{"id":227092,"date":"2025-10-20T09:12:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T09:12:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/227092\/"},"modified":"2025-10-20T09:12:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T09:12:15","slug":"mumbrellas-next-phase-mumbrella","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/227092\/","title":{"rendered":"Mumbrella\u2019s next phase – Mumbrella"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in 2011 when News Corp switched on the paywall for The Australian, one of the executives joked that the public\u2019s ten-year free trial was coming to an end.<\/p>\n

You could say the same thing about Mumbrella, except it\u2019s been nearly 17 years. This afternoon we pressed the button. If you want to see articles that are older than six weeks old, you\u2019ll need to be a subscriber to Mumbrella Pro<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s part of a larger project to bring the content of Mumbrella and Unmade together on one platform. On Saturday, we sent the final Unmade newsletter via Substack. From now on, Unmade\u2019s analytical content<\/a> will be published via Mumbrella\u2019s WordPress platform.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been long time believers in a membership tier for Mumbrella. We acquired<\/a> the then 40-year-old title AdBrief from Thomson Reuters back in 2012. We then relaunched it<\/a> as The Source in 2013. This was our first run at creating an industry intelligence tool, offering members comprehensive contacts and information on the activities of Australia\u2019s biggest brands and agencies.<\/p>\n

ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n

And in 2019, we folded The Source into Mumbrella, and launched the membership tier Mumbrella Pro<\/a>. As well as the directory of brands and agencies, we began to share content from our conferences. It was the first time we\u2019d effectively had a paid content tier.<\/p>\n

By that point, we\u2019d sold Mumbrella and five months later, we handed over management control of the business. As was their right, the new owners chose other priorities, and the new Mumbrella Pro was not marketed. Gradually, updating the directory content fell by the wayside. Revenue that had been approaching $100,000 per year fell away to what is now about $30,000.<\/p>\n

While I was away from the Mumbrella mothership, I had the opportunity to explore my own paid membership model with Unmade. That experience helped convince me that the business model of publishing requires that content worth paying for, should indeed be paid for. The audience of exclusively advertising-supported media gets what it pays for.<\/p>\n

With Unmade, we created a membership model with an annual fee of $650 which included access to member-only content, our archive, and free access to our events. Our annual revenue from Unmade\u2019s paying members has reached just over $125,000.<\/p>\n

Behind the scenes we\u2019ve been working with our wonderful technology partner The Code Co, along with the inhouse team at The Intermedia Group. The Code Co has been involved with Mumbella for most of our existence. You may have noticed Mumbrella had a bit of a spruce up a few weeks ago \u2013 that was the first stage of the current project.<\/p>\n

As of today, all of Unmade\u2019s content now lives within Mumbrella.<\/p>\n

With Mumbrella\u2019s readers all working within the media industry, I know I don\u2019t need to apologise for asking you to pay for our content, if it\u2019s worth it. Our job is to make sure that\u2019s the case.<\/p>\n

With more yet to come, we\u2019ve been steadily reinvesting. For the last couple of months, we\u2019ve had extra staff working to ensure that the Mumbrella Pro directory is once more up to date.<\/p>\n

You may have seen that at the start of the year, Hal Crawford<\/a>, one of Australia\u2019s most experienced and respected news executives joined us as editorial director. Last week, Eleanor Dickinson rejoined us as chief reporter. Eleanor is a previous editor of Mumbrella Asia, and before that reported for the Middle East edition of Campaign magazine.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re also beginning to build a stable of excellent, grown-up industry columnists. You\u2019ll have already seen Mark Ritson\u2019s first column. Shortly we\u2019ll be announcing the rest of our new columnists.<\/p>\n

Bringing Mumbrella and Unmade together will result in another practical benefit. Rather than sending Mumbrella\u2019s daily email to 38,000 people and Unmade to 23,000, we\u2019ll be sending to a de-duplicated database of more than 55,000. I believe that will be the biggest in the market.<\/p>\n

Every morning, we\u2019ll send a Mumbrella-branded news email featuring the latest developments of the day. And at the end of the day, we\u2019ll be sending an analytical and long form led newsletter which will also include our daily Unmade Index coverage of Australia\u2019s listed media and marketing companies.<\/p>\n

On a Saturday morning, Best of the Week will go to everybody.<\/p>\n

As of today, we\u2019ve dropped the price of a Mumbrella Pro subscription to $650. In the coming weeks I look forward to persuading you that\u2019s a bargain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back in 2011 when News Corp switched on the paywall for The Australian, one of the executives joked…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":227093,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,63,137419,27458,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-227092","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-mumbrella","11":"tag-paywall","12":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}