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Advertising | Supporter Spotlight

Addressing uncertainty: testing addressability with programmatic curation

In the new reality for digital media, advertisers will require a multifaceted approach to targeting and attribution. This approach includes the use of alternative IDs, first-party data, contextual and Google’s Privacy Sandbox (PSB). However, understanding where to invest time, resources, and money, is proving to be a challenge for many media companies.

Curation: A programmatic advertising multi-tool

Programmatic curation can be an indispensable tool to alleviate some of the issues created by the deprecation of third-party cookies.

But what is curation? Programmatic curation is the process of packaging data and supply from a variety of partners into unique private marketplace-based deals, which can then be activated on the buy side though any DSP.  This process is different from simple deals-based trading, where a publisher packages its own inventory into a deal ID to offer buyers.

Curation creates a more fluid and interoperable supply and data marketplace. A publisher can package its own supply with someone else’s data to satisfy advertiser needs. Or a data owner can package its data with supply from publishers they don’t know to create a data-enriched inventory package to satisfy advertiser interests.

Because curation relies on existing programmatic processes, it’s a quick and straightforward way for both the sell and buy side to transact. In fact, curated deals can be created and activated in a matter of minutes using the same programmatic platforms and pipes which already power thousands of private marketplace (PMP) deals every day.  It also ensures that publishers are on the receiving end of premium media budgets from advertisers without worrying about data leakage.

By bundling premium data—including addressability signals—with media, curation can act as a bridge between ad inventory and audience data, something that becomes increasingly important as third-party cookie deprecation draws closer.

Layering advertising addressability signals

Programmatic curation is being used by advertisers to test out various addressability solutions, as they map their approach to a post-cookie world. Working directly with a single publisher or across a network of preferred publisher partners, advertisers can curate inventory based on the presence (or absence) of specific addressability signals. This allows them to run side-by-side tests to understand the relative impact and scale of each solution. Some of the signals that advertisers are using curation to test are: Alternative IDs, Google’s Privacy Sandbox, and first party data.

Alternative IDs

There are several dozens of Alternative IDs in use today across the programmatic ecosystem, looking to replicate much of the third-party cookie’s functionality in more privacy-preserving ways. These IDs can be free or can come at a cost. They can be deterministic or probabilistic. They can be open sourced, or privately operated. In all cases, though, they require some level of effort by both brands and publishers to implement, maintain, and evaluate for efficacy.

Advertisers can use programmatic curation to test the effectiveness of different ID solutions by creating unique supply packages, executed via a deal ID, based on the isolated presence of a specific ID in the bidstream. Keeping everything else the same, advertisers can see how effective different IDs are at driving specific campaign outcomes. Once they’ve determined what works best for them, they can then work directly with publishers to increase the penetration of those IDs in the bidstream to ensure scale.

Google’s Privacy Sandbox

Like Alternative IDs, addressability signals from Google’s Privacy Sandbox APIs can also be packaged with publisher supply. These signals are currently available on 1% of traffic from the Chrome browser and can be used as a point of comparison with other addressability signals to see which drives better outcomes for the publisher’s demand partners.

Advertisers can leverage Google Topics signals in curated deal IDs to test the scale across multiple publishers within their preferred DSPs. While limited to the signals collected from the Topics API, advertisers can begin building out A/B tests with curation to compare addressability and performance without relying upon their DSP to fully support PSB.

While stable testing has only begun in March 2024, publishers should prioritize analyzing PSB signal impact and assessing performance as the PSB may be a key driver in a publisher’s addressability strategy after the full deprecation of third-party cookies on Chrome. In addition, as PSB testing scales, advertisers should be able to capitalize on using other addressability signals from the Privacy Sandbox APIs.

Publishers’ first party data

The first-party data publishers hold on every visitor to their website(s) is incredibly valuable to advertisers. And their ability to use that audience on other supply go double once third-party cookies disappear for good. Historically, this has been a sticking point with publishers. That’s because to allow advertisers to target their audiences outside of owned and operated environments (aka audience extension), they would traditionally need to relinquish some control of their data—and they won’t necessarily get it back.

With curation, first-party data can be protected. By layering publisher first-party data into curated deals using third-party inventory, or using it as a centralized match key, publishers can drive incremental revenue without the need to give media buyers direct access to their audience data. They’re always in the driving seat.

Addressability testing and timelines

Curation can package these data signals within existing programmatic workflows that media buyers use day in, day out. That means that programmatic curation is a natural fit for publishers looking to monetize their audiences in a low-friction way. 

Future-focused digital advertising solutions

Third-party cookies have already been deprecated on Safari, Firefox, and Edge browsers, as well as on 1% of Chrome traffic. This provides a unique time-limited opportunity for publishers to test out what works best for their inventory, and for media buyers to partner with publishers to activate these strategies closer to supply. 

Nonetheless, there will not be a panacea for addressability: Digital media companies will need to combine different addressability solutions to ensure that they are maximizing the return on their inventory. By using curation, publishers can test different strategies within their existing programmatic workflows to ensure that they are not leaving revenue on the table.

Advertising | Supporter Spotlight

3 Trust signals that help publishers stand out from MFAs

One topic making headlines in the digital media and advertising industry is made-for-advertising websites. The industry has tried to define them. Studies have been developed to determine how much MFAs are costing advertisers (15% of all ad budgets, according to the ANA). Tech providers have tried blocking them from media buys. Though that has caused some pushback from legitimate publishers’ sites, which might resemble MFAs on the surface (but are anything but). Despite all these efforts, a recent report from Adalytics showed that ads are still reaching MFAs.

The industry is starting to realize that a one-size-fits-all approach to weeding out MFAs doesn’t work. Media buyers and tech providers are taking a step back to re-examine their selection of media partners. Instead of automatically blocking publishers that don’t fit specific criteria, they’re looking at media more granularly and adding approved publishers to inclusion lists.

What are advertisers seeking in a publisher partner? Broadly speaking, they’re looking for media brands that have created quality ad environments that are seen by real audiences. But different buyers use different criteria and technologies, which lead to inconsistent and disparate outcomes. So: How can publishers take control of the narrative and demonstrate why they should be rewarded for their quality content?

The answer: media companies should implement trust signals, especially those developed and backed by the industry. Here are three trust signals designed to help publishers stand out to buyers for their commitment to quality, transparency, and accountability, and earn advertisers’ trust and business.

Trust signal #1: Industry certifications

Several industry groups, including the Media Rating Council, IAB Tech Lab, Trustworthy Accountability Group and the Alliance for Audited Media, have developed compliance programs to recognize publishers for meeting industry standards for ad measurement, brand safety, ad fraud and sustainability. Publishers that complete these programs demonstrate their commitment to transparency. It shows that they have processes and systems in place that deliver accurate and reliable data advertisers can trust.

Many of these industry certification programs require independent validation that a publisher has implemented industry standards and best practices to earn certification. Independent review and validation provide additional assurance for media buyers and publishers.

Trust signal #2: Brand safety tools

With advertisers becoming increasingly concerned about brand safety, solutions have been developed to highlight publishers committed to creating safe content and environments.

The Journalism Trust Initiative was developed by Reporters Without Borders in collaboration with the industry. It provides a blueprint for certifying media outlets for their adherence to industry standards to produce ethical content. JTI’s certification program includes third-party verification and differentiates quality media for their commitment to these standards and best practices.

Trust.txt is an industry framework developed by the non-profit JournalList to help tech platforms and advertisers make associations between publishers and the industry organizations they belong to including Digital Content Next and AAM. Participants in the program add a Trust.txt file to their website directory, which acts as a machine-readable map to help advertisers, tech platforms and search engines connect legitimate publishers with respected industry organizations.

The Ad Fontes Media Bias Chart® rates publishers for their political bias and reliability and lists them on an interactive chart. Publishers verified by a third party tend to be rated among the most reliable. They can use their rating to show media buyers their reliability and trustworthiness. Media outlets rated at the top of the media landscape can take their ratings to the next level and achieve certification from Ad Fontes for consistently providing reliable news and information.

Trust signal #3: Industry memberships

Membership in an industry organization is another signal of trust that differentiates quality publishers from other websites. Industry memberships require investment and often adherence to a code of ethics. Publishers that join and participate in industry associations stand out for their commitment to supporting and advancing the industry.

As digital advertising evolves and becomes more competitive, standing out for your good work becomes even more crucial. Demonstrating your commitment to industry standards and best practices by participating in the industry programs mentioned above is essential for communicating your value to advertisers.

As media buyers become more focused on curating their inclusion lists, it is critical to showcase your commitment to quality and transparency. Adopting these trust signals differentiates premium publishers and valued media brands in a competitive market and fosters a healthier ecosystem for advertisers and audiences alike.

Advertising | Supporter Spotlight

Data collaboration gives power to the publishers

Over the last few years, publishers and digital marketers have been preparing their data capabilities to withstand third-party cookie deprecation and heightened privacy regulations. Data scarcity is the challenge. And the clear solution is data sharing between trusted business partners who stand to benefit mutually. 

No wonder we’ve seen a variety of data clean room options emerge as a means for publishers and advertisers to share and match audiences. But now, the industry is taking a much-needed step forward. Data collaboration platforms have emerged as essential tools for marketers’ new customer acquisition efforts. And publisher data is what makes successful collaboration possible.

The deep data insights that marketers can gain from publishers is of heightened value right now. This puts publishers in the driver’s seat, giving them leverage in the ad buy and positioning them as essential partners to marketers. Deepening these partnerships allows publishers to win commitments and preferential deals from marketers.

For any media executives that are wary about sharing their data, it’s time to take a closer look at the controls that are possible today. Publishers can safely and privately permission parts of their audience, pseudonymously, for purposes of learning, analysis, modeling, and segmentation. 

Contrary to one lingering misunderstanding in the industry, clean rooms are built for more than authentication alone. They are, in fact, useful to media companies even if they don’t have a great amount of emails to use as matching identifiers. Data collaboration allows businesses to unify and analyze data from any internal sources – breaking down old data silos – along with data from external partners. 

Even if publishers don’t have a lot of data on email, they can still benefit from this technology. In fact, this data can include subscribers who log-in, as well as data from content consumers who don’t need to authenticate for access. All of this can considerably grow the amount of data available for analysis and activation, a more comprehensive solution than most traditional clean rooms alone. It can also be a more direct and less resource-heavy arrangement than what some data clean rooms offer. 

The value in a fuller picture of the buyer’s path

Of course, as with a clean room, a data collaboration platform is only as effective and valuable as the data that goes into it. And the overwhelming share of brand marketers will find that because they have limited touchpoints with consumers, they have a limited view of the buyer’s journey. CPGs, for example, are big digital spenders whose overall ROI is threatened by their shortage of direct interactions with consumers. 

And for any industry vertical, the longer the path to purchase, the larger the marketer’s data blind spots. It’s easy to imagine the implications for industries like automotive, real estate, or travel and hospitality: The consumer will spend a great deal of time researching their purchases, but the brand doesn’t own the data from the overwhelming bulk of sites and apps where that engagement happens. Publishers do. 

Therefore, publishers play an absolutely crucial role in data collaboration. They have the leverage in this scenario to drive greater value from the data that they own and marketers need. When marketers are able to analyze their consumers’ browsing patterns across platforms and devices, they can develop a deeper understanding of consumer behavior and preferences, which can make targeting and personalization more relevant and effective.

Newfound scale brings newfound ad revenue opportunities

To envision how data collaboration works, consider how a brand might start with data from their qualified leads – logged-in or deeply engaged users on their own sites and apps – and combine it with a publisher’s data. Keep in mind that many data collaboration platforms rely on an identifier, such as a hashed email, for matching purposes. But this will limit a business’s statistically significant data set to be analyzed. It’s important to open the field to a larger data set – which will entail finding the options that work beyond email identifiers to enable a greater audience overlap. 

Patterns in content consumption unlock consumer interest insights that might not have otherwise been obvious or intuitive to marketers. For a real estate company, for example, the marketer won’t be able to overhear in-person conversations between prospective homebuyers and realtors. But content consumption habits can help suggest what a buyer’s longer-term concerns might be – interest in colleges, financial planning, and products for children of specific age groups. Content consumption insights can also provide a wealth of information that enables targeting and personalization on pages that are relevant to the individual consumer, but not directly related to the brand’s own vertical. 

Without data from publishers, marketers simply wouldn’t be able to fill out the consumer’s profile this way and reach them in a wider variety of relevant settings. Media companies are now empowered to present a bespoke data package to a preferred advertiser partner, full of uniquely valuable insights and recommendations. And the monetization benefits go beyond attracting new advertisers and drawing existing advertisers closer. There’s also an opportunity for publishers to increase CPMs overall, in tandem with the increase of their data’s value to advertisers.

Becoming an advertisers’ essential partner

Throughout the industry’s process of reshaping how data is used, most businesses have found that first-party data tied to email identifiers, taken on their own, simply aren’t sufficient. Publishers’ data leverage in the ad marketplace becomes even greater with data collaboration platforms. In exchange, publishers can deepen relationships with their preferred advertisers, position themselves to bring new partnership ideas to the table, and win newfound ad spend from brands in verticals and markets they may not have even considered before. 

Through data collaboration, media companies can grant advertisers the ability to discover, reach, engage, and retain their best consumers efficiently. They are able to effectively save advertisers from wasted spend, irrelevant targeting, and reliance on multiple point solutions. That’s a very valuable proposition in today’s data landscape, where consumer attention is fleeting. Publishers need to take advantage of powerful data collaboration solutions to cement their place in marketers’ budgets and in the media marketplace well into the future.

About the author

Dave Chokshi Lotame

Dave Chokshi is Director of Client Services at Lotame, responsible for managing enterprise publisher accounts in the North America region. Dave brings nearly a decade of industry experience to his client services role, having worked at Comscore and PGR Media. 

Advertising | Revenue | Supporter Spotlight

Telegraph, Future, Guardian, and Immediate on direct-sold strategies

We recently hosted a discussion with a panel of industry experts from some of the UK’s biggest publishers. Panellists included Karen Eccles, Chief Commercial Officer at The Telegraph; Nick Flood, Global Ad Product & Revenue Operations Director at Future; Katie Le Ruez, Director of Digital at The Guardian; and Matthew Rance, Head of Commercial Data & Analytics at Immediate Media. Here’s what they have to say about building first-party strategies and direct relationships with advertisers to grow revenue. 

Direct relationships 

As we (finally) wave goodbye to third-party cookies, publishers are perfectly positioned to provide brands and agencies with the data, insights, and audience addressability they’re looking for through more direct relationships. In fact, they’ve been ready to offer that to advertisers for a very long time, according to Eccles.

“All the publishers on the panel have been putting in place the technology, the products, and the story, for this year for a really long time, and it’s finally here,” he said. “My worry is revenue moving to walled gardens. But my hope – and we’re seeing it borne out in our revenue and the conversations that we’re having – is that there are more conversations between publishers and agencies, but also with clients. At the moment, 75% of our digital ad revenue is transacted as direct-sold or PG,” explained Eccles.

“We can work with clients to help them answer questions that they might have about ‘why isn’t this particular product landing? How do I connect to the target audience? Can I test creative to understand what really resonates?’”

Data-powered

Even while the world still has Chrome’s third-party cookies, exploring these direct partnerships could be very beneficial for advertisers, because only 30% of the open web is currently addressable (even with them still around). Half of consumers already use browsers where third-party tracking is blocked, and 40% of people using Chrome have disabled tracking.

That’s one of the reasons why Immediate Media was an early mover with its data proposition, which focuses on telling a story with its data and presenting this to clients, according to Rance. “Something we’ve found as the most important thing is the story that we tell with our data. It’s so important,” said Rance.

“We launched our data proposition back in 2018, which was, all things considered, fairly early… at the time, it was really interesting and innovative tech, because there were all of these buzzwords that we were mentioning that no one had heard about like cookieless and on-device.

“What we found over time is that it was really interesting to clients and certainly helped get a foot in the door. But it wasn’t the most important thing. The most important thing was the story we articulated with our data.”

But, for any publisher to form an effective data strategy, they need to be willing to put the money into making that a reality.

“It requires investment in the data infrastructure and resources,” said Le Ruez. “At The Guardian, increasingly, we’ve been investing in digital experts, audience experts, data analysts, working very closely with our products. We’re trying to ensure that connection between sales and expertise is really considered and always-on.”

Part of that also means being “more proactive” with advertisers and internally, Le Ruez continued. “So, making sure that we understand not just advertising data, but also the data that other departments within The Guardian have. We try to identify opportunities from sign-ups or review ratings, etc., to get a better holistic view of everything. And then, from there, work out what has value for advertising purposes. It’s an enormous job, but it’s something that we’re really excited about.”

Driving better conversations

While the changing ecosystem, and recognition of the importance of first-party data, are helping to drive more direct conversations between publishers and advertisers, it’s also having a significant impact on how “grown-up” those conversations are, as Flood sees it.

“Two years ago, you would never get a question from an agency about what the audience’s make-up was. Now, especially in the US, I’d say 50% of responses that have some data element, you will get follow-up questions. What’s the source? How have you made a cohort? Are you using third-party? Is it a seed? All those questions,” said Flood.

“I think agencies have increased their knowledge in this sphere, which is good because you can have bigger, more grown-up conversations about better relationships and partnerships.”

These conversations are being driven by agencies now being “held a lot more accountable to their clients,” and understanding that there is more to marketing than just the viewability or clicks numbers. Nonetheless, while those conversations are now more knowledgeable, there is still room for them to start happening much earlier in the process, Flood concluded.

A pivotal role for publishers 

Our recent panel discussion shed light on publishers’ pivotal role in shaping the future of digital advertising through data, especially given the open marketplace’s addressability challenges and the decline of third-party data. 

The insights shared by Karen Eccles, Nick Flood, Katie Le Ruez, and Matthew Rance underscore the preparedness of publishers to harness first-party strategies and establish direct relationships with advertisers but also highlight the growing accountability of agencies to their clients. 

As the industry adapts, publishers remain poised to deliver valuable data, insights, and audience addressability through direct and meaningful collaborations. 

Advertising | Revenue | Supporter Spotlight

Advanced media strategy: navigating the first-party data shift

With the imminent demise of third-party cookies, the digital media industry stands on the brink of a seismic transformation that will create pressure for publishers to adapt quickly and efficiently. In my role at Dow Jones, as head of advertising product and technology, the urgency to transition towards first-party data and contextual advertising wasn’t just about staying ahead; it was a necessity to ensure our continued success in the digital realm.

This urgency is underscored by a stark reality: according to a 2023 Teads survey, only 16% of publishers felt prepared for the cookieless future. When Google announced the Chrome Cookie Deprecation in Jan. 2020, it became abundantly clear to us at Dow Jones that decisive action was needed to navigate this uncharted territory.

Facing the dual challenges of maintaining our revenue streams and upholding audience privacy, we envisioned a future where we relied exclusively on robust first-party data and developed a comprehensive game plan to bring that vision to fruition. This wasn’t just about adapting to a new set of rules; it was about reimagining our approach to digital engagement and advertising in a way that respects our readers’ desire for privacy and control over their own data.

Building an advanced advertising strategy

As a leading global business and information company that publishes trusted brands like The Wall Street Journal, our strategic vision was predicated and relied upon our subscription business, including the core high-quality audience of dedicated subscribers that serve as our core readership. We evaluated every aspect of our digital footprint, from the ways we engage with our audience to the methodologies behind our ad targeting. This wasn’t a simple process. It required a fundamental reshaping of our operations, systematic execution sustained over time, and a significant investment in new technologies and skills.

By focusing on the wealth of data generated by our direct and long-standing relationships with subscribers, we’ve not only prepared ourselves for the post-cookie world but have also unlocked new opportunities for growth and engagement. We’re now in a position where we can offer our advertisers targeted, effective ad placements based on direct audiences composed of known users and enriched with real, meaningful insights into preferences and behaviors, all while maintaining the privacy standards that our customers (not to mention regulators) expect.

Challenges and opportunities in cookieless digital advertising

However, this shift hasn’t been without its challenges. It’s been critical to strike a balance between maintaining innovative forward momentum and overcoming technical hurdles in a privacy-compliant manner that requires a judicious and collaborative approach to data. 

Despite this, the shift away from third-party cookies has presented numerous opportunities. We’ve been able to forge deeper relationships with our advertisers by offering high-quality audience signals, innovative new products and services built on those audiences, and the analysis that demonstrates value and outcomes.

A future built on trust and transparency

As we look to the future, it’s clear that the key to success in the digital media space is a combination of innovative technology and a commitment to user privacy. By focusing on first-party data and contextual advertising, publishers can navigate the post-cookie landscape.

Moreover, the importance of systematic and open collaboration cannot be overstated; engaging with experienced partners and technology providers, especially those who have proactively tackled the challenges of this new digital ecosystem, can provide you with fresh perspectives and new opportunities for growth. For digital media executives navigating this shift, remember: the future belongs to those who prepare for it today.

Advertising | Supporter Spotlight

Better ads, fewer tradeoffs: insights from a creative director

As a longtime creative director in digital advertising, I consistently saw the same challenges across publishers: tension between revenue and creative, between premium ad offerings and relentless efficiency, between trying new approaches and sticking to the playbook.

Here are three insights I often share our clients now that I’m at Clipcentric to show that digital publishers don’t need to view these perceived tradeoffs as either/or dilemmas.

You can reduce ad inventory without sacrificing revenue. Really.

It sounds counter-intuitive, but many digital publishers have successfully reduced ad inventory without sacrificing revenue. Fewer ads on a page creates a better experience for the audience, and higher-quality, premium ads command a premium for the advertiser.

One of Clipcentric’s partners currently fills about 20% of its inventory with direct-sold advertising, but that 20% accounts for almost 80% of its ad revenue. Trading programmatic pennies for direct-sold dollars works. Another partner recently reduced overall ad inventory by 50%, but didn’t sacrifice revenue at all.

More ads don’t always equal more money. Shifting available ad inventory away from open programmatic to direct sold, and then offering compelling, premium units for those ad slots, gives you more control over your revenue and creates a better experience for advertisers and audiences.

Premium publishers should serve premium content and premium ads.

Premium publishers invest a lot in building an audience around top-shelf digital content that keeps audiences coming back for more. But serving low quality ads next to that content can diminish the entire experience of a site or app.

We’ve all encountered a poorly placed programmatic belly fat ad next to a piece of premium content. Even running house ads that promote your own content (for example, from your branded content studio) can sometimes be preferable to low-revenue, low-quality ads on a premium site.

However, in addition to elevating the look and feel of your site, premium ad offerings can effectively differentiate you from the competition and help your ad sales team close more deals. Aligning features from different ad products to advertisers’ KPIs (a dynamic map in the ad unit to drive in-store traffic; a countdown timer or in-banner add-to-calendar feature to raise awareness of an event) allows you to quickly respond to RFPs and develop ad proposals that truly excite clients.

A prime example of this from my time at CBSi was when a client wanted to position its brand in a memorable way. CBS Sports had a popular fantasy football league. We proposed targeting fantasy football users with personalized ads that included each user’s fantasy team name and feedback on their draft choices. The advertiser loved the idea, and it was something only CBS Sports could offer. We linked our fantasy API  to the ad unit (with Clipcentric’s help) and developed a unique offering that the advertiser loved – and that perfectly aligned with CBSi’s own content.

Custom ads don’t require in-house engineering – just the right tech partner.

In my publisher days in creative services, there were so many times the ad sales team approached me with requests for complicated ads:

  • “Can we create a quiz?”
  • “Is it possible to put multiple videos in one ad?”
  • “Can we create an interactive game inside a 300×250?”
  • “Can we use our data to change what’s in the ad?”
  • “Can we put a flying dragon on the page? Okay what about four flying dragons?”

…and so on. There was no shortage of ideas, but with limited resources there was a hesitancy to say yes.

Publishers often streamline ad product offerings into their simplest form so ad ops teams can run very lean and produce ads efficiently. But that often leads to always saying “no” to advertisers who want anything beyond ordinary. Saying “yes” can unlock revenue premiums and demonstrate to your advertisers that your pub is responsive and collaborative and can deliver not just the audiences they want to reach, but the creative that will engage them. 

Ads with advanced creative features – dynamic video, data-driven features, all kinds of interactivity – can drive CPM premiums without needing to develop or retest an entirely new ad unit. At Clipcentric, we work with publishers to develop flexible ad containers that are tested and approved for their sites. Inside those containers, (almost) anything goes. The right partner can help you respond to custom requests to make an advertiser’s vision come to life.

Many media executives probably already know all these things. But sometimes it’s difficult to choose a path that seems more complex than what an organization is used to. Fewer ads, of higher quality, with better features and higher CPMs are not nearly as complicated to pull off as most publishers think. Ad operations professionals, myself included, welcome the opportunity to put real creativity back into ad products.

About the author

Jeff Hill was a director in ad operations and creative services for 15 years at major digital publishers like CBS Interactive and Red Ventures. He joined Clipcentric in July 2023.

Advertising | Revenue | Supporter Spotlight

4 Ways publishers can leverage AI to improve monetization

Generative AI represents the most disruptive force to hit the media space since the dawn of digital publishing. It’s understandable that right now, in 2024, a lot of the headlines are going to be focused on scandal—including the Sports Illustrated AI-generated article controversy and CNET’s quieter decision to suspend AI-generated content publication “for now.” In all likelihood, this list will continue to grow as too many publishers play fast and loose with their AI guidelines. 

That said, while the need for publishers to establish guardrails and policies for the use and implementation of AI cannot be understated, publishers also risk going too far and missing out on the benefits of these transformative leaps forward in technology. Unfortunately, that means there’s no one-size-fits-all solution for our industry when it comes to generative AI.

Generative AI—and really all AI—has the potential to revolutionize the way in which publishers monetize their content and on-site experiences. Let’s look at four areas where current and emerging AI capabilities can bolster the bottom line, while still preserving a transparent, premium content ecosystem and a robust future for professional journalism. 

AI-driven dynamic ad creative

Dynamic ad creative isn’t a new concept in the digital ad space. However, it is one where the execution of such ads to date has not been able to keep up with advertiser desires. New generative AI tools are changing the game in this regard. From a publisher’s perspective, the more tailored an ad experience can be based on what’s known about a visitor, the more effective that creative will be—and the higher a premium these dynamic units can yield for the sites that support them. 

Historically, dynamic ad creative has been used to greatest effect in retargeting efforts: those infamous instances where ad units featuring a product the visitor viewed on another site continue to “follow” the person across the internet. With the deprecation of third-party cookies, traditional means of retargeting in this way will become more challenging. However, improved generative AI capabilities will help bridge the gap by enabling advertisers to dynamically generate ads based on a wide variety of other factors, including the content around which the ad is appearing and known attributes and interests of the site visitor. 

With tools like OpenAI’s Sora now rolling out to the market, the potential for dynamic video ad creative is also about to skyrocket, bringing unprecedented premium personalization options to already-lucrative video ad formats. Publishers need to stay on top of what’s possible in this realm and integrate these premium options into their sites as they become available. 

Enhanced native advertising content

In the same vein as emerging gen AI capabilities for video ads, publishers also have an opportunity to enhance the monetization of another premium opportunity on their sites: native advertising. New generative AI tools can help publishers and advertisers quickly and easily launch more-effective native ad and branded content campaigns by generating multiple headline options in varied tones and styles. These tools can also keep native ad content fresh by rephrasing existing content for additional impact, even going so far as to customize based on other content on the page. 

In a cookieless advertising environment, native advertising will continue to play a bigger role in publishers’ monetization strategies, given its ability to target visitors based on context while enhancing the value being delivered to the reader. Supercharging these experiences with the latest GenAI capabilities—thereby enhancing effectiveness while reducing resources to create and update these ad experiences—will ensure these units continue to contribute a growing proportion of publisher ad revenue. 

Personalized audience experiences

Beyond AI-elevated ad experiences, new generative AI capabilities can deliver personalization experiences at a scale and granularity that simply weren’t possible with previous automation technology. This will not only be in terms of article recommendations, but also optimized layouts, tailored offers and upgrades, unique experiences based on personal preferences, and more. 

Such personalization isn’t just an experience upgrade for visitors; it’s an enhanced monetization opportunity for publishers, with returns on personalization efforts ranging from $3 to $20+ per dollar invested. Beyond increasing audience engagement and time spent with a publisher, personalized elements can be packaged into new monetizable products, including email and mobile newsletters and digests that bring value to users while opening new advertising inventory and sponsorship opportunities. 

Predictive analytics to boost subscriber and ad revenue growth

Finally, new AI tools can be tapped to transform website data and analytics into predictive insights that can help publishers optimize their content for better performance and monetization. Publishers can leverage data and AI to predict which content will perform best, which audiences are most likely to subscribe, and which ad placements will be most effective. By identifying patterns and trends that humans might miss, AI can deliver actionable insights to optimize content and marketing strategies for maximum revenue.

For example, by predicting which articles are likely to generate the most subscription conversions, publishers can prioritize their promotion across their site and other owned platforms. Similarly, AI-driven predictive analytics can help optimize ad placements, ensuring that ads are seen by the most relevant audience, thus increasing their effectiveness and the publisher’s ad revenues.

As digital publishers tackle tough questions regarding the role of AI within their organizations, both today and as these capabilities evolve in the future, it’s important to consider the full range of enhancements that can be delivered. Ultimately, the most-effective implementations won’t be the ones that replace human creativity and voices within the site experience. Rather the best implementations will be those that amplify the impact of that human creativity and ensure it’s being monetized at a rate that enables publishers to continue to reinvest in the content, initiatives, and people that matter most. 

Innovation | Supporter Spotlight

How media companies can fuel innovation in 2024 and beyond

As publishers look for ways to accelerate audience growth, engagement, and monetization in 2024, they have a multitude of options for driving change and innovation. Last year I worked with Nick Nyhan, Managing Director and Co-Founder of Upside Analytics, to develop a model for roadmapping the innovation journey in the publishing industry. As part of that effort, we uncovered some key strategies and ideas that publishers can use to accelerate their organizational velocity in the coming year across three areas: audience growth, audience engagement and monetization.

Grow audience reach

Most publishers are already working on the obvious top-of-funnel audience growth strategies, like social media and SEO. But we identified some opportunities beyond those obvious strategies that we encourage publishers to consider.

Idea #1: Add new sites or apps for specific audience segments

Breaking your audience down into sub-segments is a critical tactic for any publisher. When you’ve identified sub-segments with strong subjects of interest, you can build on that knowledge with more advanced strategies for targeted growth in each segment, including adding new properties.

A great example of this is Gray Television, one of the largest broadcasters in the U.S. Gray owns a large number of television stations across the country, and they decided to launch “City Weekend” sites in each of their local markets featuring location-specific lifestyle content on events, food, art and culture. This segmentation-based strategy helped Gray expand its audience, increase traffic, and boost ad revenue.  

Following Gray’s example, you could identify a segment of your audience that’s very interested in sports, or local business, or any other specific topic, and introduce a microsite that’s easy to market to that audience.

Idea #2: Create mobile apps for fans

Your brand’s power users – the segments of your audience that engage with you the most – are also the most likely to download your mobile app. To take your mobile strategy to the next level, tailor your mobile app to hyper-engage your power users.

This presents the opportunity to align other elements of your business with your mobile strategy. For example, you can use your website mainly to attract, engage, register, and then drive new users to your mobile app, where you can employ additional strategies to keep them engaged.

Increase audience engagement

Once you’ve gotten your audience onto your site, you need to get them to stay there and have longer session lengths. More content views and more time on site equals more affinity to your brand.

Idea #3: Cater to multi-scenario consumption

People don’t just ingest news while sitting at a computer. They could be stuck in traffic and want an audio option. They could be on the go in a subway and need an offline mode. Some people want to save stories and listen to them later on audio or watch on video when they’re sitting in front of their TV at night. There is a lot of churn going on across all of these modalities, so publishers need a strategy to consciously cater to different audience scenarios for consuming content.

At the simplest level, this might involve letting users create reading lists of stories they can access later. At the most sophisticated level, you could have a completely native team building a custom OTT app. In between are opportunities to experiment with and test modalities for various content consumption scenarios, from podcasts to mobile to TV “sit back” options.

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) presents an exciting opportunity for publishers. In its current state, AI is well-positioned to take on some of the more tedious or repetitive tasks in content creation workflows. For example, AI-powered tools are emerging for auto-summarization and auto-tagging.

Your content creators like to write and create content. Maybe they don’t mind summarizing. But nobody likes tagging—so why not let AI tools do that work? Auto-tagging for text, video, images, and captions makes it easier to suggest related content to your audience, keeping them on your site longer and increasing the amount of content they consume.

Monetize by segment

Before you start trying advanced monetization strategies, make sure you have the basic building blocks in place. That includes the ability to enable and measure customer loyalty, clear calls-to-action across all of your properties, and an optimized checkout process. Beyond those basics, we identified some innovative strategies publishers are using to monetize audience segments.

Idea #5: Provide special content consumption options for subscribers

As I covered in the last section on audience engagement, your audience is consuming your content in many different scenarios, whether it’s sitting in front of a computer, on a mobile phone while on the go, or in front of their TV at night. Providing special consumption options that cater to these preferences can be used to entice people to subscribe.

For example, The Irish Times uses a text-to-speech provider to convert most of its stories into an audio version. A small headphones icon appears in the corner of these stories to indicate that an audio option is available—but only for subscribers. The Irish Times incurs a cost associated with doing the text-to-speech conversion. However, by enticing higher value users to subscribe, this cost is balanced out by the revenue gain. 

Idea #6: Try a freemium approach

With a freemium strategy, publishers offer a selection of content that’s available without a subscription, but make higher-value content available only to subscribers. Readers are able to see headlines and short snippets of the high-value premium content featured amongst the free content, enticing them to subscribe to get full access.

We believe that sports-related content, especially if it’s local, will be among the highest value content that publishers can offer in the future. Sports-related stories would therefore be a great candidate to offer as premium content in a freemium model (and also a great testing ground for new monetization approaches).

Ultimately innovation for media companies comes down to having the courage to try, whether it’s one or more of these ideas, or any other tactics for growing your audience and increasing your revenue. We recommend crafting a one pager that outlines the new ideas you’ll test in 2024, including where you are today, where you want to go, and the KPIs you’ll use to measure your progress. Then share that document throughout your organization and take the next steps on your media innovation journey for 2024 and beyond.

Advertising | Industry-Research | Supporter Spotlight

3 Advertising trends that can’t be ignored

This year, I’m optimistic about advertising opportunities for nimble media companies despite likely shifts in market conditions. Although budgets tightened considerably in 2023, recovery signs point to an acceleration in ad spend. As media companies think about achieving 2024 advertising goals, consider investing resources in high-potential spaces like political advertising, pockets of opportunity in local markets, and key market segments or advertisers.

Economic conditions can shift quickly, so close monitoring of market signals allows smart firms to pivot toward expanding revenue by adjusting strategy. Here are some trends that media companies should not ignore along with insights to help capitalize on the potential increase in ad revenue associated with each. 

The digital ad market is starting to recover and advertisers will be spending

We entered 2023 with rapidly rising interest rates and inflation, which seemed to point to a terrible recession. Advertisers began tightening budgets back in September 2022 anticipating tough times ahead. That defensive posture continued until late 2023 when the purse strings finally began to loosen.

In December, MediaRadar observed a promising 10% year-over-year increase in ad sales, but total advertisers still lagged by 13% YoY. This was likely due to both precautionary pullbacks and mounting bankruptcies. Last year saw bankruptcy filings surge by over 18%, its highest rate since 2009.

Despite these and other economic and marketplace challenges, we expect things to continue to open in 2024. However, the rebound will not be even, so sales leaders must monitor segments closely. Categories like Electronics, Financial Services, Housewares, Pharma, Sports, and Software stand out as pockets of growth. Given limited resources, ad teams need to invest them wisely. 

Political advertising will be up and distributed across the country

The political advertising spend is primed to reach unprecedented heights during the 2024 election cycle, far exceeding the $1b during the 2020 presidential election. With abortion rights, healthcare, and other issues central to voter engagement, both sides appear ready to invest in advertising.

Historically, election advertising was concentrated in swing states. However, current trends point toward more national allocation this cycle. We already see political ads penetrating every state. 

Abortion-centered messaging currently comprises 6% of the total Democratic spend. Immediately following the Dobbs verdict (May 2022), ad spend with abortion messaging across political parties jumped to 19% of federal political ads on broadcast TV. This will remain a hot button during the election cycle and we are likely to see ad spend surrounding this topic skyrocket in both national and regional markets.

For media firms, partisan advertising represents an unparalleled revenue opportunity for firms with a solid strategy.

Local advertising suffered in 2023, but will recover in 2024

Last year was especially challenging for regional media. Local ad spend was down 11% YoY dropping to just 16% of all media spend in 2023. But 2024 should see recovery gain steam in select markets.

For instance, Phoenix looks ripe for rebound thanks to the 2022 CHIPS Act’s $53 billion investment in the manufacturing of semiconductors in the U.S. As infrastructure starts to develop, there will be advertising in the local market to support education, employment, and construction among others.

This is just one key area in which we expect an uptick in local ad spend. It is important for media companies to understand how local advertising will impact overall ad spend in 2024. Government spending, newsworthy events, and businesses expanding can all impact ad spend in the local markets. Media companies should keep up with trends in the local markets. It may be necessary to adjust the narrative and offerings to key advertisers as budgets shift. 

Apple is making big bets on vision pro

While a $3,500 virtual reality headset may seem an unlikely hit, the iPhone once faced skepticism around its $1,000 price. Now, Apple is betting big on breaking new ground again with their upcoming “Vision Pro” launch.

This marks Apple’s biggest product release since the Apple Watch in 2015. Historically, Apple spends over $35 million in advertising for key launches across their product lines each year. We expect Vision Pro to earn substantial marketing backing given the effort Apple has poured into this brand-new product push into VR.

The official unveiling comes on February 2nd, 2024. The Vision Pro represents an opportunity to pitch Apple on driving customer excitement and awareness in a new tech frontier.

Media companies should be prepared with compelling pitches for Apple. They are one of many brands launching products this year. It is vital to know when RFPs are being issued and to have strong relationships with key media buying teams.

Opportunities in a challenging digital advertising market

In 2024, the advertising market, and media industry as a whole, will face many challenges. However, there is a real opportunity for savvy media companies to capitalize, while cautious competitors will stall. In this article, I shared a few of my advertising predictions for the year ahead. 

Perspectives | Revenue | Supporter Spotlight

When creative and commercial work together, digital media thrives


The news industry has (finally) woken up to the idea that paying for journalism is a longstanding and effective strategy that must transition from print to digital. Over the past several years, there has been a push to establish reader revenue models which promise the annuity revenue and stability that digital advertising cannot.

While paid-for content is absolutely correct as a concept, the execution is far more difficult. One of the reasons for this is a real fear of trying to tackle and change editorial workflows, cadence and practices to service a digital, willing-to-pay audience. 

The universal truth in news organizations globally is the “separation of church and state.” There is no doubt that editorial integrity should be protected at all costs. But in this modern world the notion that newsrooms should have little or no role in commercial endeavors – including subscription growth – is becoming increasingly obsolete, if not completely counterproductive to sustainability and growth.

As newsrooms become more representative, younger and dynamic and we pay more attention to audience diversity, there is no place for static thinking about our place in the world.

The FT’s subscription engine room

The Financial Times most definitely experienced more change in the past 20 years compared to the preceding 125 years. The advent of the internet, the iPhone, and high-speed connections completely disrupted our distribution channels and our users’ reading experiences. These digital forces also radically shifted the course of the fundamental business model of newspapers – ours included.

Across the industry, print has been in long-term decline for more than 20 years now, and advertising growth has been elusive for almost as long. Very little of our past business remains intact.

At the FT, we’ve benefited from visionary leadership that bit the bullet many years ago. We worked extremely hard (and still do) to build and grow a successful digital business in both reader revenue and carefully considered advertising strategy that has seen digital ad revenues double in the past three years. And it must be said that the development and implementation of this strategy very much included our editorial leadership and cross-departmental input.

Some of the most exciting digital product innovations that have engaged readers of the FT in updated ways are collaborative efforts that include or are driven by editorial. example this “Draw your Own Chart” from the Visual storytelling team and this fantastic visual explainer on AI offer subscribers more creatively engaging ways of getting the information they need. And the launch of FT Edit increased reader revenue by providing an option for audiences that might not otherwise be willing to pay for a full subscription.

Indeed there are vastly different conditions in this new era. So, keeping the engine room of news companies entirely isolated from commercial reality is simply not good for business. At the FT, revenue ideas may come from editorial, as in the case of FT edit, or be driven by commercial EXAMPLE.

As much as we lament the decline of print and advertising and blame the rise of social media and platforms for our woes, much of the news industry is suffering from:

  • A built-in “church and state” stress fracture in our businesses and the industry as a whole
  • Siloed thinking and an inability to collaborate effectively or to think outside the box
  • An unwillingness and genuine fear to try new things and experiment
  • Suspicion of commercial colleagues – a damaging “us and them” mentality
  • Product, engineering and technology teams falling on the commercial side of the fence and an often unhealthy tension between product and editorial

At the Financial Times, we have found that a closer relationship between commercial, editorial and technology can only result in revenue growth in the long term. It is also vital to carefully pick the people who can make this happen. They are the glue that holds an organization together.

There was a session at The Audiencers event in London about bridge roles and how important they are in newsrooms. Panel participant and consultant Dmitry Shishkin has made very good observations about how wonderful things happen when product and content come together.

Reader revenue models help newsrooms transform digitally

The establishment of reader revenue models (subscription or membership) at so many news organizations is positive not only for revenue generation but also for the toughest challenge of organizational and cultural change.

A paywall has a galvanizing effect on journalists who don’t want to see their hard work going on a website for free. For newsroom leaders, it helps with adjusted workflows and better copy flow to publish valuable journalism with a clear value proposition for readers.

Reader revenue strategies are entirely in lockstep with quality journalism, and not with the high-volume game of clickbait and churnalism. More importantly, for a paid model to be truly successful it will be enormously strengthened by the input and commitment of all: and this means editorial too.

On the other extreme, organizations that have not integrated their digital and print operations can suffer from related labor issues. “Print staff” may even actively campaign against transformation initiatives. This might take the form of refusing to do any digital publishing, not attending digital training, treating digitally skilled staffers as inferior, the list goes on. And this puts organizations in a tough spot.

The answer at this point is very simple: strong leadership. In a recent study, created in collaboration with the Google News Initiative, we found that leadership is a pivotal factor for sustainability and the growth and success of news organizations.

It is this trust and leadership from editors that will ultimately make the difference in the long-term fortunes of news organizations. A successful integration of print and digital, and bridging the creative side of the organization with the commercial, comes down to a clear, unified vision for success. 

Print is and will remain a premium product with a definitive market niche. But to ignore the commercial realities – and digital opportunities – of our industry is to be no better than the band leader on the Titanic. Success lies in a common goal and purpose and having all staff in the same lifeboat and pulling in the same direction is the only way to leverage growth and guarantee sustainability.

About the Author

Lisa has over 25 years of experience in print-to-digital transformation, most notably at the Financial Times where she led newsroom operations, was an Assistant Editor and Managing Editor, Associate Editor and Head of Operations for FT.com. She led group-wide digital transformation projects at both of South Africa’s biggest publishers, Tiso Blackstar (now Arena Holdings) and Naspers’s 24.com.

Innovation | Supporter Spotlight

Break social’s hold on readers with live reporting

Public trust in the news is dwindling, with three in 10 UK adults admitting they don’t trust the news very much and 6% confessing they don’t trust it at all. Unfortunately, this phenomenon is not limited to the UK but affects media audiences globally. A recent Gallup Poll, for example, showed a similar reality among Americans, with only 32% saying that they trust news a “great deal” or a “fair amount.”  

What’s more, publishers are grappling with the fact that audiences increasingly turn to social media to get their news fix. In its annual Digital News Report, Reuters and The University of Oxford found that 30% of respondents say that social media is the main way they come across news, surpassing the 22% who access it directly. Unfortunately, social media provides a fertile breeding ground for misinformation, which (somewhat ironically) further erodes people’s trust in news. 

Today’s media companies need strategies and tools that will help them re-engage audiences whose expectations have been shaped by social media. By understanding the behaviors and preferences of today’s audiences and incorporating the right tools and tactics, publishers have the ability to attract audiences and satisfy their need for a well-rounded information diet in a more social setting. 

More than passing news updates

Notably, the shift to social news consumption is particularly acute among younger consumers, with people aged 18-24 less likely to use a news website or app and more dependent on social media for news. And these young consumers’ information preferences have been molded by their use of social media and mobile content consumption. Our own research finds consumers want  easily understandable and readily available content. In fact, 26% of 18-34-year-olds say that they prefer news updates in short, bite-sized segments. 

One of the strategies publishers can implement to replicate the social media experience–while continuing to provide quality news and information–is through the use of live blogs. Live blogs allow media companies to provide readers with an enriched and authentic experience that replicates the benefits of social media while addressing key challenges such as lack of engagement, misinformation, and declining trust. 

A live blog allows publishers to provide real-time commentary, updates, and coverage on breaking news or unfolding events. Despite their rise in popularity during the Covid-19 pandemic – where they served as a valuable tool for disseminating rapidly emerging critical information – live blogs have been around for quite some time. 

However, publishers around the world are now working to refine their live blog strategies to capture the best aspects of the social media experience but serve as more than just a format that provides the latest superficial updates. These publishers build trust and credibility among their audiences through this more social way of authentic storytelling.  

The style of live blogs resembles a mobile-friendly social media timeline. Therefore, it gives consumers news in the format they crave. It caters to the habits and preferences of users accustomed to consuming content through scrolling on their mobile phones.  

Interactivity and engagement

To increase audience engagement, publishers can also incorporate interactive elements such as polls, videos, and live comment blocks into their live blogs. These mirror many popular features found on social media platforms. For example, journalists from the New Zealand publisher Stuff interacted directly with readers as millions of people attempted to get tickets to Taylor Switft’s Eras Tour in Australia. With over 150 comments on their live blog, the journalists were able to build a community with their readers as they all shared their triumphs and frustrations with one another in real-time.    

Some publishers even use live blogs to provide their audiences with direct access to experts in various fields. MDR, a public German broadcaster, did this particularly well during the Covid-19 pandemic and cost of living crisis. They encouraged readers to post their questions in a comment block within the live blog. Then, the expert answered their questions directly in the chat. This tactic increases trust by giving readers access to experts in their field and reinforcing the expertise of a media outlet’s team. It also helps provide a more balanced view of events through the inclusion of a variety of perspectives, reducing the perception of spin. 

With live blogs, individual personalities can come out, which allows journalists to foster better relationships with their audience. For example, reporters covering sports at Süddeutsche Zeitung engage with their audience using a lighter tone than their formal journalism. This injects personality into their coverage and makes it more relatable and enjoyable for readers, mirroring the conversational style often seen in social media interactions. 

Another key advantage of live blogs is their ability to prevent endless doomscrolling by providing a curated and limited amount of verified information and data. This way, readers can choose the most relevant information to them based on their own needs and preferences without becoming overwhelmed with too much content. 

Looking ahead

It’s a challenging time for publishers and newsrooms around the world. The emergence of generative AI search results, along with audiences’ increasing frustration with the news (not to mention the fact that social media platforms are distancing themselves from news), create higher barriers to engagement. 

In the year ahead, publishers should turn their attention to incorporating strategies that replicate the elements audiences love most about social media to keep consumers engaged and coming back for more. Implementing this approach can help publishers meet the needs of the modern consumer, who favors receiving their news in short, bite-sized segments. Live blogs allow media companies to capture the essence of the social media experience while addressing lack of engagement, misinformation, and declining trust. 

Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

Media execs share strategies for navigating a challenging market in 2024

The media industry continued its remarkable transformation in 2023, with shifts in audience behavior and the emergence of AI as a potential threat to newsrooms. As we head into an uncertain 2024, we spoke with four content industry leaders to understand the strategies that are helping media companies and content creators successfully navigate these challenges.

1. Focus on the lifetime value of your audience

During the COVID pandemic, media companies focused on acquiring subscribers. And then in the immediate aftermath, they focused on retaining those subscribers. Now their focus must shift to lifetime value, which doesn’t start when someone subscribes, but from the moment they arrive on your site—even if they’re not yet ready to subscribe. This means providing the right content at the right time with the right paywall, pricing and messaging.

“FT has gone through that journey of being acquisition-focused to then engagement-focused, retention focused and now lifetime-value focused,” said Daisy Donald, Principal Consultant and Head of Americas at FT Strategies. “There are interesting opportunities that FT has started experimenting with to create different levels of subscription products. What do you get as a registered user that’s free?” For example, one of these new subscription products is FT Edit, which is app-based and has a specific persona in mind of someone who has news fatigue and wants to pay a smaller amount of money to still get quality content.

2. Dive deep into audience segmentation

Maximizing lifetime value is difficult without understanding your audience at a more granular level. “It’s all about actually putting your audience first and thinking about their needs from day one. What are their interests as individuals rather than as a whole audience? And how can you really serve those needs?” said Madeleine White, Head of International at Poool and Editor-in-Chief at the Audiencers.

White recommends that audience teams invest in user needs analysis, with every piece of content that is created focused on meeting a specific user need and furthering a related revenue strategy. For example, one user need might be valuable for converting users into subscribers, while another is valuable for advertising revenue.

Adley Bowden, Head of Individual Investor & Editor-in-Chief at Morningstar Wealth concurs on the importance of understanding audience members as individuals: “Yes, there is an audience. But within it there are unique individuals. They segment in different ways and you can see which content drives engagement from these different profiles. We’ve done a lot of work to better understand these groupings within our audience and then better design content.”

3. Elevate human expertise in the age of AI

No discussion of content industry challenges in 2024 would be complete without addressing the elephant in the room: AI. Instead of fearing AI, media companies should recognize the important role that human expertise plays in making an AI-enhanced content strategy successful.

“I’ve seen a lot of publishers who are starting to use AI-personalized homepages based on what you’ve read previously,” said Poool’s White. “And every single one that is doing it has a maximum of maybe 70 percent of their homepage that’s personalized through AI. The rest is still in the control of their editorial team to really push the stories that matter because a machine can’t know what’s going on in the local community right now, what everyone’s talking about in offline conversations.”

Morningstar’s Bowden said that the company has found value in using AI for content translation, which leans into the strength of large language models. But maintaining the trust and authority of Morningstar’s content is critical, so “we can’t just do Google Translate, and off we go.” Instead, the company’s AI-assisted translation process includes humans in the process to perform some manual translation and ensure the quality of everything that’s published.

4. Remember that quality content is at the core of everything

New trends, tools and technologies shouldn’t obscure the fact that quality content that engages audiences is at the core of a successful media company. “I was speaking to a client of ours in Denmark, and one of the worries that they’ve been having is that they are overinvesting in their ability to perform well on SEO. So, they’re worried that their articles are written in a way that is not journalistically valuable,” said Birger Soiland, VP of Sales at Norkon. “When your focus is too much on serving up content on SEO, then you might fall into a trap of your content not being engaging enough.”

The definition of high-quality, engaging content will vary based on audience needs. Norkon’s Soiland has seen many of the company’s publishing clients successfully emphasize short-form content that is easily consumable, whether text, audio or video. For Morningstar, Bowden says that emphasizing data content gives its audience something more than just written or video content to come back to and re-engage with.

FT Strategies’ Donald aptly summed up media companies’ ability to navigate the challenges of 2024 and beyond by saying, “The media industry is the most resilient industry in the whole world. That’s why we love working in it… we are just so resilient. We adapt so well. I believe we will continue to adapt and survive.”

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