SODP Dispatch - 25 May 2025

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.

Nonprofit News Media Leaders are Struggling to Stop Leaning on the Foundations That Say They Should Branch Out More

By Katherine Fink

You’ve probably heard the adage about not putting all your eggs in one basket.

It’s an especially meaningful one for newspapers. For decades, they relied heavily on advertising revenue. That arrangement stopped working about 20 years ago, as audiences moved online and advertisers followed. News media outlets moved online as well, but they found themselves in a losing battle for advertising dollars against new digital competitors such as Craigslist, Facebook and Google. One-third of U.S. newspapers have closed in the past two decades, most of them local.

As their income from ads and subscriptions has dwindled, some news organizations that used to rely mainly on ad revenue, such as The Salt Lake Tribune and Philadelphia Inquirer, have become nonprofits – opening the door to other sources of revenue. And interest in launching news organizations as nonprofits has been growing. Meanwhile, some for-profit media outlets have begun to obtain some philanthropic support and ask for donations from readers and subscribers.

I’m a journalism studies researcher and a former journalist myself. To better understand how news leaders were thinking about their future in this ever-evolving landscape, I researched the fundraising approaches of local nonprofit news outlets across the U.S.

From M&S to Duolingo: Banter Between Brands on Social Media Gets People Buying – But There’s a Catch

By Zoe Lee, Denitsa Dineva & Federico Mangiò

The line between entertainment and advertising is increasingly blurred thanks to social media. People no longer just consume content, they experience it – laughing, sharing and commenting. And brands have caught on.

The days when people sat through a 30-second TV ad because they had no choice are long gone. Now they can quickly swipe past anything that feels too much like selling.

What tends to grab attention are things that feel spontaneous, real or funny. That’s where brand-to-brand banter comes in.

Instead of posting directly to consumers, brands increasingly engage with each other. They crack jokes, offer praise and even poke fun at competitors. Brands are becoming more human in their interactions – especially with each other.

Brand “banter” doesn’t feel like an ad (even though it has a commercial purpose). It can feel unscripted, human and weirdly fun, cutting through in a way traditional advertising can’t.

Our research shows that consumers are more likely to notice and engage with these interactions. The content feels less like marketing and more like shared digital culture. It can feel unexpected and entertaining, and invites audiences into a “moment”.

Humour, especially online, is a powerful emotional hook. It invites people to share the content – great news if you have a product to sell. In a noisy digital world where brands compete for eyeballs, humour helps to get people’s attention.

But it also fosters emotional connection, and can make brands feel human-like to consumers. When we see brands behaving playfully or being especially complimentary towards each other, our research shows they are more like to engage and remember them. It turns passive scrolling into active participation.

A good example is the Duolingo Death meme. The brand’s chaotic cartoon owl faked its death on Instagram and the result was viral engagement.

🛠️ Trakkr

Trakkr monitors how AI models talk about your brand by sending carefully crafted prompts to multiple leading AI systems every day, the platform tracks both visibility and presence across all major AI models to give you comprehensive insights. See more ▸

🚀 7 AI Startups

AI doesn’t have to spell doom for publishers as several startups are building tools that actually support and empower them. From AI-powered brand agents and real-time reader engagement to privacy-safe data tools and agentic media products, these companies are helping publishers stay in control of their content, data, and revenue. See more ▸

By Vahe Arabian

🚨 Google's AI mode is changing search

Google’s AI Mode is here – and it’s rewriting the rules of search.

With AI Mode and Deep Search rolling out—powered by Gemini 2.5—publishers must adapt quickly. This isn’t just a UI change and a traffic decline scare. It’s a fundamental shift in how content is retrieved, ranked, and surfaced.

After digging into Google’s announcements, Ahrefs' 56 M+ query study, and Duane Forrester’s tactical AI content guide, here’s where media brands must focus:

1. Search is now multimodal, not just link-based.

AI systems don’t “read” like humans. They chunk, embed, and retrieve. That means:

• Break longform content into retrievable blocks using semantic HTML (<h2>, <section>)

• Use FAQs, TL;DRs, tables, videos—modularity = visibility

• Ensure crawlability for AI bots (GPTBot, Google-Extended)

📌 Why it matters: Gemini’s Deep Search pulls structured content across the web—not just page titles or headers. If it’s not structured, it’s invisible.

2. Long-tail queries are booming—and they convert.

Ahrefs’ data shows AI Overviews increase CTR for results in positions 5+. Why? Users are searching in more natural, multi-intent ways.

That means:

• Use GSC, Reddit, Quora & Perplexity to mine real questions

• Create content around “what”, “how”, “why”, “vs.”, “when”

• Rephrase key points—redundancy improves recall across LLMs

Bottom line: These queries are more qualified, less competitive, and now more visible than ever. This allows you to focus on informational queries for brand search and recall for the longer term.

3. Authority and structure win in AI-first SERPs.

LLMs favour trustworthy content. We’re doubling down on:

• Author bios, publish dates, outbound citations

• Internal linking (content pillars and clusters with our flywheel execution)

• Supporting pages: glossaries, comparisons, explainers

Remember: Clear structure + consistent entities = higher retrievability.

Next steps for media brands and publishers :

• Audit your top content for AI-readiness

• Optimise for retrieval, not just ranking

• Start testing key queries in AI Mode & Perplexity

• Don’t wait for GSC AI Overview reports—prepare now

Google Expands AI Features in Search: What You Need to Know | SEJ

At its annual I/O developer conference, Google announced upgrades to its AI-powered Search tools, making features like AI Mode and AI Overviews available to more people. These updates, which Search Engine Journal received an advanced look at during a preview event, show Google’s commitment to creating interactive search experiences..
Read more ▸

Will Writing Survive A.I.? This Media Company Is Betting on It. | The New York Times

Dan Shipper, the founder of the media start-up Every, says he gets asked a lot whether he thinks robots will replace writers. He swears they won’t, at least not at his company. “I want to make a lot more great writing,” he said during an interview at the company’s airy Brooklyn office, “particularly great writing about technology.” But there’s a reason he gets asked.
Read more ▸

‘The algorithm is a beast’: Editing for social media at Ladbible, Joe and Metro | PressGazette Future of Media

The algorithm was described as “the boss” and “a beast” by editors at Ladbible, Joe and Metro who all used “authenticity” as the watchword for their social media output. In a survey of 30 digital journalists from the Metro, Telegraph, Reach and Joe by creative agency Taylor Herring between January and March, 23% said their social news channels were the main focus for the year ahead while 39% said they were becoming increasingly important. Read more ▸

How to audit your brand using search data | Search Engine Land

Big brands have a blind spot. They talk about “brand health” while ignoring what users are actually asking about their products – on Google, in AI answers, and across search data. Meanwhile, all the signals are right there in the SEO stack. Questions like “Is Gatorade actually good for you?” aren’t just keyword opportunities. They’re warning signs. And if you know how to read them, they expose major gaps in brand trust and positioning. Read more ▸

The Benefits of Supply Path Optimization (SPO) for Publishers | Opti digital

Publishers are under constant pressure to maximize their revenue while providing an optimal user experience. As the programmatic advertising ecosystem grows rapidly, traditional monetization methods are no longer enough to ensure that publishers are capturing the full potential of their inventory. One of the most powerful tools available to address this challenge is Supply Path Optimization (SPO).
Read more ▸