

Among the best known are the sites in the publisher’s “style” vertical, which includes xoJane and Fashionista. Say also lends its services to community-heavy sites like Catster and Dogster, and to design, home, and lifestyle properties like Remodelista and A&E’s Biography.com.

The common thread that holds them all together? Co-founder and CEO Matt Sanchez refers to it alternately as “point of view publishing” and “blending community with content.” The idea, says Sanchez, is to cut through the in-ternet’s endless digital clutter by creating highly-subjective and opinionated content.

Notably, part of Say Media’s uniqueness results from its hybrid business model. Say owns and operates some sites in its portfolio outright while others, like Biography.com and Lifetime Moms, are published through a partnership model. Say also lends its advertising and sales engine to sites like Fashionista and Gear Patrol, which also benefit from the company’s marketing and technology assists.

Perhaps most important, Say Media’s sites all live within a proprietary online publishing platform known as Tem-pest. More than just a beefed-up content management system, Tempest offers a scalable digital experience that integrates content, community, commerce, and market-ing—the so-called “four pillars” of the platform—across any digital device.

Sanchez recently spoke with Publishing Executive about the ways in which his roughly 300-employee team attempts to build the media company of the future each day.

What does Say Media bring to the table when partnering with a publisher?

I think what’s really interesting about the media business—particularly in digital—is that we create lifestyle content around the things we’re passionate about. And there are all these great independent publications being created because people have a real passion for a certain topic. [Our work] is really about bringing to life the voice of a small collec-tion of individuals that really care deeply about a topic, and then building a community around that. And that’s a very personal thing.

There are parts of the media business that are about scale, and those include the technology challenges of build-ing a website, making sure it works on mobile, understand-ing your Twitter strategy—all the pieces that are actually true of every publication. And so what we were finding was that Say had an opportunity to solve some of the scale chal-lenges of media for a whole set of independent publishers, whether those were technology challenges, or marketing, or back office, or whatever. And then that would allow these publishers to really create the concept they loved to create, and to do what it is they’re passionate about.

Can you explain how Say Media transformed from a digital advertising network into a digital magazine publisher?

The company is almost 10 years old and we actually started by trying to solve the publishing problem around video. This was before YouTube ever existed, and we thought there was

a big opportunity in con-sumers being able to share their video content online. So we built out a platform that made it easy for ser-vices that were already in existence and had large au-diences—a blogging plat-form, or a social network, or a listing site like eBay—to embed video really eas-ily into those services.

CORNER OFF ICE

Empowering Content Say Media CEO Matt Sanchez on the strengths of point-of-view content and the benefits of publishing platforms that serve readers, editors, and marketers.

By Dan Eldridge

JUNE 2014 • PUbExEc.com 15

We ended up studying the video platform and got very focused on the ad technology piece of that: How do you help brands tell stories? How do you create rich experiences that are about emotion and that are beautiful and clean and really accountable when driving attention?

So we were trying to innovate, but we were stuck in-side the hole on the page that the publisher allowed the ad to live in, and we couldn’t really break out of that. We began seeing opportunities to create much more engaging experiences for readers—experiences that would work a lot better for marketers, as well. So about three-and-a-half years ago, we said, “You know, what was once blogging is turning into all these great independent publications, and those publications all need scaled business services. There’s an opportunity to build a modern media company around this emergence of great lifestyle brands.”

And if we can do that by controlling the entire expe-rience—not just the advertising experience, but by giving editors tools to create really beautiful content and in a way that’s standard across a bunch of publications—then you can build something super interesting. That’s what we’ve been focused on for the last three-and-a-half years.

Are you referring to the development of your publishing platform Tempest?

Right. And as I think about the next couple of years, what starts to put more and more distance between some of the more innovative digital publishers and the rest of the mar-ket is this kind of “whole product” approach, where you’re thinking deeply about reader, editor, and marketer, and how you build your end product.

Tempest is an advertising solution, a content marketing solution, and an editorial solution all in one. At the end of the day, that should feel like one magazine to the reader. And so we’re really starting to say, “OK, forget where the market’s at. What’s right for the reader and for the marketer if you think about how content consumption is changing?”

So we’re moving mobile, we’re moving to more of a single-column, stream-based content consumption mode. We’re really trying to play with the ad formats that are going to be premium and high-impact and that help brands tell stories that work on every platform—so marketers don’t have to plan their budget differently for your phone, your tablet, your desktop computer.

We’re also really trying to push the envelope on how we think about content marketing and how we make that more effective for brands. And that’s the process of getting our editors a lot more involved in programs we put together. The editors know their communities so well that they can actually create a better product, and one that ultimately their audiences are more receptive to, because it’s been

done tastefully and in the voice of the publication. So as we think about how sponsorship and branded content and content mar-keting all evolve, bringing the editors into that con-versation early is another area where our approach is really starting to set us apart.

Can you explain your motto “Point-of-View Pub-lishing”?

It’s really easy: You’re trying to carry content that breaks through—that people react to. We live in such an over-me-diated, fragmented world where there’s just tons of clutter, and where the only way that you’re actually going to get people’s attention is if you say something provocative. And that doesn’t mean salacious. It just means that you take a position.

If it’s for Remodelista, that might mean, “I think this is the most beautiful drawer pull that I’ve found from Germa-ny.” Or it might mean that we’re breaking a really important story at xoJane about a women’s rights issue. It’s going to mean different things to different brands, and to different editors. But the through-line in all of that is that you aren’t blasé and middle of the road, but that you actually let your passion come through in how your write.

And what we find is that people just engage differently with that sort of content. They spend more time with it, and they share it with their friends more. And this is true in television as well—it’s why The Daily Show does so well, it’s why Fox News does so well—people become tribal around it. So you either love it or you hate it, which means the core audiences are incredibly passionate and engaged.

Why do you think community is an important part of digital publishing?

I think that what ends up being most important about digital magazines is that they’re two-way. You have nearly immediate feedback from your readers about what you’ve written. And you sense that in some small way, you have ownership in the brand as a reader, because [with digital], there’s a way to get that conversation going between editors and the readers. And I think that changes all the rules.

How do Say Media publications ensure a strong point of view?

Well, one of the things you’ll see in our publications is that we try to bring the voices of the editors through,

“One of the things you’ll see in our publications is that we try to bring the voices of the editors through,

and make them almost a cast of characters on the site.”

(continued on page 29)

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JUNE 2014 • PUbExEc.com 29

Marketing autoMation

and make them almost a cast of characters on the site. And I guess I would say that if you find that dif-ficult as a publication, then you’re probably not getting there. If you can’t authentically say what you have to say—and use personal pronouns, and ask people to talk back, and get into the comments and react to what people say—then you’re probably not pulling it off.

As we’ve built these editorial teams, we’ve definitely seen people who were very uncomfortable with using their voice, or putting them-selves out there in that way. And you can feel that in the writing, which just ends up being less interesting in some cases.

Any final thoughts about the future of digital publishing?

To me the future is about pushing a lot of the ancillary costs in traditional publish-ing into the platform and solving [prob-lems] with technology. That way, you can give a voice to really talented content creators.

At the end of the day storytelling and great content creators will always have something unbelievably special to share with the world. What’s been challeng-ing about the evolution of the ecosystem over the last decade or so is not the cre-ation of high-quality content. I think it’s the infrastructure behind it that’s killing us. That’s the stone around our necks and we have to somehow take a different approach. So that’s what we’re doing. PE

(continued from page 15)Tech TAlk(continued from page 9)

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cORNeR OFF Ice

do it, of course, mobiley. So I think there are brands that are testing and doing some really great things.

Any tips on pushing the magazine app forward?I just would encourage publishers to iden-tify individuals on their staffs—on their edit staffs or marketing teams—that have a passion for this sort of thing. Those that believe the future in ‘15, ‘16, ‘17 is going to be all about a full-blown strategy with content across platforms, designed and distributed on those platforms in the forms the platforms can accept, and make the content beautiful, and that they will find a business model whether it is a subscrip-tion, or whether it is a sponsorship model identifying advertisers who understand what they’re trying to do and want to be along for the test. PE