The rush of publishers to embrace distributing media across platforms rather than relying mostly on people coming to their owned properties rests on a basic assumption: The business model will follow.
But that’s easier said than done. As the travails of BuzzFeed and Mashable have shown, excelling at audience development on platforms does not necessarily (and immediately) mean the ad revenue comes with it. One of the big, thorny issues that’s holding up the migration of ads is the simple fact that it’s hard to measure publishers across platforms.
