Modern Infrastructure for Digital Publishers 2019/2020

Think about the important factors for digital publishers as of 2019/2020: SEO, Audience Growth, Audience Re-Engaging, Managing website speed, Diversifying Revenue, Ad Operation, Monetization, New data regulations like GDPR and CCPA, AMP, PWA, Facebook IA, Apple News, Google News, Video player and adverts, Paywall, Membership and subscription, Header bidding...

Unlike tech giants or large publishing groups, most small-medium digital publishing businesses are lacking access to advanced technologies. Transfon was started in the vision of modernizing the tech infrastructure SMBs, for digital publishers and marketers. What tech infrastructure should be built or have for a modern digital publisher?

• Multiple Channel Modern Headless CMS
• Identity Management System
• Membership System
• Personalization and Recommendation
• Safety, Privacy Protection and Compliance
• Application Layer Firewall
• First party data management System
• Paywall and Payment System
• User Experience and Performance Management

Multiple Channel Modern Headless CMS

The CMS provides news feed and video feed which can be rendered by multiple distribution channels such as responsive website, mobile application, Email, PWA.

Ideally the CMS is able to provide content feed with GraphQL which can be consumed by all these different distribution channels.

A publisher should start to invest in multiple channels and not only rely on search engine or news index. Think about the channels that can be used by publishers: Mobile app, Social account, Email list, SMS, Mobile pushing messages, Browser pushing messages.

But the key to taking advantage of multiple channels is personalization — providing users with the messages and content they want and like. A first-party data management system is required to manage the 1-to-1 message on a large scale.

Identity Management System

The cost of user acquisition is increasingly expensive. It is worth establishing a first-party relationship with the audience and converting them into users.

As a publisher, you have to store and manage users' identities in a secure way.

Build a profile of the audience, own the relationship with your audience, it is the real value of a publishing business.

Membership System

A publisher's business cannot rely solely on advertising — you can also open multiple revenue streams such as sponsored products for your audience base. Provide premium content for your users. Think of your website as a community, not just a static news or media website. Provide more value for the community members.

Personalization and Recommendation

Based on the user's behavior, visit history, and other data you have, provide users with a personalized experience to improve engagement.

Like Google or Facebook, a modern publisher can provide different content for different users. Different users see the different content list based on their interest.

Content relevant to the main article should be displayed to the user to increase overall engagement time.

Users should also be able to subscribe or choose their interested topics.

A first-party data management system allows publishers to have personalization and recommendation features on their website.

Safety, Privacy Protection and Compliance

Only collect or use users' data based on users' consent. A consent management system like UniConsent for GDPR/CCPA is required if you are running a business in the EU or have audiences in the EU countries, or California.

Another perspective is from the advertising supply chain, keep your website secure and safe for your audiences. Because of the nature of real-time bidding and header bidding, the adverts and content displayed on a website are dynamic. It is difficult to trace the supplier of a specific advert. An advertising protection system should be applied to manage the secure environment of your website.

If you have multiple content suppliers, you have to ensure content quality and safety. This is important for inventory buyers and also for Search Engine Optimization.

Fortunately, if you have integrated with a first-party data management system, your content and user behavior data can be used to analyze and identify low-quality content.

Application Layer Firewall

It is challenging for a digital publisher to protect themselves from the content being copied or duplicated on the internet. An application-layer firewall is needed to protect the website from large scale data crawling and spidering. The spiders not only steal data from your public website but also drain server resources and harm overall website speed and user experience. It may also damage your ranking score in Google's index system because you have a slower website.

First party data management System

Third-party cookies and data are dying. A publisher needs to start building and owning a first-party database including audience data, user behavior data, user interests, and more. The first-party data can not only help you provide better content if you can understand your audience better, but also increase traffic and revenue by leveraging first-party data.

The other part of first-party data is about your content, you will be able to identify the quality of your content based on the user's behavior. Catch and amplify the trending articles gaining traction to multiple channels or across your network.

A first-party data management system enables a publisher to provide detailed marketing and advertising service packages for marketers and brands.

Paywall and Payment System

Paywalls and paid content may or may not work depending on the nature and type of your website. But you should provide users with more choices such as tip the article or topic they like.

Pubpayment is an add-on system enabling publishers to issue ad-free passes, provide premium content, and more to their audience.

User Experience and Performance Management

Managing the user experience for your large-scale audience is complex. A performance management system like PubPerf is necessary to keep tracking the speed of your website and identify and predict potential issues with your website and mobile applications.

A real user monitoring system should be used to monitor the uptime, reliability, performance of your website.

Transfon UXP is a group of add-on systems for modernizing the tech infrastructure for digital publishers and marketers.