Get ready for the Amazonification of media

In media, the “retching changes” that hit the newspaper business more than ten years ago are cascading across all media and it’s fundamentally changing the way publishing companies look to develop and capitalise on new revenue opportunities. Fundamental to this is how the digital world has changed the distribution of content, said Troy Young, Global President, Hearst Digital Media, USA, during his opening address at the Digital Innovators' Summit in Berlin.

Young explained that a solid understanding of the forces at the heart of digital disruption provides answers to the challenges of the future. “We need to ask ourselves: what are the real forces beneath disruption? The answer is pretty simple. The internet has undermined proprietary distribution networks as well as the stability and profits that come along with it. At the same time it democratised content creation opening competition for attention from anyone with a mobile device. Global platforms, which enable communication across these networks, have upended advertising markets with granular data sets and global consistency.”

While opportunities to reach larger audiences increased, such as with Facebook’s Newsfeed, which “provides an extraordinary way to market content”, Young warned that “partners like these” (Facebook) remain unreliable for building a real media businesses. More importantly, “fighting for air in the Facebook feed has eroded our differences. In the feed we are starting to look more and more alike. This is the death nail for media.”

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