The Weekly Bulletin | November 18, 2025

Hi SODP community,

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

.TIP OF THE WEEK.

When video RPMs fall by half, passive formats won't save you.

Video monetization hasn't escaped digital publishing's accelerating pace of change. Google AdSense publishers report RPM declines exceeding 70% since late February 2024. Publishers relying on traditional video placements face a critical shift: passive strategies no longer sustain revenue streams.

Three formats are thriving while others decline:

Interactive explainers. Linear storytelling is giving way to dynamic experiences where viewers click, pause, and explore at their own pace. User control drives higher engagement, extended watch times, and improved retention—all translating to stronger monetization. When audiences direct their journey, they stay engaged and convert.

Shoppable tutorials. Passive product placement has ended. Shoppable formats embed real-time purchasing directly within video experiences. Beauty tutorials with clickable products or DIY guides with integrated tools create direct paths from interest to purchase. For publishers invested in e-commerce or brand partnerships, this converts viewer attention into revenue.

Annotated archives. Repurposing existing libraries with expert annotations, timely updates, and targeted CTAs drives conversions 20-30% higher than unedited replays. This low-effort, high-impact strategy revitalizes evergreen content without starting from scratch.

The strategic shift.

Monetization no longer centers on view volume but on value engineering per second. Standard formats lose power while engagement-driven features—interactivity, utility, relevance—become differentiators. Smart repurposing delivers impact equal to new content creation.

Publishers should identify where audiences already show intent, then build immersive, value-driven flows around those moments. Monetization isn't about ad placement location anymore. It's about value delivered within the experience itself.

.NEWS OF THE WEEK.

➡️ The web's infrastructure may shift fundamentally as AI agents mature. Mario Fischer argues HTML—designed for human browsers—creates friction for machines, proposing AIDI (AI Data Interface) where servers return structured data instead of pages. Personal AI agents could negotiate purchases through machine-readable exchanges, similar to B2B ERP systems. For publishers, this means potential credit-based content retrieval where agents pay per query rather than users navigating ad-supported pages.

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➡️ Google Search Console's limitations can be bypassed through strategic property architecture. Enterprise sites can overcome GSC's 1,000-row limit and 2,000-URL daily API cap by creating multiple subfolder properties. With 1,000 properties available per account, publishers can scale to 42,000+ daily API URLs across 20 properties, enabling granular indexation tracking for massive sites. Tools like SEO Stack and Indexing Insight remove limitations entirely, but multi-property leverages Google's free infrastructure.

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➡️ The Independent doubled revenue and profit after ditching print entirely and now embraces AI with the same conviction. CEO Christian Broughton told WAN-IFRA's Paris AI Forum that publishers must actively shape AI's impact on journalism rather than resist it. The publisher's AI-powered "Bulletin" product for busy readers achieved second-highest engagement of any Independent product while creating 12 jobs instead of eliminating them. Key strategy: humans stay in the loop, and AI only uses The Independent's content as source material rather than the entire internet, reducing error rates to near-zero. The platform serves as both reader product and referral engine driving traffic to other Independent properties.

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➡️ Progressive profiling and smart forms cut subscriber registration friction while building comprehensive data. The Data Business's Barnaby West advocates gathering subscriber information gradually across multiple touchpoints rather than overwhelming users with lengthy forms. AI-powered smart forms can auto-populate company details from LinkedIn profiles or website domains, reducing manual entry. For one food and drink publication's event, data verification revealed attendees falsely claiming procurement authority, allowing the publisher to filter for qualified participants—improving exhibitor satisfaction despite lower attendance numbers. Comprehensive, segmented data enables precise advertiser targeting and prevents irrelevant communications that damage subscriber trust.

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➡️ The Boston Globe launched three newsletters strengthening topical and hyper-local coverage. Starting Point delivers daily news summaries and analysis from Ian Prasad Philbrick. Camberville & beyond covers Cambridge and Somerville communities through Joshua Miller's reporting. Trendlines explores business trends, technology, and lifestyle written by Larry Edelman. Deputy managing editor Heather Ciras positions newsletters as "expressions of journalistic voice, trust, and community—driving habit, loyalty, and lifetime value in a subscription-first newsroom." The strategy focuses on curated news, deeply reported stories, and inbox-only content targeting specific audience needs.

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.JOB BOARD.

➡️ The Guardian (New York) needs a full-time social media producer for its audio and video podcasts, responsible for creating engaging social content that drives audience growth and engagement across platforms. (New York, Full-time).

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➡️ The New York Times (Louisiana/Mississippi) is seeking a reporter fellow for local investigations with a focus on accountability journalism and community impact stories ($85k). (Louisiana/Mississippi).

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➡️ The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (London) is hiring an enablers editor for a maternity cover, working on investigative projects that expose corruption and hold power to account. (London, Contract).

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.SOCIAL MEDIA.

➡️ Alessandro De Zanche on LinkedIn:

"If you're in crisis because 60-70% of your traffic came from search referrals, you've already failed as a media business."

De Zanche, strategic advisor to media and content leaders, shared a conversation with a European media group CEO whose response to declining search traffic was counterintuitive: "I'm happy if the lowest quality segments drop. It removes unsold inventory attached to low-quality traffic."

The CEO's position cuts through industry anxiety: "If 70% of your traffic is casual, you've done a bad job as a media brand."

De Zanche frames this as the fundamental misalignment: too many media companies think like adtech platforms rather than consumer brands. The hierarchy should be clear—audience first, advertisers second. No serious advertiser values traffic metrics over genuine audience relationships. No smart advertiser trades shallow reach for meaningful engagement.

The real issue isn't zero-click search destroying referrals. The real issue is building business models on borrowed attention from search algorithms rather than owned audience relationships. When external sources dry up, only direct audience loyalty matters. That requires long-term strategy and organizational alignment behind relationship-building, not traffic acquisition.

The adtech narrative of reach-at-all-costs has dominated too long. Publishers need to break the perpetual emergency cycle and build on what actually matters: audience value, not traffic volume.

CONTINUE READING

These are the highlights for the last week.

Until next!

Vahe Arabian and the editorial team at SODP