'There was no accountability': What went wrong for The Players' Tribune

The sports star-powered media startup struggled to generate enough hits to turn itself into a habit. That hampered more recent efforts to diversify into new things, including podcasts, documentaries and merchandise. November 06, 2019 In late 2017, The Players' Tribune scored a big hit when NFL MVP Cam Newton posted “Dear Chosen,” an open letter to his son, complete with a video shot shortly after the baby's delivery. Like many of the sports site's stories, the essay was quickly written up by other sites, including Bleacher Report and Essence, and the video drove more than 70% of the video views it had gotten that month. It was also the only story to really pop that month. The site's traffic also fell 30%, partly because of low editorial output, with just 40 posts published in January, according to one former employee. Read more below. - [The Players' Tribune struggled to generate enough hits to turn itself into a habit.](That hampered more recent efforts to diversify into new things, including podcasts, documentaries and merchandise. - [American Express]( is preparing for a world without cookies by developing more identity-based media buying strategies. - Login unions [have formed between publishers in Switzerland, Finland, France, Portugal and Germany.]( Some of those alliances also extend to offering enhanced ad-targeting options to advertisers. But as can often be the case when competitors decide to collaborate, progress across the board has been relatively slow. - Complex has a growing commerce business because of the popularity of its original shows and its in-house hosts. [See why.]( Other things to know about - Categories are live for this year’s Digiday Content Marketing Awards. Interested in entering? 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Join the webinar for the latest insights — surfaced by new research — into how buyers are currently approaching SPO in the UK. howdy! [How Esquire is trying a 'micro-membership' model around Charles Pierce]( Since launching the micro-membership model in November 2018, the site has garnered over 10,000 subscribers, and Sebastian expects that the election year will drive up that number even higher. howdy! DIGIDAY+ MEMBER EXCLUSIVE [Pitch deck: TikTok is testing cost-per-click ad pricing]( TikTok says it has nearly 22 million users in Europe who open the app up to 11 times a day. [All Latest Stories]( [HuffPost’s Lydia Polgreen on the risk the pivot to paid could create an ‘unequal news ecosystem’]( "I would be very worried about a world in which advertiser-supported, free-to-consumer news just went away. I think that would be a tragic loss." You received this email because you’re a member of the Digiday community. If someone forwarded this to you, [subscribe for yourself here](#). 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