The Weekly Bulletin | December 17, 2024

Hi SODP community,

This is our last Weekly Bulletin this year. We will be back in 2025, ready to share industry updates, tips, educational opportunities, and more.

I’d like to take this opportunity to wish you a festive holiday season. I hope you will be surrounded by your loved ones, making joyful memories, catching up on rest, eating delicious food, and celebrating your wins in 2024 – both small or big.

Thank you for being a part of our community!

TIP OF THE WEEK

There is too often this disconnect between what consumers perceive is being done with their data. Publishers have to be mindful of this deficit or disconnect and focus on ensuring that their audience knows exactly what their data will be used for and how, which is often not an easy task.

Studies have repeatedly indicated that consumers value personalization – tailored content over random content. And many of them recognize the reality of the internet – when something is free, it is often paid for by advertisers.

Acquiring first-party data will become significantly easier if you have a clear value proposition to offer your audience. Both The Guardian and Metro offered interesting examples at PubTech2024 of how you can improve user engagement and collect data by focusing on the value proposition in different ways:

• Targeted Emails Based on Engagement Levels

  When a reader visits your website and consumes content beyond a certain threshold, it is usually a reliable sign that they value your content. Instead of sending mass email campaigns, The Guardian started sending subscription promos to anonymous readers who had crossed a specific threshold. This helped boost subscription numbers.
  

• Personalized Content via, for example, Daily Horoscopes

  The Metro offered readers personalized daily horoscope newsletters in exchange for their date of birth. This is an example of an exchange based on a clear-cut value proposition – the publisher gets valuable email and age data, while the interested user gets personalized content.

SODP POSTS

Sponsored
Stay22 Review for 2025

An increasing number of travel businesses have reported adopting AI-based solutions to grow revenue and improve customer experience. The most common application of AI in travel and tourism reported was personalized recommendations, a role traditionally occupied by travel magazines and bloggers, both big and small.

Large corporations are investing heavily in AI-based content personalization and recommendation solutions to capture a piece of this lucrative pie. Airbnb, for instance, bought a stealth-mode AI-based startup for a reported $200 million to provide a more “personalized experience for its users.”

However, publishers, whether large or small, can rarely afford to invest such amounts in new technologies. Is there any way, then, for publishers to stay relevant?

Stay22 positions itself as a solution to this very problem.

In this review, we delve deep into this new AI-based monetization solution for travel affiliates that claims to help publishers increase revenue without impacting their UX.

READ MORE

JOB BOARD

➡️ CoinDesk is seeking a Content Marketing Manager to lead the creation of compelling content for its award-winning Media & Events products (Hybrid, NYC, NY, US). SEE MORE

➡️ Iconic is looking for an Audience Growth Manager to grow audiences across its roster of iconic artists and increase fan engagement (LA, CA, US). SEE MORE

➡️ News Corp is seeking a Head of Digital Branded Content to drive content and partnership revenue across O&O, CTV and social platforms (London, UK). SEE MORE

COMMUNITY BUZZ

Industry News

➡️ Perplexity added over a dozen new partners to its Publishers’ Program, including ADWEEK, Blavity, DPReview, Gear Patrol, The Independent, Los Angeles Times, Mexico News Daily, and RTL Germany brands stern and ntv. READ MORE

➡️ Google released the December 2024 core update a few days ago. Yes, this new core update is happening a week after the last core update completed. The update will take about two weeks to roll out, Google said. READ MORE

➡️ Here is how you can quickly see which AI services are honoring your robots.txt policies, which aren’t, and then programmatically enforce these policies. READ MORE

Social Media Discussions

➡️ Eric Shanfelt on LinkedIn:

This is the toughest time ever to be a magazine publisher:

- Search traffic is being replaced by generative AI.
- Social media penalizes posts that link to websites.
- New aggregators don't link back to sites, but ingest and strip down content.
- Email deliverability is harder, and losing impact with younger generations.
- Junk AI content is stealing market share.
- There is a switch from text to video content consumption.

What do you think? How can publishers overcome these issues?

SEE THE RESPONSES ON LINKEDIN

These are the highlights for the last week.

Until next!

Vahe Arabian and the editorial team at SODP