You probably already knew that. Most editorial teams have seen the number somewhere, a Chartbeat dashboard, a quarterly review slide, a conference presentation that confirmed what you already suspected. Twenty-nine seconds. Less than a minute for a piece that took hours to report, write, edit, and publish.

Where readers go when they leave is the more interesting question.

Mostly, they go to ask something.

A reader gets three paragraphs in and hits something, a term they’re not sure about, a statistic they want to check, a thread they want to follow. Standard response: open a new tab, search, land somewhere else. The article is still open but the session is effectively over. They’re not coming back.

This mid-session leak is a distinct problem from traffic acquisition. Google traffic for publishers dropped 33% over the last year, per Chartbeat. That story has been well covered. The quieter version is the reader who already arrived, was interested enough to click, and left because the article didn’t answer a question they formed while reading it.

Why Readers Leave After They Click

Some publishers have started treating this as a product problem, not just an editorial one.

In a recent test, a B2B trade title tested Divee’s conversational layer on its article pages. Readers could ask questions and get answers sourced from the article itself, without navigating away. After adding the layer, time on site tripled, page views per session reached 2.8x baseline, and bounce rate dropped 45%. The session duration comparison is the number worth sitting with: 5 minutes 43 seconds average for readers who engaged, versus the 29-second industry baseline. That kind of gap rarely comes from layout tweaks or headline tests.

Looking back, it’s not complicated. A reader who gets to ask a question, from your content, on your page, has a different experience than one who doesn’t. They went deeper. They stayed. The article did something it doesn’t normally do: it responded.

What Reader Questions Tell Publishers

The audience intelligence angle is something publishers tend not to anticipate going in. Every question a reader types is a statement about what they came for. Across early publisher deployments, 91% of questions come in freeform - no prompts, no pre-loaded suggestions. Readers treat it like a genuine conversation. What you get back is declared reader intent, in their own words.

For any title navigating audience measurement since third-party cookie deprecation started in earnest, the signal quality matters. Intent signals from reader questions, what topics they’re probing, where coverage has gaps, what vocabulary they use, are actual expressed interest. That’s a different category from what most analytics stacks generate from behavioural inference.

Publisher skepticism on implementation is earned. Most editorial tech that promises a quick install delivers a months-long project. This is a single script tag, live in under 10 minutes on WordPress, Webflow, React, or custom HTML. Publishers who’ve been most reluctant to try it tend to find that part the most surprising.

Whether conversational article layers become a standard format or stay a differentiator for early movers remains unclear. The 29-second baseline, though, probably isn’t just a measurement problem. It’s a signal. Readers are leaving at the moment of highest interest, when they wanted to know more. The gap is in what happens at that moment.

Divee is the widget behind the publisher results described here. One script tag, no CMS changes, live in under 10 minutes. divee.ai

Full Explainer Video: https://tinyurl.com/yxfymsfa

Demo Live on Page: https://tinyurl.com/bdcwd29j

For publishers and broadcasters, trust is not a branding exercise. It is the business model.

Audiences do not subscribe to newspapers, tune into broadcasters or engage with journalism simply because content exists. They do so because they believe the information being presented is true, verified and produced with editorial integrity. In an age of synthetic media, that trust is becoming both more fragile and more valuable.

Deepfake video, AI-generated images and cloned audio are no longer fringe threats but are now sophisticated, scalable and increasingly difficult to detect. According to Digiday, more than 3,000 deepfake incidents were identified in a single month in 2026, a dramatic increase from just a handful of recorded cases in 2020. The problem is no longer hypothetical.

For media owners, the danger is not merely that fake content exists online but that audiences begin to doubt everything.

Once consumers start asking whether a video clip was fabricated, whether an image was manipulated or whether an audio segment was synthetically cloned, the value proposition of journalism itself comes under pressure.

The old phrase “seeing is believing” no longer applies. And when belief disappears, so does engagement, loyalty and willingness to pay.

This is particularly acute for subscription-based publishers and premium broadcasters. Audiences already live in an ecosystem flooded with algorithmically amplified misinformation, AI “slop” and anonymous content farms. The one differentiator professional journalism still possesses is credibility. In my view, the risk for publishers is being “lumped in” with the chaos of social media.

That should alarm every newsroom executive and broadcast leader.

Trust is becoming a measurable business risk

The uncomfortable reality is that AI creators can generate content at astonishing speed and scale, but they cannot generate trust. Journalists can.

Professional reporting still depends on standards that AI systems cannot replicate independently: sourcing, verification, accountability, editorial judgment and ethical responsibility. When mistakes occur, reputable news organisations correct them publicly because their credibility matters. Synthetic content networks have no equivalent incentive structure. This distinction is now becoming commercially critical.

The irony is that while AI threatens trust externally through deepfakes and misinformation, some publishers are also undermining trust internally through careless deployment of generative AI tools. Press Gazette’s tracker of AI journalism mistakes documents a growing list of fabricated quotes, fake contributors and AI-generated articles published by recognised media brands.

Each incident damages more than a single article. It chips away at the implicit contract between newsroom and audience.

Consumers rarely distinguish between one editorial failure and another. To them, every scandal reinforces the suspicion that the information environment itself is unreliable. In that context, verification stops being a back-office editorial process and becomes a visible product feature.

Verification needs to move upstream in the newsroom

This is why deepfake detection and content authentication tools are rapidly becoming essential infrastructure for modern media organisations. The issue is no longer whether publishers should invest in verification technologies, but whether they can afford not to.

IdentifAI, where I am an advisor, argues that trust itself must now be actively defended. Their analysis highlights a troubling reality: humans detect deepfake images with only limited accuracy, while high-quality synthetic video fools viewers most of the time. In other words, newsroom instinct and manual review alone are no longer sufficient safeguards.

That changes the economics of journalism.

Historically, verification happened largely behind the scenes. Today, audiences increasingly want evidence that verification has occurred. They want provenance, authentication and transparency around what is real. The Reuters Institute has already forecast growing demand for visible verification in journalism as audiences search for trustworthy sources in an AI-saturated environment.

For broadcasters especially, the stakes are enormous. A single manipulated clip aired during breaking news could damage decades of carefully built reputation. Unlike social platforms, legacy media organisations have spent generations constructing audience confidence. That accumulated trust is an asset on the balance sheet, even if accountants cannot quantify it directly. And like any asset, it requires protection.

The next competitive advantage in media will not simply be speed, scale or even exclusives. It will be demonstrable authenticity.

Publishers and broadcasters that can prove their journalism is verified, authenticated and humanly accountable will stand apart from the wider information disorder. Those that fail to build verification into workflows, standards and audience communication risk becoming indistinguishable from the synthetic noise surrounding them.

The future of journalism may well depend on a paradox: AI will help create the trust crisis, but AI-powered verification tools will also help solve it.

Still, technology alone is not enough. Trust ultimately rests with people — editors, reporters, producers and publishers willing to defend standards even when speed and economics push in the opposite direction.

Because in the end, journalism’s greatest competitive advantage is not content production.

It is belief.

Tom Bowman, Advisor, IdentifAI

About: IdentifAI is one of the most advanced and well-founded deepfake detection companies. Proudly European, formed in 2024 we are fast growing and already have many accolades. We use de-generative models to detect AI-generated content across images, voice and video. We defend the human right to recognise reality.

Today’s Long Read is a teardown of David Homan’s new book, ‘Orchestrating Connection: How to Build Purposeful Community’. His central argument? Audience reach and size do not prove a publisher has a resilient audience. Genuine connection can only be forged through repeated value exchange, trust and the intentional design of relationships. Put bluntly, “There’s no such thing as a massive audience. There’s only person to person.”

Let’s jump in…

• Freemium Is Becoming The Dominant Media Monetisation Model

  As advertising weakens and subscription growth slows, leading media analyst Juan Señor argues that combining free access for scale, with premium tiers for revenue stability, is now the optimal model. BUT: “Successful freemium models require a far more deliberate approach to content & product development.” Juan’s Innovation Report 2026/27 is out now…

• Vox Media Splits Into Two, James Murdoch Takes Half

  Much has been written about James Murdoch’s takeover of New York magazine, Vox Media Podcast Network, and Vox itself. They'll be led by current Vox Media CEO Jim Bankoff, who clearly knows where the skeletons lie. The remaining brands — Eater, Popsugar, SB Nation, The Dodo, and The Verge — will spin off into a separate company. The internal memo is worth reading…

• The Guardian Posts Record U.S. Revenue of $81M

  The Guardian's U.S. operation generated $81M in revenue in its latest fiscal year, the highest level since launch 15 years ago. Reader donations make up 70%, ads around 25%. Ten years ago, the brand was hemorrhaging cash and only 8% of its revenue came from outside the UK — that’s now 40%. The bigger story? The Guardian has carved a niche in chasing reader donations…

• The Great Digital Media Valuation Collapse

  A leading M&A exec told me earlier this year that they’d moved away from media. Why? No value. VC capital that helped back digital publishing businesses has also dried up, with only family offices and wealthy individuals willing to step in (à la James Murdoch). Buyers are now prioritising profitability, niche audiences and intellectual property over scale…

• Hearst’s Weather Coverage Is Among Its Biggest Converters

  Such has been the success of SF Chronicle’s weather coverage in turning readers into subs, Hearst is expanding the model across its portfolio. The reason it works? It layers useful information on top of the forecasts such as what storms, fires, floods and heat mean for readers’ homes, commutes and safety. Includes local forecasts, live blogs, evacuation maps, weather trackers, address-level data, text alerts…

• AI Mode Queries Are Doubling Every Quarter

  A new report from Google - download here - says AI Mode has passed one billion monthly users globally, with queries more than doubling every quarter since launch. Search is becoming broader, moving further from keywords and links, and closer to in-depth answers, recommendations and completed tasks. Ezra Eeman writes, “Search is evolving from an information layer to a utility layer.”

• The Economist Is Testing Content Read By AI Agents

  Josh Muncke, VP of GenAI at The Economist Group, says that the publisher is preparing for ‘a world with two versions of the web’. In anticipation, it’s already testing new ways of structuring content: one optimised for deep, human reading experiences, and another where ‘agents want clear structure, questions and answers’. Related: Brian Solis’ keynote at DE{CODE} 2026 — view here.

• Who What Wear’s Affiliate Lessons

  Women’s lifestyle publisher, Who What Wear, has grown from an email newsletter to a $130M brand by building its business around product recommendations. With retail media one of the UK’s fastest-growing ad segments (up 17.5% to £3.8Bn), Poppy Nash shares her insights on how publishers can grow their retail media & affiliate revenue. Related: AI shopping agents less swayed by traditional tactics

• How to Become a Preferred Source in Search & Discover

  With Google rolling out ‘Preferred Sources’ globally — letting readers select their favourite publishers — US consultant, Eric Shanfelt, has written a short guide showing how to add your media site as a Google Preferred Source. TL;DR: You need to add your publication name and URL in Google Publisher Center. Several publishers have also created guides to help readers, for example The Northern Times…

• More Than 340 Local News Outlets Are Blocking The Internet Archive

  McClatchy, Advance Local, Tribune Publishing and other major newspaper chains are now restricting the nonprofit’s archiving bots. Why? Concerns that their journalism is not just being preserved in public archives, but scraped to train AI with no recompense. Quote: “Lots of different historical and legal and economic issues are colliding in this situation”. Journalists aren’t happy…

In partnership with Bridged, WNIP has created Media Genie - a smarter way to explore 17 years of publishing insight. Ask a question about the media business and get a direct answer grounded in WNIP’s archive. 👇

• AI Tool: Topview Agent V2

  AI generated videos demand a suite of tools including a script tool, voiceover tool, image generator, and an editor to stitch it all together. Topview puts it all into one solution, powered by Seedance 2.0, and refines everything through spoken prompts. Explainer video. P.S. Higgsfield.ai is a comparable tool but more complex. #outofmydepth

• Report: AI for Value Creation (B2B)

  Collingwood’s latest report argues that AI is not about adding shiny tools, but about making B2B media businesses more valuable and harder to replace. Their advice? Get your data clean, structured and protected as a priority, then work out how AI is changing the markets your customers operate in. Free to download…

• Event: World News Media Congress

  WAN-IFRA’s Congress is one of the year’s standout publishing events. Three days of in-depth insights, learnings and networking followed by a Paris Study Tour of French publishers including Les Echos–Le Parisien Group, AFP (Agence France-Presse), Le Monde Group and Le Figaro Group. | Marseille 1-3 June | P.S. Worth attending even if you don’t cover news…

Why Audience Size Is the Wrong Metric — and What Publishers Should Measure Instead

A new book on purposeful community-building is not aimed at publishers, but its central argument addresses one of the industry’s most persistent problems: reach is not the same as relationship value.

David Homan is a New York-based author whose work centres on trust, introductions and the design of meaningful networks. His new book, Orchestrating Connection: How to Build Purposeful Community in a Tribal World, co-authored with Noah Askin, is not written for media businesses per se. But the core argument is one publishers need to hear.

Homan’s central point is that genuine connection is not created by audience size, follower counts or contact databases. It is created through trust, repeated value exchange and the intentional design of relationships.

“There’s no such thing as a big or small network, or a massive audience. There’s only person to person.” — David Homan

Reach Is a Weak Proxy for Publishing Value

The media industry has spent two decades optimising for scale: search traffic, social reach, newsletter lists, pageviews and registrations. Those measures still have value, but they do not prove that a publisher has a resilient audience. They prove that the publisher can reach people, not that those people will return, pay, refer others or help the business grow.

The commercial question is not how many people a publisher reaches. It is what that reach enables. Does it create habit? Does it generate subscription intent, event participation or useful first-party data?

These questions are becoming more urgent as discovery weakens. Search is changing, social distribution is fragmenting, and AI interfaces are increasingly answering queries without returning users to original sources. Relationship depth is becoming a strategic asset, not a soft ‘nice to have’ audience goal.

Contacts Are Not Relationships

One of Homan’s biggest distinctions is between having contacts and having relationships. Many media companies have large databases of known users, but the stronger question is not how many known users a publisher has, but which readers participate, refer, renew, contribute expertise or bring others into the brand.

This fundamentally shifts how publishers should segment audiences. Instead of grouping readers by demographics or content preference alone, publishers should identify the connectors inside their audience: readers, members, sources and event attendees who create value for others, not just consume it.

These are the people who forward newsletters with context, bring colleagues to events or contribute specialist knowledge. They matter commercially because they demonstrate that the publisher sits inside a live network rather than simply in front of an audience.

A further lesson from Homan is that connection depends on understanding what people actually need. Most publishers are better at showing and telling than asking. They publish, promote and target, but often lack a feedback loop capturing what readers and members are trying to solve. Without it, publishing remains too dependent on guessing what people want and measuring the reaction afterwards.

Community Products Are Often Still Broadcast

Many publishers will argue that they already have community products: newsletters, events, memberships, private briefings, reader forums. But Homan’s framework exposes a common weakness: many are still broadcast products with community language attached.

A newsletter that sends content is not necessarily a community. An event that fills a room is not necessarily a network. The test is whether the format enables people to do something they could not do alone.

“Publishing as a whole is putting a product into a digital or physical shelf and hoping somebody looks and sees it.” — David Homan

The stronger model is to involve the audience before the product is sold. Reader panels, expert briefings and member previews create stronger pre-launch demand than a conventional marketing push and give publishers better signals about what audiences actually value.

Trust Is Built Through Behaviour, Not Brand Messaging

Homan’s book is organised around principles including curiosity, generosity and vulnerability. Curiosity means listening to readers before deciding what to sell them. Generosity means offering useful access or insight before asking for a subscription. Vulnerability means being more open about editorial process and product decisions where appropriate.

Trust is not built by claiming “trusted journalism”. It is built when readers repeatedly experience competence, honesty and reciprocity. Registration, payment, event attendance and referrals all require confidence that the relationship is worth maintaining, and that confidence is earned through behaviour, not messaging.

Bottom Line

Orchestrating Connection reframes community as deliberate relationship rather than passive audience sentiment.

As platform discovery weakens, publishers that rely on borrowed reach remain exposed. The practical shift is from broadcasting to asking: understanding what readers and partners are trying to achieve, then building products that connect those needs to editorial and commercial value.

Hat tip: Monojoy Bhattacharjee, David Homan, Ezra Eeman, Paul Gerbino, Algarve Evolution, Monchique PT, Fantic Caballero 500

David Homan is a New York-based entrepreneur and author whose work centres on trust, introductions and the design of meaningful networks. His new book, Orchestrating Connection: How to Build Purposeful Community in a Tribal World, co-authored with Noah Askin, is not written for media businesses. But its core argument is one publishers need to hear.

Homan’s central point is that genuine connection is not created by audience size, follower counts or contact databases. It is created through trust, repeated value exchange and the intentional design of relationships.

“There’s no such thing as a big or small network, or a massive audience. There’s only person to person.” — David Homan

Reach Is a Weak Proxy for Publishing Value

The media industry has spent two decades optimising for scale: search traffic, social reach, newsletter lists, pageviews and registrations. Those measures still have value, but they do not prove that a publisher has a resilient audience. They prove that the publisher can reach people, not that those people will return, pay, refer others or help the business grow.

The key commercial question is not how many people a publisher reaches. It is what that reach enables. Does it create habit? Does it generate subscription intent, event participation or useful first-party data?

These questions are becoming more urgent as discovery weakens. Search is changing, social distribution is fragmenting, and AI interfaces are increasingly answering queries without returning users to original sources. Relationship depth is becoming a strategic asset, not a soft ‘nice to have’ audience goal.

Contacts Are Not Relationships

One of Homan’s biggest distinctions is between having contacts and having relationships. Many media companies have large databases of known users, but the stronger question is not how many known users a publisher has, but which readers participate, refer, renew, contribute expertise or bring others into the brand.

This fundamentally shifts how publishers should segment audiences. Instead of grouping readers by demographics or content preference alone, Homan argues that publishers should identify the connectors inside their audience: readers, members, sources and event attendees who create value for others, not just consume it.

These are the people who forward newsletters with context, bring colleagues to events or contribute specialist knowledge. They matter commercially because they demonstrate that the publisher sits inside a live network rather than simply in front of an audience.

A further lesson from Homan is that connection depends on understanding what people actually need. Most publishers are better at showing and telling than asking. They publish, promote and target, but often lack a feedback loop capturing what readers and members are trying to solve. Without it, publishing remains too dependent on guessing what people want and measuring the reaction afterwards.

Community Products Are Often Still Broadcast

Many publishers will argue that they already have community products: newsletters, events, memberships, private briefings, reader forums. But Homan’s framework exposes a common weakness: many are still broadcast products with community language attached.

A newsletter that sends content is not necessarily a community, and an event that fills a room is not necessarily a network. The test is whether the format enables people to do something they could not do alone.

“Publishing as a whole is putting a product into a digital or physical shelf and hoping somebody looks and sees it.” — David Homan

The stronger model is to involve the audience before the product is sold. Reader panels, expert briefings and member previews create stronger pre-launch demand than a conventional marketing push and give publishers clearer signals about what audiences actually value.

Trust Is Built Through Behaviour, Not Brand Messaging

Homan’s book is organised around principles including curiosity, generosity and vulnerability. Curiosity means listening to readers before deciding what to sell them. Generosity means offering useful access or insight before asking for a subscription. Vulnerability means being more open about editorial process and product decisions where appropriate.

Trust is not built by claiming “trusted journalism”. It is built when readers repeatedly experience competence, honesty and reciprocity. Registration, payment, event attendance and referrals all require confidence that the relationship is worth maintaining, and that confidence is earned through behaviour, not messaging.

Bottom Line

Orchestrating Connection reframes community as deliberate relationship design rather than audience sentiment.

As platform discovery weakens, publishers that rely on borrowed reach remain exposed. The practical shift is from broadcasting to asking: understanding what readers and partners are trying to achieve, then building products that connect those needs to editorial and commercial value.

Drawing on audience research in the US, UK and Norway, as well as interviews with publishers including the New York Times, the Guardian, The Economist, the Financial Times, The Times and Sunday Times, and several major European titles, the report identifies a clear strategic shift into video.

Video opens up discovery to a wider audience, pulls podcast brands into YouTube, Spotify and connected TV environments, and creates more attractive advertising inventory. However, it also adds cost, changes workflows and can weaken formats that work precisely because they are intimate and audio-first.

Platform Incentives Are Pulling Podcasts Towards Video

Podcasting originally grew as an open audio format, distributed through RSS and consumed through apps such as Apple Podcasts. This model has not disappeared, but YouTube, Spotify and Apple are making video a far more prominent part of podcast discovery, and publishers are following suit.

By 2024, Spotify had more than 250,000 video podcasts on its platform. Apple announced support for video formats in February 2026. Nina Lassam of the New York Times notes that video discovery is stronger because clips travel across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube Shorts, bringing in audiences that are new and larger.

But although video is easier to clip, easier to recommend and easier to package commercially, it can also pull publishers into a more expensive operating model before they have proved whether the additional reach produces margin, loyalty or paying relationships.

Not Every Podcast Should Become a Video Product

The strongest examples in the Reuters Institute report are selective and specialised. The New York Times has added video versions to shows such as Hard Fork, Popcast and The Ezra Klein Show, but The Daily remains primarily audio. As Lassam explains: “The production of the show is established in audio and our listeners have grown to value the relationship they have with that journalism in audio.”

The Guardian takes a similarly mixed approach. It has a full video version of Football Weekly alongside The Latest, a short evening video update on YouTube, while keeping major audio investigations as audio-first products supported by clips where useful.

Conversational shows are easier to film, clip and distribute. Narrative and investigative podcasts often need a different production process, and filming a successful audio format does not automatically create a successful video format.

Audio Still Protects Habit and Depth

The report’s audience research suggests podcasts are still highly valued for depth, context and routine. Respondents described using them to build knowledge around stories they had encountered elsewhere, fitting listening around commuting, exercise and household tasks where screens are inconvenient.

Video can strengthen the relationship between hosts and audiences, particularly where personality matters, but audio retains a clear consumer role because it does not require visual attention, which is precisely why podcasts became useful in the first place.

There is also a territorial difference that matters commercially. US audiences appear more open to video podcasting, while the Reuters Institute found more resistance in smaller European countries where audio platforms and public service broadcasters remain stronger. A publisher copying US video habits into a smaller European market like Norway may find the economics do not work anywhere near as well.

The ad market adds another layer. Programmatic digital audio ad spend is forecast to reach $2.59bn this year, giving publishers another reason to treat audio as a live commercial format rather than a legacy listening habit. But the same discipline applies: more automated demand can improve monetisation, but it can tempt publishers to create inventory before they have proved audience value.

Cheap Production Can Cut Both Ways

Chris Stone, who has grown podcast and video audiences at publishers including the Telegraph, the Evening Standard and the New Statesman, says publishers tend to professionalise maturing formats, adding studios, lighting, process and cost, often before the audience or revenue case is proven.

“My hunch is that, as the premium layer of podcasting becomes increasingly conventional, more shows will develop a deliberately rough aesthetic, returning to podcasting’s indie roots either in reaction against the established norms, or in recognition that you don’t need a budget and production team to build something. It’s the internet. You can just start.”

— Chris Stone, Podcast Strategy Weekly

But a lean show built around a real voice is very different from automated audio created simply to fill ad inventory. Meta Media reports that 39% of new podcast streams created over a recent nine-day period were AI-generated. Ominously, it heralds the disruptive emergence of a new AI generated audio economy, where synthetic voices and automated scripts can flood small niches cheaply enough to pick up programmatic ad revenue. It’s been happening on YouTube for months - case in point? Financial commentator, John AG.

The premium opportunity for publishers is to use AI to increase the value of human reporting while keeping the audience-facing product accountable, edited and recognisably human. PRISA Media offers a standout example, using AI transcription across its audio operation to make content searchable, reusable and more commercially productive without displacing editorial judgement.

Key takeaway

News podcasting is becoming more commercially valuable, but also easier to over-engineer. Video has a clear role in discovery, advertising and personality-led formats, but audio still protects routine, engagement depth and low-friction use.

The risk is not too little video. It is professionalising the format so heavily that cost runs ahead of audience value, while the bottom of the market fills with synthetic audio built only to monetise cheap attention.

The more sustainable path is a disciplined middle ground: specialised shows for highly engaged audiences, with video, AI and production spend added only where they strengthen the commercial case.

I feel privileged to be a judge for the Publisher Podcast Awards taking place this July. Over the years, the quality of publisher podcasts has improved beyond all recognition. 2026’s entries are simply knockout with barely a wafer-thin mint to separate them (©John Cleese).

Staying on the topic, this week’s Long Read is a teardown of a new Reuters Institute report which finds news podcasts moving into video with considerable success. But which shows are worth the extra investment? And do publishers have the bandwidth?

Let’s jump in…

• Le Monde Dominates ChatGPT-Driven Audience Referrals

  A banger of a story out of France: research shows ChatGPT directed 9.9M visits to French news sites during 2025, with Le Monde alone capturing 26% of them. Why? “We measured the redistribution of outbound traffic from ChatGPT and other AI chatbots to news sites. The main finding: bilateral agreements with OpenAI play a central role.” P.S. Le Monde is all in with OpenAI…

• Google Tells Publishers Not To Change SEO For AI Search

  Google has published new guidance on how websites should prepare for GenAI search. The key lesson? Clear, authoritative, well-structured content still wins, although keywords and their variants are dying as AI systems get better at understanding context and meaning. Search Engine Journal tears it all down…it’s all about “non-commodity, unique content”.

• EU’s Top Court: News Snippets Are No Longer Free

  The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has ruled that Meta must compensate publishers ‌for using snippets of their news articles. It opens the door for similar claims against other platforms, with tech giants ordered to hand over any data needed to calculate “fair value”. P.S. The ruling also ensures platforms can no longer strangle publishers by demoting their content during negotiations…

• Future plc Profits Crater 67%, Google Traffic Falls Blamed

  One of the UK’s top lifestyle & tech publishers, Future plc’s half-year results show just how badly the publisher relies on Google search referrals — website sessions fell 15%, ecomm dropped 24%, and profits plummeted 67%. Its turnaround plan? Selling AI optimisation services, building better ecomm tools, and turning its flagship brands into ‘destinations’. Quote: “Could have been worse”…

• SheerLuxe’s AI Influencers Come Under Fire

  Staying with Future plc, its fashion site SheerLuxe has suffered a backlash after creating four AI-generated influencers to help sell its makeup and clothes. The problem? ‘Gigi’, ‘Eden’, ‘Reem’ and ‘Brooke’ all portray unattainable ideals of physical perfection, but more worrying is that there are no disclaimers they are fictional characters. The sheerluxelab Instagram feed makes readers’ feelings clear…

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• Ignore Reddit At Your Peril

  With 125Bn monthly views and 490M weekly active users, Reddit continues to be misused as a link dumping ground. At last week’s Newsrewired AMA, Oliver Wrighton and Rachel Duffy had a clear message for publishers using Reddit: build moderator relationships first, treat it as a community rather than a traffic pipe, and the returns will follow. P.S. Reddit Pro for publishers is now available in beta…

• The Era Of Google’s “Ten Blue Links” Is Over

  At Google’s I/O presentation this week, the biggest development was the addition of new AI agents to Google Search. Any distinction that existed between Google’s Gemini AI chatbot and its search bar is evaporating. For publishers, it means users are increasingly being kept inside Google’s ecosystem and not being referred elsewhere. Google calls it the “intelligent search box”…Hmmm.

• Why People Inc. May Launch a Housing Community

  People Inc. is working on 19 “Inversion” projects designed to turn its brands into standalone businesses beyond ads and subscriptions, including Southern Living-branded tea and, possibly, a Southern Living housing community. It’s also experimenting with memberships, social shopping tools, a recipe locker, and a People app where game-playing sessions often last around 20 minutes.

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  Survey Participation Request

  Tickaroo’s latest survey explores how journalism is changing through the experiences of those entering the industry now, alongside those already working in it. Building on last year’s focus on student and early-career journalists, this year expands the dataset for greater depth but keeps emerging voices at its core. Take part here.

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• Publicis Buys LiveRamp: Publishers Lose A Neutral Player

  Publicis has agreed to buy LiveRamp for $2.2Bn, adding a key data matching and clean room business to its tech stack. LiveRamp is used by publishers to unify disjointed customer data across subs, newsletters, sites and territories so they can sell better-targeted audiences to brands. But how comfortable will they be using ad infrastructure now owned by an agency group they negotiate with?

• Media Jobs: AI Scanners Prefer AI-Written Résumés

  Publishers with open job positions are using AI to scan CVs, but many applicants are using AI to write them. The result? The AI scanner will prefer the CVs written by its own model, recognising and rewarding its own dialect. In short, many applicants are not losing to a better candidate, but to the one who paid Anthropic $20. DeepSeek-V3 picked its own résumés 69% more often, ChatGPT 45%…

• AI Tool: Podsplice

  Neatly segueing with this week’s theme, Podsplice creates 4K remote video podcasts, screenshares, and shorts. Built by the AI Growth Guys: “Most recording tools force creators into one of two bad choices: easy tools with weak features, or powerful tools that feel like cockpit software. Podsplice is built to be neither.” i.e. it’s cheap and simple enough for even me to use…

• Webinar: Who Gets to Crawl?

  Organised by WAN-IFRA and subtitled, ‘Publisher control in the age of AI crawlers and agents’, this webinar brings together three heavyweights — Ezra Eeman, Kevin Anderson and Sam Else — to look at how AI crawler behaviour is evolving, and the emerging infrastructure layer around bots, agents, and machine-readable rights. 30 June 2026 | 4pm UK, 11am EDT.

• Event: Axios AI+ Summit

  Taking place in New York City during NY Tech Week, Axios’ AI Summit explores the future of AI and its next wave of innovation. Includes YouTube vlogger Casey Neistat, IBM’s CEO Arvind Krishna, Yahoo’s CEO Jim Lanzone, and others. 3rd June 2026 | 1pm - 7pm ET | NYC

Podcasting’s Video Shift Complicates the Economics

A Reuters Institute report finds news podcasts moving into video, leaving publishers with a harder commercial question: which shows justify the extra cost?

Reuters Institute’s latest report, The Changing Shape and New Economics of News Podcasting, finds that podcasting is being reshaped by video distribution, personality-led formats and changing business models.

Drawing on audience research in the US, UK and Norway, as well as interviews with publishers including the New York Times, the Guardian, The Economist, the Financial Times, The Times and Sunday Times, and several major European titles, the report identifies a clear strategic shift into video.

Video opens up discovery to a far wider audience, pulls podcast brands into YouTube, Spotify and connected TV environments, and creates more attractive advertising inventory. However, it also adds cost, changes workflows and can weaken formats that work precisely because they are intimate and audio-first.

Platform Incentives Are Pulling Podcasts Towards Video

Podcasting originally grew as an open audio format, distributed through RSS and consumed through apps such as Apple Podcasts. This model has not disappeared, but YouTube, Spotify and Apple are making video a far more prominent part of podcast discovery, and publishers are following suit.

By 2024, Spotify had more than 250,000 video podcasts on its platform. Apple announced support for video formats in February 2026. Nina Lassam of the New York Times notes that video discovery is stronger because clips travel across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube Shorts, bringing in audiences that are new and larger.

But although video is easier to clip, easier to recommend and easier to package commercially, it can also pull publishers into a more expensive operating model before they have proved whether the additional reach produces margin, loyalty or paying relationships.

Not Every Podcast Should Become a Video Product

The strongest examples in the Reuters Institute report are selective and specialised. The New York Times has added video versions to shows such as Hard Fork, Popcast and The Ezra Klein Show, but The Daily remains primarily audio. As Lassam explains: “The production of the show is established in audio and our listeners have grown to value the relationship they have with that journalism in audio.”

The Guardian takes a similarly mixed approach. It has a full video version of Football Weekly alongside The Latest, a short evening video update on YouTube, while keeping major audio investigations as audio-first products supported by clips where needed.

Conversational shows are easier to film, clip and distribute. Narrative and investigative podcasts often need a different production process, and filming a successful audio format does not automatically create a successful video format.

Cheap Production Can Cut Both Ways

Chris Stone, who has grown podcast and video audiences at publishers including the Telegraph, the Evening Standard and the New Statesman, says publishers tend to professionalise maturing formats, adding studios, lighting, process and cost, often before the audience or revenue case is proven.

“My hunch is that, as the premium layer of podcasting becomes increasingly conventional, more shows will develop a deliberately rough aesthetic, returning to podcasting’s indie roots either in reaction against the established norms, or in recognition that you don’t need a budget and production team to build something. It’s the internet. You can just start.”

— Chris Stone, Podcast Strategy Weekly

But a lean show built around a real voice is very different from automated audio created simply to fill ad inventory. Meta Media reports that 39% of new podcast streams created over a recent nine-day period were AI-generated.

Ominously, it heralds the disruptive emergence of a new AI-generated audio economy, where synthetic voices and automated scripts can flood small niches cheaply enough to pick up programmatic ad revenue. It’s been happening on YouTube for months: case in point? Financial commentator, John AG.

The premium opportunity for publishers is to use AI to increase the value of human reporting while keeping the audience-facing product well edited and human.

Key takeaway

The risk is not too little video but professionalising the format so heavily that cost runs ahead of audience value, while the bottom of the market fills with synthetic audio built solely to monetise cheap attention.

The more sustainable path is a disciplined middle ground: specialised shows for highly engaged audiences, with video, AI and production spend added only where they strengthen the commercial case.

Hat tip: Monojoy Bhattacharjee, Eleven Writing, Jeanine Skowronski, Giselle Ho, Ceren Marshall, Srishti Bahadur, Ayamonte ES, Yamaha FZ8

The digital ecosystem has been filled with AI-generated content at a rate that many of us would never have anticipated. Synthetic output seems to be everywhere, with unstimulating articles ten-a-penny and over-processed images and videos at every turn. Social media in particular, seems to have become inundated with an endless stream of off-kilter content that adds little of value to the world.

But on the open web, AI slop has also become a huge problem very quickly. AI-generated news sites are popping up all the time and flooding the internet with hundreds of articles every day. Research has found that between mid-2024 and mid-2025, there was a 717% increase in the creation of AI-generated websites. This explosion of slop causes publisher revenues to be squeezed and advertisers to waste budget. All the while, consumers see their online experience degraded.

On the surface, it does feel like everyone loses, and premium publishers could be forgiven for despairing at the situation. But this cloud could very well come with a significant silver lining. It’s my view that the spread of AI slop may turn out to be one of the best things to happen to premium publishers in a long time.

Trust in AI-generated content is low

There’s a growing body of evidence that shows trust in AI-generated content is declining, especially when it comes to marketing content and that produced by social media creators. But this is spreading to news media too. There is a perception among consumers that generative AI is being widely used in news media, according to a report by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, with more than half believing that it is ‘always’ or ‘often’ deployed in this industry sector. Only 26% of people questioned for the same study think that this use of generative AI will make their experience of interacting with news media better.

This backlash will favour publishers who invest in real reporting. When low-quality content is everywhere, high-quality content becomes scarce. This increases the value of quality. Human journalism, produced by people who take pride in their output, with thoughtful analysis and substantive verification processes, is brought into sharp contrast against a backdrop of slop. Now more than ever, publishers need to make sure they are completely transparent about whether they use AI in their content creation, and if so, how.

Advertisers, already conscious of how they may or may not use generative AI in their own creative processes, will be increasingly sensitive about being criticised for producing, or being seen alongside AI slop. The quality of editorial content reflects on the brand, and an advertiser that chooses to appear on a platform saturated with AI-generated noise is making a statement, whether it is intentional or not. Publishers that can steer clear of any association with AI slop will be well positioned to take advantage.

The AI slop backlash may take time to bear fruit

The benefits of the backlash won’t arrive overnight, though. This is a structural change that is likely to play out over the next five years or more. But as AI-generated content continues to scale, consumer scepticism is likely to grow, and platforms that allow AI slop to proliferate will bear reputational costs. Publishers that maintain their standards and invest in human creativity will see growing audiences and, over time, increasing advertiser demand.

The case for investing in human journalism has never been easier to make; human-produced content can’t be reliably replicated at scale by AI, and audiences will reward the sources that provide it. The big challenge for publishers is guiding advertisers to follow these audiences.

With many marketing teams still firmly focused on showing immediate return on ad spend, premium publishers need to step up their efforts to present their platforms as brand-building environments, not just performance ones. Brands like Lego and Mercedes have built decades of equity by treating advertising as a long-term investment in perception rather than a short-term conversion mechanism. Brands following that model today are making the better choice, and publishers need to help them reach this conclusion.

Brands that can see beyond the narrow confines of ROAS and basic attribution models will get a better view of the big picture and come to recognise that trust is built slowly rather than bought cheaply. And publishers that support marketers in achieving outcomes that are genuinely going to move the needle such as brand lift and attention, will have a much more persuasive argument if they can show their content is driving high levels of engagement.

AI slop will get worse before it gets better

These are difficult changes for marketers under pressure to show quarterly results, but they have to realise that the alternative of chasing cheap impressions on platforms crowded with synthetic content is a short-term approach with diminishing returns.

The AI content wave will keep growing, and AI slop will get worse before it gets better. As it does, the audience for serious, human journalism will become more defined, more loyal, and more valuable to premium publishers.

Ed Bristow, VP Business Development EMEA, Adlook

About: Adlook is a next-generation media technology company specialising in reaching audiences on the open internet and CTV – finding the right target groups where standard methods either under-deliver or outright fail.

Through innovative and groundbreaking Audience solutions, paired with cutting-edge Deep-Learning algorithms, Adlook restores programmatic advertising to its original vision: maximising efficiency and delivering real, effective media to our clients. Learn more at www.adlook.com

Most UK publishers believe they are compliant with data protection law because they have taken legal advice, updated their privacy notices and put policies somewhere on the website. However, that is not the same as being able to prove how personal data is actually collected, used and shared across their media business.

The Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 is now exposing that gap. From 19 June 2026, publishers must establish a formal data protection complaints process, which means complaints now land with the publisher first and must be acknowledged within 30 days of receipt. Furthermore, you must investigate it and respond in full without “undue delay”, as well as informing the complainant how to escalate to the ICO if they’re not satisfied. Finally, you must have an accessible way for people to submit complaints – including online.

The new enforcement powers are significant. The ICO can now compel witnesses to attend interviews. It can demand technical reports from organisations revealing how many complaints or data breaches it has suffered, with a maximum fine of £17.5m / 4% of global turnover.

What regulators are now looking for

At the same time, regulators across Europe are taking a much closer look at whether organisations can actually explain what they are doing with personal data under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), including what is collected, why it is used and how long it is retained, and this is where a lot of publishers start to struggle.

In most cases, the problem is not deliberate misuse of data but the way systems have grown over time across subscriptions, advertising, analytics and personalisation, which leaves gaps, inconsistencies and assumptions that are difficult to defend when challenged.

This plays out clearly in practice, where publishers use personal data collected for one purpose, such as competitions or subscriptions, and then reuse it for marketing or advertising without properly evidencing consent or checking whether the new use breaches the purpose limitation principle.

A different version of the same problem can be seen in how ad tech systems operate. In 2019, leading UK publishers reduced their use of open ad exchange bidding after concerns that user data was being shared too widely through real-time bidding.

What this allows publishers to do

The DUAA does create more flexibility in how personal data can be reused where that use aligns with reasonable expectations, which gives publishers more room to make better use of the data they already hold, particularly around audience development and retention, provided those decisions are properly documented, expert advice has been taken where needed and the organisation’s risk appetite has not been exceeded.

There is also more scope to use artificial intelligence in areas such as content recommendation and audience segmentation where the impact on individuals is limited, although the requirement to apply data protection by design and default still applies, which means these decisions need to be thought through at the point systems are built rather than corrected later.

What publishers need to decide

However, marketing remains exposed under PECR because the way user data is collected through cookies differs between analytics used for user experience and advertising or third-party tracking, which still require proper consent.

For publishers using subscriber databases, newsletters and outbound campaigns, that creates direct financial exposure, with accountability sitting at director level.

This leaves three practical options:

• Continue relying on internal teams, which works where expertise and capacity exist but often leads to inconsistent application and gaps.

• Build an internal data protection function, as Reach plc has done, which provides control but introduces significant cost and ongoing maintenance as regulation and enforcement evolve.

• Bring in external support to take ownership of the function and provide current expertise without building a full internal team. This is an increasingly popular option - a full team of privacy experts readily available at any time, without the overhead of a full-time internal team.

In conclusion, the DUAA has made poor data ownership harder to hide. Right now, you could be relying on policies that say the right things while your teams make data decisions nobody has properly recorded, tested or evidenced. This is what the ICO will no longer tolerate.

Andy Chesterman, Managing Director, Privacy Helper

About: Privacy Helper is one of the UK’s leading privacy consultancies, supporting clients across the UK, the European Union and globally. We make General Data Protection Regulation compliance straightforward through a practical, zero-fuss approach.

We are pro-business and understand that organisations need to grow, hit their targets and use data confidently while still meeting their data protection obligations. That is why firms across the UK and Europe trust us as advisers. We interpret risk appetite, give clear direction and work with teams to help them achieve their goals compliantly.

Last week Forbes was hit with a $10M fine for falling foul of California’s Invasion of Privacy Act and its use of ‘illegal’ trackers. Nearly 4M Californian visitors to Forbes.com are now eligible for payouts of between $32 and $189 each.

Over on this side of the pond, UK publishers are sleepwalking into similarly perilous territory. The Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 changes how reader complaints are handled: from 19 June 2026, publishers will need to deal with data protection complaints themselves before the ICO steps in. Today’s Long Read looks at what that means in practice, and how publishers can insulate themselves from fines of up to £17.5M.

Let’s crack on…

• Forbes Media Settles Class Action $10 Million Lawsuit

  California’s Penal Code Section 638.51 has clobbered Forbes for its use of LinkedIn and Microsoft trackers on Forbes.com. The plaintiffs successfully argued that each embedded third-party tracker (which activates when a visitor loads a page) operates as a de facto ‘pen register’ — the same category as a wiretap. Email tracking pixels are next on California’s hit list…

• New York Times Fabricated Poilievre Quote With AI

  With 13M subs and $2.82bn in yearly revenue, you'd think the NYT could afford a fact checker. Or hand the task to one of its 2,500 journalists. Nope. Its use of AI to ‘paraphrase’ a leading Canadian politician’s quote gave it a completely new meaning, and not in a good way — falsely claiming floor crossers were “turncoats”. Careless or suspicious? Asking for a Canadian.

• INMA World Congress: Four Publishers’ Agentic AI Playbooks

  Freshly back from Berlin’s INMA World Congress, John Rahim outlines how publishers are starting to use agentic AI. Early use cases are not slick reader-facing products, but workflow tools: research, coding, marketing, etc. Key takeaway? AI adoption is non-negotiable, but publishers must create the governance, incentives and measurement frameworks to make it work.

• Axios Cuts Output by 22% Yet Increases Page Views 30%

  Axios cut output by 22% in Q1 2026 versus Q1 2025 yet still grew page views by 30%. The key lesson? The publisher stopped producing filler content with no edge, no audience need and no commercial purpose. Basically, it sharpened up, and it’s worked. The ‘Less is More’ strategy is a central theme at the London Publisher Summit in July…

• Mobile Drives at Least 63% of Publisher Site Visits

  Chartbeat’s Q1 2026 research across its publisher clients shows that mobile remains the default reader environment globally. Average audience engagement rose half a second from Q4 to 26.5 seconds. Fast mobile page speeds, low-friction ads, and apps that build habit continue to be key to publisher success.

• TIME Launches Free Interactive Play Hub

  With NYT’s purchase of Wordle looking like one of the strategic acquisitions of the decade (NYT games were played 11bn times in 2025), TIME is hoping to capture similar attention with the launch of TIME Games. The hub includes word games, quizzes, Sudoku, jigsaws and a prediction game based on current events. TIME covers will also become available as physical puzzles and, ahem, ‘fine art’ prints.

• NYT Wants to Turn Its Games Into Live IP

  As TIME takes its first tentative step into games, NYT is pulling further ahead by turning them into live entertainment, TV formats and social products. Cases in point? Its first two-player game, Crossplay, and a deal announced this week with NBC to turn Wordle into a TV game show. It’s also looking at further gaming acquisitions, especially card games and puzzles…

• How Paywall Plus Philanthropy Saved The Philadelphia Inquirer

  Can philanthropy work as a publishing model? Jeff Bezos would say yes, Washington Post staff might disagree. The Philadelphia Inquirer offers a less tarnished version, successfully pairing its paywall with donor funding, channelled through a nonprofit owner. Key takeaway? Philanthropy only works when it strengthens an already solid media business. #LenfestInstitute

• Video: Why AI Agents Could Break the Internet

  Hannah Fry’s brilliant YouTube experiment shows what happens when an AI agent is given a name, a bank card and real-world tasks. The results are funny until they are not: the agent emails public officials, burns money trying to buy paperclips, contacts a journalist, leaks passwords and shows why agentic AI poses a ‘clear and present danger’. You’ve been warned…

• Report: The Event Is No Longer the Product

  Collingwood’s latest benchmark report finds that more than 70% of organisers generate significant income from non-event sources. Publisher live events are now evolving into a continuous engagement cycle, rather than being the centrepiece product itself. P.S. The ones doing this well are building communities around their audience, not around their event dates… [Free to download]

In partnership with Bridged, WNIP has created Media Genie - a smarter way to explore 17 years of publishing insight. Ask a question about the media business and get a direct answer grounded in WNIP’s archive. 👇

• AI Tool: Anijam

  Perhaps the most astounding AI tool I’ve come across this year, Anijam will create a fully animated video, lip-synced, plus a script and character storyboard, using just a single prompt. For publishers, the obvious use case is fast-turnaround explainers, social video, promos and animated content. Also available as an iOS app. Short explainer video. Still in beta…

• Webinar: AI Tools for Automation, Trust & Revenue

  Organised by WAN-IFRA, this session brings together leading solution providers to show how AI is transforming publishing, including helping newsrooms automate workflows, building audience trust, and creating new revenue opportunities. Participants: StiboDX, Choicely, StoryEditor. Free | 19th May | 12:00 CET, 6:00 ET.

• Event: HumanX Amsterdam 2026

  Billed as a ‘high-impact expansion’ of the leading US AI summit, HumanX EMEA brings together 2,500 senior leaders and 100+ global speakers to the Netherlands. The conference focuses on practical, responsible AI implementation as well as curated matchmaking programmes including VentureConnect & SolutionBridge. 22–24 Sept | RAI Amsterdam | €1,599 | 10% off: HX26E_whatsnewinpublishing

Why UK publishers are exposed under the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025

Key provisions of the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 have applied since February 2026, with mandatory complaints handling requirements from 19 June 2026, which means publishers must now take responsibility for how personal data is collected, used and stored in practice. Andy Chesterman explains more…

Most UK publishers believe they are compliant with data protection law because they have taken legal advice, updated their privacy notices and put policies somewhere on the website. However, that is not the same as being able to prove how personal data is actually collected, used and shared across their media business.

The Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 is now exposing that gap. From 19 June 2026, publishers must establish a formal data protection complaints process, which means complaints now land with the publisher first and they must be acknowledged with an attempt at resolution within 30 days.

The new enforcement powers are significant. The ICO can now compel witnesses to attend interviews. It can demand technical reports from organisations revealing how many complaints or data breaches it has suffered, with a maximum fine of £17.5m / 4% of global turnover.

What regulators are now looking for

At the same time, regulators across Europe are taking a much closer look at whether organisations can actually explain what they are doing with personal data under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), including what is collected, why it is used and how long it is retained, and this is where a lot of publishers start to struggle.

In most cases, the problem is not deliberate misuse of data but the way systems have grown over time across subscriptions, advertising, analytics and personalisation, which leaves gaps, inconsistencies and assumptions that are difficult to defend when challenged.

This plays out clearly in practice, where publishers use personal data collected for one purpose, such as competitions or subscriptions, and then reuse it for marketing or advertising without properly evidencing consent or checking whether the new use breaches the purpose limitation principle.

A different version of the same problem can be seen in how ad tech systems operate. In 2019, leading UK publishers reduced their use of open ad exchange bidding after concerns that user data was being shared too widely through real-time bidding.

What this allows publishers to do

The DUAA does create more flexibility in how personal data can be reused where that use aligns with reasonable expectations, which gives publishers more room to make better use of the data they already hold, particularly around audience development and retention, provided those decisions are properly documented, expert advice has been taken where needed and the organisation’s risk appetite has not been exceeded.

There is also more scope to use artificial intelligence in areas such as content recommendation and audience segmentation where the impact on individuals is limited, although the requirement to apply data protection by design and default still applies, which means these decisions need to be thought through at the point systems are built rather than corrected later.

What publishers need to decide

However, marketing remains exposed under PECR because the way user data is collected through cookies differs between analytics used for user experience and advertising or third-party tracking, which still require proper consent.

For publishers using subscriber databases, newsletters and outbound campaigns, that creates direct financial exposure, with accountability sitting at director level.

This leaves three practical options:

• Continue relying on internal teams, which works where expertise and capacity exist but often leads to inconsistent application and gaps.

• Build an internal data protection function, as Reach plc has done, which provides control but introduces significant cost and ongoing maintenance as regulation and enforcement evolve.

• Bring in external support to take ownership of the function and provide current expertise without building a full internal team. This is an increasingly popular option - a full team of privacy experts readily available at any time, without the overhead of a full-time internal team.

In conclusion, the DUAA has made poor data ownership harder to hide. Right now, you could be relying on policies that say the right things while your teams make data decisions nobody has properly recorded, tested or evidenced. This is what the ICO will no longer tolerate.

Andy Chesterman, Managing Director, Privacy Helper

About: Privacy Helper is one of the UK’s leading privacy consultancies, supporting clients across the UK, the European Union and globally. We make General Data Protection Regulation compliance straightforward through a practical, zero-fuss approach.

We are pro-business and understand that organisations need to grow, hit their targets and use data confidently while still meeting their data protection obligations. That is why firms across the UK and Europe trust us as advisers. We interpret risk appetite, give clear direction and work with teams to help them achieve their goals compliantly.

Hat Tip: Monojoy Bhattacharjee, Andy Chesterman, Silves (Art’Aska) PT, Yamaha FZ8

As publishers continue to navigate pressure on display CPMs, the UK market tells a more complex story. According to IAB UK, digital ad spend grew by 10% in 2025, with investment increasingly flowing into formats such as video. Yet display has not kept pace. While it’s tempting to attribute this shift solely to AI-driven changes in search and referral traffic, the reality is more nuanced, with shifting demand, increasing supply, and format fragmentation all playing a role.

Over the past year, values continually swerved against a backdrop of transformation in search, with generative AI tools taking up position as the first, and sometimes the only, port of call for audiences seeking online information. And it quickly became clear that publisher concerns about how they were going to keep the display advertising lights on were justified, with widespread reports of traffic declines.

The advertising ecosystem, however, has always been far too complex to conform to one narrative. While referrals from sources such as Google experienced global dips, analysis across our network shows that traffic volumes maintained 95% stability, suggesting many publishers were still attracting the same numbers of audience eyeballs that would, in theory, maintain solid CPMs and healthy ad spend.

Indeed, according to data from the UK’s Association for Online Publishers (AOP), recent display performance proved especially strong, with AOP members enjoying the highest ad revenue increase in three years and even seeing income outpace subscriptions, indicating that some are enjoying a good balance of ad-based yield and paying-user support.

When added to the broader picture of ongoing trade uncertainty and stubborn inflation across markets, this trend clearly shows that a key element of the display CPM problem is supply and demand. Just as CTV slots are losing value through easier availability, plentiful display supply and static demand have created the perfect conditions for prices to slump, particularly in the UK, where there was no change in overall marketing budgets at the end of 2025.

So how can publishers ensure display remains a key revenue driver, enabling continued investment in high-quality, independent journalism?

Simple steps to maximise the commercial value of display ads

CPMs are tied to inventory value, which is determined by media and audience quality. Aside from AI, the biggest programmatic buzzword in 2025 was curation, where DSPs and SSPs alike sought to trim the fat from available supply to steer the programmatic market towards quality over quantity. To make it onto these curated lists, publishers must ensure they are adhering to advertising best practices.

Most importantly, for an advert to be effective it has to be seen. Viewability and attention are key metrics, and can be boosted by tweaks to page design and the placement of ad slots. Something as simple as a smaller font size, for example, can slow down the speed at which the user scrolls, keeping their gaze fixed for longer. Having ad slots that occupy a fixed position on the page rather than moving out of sight as the user browses increases viewability, while limiting the number of ads on a page means display units are not being pitted against each other for attention.

Keeping ad load in check boosts site performance and improves the user experience, increasing the likelihood that viewers will stay on the page and visit again. While it can be tempting to counter declining display CPMs by increasing ad volume, there is only so far this can be pushed before ad fatigue sets in, resulting in the opposite intended effect. Excessive ad load is also a red flag under Core Web Vitals, Google’s set of user experience metrics that determine whether a page ranks in its search results and Discover feed.

Along with good ad hygiene, publishers must be able to segment their users into targetable audiences and pass them along the bidstream to buyers. Contextual solutions can create targetable audiences through page-level data, while identity solutions allow richer behavioural profiles to be built on a per-user basis by connecting to off-site activity. While exact regulatory requirements vary by region, targeting advertising depends on cookie consent while subtle adjustments to the wording, placement, and timing of consent walls can have a significant impact on whether users accept or reject.

Incentivising account creation, newsletter sign-ups, and polls and surveys provide further avenues for first-party data collection for audience enrichment. This data can also be leveraged for mutually beneficial data collaboration with other publishers, media organisations, retailers, and brands, forming the basis for further enrichment, improved attribution, and commercial partnerships.

Diversify revenues to reduce exposure to display disruption

Display ads are far from the only format available to publishers. Diversifying into rich media, native, and video spreads the risk of CPM decline in any one format, and opens publishers to a wider array of demand sources.

Publishers with a unique value proposition are increasingly deploying subscription models, with AOP members alone making £55 million from paid users last year. Very few publishers with such programs eschew advertising entirely and instead leverage their core, loyal segment of paying customers (who are typically more willing to share insights) to enrich their targetable audience segments. While operational load increases when balancing two revenue strategies, one can be used to uplift the other, and reducing reliance on advertising allows a “less is more” approach to be applied.

Diversifying programmatic auction dynamics can also reduce vulnerability to shocks in the open market. Private marketplaces (PMPs) can be one of publishers’ most powerful levers for controlling programmatic CPMs, however it’s not just a case of ‘flipping a switch’ to reap the benefits. PMPs should be confined to a limited selection of high performing formats or content to prevent the cannibalisation of open programmatic sales.

Publishers without the internal expertise and resources to successfully manage PMP strategy should seek external support from their ad tech partners, with the understanding that this is a shared journey towards quality, rather than a product feature that can be easily turned on.

In 2026, display, when treated as one pillar of a balanced commercial strategy, can continue to be the load bearer for open web monetisation without cracking under the pressure of carrying the entire weight of publisher profitability.

Paula Mora Barrera, Director of Publishers & AdTech Partnerships Growth, Refinery89

About Refinery89

Refinery89 is a leading AdTech platform and the #1 partner for publishers across Europe and LATAM. Bridging the gap between premium supply and global demand through a powerhouse combination of proprietary technology and human expertise.

For publishers, the “Single Tag” and “Monetize APP SDK” provide a seamless, transparent gateway to maximize ad revenue at scale. As a Google Certified Publishing Partner and an active IAB member, Refinery89 is committed to a transparent, scalable, and high-performance digital ecosystem. Refining the future of digital success for partners worldwide.

The repositioning comes at a time when replica distribution, once a useful extension of print, is now a low-growth category facing consolidation, with platforms competing on scale rather than product differentiation. Cafeyn’s acquisition of Readly’s non-Nordic operations, announced this month, is a case in point.

At the same time, publishers looking to build or improve their own digital products already have multiple options, from platform providers such as Pugpig, Twipe and PageSuite to fully in-house builds. Many of these promise flexibility in customisation and low-cost entry points, but they often come with trade-offs: long development timelines and unpredictable cost. Those that are more templated come with limited support and sometimes, underwhelming reader experiences.

Editions+ aims to stand apart by offering a faster, lower-risk path to digital. Its digital solutions are quick to launch, used by millions of readers, and come with the service and guidance of an in-house team. This makes it relevant for publishers looking for a practical, low-effort way to improve their digital edition.

To understand more, I sat down with Evan Morse, Head of Global Business Development at PressReader.

From Replica Edition to Mobile Product

Morse is clear that Editions+ is not a new product, but an evolution of what PressReader has already been doing for years.

“Most replica editions have lacked innovation and technical improvements since their inception,” he says, pointing to the gap between static PDF-style experiences and what audiences now expect on mobile.

To this end, Editions+ keeps the replica at its core, extending it with additional features and formats, powered by PressReader’s proven technology, tested by millions of readers and refined across thousands of publications. These include text-to-speech, translation, improved navigation and search, alongside the ability to integrate video, podcasts and feed-based content.

Taken together, these changes are intended to move the product closer to a full mobile news app rather than a standalone replica experience. The aim, he says, is to “bring those editions up to modern expectations”.

For readers, the change is less about a fundamentally new experience and more about usability. Content is formatted for different devices, navigation is more intuitive, and features such as audio extend how that content can be consumed.

In short, the focus is now less on where the replica is read, and more on how it behaves, particularly on mobile, where expectations around navigation, audio and content formats are higher.

Speed, Simplicity and Low Effort

Editions+ is built to accelerate time-to-market, reducing the time, cost and complexity of launching a high-quality digital product. Yet it provides the support and guidance of an in-house team or premium customisation provider.

Instead of requiring publishers to invest in product, engineering and ongoing development, Editions+ is designed to sit on top of existing workflows, allowing teams to focus on content, audience growth and revenue rather than infrastructure.

“We work to do as little as possible to disrupt their workflow and take care of the hard part on their behalf.” — Evan Morse

The performance case for Editions+ is centred on usage. Morse points to data showing that sessions on apps are typically five times longer than on the web, with e-edition apps seeing four times the screen time of alternatives. Push notifications increase usage by almost 40%, while text-to-speech accounts for 8% of content engagement and around a quarter of total session time.

These shifts point to a more app-like experience, but represent an evolution rather than a wholesale change in product strategy.

Revenue and Reach

Morse also points to enhanced revenue opportunities, including advertising within the edition, banner and interstitial ads, in-app purchases and tiered subscription models. The proposition is straightforward: generate more value from content already being produced.

One example he singles out is the world’s oldest Sunday newspaper and digital newsbrand, The Observer, which has used PressReader’s tech inside its own website to enhance its replica edition and reported growth of 17,000 paid subscribers in the first two months.

He adds that Editions+ is positioned as a way to extend access to international audiences, particularly through translation, which expands potential reach into new markets.

What “Turnkey” Means in Practice

The appeal of Editions+ rests heavily on its “turnkey” positioning — publishers provide content and brand assets, with additional involvement only required where customisation is needed.

In essence, Editions+ offers a way to get a functioning product live quickly, without requiring a full internal build or ongoing product management.

In this way, Editions+ differs from platforms such as Pugpig, Twipe and PageSuite by delivering comparable, full-featured digital experiences without compromising on speed, budget predictability and levels of support. PressReader’s offering is both narrower and sharper. It starts with the replica and builds on top of it, with a fixed set of features and a managed delivery model designed to get something live quickly with minimal internal effort. The trade-off is control and deep, but time-consuming, customisation.

Bottom Line

Editions+ is less a new product than a repositioning of PressReader’s existing offer towards a more complete mobile news experience.

It is an evolution of the replica model, keeping the core product intact while extending it with features and formats aimed at improving usage and monetisation, especially on small screens. Its strengths are speed and simplicity.

For publishers looking for a practical, low-effort way to improve their digital edition, it offers a new option. For those investing in fully owned, highly customised products, it is unlikely to replace what they are already building.

Replica editions have been around for decades, and for the most part they haven't changed. Static PDFs, clunky navigation, limited engagement. Useful, but hardly a growth product.

PressReader thinks that's about to change. Rather than treating the replica as an endpoint, the company is rebuilding it into something closer to a full mobile news experience, layering in audio, translation, and more dynamic formats on top of an existing global distribution model. Today's Long Read examines where Editions+ fits, what it actually changes, and who it's really for.

Let’s get into it…

• Google Rolls Out Preferred Sources to All Publishers

  Google has enabled Preferred Sources globally, letting readers select their favourite publishers rather than being at the whim of a Mountain View algorithm. Several publishers have created guides to help readers - see The Northern Times. Setting it up is straightforward, just add your publication name and URL in Google Publisher Center.

• Publishers Demand Removal From AI Training Archive

  A group of 20 media orgs (McClatchy, BBC, Vox, etc) have opted out of having their content saved in Common Crawl’s online repository. The News/Media Alliance is pushing their case (full letter here), spurred on by an investigation in The Atlantic which showed that Common Crawl’s opt-out registry has more holes than a tea strainer. P.S. OpenAI and Anthropic ‘donate’ to Common Crawl…hmm

• Newspapers Face Tight Supply as Mills Cut Newsprint Production

  With heavily disrupted supply chains, publishers are facing a tightening supply of newsprint which is affecting pagination, print frequency, and margins. Kevin Craig, CEO of PAGE Cooperative, which bulk purchases for 1,200 U.S. newspapers says: “It’s a double-whammy. It’s not only expensive, it’s really hard to find newsprint right now.” The Seattle Times is reducing its page count ‘temporarily’.

• The Ankler Moves Off Substack to Passport

  Automattic, the creator of WordPress, has teamed up with Ben Thompson to build Passport, a new publishing platform aimed at giving subscription media brands far greater control. Once a subscription business needs deeper data access, product flexibility, bundles, marketing tools, etc, Substack’s limits are hard to ignore. The Ankler is client #2…Stratechery #1.

• AI Agents Are Now Pretending To Be Journalists

  A site called The Wire by Acutus has been using AI agents that pose as journalists to solicit quotes from human experts. Who owns the title? It’s murky, but investigators have found links to OpenAI’s $125 million political operation, Targeted Victory, not known for being kind to AI industry critics. The verification of reporters, sources and motives is now a critical newsroom task…

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• How ‘Be Water’ Rewired Italy’s Ageing Media Market

  Founded in 2021, Be Water’s brands reach 8M Italians across platforms without relying on a traditional news site. The model is built around audio, video and film, with 70% of revenue coming from branded content, 8% from membership and further income from its New Media Academy, which offers courses on podcasting and content creation. Average age of employees? Thirty-three.

• The CMS Is Dead. Long Live the Context Management System.

  Traditional CMSs were built to publish finished stories, but AI is pushing publishers towards content systems that understand readers’ daily lives. Once audiences start getting news through AI assistants, publishers will need to structure content for machines that decide what matters before a reader ever sees it. Related: Welcome to the World of Machine Audiences

• 404 Media: A Third of New Websites Are AI-Generated

  Researchers (Stanford, etc) working on data from the Internet Archive have discovered that a third of websites created since 2022 are AI-generated. Key quote: “The most surprising result was that our Truth Decay hypothesis wasn’t confirmed — we were looking for an increase in verifiably untrue statements, which we didn’t find.” The web has also become, “more cheery and less verbose”…

• Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity: Calendar 2026

  A few years ago, I attended Cannes and saw at first hand that the real value comes from the fringe events, side sessions and networking. But where to go? This comprehensive calendar from The Digital Voice, updated in real time, gives the full lowdown and an A-Z of side events. Tip: don’t put ‘champagne’ in the search bar unless you’ve cleared your diary…

• AI Tool: Nuwa Pen

  “Beam me up, Scotty” might show my age, but this pen comes straight from the bridge of Star Trek’s Enterprise. A smart pen on steroids, Nuwa’s triple-camera system in the tip captures every stroke on any paper and beams it into the Nuwa+ app, where your handwriting becomes typed text in 95+ languages. Five-hour battery, USB-C charging case, etc. A journalist’s dream…

  

• Summit: Hacks/Hackers AI x Journalism Summit 2026

  This summit brings together journalists, technologists and product people for two days of workshops, case studies and collaborative sessions. Attendance is capped at 300, with the summit based around AI adoption, tool-building, newsroom workflows and governance. May 14–15 | Baltimore | $195 (Speakers from NYT, Philly Inquirer, Boston Globe, ProPublica, SPIEGEL, etc)

• Event: PurePub.ai

  An online conference focused on AI in publishing workflows, PurePub.ai runs over eleven days with 16 sessions and 47 speakers. Aimed primarily at scientific and educational publishers, many sessions will be useful for all publishers working through similar questions around AI tools, editorial processes and production efficiency. FREE | May 11–22 | Online

Editions+: Why PressReader Is Evolving Its Replica Product Into a Mobile News App

PressReader has launched Editions+, expanding its replica business into app-based products, but what actually changes for publishers? I sat down with PressReader’s Evan Morse to find out more.

Editions+ is a rebrand and expansion of PressReader’s long-standing Branded Editions offering, which has been available on the market for over 15 years. The shift is a clear evolution of its existing replica and feed-based products into a more complete mobile news experience, moving closer to a full mobile news app.

The repositioning comes at a time when replica distribution, once a useful extension of print, is now a low-growth category facing consolidation, with platforms competing on scale rather than product differentiation. Cafeyn’s acquisition of Readly’s non-Nordic operations, announced this month, is a case in point.

At the same time, publishers looking to build or improve their own digital products already have multiple options, from platform providers such as Pugpig, Twipe and PageSuite to fully in-house builds. Many of these promise flexibility in customisation and low-cost entry points, but they often come with trade-offs: long development timelines and unpredictable cost. Those that are more templated come with limited support and sometimes, underwhelming reader experiences.

Editions+ aims to stand apart by offering a faster, lower-risk path to digital. Its digital solutions are quick to launch, used by millions of readers, and come with the service and guidance of an in-house team. This makes it relevant for publishers looking for a practical, low-effort way to improve their digital edition.

To understand more, I sat down with Evan Morse, Head of Global Business Development at PressReader.

From Replica Edition to Mobile Product

Morse is clear that Editions+ is not a new product, but an evolution of what PressReader has already been doing for years.

“Most replica editions have lacked innovation and technical improvements since their inception,” he says, pointing to the gap between static PDF-style experiences and what audiences now expect on mobile.

To this end, Editions+ keeps the replica at its core, extending it with additional features and formats, powered by PressReader’s proven technology, tested by millions of readers and refined across thousands of publications. These include text-to-speech, translation, improved navigation and search, alongside the ability to integrate video, podcasts and feed-based content.

Taken together, these changes are intended to move the product closer to a full mobile news app rather than a standalone replica experience. The aim, he says, is to “bring those editions up to modern expectations”.

For readers, the change is less about a fundamentally new experience and more about usability. Content is formatted for different devices, navigation is more intuitive, and features such as audio extend how that content can be consumed.

In short, the focus is now less on where the replica is read, and more on how it behaves, particularly on mobile, where expectations around navigation, audio and content formats are higher.

Speed, Simplicity and Low Effort

Editions+ is built to accelerate time-to-market, reducing the time, cost and complexity of launching a high-quality digital product. Yet it provides the support and guidance of an in-house team or premium customisation provider.

Instead of requiring publishers to invest in product, engineering and ongoing development, Editions+ is designed to sit on top of existing workflows, allowing teams to focus on content, audience growth and revenue rather than infrastructure.

“We work to do as little as possible to disrupt their workflow and take care of the hard part on their behalf.” — Evan Morse

The performance case for Editions+ is centred on usage. Morse points to data showing that sessions on apps are typically five times longer than on the web, with e-edition apps seeing four times the screen time of alternatives. Push notifications increase usage by almost 40%, while text-to-speech accounts for 8% of content engagement and around a quarter of total session time.

These shifts point to a more app-like experience, but represent an evolution rather than a wholesale change in product strategy.

Revenue and Reach

Morse also points to enhanced revenue opportunities, including advertising within the edition, banner and interstitial ads, in-app purchases and tiered subscription models. The proposition is straightforward: generate more value from content already being produced.

One example he singles out is the world’s oldest Sunday newspaper and digital newsbrand, The Observer, which has used PressReader’s tech inside its own website to enhance its replica edition and reported growth of 17,000 paid subscribers in the first two months.

He adds that Editions+ is positioned as a way to extend access to international audiences, particularly through translation, which expands potential reach into new markets.

What “Turnkey” Means in Practice

The appeal of Editions+ rests heavily on its “turnkey” positioning — publishers provide content and brand assets, with additional involvement only required where customisation is needed.

In essence, Editions+ offers a way to get a functioning product live quickly, without requiring a full internal build or ongoing product management.

In this way, Editions+ differs from platforms such as Pugpig, Twipe and PageSuite by delivering comparable, full-featured digital experiences without compromising on speed, budget predictability and levels of support. PressReader’s offering is both narrower and sharper. It starts with the replica and builds on top of it, with a fixed set of features and a managed delivery model designed to get something live quickly with minimal internal effort. The trade-off is control and deep, but time-consuming, customisation.

Bottom Line

Editions+ is less a new product than a repositioning of PressReader’s existing offer towards a more complete mobile news experience.

It is an evolution of the replica model, keeping the core product intact while extending it with features and formats aimed at improving usage and monetisation, especially on small screens. Its strengths are speed and simplicity.

For publishers looking for a practical, low-effort way to improve their digital edition, it offers a new option. For those investing in fully owned, highly customised products, it is unlikely to replace what they are already building.

Hat Tip: Monojoy Bhattacharjee, Mark St Andrew, Jess Davis, Eric Shanfelt, Laura Harvey, Almodôvar PT, Yamaha FZ1

This week’s Long Read looks at a key finding from WARC’s 2026 Consumer Trends report, namely the rising concern about AI content and labelling. With the Alliance for Audited Media (AAM) rolling out its Ethical AI Certification and Seal to all members, and with Google now upranking unique and authentic journalism, the value of verified publisher content is coming back into sharp focus.

Let’s jump in…

• UK Ad Market Grows, Just Not for Publishers

  Two surveys out this week make for grim reading. The UK ad market grew 6.4% to £47bn in 2025, but published media fell 5.1%, according to AA/WARC. Press Gazette’s Ipsos data tells a no less uncomfortable story: most sites are losing reach, with the Daily Record, Scotland’s leading newsbrand, cratering 36% YoY.

• How Stern+ Built a Subscription Business from Scratch

  Stern, one of Germany’s most iconic media brands, rebuilt its subscription business from scratch after realising its brand fame was not enough to sell digital subs. Rather than focus on paywalls, funnels and optimisation, the publisher went back to the drawing board to make its product a must-read. The strategy worked.

• As Search Weakens, Publishers Bundle With Each Other

  FIPP’s Global Digital Subscription Snapshot 2026 contains many findings you’d expect — weaker referral traffic, higher acquisition pressure, etc — but a key finding is just how many publishers are bundling with each other to create added value. Case in point: El País, The Irish Times, Corriere della Sera, Le Monde, La Repubblica all offer access to the New York Times as part of a premium bundle.

• Us Weekly Halves Staff, Goes Fully Remote

  McClatchy-owned Us Weekly is ditching its NYC HQ, halving staff, and telling the rest to work from home. Once the leading celebrity magazine at U.S. supermarket checkout lines (60M+ audience), its sole reliance on ad dollars and mass market reach has proved its undoing. Key quote: “There’s a lack of effort to adapt for the digital space—the business is totally shot.”

• IAB Tech Lab Launches Programmatic Governance Council

  With ad revenue still the biggest slice of publisher revenue, the launch of a Programmatic Governance Council can’t come soon enough — especially in light of the world’s biggest programmatic DSP, The Trade Desk, being shunned by global ad groups because of lack of transparency, hidden fees, and a failed third-party audit. Hearst and News Corp will be there to bat for publishers…#finally

• Death of the Generic Listicle

  Google’s Danny Sullivan took to the stage in Toronto to let everyone know that the days of “Top Ten Listicles”, so beloved by publishers to goose SEO, are now dead. Non-commodity content, structuring your information optimally, and creating unique content is now vastly more effective than the old SEO playbook. Related: Google Lists Best Practices For ‘Read More’ Deep Links

• News Media Should Rethink Newsrooms, Not Hire Content Creators

  Martin Schori, Aftonbladet’s Director of Editorial AI & Innovation, describes how Gen Z are not news avoiders, but news site avoiders, bypassing media they perceive as constantly negative, emotionally draining, and irrelevant. His solution? Give editorial teams greater autonomy and allow them a unique voice. TL;DR: the journalist’s role is morphing into that of a credible guide, not a content jockey.

• Diario Vivo Turns Journalism Into a Live Experience

  Billed as Spain’s first live journalism media outlet, Diario Vivo puts journalists (and others) on stage to tell personal stories — audiences don’t even know what stories they’ll hear when they attend a show. The result? Diario Vivo began in 2017 with small audiences but they now sell out 1,000-seater venues. CORRECTIV, a German newsroom, follows a similar model by bringing investigative stories to the stage.

• AI Deals and Disputes Tracker

  Tow Center (Columbia Journalism School) has created a useful tracker that monitors developments between news publishers and AI companies (Lawsuits, Deals, and Grants). Updated each month, it’s a handy resource for media companies when evaluating their own licensing frameworks, especially against peers.

• AI Tool: Chirp

  Many journalists use Wispr, the voice command dictation tool that lets you write using just your spoken voice. However, at £125/yr per user, it’s another added cost especially at a company-wide, enterprise level. Enter Chirp, another voice-to-text tool that is entirely free — open source, no subscription. Wispr received $81M in VC funding, so download Chirp quickly before it/he ‘disappears’. #GitHub

• Webinar: Data Science - Opening the Algorithmic Black Box

  As AI moves into high-stakes decisions (credit scoring, employee hiring, etc), publishers need to know why a system reached a decision, not just what it decided. This WAN-IFRA session looks at explainable AI: how tools such as SHAP and LIME can make AI outputs more understandable, traceable, and auditable. #EUAIAct. May 5 | Zoom | 16:00 CEST / 10:00 EDT

• Event: INMA World Congress of News Media

  Titled “From walls to bridges: news media reimagined”, next week’s INMA 2026 Congress combines study tours, seminars, a two-day conference, the Global Media Awards, and private AMA sessions with INMA subject matter experts. If you’ve any energy left, Berlin also offers its delights. May 4-8 | Berlin

The Case for Making Human Judgement Visible

Publishers that make human oversight visible, to readers and advertisers alike, are turning editorial integrity into a commercial differentiator.

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WARC’s 2026 Consumer Trends report lands at an awkward moment for publishers. Pressure to use AI to cut costs and increase output is intensifying, while the report’s headline finding points in the opposite direction: 78% of respondents now consider it very or extremely important for AI-generated content to be clearly labelled as such.

For publishers, this changes the equation entirely. The question is no longer only whether AI can make content production cheaper, but whether human reporting, editing and judgement can be made more valuable at a time when audiences are growing increasingly sceptical of synthetic content and low-quality AI slop.

Transparency Is No Longer Optional

Few, if any, publishers can credibly claim that they don’t use AI. It is already used for transcription, tagging, translation, archive searches, customer service, data work and advertising ops.

Neither does WARC suggest that readers are rejecting every use of AI within media, with AI-assisted creativity scoring highly when executed properly.

The stronger concern is whether people know when AI has been used, especially in areas where poor or inaccurate information carries sharp consequences, such as healthcare, politics, law, finance and news. A reader looking at a health explainer, election guide or financial advice piece should be able to see whether AI was involved, who reviewed it, and what standard the publisher is putting behind it.

The same applies to publishers’ media kits. Advertisers do not need another vague promise about “trusted environments”, they need to know whether the content around their campaigns is human-reviewed, clearly labelled where AI is used, and governed by rules that reduce reputational risk.

Making the Editorial Process a Product

The Economist offers a useful reference point. Its new Insider video programme takes subscribers inside the newsroom, where senior editors debate the week's major issues. It is a significant product shift for a publication historically defined by anonymous bylines.

The format gives subscribers a way to see the judgement behind the finished piece: which stories editors prioritise, how they frame competing arguments, what context they think matters and why the publication lands where it does.

“AI is really great at summarising, but what it can’t replicate is human judgement.”— Nada Arnot, Executive VP of Marketing, The Economist

At Google Search Central Live last week in Toronto, Google’s Danny Sullivan also urged publishers and creators to produce “unique, authentic and non-commodity content”: specific, first-hand work with expertise or a viewpoint others cannot easily copy.

For publishers, it all points in the same direction. Generic AI-assisted output is a weak place to compete when readers, advertisers and search are all placing more value on specific reporting, expert knowledge and clear editorial judgement.

From Internal Policy to Market-Facing Proof

Last week’s announcement by the Alliance for Audited Media to expand its Ethical AI Certification to all members shows responsible AI is now moving from internal policy to visible, market-facing proof.

AAM says its certification evaluates publishers across transparency, governance, bias and fairness, and privacy, with certified publishers using the seal on websites and media kits.

“By expanding access to our certification, we’re helping publishers demonstrate and communicate responsible AI use to their subscribers, advertisers and partners.”— Richard Murphy, CEO, President and Managing Director, Alliance for Audited Media

It also aligns with the IAB’s AI Transparency and Disclosure Framework, which gives brands, agencies, publishers and platforms a shared reference point for responsible AI use in advertising.

Bottom Line

WARC's report points publishers toward a clear operational priority: audit where AI is used across editorial and commercial operations, decide what requires explicit labelling, and turn human oversight into a visible product promise.

In short, AI should protect distinctiveness, trust and margin. Otherwise, if it simply lowers production cost while making the product easier to ignore, it is solving the wrong problem.

Hat tip: Monojoy Bhattacharjee, Jeremy Caplan, Amanda Benfell, Erin Boudreau, Armação de Pêra, Fantic Caballero 500

For publishers, this changes the dynamic entirely. The question is no longer only whether AI can make content production cheaper, but whether human reporting, editing and judgement can be made more valuable at a time when audiences are growing increasingly sceptical of synthetic content and low-quality AI slop.

Transparency Is No Longer Optional

Few, if any, publishers can credibly claim that they don’t use AI. It is already used for transcription, tagging, translation, archive searches, customer service, data work and advertising ops.

Neither does WARC suggest that readers are rejecting every use of AI within media, with AI-assisted creativity scoring highly when executed properly.

The stronger concern is whether people know when AI has been used, especially in areas where poor or inaccurate information carries sharp consequences, such as healthcare, politics, law, finance and news.

A reader looking at a health explainer, election guide or financial advice piece should be able to see whether AI was involved, who reviewed it, and what standard the publisher is putting behind it.

The same applies to publishers’ media kits. Advertisers do not need another vague promise about “trusted environments”, they need to know whether the content around their campaigns is human-reviewed, clearly labelled where AI is used, and governed by rules that reduce reputational risk.

Making the Editorial Process a Product

The Economist offers a useful reference point. Its new Insider video programme takes subscribers inside the newsroom, where senior editors debate the week’s major issues. It is a significant product shift for a publication historically defined by anonymous bylines.

The format gives subscribers a way to see the judgement behind the finished piece: which stories editors prioritise, how they frame competing arguments, what context they think matters and why the publication lands where it does.

“AI is really great at summarising, but what it can’t replicate is human judgement.”— Nada Arnot, Executive VP of Marketing, The Economist

At Google Search Central Live last week in Toronto, Google’s Danny Sullivan also urged publishers and creators to produce “unique, authentic and non-commodity content”: specific, first-hand work with expertise or a viewpoint others cannot easily copy.

For publishers, the message is blunt: generic AI-assisted output is a weak place to compete when readers, advertisers and search are all placing more value on specialised reporting, expert knowledge and clear editorial judgement.

From Internal Policy to Market-Facing Proof

Last week’s announcement by the Alliance for Audited Media to expand its Ethical AI Certification to all members shows responsible AI is now moving from internal policy to visible, market-facing proof.

AAM says its certification evaluates publishers across transparency, governance, bias and fairness, and privacy, with certified publishers using the seal on websites and media kits.

“By expanding access to our certification, we’re helping publishers demonstrate and communicate responsible AI use to their subscribers, advertisers and partners.”— Richard Murphy, CEO, President and Managing Director, Alliance for Audited Media

It also aligns with the IAB’s AI Transparency and Disclosure Framework, which gives brands, agencies, publishers and platforms a shared reference point for responsible AI use in advertising.

Bottom Line

WARC’s report points publishers toward a clear operational priority: audit where AI is used across editorial and commercial operations, decide what requires explicit labelling, and turn human oversight into a visible product promise.

In short, AI should protect distinctiveness, trust and margin. Otherwise, if it simply lowers production cost while making the product easier to ignore, it is solving the wrong problem.

Hat tip: Amanda Benfell, WARC; Erin Boudreau, Alliance for Audited Media

With news that Axios Local hasn’t made a profit after five years, what went wrong? Axios thought it could scale its Smart Brevity model across 10,000 U.S. towns, but as API’s Yoni Greenbaum writes, it’s difficult to fund a “venture-scale corporate headquarters on a local newsletter’s back”.

Yet what Axios Local really lacked is deep local connection. As Greenbaum concludes, “people will pay to belong to their community. But they are increasingly hesitant to pay for a standardised product that feels like it was processed in a factory.”

Keeping that in mind, today’s Long Read examines a local news product that actually works. The secret? A deep insider’s knowledge and love for their town.

Let’s crack on…

• Bauer Media Group Slashes Headcount in Restructure

  Europe’s biggest magazine publisher is shedding up to 30% of its staff, citing the impact of Google’s AI Overviews, tech disruption, and the Iran war for driving up print magazine costs. Ominously, Bauer said: “It has become increasingly challenging to operate digital publishing businesses profitably at scale.” Bauer Xcel Media, its SEO content marketing business, is shutting down entirely…

• The New York Times Launches New Community Features

  Taking a leaf out of the creator playbook, the NYT is now encouraging its reporters to become part of the product by interacting directly with readers. The biggest update is a new comments hub, which pulls together stories where NYT’s journalists are in conversation with readers. P.S. The Times of London saw a 119% increase in comments when writers joined its comment section…

• International Journalism Festival 2026: What We Learnt in Perugia

  This year’s festival showed that the pressures facing Bauer are by no means unique, with the wider industry grappling with the same challenges — shrinking traffic, hostile platforms, and hit-or-miss AI strategies. Key quote: Mukul Devichand, AI Initiatives at the New York Times, “We are changing our own product experiences to be less AI in many ways.”

• WaPo’s New Paywall Shows How Design Impacts Subscriptions

  Washington Post’s Kelsey Burnham describes how a redesigned paywall with prominent pricing and clearer product benefits has increased subscriptions. Bottom line? People subscribe when there is stronger perceived value at the point of conversion. The same design, however, reduced registration uptake. TL;DR: WaPo found that each step in the conversion funnel must be optimised separately.

• The Definitive 2026 Guide to Getting Your Brand Mentioned by AI

  A 15-minute waterboarding on how to get your media brand surfaced by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude. Top priorities in order? Get AI crawlers unblocked in your robots.txt; Implement JSON-LD schema markup; Structure content in self-contained 50-150 word chunks; Front-load your answers (44% of citations come from the first 30% of text).

  P.S. LLMs reward content quality and structure over domain age and backlink counts, making them more meritocratic than traditional search.

• Reddit and Mail Metro Top IPA Digital Media Owners Survey

  Amidst a sea of adtech, Reddit and Mail Metro stand out as the best media owners to work with. Why? An ‘Excellent understanding of own products’ and ‘Ease of sales force contact’, with Reddit also leading for ‘Quality of response to brief’. The Guardian also scored highly. In short, they make their products easy for advertisers to buy…

• Research Finds Advertisers May Benefit From Some AI Content

  OM Media Trials (Omnicom) and Zefr surveyed 5,000 consumers in North America, testing reactions to ads placed after GenAI videos. The conclusion? Ads next to AI satire, youth content, and artistic content performed well. In short, it’s all about context and where the ad sits. P.S. 9% of published articles are now partially or fully AI-generated.

• Report: State of Audience in Media Report 2026

  Omeda’s new 2026 report shows that although publishers have spent years building first-party data strategies, only 9% use audience data effectively. Why? Fragmented systems, siloed data, and poor coordination between teams. The clear winners are the publishers who unify their data into one cross-functional system, turning audience strategy into a core business function. Free to download…

• Journalist Hit with £14k Costs Bill for Pursuing FOI Request

  If there was any doubt as to the creeping strangulation of UK press freedom, then Barnie Choudhury’s legal bill should put it to rest. FOI was introduced to allow journalists to uncover truth, and here we are 25 years later with it weaponised. National Union of Journalists (NUJ) Laura Davison comments, “If upheld, it creates a significant risk for journalists using FOI requests to hold power to account.” #SLAPPs

• AI Tool: Kumo

  Self-billed as ‘The Gold Standard for Predictive AI’, Kumo is an AI model like GPT, but it’s built for your own business data. It lets you ask strategic questions by combining your data with predictive modelling: “Simply connect your data, start asking predictions, and get results.” Built by an A-Z of industry heavyweights…

• Webinar: Acquisition vs Engagement - What Should Publishers Prioritise?
  As traffic sources become less predictable, publishers are rethinking growth strategies. Execs from Future PLC, News UK, FT Strategies, and SEO expert Barry Adams explore how to balance acquisition with engagement and long-term sustainability. 27 April | 3:00 PM UK / 10:00 AM ET | Register here

• Event: INMA’s Media Innovation Week

  A calendar highlight, Media Innovation Week takes place in September in Madrid. Heavily focused on European publishers, the event includes a two-day study tour visiting some of Spain’s most progressive media businesses — Prisa Media (El Pais), Unidad Editorial (el Mundo), ElDiario, Mediaset, and others. Sept 21-25 | €4,495 *cough* | Madrid

Why DMMG’s “Modern Time Out” Model Is Working in Local Media

Don’t Miss Media Group is building a hyperlocal newsletter model that monetises audience action rather than scale - does it offer a new commercial path for local media?

—————

Don’t Miss Media Group (DMMG) is expanding its hyperlocal newsletter model across a number of the UK’s South East towns, with editions in Margate and Ramsgate and a third launch in upmarket Broadstairs.

Built on Substack and grown without paid marketing, the business is already generating meaningful revenue at town level, with Margate on track for around £85,000 annually and ad inventory sold out up to ten weeks in advance. Such has been its impact, the publisher has been named as a regional finalist in the UK StartUp Awards.

At a time when UK local media is defined by contraction and policy intervention, as evidenced by the UK government’s proposed £12m support package, DMMG is starting to show that with the right business model, a locally focused media product can grow into something more sustainable and repeatable.

Founder Georgina Wilson-Powell, a former Time Out and BBC Good Food editor who launched the first edition in Margate after struggling to find reliable local listings, describes the model in relatively familiar terms. Time Out worked, she says, because it sat between audiences and culture at the point of decision. “Advertisers wanted to be in front of an audience that was already in a booking mindset,” she says. “That’s exactly what I’ve built, but at town-level.”

Newsletter open rates sit around 65–70%, click-through at 22%, and 78% of readers have gone on to book something they saw in the newsletter. Advertisers pay to reach people already planning what to do next, and they can see the effect quickly in bookings and footfall.

The Editor as the Product

The model’s success, however, depends heavily on the person running each edition. Every town has a locally rooted editor responsible for curation, tone and relationships with both readers and advertisers. Wilson-Powell is clear about where the value sits.

“The thing that actually makes it work is the person writing it. Get that wrong and no amount of infrastructure saves you.” — Georgina Wilson-Powell

Rather than treating the product as something that can be standardised and scaled centrally - as Axios Local has tried to do in the U.S. - it relies on people who are embedded in their communities and known locally. With a six-person team, including part-time editors in each town, the business is growing carefully without losing the local connection.

Growth has been largely organic, driven by word of mouth rather than paid acquisition. Margate reached 1,000 subscribers within three months and now sits at around 3,000, with roughly 150 paying subs. Ramsgate has reached around 1,000 subscribers, with about 50 paid, while Broadstairs built a waitlist of more than 500 ahead of launch, with some readers converting before receiving a single newsletter.

“When the demand precedes the product, you have something replicable.” — Georgina Wilson-Powell

Revenue is led by advertising and partnerships, which account for roughly 75% of income, with subscriptions contributing the remaining 25%. Paid subscriptions are priced at £4 per month or £44 annually, with a conversion rate of around 5%, and are positioned as a way for readers to support the product as much as to access additional content.

DMMG is Substack-first, using the platform for distribution, payments and subscriber management, which allows the business to operate with a lean team while focusing on editorial quality and commercial delivery. The publisher has also gained traction within Substack itself, ranking No.22 in its global Rising Culture leaderboard this year.

Platform dependency introduces a clear element of risk, but for now at least, the balance works, particularly at this stage of growth where simplicity and speed matter more than outright control.

Trust and Ongoing Reader Engagement

In Margate, advertising demand is strong enough that sponsor slots are booked ten weeks in advance. Campaigns range from national brands such as Live Nation to independent local businesses, all targeting clearly defined local audiences.

“A café can run a sponsored listing on Monday and see tables full by Wednesday.” — Georgina Wilson-Powell

Alongside that is a more subtle shift in how the relationship with readers is handled. “We don’t treat our readers as inventory or eyeballs,” she adds, reflecting a model that leans more on trust and ongoing engagement than on scale.

Don’t Miss Media Group is an example of how local media can be rebuilt from the ground up using a proven template but with a distinctly human dimension. By showing passion, knowledge and love for their local towns, it demonstrates how smaller media products can develop into something sustainable.

In short, local media does not need to have scale to be viable, but it does need to reconnect with audiences in a way that leads to trust, action and, ultimately, revenue.

Hat tip: Monojoy Bhattacharjee, Georgina Wilson-Powell, Alferce PT, Art School Girlfriend, Buckethead, Yamaha FZ1

Built on Substack and grown without paid marketing, the business is already generating meaningful revenue at town level, with Margate on track for around £85,000 annually and ad inventory sold out up to ten weeks in advance. Such has been its impact, the publisher has been named as a regional finalist in the UK Start Up Awards.

At a time when UK local media is defined by contraction and policy intervention, as evidenced by the UK government’s proposed £12m support package, DMMG is starting to show that with the right business model, a locally focused media product can grow into something more sustainable and repeatable.

Founder Georgina Wilson-Powell, a former Time Out and BBC Good Food editor who launched the first edition in Margate after struggling to find reliable local listings, describes the model in relatively familiar terms. Time Out worked, she says, because it sat between audiences and culture at the point of decision. “Advertisers wanted to be in front of an audience that was already in a booking mindset,” she says. “That’s exactly what I’ve built, but at town level.”

Newsletter open rates sit around 65–70%, click-through at 22%, and 78% of readers have gone on to book something they saw in the newsletter. Advertisers pay to reach people already planning what to do next, and they can see the effect quickly in bookings and footfall.

The Editor As the Product

The model’s success, however, depends heavily on the person running each edition. Every town has a locally rooted editor responsible for curation, tone and relationships with both readers and advertisers. Wilson-Powell is clear about where the value sits.

“The thing that actually makes it work is the person writing it. Get that wrong and no amount of infrastructure saves you.” — Georgina Wilson-Powell

Rather than treating the product as something that can be standardised and scaled centrally - as Axios Local has tried to do in the U.S. - it relies on people who are embedded in their communities and known locally. With a six-person team, including part-time editors in each town, the business is growing carefully without losing the local connection.

Growth has been largely organic, driven by word of mouth rather than paid acquisition. Margate reached 1,000 subscribers within three months and now sits at around 3,000, with roughly 150 paying subs. Ramsgate has reached around 1,000 subscribers, with about 50 paid, while Broadstairs built a waitlist of more than 500 ahead of launch, with some readers converting before receiving a single newsletter.

“When the demand precedes the product, you have something replicable. — Georgina Wilson-Powell

Revenue is led by advertising and partnerships, which account for roughly 75% of income, with subscriptions contributing the remaining 25%. Paid subscriptions are priced at £4 per month or £44 annually, with a conversion rate of around 5%, and are positioned as a way for readers to support the product as much as to access additional content.

DMMG is Substack-first, using the platform for distribution, payments and subscriber management, which allows the business to operate with a lean team while focusing on editorial quality and commercial delivery. The publisher has also gained traction within Substack itself, ranking No.22 in its global Rising Culture leaderboard this year.

Platform dependency introduces an element of risk, but for now at least, the balance works, particularly at this stage of growth where simplicity and speed matter more than outright control.

Trust and Ongoing Reader Engagement

In Margate, advertising demand is strong enough that sponsor slots are booked ten weeks in advance. Campaigns range from national brands such as Live Nation to independent local businesses, all targeting clearly defined local audiences.

“A café can run a sponsored listing on Monday and see tables full by Wednesday,” Wilson-Powell says. That impact is visible to partners with one local business describing a “spike in enquiries immediately following a newsletter mention”, translating directly into bookings.

Alongside that is a more subtle shift in how the relationship with readers is handled. “We don’t treat our readers as inventory or eyeballs,” she adds, reflecting a model that leans more on trust and ongoing engagement than on scale.

Dont Miss Media Group is an example of how local media can be rebuilt from the ground up using a proven template but with a distinctly human dimension. By showing passion, knowledge and love for their local towns, it demonstrates how smaller media products can develop into something sustainable.

In short, local media does not need to have scale to be viable, but it does need to reconnect with audiences in a way that leads to trust, action and, ultimately, revenue.

Wen announced the idea publicly on X alongside the manifesto:

What Web 4.0 actually is

Wen’s argument is that software will move beyond assisting humans and begin operating on their behalf in markets. That means AI systems accessing services directly, negotiating transactions and making decisions continuously rather than only when prompted.

The reason this matters to publishers is not because a new “version of the web” has formally begun per se. It matters because the behaviour being described is already emerging inside media businesses.

Where this affects publishers

Start with newsroom workflow.

Many publishers now use AI to help draft headlines or summarise documents. The more significant shift is that AI tools are being embedded inside production systems rather than used as separate chat interfaces.

Take Dalet as an example. Dalet is a media tech company that provides workflow software to broadcasters and large publishers. Its latest AI layer connects several stages of the production process. When raw video footage is uploaded, the system automatically creates a transcript, suggests metadata tags, identifies key moments and routes the content through approval workflows. Editors still make decisions, but the repetitive handling of files between systems is reduced.

When content moves through consistent workflows with reliable metadata, it becomes easier to search, package, license and measure. This type of infrastructure optimisation directly affects publisher economics.

Archives provide another example.

TIME last year launched a conversational interface that allows users to query its archive directly. Instead of searching manually through decades of reporting, users can ask questions and receive contextualised summaries drawn from structured material. For the publisher, this turns the archive from a storage system into a continuously usable content asset that drives engagement.

Licensing is also becoming more technical.

In the US, the Associated Press has defined exactly how its content can be used in AI deals, while in Europe publishers such as Axel Springer and the Financial Times have signed agreements that specify usage and compensation.

These deals rely on tracking how content is used, which means payments are increasingly based on measurable activity rather than broad claims about value. This is already visible in practice, as AI tools influence how licensing agreements are structured.

Practical Implications

For publishers, the implications are practical:

• Poorly tagged archives surface less often in AI-driven search and summarisation products.
• Unclear rights documentation weakens leverage in structured AI licensing negotiations.
• Inconsistent or unverifiable audience data reduces allocation in automated ad buying systems.
• Content that cannot be accessed cleanly through APIs is harder to integrate into distribution partnerships.
• Weak metadata makes packaging, syndication and measurement more expensive and less scalable.

“Web 4.0” is not an official new phase of the internet, but the changes it describes are already affecting how publishers’ content is discovered, licensed and monetised.

Publishers should review how their products are structured and exposed, starting with clean interfaces, consistent product definitions and reliable payment flows. If AI tools begin to compare or manage subscriptions, for example, those systems will rely on clarity rather than persuasion, which means offers, eligibility rules and pricing need to be explicit and defensible.

The near-term question now is whether your content, rights and audience data are organised well enough to compete in systems that increasingly determine what gets distributed, licensed and funded.

This shift is already happening.

Bridged Media is a world-leading specialist in turning audience interest and intent signals into measurable results for publishers. The result is higher engagement, more conversions, and stronger proof of value for sponsors and partners, without adding extra workload for internal teams.

Today’s Long Read features DPG Media, the Netherlands’ largest news group, who have made their entire portfolio of titles free to students. Why? Young people expect news for free over their social feeds, and like many news publishers, DPG were being ignored. The campaign beat all expectations — 83,000 students took up the offer — and the response was so huge, the team initially believed the traffic surge was a tech issue.

Let’s jump in…

• U.S. Sites Suffer Dramatically Lower Google Referral Traffic

  22 leading U.S. news brands are witnessing 20%+ fewer site visits in March compared with a year ago. The UK is faring slightly better, although titles with a large U.S. footprint are seeing similar declines (e.g. MailOnline is down 20% YoY). Ironically, even Google News is down 21%… #IndustryWide

• The Times and Axios Perform Better with Less Content

  Axios had the best performing Q1 in its traffic history, with total page views up 30% YoY despite the number of stories declining 22%. The Times has made a similar cut in content, going from 200 stories a day to 150, yet organic search traffic is also up 29% YoY. The focus on more in-depth exclusives, scoops, and better storytelling is paying off…

• Daily Newsletter Is Telegraph’s Biggest Source of Subscribers

  Sent at 7.30am each morning, with stories hand-picked by editor Chris Evans, the Telegraph Daily newsletter has become its biggest subs driver. The approach is soft - there are no CTAs, and conversion is gradual with most subscribers signing up long after initial engagement. The publisher has taken the key learnings and expanded out to 31 newsletters…

• Publishers Starting to Monetise Visibility Inside AI Answers

  With brands desperate to rank highly on AI platforms, GEO (generative engine optimisation) has become the new SEO. Publishers are now muscling in and offering bespoke GEO services. Future has already launched Future Optic, and now Time is following with its own product, analysing brand sentiment and using branded content to help shape AI-generated answers.

• Your Podcast Downloads Are Lying to You

  The New Statesman’s Chris Stone outlines why podcast downloads aren’t nearly the same as the numbers who actually listen to a show. TL;DR: While Apple Podcasts accounts for the majority of downloads, Spotify accounts for the majority of listeners. A Spotify downloader is three times more likely to actually listen, and Stone is now “putting Spotify first”.

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• Do Links in Tweets Hurt Publisher Engagement? Yes

  Nieman Lab’s analysis of thousands of tweets from 18 publishers shows links are demoted by X’s algorithm. NYT, with 53M followers, includes links in 88% of tweets and gets just 383 engagements per post. By contrast, Globe Eye News (886k followers) rarely links out and gets 8,418 engagements per tweet. Musk’s advice? Write a description of a story in the first tweet, and add a link in the second.

• AI Polling Could Kill Public Opinion as We Know It

  Publishers need to tread carefully with ‘silicon sampling’, which replaces real respondents with AI-generated ones. Whilst quick and low-cost, the polls can be a reflection of model biases rather than real-world views, as Axios recently found out when it published a poll that was fabricated. I’ll look forward to Trusting News tackling this one… #API #RJI

• Are Publishers Ready to Sell Subscriptions to AI Agents?

  Paul McCarthy-Brain argues that publishers have optimised subscriptions for human readers, but as AI agents begin to browse and buy on users’ behalf, the industry may need to rethink. Key quote: “Don’t assume that today’s user journey will be the same tomorrow, because the customer may not be the one clicking the purchase button.”

• Finally… Business Insider Offers Staff $400 for the Best Use of AI

• AI Tool: HeyGen Avatar V

  Whilst most attention is on Google’s new budget-friendly video model (Veo 3.1 Lite), HeyGen’s Avatar V is a clear step ahead. The model generates high-resolution talking avatar videos from a single reference video and audio track. The boundaries between reality and synthetic video content are fast evaporating. Check out the demos featuring Novak Djokovic…wow⚡

• Webinar: IAB/PwC Internet Advertising Revenue Report 2025

  IAB, PwC, and Madison & Wall discuss findings and trends from the Internet Advertising Revenue Report: Full Year 2025. Considered the industry benchmark for measuring digital ad revenue, this year’s event will focus sharply on the impact of AI on ad spend and shifting consumer engagement. 21st April | Online | 1pm EST, 6pm UK

• Event: Future of Media Awards

  Now in its fourth year, Press Gazette’s Future of Media Awards celebrates the best in online journalism and commercial innovation, including newsletters, podcasts, websites and apps. Entries are now open with the shortlist announced mid-July. 10th Sept | In-Person | Bankside, London

DPG Media Offers Free News Access to 83,000 Students — But What Comes Next?

DPG Media has given free digital access to 83,000 students across the Netherlands and Belgium. The goal? Access, discovery, and understanding Gen Z audience behaviour.

DPG Media, the largest news publisher across the Netherlands and Belgium, has reached nearly 83,000 students by offering free access to its digital news apps, with eligibility verified through SheerID.

It comes at a time when Dutch research shows many young people now expect news to find them rather than actively seeking it, underlining how far publisher distribution has slipped out of daily habits. The same research shows only 64% of 18–24s consume news daily, and just 35% say they are highly interested in it.

I spoke with Imke Rodermans, Projectmanager Marketing IT – Circulation at DPG Media, about how the initiative is designed to address discovery and engagement among younger audiences.

Rodermans started by telling me that students now receive full, unhindered access to DPG Media’s portfolio of news titles via mobile, allowing them to move freely across brands and editorial styles, from serious reporting in de Volkskrant and De Morgen to mass-market coverage from AD and Het Laatste Nieuws, as well as regional reporting through AD’s local editions.

“We found that adoption was immediate. Around 50,000 students registered within the first two days of launch – in fact, the early surge was so big we briefly mistook it for a technical issue. Our student programme now reaches roughly 10% of students in Flanders and 4% in the Netherlands.”

Discovery Is Broken, Not The Pricing

DPG Media’s strategy is a direct response to a deep structural shift in news consumption whereby younger audiences are primarily encountering news through social feeds.

Indeed, DPG Media’s own in-house research showed that 78% of young people rely on social media as their primary news source, meaning many rarely encounter news brands organically. Even when they do, engagement is low and haphazard.

DPG Media’s previous attempts to address this problem through discounted subscriptions failed. Even a 40% discount delivered only a few thousand student subscribers across all its titles.

It led to a clear conclusion: lower prices by themselves do not solve a relevance problem. The students, who admittedly have limited disposable income, simply did not see enough added value in paid journalism compared to the free content they already received in their social feeds.

Removing the price barrier was therefore seen not just a promotional tactic per se, but a complete strategic U-turn. Essentially, the aim was to reintroduce the product and show its value to a new generation of readers.

“Discounting alone did not address the core issues of relevance and discovery.” Imke Rodermans, DPG Media.

Free access also removes a key subconscious barrier because it eliminates the need for any upfront decisions. Instead of asking students to subscribe, it gives them unrestricted access to experience the journalism first, in the formats and environments they already use.

From Access to Creating Behavioural Change

DPG Media’s immediate focus is to garner behavioural insights - how students consume news, what content resonates, and what drives repeat usage.

This includes testing content formats and editorial approaches through student focus groups and using those insights to shape new content frameworks. DPG Media is effectively using free access for both discovery and product development.

“The immediate focus is to understand how students consume news, what resonates with them, and what keeps them engaged.” Imke Rodermans, DPG Media.

These insights carry enormous weight because news habits formed early tend to persist into adulthood, making this just as much about long-term audience investment as it is a discovery and access strategy.

It comes as other publishers are reaching similar conclusions. Schibsted’s IN/LAB work on young audiences in Scandinavia showed that these users engage more with formats and experiences that feel native to platforms they already use, rather than being pulled into traditional news environments.

Strong Student Adoption Signals Meaningful Engagement

Imke emphasised that DPG’s strategy is focused solely on access, discovery and research on Gen Z behaviour.

DPG Media has tried to structure the programme to limit its downside risk, with eligibility verification through SheerID ensuring access is restricted to genuine students and reducing the risk of cannibalising existing subscriptions.

“By maintaining a clear distinction between student access and paid subscriptions, we can expand reach within a new audience without undermining current revenue streams.” Imke Rodermans, DPG Media.

The end result is a controlled environment in which the publisher can build relationships with a younger audience without damaging its core business.

Bottom Line

DPG Media’s student program shows how publishers can reach Gen Z audiences in a way traditional subscription models are no longer achieving, especially with hard paywalled content.

But whilst free access can rebuild reach and start to form habits, it only becomes commercially meaningful if it eventually leads to payment.

Time will tell.

Hat tip: Monojoy Bhattacharjee, Eric Shanfelt, Michael Tilus, Emily Bamber

It comes at a time when Dutch research shows many young people now expect news to find them rather than actively seeking it, underlining how far publisher distribution has slipped out of daily habits. The same research shows only 64% of 18–24s consume news daily, and just 35% say they are highly interested in it.

I spoke with Imke Rodermans, Projectmanager Marketing IT – Circulation at DPG Media, about how the initiative is designed to address discovery and engagement among younger audiences.

Rodermans started by telling me that students receive full, unhindered access to DPG Media’s entire portfolio of news titles via mobile, allowing them to move freely across brands and editorial styles, from serious reporting in de Volkskrant and De Morgen to mass-market coverage from AD and Het Laatste Nieuws, as well as regional reporting through AD’s local editions.

“We found that adoption was immediate. Around 50,000 students registered within the first two days of launch – in fact, the early surge was so big we briefly mistook it for a technical issue. Our student programme now reaches roughly 10% of students in Flanders and 4% in the Netherlands.”

Discovery Is Broken, Not The Pricing

DPG Media’s strategy is a direct response to a deep structural shift in news consumption whereby younger audiences are primarily encountering news through social feeds.

Indeed, DPG Media’s own in-house research showed that 78% of young people rely on social media as their primary news source, meaning many rarely encounter news brands organically. Even when they do, engagement is low and haphazard.

DPG Media’s previous attempts to address this problem through discounted subscriptions failed. Even a 40% discount delivered only a few thousand student subscribers across all its titles.

It led to a clear conclusion: lower prices by themselves do not solve a relevance problem. The students, who admittedly have limited disposable income, simply did not see enough added value in paid journalism compared to the free content they already received in their social feeds.

Removing the price barrier was therefore seen not just a promotional tactic per se, but a complete strategic U-turn. Essentially, the aim was to reintroduce the product and show its value to a new generation of readers.

“Discounting alone did not address the core issues of relevance and discovery.” Imke Rodermans

Free access also removes a key subconscious barrier because it eliminates the need for any upfront decisions. Instead of asking students to subscribe, it gives them unrestricted access to experience the journalism first, in the formats and environments they already use.

From Access to Creating Behavioural Change

DPG Media’s immediate focus is to garner behavioural insights - how students consume news, what content resonates, and what drives repeat usage.

This includes testing content formats and editorial approaches through student focus groups and using those insights to shape new content frameworks. DPG Media is effectively using free access for both discovery and product development.

“The immediate focus is to understand how students consume news, what resonates with them, and what keeps them engaged.” Imke Rodermans

These insights carry enormous weight because news habits formed early tend to persist into adulthood, making this just as much about long-term audience investment as it is a discovery and access strategy.

It comes as other publishers are reaching similar conclusions. Schibsted’s IN/LAB work on young audiences in Scandinavia showed that these users engage more with formats and experiences that feel native to platforms they already use, rather than being pulled into traditional, legacy news environments.

Limiting Downside Risk

Imke re-emphasised that DPG’s strategy is focused solely on access, discovery and research on Gen Z behaviour.

DPG Media has tried to structure the programme to limit its downside risk, with eligibility verification through SheerID ensuring access is restricted to genuine students and reducing the risk of cannibalising existing subscriptions.

“By maintaining a clear distinction between student access and paid subscriptions, we can expand reach within a new audience without undermining current revenue streams.” Imke Rodermans

The end result is a controlled environment in which the publisher can build relationships with a younger audience without damaging its core business.

Bottom Line

DPG Media’s student program shows how publishers can reach Gen Z audiences in a way traditional subscription models are no longer achieving, especially with hard paywalled content.

The focus here is on access, discovery and understanding behaviour, which already delivers value by giving younger audiences exposure to trusted journalism and supporting media literacy.

Whether that can ultimately translate into paying subscribers remains the open question.

Subscription friction - smart publishers know the importance of removing it, at all costs. If someone lands on a paywall and decides to subscribe, give them no reason to stop. Keep the journey tight. Surface the best offers and the fastest logins and payment methods. Keep it simple. Keep it moving.

However, these conversion methods are structured around one key assumption - that the buyer is a human, on a browser, sitting in front of a screen in that moment. That assumption is about to be challenged.

The AI agent - a new buyer persona

Publishers are rightly losing sleep about the impact AI is having on their search traffic and revenues, not to mention the ongoing wrangle over copyrights and content licensing. But AI offers plenty to be excited about, too. One area that’s quietly moving forward is agentic ecommerce; and for publishers, it could potentially open up a whole new avenue for promoting and selling subscriptions.

At a basic level, agentic ecommerce has already started at browser level, with tools such as OpenClaw, which can operate webpages and attempt to complete tasks in the same way that a person would.

If you asked an agent like this to subscribe to a newspaper, it would effectively open a browser, work its way through the paywall, enter details, and attempt a checkout. It requires access to your personal data, your card details, and most likely your phone (and you) for authentication.

It works, but it’s a clunky process still, and far from ideal. It is however an important step, because it shifts AI from being something that answers questions, to something that makes decisions and completes tasks.

Designing for agents, not readers

What is emerging next though, is the idea of agent-friendly commercial infrastructure, which instead of forcing an AI agent to behave like a human on an internet browser, gives it a direct, structured way to interact with retail systems, tech-on-tech.

The new Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) is an open specification that allows AI agents to discover offers, understand entitlements, and complete transactions through a programmatic interface rather than a web page. Stripe and OpenAI are making significant strides in developing this kind of open framework, but real progress will depend on creating consistent standards for each industry that are extensible and importantly, vendor-neutral.

Publishers who are following these new developments will begin to understand the importance of organised, machine-readable product data, uniform pricing and eligibility, tokenised payments and strong authentication flows that protect sensitive user data. It’s all in the early stages still, but it’s taking shape.

Moving the subscription battleground

Fast-forward a few years, and instead of a reader arriving at a publisher paywall, they may simply instruct their personal agent to find and purchase the best offers. An agent could then review subscriptions from multiple publications, understand pricing, trials and billing cycles, and complete a purchase using a secure payment token rather than card data. No browser would be involved so therefore no clicks, scrapes or clunky authentication processes.

At that point, a carefully optimised checkout flow is no longer the primary battleground. The agent doesn’t care about the publisher’s button placement or colour scheme. It cares about what products are visible through the ACP interface, how clearly those products are defined, what entitlements come with them and what pricing rules and criteria apply.

It’s going to require a complete mindset shift for publishers, because things like dynamic metering and individual-level behavioural targeting may actually become irrelevant to the final transaction. Instead, they’ll need to pay extra attention to the way their subscription products are catalogued, found and presented in this new agentic universe.

What publishers should do now

Agentic commerce is not happening for the average consumer yet, but the roadmap is clear. As an industry, we should start aligning on a common framework for subscription types, entitlement models, trials, discounts and renewals, and some clear definitions of access across web, apps and print.

In the meantime, individual publishers should be thinking about subscription friction from an agentic perspective and start auditing their products and pricing offers for programmatic exposure. Start by setting up clean interfaces, clear product definitions and reliable payment flows to make it easy for agents to transact. Think carefully about which offers are visible to agents, set rules around eligibility and ensure that pricing strategies are protected.

Most importantly, don’t assume that today’s user journey will be the same tomorrow, because the customer may not be the one clicking the purchase button. This doesn’t remove the need for great products or strong journalism; if anything, it reinforces it. But it does change how those products are discovered and purchased.

Put in the work now and agentic ecommerce becomes a major opportunity for publishers. Like it or not, agentic purchase decisioning is coming, and as platform builders, we’re already making sure our partners are ready.

Flip-Pay is a unified monetisation platform for quality news publishers, media companies and content providers, combining subscriptions, donations, identity, first party data collection, payments, analytics and print fulfilment into a single system. Flip-Pay is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, with additional offices in New York, USA.