Best resources of 2024

Last updated: December 16, 2024

From shifting algorithms to advertising shortfalls, 2024 was an eventful year in media. So we’re taking a minute to review what worked, what didn’t, and what challenges lay ahead for media operators.

Prepare to plan and attack your 2025 audience goals with our best — and most used — resources.

Read on for advice on first-party data strategies, email and marketing automation, and media industry trends, along with webinars and interviews from Dan Oshinsky of Inbox Collective, Jacob Donnelly of A Media Operator, Brian Morrissey of The Rebooting, experts from Bloomberg, The Guardian and many more.

Stay ahead and read our Q3 2024 email engagement report to uncover trends & best practices for success:

Plus, learn how Omeda customers have found success to spark some ideas for next year.

Our industry-first audience marketing research report

State of Audience Report: This year at our annual conference, we rolled out the industry’s first research about how media companies are activating their audiences, what opportunities are out there, and what structural challenges still stand in their way.

Some of our biggest findings:

81% of respondents say they’re increasing and maintaining their audience spend, but two-thirds of them don’t have a formal audience development plan.
Converting unknown visitors (60%) and disconnected workflows (52%) are keeping teams from connecting with their audience; and respondents named these as their top challenges.
The definition of engagement varies by organization. 25% of respondents said they do not track engagement. Just 20% of the survey respondents reported having an audience with more than 75% of their audience as engaged.
About 60% of respondents say their audience team spends five hours or less on “data janitorial tasks.” But almost half of our respondents spend 5+ hours — more than half a workday — on these tasks.
Despite using 4+ audience management systems on average, most media companies (85%) don’t feel they have the technology they need to reach their goals.

Top resources for email and marketing automation

Quarterly email engagement reports: Each quarter, we track almost 2 billion emails sent through our platform to analyze email performance and give you actionable takeaways to improve your strategy. In these reports, we also talked to some of the smartest people in email and audience development.

In Q1, we got some insider tips from Inbox Collective’s Dan Oshinsky. Then in Q2, we talked to Todd Peterson from Farm Journal about how changing inbox service provider algorithms are impacting email performance — and what senders can do to respond.

Newsletter growth and monetization tactics for 2025: The newsletter industry’s more lucrative than ever. With new money comes new competition. So how can you cut through the noise and keep your audience valuable next year and beyond? Check out our team’s best practices, along with examples from legacy media and indie newsletters, here.

How to prepare and launch your SMS marketing strategy: This year, we launched the ability to send SMS messages in your marketing automation workflows. Learn how to use SMS alongside email to help get renewals, drive engagements and convert your audience with these tips.

Top resources for first-party data

Going against the grain: How IRONMARKETS combines experimentation and data to drive revenue: Discover how IRONMARKETS unified its first-party audience data with Omeda, then used it to create engagement-based segments and create more lucrative ad packages.

Webinar: Data Hygiene Best Practices: In this webinar, our team walks through strategies and expert tips to keep your database clean, accurate and actionable.

4 registration wall examples from leading publishers: Convert unknown to known, collect better audience data and improve your audience experiences by creating better registration walls. Get some inspiration from these examples by top media companies.

Active Interest Media is growing their business by understanding and wowing their hobby enthusiast audience: See how Active Interest Media is using Omeda to unify its first-party data, deliver a single view of its audience, and execute more targeted, successful campaigns.

Top resources for subscription management and media industry analysis

Unlocking Gold: Transforming Data into Revenue for Media Companies: Jacob Donnelly of A Media Operator talked to Marissa Zanetti-Crume, Bloomberg’s Head of Product, about how media companies can drive more revenue and opportunities from their first-party audience data.

The Rebooting x Omeda Online Forum: New Audience Strategies: Our CEO James Capo and Brian Morrissey of The Rebooting talked to The Guardian’s Emilie Harkins and Thomas Johnson about how they’ve redesigned their audience experience, including how they’ve used their audience data to improve their product to earn more repeat visitors and donations. (Can’t watch the full session? Get our top takeaways here.)

A media leader’s guide to developing and sustaining paid subscription models: Learn how to pivot from a free to paid subscription model with our best practices (and examples from media companies like yours).

The case for hiring a Chief Audience Officer: Audience development needs to be an organization-wide priority — and you need a chief audience officer to spearhead that change. Make the case for hiring a chief audience officer with these tips.