Patricia McGuinness spent the first part of her career working in niche media as a circulation specialist for various companies. In 2009, during the Great Recession, she founded SBM Audience Development, an audience consultancy dedicated to serving media companies.
Since then, McGuinness has had a front-row seat to an audience revolution. The magazine industry migrated from primarily print to primarily digital. And with that, the old circulation skillsets—BPA compliance, fulfillment, direct mail, USPS regulations—diminished in value as new ones emerged: Tracking engagement, establishing meaningful KPIs, converting unknowns to knowns, monetization, tech stack mastery.
Patricia McGuinness.
In her career, according to her website, McGuinness “has not only built audiences but also built bridges between traditional and digital publishing, ensuring her clients are well-equipped to navigate the dynamic media landscape of today and tomorrow.” Her consulting practice, the web copy continues, leverages “our nearly three decades of niche media expertise and our commitment to digital-first thinking to drive audience growth and engagement.”
Because of her broad experience across many customers and an audience transformation, McGuinness is a great person to speak to as we contextualize the last 20 years in specialized media. Here’s a transcript of our conversation.
Fox Tales: What are the top four or five audience-related challenges media companies face today?
Patricia McGuinness: The biggest challenge is that most media companies are saying “audience-first”—but aren’t operating that way. Many are still chasing volume when they should be building value.
Omeda’s most recent State of Audience Report found that nearly two-thirds of respondents didn’t have a documented audience strategy. That disconnect shows up everywhere: Unknown-to-known conversion, disconnected systems, and engagement tracked through shallow metrics like opens and visits instead of meaningful actions.
At the same time, attention is fragmenting. Publishers aren’t just competing with each other anymore, they’re up against creators, retail media networks, and AI content farms. The operators who will survive this phase are those who can turn audience engagement into audience insight and action.
Fox Tales: Is the challenge different when discussing print or digital?
McGuinness: Yes, but not in the way people think. The print-to-digital divide used to be about format. Now it’s about mindset. Print publishers are used to recurring relationships: Subscriptions, renewals, loyalty over time. Digital teams tend to chase reach and speed. The irony is that digital needs to think more like print. Engagement depth, renewal intent, and lifetime value matter far more than raw traffic now.
So while the channels differ, the new common ground is identity. Whether in print or online, you have to know who you’re reaching—not just how many. That’s why first-party data and consent-based onboarding have become the foundation of every sustainable audience model. Additionally, I think the publishers who have maintained print products, or at least the data collection disciplines of the print mindset, will reap rewards that publishers who abandoned print for digital have forfeited. Being able to offer print reach, even if it’s not the traditional magazine option, will become increasingly valuable in a world where email deliverability becomes a less reliable.
Fox Tales: What metrics are the right ones to track?
McGuinness: Adding thousands of email addresses to a newsletter list is easy. But with search traffic diminishing and referral models collapsing, reaching and engaging qualified audiences is getting tougher and tougher. The focus has to be on increasing the yield from every relationship. For audience professionals, that translates to three layers of measurement:
- Identity and reach: Known vs. unknown users, engagement, and behavior tracking.
- Engagement quality: Depth metrics like repeat visits, time on site, newsletter CTR, and poll participation.
- Monetization signals: Conversions, renewals, and lead generation.
When you connect those layers, you stop reporting activity—and start proving impact.
Fox Tales: Would you say a number of media operators aren’t doing these things—and if so, why not?
McGuinness: Yes—and it’s not because they don’t want to. It’s because their systems and incentives are still built for the traffic era. In many organizations, editorial, audience, marketing, and sales are each chasing different metrics. That setup makes short-term wins like pageviews or email volume look like success, even when they erode long-term engagement and loyalty. It’s not that teams lack effort—it’s that the infrastructure rewards activity over alignment.
But I think the bigger barrier is cultural. Audience development has long been treated as a support function—the people who “send the emails” or “manage the database.” But today’s reality demands something different. Audience teams need to sit at the strategy table, not the sidelines. As Omeda’s Tony Napoleone suggested in The Stormy Seas Audience Plan, this is a moment to redraw the map: Audience leaders must define their value in revenue terms, own the link between engagement and monetization, and lead cross-functional collaboration.
That cultural shift means replacing old silos with shared accountability. Editorial should understand how engagement drives renewals. Sales should see how data quality fuels conversions. And audience teams should have the authority—and expectation—to guide the entire organization toward measurable, sustainable audience value. Until media companies make that leap, “audience-first” will remain more slogan than strategy.
Fox Tales: What’s your take on the emergence of AI summaries and the threat to web traffic for media companies?
McGuinness: AI isn’t the real threat—sameness is. Established niche publishers actually have a huge advantage over generative platforms: Deep, original archives and institutional knowledge of their industries. AI can summarize what’s already known, but it can’t replicate the decades of reporting, context, and relationships that live inside niche publications. That’s the raw material of trust—and it’s something most AI systems can only imitate.
The opportunity now is to use AI strategically—to surface, synthesize, and personalize that unique knowledge for readers. Instead of chasing clicks, media companies can use AI to help users find the exact insight, trend, or benchmark that no one else can explain as well. In a world flooded with automated content, the publisher who becomes the go-to source for reliable interpretation—not just information—wins.
This isn’t about competing with AI summaries. It’s about using AI to amplify what makes your publication irreplaceable: Depth, credibility, and focus. The publishers who lean into that role will become the trusted copilots of their industries—the ones professionals turn to when they need more than an answer, they need understanding.
Fox Tales: Bonus question: Tell us how your business has changed over time.
McGuinness: My work has evolved from audience management to audience strategy. Twenty years ago, my job was primarily centered around maintaining lists, adhering to USPS and BPA rules, and keeping print circulation clean. Today, it’s about helping publishers design systems that prove audience drives revenue.
That shift mirrors what’s happening across business media—moving from static to signal-led models, where audience data isn’t just collected but interpreted. Audience development increasing sits at the center of strategy—guiding editorial priorities, powering ad sales, and strengthening renewal pipelines. We’re no longer just gathering names. We’re building engines that turn audience attention into business intelligence.