While the news media industry faces many challenges — some old, some new — it also has great opportunities ahead. During INMA’s Latin American News Media Summit, Pepe Cerezo, managing director for Evoca Media and a digital monetisation consultant, shared some of his insights and strategies for the future.

One big challenge this year has been the amount of uncertainty news publishers are dealing with. Cerezo said he had declared this “the year of uncertainty,” and so far this year has lived up to that prediction — particularly when it comes to advertising.

“Advertising has really changed on platforms,” he said. “Amazon has been a huge platform. It's the biggest one that’s been growing proportionately.” The rise of influencers and social media have further grabbed the attention of audiences, diverting traffic from news publishers. This is something that can’t be ignored, Cerezo said.

“We have to rethink our strategy and our business plan because it’s [causing] issues and we’re kind of obsessing over traffic and not thinking about revenue,” he said. “We don’t have the same revenue as we had before. Advertising is not bringing in enough income and it’s actually creating a problem.”

Publishers must create new business plans and strategies, and he said there are different ideas on how to do that: “We have new competitors that are working to retain users’ attention and they also capture advertising in a lot more effective way than we, as journalism and news outlets, have been doing it.”

In Spain, one of the huge competitors is FAST, which are streaming TV channels operating on a subscription model. Social media continues to affect advertising revenue for news outlets, Cerezo said. TikTok, in particular, poses a threat, and Cerezo believes news media companies need to build a TikTok strategy if that’s where they want to be.

“This engagement needs to be about our brand and it has to be about our platform,” he said.

As we move from 2023 into a new year, publishers need to clarify their brand’s mission and values, then create a clearly differentiated value proposal that allows them to stand out from competitors on social media, influencers, and other platforms, Cerezo said:

“We have to create these interested communities and this is something that we have actually failed to do on some aspects because we’re not aligned with our business model, we’re not aligned with our mission, and we’re not aligned with our value.”

As the industry migrates to subscription models, publishers need to focus on retention: “If we don’t also make our strategies for retention, the subscriptions won’t be enough because we need something that will actually work in the long term,” Cerezo noted. “It can’t only represent income and revenue now.”

To thrive in 2024, publishers must create strategies that are built for the future: “There has to be diversification. Diversification of teams and models, customisation of models; we have to diversify the strategies,” he said. “This is a sector that has to pay attention to the changes because we have a scenario of uncertainty. Everything changes. It’s a very rich scenario, but it is also very complex.”

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