AI, Audience Building, B2B, B2C

2025 Niche Media Conference: Google Zero means building the owned audience

Alisa Cromer January 1, 2025

A growing sense of urgency is bubbling up in the niche media industry about aggressively growing the owned audience, or, simply put, the email list.

At the 2025 Niche Media Conference, audience expert Melissa Chowning, head of Twenty First Digital (TFD), told attendees that they should start measuring their audience in a different way than the old model of counting visitors and impressions.

“What is your total owned audience as a percentage of web traffic?” she asked.

“If it is 20% now, can it be 50% next year?”

She was not alone.

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Categories: AI, Audience Building, B2B, B2C

White paper: Recent research on the value of print advertising

How should niche media, dominated by magazine brands, talk to advertisers about the value of print?

It’s a tricky issue. On the one hand, print sales continue to decline in the face of reduced advertiser demand. Media brokers place almost no value on profitable print advertising sales. This white paper shows all the research you need, with sources and links to use.

Alisa Cromer January 1, 2024

The Ultimate Guide to Selling Lead Magnet Advertising

Let's get creative! We researched more than a hundred different lead magnet campaigns to find the best ideas that command top dollars from niche advertisers, and how they did it.

First, to define the terms: A lead magnet is simply gated information a publisher creates that is valuable enough to persuade the audience to leave their contact information.

Advertisers will invest 2 to 5x the cost of a major campaign and in some cases $30,000 to $50,000 - for publishers to create the content, host the lead capture page or system, and deliver the leads generated. They, too, are worried about Google Zero.

The Lead Magnet itself could be a white paper, e-book, video, podcast, or webinar — as long as there is a “hook” that attracts the audience to exchange their contact info for access.

Steal these ideas: Below is a list of the most powerful peer-shared ideas for lead magnet campaigns from case studies and research.

Alisa Cromer August 6, 2025

Marketers turning to magazines: These 7 reports show why

Top reasons marketers are returning to print

Alisa Cromer October 11, 2023

How he did it: Interview with James Cridland, founder of Podnews.net

James Cridland has built a $600,000+ one person media company that he runs part-time. Here’s how he does it.

Alisa Cromer January 6, 2024

The confounding simplicity of Industry Dive

The confounding simplicity of the Industry Dive model is more strategic than it looks. Here are lessons learned about the formula.

Alisa Cromer January 26, 2024

Advertise to grow the email list? Shanfelt says yes.

Sure, Eric Shanfelt, CEO of Nearview Media consulting told the audience at the 2025 Niche Publishing Conference, "The number one job of your website is to capture an email."

However, the website is not the only way to grow the email list. He advised clients to advertise on social media such as META and LinkedIn to achieve their audience target goals.

The upside is significant on a variety of levels. The cost of an email opt-in may be $3 to $5, however, publishers can command much higher prices for first-party data-influenced advertising. CPMs increase by 50-200% for data -targeted audiences and some publishers report getting $35 to $100 CPMs for newsletter ads.

Finally, publishers can resell leads for 5x or more to partnering advertisers, depending on the category.

Here are the three types of campaigns he recommended:

Alisa Cromer May 4, 2025

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