SODP Dispatch - 23 April 2026

9 Best CRM Solutions for Publishers in 2026

By Sreemoyee Bhattacharya

Publishers can see their traffic steadily growing, subscribers increasing, but monetization still remains a persistent area of concern. Despite registering, subscribers are not showing active engagement signals such as clicks, unless they get personalised content based on their preferences. This leads to further decline in revenue potential and ad yields. With the decreasing dependence on third-party cookies, 85% publishers believe that the significance of first-party cookies will continue to increase in ad performance and monetization in 2026. Though publishers can track audience data through first-party cookies, most of it exists in silos spanning various channels, failing to offer a comprehensive view that might help publishers in understanding their audience and retaining them.

This is where CRM for publishers come into play. The publishing and subscription software market size is expected to reach USD 13.86 Billion by 2032, with a CAGR of 12.54% during 2025-2032. The valuable audience insights from CRM are one of the most important contributing factors of this rapid growth. Like the media and entertainment industry, the adoption rates of CRM tools are high even among publishers. Serving as an audience intelligence platform, it serves as a game-changer for publishers. It consolidates data from all platforms, helps publishers get clarity about their audiences, refine their strategies, engage with them deeply, improve customer experiences, and boost revenue.

📊 SODP San Francisco Study Tour 2026 – Publisher & Ad Media Leaders

We're bringing together 8–12 senior publisher and ad media leaders in San Francisco for a private, two-day programme on what actually drives signal and revenue in publishing today. Taking place in June 2026 across partner and publisher offices to be revealed, this is a closed-door, operator-led experience, not a conference or vendor pitch.

You'll get candid peer exchange on audience signal vs noise, AI-driven discovery, commerce media monetisation, first-party data strategies, and infrastructure as a revenue driver. Sessions are discussion-led with working roundtables, a private dinner (10–15 leaders, Chatham House rules), and an informal Mission District experience to deepen connections outside formal settings.

No panels. No presentations. Just real commercial insights on what's working and what's not as AI reshapes discovery, attribution, and publisher economics.

This programme is being hosted in collaboration with Ezoic. Seats are limited.

Reply to [email protected] to register interest.

🎯 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.

Run the audit ▸

By Vahe Arabian

📢 The Advertising Shift: Budgets Now Follow Creators, Not Channels. Here's What Publishers Must Do

Advertising budgets are not gone; they’ve simply shifted to creators who act like publishers.

For years, businesses relied on big ad networks and media agencies to distribute their budgets. But spending patterns are changing. Increasingly, we see brands allocating funds directly to individuals who can create content that resonates, drives attention, and fosters trust with their audiences.

This doesn’t mean advertising is shrinking; it’s just moving closer to the people who can capture attention with relevance and authenticity. The challenge for publishers and businesses is clear: how do you act like a content creator to access these dollars?

Marketers are under pressure to prove ROI. Instead of broad placements, they’re betting on creators who deliver measurable engagement in niche communities. Research shows that influencer marketing spending continues to rise, with global estimates in the tens of billions annually (Statista, 2025).

That money isn’t disappearing; it’s just flowing through different pipes.

What content creators are doing right

Creators earn this share of the budget because they:

• Publish consistently: They show up regularly with content that’s fresh, timely, and aligned with audience interests.

• Focus on niche authority: They don’t try to be everything to everyone; they build depth in one area.

• Foster community: Engagement is two-way, not broadcast-only.

• Show personality and trust: Their audience knows who is behind the content, which builds credibility.

How can publishers adapt:

If you want to attract these budgets, act more like a creator:

1. Prioritise storytelling and expertise: Showcase the human side of your brand alongside expertise in your subject matter.

2. Invest in consistent output: Treat your publishing cadence with the same discipline as a professional content creator.

3. Build identifiable voices: Authors, editors, and contributors should be visible, not hidden behind a logo.

4. Measure and prove value: Track engagement, conversions, and attention metrics, not just impressions.

Advertising money hasn’t disappeared. It has moved closer to creators who can demonstrate relevance, authenticity, and impact. For businesses and publishers, the opportunity is to stop thinking like an ad slot and start thinking like a trusted creator who can tell stories, build audiences, and drive results

Newsrooms shift to distinctiveness, relevance in response to AI | INMA

I’ve been thinking a lot about the questions of what is abundant and what is scarce in an AI-mediated information ecosystem. Information, which news publishers carefully controlled for centuries, is now abundant. What, then, is scarce? As news publishers, where does our competitive advantage lie? What is it that we provide that is truly valuable — and how does that shape our newsrooms’ content strategy? It looks like I am not the only one who is thinking about this. After decades of scaling up content production (at the behest of the advertising department), many newsrooms are now coming to the conclusion that producing more content is not the path to financial sustainability and that less is more.

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Microsoft wants to build the infrastructure behind the AI internet | Axios

Microsoft is building universal protocols and tools that will make the agentic web reliable and transactable across all AI platforms. It's in active conversations with other AI companies to participate, says corporate vice president for AI monetization Tim Frank. Why it matters: The company believes its 51-year history, focused mostly on enterprise solutions, established the trust and scale necessary to build the foundational layers of the agentic web. "We do not have conflicting interests about operating as a platform," Frank said. "We operate to help our customers succeed, and since that orientation aligns so well with this strategy, we think it's true to us."

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YouTube expands its AI likeness detection technology to celebrities | TechCrunch

YouTube is expanding its new “likeness detection” technology, which identifies AI-generated content, such as deepfakes, to people within the entertainment industry, the company announced on Tuesday. The technology works similarly to YouTube’s existing Content ID system, which detects copyright-protected material in users’ uploaded videos, allowing rights owners to request removal or share in the video’s revenue. Likeness detection does the same, but for simulated faces. The feature is meant to help protect creators and other public figures from having their identities used without their permission — a common problem for celebrities who find their likenesses have been used in scam advertisements.

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IAB Tech Lab Forms Programmatic Governance Council To Improve Transparency In $200B U.S. Digital Ad Market | TVNewsCheck

IAB Tech Lab, the global digital advertising standards body, has created a Programmatic Governance Council to bring together media buyers, media owners and ad tech platforms and align business expectations with the technical standards underpinning automated trading. “Programmatic advertising moves billions of dollars every day, but too often the people responsible for it are not sitting together to address operational challenges,” Anthony Katsur, IAB Tech Lab CEO, said. “Programmatic grew fast, but governance hasn’t kept pace with its scale and complexity. Without alignment, inefficiencies risk becoming entrenched.”

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German media coalition demands AI rules as Big Tech turns into gatekeeper | PPC Land

Five of Germany's most significant media organisations published a joint position paper on 21 April 2026 calling on the federal government and European regulators to impose binding rules on how AI platforms may use journalistic content. The signatories - ARD, BDZV, MVFP, VAUNET and ZDF - represent the full breadth of the German media sector, spanning public broadcasting, newspaper publishers, magazine publishers, private commercial broadcasters and digital publishers alike. Their unusual alignment is itself the story. Public and private broadcasters rarely publish shared regulatory demands. That they have done so here signals how acute the pressure from AI platforms has become.

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ChatGPT Ads Now Offer CPC Bidding Between $3 And $5: Report | SEJ

Digiday reports that an early version of ChatGPT’s ads manager, available to a subset of pilot advertisers, now shows cost-per-click bids ranging from $3 to $5, based on screenshots reviewed and verified by the publication. Until now, advertisers in the pilot have paid on a CPM basis, meaning a flat rate per 1,000 impressions served. CPC pricing lets buyers pay only when a user clicks. Digiday reported the option is available to marketers already testing advertising in the pilot, not as a broad rollout. OpenAI didn’t respond to Digiday’s request for comment.

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