SODP Dispatch - 31 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.

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.

🚀 Reddit Trends

Reddit just launched a new Trends tool, and it is a great news for PRs. Reddit Trends will allow you to track keywords or brand mention on Reddit over time, and you can see the most discussed topics related to your keywords See more ▸

📚 NESS25

The 2025 edition of the annual online event brings together top industry experts to share actionable insights, proven strategies, and hard-earned lessons tailored to news and publishing professionals navigating today’s SEO challenges. See more ▸

By Vahe Arabian

⚠️The hidden cost of AI-generated misinformation in media

AI-generated misinformation isn’t just a glitch — it’s a systemic risk.

Recently, The Chicago Sun-Times and Philadelphia Inquirer published fake summer reading lists created by AI. Entirely fictional books, attributed to real authors, slipped through due to unchecked third-party syndication. This isn’t an isolated case. It reflects a growing trend: false narratives disguised as content, amplified by automation. Campaigns like TBWA\CJR’s PSAi are trying to equip audiences to spot AI-manipulated imagery and narratives. But what happens when publishers themselves fail to catch them?

Why this matters:

• 67% of global respondents say they worry about fake news being weaponised (Edelman Trust Barometer, 2023)

• Publishers associated with misinformation saw CPMs drop 25–40 %(Digiday, 2021)

• Reader trust is fragile — and hard to rebuild once broken.

Practical steps for publishers:

1. Multi-layered Fact-Checking: Don’t just trust the source, verify against primary data. Use checklists for high-risk content like health, finance, politics.

2. Transparent Sourcing: Attribute all stats, quotes, and media. Use inline flags to add context to contested or evolving claims

3. AI-Generated Content Auditing: Scan for synthetic images, ghostwritten copy, and deepfakes before publication. Log and label any AI-assisted contributions

4. Own Your Errors: Launch “Report an Error” tools. Publicly log corrections to rebuild and maintain trust

The hard part?

Speed often wins over accuracy. Misinformation outperforms verified content. Lean teams struggle to audit UGC and external contributions. But credibility isn’t optional. It’s foundational.

This owner thinks newspapers are better off diminished than dead | NiemanLab

Is any newspaper better than a news desert? Steve Strickbine thinks the answer to that question is yes. I recently published a story, “National Trust for Local News sells 21 newspapers to a company with a history of gutting local news outlets.” Strickbine, founder and president of the Arizona-based group that acquired the local publications, didn’t respond to my request for comment before publication, but after the story came out, he got in touch.
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Google confirms the future of advertising with the arrival of AI Overviews and AI Mode | Network of Journalists

These days, users are seeing how Google not only displays AI Overviews, with its generative responses, but also ads at the bottom or on the side of certain queries. And even Google's AI-powered summary module could fall under the sponsored links category, in a twist of ad relocation with this new Google. However, there will also be advertising within Google's AI summaries—of course, did anyone expect this wouldn't be the case?
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FTC v. Meta: the antitrust battle’s final day | The Verge

The long-awaited antitrust trial between Meta and the Federal Trade Commission kicked off on April 14th. Over about two months, DC District Court Chief Judge James Boasberg is hearing arguments about whether then-Facebook illegally monopolized the market for “personal social networking services” through its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. Read more ▸

How launching podcasts on Youtube has prompted ‘explosive’ growth for Goalhanger | Press Gazette

Launching podcasts on Youtube has led to “explosive results” for The Rest Is Politics producer Goalhanger in terms of both audience and revenue. The UK’s largest independent podcast production company has only been filming and broadcasting its podcast episodes on Youtube for a year. Read more ▸

The New York Times and Amazon ink AI licensing deal | TechCrunch

Nearly two years after suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, The New York Times has agreed to license its editorial content to Amazon to train the tech giant’s AI platforms. The agreement will “bring Times editorial content to a variety of Amazon customer experiences,” the outlet said in a statement.
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