Millions of consumers have grown to rely on their virtual assistants with commands like, “Alexa, set the timer for 10 minutes” and “Hey Siri, what’s the weather forecast?” And soon, some of us might enlist the help of our voice-recognition devices for a noble task that basically amounts to: “OK Google, let’s help keep Encyclopedia…
Planned Eric Schmidt Talk at AI Conference Draws Protest
The former Google CEO is scheduled to keynote a Stanford conference on ethics in artificial intelligence. Critics say Schmidt is a poor ethical role model.
Wouldn’t It Be Great If People Could Vote on the Blockchain?
Well, for starters, stop calling it “the” blockchain.
September 3, 2019 – When the local council…
When the local council imposed a ban on hogging along footpath the pet pigs, owners took it for grunted!
Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for September 03, 2019
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What Adweek Means to These Women Trailblazers
At our recent Women Trailblazers event, we caught up with several women in media, marketing, advertising and entertainment to get their take on what Adweek has meant to them in their careers. It’s part of our ongoing series celebrating our 40th anniversary. Linda Johnson Rice, chairwoman of Johnson Publishing, called Adweek “one of your go-to…
Behind the Rise of China’s Facial-Recognition Giants
Megvii, one of four highly valued Chinese facial-recognition startups, has filed for an IPO. Most of its revenue comes from surveillance and security systems.
Entercom is buying Mike Francesa’s paid app and dropping the paywall
The pivot to paid is ending for Mike Francesa.
In August 2018, the popular sports talk radio host rolled out Mike’s On, a subscription audio and video app with exclusive interviews, daily updates, plus periodic live streams. The app turned heads for its pricey subscription fee of $8.99 per month or $99 per year for access.
The effort will wind down, as radio giant Entercom (owner of WFAN, home to Francesa’s radio show) has bought the app and will dismantle the paywall to integrate the content with its ad-supported Radio.com. The Mike’s On app gives Radio.com a new set of features, such as live video, to test out on its audience; earlier this month, Entercom launched a sports digital network featuring video and audio produced by a mixture of radio DJs and former professional athletes, such as Ross Tucker.
The steep cost of the app attracted plenty of doubters that a popular talk radio personality would be able to convert his legion of fans into paying subscribers. Since its launch, Mike’s On has accumulated a small cluster of subscribers, though new downloads have slowed to a crawl over the past few months, with the app driving fewer than a thousand downloads a month in each of the past four months, according to Apptopia.
That audience pales in comparison to the Radio.com app audience, which has been averaging over 230,000 downloads per month over the same period, also per Apptopia. But it’s big enough to learn from, as Entercom plans to eventually migrate away from an app product strategy focused on specific shows in favor of one organized around topics and talent. That may eventually include a paid tier of the app as well, according to a source.
Glenn Rubenstein, the founder of Adopter Media, an agency focused on podcasts and on-demand audio, noted that larger media companies have been trying to give top talent more of a platform to create and distribute more content, partly to keep them from leaving and forming a direct relationship with their audiences. If Entercom can figure out how to integrate these supplementary content types into their flagship app, it could provide a blueprint that it can apply to the rest of their stations’ talent and shows.
“It can easily be replicated across all of their other properties,” Rubenstein said.
The post Entercom is buying Mike Francesa’s paid app and dropping the paywall appeared first on Digiday.
Dilbert by Scott Adams for September 03, 2019
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Axios Has A Game Plan For Growth, And It’s All About Engagement
The Axios Sports newsletter recently hit a major milestone: 100,000 subscribers, up nearly tenfold in less than nine months. But this is not just growth for growth’s sake, said Ernesto Arrocha, associate director of growth and engagement at Axios, which publishes more than 20 daily and weekly newsletters. Its sports newsletter maintains a 42% open… Continue reading »
The post Axios Has A Game Plan For Growth, And It’s All About Engagement appeared first on AdExchanger.