The Weekly Bulletin | November 26, 2024

Hi SODP community,

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

TIP OF THE WEEK

As you know, last week, we hosted the second annual PubTech week – a virtual event for digital publishing and news media professionals.

Day 4 featured a workshop by Harry Brockbanks from Ezoic. He presented a case study on how leading publishers capture and utilize first-party data.

While the ebook with learnings from the event + session recordings will be made available to our community very soon, I wanted to share this bit from Harry’s presentation with you now – why publishers should start taking first-party data seriously, if they aren’t already.

All major browsers have started phasing out support for third-party cookies. Google Chrome, the undisputed market leader at 65%, is scheduled to follow suit. Privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA are also making it much easier for consumers to block/opt out of third-party data tracking.

Programmatic ad revenues which relied heavily on third-party data have plummeted. Publishers with first-party audience data have a great opportunity to fill the gap created by the death of third-party cookies. First-party audience data has some very tangible advantages for publishers:

• It can help deliver more relevant, highly personalized ads to your audience, resulting in better ROI

• Advertisers are also starting to shift their budgets increasingly toward highly targetable audiences

• Publishers who directly own audience data are less vulnerable to future disruptions created by Google algorithm changes

“Only one-third of Google searches now actually result in a click. If you are able to diversify your own traffic acquisition through something like an email list, that gives you more independence from these big players, more control over your users, and ultimately more control over your revenue."

SODP POSTS

As AI and megaplatforms take over, the hyperlinks that built the web may face extinction

All of the laws that have created the internet have relied on links. The social contract is that a search engine can scrape your site, or a social media company can host your words or pictures, as long as they give you, the person who created it, credit (or discredit if you’re giving bad advice). The link isn’t just the thing you follow down a Wikipedia rabbit hole, it’s a way of giving credit, and allowing content creators to profit from their content.

Large platforms, including Google, Microsoft and OpenAI, have used these laws, and the social contract they imply, to keep ingesting content at industrial scale.

The provision of links, eyeballs and credit, though, is falling as AI does not link to its sources. To take one example, news snippets provided in search engines and social media have displaced the original articles so much that tech platforms now have to pay for these snippets in Australia and Canada.

READ MORE

JOB BOARD

➡️ Reach plc is recruiting for an SEO & Trends Reporter to work across several South East and East Midlands titles (Remote, UK). SEE MORE

➡️ The Points Guy is looking for an Editor to join the content operations department, which supports the broader editorial team in a variety of initiatives (Remote). SEE MORE

➡️ The Associated Press is seeking a journalist to focus on audiences and engagement for the organization’s digital platforms as an engagement editor (Washington, DC, hybrid, US). SEE MORE

COMMUNITY BUZZ

Industry News

➡️ Warning: don't move content hit by Google's Site Reputation Abuse penalty. It would be a mistake to do that in the long run and can lead to more penalties and potentially the whole site being penalized. READ MORE

➡️ Apple has started selling its own advertising inventory for Apple News, two sources familiar with the effort told Axios. It's pitching new ad units that it hopes will maximize revenue for itself and its publishing partners. READ MORE

Social Media Discussions

➡️ Steve Wilson-Beales on LinkedIn:

For the SEO-minded individuals here, I have created a Bluesky SEO starter pack.

Would love to have more SEOs on Bluesky, looks like there are still a few who need to give it a whirl...

SEE THE FULL LIST

These are the highlights for the last week.

Until next!

Vahe Arabian and the editorial team at SODP