Update: Things remain up and down. Advertising is still down overall, although there are positive signs of a bounce back ahead. Subscriptions are up by about 15% on the start of the pandemic which has partially offset some of the ad losses. We’ve not furloughed anyone, but we have taken out a bounceback loan. We are seeing a rise in subs cancellations at the moment with the main reasons given being tightening of belts, but even so we are still creeping upwards with slightly more new subs than cancelled. We are seeing more interest in sponsored content type articles rather than display ads, which I hope we are doing right and they are useful to you.
We have switched to a new programmatic ad provider that is super efficient and easy for us to control but they don’t pay as well as the old one, which went bust last month taking about £4k of our money with them. The old conundrum of balancing UX with cash return. We are going for the UX first approach with ads.
The growth in memberships has been great and it’s a longterm sound strategy for us. If there’s a downside it’s that the majority of new ones have come in via an offer which means up front we haven’t gained the benefit – but the gamble is that we win down the line when they renew. Hopefully April next year will be the start of that. In the meantime we are looking at our merch as a solid interim cashflow solution as we run up to Christmas. So buying our stuff is the best thing anyone can do for us right now.
I’m being open and honest here with where we are at because I think you deserve to know. a lot of you have already dug deep for us and we absolutely appreciate that. It’s a given that without your help up to now we would have been in a bad place at this point in the year. We are not out of the woods yet but I remain optimistic.
Cheers
Mark