Entertainment Daily Home Page September 24, 2024
Online entertainment publisher Digitalbox is launching a series of targeted sites in a bid to deliver the “super engagement that is increasingly favoured on the platform”.
The new “vertical strategy” began with the launch of Emmerdale Insider, with existing staff moving over from Entertainment Daily.
Two further new sites are expected to be operational by the end of 2024.
Digital Box chief executive James Carter pointed to Google’s E-A-T (expertise, authority and trustworthiness) criteria and said sites dedicated to particular football clubs were one example of the type of content the search engine currently favoured.
He said there would be a “shift from generalists to specialists” and that the “EAT algorithm will provide very clear and specialised coverage focused on one club, rather than a generalist view of football by a journalist covering every club.”
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Digitalbox’s business model is based on driving large amounts of traffic to its primarily mobile-optimized sites, which the company says allows it to generate significantly higher advertising revenue per session compared to other publishers.
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Digital Box reported that revenue for the six months to June 30 rose 32% to £1.6m and that its adjusted EBITDA (a figure before depreciation, impairment of goodwill and intangible assets and share-based payment expenses) rose to a profit of £300,000 from a loss of £100,000 in the same period in 2023.
Entertainment Daily blocked by Google
Digitalbox’s largest brand, both in terms of revenue and viewership, is Entertainment Daily, with soap operas as one of its key segments.
At the start of 2023, Entertainment Daily was “blocked” by Google in Search, News and Discover, and saw an overall 27% drop in visitors for the year, before finally regaining traction in November.
But the brand’s rocky relationship with Google continued this year.
Digital Box said Entertainment Daily saw a “significant amount” of traffic from Google in January and February this year, but then took a big hit with the core update in March.
“While we expected advertiser demand to remain broadly stable during the period, we did not anticipate that Google’s algorithms would block our largest brands,” the company said.
The team was able to restore the site’s presence in Google search and news traffic, but not in Discover.
“We continue to focus on our strategy to restore the site across all three major channels following the implementation of a further Google Core Update in August,” the account said.
“We were able to regain momentum in search in the middle of the first half, but we believe we face further challenges ahead,” Carter said.
Daily Mash’s subscribers exceed 4,200
Despite relying heavily on advertising for most of its business, satire website The Daily Mash operates on a subscription model and currently has more than 4,200 subscribers.
The price of Mash Premium, which offers unlimited ad-free access to the site with some exclusive articles, has increased from £20 to £30 a year, meaning at the new higher price the paywall could bring in more than £126,000 a year – the Daily Mash made just under half that (£59,000) in the first half of this year.
But the brand, which will also publish a book called The Daily Mash Class Wars – A Field Guide to Being British by the end of the year, was the only Digitalbox site to make a loss in the first half of the year (making £56,000).
Digital Box plans further acquisitions
Student site The Tab, which was acquired in 2020 and paid off the purchase price in 18 months, has seen a 3% increase in traffic and positive monthly contributions since achieving full repayment. While the company’s model is based in British universities, the company says the core team’s entertainment productions are growing in popularity in the US.
Satire website The Polk was acquired in December 2022 and has paid back the full acquisition cost after 18 months. The company said it had a “strong six months” since integrating Digital Box’s Graphene ad stack a year ago, with viewership up 21% and session value growing.
Digital Box’s latest acquisition is TV Guide, with a £550,000 deal announced in May 2022.
The company said it recouped 31% of the acquisition cost in the first half of 2024 due to a series of technology improvements, a 30% increase in traffic and expanded editorial content around its streaming programming.
Carter said more acquisitions were planned, including of sites hit hard by Google’s changes.
Despite the search disruptions, Facebook remains “relatively strong” for Digitalbox, Carter said.
The company launched Facebook’s invite-only Performance Bonus program in February, allowing creators to earn rewards based on engagement on their photo, text and video posts.
Carter said: “Essentially, Facebook will reward content creators for engagement. This is a shift from Facebook’s previous monetization model, which was very basic: you published a video to Facebook, they served mid-roll and post-roll ads around your content, and you received a cut of the revenue directly.”
“They’ve moved away from that mindset and towards, if we can keep people on the platform longer, the more engaged they are, the better. We’ve been doing pretty well on that front over the last six months.”
Carter said the UK digital advertising market was “slightly down” in the first half of this year compared with the first half of 2023, but “relatively stable compared with previous volatile years”.
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