What We're Reading: Volume 2 - Disqus Blog

Welcome to volume 2 of our, What We’re Reading, blog post series. In case you missed our last post, this is a new series where we aim to share our favorite articles, posts, and reports, relevant to digital publishing, with our publishers, readers, and blog subscribers. As always, we love to hear your opinions about these articles and others that you are reading. So, be sure to share your thoughts in a comment below.

Here’s what we know so far about Google Chrome’s mobile article recommendations, the next major traffic driver for publishers

Josh Schwartz - Nieman Lab

A couple weeks ago, Niemen Lab and Chartbeat reported on the insane growth of traffic from Chrome’s mobile article recommendations. It is up 2,100 percent in one year and driving hundreds of millions of visits to publisher sites per month. Here is what you need to know about Chrome Suggestions and how to take advantage of it.

Publishers Haven't Realized Just How Big a Deal GDPR is

Thomas Baekdal - Baekdal

GDPR goes into effect in 6 weeks. Here at Disqus, we are hard at work to finalize some platform changes in order to be fully compliant. Be on the lookout for a more detailed description of everything we’re doing soon. In the meantime, while we can’t offer legal advice to publishers, we definitely agree that publishers should be taking GDPR seriously and taking the necessary steps for compliance.

Newsonomics: Will Facebook’s troubles finally cure publishers of platformitis?

Ken Doctor - Nieman Lab

Focusing on building direct relationships with readers is the key to sustainable results for publishers. We’re excited to see more publishers increasing their investments in audience development.

'You can't just pivot into a subscription': Overheard at the Digiday Publishing Summit

Digiday Editors - Digiday

It's no secret that publishers are curious about new revenue streams. However, succeeding with subscriptions often requires significant investment and the right approach. Here are some great excerpts from publishers sharing their candid opinions about subscriptions, e-commerce, Facebook, and more. If you're interested in a case study of how to build a subscription business, check out the next article.

Half of Politico Europe's revenues come from paid subscriptions

Jessica Davies - Digiday

Here is some great insight on how Politico Europe has made subscriptions a major revenue driver. While Politico is a somewhat unique case, their core tactics of differentiating their offering from the competition and striving to become "totally indispensable" to their readers are great advice for any publisher looking to succeed with paid offerings.

Data Suggests Surprising Shift: Duopoly Not All-Powerful

eMarketer Editors - eMarketer

While the Duopoly status of Google and Facebook in the digital ad status remains largely unchanged, their control is slowly shrinking and new players are growing faster than expected. Analysts expect Google and Facebook to capture 48% of all new ad spend this, down significantly from 73%, just two years prior in 2016. Meanwhile, Snapchat and Amazon are growing faster than expected.