Quartz

Six trends the new Quartz app has joyfully piggybacked

The new Quartz app is fun, perhaps divisive, but bang on trend, showing us what content distribution might look like soon.

When Quartz was founded, it was pretty revolutionary for news on the web – mobile first, big bold text, single stream layout, changing topics, great data viz, free to use (!), a daily digest email, etc.

Since then, it has adapted somewhat to compete with click bait on social media, but hasn’t really been ‘bleeding edge’ in rapidly-evolving mobile.

The Quartz app changes that. Here are six things to take note of, that all media companies should be investigating.

Quartz: what’s so great about it?

What’s so great about Quartz?

Quartz is a business news publication that’s been talked about a lot since its founding, by Atlantic Media Company (publishes The Atlantic), in 2012.

It’s built on WordPress, is mobile-first and characterised by a strong team of journalists that produces engaging short and long content that’s incredibly sharable.

Here’s some more answers to the question ‘what’s so great about Quartz?’

Three reasons to bet on commenting for marketing ROI

“Don’t you think dreams and the internet are similar? They are both areas where the repressed conscious mind vents.” Paprika — 2006

I recently watched a 2006 Japanese anime called Paprika where the quote above comes from. After it was recommended to me, I learned that Christopher Nolan has cited Paprika as an influence on his 2010 feature film, Inception…so to say it was a bit ahead of its time is probably an understatement.

When the character Paprika (who is a sort of repressed personality herself, but I won’t say too much to keep from spoiling the plot) offers this viewpoint it reminded me to revisit a very important area for today’s web marketers to pay attention; that of social commenting.

While online commenting has to date been a very frustrating for all of us, not to mention brand agnostic, for the very reason offered in this quote, times are changing and marketers need to take note.

After the web, what’s next for digital?

Without a doubt, the most significant media disruptor in recent history has been the internet, and it’s reasonable to consider the last 10 to 15 years the “internet era.” If the long history of disruptions has taught us anything it is that we need to ask, what era will be next? 

Even if we can’t predict the future, we need only look around us in digital media and technology to guess and stay informed of what’s down the road. As we have seen how quickly prominent companies have fallen, foresight is sure to pay dividends for marketers, publishers, and generally everyone who interacts with the world around them.

It’s a time for bold statements. It’s a time for stretching the imagination to glimpse at our future “beyond the internet.”

Making your ads viewable is only half the battle

With online advertising in the throes of a full-fledged panic about ad viewability, marketers are turning to native advertising and branded content as digital Xanax to alleviate their stress. While anxiety about unseen ads is well-founded, this road of what we call “next-gen digital” holds new bumps and curves for marketers to navigate.

It’s a fact that consumers are ignoring ads like never before; banner blindness continues to plague the industry. On top of that, it turns out that even if consumers were paying attention, many ads wouldn’t be “in view”: They’re served below the fold or take more time to load than viewers typically spend on a page.