Hi SODP community, happy new month!

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

TIP OF THE WEEK

If your site is slow, you’re leaving traffic and revenue on the table.

Core Web Vitals are no longer optional. Google has made them a ranking factor, meaning publishers that ignore them risk losing visibility, traffic, and user trust. For those of us working in SEO and digital publishing, the message is clear: speed, stability, and responsiveness directly affect performance.

Core Web Vitals focus on three measurable aspects of user experience:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): How quickly the main content loads. Target: under 2.5 seconds.

• First Input Delay (FID) / Interaction to Next Paint (INP): How quickly the page responds when a user interacts. Target: under 200 milliseconds.

• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): How visually stable a page is. Target: less than 0.1.

These metrics are designed to capture the “real” experience of a visitor, not just what a developer or SEO sees on their end.

Why publishers can't ignore CWV in 2025

1. SEO & Trust: Only ~47% of sites pass CWV assessments, presenting a competitive edge for publishers who optimize now.

2. Page performance pays off: A 1-second improvement can boost conversions by ~7% and reduce bounce rates—benefits seen across industries

3. User expectations have tightened: In 2025, anything slower than 3 seconds feels “slow” to most users—under 1 s is becoming the new gold standard, especially on mobile devices.

4. Real-world wins:

   a. Economic Times cut LCP by 80%, CLS by 250%, and slashed bounce rates by 43%.

   b. Agrofy improved LCP by 70%, and load abandonment fell from 3.8% to 0.9%.

   c. Yahoo! JAPAN saw session durations rise 13% and bounce rates drop after CLS fixes.

Practical steps for improvement

• Measure regularly: Use lab and field data to monitor Core Web Vitals across templates and devices.

• Prioritize technical quick wins: Image compression, proper caching, and removing render-blocking scripts can deliver immediate improvements.

• Stabilize layouts: Define media dimensions and manage ad slots to reduce layout shifts.

• Invest in long-term fixes: Optimizing server response times and modernizing templates can help sustain improvements.

Here are the key takeaways

1. Core Web Vitals are measurable, actionable, and tied directly to SEO performance.

2. Faster, more stable sites not only rank better but also improve engagement, ad revenue, and subscriptions.

3. Publishers that treat Core Web Vitals as ongoing maintenance, not one-time fixes will see compounding benefits over time.

SODP POSTS

Generative AI is not a ‘calculator for words’. 5 reasons why this idea is misleading

Last year I attended a panel on generative AI in education. In a memorable moment, one presenter asked: “What’s the big deal? Generative AI is like a calculator. It’s just a tool.”

The analogy is an increasingly common one. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman himself has referred to ChatGPT as “a calculator for words” and compared comments on the new technology to reactions to the arrival of the calculator.

People said, ‘We’ve got to ban these because people will just cheat on their homework. If people don’t need to calculate a sine function by hand again […] then mathematical education is over.’

However, generative AI systems are not calculators. Treating them like calculators obscures what they are, what they do, and whom they serve. This easy analogy simplifies a controversial technology and ignores five crucial differences from technologies of the past.

1. Calculators do not hallucinate or persuade Calculators compute functions from clearly defined inputs. You punch in 888 ÷ 8 and get one correct answer: 111.

   This output is bounded and unchangeable. Calculators do not infer, guess, hallucinate or persuade.

   They do not add add fake or unwanted elements to the answer. They do not fabricate legal cases or tell people to “please die”.

READ MORE

JOB BOARD

➡️BBC is looking for a social content producer who will be at the forefront of creating innovative and engaging digital content that connects with young audiences, whose work will promote priority BBC iPlayer titles and contribute to making iPlayer the most viewed media brand among 13–34-year-olds. (London). SEE MORE

➡️ Special Broadcasting Service is looking for an engagement strategist who will play a critical role in supporting the optimisation of their digital products including SBS On Demand, News, Audio and Publishing. (Australia). SEE MORE

COMMUNITY BUZZ

Industry News

➡️ Artificial intelligence is reshaping journalism, whether we're ready or not. The real question is whether journalism can preserve its democratic function when sophisticated intelligence becomes both ubiquitous and increasingly tailored to individual needs. Ethan Mollick, in his piece for One Useful Thing last week "From GPT-5 to nano banana: everyone is getting access to powerful AI," tracked the rapid democratization of AI capabilities, showing how we're entering an era of "Mass Intelligence" where powerful AI systems are becoming accessible to over a billion people. READ MORE 

➡️For years, marketers have asked for better visibility into how individual channels contribute to Performance Max results. Google has released a tutorial walking advertisers through its new Performance Max channel reporting. This reporting feature offers more transparency into how campaigns perform across Search, YouTube, Display, Gmail, Discover, and Maps. With this new report, you can now dig deeper into performance by channel and format, making it easier to analyze results and troubleshoot. READ MORE 

➡️ An independent trial has found technology can effectively screen young Australians for coming age restrictions on social media. The trial assessed more than 60 technologies from 48 age assurance vendors and found companies could check identification documents, use facial estimation or review a person’s online footprint. The report found age assurance to be both “practical” and “achievable” but that there were risks or shortcomings from some methods. READ MORE 

Social Media Discussions

➡️ Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism on LinkedIn:

🗞️ Our top story An unprecedented campaign. More than 250 news outlets from over 70 countries simultaneously interrupted their broadcasting and blacked out their front pages and homepages, to condemn the murder of journalists by the Israeli army in Gaza. The protest was organised by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the global campaigning movement Avaaz. | RSF

• A chilling quote: “At the rate journalists are being killed in Gaza by the Israeli army, there will soon be no one left to keep you informed,” says the official statement from RSF and Avaaz.

The numbers. Today the Guardian publishes the names of the 189 Palestinian journalists listed by the Committee to Protect Journalists as having died as a result of Israeli military action since October 2023. | The Guardian

🎯 Go deep:

• A poignant profile of Mariam Abu Dagga, one of the Palestinian journalists killed by the Israeli strike on the Nasser Hospital. | +972

• Palestinian journalist Mohamed Solaimane on the tireless work of his colleagues. | El País (Spanish)

CONTINUE READING

These are the highlights for the last week.

Until next!

Vahe Arabian and the editorial team at SODP