Dive Brief:
- NBC News is shutting down the Breaking News app, which it acquired in 2011, at the end of the year, per Poynter.org. The app has a loyal audience for its fast news alerts, with 9.4 million Twitter followers.
- Breaking News co-founder and GM Cory Bergman stated via his Twitter feed that the app has not been able to attract advertising, with NBC News deciding it makes more sense to re-invest funding into its core digital products.
- NBC News will work to incorporate some of Breaking News’ features into its other products.
Dive Insight:
News alerts received on smartphones are increasingly popular with consumers, with one-third of American smartphone users receiving such content and have expressed satisfaction with the notifications, according to a recent report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism that was cited by Poynter.org.
However, despite their popularity with users, apps built around delivering news alerts have so far mostly failed to find a business model that works, with several offerings folding over the past few years. Traditional media companies continue to hunt for effective digital strategies in this medium, but monetizing the business model is consistently the problem, with apps struggling to attract enough advertising to support the operations behind the services.
At the same time that legitimate digital news offerings are struggling, fake news sites are attracting significant traffic volume and advertising revenue. However, a significant backlash against fake news sites is causing some brands to pull their ads, ostensibly leaving money on the table. If brands choose to reinvest those ad dollars elsewhere other digital properties may stand to benefit, but that shift is thus far unclear.
For NBC News, Breaking News had been an important step toward getting in front of smartphone users. App-generated push notifications are an important way for media companies to reach users directly, as opposed to reaching them on Twitter or Facebook, where companies have less control over the experience.
