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AI Expectations: Why Publishers Must Balance Excitement With Realism

As anyone can tell from how much I have written about AI’s place in publishing and in the newsroom specifically, it is clear that I’m coming from a place of excitement.

From here, at the particularly-thrilling intersection of publishing and technology, this tool’s work potential is worthy of our best efforts and explorations now while it’s impossible to ignore.

Still, the more-measured reactions and AI reports — whether that’s from the user or the audience perspective — are always welcome, and a recent study from Enders Analysis provides an interesting one to chew on.

 

Marketers and GenAI: Diving Into the Shallow End

Marketers are leading in GenAI use, but it’s only surface level. What’s needed to take the next step?

 

The AI Character Question: Can AI Agents Reverse Declining Trust In Brands?

Consumers are hardly in a trusting mood as we approach the holiday season. A full 72% have less faith in companies than they did a year ago, up from 56% in 2023, according to the State of the AI Connected Customer, a study by Salesforce. Only 26% trust companies more, down from 44% last year. 

 

Chatbots Are Marketers’ Most Popular Use Case For AI

38% of marketers worldwide cite chatbots as the most impactful AI use case for enhancing the digital experience, according to a September 2024 survey by Advanis and Sitecore.

AI Companies Collaborating on $10 Million In Support Projects For Newsrooms

As newsrooms continue to explore AI’s potential and what it could mean for their work, the tech companies themselves are taking steps to further their exploration.

The latest effort is from the Lenfest Institute for Journalism, founded by former Philadelphia Inquirer owner H.F. “Gerry” Lenfest in 2016, which is collaborating with OpenAI and Microsoft to “help newsrooms explore and implement ways in which artificial intelligence can help drive business sustainability and innovation in local journalism.”

In total, $10 million will be awarded over two years to support projects by Chicago Public Media (Chicago Sun-Times, WBEZ), Minnesota Star Tribune, Newsday, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Seattle Times, for AI focuses varying from text summarization and translation to media analyzation and marketing services.

 

Wave of News Publishers Arrive on Bluesky As Sign-Ups Surge

A wave of news publishers have arrived on Bluesky in recent days, following audiences and journalists departing X/Twitter. Days after announcing it was leaving X, The Guardian has become one of a flurry of news publishers to set up an account on the rival microblogging platform. A significant uptick in account registrations since the U.S. election has prompted a wave of new journalists and publishers to start posting to Bluesky over the past week. As of [last] Tuesday it had 20 million accounts, up from 16 million before the [previous] weekend.

 

Email Reigns: It’s The Most Popular Channel Worldwide

Consumers worldwide are more likely to trust a message when it contains a logo or check mark, according to Consumer Preferences Report, a study from Twilio. Of those polled, 66% refrained from purchasing from a brand in the past year due to lack of trust. But 49% say they will trust a brand much more if the message displays a logo or check mark. And 62% will likely open an email when it is confirmed to be from a brand they trust …

 

DOJ Says Google Must Sell Chrome To Crack Open Its Search Monopoly

The Department of Justice says that Google must divest the Chrome web browser to restore competition to the online search market, and it left the door open to requiring the company to spin out Android, too. Filed late Wednesday in DC District Court, the initial proposed final judgement refines the DOJ’s earlier high-level outline of remedies after Judge Amit Mehta found Google maintained an illegal monopoly in search and search text advertising.

Premium Programmatic Growth Projected To Only Increase Further (New Report)

Programmatic advertisers face a number of hurdles, from brand safety concerns to larger environmental ones.

But the more I’ve written about those issues, the more I see them as not only conquerable, but also responsible for advertisers ultimately achieving even better programmatic results.

Which makes Guideline’s recent data about the programmatic ecosystem all the more confirming, with a reported 47% growth YoY in the premium programmatic market for January through August 2024.

 

Young UK Adults Read Average Of Six News Stories Per Day, Research Finds

Young people visit publisher news websites far more often than they admit to in surveys, according to a new study tracking online behavior. The last Digital News Report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, based on a survey of 2,000 adults, found just a quarter of 18 to 24-year-olds in the UK said they had visited a news publisher website or app over the previous week. But now new research based on tracking a representative sample of UK young people has told a more encouraging story for publishers.

 

Most Podcast Listeners Have Responded To Ads, Study Finds

Podcasts continue to pull in listeners and drive sales, judging by Podcast Pulse, a study from Acast conducted by Edison Research. Of the listeners polled, 84% have taken action after being exposed to a podcast-first omnichannel campaign. In addition, 44% have made a purchase and almost 60% have thought more favorably about the brand, according to the study.

 

7 In 10 Consumers Worldwide Prefer Emails From Brands

69% of consumers worldwide say email is their preferred communication channel with brands, according to a June 2024 survey from Emarsys. Email was followed by SMS/MMS, at 53%.

The Continued Trust In Newspapers, And Why That’s Significant To Advertisers

It’s not the first time that research has come back showing newspapers to be especially trustworthy, but it’s still newsworthy all the same.

Kantar’s new US Media Reactions Report found that consumers ranked newspapers No. 1 for trust, relevance / usefulness, and even consumer advertising receptivity. 

That last ranking is particularly noteworthy considering what Kantar’s press release calls “over-targeting” in ad experiences, which is “driving consumers back into offline channels and more ‘natural’ advertising experiences like retail media networks and news publications.”

 

Unwrapping Success: Key Investments Driving Holiday Sales

While the festive mood is encouraging, our report makes it clear that consumer optimism alone won’t guarantee success during key shopping events like Black Friday and Cyber Week, as well as the overall holiday shopping season. To profit, brands must invest in three main areas to attract and retain customers while boosting conversions: Modernizing their eCommerce platforms, powering social commerce and harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) for a wide range of use cases with proven ROI.

 

Crabby Customers: Over Half Will Jump After A Single Bad Experience

Email teams noticing a lagging response should look beyond their latest creative to place the blame. It may not be their fault. Rather, it could be due to a disappointing customer experience. Moving into 2025, 53% of customers worldwide will walk or reduce their spend after a single bad experience, up 2.7% earlier in 2024, according to 2025 Consumer Trends, a study by Qualtrics XM.

 

CFOs Are The Most Skeptical Of Marketing’s Value

40% of senior marketers worldwide say their CFO is most skeptical of marketing’s value at their company, according to data from Gartner. With budgets tight, marketers are under increased pressure to prove ROI to CFOs. Demonstrating that your tactics are working is even more important so marketers must have solid measurement strategies to demonstrate the value of dollars spent.

Advertising Outlook: WFA Predicts Two Years of Rising Media Inflation

The World Federation of Advertisers has released its latest WFA Outlook report for its members, predicting two years of rising media inflation following increased inflation forecasts for this year (up to 3.3% from 3.1% in April).

“This pattern of increasing media price inflation looks to be the story for the next few years,” WFA says. “Looking ahead to 2025, the report forecasts that 9 of the top 10 global media markets will see greater media price inflation in 2025 than 2024, led by the U.S. rising from 2.1% in 2024 to 2.3% in 2025.”

The report, compiled from “aggregated, anonymized, media price forecasts” across 41 markets, forecasts India to see particularly high inflation, reaching 9.6% in 2026. In the United States, inflation is forecast to hit 3.9% in 2026.

 

Google Lags In Mobile AI, Captures Most Search Market Share

Google, Meta, and Microsoft continue in their race to capture dedicated users for search and AI services and engines, competing with newcomers OpenAI, Perplexity, Anthropic, Mistral and many others for market share. New Street Research surveyed 263 U.S. consumers on a census-weighted basis for their search and AI chatbot usage habits … Survey results showed Google retains a lead among U.S. users for default search settings among both Android and iOS users — at 71% and 81%, respectively.

 

U.S. Consumers Are Fed Up With Excessive Texts and Emails

Four in ten U.S. consumers say they unsubscribe from texts and emails from brands at least once a week. … This presents a problem for B2C marketers. There is often a push to maximize campaign performance but the frequency of email marketing content, SMS, or digital notifications appears to be overwhelming consumers and disengaging leads. Now is the time to rethink digital marketing strategy and how to approach your audience when targeting them.

 

New Survey Reveals Ad Fatigue is Negatively Impacting Viewers’ Purchasing Decisions

AD-ID … announced the results of a new Harris Poll survey of over 2,000 U.S. adults ages 18+ among which 1,921 watch TV or view content on streaming (“viewers”) and found that 59% of viewers cite that seeing the same ads repeatedly leads to a negative impact on their viewing experience with half [50%] saying they get annoyed and a quarter [26%] stating it has negatively impacted their purchasing decisions.

Advanced Advertising: Are Google’s AI Overview Ads Enough To Maintain Search Dominance?

Search has found a new buddy in generative AI.

It’s something I’ve noticed in my own online perusals and pursuits. It’s something that’s driven people to break their traditional search engine habits, and it’s even something many say provides better results.

So it was only a matter of time before the advertising money followed.

 

PwC’s 2024 US Responsible AI Survey

As we move well into the second year of generative AI’s (GenAI) broad emergence — which propelled AI to the top of corporate agendas — there’s no question it’s becoming integral to business. Companies slow to make AI an intrinsic part of their businesses may find themselves so far behind that it will be difficult to catch up. 

 

The Last Days Of Last-Click?

Last-click attribution is an easy but flawed metric, and it’s limiting marketing. Just one in five (21.5%) marketers are confident last-click attribution is a reasonably accurate reflection of a platform’s long-term impacts on business, according to a new survey by EMARKETER in partnership with Snap. “It’s the devil marketers know,” said EMARKETER’s vice president of content Paul Verna. 

 

Agency Acceleration

Hearing in-house marketers and agencies describe the future, one wonders if they’re talking about the same industry. A significant share of in-house marketers say AI will invariably affect their agency relationships. In fact, 43% say AI will make their company less dependent on agencies — roughly 6x the rate of those who say they will be more dependent on agencies due to AI.

Highly Recommending: Magazine Readers ‘More Influential’ Than Other Media Users (New Report)

Nine out of ten Americans won’t agree on much this close to Election Day.

But there is one thing that unifies nearly 90% of adults these days.

Engaging with magazine media.

A News/Media Alliance report says 223 million Americans make up magazine media’s print and digital audience in 2024, with 87% engaging with magazine media in the last six months in a trend that’s “been stable over the last four years, indicating a strong and loyal magazine audience,” the report’s press release says.

 

Why News Publishers Should Not Give Up On Print

What is missing today … is a discussion not only about how a mix of different formats offering quality journalism is essential, but how it should be packaged, delivered, and presented to best meet the needs and expectations of different readers, creating opportunity for long-term profitability. There are still several examples of publishers continuing to invest also in their printed newspapers. Not just because they are staunch supporters of the paper as a product, but because they simply know that print creates unique conditions for profitability.

 

Programmatic Carbon Footprint: Brands Struggle To Achieve Sustainability

It’s not clear that most programmatic advertisers want to reduce their carbon emissions. But some are trying…. Sustainability in Media Planning notes that “1,000 ad impressions emit between 50-1,500+ grams of carbon.” And, “Every minute spent on social video consumption emits about 2.6 grams of carbon.” But it turns out that 2% of sites targeted in programmatic campaigns drove 50% of emissions. 

 

Instagram Sees Drop In Publisher Engagement, Ad Spend

Instagram’s appeal to publishers is waning, with 86% of publisher professionals posting content on the platform in Q3 2024, down from 91% a year ago, per Digiday research. Similarly, publishers’ ad spending on Instagram is decreasing, with 55% purchasing ads in the past month, down from 61% last year.

Search Strategies: More And More Trading Traditional For AI

Like Kleenex and tissue paper, Band-Aid and sticky bandages, and Trampoline and, well, whatever a generic description of a trampoline is, Google’s name is all but synonymous with the online search, with a name that’s replaced the verb-tense of the daily function.

Which makes AI’s meteoric rise in that realm all the more remarkable.

A September survey by The Information found that more than three-quarters (77%) of its readers had used genAI tools in place of Google and other traditional search engines, showing more overall optimism about the technology.

 

AI Adoption Outpacing Previous Technologies Like PCs And Internet, Survey Finds

Generative AI tools like ChatGPT are being adopted much faster than previous transformative technologies such as personal computers and the internet, according to a new U.S. survey. The study, titled “The Rapid Adoption of Generative AI,” found that generative AI reached usage rates in two years that took PCs and the Internet more than five years to achieve.

 

Putting The Customer On The Map: How Brands Track The Journey

Customer experience professionals must be getting better at what they do. They define their biggest challenge as cross-functional communication across business departments, up slightly from 2023. But understanding and acting on actual customer behaviors has fallen from 85% last year to 44% in 2024, according to The State of Customer Journey Success 2024-2025, a study by CX Network in association with Alterian.

 

Navigating The Holiday Crunch: Marketing Strategies for SMBs In An Uncertain Economy

Consumers want to support small businesses, and they begin thinking about the holidays earlier than many SMBs realize. With inflationary pressures, many are shopping for deals throughout the year. While SMBs tend to wait until Q4 to ramp up their marketing, the reality is that customers are already planning their purchases by the time October rolls around. There is an opportunity for SMBs to win over these early shoppers and reduce their holiday stress simply by preparing earlier.

Inbox Engagement: Why Sponsored Content Means More In A Newsletter

There’s a reason newsletters have been making headlines recently, in my blogs and beyond.

Because they consistently work.

A recent study from MAGNA Media Trials confirms that readers not only find them to be their preferred news source, but that built-in trust means 65% of those surveyed are more receptive to the sponsored content within newsletters.

 

AI Revolution For News Publishers Is Only Getting Started

Personalized news and information consumption will bring about a profound transformation in digital publishing. The widespread integration of generative AI into these domains will necessitate a comprehensive overhaul of existing news and information websites. The repercussions of these revolutionary changes will be so profound that, in retrospect, we will marvel at the relative simplicity of information consumption in the past. It is imperative that we swiftly embrace these advancements to remain competitive and avoid being left behind. The time for action is now.

 

Trust In Advertising: Have Advertisers Moved the Needle on Supporting Brand Safety, News Integrity and Quality Publishers?

Our annual Trust in Advertising Report tracks advertiser attitudes about the content environments they’re supporting with ad dollars – and to what extent they are conscientiously supporting high-quality legitimate publishers and information sources, or inadvertently funding bad actors profiting off disinformation or fraud.

 

Eighty Percent Of Brands Have Concerns About Agency Use Of GenAI

Nearly two-thirds of brand owners (63%) are already using generative AI in their marketing strategies, according to new research from the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) but many have serious concerns about the technology.

Sign-Up Sweeteners: What Your Newsletter Needs To Offer In Exchange For Emails

As publishers, we always believe our content to be the best.

But as publishers, we also know our content quality can’t do it alone.

To build an audience, publishers need more. And a new survey about the much-beloved email newsletter shows how willing consumers are to sign up for these audience-developing godsends … if, as LiveIntent says, “there’s value on the table.”

 

Search Saw Consistently Higher Clickthrough Rates Than Social And Retail Media Worldwide In The Last Year

In Q2 2024, worldwide clickthrough rates (CTRs) for search was 1.63%, more than double that of social (0.66%) and quadruple that of retail media (0.39%), according to a July 2024 report by Skai.

 

Better On Weekends: B2B Leaders Often Consume Content On Their Days Off

B2B marketers trying to reach high-level decision-makers should do so when they are available: on weekends. There has been a 23% surge in weekend web traffic from CEOs, CFOs, CIOS, CMOs and VPs of sales, DesignRush reports. The report specifically covers web traffic, but the uptick in weekend involvement presumably includes email. 

 

2024 Retail Media Pulse Report

While satisfaction with retail media is positive, we also found a growing demand for innovation within the space. Marketers and brand owners are looking to leverage AI, real-time targeting, and programmatic solutions to infuse efficiency and effectiveness into their retail media operations.