The Weekly Bulletin | May 7, 2024

Hi SODP community,

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

TIP OF THE WEEK

Strategic pivots with value-driven exchanges to address solution gaps and revenue diversification are paramount for sustained monetization and relevance in digital publishing.

In September 2022, amidst significant industry changes, we experienced a pivotal moment in our journey toward brand sponsorships at SODP.

Back then, some clients, such as We Are Explorers and Boss Hunting, faced negative impacts on their traffic. However, what stood out was their ability to thrive despite adversity, thanks to their robust brand partnership pipelines and prestige. Their consistent focus on brand partnerships, coupled with their busy schedule (as all pubs have), made them less open to adopting new approaches to monetization. This observation catalyzed a paradigm shift at SODP.

Originally focused on building a subscription offering as the primary revenue stream, our slow traction prompted a strategic reassessment. Inspired by our client's success in securing brand partnerships and training, which showed us that we did not need to be large to begin, we decided to offer brand sponsorships ourselves.

We recognized the imperative to diversify our monetization strategies, leading us to pub tech reviews and best listicles into our content strategy and modularizing our media kit offering.

Moreover, we reevaluated our collaboration approach, shifting from free content-led partnerships towards performance-driven models to provide value to partners while ensuring SODP's sustainability (and we have case studies to show).

As we continue our journey, we're committed to providing insights, resources and our experience to the SEO and digital publishing community while forging meaningful brand partnerships.

Here are key takeaways from our experience:

1. Learning Resources for Sales: For those looking into branded sales training, visit The Meta Branded Content Project and Broadstreet

2. Advertising Revenue Maturity Model: If sales on a particular product are struggling, it's beneficial to go back to the advertising revenue maturity model and address your product/solution gaps.

3. Adapting with Agility: One must be able to adapt swiftly to industry shifts and strategically pivot when necessary by diversifying revenue streams

4. Value-Driven Collaboration: Collaborations with partners should prioritize mutual benefit, emphasizing value delivery and performance/revenue-oriented strategies.

5. Continuous Innovation: Exploring industry gaps and innovations is imperative to maintaining relevance and achieving success. Never give up!

SODP POSTS

Teens See Social Media Algorithms as Accurate Reflections of Themselves, Study Finds

Social media apps regularly present teens with algorithmically selected content often described as “for you,” suggesting, by implication, that the curated content is not just “for you” but also “about you” – a mirror reflecting important signals about the person you are.

All users of social media are exposed to these signals, but researchers understand that teens are at an especially malleable stage in the formation of personal identity.

The prevalence of the “for you” message raises important questions about the impact of these algorithms on how teens perceive themselves and see the world, and the subtle erosion of their privacy, which they accept in exchange for this view.

Gen AI Impact Report

The first edition of the Gen AI x Comms Report provided an early look into how Asia Pacific's communications industry was adapting to Gen AI.

Key Statistics

Late last year, Media Collateral surveyed 227 communications professionals throughout the region, and found 74% of those were already using Gen AI in their work.

The 2nd Edition

For 2024, we are partnering up with Media Collateral to bring the findings to our community of digital publishing professionals.

Your Input Is Critical

Please take the time to fill out the 2 minute anonymous survey to share your experiences, and gain access to the upcoming report's advice and insights + enter a raffle to receive FREE 1-year access to our Publisher SEO course.

JOB BOARD

➡️ Skimlinks, a Connexity company, is looking for a publisher development manager, Germany (Baden-Württemberg, Germany). SEE MORE

➡️ WHYY News is looking for an audience and social media manager to join its digital team (Hybrid, Philadelphia, PA, US). SEE MORE

COMMUNITY BUZZ

Industry News

➡️ There are rumors that a new ChatGPT-powered search website will launch on May 9th that will be a challenger to the Google Search website. READ MORE

➡️ Google begins enforcement of site reputation abuse policy with portions of sites being delisted. Sites like CNN, USA Today, LA Times and others are seeing their rented subdomains and subfolders dropping in rankings after they were hit by manual actions. READ MORE

Social Media Discussions

➡️ @carlhendy on X:

Site abuse: Google has confirmed it has taken manual actions.

I took 2,500 of the most popular search queries for discount and voucher codes from the UK and Australian markets. The data was sourced from @semrush. Using these queries, I created a ‘Share of Search’ report for each market. From the data, I reviewed each website to determine which company was supplying the 'codes' to obtain an overall market view of publishers and their visibility within Google.

Below are the top 10 overall publishers of 'codes' for the UK and Australia. Given the small sample size of queries, it suggests that two publishers nearly dominate 50% of the market. I removed a couple of brands that were sensibly driving traffic to dedicated landing pages on their sites, such as The Iconic.

This data could change significantly over the next week, given how search query positions have been changing in the last few hours as Google rolls out the 'site reputation abuse.' Early indications suggest that Google is not messing about.

CONTINUE READING HERE

These are the highlights for the last week.

Until next!

Vahe Arabian and the editorial team at SODP