Around the world, media companies are reporting losses, while just a few are coming out ahead. It is attributed to many different causes including lack of personalization technology, bad investments, and a rise in competition. However, as time goes on, media companies have been shown to adapt quickly and get better with age. We will look at 4 media companies who are reporting loses in some areas, and what they are doing to reverse this.

Struggling Companies

Yahoo - losing revenue

Yahoo is still a profitable company, but they have a big revenue problem. Their ad revenue, their main source, has fallen by 7% recently, and profits adjusted for costs such as stock compensation fell 24%. However, by focusing on providing quality and relevant content for users they have started to reverse this trend. Their traffic has increased 20% over the past 15 months and is projected to continue.

Pandora Media - losing profit

Pandora has reported that it lost profit this 3rd quarter. It sights content, sales, and marketing as the culprits. The main reason for the loss is the increase in royalty costs for its songs which increased by 32%. However not all was lost as revenue jumped up over 50% due to the personalization technology that Pandora users to provide users with custom tailored content.

Guardian News & Media- cutting losses

The publishing company for The Guardian and The Observer has been facing big loses in the last few years. In 2012 the company had a loss of over £75 million but has cut it to only £30 million by focusing on digital news. They have incorporated personalization technology to increase customer loyalty and readership which helped to increase digital revenue by 28.9%.

Central European Media- losing revenue and profits

The company, which is 49.9% owned by Time Warner, reported a second quarter loss of $41 million, compared to a $3 profit just two years ago. The problem is that different markets are not paying the higher prices for advertising that CEM is charging. Different countries, especially the Czech Republic, are resisting the price increases much longer than expected. The reason is thought to be that advertising was not targeted enough. Advertisers want are starting to demand personalization technology to be used in order to get the right advertisements in front of the right consumers.

Success

Many companies have jumped on the personalization and subscription based marketing train already and have results to prove it was a good decision. David Rosen, SVP at San Francisco-based Loyalty Lab said “A marketing platform will enable media companies to help put advertisers in contact with the right consumers at the right time, something for which many advertisers are willing to pay.” This shows the power of providing the right content to the right customers.

Disney, ESPN, and Time Inc. have started subscription based marketing platforms to continue engagement with customers by providing them relevant offers and news. This mode of communication with customers makes people feel that they are part of the brand and the useful content they get makes them feel that the relationship is valuable.

Tribune Company is a publisher of 10 daily newspapers and has begun pairing client customer data with subscription data so that advertisers can be sure they are advertising to a relevant audience. The program is called PrePrint Optimization and is already starting to gain traction for the publishing company.

Personalize or fail

Media and publishing companies that have not caught up to the personalization revolution are falling behind. There are many benefits for the companies in terms of customer engagement because the more relevant content a customer receives, the more likely they will subscribe and come back again. The other benefit is the ability to charge more for advertisements because these companies know where ads will be most effective and thus makes their ad space more valuable than a company that has not implemented this technology.