Hi SODP community,

Let’s recap on what’s been happening, the new content, industry updates, tips, and more.

TIP OF THE WEEK

The biggest risk of programmatic SEO isn’t scaling too little; it’s scaling the wrong way.

Automation and AI have reshaped how we research, create, and publish at scale. Programmatic SEO sits at the intersection of both. But here’s the key point: there’s a massive difference between automating research workflows and auto-generating copy.

Programmatic SEO is about identifying structured sets of search needs and building pages that serve them. That requires:

• Understanding search intent

• Grouping keywords logically

• Mapping topics to avoid duplication

• Validating which combinations deserve their own page

When research is automated, teams save time on data prep and free up bandwidth for real decision-making. When copy is auto-stitched from templates or sentence fragments, the result is shallow, repetitive, and low-trust.

Automated research workflows strengthen programmatic SEO by:

1. Clustering keywords with precision

2. Spotting missed opportunities (long-tail queries)

3. Validating intent before publishing at scale

4. Tracking search shifts over time

The goal is to ensure every page is built on intent-confirmed demand, not filler text.

Using AI to mass-generate sentence-level copy creates risks:

• Context gaps → nuance is lost

• Repetition → low engagement, high bounce rates

• Thinness → flagged by readers and search engines alike

Great programmatic SEO isn’t just about copy. It combines:

1. Solid research as the multiplier

2. Technical foundations (schema, linking, speed)

3. Human oversight for tone, authority, and compliance

AI still has its place, which involves supporting structured data, scaling FAQs, or assisting with drafts, but it should help, not replace research.

If you’re looking to scale, focus first on automating research. That’s where the long-term traffic, trust signals, and sustainable growth come from.

SODP POSTS

Curation and The Great Programmatic Reset

Curation has become one of the biggest talking points among adtech professionals and digital marketers in 2025.

In digital advertising, curation refers to the selection and packaging of specific, high-quality ad inventory, making it easier for advertisers to buy media that’s brand safe, targeted, and effective. Essentially, this means that a partner, such as a media company or a sell-side platform (SSP) , carefully selects premium ad spaces and audiences that fit an advertiser’s specific criteria and bundles them into curated deals that can be bought programmatically.

Programmatic advertising, or the automated buying and selling of digital ad space, has revolutionised the digital advertising industry over the past two decades. However, a shift is now taking place among marketers, from a scale-at-all-costs approach to intentional, intelligent trading – especially in high-value channels like video and CTV. Curation is redefining what ‘good’ looks like in programmatic.

The benefits of curation

Traditional programmatic buying on the open marketplace can present its own challenges around efficiency and clarity. Curated deals, on the other hand, streamline the supply path, cut duplication and embed first-party data, giving buyers the precision and control they need while letting publishers surface high-value impressions.

Brands can tap into curated deals built around specific audience segments, inventory types, or campaign objectives. These tailored environments improve targeting and offer higher confidence in media quality.

READ MORE

JOB BOARD

➡️ CNN is looking for a Channel Manager, YouTube, to lead the editorial, creative, and strategic development of their YouTube presence across one or more flagship news channels. The role will also be responsible for growing audience reach, engagement, and revenue on YouTube, while driving innovation in content strategy, format testing, and platform-native storytelling. (NY). SEE MORE

➡️ ClickZ Media is looking for a content editor for their flagship finance publications, Accountancy Age and The CFO, who will lead editorial strategy for two of the UK's most influential finance brands combining traditional editorial excellence with cutting-edge AI integration. (London). SEE MORE

COMMUNITY BUZZ

Industry News

➡️ Some publishers win by producing need-to-have information. Other publishers win by promoting the hell out of their revenue streams. The most successful publishers learn how to do both. This is the balance that Tangle has mastered in the six years they’ve been in business. 70k+ PAID SUBSCRIBERS doesn’t happen by crossing your fingers and hoping readers smash that “pay us” button. It happens because of a smart, tested system you build around your work. In Tangle’s case, a huge part of that system has been created in close partnership with Outpost. READ MORE 

➡️Google appears to have disabled or is testing the removal of the &num=100 URL parameter that shows 100 results per page. Reports of the change began around September 10, and quickly spread through the SEO community as rank-tracking tools showed disruptions. Google hasn’t yet issued a public statement. The &num=100 parameter has long been used to retrieve 100 results in one request. Over the weekend, practitioners noticed that forcing 100 results often no longer works, and in earlier tests it worked only intermittently, which suggested a rollout or experiment. READ MORE 

➡️ Artificial intelligence is advancing rapidly, forcing website owners to face a big question: which AI crawlers should you exclude from your site via robots.txt and which should you allow? Since an increasing number of bots are using the web every day, the answer to this question is more relevant than ever. Whether a bot is used for training language models, for real-time responses by AI assistants and search engines, or for autonomous task execution, each use brings its own opportunities and challenges. The bots that you choose to allow versus the ones you block should depend on factors such as website size, individual business model, and the value of your content. READ MORE 

Social Media Discussions

➡️ Elliott Easterling on LinkedIn:

Creators who want to build real media companies often chase follower counts……but it’s first-party data that builds equity.

It’s wild how many creators running $25M, $50M, even $100M media empires don’t actually own their audience.

When you do, everything changes: ownership turns attention into 10× more sustainable revenue per fan — and builds real enterprise value.

Why an email subscriber is worth 10× a social follower:

• Reach 40–60% of your list with every send vs <5% of followers per post

• Drive 5–10× higher clickthrough and conversion rates

• Monetize through products, memberships, and commerce with predictable RPMs

• Leverage first-party data for retargeting, lookalikes, and premium ad rates

• Compound value — each new subscriber is a customer touchpoint you own forever

CONTINUE READING

These are the highlights for the last week.

Until next!

Vahe Arabian and the editorial team at SODP