A fashion and beauty brand aimed at millennial women launched by DMG Media in 2022 closed its website and focused on social media where it was getting “nearly all” its eyeballs.
Mail, Metro and The i Paper publisher DMG launched Eliza in 2022. It initially started publishing creator-led content on Instagram (where it now has 255,000 followers) and Tiktok (371,700) but did also launch its own website.
Eliza delivers the social and creator side campaigns bought with Mail Metro Media and last year was said to have worked on over £2m worth including brands such as Matalan, Superdrug, British Airways and Very.co.uk.
Co-founder and editor-in-chief Joanna Bridger told a “death of the website” panel at the PPA Festival in London: “When we first launched we built a website from scratch. But traffic was hard to build and nearly all our attention came from social.
“As a small team with limited resources, we made the radical decision to retire the website. We put all our energy into social, and now get around 50 million views a month.”
Co-founder and managing director Hannah Blake added that advertiser preferences had played a part in this decision: “When we launched and were out talking to advertisers and brands, they weren’t interested in a new piece of content on the website. All they wanted to know was how we could create really effective social video.”
Panel host Mel McVeigh of the PPA asked Blake how she felt about Eliza’s success being dependent on social media algorithms.
“People always say we’re at the mercy of these platforms,” Blake responded, referring to critics who say they don’t “own their audience”.
“But really that’s only something I hear from people in traditional businesses. Because if you look around, there are creators that jump on these platforms, get millions of views really quickly… take that community that they’ve made, and develop products that become wildly successful. They see these platforms as a massive opportunity.”
Eliza does still try to convert its social audience towards its newsletters, however. Blake added: “Newsletters are a huge part of our strategy. We use social to drive to our newsletters,” Blake said, pointing out that newsletters act as an “authority layer for a more dedicated audience.”
Eliza has a team of full-time social media creators who also star in the videos it produces.
Eliza features in as a case study in a new PPA report by Enders Analysis called “Rewriting the media playbook” which notes: “brands are able to sponsor all of the formats native to the platform or commission bespoke content, blurring the lines between commercial and noncommercial content”.
Successful Eliza content strands include the video series “Guess Which Outfit is Most Expensive” which has attracted more than 200 million views.
It features two Eliza creators who go out in identical outfits, one high fashion and the other from the high street. They then vox pop members of the public to find out which they think is more expensive. Commercial versions of this format have been created for brands such as Tu, Deichmann, Tk Maxx, Elf Cosmetics, Tresemme and British Airways
Enders Analysis chief executive Douglas McCabe told the PPA Festival in a keynote speech that the website format is “gradually becoming redundant” in the face of changing consumer behaviours, algorithms and AI-led search.
His sentiment was echoed in the same session as the Eliza founders by chief executive of AI start-up Miso.ai Lucky Gunasekara who referenced statistics shared by Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince, that: “Ten years ago, Google would scrape two pages and send one visit to a site. Now it’s six pages per visit. Open AI scrapes 200-300 per visit. For Anthropic [Claude.ai], it’s 6,000 per visit.
“Google AI Overviews have led to a 40% drop in clickthrough rates. That’s an asteroid coming to planet earth. It’s not over… but [websites] have to reinvent or resurrect themselves.”
He added that publishers need to “understand that the ocean is drying up and [your website is going to be] an island. How do you make it sustainable? How do you make it a destination people want to go to?”
Email pged@pressgazette.co.uk to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our "Letters Page" blog
