This resulting blend of bombast and simplicity has piqued the interest of the advertising community, said Lou Paskalis, the chief strategy officer at Ad Fontes Media, although its ability to capture an audience remains the outstanding question.
“I like the premise,” Paskalis said. “Marketers are looking for more opportunities with news, and I hope the platform is as unbiased as Jimmy claims it will be.”
The Messenger’s direct advertising strategy
In its first year, The Messenger will generate the entirety of its revenue from advertising across channels, including digital, newsletters, events and video.
Drawing on the relationships Beckman has built throughout his career, the publisher aims to sign most of its business directly, including an eight-figure media commitment it recently penned with a major holding company.
Chief revenue officer Mia Libby, formerly of The Daily Beast, will oversee its 20-person team of sales staff, as well as direct its branded content division and marketing group. The Messenger plans to monetize its remaining digital inventory using private marketplace, programmatic guaranteed and open-exchange programmatic deals.
In line with broader trends, the publisher hopes to sell large, multichannel packages to brand clients, drawing on its experiential division, in particular, to help it do so. It aims to host 10 events this year beginning in September, and between 40 and 50 in 2024, according to Beckman.
The Messenger will ultimately include nine verticals, which it will unveil throughout the year: news and politics in May; entertainment and business in June; sports and technology in July; health in August; purpose, which includes topics like DEI and sustainability, in September; food in October; travel in November and style in December.
This portfolio offers The Messenger a strong chance of reaching a wide, top-of-funnel audience—a valuable asset in an age of increasingly fractionalized media, said Josh Rosenberg, the chief executive of Day One Agency.
“You need to build within niche communities to gain credibility, but every marketer needs a scale play,” Rosenberg said. “And in 2023, there really is no one watering hole for news.”
With each new vertical, the publisher will launch a newsletter, and newsletter sponsors will rotate on a weekly basis. These will complement its core email products: a daily morning, lunch and evening news report, as well as a flagship political newsletter. When The Messenger acquired Grid, it gained a headstart on these efforts via its roughly 200,000 newsletter subscribers.