I'm going to call it: 2025 will be the year of brand journalism.
Our CEO Noah Greenberg worked with Live Data Technologies to uncover how many roles with atypical, content-related titles (Editor-in-Chief, VP Content, and Editorial Director) are being hired at non-media companies.
The number of people with this role has grown by 20% since 2019. And while it's leveled off since 2022, it's still an encouraging trend.
Celebrity and award show stories outperformed other topics in December, representing three of the Top 5 best-performing articles on the newswire. Award season aside, the celebrity angle is often a top-performer, so we often encourage our partners to consider how their topics can relate to public figures people care about.
What publishers want
Here’s a look at what content areas our publishers have been most interested in over the last month.
Lifestyle, 996 searches
Money, 936 searches
Travel, 894 searches
News, 853 searches
Entertainment, 734 searches
Money jumped up to the Top 5 list in December. Part of this might be attributed to the higher amount of money spent during the holidays and a renewed interest in personal finance and budgeting. Entertainment also broke the Top 5, influenced by early-in-the-year award shows like the Golden Globes in January and the Grammys in February.
Most anticipated topics next month
Here are the topics that are most likely to be picked up next
Evergreen lifestyle stories (particularly topics around food/drink and love/relationships)
Economic trends (particularly stories related to jobs or small business)
Weather- and season-related stories (including harder news like how serious weather is affecting communities but also more "soft" features like seasonal recipes)
Marketplace lets brands access, invest in, and build new growth opportunities from data-driven journalism.
Partner Highlights
STACKER NEWSWIRE
We are delighted to welcome Her Agenda and Bay State Banner as new publishers on the network this month.
STACKER CONNECT
We're proud to count LawnStarter as one of our content partners. Here is a story they produced and distributed in partnership with Stacker.
And if you want to read more about how LawnStarter used Stacker to scale brand awareness with 6k+ earned media placements, read our full case study here.
"Our link count has drastically improved year over year...we got a lot more links with you all than we did with the previous syndication network [we worked with]. It really isn't comparable at all."
Patricia Adler, Senior Marketing Analyst at LawnStarter
What's Next
In Q1, we'll be introducing a refreshed analytics dashboard for our brand partners. It will include improved audience reach metrics and be able to benchmark performance against similar campaigns. We're excited for you to see it and give us your feedback!
I've also been thinking about the impact of data analysis and visualization in the stories we distribute, and I wanted to share this quote by Nathan Yau of FlowingData: "Learn data, and you can tell stories that more people didn't even know about yet are eager to hear." I think that sums it up perfectly.
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