The Weekly Bulletin | August 20, 2024

Hi SODP community,

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

TIP OF THE WEEK

“If you start by getting your retention tools right, it makes it easier to acquire subscribers.” That was one of the central messages delivered by Stephanie Solomon, Chief Revenue Officer at Foreign Affairs, during a fireside chat session at the WP Publisher Success Week earlier this year.

Foreign Affairs Magazine is a 100-year-old publication launched in 1922 by the Council of Foreign Relations.

At Foreign Affairs, it took Stephanie one year in the beginning to get the basics of retention set up the right way. And it is worth taking that effort as acquisition is so much more expensive than retention. This way, when you start acquiring new subscribers, you are actually growing, instead of replacing the ones who are leaving.

Acquiring customers is way more expensive than retaining the ones you already have. Focusing solely on acquisition without addressing issues with retention is like trying to build something on quicksand.

Retention is the key metric – the number of subscribers who stick around on an annual basis. The other important engagement metrics worth chasing include:

• How people are interacting with your articles?

• How many audio files are people listening to, and for how long?

• How are people logging into the app or website?

• When was the last time they logged in?

Subscribers who have not logged in for two months are probably at a high risk of churn. The important thing is to discern various patterns of behavior that can indicate whether people are more likely to churn. And then create re-engagement strategies based on those indicators to prevent churn.

REPORT LAUNCH + EXPERT Q&A

2024 Gen AI x Comms Report & Q&A Webinar

We have an exciting announcement – the launch of The 2024 Gen AI x Comms Industry Impact Report.

This is the second edition of the report by our friends at Media Collateral. For the 2024 edition, we partnered up with them to bring the findings to our community.

Snapshot Findings

• SEO Disruption: 76% of respondents believe Gen AI will significantly disrupt or even make SEO obsolete, highlighting the need for adaptation in the digital landscape.

• Increased Adoption and Deeper Integration: Gen AI adoption has risen to 80% in 2024, with a significant shift towards full integration into daily tasks (from 18% in 2023 to 24% in 2024).

• Future of Work Optimism: Fears of job losses have subsided. 22% of respondents now believe Gen AI will create more job opportunities, a 12% increase from 2023.

• Shifting Sentiments: Marketers’ initial enthusiasm has tempered, with many scaling back from deep integration and returning to the experimentation phase. In contrast, journalists show signs of overcoming initial resistance to Gen AI, with a significant increase in the exploration phase (from 15% to 33%).

Q&A Session with Industry Contributors

Media Collateral and SODP are hosting a panel discussion with the contributors

🗓️ 29 August, 4:00 PM AEST

Confirmed panelists include:

• Binoy Prabhakar – Chief Content Officer, Hindustan Times Digital

• Scott Purcell – Co-founder, Man of Many

• Dr Lisa Dethridge – Senior Research Fellow, RMIT University & Media & Technology Academic

• Jaemark Tordecilla – Nieman ’24 Fellow, Harvard University

• Alicia Kokocinski – General Manager – Marketing & Communications, Equity Trustees

• Josh Mann – Senior Art Director, Consultant

Engage directly with the experts, ask your questions, and be part of the conversation that shapes the future of our industry.

SODP POSTS

Building a Tech Stack as a WordPress-Based Digital Publisher: Tips and Best Practices

WordPress has one of the biggest libraries of plugins and add-ons. However, using too many of these can cause a website to bloat, eventually impacting performance.

The solution is for publishers to take a minimalist approach to building their tech stack, such that they can effectively track performance without impacting performance.

To do this, they need to focus on the following areas: performance, usability, security, extendability.

READ MORE

How B2B Publisher CEE Legal Matters Monetized Offline Events

CEE Legal Matters (CEELM) is a print/online B2B publication that caters to the legal industry in Central and Eastern Europe. They publish news, analysis, and opinions that are of interest to lawyers. They also host offline events including conferences and round tables.

Despite being an authority publisher with excellent online engagement and traction, monetization remains a challenge. This is why the publication started focusing on offline corporate events for the legal industry as an alternative route to monetization.

READ MORE

JOB BOARD

➡️ LADbible Group is looking for a media effectiveness leader. This role sits within the Insight and Effectiveness unit at LADbible Group, reporting into the Head of Department (Hybrid, London, UK). SEE MORE

➡️ The Los Angeles Times is seeking a director of audience engagement and platforms, a key digital strategy role that manages the audience, home page, social media and social video teams (El Segundo, CA, US). SEE MORE

COMMUNITY BUZZ

Industry News

➡️ Google unleashed the much-anticipated August 2024 core update Thursday morning. Less than 24 hours later, Google Search confirmed a ranking bug. This means Google Search is volatile right now. And many SEOs and publishers have been documenting some of what they’ve seen since the August core update rollout started. READ MORE

➡️ Some publishers say they can't block the Googlebot crawler that covers AI Overviews without hampering their discoverability, as the crawler also covers Search. READ MORE

Social Media Discussions

➡️ Aleyda Solís on LinkedIn:

🚨 Google has just announced many AI Overviews Updates:

1. A new right-hand link display for AI Overviews on desktop – also accessible on mobile by tapping the site icons on the upper right, to check out relevant websites while you search.

2. Also currently testing the addition of links to relevant web pages directly within the text of AI Overviews making it even easier for people to click out and visit sites that interest them. "Showing links to supporting web pages directly within AI Overviews is driving higher traffic to publisher sites."

3. Launching new capabilities for AI Overviews in Search Labs: the ability to “save” a specific AI Overview for future reference (you can also see your saved AI Overviews by tapping on your profile icon from Search and navigating to your Interests page) and you’ll now see an option on some AI Overviews to simplify the language with a single tap.

4. Expanding AI Overviews to more places around the world: Bringing the helpfulness of AI Overviews to six new countries: United Kingdom, India, Japan, Indonesia, Mexico and Brazil – along with local language support in each country.

Google also mentions that since launching in the U.S., they've found people who use AI Overviews use search more and are more satisfied with their results: "people are asking longer questions, diving deeper into complex subjects and uncovering new perspectives — which means more opportunities for people to discover content from publishers, businesses and creators."

CONTINUE READING HERE

These are the highlights for the last week.

Until next!

Vahe Arabian and the editorial team at SODP