Robin Footdale has joined LEAP Media Solutions in the role of senior customer success manager. She will report to Kirsten DiChiappari, U.S. director of customer success.

Let's start with a given: Traditional advertising no longer keeps the lights on. The strategic imperative for newsmedia companies is one of revenue diversification. Of course, revenue diversification can – and does – assume many shapes and sizes.

But for the moment at hand, consumer monetization is in the crosshairs of many publishers as the primary source of untapped revenue. Specifically, it is in persuading consumers to pay for digital content that, heretofore, has been available at zero or nominal cost.

Challenging? Of course.

Essential? Absolutely.

BlueVenn has announced the purchase of LEAP Media Solutions (LEAP), a provider of customer analytics and marketing campaign services for the U.S. media industry.

The acquisition will strengthen BlueVenn's presence in the media and publishing market, which already boasts over 200 newsmedia brands operating the BlueVenn Customer Data Platform and its analytics, personalization and campaign management tools.

LEAP has been utilizing BlueVenn technology effectively for five years, to provide media publishers with tailored data analytics and marketing campaign capabilities through a shared-hosting model. This has enabled independent publishers with limited marketing resources the same sophisticated marketing capabilities as major publishers and media, without investing in technology systems that may otherwise be out of reach.

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Shaw Media, operators of nearly 100 print/digital, paid/free publications in Illinois and Iowa, has joined a growing coalition of such family-owned companies as Calkins Media, Albuquerque Publishing Company, Frederick News-Post, Observer Publishing Company and Morris Publishing Group in pursuing audience growth, engagement and monetization through LEAP Media Solutions' proven data-driven approach, capping another year of record growth for LEAP.

LEAP Media Solutions has announced the addition of several industry leaders to its executive team, as well as one promotion.

Star Tribune Media Company, LLC, publisher of the Star Tribune in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn., has engaged LEAP Media Solutions to engineer, manage and deploy a state-of-the-art marketing automation and analytics platform (MAAXTM) to drive the company's ambitious audience initiatives.

While we might cut our way to short-term viability, Tom Ratkovich of LEAP Media Solutions says we can't cut our way to long-term prosperity. And the sometimes chaotic efforts to rapidly become "digital first" – rather than "customer first" – led to the disastrous customer experiences and privacy concerns that have, in turn, been manifested in ad blockers and, frighteningly, digital revenue declines at some highly visible publishing companies.

At first blush, content monetization seems a reasonable pursuit. Such pursuit has taken many forms, but two of note include (1) the broad domain of "paywalls" or metering of digital content, and (2) aggressive pricing actions for both print and digital content.

Why does Ratkovich say reasonable "at first blush?" Read this article to find out -- and then learn more at the News Industry Summit!

SNPA's strategic partnership program helps member newspapers cut costs, grow revenue and access essential benchmarking data. Additional partnerships are in development to further expand the program.

If a newspaper takes advantage of any one of these services, the newspaper can save more money every year than it spends on SNPA dues. It quite literally pays to be a member of SNPA.

LEARN MORE about these special opportunities available only to members of SNPA.

For the Erie Times-News, LEAP Media Solutions' audience-based advertising revenue development program proves "data doesn't lie."