The Weekly Bulletin | July 9, 2024

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

Author

Vahe Arabian
July 09, 2024

Hi SODP community,

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

TIP OF THE WEEK

Ads are not going anywhere in digital publishing.

They are a part of the web’s ecosystem. So, it is about how you approach having the right ad format.

There are several different approaches to selecting an ad format strategy as a publisher.

  • Platform-centric: the focus here is on picking ad formats optimized for specific platforms like mobile, desktop, social media etc.

  • Funnel stage alignment: the type of ad displayed will change depending on the stage of the customer journey. A visual ad may be shown to users in the initial stages of the funnel, while those at the decision stage may be targeted with conversion-focused ads.

  • Audience-centric: the ads are tailored based on how your audience consumes content for that particular topic. For instance, if users interested in health prefer short-form videos, your ad content choice may include premium video ads.

  • Message adaptive: the choice of ad format will depend on the content and message of a particular ad campaign. Video ads are great for storytelling, while display ads are ideal for quick promos.

  • Adaptive testing and optimization: this is an experimental approach where publishers test various formats and analyze metrics to optimize ad selections.

LAST CHANCE TO REGISTER

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SODP POSTS

The State of Publishing Tech and Trends to Watch

With the advent of generative AI into the media landscape, we have witnessed many publishers taking polar opposite approaches, with some, like The New York Times and The Center for Investigative Reporting, suing OpenAI, while a number of publishers sought to establish partnerships – e.g., BuzzFeed, TIME, and The Wall Street Journal. Most publishers remain somewhere in the middle, cautiously experimenting with the possibilities of generative AI.

While the impact of generative AI on the digital media industry has certainly been large-scale, it is not the only tech-related trend that online publishers should be keeping an eye on.

Vahe Arabian and Khalil Cassimally discussed the landscape of publishing technology during their session at PubTech 2023. Here are the trends that they identified.

JOB BOARD

➡️ De Zaak is looking for an online campaign manager to help advertisers achieve their objectives (Amsterdam, Netherlands). SEE MORE

➡️ The Washington Post is seeking an experienced SEO editor to bolster efforts to reach audiences through search (Washington, DC, US). SEE MORE

COMMUNITY BUZZ

Industry News

➡️ Google’s Gary Illyes answered a question about negative SEO provides useful insights into the technical details of how Google prevents low quality spam links from affecting normal websites. READ MORE

➡️ If Meta bans news in Australia, what will happen? Canada’s experience is telling. READ MORE

Social Media Discussions

➡️ Tim Soulo on LinkedIn:

It's not websites, who are linking to you. It's PEOPLE!

And one person might link to you (or your competitors) a lot of times from a lot of different websites.

Well... Ahrefs' new "Linking Authors" report makes it super easy to find all these people:

🔸 1. Put your target website in Site Explorer.
🔸 2. Navigate to "Linking Authors" report in the left-hand menu.
🔸 3. See the people who have linked to that website.

What do you do next?

Well, you probably need to reach out to these folks and see if you can establish some (mutually beneficial) business relationship with them 😉 .

These are the highlights for the last week.

Until next!

Vahe Arabian and the editorial team at SODP