SODP Dispatch - 09 April 2026

Social media giants are not complying with under‑16s social media ban, new report finds

By Lisa M. Given

Nearly four months into Australia’s social media ban for under-16s, the online regulator today released its first detailed compliance update report on how the world-first policy is progressing.

eSafety’s report comes at a crucial time, with many other countries eyeing the progress of the ban. Since the ban took effect on December 10 last year, I have spoken with journalists from Canada, France, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and elsewhere. Everyone asks two questions: how successful is the ban, and are children still accessing social media platforms?

The new report paints a complicated picture – and leaves other key questions about the social media ban unanswered.

A number of compliance concerns
The report acknowledges social media companies have taken “some steps” to comply with the social media legislation (which restricts account holders to those aged 16 and older). Some 4.7 million accounts were removed by mid-January and another 310,000 by early March.

However, the report also highlights “compliance concerns” in four key areas:

1. Messaging to under-16s on some platforms encouraged children to attempt age assurance even where they declared themselves to be underage

2. Some platforms enabled under-16s to repeatedly attempt the same age-assurance method to ultimately pass age checks

📊 SODP Publisher Revenue Dinner in London

We're hosting an off-the-record dinner for senior publishing revenue and commercial leaders on Wednesday, June 10 at Cornus Restaurant, London (6:30 PM GMT.) The focus is on how to extract a reliable commercial signal as AI reshapes content creation, audience discovery, and inventory measurement simultaneously. You'll get candid peer exchange on revenue strategy, content licensing, inventory quality, and how to future-proof your commercial model at a moment when the rules are changing fast. You will have access to dinner, drinks, strategic insights that won't be shared publicly, and our private post-dinner network. Many thanks to Ezoic for partnering with us to host this. Seats are limited.

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🎯 Google Discover Content Audit

Most publishers are guessing why their content doesn't appear in Google Discover. They're optimizing blindly without understanding the actual pipeline their articles need to pass through. This free audit tool from State of Digital Publishing tackles that gap by mapping your content against the 6-stage Google Discover pipeline: ingestion and entity extraction, OG tag configuration, content classification (evergreen vs breaking), quality signals and E-E-A-T assessment, predicted click-through rate modeling, and user topic matching. It shows you exactly where your content is failing to qualify, whether it's poor image optimization, missing entity signals, clickbait patterns being flagged, or weak topical authority, the same diagnostic framework that determines which articles actually surface in users' feeds. If your team is publishing content hoping it reaches Discover without understanding the pipeline, give it a try. We built this to help publishers see what Google actually evaluates. We'd love your feedback.

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By Vahe Arabian

📐 Build to Own: A Publisher's Step-by-Step Guide to First-Party Data Infrastructure

Developing a first-party data stack is essential for publishers to regain control of audience insights, increase ad revenue, and prepare for a cookieless future.

A robust stack enables the collection, organization, and activation of data directly from user interactions. Here is a step-by-step guide to developing a first-party stack:

1. Identify Data Collection Points & Define Strategy
   Start by mapping every touchpoint where your brand interacts with users to gather data. This involves shifting from passive audience measurement to active, permission-based collection.

• User Registration/Logins: Implement universal login systems (e.g., Auth0, Okta) to encourage user registration.

• Newsletter Subscriptions: Create interest-based newsletters allowing users to self-select into segments.

• Interactive Content: Use quizzes, surveys, polls, and calculators to collect declared "zero-party" data.

• Engagement Tracking: Monitor behavioral data such as click-through rates (CTR), scroll depth, time-on-page, and article completion rates.

2. Choose the Core Technology Components
   A first-party stack typically includes several integrated technologies:

• Customer Data Platform (CDP): To unify data from various sources (site, app, email) into a single, cohesive user profile.

• Customer Relationship Management (CRM): To store and manage authenticated user profiles and registration data.

• Consent Management Platform (CMP): To ensure compliance with regulations like GDPR and CCPA while managing user opt-ins.

• Data Warehouse (optional, recommended): For complete ownership and advanced analysis of data.

3. Implement Progressive Data Collection
   Avoid overwhelming users with long forms. Instead, use "progressive profiling" to gather more information over time as trust builds.

• Initial Visit: Only ask for an email address.

• Subsequent Visit: Ask for content preferences or job title once they are engaged.

4. Activate Data for Monetization
   Once data is collected, activate it to increase the value of your inventory.

• Create Audience Segments: Segment users based on behavior (e.g., "Auto-intenders," "Frequent Investors").

• Private Marketplaces (PMPs) & Deals: Use Deal IDs to offer premium advertisers access to specific, high-value audiences.

• Programmatic Guaranteed (PG): Sell audience-based, first-party data campaigns directly through your ad server (e.g., Google Ad Manager).

• Data Clean Rooms: Partner with technology companies (e.g., InfoSum, LiveRamp) to safely match your data with advertiser data for targeting, without sharing personal information (PII).

5. Ensure Privacy and Compliance
   First-party data relies on trust. Clearly communicate your privacy policy, provide easy consent options, and ensure data governance is tight.

Summary Checklists

• Identify key engagement points (polls, login walls).

• Deploy a Consent Management Platform (CMP).

• Select a CDP to unify data.

• Build an authenticated user base.

• Segment audience into high-value cohorts.

• Activate segments in Ad Manager or a DS

Something bigger lies behind Meta’s return to news media partnerships | INMA

Meta’s re-entry into media partnerships, on the surface, might sound like a win for only a handful of publishers. After all, haven’t we seen this pick-and-choose behaviour before? This, however, is different. Meta’s recent spate of media deal signings is part of its strategy to fix its AI model. And it is Meta’s pivot acknowledging it has to pay for training content that will prove to be the much bigger deal for the wider tech and media worlds. To get up to speed, let’s unpack what’s happened with Meta’s love-hate-love relationship with news media.

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How newsrooms are bringing their archives to life | NiemanLab

Journalism is, by design, perishable. A piece is valued for its immediacy — at best it circulates for a few weeks — and then disappears into the archives. This archive might serve as an internal database for journalists, maybe the occasional article resurfaces via search for a reader, but mostly, it remains (either literally or digitally) in dusty boxes in a back room. But as news organizations look for ways to tackle news fatigue and bring in new audiences, some newsrooms are experimenting with how these can be repurposed.

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Silverpush's Paul Briggs on Navigating YouTube and using Contextual to regain Visibility and Control | ExchangeWire

At Silverpush, we like to say that video is the funnel. More than 80% of internet traffic is now video. So video advertising has to be full-funnel, which means your ads have to be delivered not just where the ad is relevant but where the internet is relevant. Context is all about the moment – whether a customer is researching and comparing products on YouTube or about to click buy on Instagram – so your video ad has to be delivered at the moment where the audience will be most engaged.

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Kalshi Forecasts Coming to Fox News as Prediction Market Strikes Deal With Cable News Leader | The Hollywood Reporter

The biggest prediction market in the U.S. is teaming up with the biggest TV news channel in the U.S. Kalshi, the betting platform that lets users put their money on the line to predict the outcome of world events (from elections and sporting events to unemployment rates, Oscar winners and updates in the Iran war), has inked a wide-ranging deal with Fox Corp. that will see its forecasts integrated into Fox News, Fox Business Network, Fox One and Fox Weather.

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AI is rewriting brand discovery | AdNews

Australians are increasingly turning to AI to shop. Around 60 % of search queries now end without a single click, with some data showing zero‑click rates above 70 % in Australia, as people get direct answers from AI assistants rather than websites. At the same time, about seven in 10 Australians use AI tools for online shopping research. These shifts matter for marketers because visibility is no longer about page ranks; it’s about whether an AI model recommends a brand at all.

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Google Explains Why It Doesn’t Matter That Websites Are Getting Larger | Search Engine Journal

A recent podcast by Google called attention to the fact that websites are getting larger than ever before. Google’s Gary Illyes and Martin Splitt explained that the idea that websites are getting “larger” is a bad thing is not necessarily true. The takeaway for publishers and SEOs is that Page Weight is not a trustworthy metric because the cause of the “excess” weight might very well be something useful. Google’s Martin Splitt explained that what many people think of as page size depends on what is being measured. Is it measured by just the HTML?

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