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One big thing
This week Axios shared the Axios Bill of Rights, their promise to readers. Check it out.
I’m always a fan of a mission statement, or an outline of principles, the act of sharing it, itself tells something about the publication. With theirs, the very first one is:
Every item will be written or produced by a real person with a real identity. There will be NO AI-written stories. NO bots. NO fake accounts.
That feels very prescient, as content is going more towards AI, not away from it. And larger media companies will use AI to offset labor costs to create stories. But Axios will not.
Explore the others too, in some respects, they are what you’d expect from an upstanding publisher.
Notable stories this week
- Analysts suggest Spotify’s big bet on podcasts is failing.
- The evolution of shoppable content lies in social media streams.
- How the BBC is thinking about the carbon used to create its stories.
- Taboola launches open web stories.
- An analysis of the earnings of Substack’s top writers.
- Branded content boom: why digital channels count.
- Forbes launches paid newsletters.
- Likes, shares, comments: don’t be misled by past engagement rates.
- CRTC peppers CBS with questions about plans for controversial branded content.
- Vimeo’s best videos of the year and Netflix is going to roll out its shuffle button.
- Businesses become the only trusted institution in recent Edelman brand trust study. And advertising is trusted more than social media.
- The Mandalorian becomes first non-Netflix show to top Nielsen streaming chart.
- Google agrees to pay French publishers for news.
- [Long read] The unauthorized story of Andreessen Horowitz. Also, read how they are growing their content.
Deals/M&A
- Group Nine SPAC goes public.
- Simpli.fi buys Advantage in a $100m deal.
- Wattpad sells for $600m.
Smartest commentary
- ‘A16Z is a media company that monetizes through VC’. –Benedict Evans, VC
Datapoints of note
- Mandalorian clocked 1.34 billion minutes of viewing time Dec 14-20th.
- Facebook may take a 7% revenue hit from Apple privacy changes.
- Netflix shows made up 9/10 of the top tv show searches on Google last year and 2/10 for movies.
- 19 year old has made nearly $3m from Snapchat’s Spotlight.
- The average eSports fan consumes 7.1 hours of gaming and esports.
That’s it for this week.
Thanks,
Ben
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