Author: Tatjana Rajković, Founder & Consumer Insights Consultant, Kabinet 3C, HUDI member
Ahead of the 14th SoMo Borac, the regional competition for the best digital projects taking place on 23 October, co-organised for the fourth consecutive year by the Croatian Digital Publishers Association (HUDI), we raise the question of whether the value of a media outlet is measured solely by the number of people it reaches or also by how important its content is to the audience it serves. The column is written by Tatjana Rajković, founder of Kabinet 3C, consumer insights consultant and HUDI member. In it, she introduces HUDI’s “Beyond Reach” research, conducted through in-depth interviews with representatives of seven member media outlets, whose insights she will present at SoMo Borac.
Behind every audience figure is a person. Someone who chooses what to read, what to return to and what to give their attention to. What interests me most are precisely those reasons and what lies beneath the surface of the answers: needs people do not express straight away, the moment content becomes important to them, and the difference between what they say they want and what they actually do. This is exactly what I do through market research: I try to understand people’s behaviour, needs and motivations.
In my work, I try to understand precisely these deeper patterns. I research readers and viewers, their needs, habits and perspectives, but in B2B research I also listen to experts who recognise trends, changes and directions of development from within. I am interested not just in what is happening, but also in why it is happening, what it means and where it might take us.
I bring that perspective to my role as a HUDI member, too. I do not come from the position of an owner, editor or representative of one particular digital media outlet, but from the position of someone who tries to connect the audience’s perspective with the experience of those who create media every day.
That is why, in conversations about media, I am interested in more than the figures we see in reports. I am also interested in the questions that often remain hidden behind those figures: why audiences return to a particular media outlet, what its content means to them, at what point it becomes important to them, and what value the outlet creates for the community it serves.
It was precisely this interest that led to the collaboration with HUDI, the Croatian Digital Publishers Association. HUDI is more than a formal gathering place for publishers. An important part of its role is to bring members together, organise, motivate and encourage them to reflect collectively on questions that an individual publisher would find difficult to raise alone.
This is particularly important at a time when the media sector is changing rapidly. Audience habits, content distribution, business models, relationships with platforms and advertisers’ expectations are all changing. At the same time, media outlets are still often evaluated through a handful of major figures: reach, impressions, clicks and views.
These figures matter. They enable comparison, planning and the tracking of results. But on their own, they cannot answer all the questions that matter to understanding media value.
What does it mean when content becomes relevant to the very reader it was intended for? What happens when a media outlet does not speak to everyone, but speaks very precisely to a particular community? How does the value of content change when it gives audiences not just information, but also context, explanation and a sense that the topic is truly understandable?
These are some of the questions that guided us in preparing HUDI’s “Beyond Reach” research.
Conversations with Those Who Create Media Every Day
Representatives of seven HUDI member media outlets took part in the research. They represent different media models, audiences and topics, but what they have in common is that they have built their position around a specific relationship with their audiences.
Individual, in-depth B2B interviews were conducted. Participants spoke about how they know their readers, how they decide which topics matter, how they adapt content to the community they serve, and how they think about their own value.
The conversations also covered the business side of publishing: revenue, advertising, media planning, relationships with agencies, human and technological resources, and the changes brought by platforms and artificial intelligence.
What I find particularly important in these conversations is that participants talk not just about what they do, but also about why they do it. Their answers reveal how an editorial relationship with the audience develops, how trust is built, and how a media outlet recognises that a topic matters not just because it is currently visible, but because someone truly needs it.
This research does not seek to produce another ranking of media outlets. Its value lies in opening up space for understanding. In revealing, behind the usual categories and business metrics, the experiences of people who create content every day, talk to audiences and try to keep their media outlet relevant and financially sustainable.
What Does the Word Relevance Encompass?
The title of the research, “Beyond Reach”, emerged from a need to talk more precisely about what media outlets produce.
Reach tells us how many people could have seen the content. But it does not always tell us who found that content important, whether the person understood it, whether it helped them make a decision, or whether it raised a question that would have remained invisible without that media outlet.
This does not mean that reach should be disregarded. On the contrary, it matters when the communication objective is broad visibility. But not all communication objectives are the same, just as not all audiences are the same. In some situations, reaching as many people as possible is crucial. In others, it is more important to reach precisely those for whom a particular topic is relevant, in an environment they trust and in a way they can understand.
This raises a question that we will explore in more detail at SoMo Borac: should relevance become a more important part of the conversation about media value?
Not as a replacement for reach, but as an additional perspective on its value.
HUDI as a Space for Collective Conversation
The value of this project also lies in the fact that it goes beyond individual experiences. Every digital publisher knows its own audience and business model best, but some themes recur: how to demonstrate the value of a specific audience, how to protect editorial trust, how to develop sustainable business models, and how to respond to changes coming from outside.
HUDI’s role is precisely to connect these experiences. To make them visible, encourage the exchange of knowledge, and organise a conversation between publishers, advertisers, agencies and other participants in the digital ecosystem.
Such a conversation should not be a defence of one type of media against another. Large media outlets have their own function and value. Specialised, thematic and local media outlets have a different role. It is important to understand where these values complement one another and how to choose the appropriate environment for different communication objectives.
The “Beyond Reach” research therefore offers neither a simple answer nor a single universal metric. It opens a conversation about how we understand audiences, attention, context, trust and the impact of media today.
We will present detailed insights and participants’ voices at SoMo Borac. Until then, we leave you with one question that may be the most important starting point for the conversation:
When we talk about the value of media, are we simply counting how many people saw something, or are we trying to understand who it truly mattered to?
