Like many digital publishers, The Daily Beast was struggling at the end of 2023. Facebook, long a primary driver of clicks to the publication, had turned away from news. Search traffic had become increasingly erratic, as Google adjusted its algorithm to combat a flood of AI-powered junk. The site’s paid subscription program had atrophied since Donald Trump left office.

But it had a new lifeline: Apple.

Late last year, the digital news tabloid (where I worked from 2018 to 2021 as a media reporter) entered into Apple’s partnership program, called Apple News+. The program made all of the publication’s buzziest exclusives available to paying Apple subscribers, behind Apple’s own paywall. And the impact for a mid-sized news site was immediate, putting the Beast on track to make between $3-4 million in revenue this year from Apple News alone — more than its own standalone subscription program, and without much additional cost.

In analysis:

But the partnership also raises some of the questions publishers avoided during the peak social media era. It incentivizes users to subscribe to Apple News+ rather than to publications directly, likely cannibalizing some potential revenue. It’s driving editorial decisions, meaning publishers are once again changing their content strategy to placate a platform. And of course the company could wake up one day and decide, like Facebook, that it no longer really wants to be in the news business, leaving news publishers stranded.

from Semafor, via John Gruber.

I don’t believe in this “lifeline” any more than I believe that Google is “saving publishers” with its Google News initiative.

Working with an aggregator – any aggregator – means losing direct customers and, I believe, ultimately losing business – simply because the publisher becomes one of many and easily replaceable.

Having a unique, inherently valuable and non-modularized offering (i.e. a recognizable, monolithic product instead of fragmented, interchangeable “content”) is the only way to engage and keep readers and customers.

This is what COMYAN has always strived for: To provide the technology that allows publishers to do this, without becoming a middleman and driving them out of business. COMYAN wants publishers to be successful in their own business. Their business is none of our business – because, as we have proven many times, we are laser-focused on our own business: Technology.