SODP Dispatch - 4 July 2024

WEBINAR: Are Bots and Invalid Traffic Stealing Your Ad Revenue?

with Kean Graham

You still have time to register!

🗓️ 11 July 2024
🕚️ 11 AM ET | 5 PM CET

Publishers dependent on ad revenue lose an estimated $1.27 billion annually due to fake ad inventory. The reality is you could be next.

Join this webinar and learn how to secure your platform from invalid traffic (IVT).

💡What you will learn:

• Types of IVT fraud and ad setup mistakes

• Advanced IVT techniques

• How to analyze user interactions to identify bot-like behavior

• The importance of clean ad practices for creating a trusted environment for advertisers

  +more

The State of Publishing Tech and Trends to Watch

By Saida Ayupova

With the advent of generative AI into the media landscape, we have witnessed many publishers taking polar opposite approaches, with some, like The New York Times and The Center for Investigative Reporting, suing OpenAI, while a number of publishers sought to establish partnerships – e.g., BuzzFeed, TIME, and The Wall Street Journal. Most publishers remain somewhere in the middle, cautiously experimenting with the possibilities of generative AI.

➡️ While the impact of generative AI on the digital media industry has certainly been large-scale, it is not the only tech-related trend that online publishers should be keeping an eye on.

Vahe Arabian and Khalil Cassimally discussed the landscape of publishing technology during their session at PubTech. Read on to see which trends they think digital publishers should pay close attention to.

By Vahe Arabian

➡️ How to spot trends

Identifying trends that become mainstays in digital media publishing is all about recognizing patterns and leveraging key insights. When I first started podcasting, I learned one of the most valuable lessons from Insanul Ahmed, who emphasized the "Power of Three."

Ahmed explained that if you see something happen three times and then notice a major industry player adopting it, you can be confident it's a trend. This simple yet powerful approach can help you identify enduring trends amidst the constant flow of new ideas.

Applying this across digital publishing, it's easy to get caught up in the excitement of new technologies. Take generative AI, for example. When ChatGPT launched, it quickly became apparent that generative AI was more than just a passing fad. This realization came as major industry players started adopting and integrating generative AI into their workflows, making it a significant trend. It was very quick to get caught up in using generative AI just because ChatGPT was launched, but it became a trend because of the major players adopting it. This mainstream adoption solidified its status and made it an integral part of the digital media landscape.

You can apply this approach across digital publishing.

Observe the "Power of Three": When you see a particular practice or technology being used three times and then embraced by a significant industry player, you know it's likely to stick around. This method helps you sift through the noise and focus on trends that have staying power.

🔎 2024 Zero-Click Search Study

Check out this study that answers questions like: “What happens after Americans and Europeans search Google?”; “What percent of searches in 2024 end without a click?” + more.
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📊 Case study: How Stears increased its organic traffic by 1,039%

Our sister brand, SODP Media, published a case study that publishers – especially the ones covering elections (be it local or national) – can learn from.
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ChatGPT is hallucinating fake links to its news partners’ biggest investigations | NiemanLab

ChatGPT is hallucinating URLs for at least 10 other publications that are part of OpenAI’s ongoing licensing deals. These publications include The Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, The Times (UK), Le Monde, El País, The Atlantic, The Verge, Vox, and Politico.
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Quora’s Chatbot Platform Poe Allows Users to Download Paywalled Articles on Demand | Wired

WIRED was able to download stories from publishers like The New York Times and The Atlantic using Poe’s Assistant bot. One expert calls it “prima facie copyright infringement,” which Quora disputes.
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Google’s AI Overviews Coincide With Drop In Mobile Searches | Search Engine Journal

A new study by search industry expert Rand Fishkin has revealed that Google’s rollout of AI overviews in May led to a noticeable decrease in search volume, particularly on mobile devices.
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Google Search Ranks AI Spam Above Original Reporting in News Results | Wired

Google adjusted its policies to target AI spam earlier this year, but plagiarizing content still comes up higher in search results months later—and SEO experts aren’t sure why.
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Time strikes licensing deal with OpenAI | Axios

The deal with the Microsoft-backed parent of ChatGPT is part of a broader effort by Time to expand access to its content to younger and more diverse audiences globally.
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