2017 has been an extremely busy and eventful year for PageSuite. We had a number of world renown publishers launching their digital products on the PageSuite platform and travelled across the globe attending and exhibiting at a number of industry events.
In 2017 PageSuite gained industry insights by visiting clients and like-minded publishing experts across the world to help improve and future-proof our market-leading digital solution. This year also saw a significant upgrade to brand new servers and major improvements to our support service infrastructure allowing us to provide clients with 24/7 support.
With this year set to be even more exciting and challenging for publishers with the introduction of GDPR, increase in VR/AR and voice technologies and the ongoing battle between advertising vs subscriptions models, we asked PageSuite’s board of directors to collate a number of key predictions for the year ahead…
Nathan Parrett, PageSuite Founder
Nathan begins with predicting that there will be a “push for more assistant style devices and Google Assistant will become as popular as Alexa. Whilst AR will become more mainstream with more interactive apps, restaurant reviews etc.
“Newspapers and Magazines will continue to search for ways to be digital first but explore ways that the process can be automated as opposed to labour intensive workflows. Machine learning will become more a necessity rather than a nice to have resulting in users expecting apps to learn from their reading habits. Displaying content that is relevant.”
Nathan also expects foldable phones to come into play, along with fingerprint sensors inside the screen. He also believes that Microsoft will launch a Surface phone.
Ross Murphy, CEO
Ross forecasts that “Content will continue to follow in advertising’s footsteps with growth to deliver personalisation based on user interaction with articles and media content. This will include efforts to deliver personalised content as people switch through their various screens and devices.
There will be a rise in importance of the loyal consumer whose repeat visits become more valuable as some publishers target subscriptions and memberships over advertising revenues.”
Continued from last year’s successful prediction, Ross thinks “Facial and Biometric login will continue to grow and become a consumer preference”
Finally, his most wild prediction is that he thinks “England has an outside chance of winning a penalty shootout in this years’ World Cup!”
Lucy Tozer, SVP Marketing
Lucy forecasts three key predictions, including rising digital subscriptions revenue, GDPR reform and the rise in Voice Assistant Technologies…
“Digital subscription revenues will rise. More and more publishers will learn how to bundle their content and encourage their readers to develop ‘digital habits’ to successfully harness digital subscription revenue in 2018. 2017 saw many publishers successfully incentivise subscriptions by including premium content offerings, such as music licenses and other products. This year, more publishers will follow suit, learning how to monetise their content and grow digital subscribers.
Publishers will spend the first half of 2018 getting to grips with their data. The new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into effect in May 2018 and will change the way that publishers are able to communicate with their audience. It will be essential for all companies to get consent from anybody they wish to collect data on and to ensure that any external systems they use are fully GDPR compliant!
Voice Assistant Technologies will gather momentum. Last year publishers ‘dabbled’ in voice recognition technology, utilising ‘Flash Briefings’ and similar concepts –  this year lots of publishers will be looking for more ways to get involved! Voice assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa, Google Home and Apple’s HomePod [coming soon] are now far more mainstream and intuitive making them an integral part of our everyday lives. Publishers will be seeking to ensure that their content is consumable across these platforms and will look for ways to monetise this service.”
Ben Edwards, SVP of Business Development
Ben predicts that “a couple of major non-publishing apps will go live through SixPorts” – the custom development arm of PageSuite. He also thinks PageSuite’s move to “24/7 business will reap rewards and bring on new clients across Asia and Australasia too.”
Jason Pyne, Global Key Accounts Director
“Last year I predicted an increase in mobile, this year is much the same. However, in 2018 there will be a greater emphasis on video and image content through editorial delivery. Whilst video streaming will see an increase in advertising revenue.
Apple and Samsung will launch new products with dazzling new screens, stronger resolution and cameras that test the Paparazzi’s long lenses and shutter speeds costing thousands of Pounds (Dollars or Euros), so of course phone usage becomes naturally even greater over tablet or desktop PC.
Pushing news information to the phone is great for supplying news content in whatever form, but this will always be just a snapshot– a quick read. Advertising will have to catch the imagination for dwell time, as the user is often ready to swipe ahead before they have even started to read the content
Occasionally when readers do want to kick back and have a good read in an easily readable format. Tablets and Desktop PCs will in my opinion always own this space but will become more directed to premium content available exclusive to this environment through crafted editions fed by publisher’s content at set times. Trusted brands will always be able to keep their audience hooked if they deliver the standards of content they have strived to deliver for years and be true to the marketplace they serve.
Thank you for reading our Director’s predictions if you have any predictions for the coming year please feel free to leave a comment on this post.