The Revenue Lab Review

I founded Revenue Lab as a collaborative think tank/accelerator for Gannett, the largest news publisher in the US. It was comprised of senior executives with revenue-responsibility/product-innovation experience at top news brands (including Reuters, Wall Street Journal, and Time Inc.). I led the selection and management of this team, pitched and managed our c-suite clients, and led workshops and war rooms with Gannett’s cross-functional employees. Our deliverable was to co-develop a fast-track product development processes for Gannett’s many regional newspaper brands and news sites.

Today (2022), the Revenue-Lab process is still central to my work with Minor Nobles. The need for large enterprise to innovate, to test-and-learn, to evolve their brands and businesses while protecting their culture, has only grown stronger - while the roadmap for growth has become less well-defined. All of which has made the Revenue-Lab process such an important feature of my work.

Also, for The Revenue Lab's own content marketing, I wrote and published a frequent review of news products around the world based on: their potential for revenue, alignment with the publisher's brand, and user experience. The rest of this page is an archive of those reviews.

Michael Quinn

NYTVR OMG

NYTVR may well be a metaphor for the dilemma (and opportunity) for legacy news publishers. This thrilling (no kidding) new product is made possible by the combination of a web-connected smartphone and a cardboard viewer that comes with the old-school paper. There are other interesting cross-channel opportunities too....

MarcMail has Revenue Potential, even if the UX is not quite ready for primetime

The economics of publishing are premised on advertisers paying for access to a publisher’s audience. “MarcMail” could be the latest example of a brand going around publishers to reach directly their common audience. Or rather, it will be if Marc Jabobs invests in acquiring publishing expertise.

The New York Times' "Watching" is an important product success

After a very public 6-month run on the home page of the New York Times, “Watching” is declared (by the Times) a product-success. Early testing, steady traffic, return visits, and scalable & curated content from other sources are the Holy Grail for news-product developers. Nice work.

Programmatic Stars at the Star Tribune

There is a strong entrepreneurial business strategy at work at Minneapolis’ Star Tribune. In fact, its programmatic selling strategy has gotten so good that it has launched a news business line to help other publishers perfect their own.

(Gold) Mining Audience Engagement

The NY Times & McClatchy both announced exciting insight and news around personalization. A coincidence of timing, but it also points the quickening competition in personalized news delivery. This may be particularly relevant for local news publishers who struggle mightily with anemic site traffic.

The Alignment Issue: A Publisher’s Quarrel.

For most corporate publishers, a lack of alignment is the single biggest roadblock to product development and innovation – and it can be a major obstacle for overall success. As companies move projects forward, locating misalignment issues is just as important as driving alignment in and of itself. Only once a company is able to pick up on cues of misalignment will they be able to locate hidden obstacles and ultimately find solutions. Is misalignment standing in the way of your innovation success? Here are a few key tips to uncovering these hidden obstacles.

Pangaea

Pangaea, the programmatic alliance of Guardian, FT, CNN, Reuters and The Economist, will provide 110 million qualified and premium users for advertisers. Ads will be pushed across the entire publishers online ecosystem.

Such a volume of users combined with accurate CRM data is definitely an advantage for this new platform which could drive higher revenue than the traditional platforms.

Overall Rating: 7.75

Blendle

Netherlands-based pay-per-read journalism start-up, Blendle, has one aim in mind – to get people to start paying for quality journalism, or rather, to get young people to pay (60% of Blendle’s users are 20-35 years of age). However, the big hurdle could be convincing publishers that Blendle’s pay-per-article premise will not diminish their more lucrative subscription products.

Overall Rating: 7.00

MasterCard

MasterCard announced some days ago the future launch of the Priceless Surprises app. A perfect and scalable channel to subtly surprise engaged customers on their mobile devices based on their behavior towards the brand. And a great way to build partnerships with multiple brands too.

Overall Rating: 7.5