The Weekly Bulletin | June 25, 2024

Catch up on your members' content, check out the community buzz, and browse through job opportunities

Author

Vahe Arabian
June 25, 2024

Hi SODP community,

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

TIP OF THE WEEK

The Digital News Report 2024 from Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism is a reminder for all digital publishers of the shift to mobile-first news consumption and the pressing need for transparency and trust in journalism.

The report highlights several critical trends that digital publishers cannot afford to ignore:

  1. Mobile-First Audiences: With more readers accessing news on their smartphones, it’s imperative to optimize our content for mobile devices. This means faster load times, mobile-friendly formats, and a seamless user experience.

  2. Trust Issues: Trust in news remains a significant issue. To retain and grow our audience, we must prioritize transparency and accuracy in our reporting. Clear, fact-based journalism is more crucial than ever.

  3. Subscription Models: There's a notable shift towards subscription-based models. This underscores the importance of creating high-quality, exclusive content that readers are willing to pay for. If we haven't already, it's time to rethink our monetization strategies.

  4. AI and Automation: The growing role of AI in newsrooms presents both opportunities and challenges. Leveraging AI can help streamline content creation and distribution, but we must ensure it enhances rather than detracts from the human element of storytelling.

  5. Engagement over Reach: Engagement metrics are becoming more critical than sheer reach. It’s about how deeply our readers connect with our content, not just how many click through. This calls for more interactive and personalized content strategies.

Ensuring GDPR compliance is not just a legal requirement but a strategic advantage. Embracing these regulations can enhance user trust, safeguard your brand's reputation, and ultimately lead to sustained success in an increasingly data-informed world.

The Digital News Report 2024 provides a roadmap for navigating the evolving digital publishing space. Let’s take these insights to heart and continue to adapt and innovate.

LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES

LIVE WEBINAR: Are Bots and Invalid Traffic Stealing Your Ad Revenue?

🗓️ 11 July 2024
🕚️ 11 AM ET | 5 PM CET

A Google study suggests that publishers dependent on ad revenue lose an estimated $1.27 billion annually due to fake ad inventory.

Is your website or app experiencing a surge in clicks, but your ad RPMs aren’t reflecting that growth? You could be facing this silent enemy! This hidden threat can drain your ad revenue, skew your data analytics, and damage your credibility with advertisers.

Join this webinar and learn how to secure your platform from invalid traffic (IVT). Discover strategies to identify and filter out these malicious activities, protect your ad revenue, and maximize profits.

LIVE WEBINAR: Native Ads: Sustainable Revenue Stream or Buzzword?

🗓️ 25 July 2024
🕚️ 2 PM ET | 11 AM PT

Native advertising is expected to top $4.3 billion by 2027, thanks to a compound annual growth rate of 12.81%. Native advertising has the potential to create a click-through rate 8.8 times higher than traditional display ads!

Yet, despite the massive potential of native advertising to generate sustainable revenue for publishers, many still struggle to identify the optimal strategy for integrating native advertising into their monetization and audience growth models.

Discover how native ads can enhance user experience and boost revenue. Join Pawel Mazurek, CEO of Takeads, as he demystifies native advertising, offers practical strategies, and addresses ad-blocking challenges.

SODP POSTS

Geozo Q&A: Future of Native Advertising for Publisher Monetization

According to Sharethrough and IPG Media Lab, native ads generate 53% more views than display ads. This research, which involved eye-tracking and surveys with thousands of consumers, highlights the higher visual engagement native ads receive compared to traditional display ads. Additionally, the Content Marketing Institute reports that 70% of consumers prefer learning about products through content rather than traditional advertisements. This preference for content-based learning underlines the effectiveness of native advertising in delivering promotional messages in a less intrusive and more engaging manner.

Native advertising is a growing revenue area that can provide an alternative avenue to engagement and is less intrusive than traditional ads. This was highlighted during Monetization Week when Ivo Bobal from Geozo presented on native advertising’s practical applications. Following the session, we decided to catch up with Aliya Gallamo, the Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) at Geozo, to delve deeper.

JOB BOARD

➡️ Forbes Vetted is seeking a temporary coupons editor to join its growing commerce editorial team. This role will help launch and maintain the success of the coupon content, plus produce related deals coverage (Remote, US). SEE MORE

➡️ Mamamia is looking for a social media editor to help shape and execute its social media strategy across platforms like Instagram and TikTok (Woolloomooloo, NSW, Australia). SEE MORE

COMMUNITY BUZZ

Industry News

➡️ A new study finds Google is reducing the frequency of, but lengthening, AI overviews in search results. READ MORE

➡️ Many people don’t pay full price for their news subscription. Most don’t want to pay anything at all. READ MORE

Social Media Discussions

➡️ Crystal Andrews on LinkedIn:

Gen Z women are so underserved by mainstream news that they're trawling social media comments for crumbs of commentary and analysis. That's the take away from the 2024 Digital News Report that shook me most (although there is so much more insight to be found in it).

As someone who deeply cares about the health of the Australian media industry, it's a real pinch me moment to be a contributor to the 2024 report. Thank you to University of Canberra Sora Park Caroline Fisher for including my perspective as a youth focused micropublisher, and one of the few women of colour to own and run a news publication in this country.

Here's a snippet of my analysis of the social media trends – but you won't regret reading the full report!

These are the highlights for the last week.

Until next!

Vahe Arabian and the editorial team at SODP