A potential secret weapon for publishers: research

Last year, a few eyebrows raised when Business Insider, the digital outlet that brought you such gems as “Jews, why do people hate them?” and the first-person journey of riding in that wondrous thing called an airplane, bought the research firm eMarketer. 

The deal, however, made a lot of sense, as Business Insider had a pretty robust research arm in its standalone Business Insider Intelligence unit. And while it makes the bulk of its money through enterprise clients willing to shell lots of cash—Digiday reports that enterprise subscriptions can cost “well over $100,000”—adding in eMarketer’s brand and data makes it a pretty strong pitch for advertisers, in addition to companies looking to get smarter. 

Digiday writes: 

“BII’s offerings have changed over the years. Two years ago, it focused on selling all-access passes to its research and guides, which cost $2,500 to $3,000. More recently, it has focused on selling vertical-specific newsletter briefings that cost $1000 a year (currently discounted to $695).”

Last week, the company announced that after a year of sleeping in separate twin beds, it’s pushing eMarketer and Intelligencer together to form Insider Intelligence, a Voltron of market research. 

As publishers continue to chase that revenue dream, they find that every door they open (think: video; social media; events; etc), slams shut. Facebook changes its algorithm choking publisher traffic; the pivot to video was more like a pivot to Facebook, and that didn’t work; a global pandemic put events out of business, and makes people question how long before they’ll want to be in a room in with 500 other people listening to boring panels and onanistic keynotes.

One area, however, that seems to be a no-brainer for publishers: custom research. If you take the point of view that a publisher knows their audience, what better way to sell that by creating research for advertisers and giving them the analysis of the very people they’re paying you to reach. It’s a double-layer cake. And who doesn’t like double-layered cake? 

Yesterday, Bloomberg reported that James Murdoch, CEO of Lupa Systems, a holding company that has invested in Vice Media among others (and whose pledge is to ‘fix the internet’), led a $31 million Series A investment on research firm Morning Consult, putting the valuation at $306 million. This comes on the heels of Lupa leading a $35.6 million Series G round for Dailyhunt, a news aggregator in India that has more than 100 million downloads on Google Play. 

Publications have dabbled in data research for years, with many tying it to their custom content studios. The Wall Street Journal, for instance, has a custom research division within its content studio, as does Slate’s branded content team, Slate Studios, which does “brand studies and measurement.”

The Atlantic’s in-house creative marketing group Re:Think also does research, even partnering with other research arms at Comscore and Harvard. And BuzzFeed continually polls its audience “to learn what’s important” to its audience.

Even Taboola does research.

The point is this: There’s real money to be had in research, especially if a publisher can then take those findings and up sell to sponsored content. 

Research won’t be the magic bullet to save a publisher, but it also won’t be at the mercy of the vicissitudes of the industry. Everybody loves data, and when done well can provide value to advertisers—which in theory provides value for the reader because the advertiser can take what it learned from the publisher’s research and create better ads.  

Kraftwerk, “Numbers”

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