SODP Dispatch - 24 October 2024

Sponsored
Sites Seeing Higher CPMs Using Ad IDs & First-Party Data Solutions

By Tyler Bishop

With third-party cookies nearly extinct, first-party data has taken center stage. ‘Identity’ solutions, focused on matching publisher-collected user emails and phone numbers, have emerged as the preferred method to replace the targeting quality advertisers and agencies are eager to maintain.

Identity solutions refer broadly to a form of personalized data that complies with established privacy regulations and standards. This means protecting personally identifiable data by securely ‘hashing’ and serializing it, allowing advertisers and publishers to keep user data anonymous while matching users with campaigns via a unique identifier.

💡 What you will learn:

• How implementing user identity solutions could help publishers boost their CPM and revenue opportunities

• Why 'audience' is rapidly replacing content as king

• Winning advice for publishers

Sponsored
Ethereum-Powered Publishing: Can Crypto Payments Redefine Author Royalties?

By Sadie Smith

Traditional financial systems have always been a commandment of the publishing industry, with authors earning relatively few royalties, especially in the self-publishing sphere. Payment delays, high transaction fees, and several intermediaries are an imperfect environment for the creators. This is where cryptocurrency, and more specifically Ethereum, has the potential to transform outdated royalty structures that have dominated the publishing world for years.

💡 What you will learn:

• The state of author royalties today

• How Ethereum can change the royalties landscape

• The challenges of Ethereum for author royalties

🤖 Responsible GenAI Toolkit

Google is making SynthID Text, its technology that lets developers watermark and detect text written by generative AI models, generally available.
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💵 Grants for AU news providers
The Australian Government is providing critical support through the Public Interest News Gathering (PING) grants to ensure local news providers can continue delivering essential news and information to their communities. If you're a publisher, now is the time to apply!
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By Vahe Arabian

🗳️ Audience growth during elections

I’d like to revisit a case study of how Stears executed a subscriber-focused content and live blogging strategy during an election year.

Providing value-led content for existing subscribers whilst attracting new ones requires a lead-in strategy strategy.

Stears provides economic and industry data and insight to facilitate decision-making for global organizations investing and operating in Africa. Let's dive into Stears' success story (how we helped) and how you can do this during the 2024 election year.

Key Strategy Highlights

• Addressing Paywall SEO Visibility Challenges & Retaining Audiences: Including the necessary markup, i.e., accessiblefreee and advising on front blocking - CSS approach to avoiding scraping content helped increase their explainer content and maintain users.
  

• Turning Events Into Engagement Opportunities: Stears leveraged their unique insights and commentary to drive traffic and conversions by launching a live blogging platform during Nigeria's elections.
  

• Unlocking SEO Potential: Stears' approach to programmatic SEO sets a blueprint for success in driving lead-in traffic and ongoing baseline traffic. They created an election center outlining all of the candidates in all region's polling numbers and biographies, which essentially aids users in learning about the candidates they could

Results

• Measurable Impact: From a 2-fold increase in traffic (3 million users) in a 6-week period in the 2023 election in comparison to the 2019 election.

• Credibility Boost: Earning links from reputable sites, i.e., NYTimes and The Guardian, solidified Stears' position as a trusted source of information.

Your Action Plan

Reflect on your current election coverage strategy and identify areas where you can apply Stears' insights.

• Can you put together an explainer series that can retain users?

• Can you set up a live blog to engage and convert live audiences?

• Can you use repositories of information and create a service that not only brings awareness to important issues but makes it an essential service for your community and audience?

Additional Resources

A few months ago, we hosted a webinar with Quintype on how newsrooms can capitalize on election season to drive growth. Whether you’re covering the upcoming presidential elections in the United States, or preparing for your local elections next year and would like to get a jump on things, this webinar – now available on-demand – has a ton of useful tips and insights.

Google Search to drop Sitelinks Search Box | Search Engine Land

Google is deprecating the Sitelinks Search Box, the search box you see under some search result snippets for some categories of queries. This feature launched ten years ago and is now being dropped from Google globally, in all languages and regions in starting on November 21, 2024.
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OpenAI, Microsoft fund $10M Lenfest Institute AI local news project | Axios

The partnership represents the largest local news development collaborative working on AI specifically, per Jim Friedlich, executive director and CEO of The Lenfest Institute.
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Google’s Mueller Dismisses Core Web Vitals Impact On Rankings | SEJ

Google clarifies Core Web Vitals' role: while a ranking factor, it doesn't significantly impact search rankings compared to content quality.
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Yahoo, McAfee Team Up to Verify Authenticity of News Images |  Variety

The news-distribution giant, the holder of one of the most-read sites on the Internet, has struck a pact with McAfee that will utilize the latter’s deepfake-image detection technology to identify pictures and photos that may have been generated by A.I. and potentially altered in a meaningful way.
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LinkedIn is News Publishers’ New Best Friend | The Information

As Facebook owner Meta Platforms has backed away from news, Microsoft's LinkedIn has leaned into it. LinkedIn is doubling down on its long-standing efforts, testing a “News Banner” on its mobile app feed and a video ad program that sources say will earn Bloomberg and WSJ $2M+ each in 2024.
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A year in, The Guardian’s European edition contributes 15% of the publisher’s pageviews | NiemanLab

Last September, The Guardian launched a digital European edition to expand its coverage of the continent and deepen its relationship with European audiences.
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