Audience development roles broaden further » Nieman Journalism Lab - Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard

“We’ll mitigate the risks of our often uneasy relationships with Facebook, Google, and Apple by further doubling down on diversifying our audience sources and cultivating direct relationships with readers.”

Over the past decade, “audience development” has gone from a little-known marketing term to a familiar newsroom role. Now, audience development experts, audience engagement managers, and growth editors tasked with getting stories in front of more readers.

Once upon a time, the skills needed were an understanding of SEO and the social levers. Later, the role expanded to audience development experts nerding out on newsletters, pushing podcasts and getting short- and long-form video viewers across multiple platforms. Audience development has gone from a newsroom role to a bridge role for the business; it’s gone from audience data to goal-setting to ensure revenue. What may have started as a scale play moved to becoming a need for loyalty and habituation. Once the focus was bringing audiences to show them advertising, which soon developed into driving memberships and commerce revenue. And audience development managers have gone from working mainly with editors to working cross-functionally across product teams and beyond.

Here’s a brief history of audience development — with some ideas as to what 2022 will bring:

The New York Times Innovation Report detailed the “audience development efforts” and the “newsroom’s growing interest” in the subject. Unpacking the leaked...

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