SODP Dispatch - 17 May 2025

Monetization Week 2025 - Just two days to go!

Monetisation in 2025 demands more than just ads and subscriptions – it requires strategic diversification across multiple revenue streams.

To equip digital publishing and news media professionals with actionable strategies for the future, we’re excited to host the 2nd annual Monetisation Week. Learn from industry experts as they share insights, case studies, and practical advice to help you adapt to evolving media revenue models.

Here’s what to expect:

Day 1: Ad vs. Subscription Revenue: Analysing Performance and Models – Presentation by our founder, Vahe Arabian

Day 2: Embracing AI-Driven Advertising Solutions – Panel Discussion with Dominick Miserandino (CEO, Retail Tech Media Nexus) and Ben Aston (Founder, Black & White Zebra)

Day 3: Navigating First-Party Data Utilisation – Fireside Chat with Tyler Bishop (CMO, Ezoic)

Day 4: Capitalising on Multi-Platform Content Distribution – Workshop with Sneha Banerjee

 Day 5: Innovating Business Revenue Approaches in 2025 – Roundtable with Scott Jamieson (CEO, Annex Business Media) and Weldon Johnson (Founder and MD, LetsRun)

📍 Online

🗓 May 19–23, 2025

⏰ 2 PM BST | 9 AM EDT | 3 PM CET

Don’t miss out on the opportunity to future-proof your monetisation strategies!

Join our upcoming webinar!

Are you struggling to balance audience engagement, content monetization, and tech simplicity? You’re not alone. Many publishers face the Goldilocks Tech Trap —tools that are either too clunky or too expensive, leaving growth stalled .

Join us for "Managing Millions: Better Audience Engagement Without the Tech Headaches" , where we’ll show you how to escape this trap and build scalable, profitable systems.

💡 What You’ll Learn:

✅ Turning clicks, scrolls, and headlines into actionable insights for stronger audience relationships.

✅ Streamlining over-complex data workflows to drive growth and ROI.

✅ Quick wins to turn loyal browsers into superfans.

✅ Striking the perfect balance between effective tools and agile systems .

Hosted by Denis Haman , CEO of Glide Publishing Platform Denis champions a “lean publisher mentality,” empowering media organizations with scalable, user-friendly CMS solutions.

📅 Date: June 11, 2025

🌐 Online Event

Don’t miss this chance to transform your audience engagement strategy and future-proof your publishing business.

11 Best Subscription Management Software in 2025

By Vahe Arabian

The subscription economy has experienced significant growth in recent years. As of 2024, premium U.S. streaming platforms (SVOD) grew 10.4% year-over-year, reaching over 260 million subscriptions . Subscription businesses have outpaced S&P 500 revenues nearly sixfold, marking a pivotal turning point across industries . The subscription market is projected to continue growing, with forecasts estimating it will reach $1.5 billion by 2025.

However, challenges persist for digital publishers. Signs indicate growing consumer concern about spending. A Deloitte survey found that 40% of U.S. consumers cancelled an SVOD service in the past six months, a slight improvement from 44% the previous year, suggesting churn rates are moderating. Despite this, the average monthly churn rate for 2024 netted just under 3% when accounting for resubscriptions .

To navigate these challenges, digital publishers can leverage subscription management platforms. These tools can help businesses manage subscriptions effectively, reduce churn, and enhance customer retention.

What Is Subscription Management Software?

Subscription management software automates the routine aspects of subscription management. It handles and executes a wide range of subscription-related tasks to streamline recurring revenue streams and improve customer relationships.

9 Best Paywall Services for Publishers in 2025

By Vahe Arabian

Paywalls have become a critical tool for digital publishers seeking to monetize content amid fluctuating ad markets. Between 2017 and 2020, the number of news outlets implementing paywalls nearly doubled each year, with adoption accelerating further in 2021 as subscriptions surged globally (Reuters Institute Digital News Report, 2022). Ad revenue plummeted by 10–15% in 2020 due to pandemic-driven cuts but rebounded sharply in 2021–2022, growing 20% year-over-year. However, economic uncertainty in 2023 led to renewed volatility, with ad spending growth slowing to 5%. This unpredictability has solidified paywalls as a stable revenue alternative, with 69% of publishers now prioritizing subscription models over ad-dependent strategies.

For those who lack the time or resources for internal development, paywall services offer a convenient way to integrate this feature with minimal effort. While paywall services are simple to implement, many factors must be considered before selecting one, such as whether the service has a sound paywall SEO strategy. Let’s take a closer look at what publishers need to consider before choosing a service.

🚀 Supercharge Your Sales Prospecting with AI

Introducing a powerful AI-driven tool designed to streamline your sales prospecting process. By automating research, enrichment, and lead ranking, this tool can save you over 100 hours each month. By leveraging this AI tool, sales teams can optimize their prospecting efforts, leading to increased conversions and revenue growth. See more ▸

🧰 Journalist's Toolbox AI

Looking to integrate AI into your journalism workflow? Journalist's Toolbox AI offers a curated collection of AI tools tailored for journalists, editors, and educators. From transcription and summarization to data analysis and digital security, this platform provides resources to enhance your reporting and storytelling capabilities. See more ▸

By Vahe Arabian

📈 Monetizing through shoppable contents

Shoppable content is more than a trend; it’s how editorial teams can monetise without compromising their storytelling.

Many publishers still treat e-commerce as a side project, tucked away behind banner ads or siloed into niche product roundups. But the gap between content and commerce is closing fast. Embedding purchase opportunities directly into articles is no longer disruptive to reader experience; it’s a value-added layer that drives revenue while serving audience intent.

This doesn’t mean turning every article into a sales pitch. It means thinking critically about where and how a product can enhance the context of your content. A product featured in a lifestyle guide, how-to tutorial, or review piece becomes part of the narrative, not a bolt-on.

Affiliate product embeds, inline recommendations, and instant checkout integrations are all viable tools, but without strategic placement and editorial integrity, they underdeliver. Effective shoppable content is not just clickable, it’s contextual. That means aligning purchase links with real user needs, building trust through transparency, and ensuring that affiliate logic doesn’t hijack the content hierarchy.

The opportunity is especially strong in niche verticals like wellness, fashion, tech, and home improvement, but general newsrooms can benefit too by monetising evergreen explainers or gift guides through product tie-ins.

However, integration must be deliberate:

• Editorial and revenue teams need joint planning cycles.

• Merchandising data must inform content calendars.

• And most critically, user journey mapping should guide placement, don’t bury CTAs at the bottom of the page or slap them into irrelevant sections.

Ultimately, shoppable content is less about technology and more about editorial mindset. Are you treating your articles as static endpoints, or as dynamic, monetisable journeys?

Here are key takeaways for publishers:

1. Don’t separate e-commerce from editorial, embed purchase paths within useful content.

2. Use affiliate and checkout tools strategically, not as an afterthought.

3. Tie product links to audience intent, not advertiser pressure.

4. Align content calendars with commerce opportunities using your own data.

5. Maintain trust: product links must serve value, not just clicks.

Shoppable content is a practical starting point to diversify revenue without sacrificing editorial quality.

WordPress Scraper Plugin Compromised By Security Vulnerability | SEJ

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OpenAI Just Released a Coding Tool to ‘Help’ Programmers (Replace Their Jobs, Probably) | Gizmodo

OpenAI has launched a new agentic coding tool with the potential to make even the most fresh-faced code monkey a software superstar. Codex, which the company announced on Thursday, represents a new sidebar feature inside OpenAI’s flagship product, ChatGPT. While obviously an exciting event in the world of software development, the tool also seems like it has the potential to replace skilled coders altogether.
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Introducing The Guardian App | The Guardian

Today, the Guardian launched a new version of our mobile app and a major redesign of our homepage. This project represents a big step forward in how we deliver our journalism in the digital age. The new app includes a redesigned homepage, a personalised My Guardian tab where readers can follow the topics they care about, a dedicated podcast section, a new text-to-speech function for articles, and a new puzzles hub. Read more ▸

Nine bundles The Athletic with SMH, Age subscriptions | Mumbrella

Nine has teamed with the New York Times to inject more value into its Sydney Morning Herald and Age subscriptions. From today, premium subscribers of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age will now be given access to sports news site The Athletic, part of the New York Times stable. The popular US sports site is currently bundled into a New York Times digital subscription, and costs A$3 a month as a standalone subscription. Read more ▸

Katie Couric Shares 3 Tips for Building a Successful Media Biz in 2025 | Adweek

In an exclusive interview with ADWEEK, Couric and Molner outlined what it takes to run a flourishing media business in an increasingly fragmented information landscape, rising mistrust in institutions, and an influx of AI. Couric saw an acceleration in the media landscape’s fragmentation—and with it, an opportunity. “I didn’t want to be hanging onto legacy media and the way they were delivering news and information,” she told ADWEEK.
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