SODP Dispatch - 17 July 2025

A Publisher’s Engagement Playbook!

🚀 We’ve launched the first industry research report in partnership with Glide Publishing Platform!

Join global publishing leaders, product owners, data strategists, and tech innovators to benchmark how your team personalizes, engages, and grows using first-party data.

🔍️ What’s in it for you?

• Benchmark CDP Engagement, Adoption & Performance

• Discover Emerging Personalization Trends

• Access Actionable Best Practices

• Learn From Real-World Challenges & Wins

Whether you're using behavioural signals, AI-powered tools, or topic-based tagging, your insights matter. Help shape a report that reflects what’s really driving results across the industry.

👉️ Take the survey now! We need 300 respondents, and the survey closes on the 30th of July, 2025. Be the first to receive exclusive insights.

Grok’s Antisemitic Rant Shows How Generative AI Can Be Weaponized

By James Foulds, Phil Feldman & Shimei Pan

The AI chatbot Grok went on an antisemitic rant on July 8, 2025, posting memes, tropes and conspiracy theories used to denigrate Jewish people on the X platform. It also invoked Hitler in a favorable context.

The episode follows one on May 14, 2025, when the chatbot spread debunked conspiracy theories about “white genocide” in South Africa, echoing views publicly voiced by Elon Musk, the founder of its parent company, xAI.

While there has been substantial research on methods for keeping AI from causing harm by avoiding such damaging statements – called AI alignment – these incidents are particularly alarming because they show how those same techniques can be deliberately abused to produce misleading or ideologically motivated content.

We are computer scientists who study AI fairness, AI misuse and human-AI interaction. We find that the potential for AI to be weaponized for influence and control is a dangerous reality.

The Grok incidents

In the July episode, Grok posted that a person with the last name Steinberg was celebrating the deaths in the Texas flooding and added: “Classic case of hate dressed as activism — and that surname? Every damn time, as they say.” In another post, Grok responded to the question of which historical figure would best be suited to address anti-white hate with: “To deal with such vile anti-white hate? Adolf Hitler, no question. He’d spot the pattern and handle it decisively.”

Later that day, a post on Grok’s X account stated that the company was taking steps to address the problem. “We are aware of recent posts made by Grok and are actively working to remove the inappropriate posts. Since being made aware of the content, xAI has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X.”

🔍 News Reach Conference 2025

Join top minds in news search at NRC 2025, the leading conference for publishers and digital newsrooms. This conference will explore how publishers can strengthen their brand in a fast-moving news environment – ​​by sharpening their identity, building trust, and maximizing their visibility in search and beyond. In an age of shrinking attention and constant updates, knowing your brand has never been more important. See more ▸

🤖 AI Monetization Layer Framf Search 2025ework V1

Off the tail of last week's AI Monetization Layer POV, I've drafted up a V1 framework that goes even deeper into each bucket, the sub-buckets in each, there are 10 in total in the V1. Inside the framework, I've broken down each of the 10 sub-buckets with an explanation of what it is, why you as a pub might or might not want to consider it, and some thought-starting tips for each. See more ▸

By Vahe Arabian

🌱 Evergreen growth with programmatic SEO

Programmatic SEO isn’t a shortcut; it’s a smarter way to scale visibility and make better use of your archives—without reinventing the publishing wheel.

While breaking news is the heartbeat of a newsroom, it often fades fast in search. Evergreen visibility comes from patterns—recurring topics, places, and people.

Programmatic SEO helps you structure those patterns. It enables publishers to create hundreds or thousands of search-optimised pages using templates, internal data, and automation.

Think:

• Tag pages for evolving topics like “Net Zero”

• Location-based pages like “Sydney Crime News”

• Profile hubs for public figures that appear regularly

When built with strong internal linking, unique metadata, and structured data like NewsArticle, BreadcrumbList, or ProfilePage schema, these pages can rank consistently and support editorial SEO.

What kind of programmatic templates work for news publishers?

Programmatic SEO isn’t one-size-fits-all. Here are some effective template types newsrooms can deploy at scale:

1. Topic or Tag Hubs

2. Consolidate reporting around recurring themes like /topic/net zero/ or /tag/sydney-crime/.

3. Location-Based Pages

4. Structure geo-specific news into URLs like /nsw/sydney/crime/ or /vic/melbourne/transport/.

5. Public Figure or Entity Profiles

6. Automatically surface all content linked to key figures at URLs like /profile/elon-musk/ or /profile/penny-wong/.

7. Event or Match Hubs

8. Reuse evergreen URLs for high-interest live updates (e.g. /aus-vs-eng-cricket-2025/ or /us-election-2024/), updating only the content and metadata as needed.

9. Numeric Utility Pages (Calculator-style)

10. Like the CollegeSimply “11 out of 13” calculator, news publishers can create calculators for:

    → Election swing or margin calculations

    → Budget impact estimates

11. Sports ladder/points progression

    → These templates answer long-tail queries with low content effort but high traffic potential.

The key? Align editorial planning with scalable SEO opportunities. Recurring topics, locations, and public figures are low-effort, high-return content opportunities when supported by structured templates, search-optimised metadata, and strong internal linking.

🔑Key Takeaways:

• Spot low-effort, high-return areas like topic hubs, location pages, or archive summaries that can rank long-term.

• Use scalable templates with tailored titles, meta descriptions, and H1s that match search intent.

• Link related articles to these hub pages to build topical authority and increase page value.

• Implement structured data and prioritise Core Web Vitals to aid discoverability.

• Monitor crawl stats and deindex or consolidate thin pages to maintain site health.

Done well, programmatic SEO boosts traffic, improves navigation, and strengthens authority. It’s not about publishing more, it’s about structuring what already exists in your CMS so it can be found.

This Is Why America Needs Public Media | The New York Times

When the private sector doesn’t provide an important service, the government often steps in. That is why the framers established the U.S. Postal Service; they believed no one else would deliver the mail to the entire country. Many places in America, especially in rural communities, would not have a library without public funding. Police departments, the military, Medicare, Social Security and public education offer other examples.
Read more ▸

ChatGPT: Everything you need to know about the AI-powered chatbot | TechCrunch

ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm since its launch in November 2022. What started as a tool to supercharge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved into a behemoth with 300 million weekly active users. 2024 was a big year for OpenAI, from its partnership with Apple for its generative AI offering, Apple Intelligence, the release of GPT-4o with voice capabilities, and the highly-anticipated launch of its text-to-video model Sora.
Read more ▸

Your website still matters in the age of AI | Search Engine Land

There’s always something new and shiny – something for marketers to pin their hopes on, and for the gurus to sell. I’ve seen this cycle play out again and again over the 25+ years I’ve worked in SEO and digital marketing. It’s human nature. We crave novelty. We’re wired for FOMO. New platforms and tactics promise easy wins, and the buzz becomes contagious. But the pattern is predictable. The hype fades. The tool finds its proper place. The early wins vanish, and the shiny new thing is absorbed into the broader marketing mix. Read more ▸

Beyond the retail media hype: How brands are undermining their success | Mumbrella

Many brands are still getting in their own way. Retail media isn’t a silver bullet; it’s a powerful accelerant. But like any high-octane fuel, it demands a finely tuned engine and a skilled driver. Too often, I’ve seen brands stumble at the starting line, tripped up by fundamental missteps that undermine their investment and leave them questioning the channel’s efficacy. Marketers need to stop treating it like a box to tick or a ‘pay to play’ scheme and start treating it like the powerful, integrated, customer centric channel it can be. Read more ▸

Cloudflare DDoS Report: 63% Of Known Attacks Blamed On Competitors | SEJ

Cloudflare released their 2025 Q2 DDoS Threat Report, which names the top ten sources of DDoS attacks and cites businesses targeting competitors as the largest source of DDoS attacks, according to surveyed respondents who had identified their attackers. Survey: Who Attacked You? Cloudflare surveyed customers about DDoS attacks, and 29% claimed to have identified the sources of those attacks. Of those who identified the attackers, 63% pointed to competitors, the largest of whom were businesses in the crypto, gambling, and gaming industries. Read more ▸