11/7/2023 0 Comments Markos daily kosAlong with the decline in pageviews, we were now over $3 million in the hole-a catastrophic 20% drop in revenue. That market shift cost us $5.2 million in revenue over the last three years, including a a precipitous $2.5M drop below expectations last year alone. Daily Kos users who opted into other campaigns' email lists via our list were consistently among the most enthusiastic activists any campaign could ask for, but it didn’t matter, because everyone on our email list was likely on these other, larger lists. There was no need to deal with the hassle of ethical “opt-in,” and on top of everything else, they were cheaper. Suddenly, campaigns decreased the size of their buys or skipped us altogether, as these new players had vastly more emails to offer (tens of millions more). All was great until new competitors entered the space using tactics we refused to utilize-namely, outright renting or selling email addresses with no opt-in or consent whatsoever from the people they were contacting. Remember, our list-building business accounted for about a third of our revenue, and it helped pay for much of the cool content we all enjoy on the site. And with a presidential cycle ahead (which features that guy, the former one), we might have even been able to ride out this downturn.īut then we got hit with something we didn’t expect, and it upended our business.Ģ. We were vigilant, but not overly worried. We could have managed that shortfall with a combination of cash reserves, non-employee cost cuts, and normal employee attrition (for example, we didn’t replace two executive departures). That said, we expected this dropoff and planned for it, anticipating about a $700,000 deficit. It would make the site unreadable, further harming our audience. And as you’re all aware, our pages are already overloaded with ads. We actually had more potential advertisers last year than we had pageviews to display those ads. But that reality has consequences for our business.įewer pageviews and lower engagement (comments, diary writing, recommending) means less advertising. We’d rather they not be in charge, and we’ll fight our asses off to make sure they are defeated everywhere they pop up. Fox News does better as a business when Democrats are in charge, and we do better when Republicans are. And it was, needless to say, great for our country.īut that’s the irony of the situation that we find ourselves in. That wasn’t a bad thing for us as individuals. With President Joe Biden in charge and Democratic majorities in Congress, people didn’t have to remain in a perpetual 24/7 state of vigilance. That was understandable! Everyone was burned out and exhausted. We lost around half of our peak traffic, dropping to around 30 million monthly pageviews. After that? Our numbers, like everyone else’s, plummeted. 2020 was a presidential year, so we hovered around 60 million monthly pageviews that year, with big spikes in November (we won!) and January (the insurrection). Look at our own pageview stats: Daily Kos traffic, 2015-2022ĭonald Trump generated a ton of pageviews, giving us around 50 million per month. Even social media outlets have suffered, all except for TikTok-and even they've just announced a hiring freeze. Look at news reports of layoffs and the quarterly financial reports of publicly traded media companies, and you’ll see a pretty consistent trend-a drop of about one-third in visitors/readers/viewers. We did our job and got rid of that menace (at least temporarily), but now the entire media ecosystem has been suffering a resulting hangover. It also motivated our supporters to record heights in readership, engagement, donating, and taking action. It’s why the traditional media gave him 24-7 coverage. What can we say? Trump was good for the media business. Two things happened over the last year that completely upended our business. We've never, ever sold or rented emails without permission.Įach one of these buckets has contributed roughly about a third of total revenue, with community contributions a little higher than the other two. So we help campaigns and organizations build their email lists with opt-in petitions. Our email list is one of the most active in progressive politics, and Democratic campaigns and allied issue advocacy groups want to reach those activists. This is the one that many of you may not know about. It’s why we were able to resist the media industry’s downsizing trend as long as we did. Daily Kos is blessed in that, unlike most media outlets, we have multiple sources of revenue.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |