SODP Dispatch - 3 March 2023

Happy Friday!

Earlier this month, Wired published a story about how the Bing chatbot was able to peek behind Wirecutter’s metered paywall and provide free access to the content.

The conversation around AI and its impact on the digital publishing industry is heating up. What does it mean for SEO? How will it alter publishers’ content strategy?

Well, today, let’s discuss what the impact of AI technologies could be on monetization strategies of digital publishers.

Our managing editor, Andrew Kemp, shares his thoughts on the subject in his weekly Editor’s Note column:

Sentiment over generative AI is experiencing a course correction in the wake of Google and Microsoft’s missteps in implementing LLMs.

Publishers are now tackling the real-world implications of a tool that can spit out reams of copy in the blink of an eye for users with very little writing experience. Concerns are mounting over a flood of low-quality AI written stories swamping submission desks. Others, meanwhile, are asking serious questions about where AI is getting the data it’s repurposing.

Publisher Pain Point

INMA’s Peter Bale points out that the concern for publishers is two-fold when it comes to search-integrated LLMs — attributions and zero-click searches.

Publishers are up in arms at the prospect of generative AI aggregating knowledge on the web to create conversational answers that don’t cite where that information came from. As Bale points out, this raises some serious questions about “copyright, terms, accuracy, as well as the big question of payment”.

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FROM STATE OF DIGITAL PUBLISHING

TECHNOLOGY

ADMIRAL CEO: WHY WE’RE EMBRACING GENERATIVE AI FOR VISITOR MANAGEMENT

Since its launch late last year, ChatGPT has captured the imagination of both the media and the general public.

Rocketing to 100 million users in record time, the Generative AI platform has caused a stir rarely seen in this day and age.

As the dust settles, digital publishers are coming to realize that they’ll need to leverage this technology or risk being left behind. Many publishers have begun to experiment with the tool, searching for ways to integrate it into their editorial workflows.

The widely held belief is that Generative AI will turbocharge content creation. At least one company, however, believes Generative AI has the potential to boost business publishers’ productivity outside the creative space.

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TOP TOOLS

13 BEST EDITORIAL CALENDAR SOFTWARE FOR 2023

Both publishers and marketers have come to rely on calendar software, with 73% of marketers in a 2022 report (PDF download) claiming to use editorial calendar/workflow software. Both Airtable and Asana claim to be used by 80% of Fortune 100 companies.

Demand for such software means that the market is awash with options, each with a wide range of differences in features and price, meaning that finding the right software is now the challenge.

With this in mind, we’ve drawn up a list of the 13 best editorial calendar software in 2023.

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TECHNOLOGY

SETUPAD REVIEW FOR 2023

Header bidding is the talk of the town in the digital publishing and advertising industries, and for good reason.

In the US, more than 70% of digital publishers reported using header bidding in the first quarter of 2022 alone. Globally, 12.5% of the top 10,000 websites now use header bidding instead of the pre-existing waterfall system for auctioning inventory. This switch to header bidding follows on the back of a widespread consensus that header bidding is both more transparent, and generates higher revenues for publishers.

On the flip side though, header bidding is a more advanced monetization technique, and requires a certain level of technical expertise on the part of the publisher. This means there is a significant opportunity for any ad tech firm that can make life easier for publishers implementing header bidding.

Setupad claims to do just that. Join us as we weigh up Setupad’s pros and cons and see how well it delivers on its promises.

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TOOLS AND RESOURCES

TOOL

Check out Google News Extractor – a Chrome extention that allows you to check an article’s news ranking in Google Search, Google News Search and on news.google.com. Learn more

ONLINE EVENT

Next week, on Wednesday, Poool will host its first Conversion Funnel Benchmark Report, a new aggregated, anonymized collection of data points from Poool clients, presented in an actionable way to better convert users into subscribers. We invite our network to join the session – 8 March 2023 | 10 AM New York | 4 PM Paris. Learn more

TIP

How digital publishers can use Google Trends to enhance their video SEO strategy. Learn more

BITE-SIZED INDUSTRY NEWS

MONETIZATIONThere are more than 2 million paid subscriptions to writers on Substack and 20 million monthly active subscribers, the company announced. Read more

ADVERTISINGGoogle has recently announced new tools to enhance search ads' performance with artificial intelligence (AI). Read more

SEARCHBoth Semrush and RankRanger are reporting several point drops in the percentage of time a people also ask box shows up in the Google search results. Read more

RESEARCHNearly three-quarters of Americans think national news orgs can report fairly and accurately, but only 35% of Americans believe they reliably do, a new study has found. Read more

TRENDS14% of Gen Z adults reported using TikTok to start researching a major news event, significantly higher than the share of all adults (2%) saying the same. Read more

SEARCHMicrosoft has started discussing with ad agencies how it plans to make money from its revamped Bing search engine powered by generative artificial intelligence as the tech company seeks to battle Google's dominance. Read more

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