ChronosHub’s CEO shares practical advice on using data for publishers

In a recent Silverchair webinar, an expert panel, including ChronosHub’s CEO Christian Grubak, discussed the challenges and opportunities that data transformation presents the publishing industry.

Ask our CEO Christian about “data” and his eyes light up (not an exaggeration). So, he was delighted to be invited onto Silverchair’s webinar The Data Revolution: Unlocking Value Across the Publishing Landscape.

Advances in digital technologies over the past decade have allowed organizations to generate, collect, and analyze data like never before. The potential to impact areas like customer personalization and product strategies is huge. But Christian knows that publishers’ enthusiasm is tempered with doubts.

“ChronosHub is an advocate for optimization through data,” says Christian, “but many publishers we speak to have concerns. They’re unsure about how to bring their data sources together to capture truly actionable insights. The amount of data available to them is vast, so it can feel overwhelming.”

Silverchair’s webinar dug into this topic. Alongside Christian, the expert panel featured Colleen Scollans (Clarke & Esposito), Beth Windsor (American Chemical Society), and Michael Crumsho (McGraw Hill Professional). Josh Dahl (Silverchair) was the moderator.

Themes from the webinar

The panel discussed four important topics.

1. Data ownership and governance: Understanding where data resides and who controls it.
2. Data interoperability: The importance of freeing data from siloes.
3. Building data competency: Developing a data-centric culture across your organization.
4. New revenue streams: How data can be monetized in innovative ways.

Christian’s key insights

The power is in the question

Data means different things to different people. There needs to be a common understanding of what you want to use data for—what’s the goal?

“We often experience that organizations treat different data streams separately,” Christian stressed. “Sales data gets treated separately from usage data, and separately from behavioral.

Really the power is in the question. If you can’t traverse all those different data streams… you really end up losing out on insights.”

With a robust data strategy in place, teams can better parse the data they have and consider how it ties together with data from other departments.

Don’t wait for perfect

Christian challenged a striving he’s seen for perfection in data collection and standardization, especially in smaller publishers, where budgets are limited. This approach can lead to missed opportunities.

“There are many data sources out there that won’t give you 100% precision rate, but they’re still good enough for purpose.”

These sources help you establish baseline understanding at the very least. And as Christian noted, “You can always buy a better option later.”

AI can’t do it all

Many organizations naturally turn to AI to analyze data.

“When the big models like ChatGPT came out, everybody rushed towards them. Now there’s a forest of them. So those models no longer have the value they once did. Now it’s more about what you can add on top of them.”

For Christian, that secret sauce is “true data talent.”

“You get to the point when being able to prompt data is no longer enough. Now you need prompt engineers, backed by actual development resources and data scientists.”

Want to learn more?

Watch the full webinar here for more insights from Christian and the rest of the panel. And if you’re curious about ChronosHub’s analytics for publishers, you can learn more here