Big Tech Bargain: Google, California Deal Commits $250 Million To Journalism, AI Initiatives — But At What Cost?

The Magazine Manager blog has followed California’s journalism bill since it was introduced last March as a measure to force Big Tech companies to pay a usage fee to publishers for their local-based content. In the contentious months since, the California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA; AB-886) has seen threats by one tech company to remove news from feeds, delays in legislation, similar efforts by other states, the actual removal of news by another tech company, and, most recently, a successful passing by the state’s Senate Appropriations Committee earlier this month.

Last week, an agreement was reached between the state and Google, who will commit a combined $250 million to California newsrooms over the next five years for journalism initiatives and AI development.

“As technology and innovation advance, it is critical that California continues to champion the vital role of journalism in our democracy,” said Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, who originally authored the bill. “This partnership represents a cross-sector commitment to supporting a free and vibrant press, empowering local news outlets up and down the state to continue in their essential work.”

 

Digital Media Makes Up Nearly Two-Thirds Of Consumers’ Total Time Spent With Media

Digital will make up 63.7% of the 12 hours and 37 minutes (12:37) per day US adults spend with total media in 2024, per our forecast. Time spent with mobile will hit 4 hours (4:00) per day among US adults, making it the most popular media access point in 2024, according to our US Time Spent With Media H2 2024 Update report.

 

Planet Email: 9.7 Billion Messages Are Sent In The U.S. Every Day

Email is a dominant channel worldwide, especially in the subscription and fintech verticals. But it falls short in other areas, judging by Unraveling The Cross-Channel Marketing Strategy, a study by CleverTap. In the Fintech sector, email, push, in-app, and App Inbox contribute to 31% of conversions.

 

PR And Betting Companies Have Articles Indexed In Google Top Stories

PR services, government websites and even betting companies are getting their content listed in the Top Stories box provided by Google for news-related searches. USA Today was the domain most likely to appear in Google’s Top Stories box in the first half of 2024, according to data shared with Press Gazette for Google searches across the web.

Push The Right Buttons: Publishers Leaning More Toward Mobile, Apps, Push Notifications (New Report)

Publishers looking to expand their audiences — a classification that could just as easily be shortened nowadays to “Publishers” — would do well to consider the doors and opportunities that mobile publishing opens, according to Pugpig’s latest report.

“Pugpig data shows that publishers have better success in engaging young audiences with their apps than their websites,” says the State of Mobile Publishing Market Report, which surveyed 72 publishers that use its platform to better illustrate mobile publishing’s potential and digital publishing’s future. With mobile’s consumer time and attention either rising or holding steady across the globe, what apps can do to attract and engage audiences (particularly younger audiences) is worth publishers’ time.

 

Readers Flock To Top US Newsbrands In July

Most of the world’s biggest news website[s] saw strong growth in July in what was a bumper month for news. July saw an assassination attempt against Donald Trump, Joe Biden announcing he would not stand for re-election as US president and the start of the Paris Olympics. The fastest-growing English language news websites in the world were mainly based in the US with Newsweek, ABC News and AP News all up more than 100% year on year. 

 

Who’s There? Retailers Can’t ID Visitors And Prospects

Retailers are letting up to 85% of their potential customers disappear because they can’t identify them, judging by the 2024 Customer Growth Benchmark from Bluecore. Identification is the ability to “recognize an anonymous visitor by email address or phone number and match them to previously collected behavior,” the study notes. But the success rate varies by vertical sector. … The average is 21.1%.

 

Dentsu Creative 2024 CMO Report

Key insights include 79% of respondents agreeing that marketing is a key driver of business transformation, with 83% of CMOs believing that creative ideas can transform businesses and 81% seeing creativity as more important to their business than ever.

Better Results: New Survey Shows Nearly Half Happier With AI-Assisted Search Results

I’ve written quite a bit recently about AI’s place in search, from the competitors running up on Google heels to the takeaways that marketers can learn from the result-outputs themselves.

Against the backdrop of the U.S. Justice Department now reportedly considering breaking up Google because of last week’s antitrust ruling that the company created an online search monopoly, a recent Tinuiti report is showing that, among the 1,000 U.S. adults surveyed, almost half (48%) who’ve seen AI summaries in their Google results say it’s made search results better. On the other end, 15% say the results have gotten worse.

 

New Industry Report That Sees Concrete Growth Opportunities Through AI

This [“State of Commerce Advertising”] report captures the industry’s sentiment and identifies top themes to provide actionable recommendations for the future. … The implementation of generative AI is seen as the second-greatest opportunity for revenue growth in the next six months (by 32.6% of the respondents), only surpassed by increased investment in partnerships (41.9%). The industry index shows that respondents view AI as a growth driver in nearly all areas of Commerce Advertising.

 

Follow The Bounce: Some Of The Worst Bounceback, Click Rates Are In Marketing

Email deliverability rates have jumped and bounce rates have fallen. But some sectors are doing better than others, judging by a new benchmark report from Selzy. Which one is doing the worst? Why, our own industry — marketing. The bounce rate for marketing is 3.21%, compared to an overall average of 1.98%. Tourism & Travel has the second highest rate — at 2.73%. 

 

Generative AI’s Rapid Growth Moderates As Users Assess The Technology’s Potential

Generative AI’s (genAI) user growth rate in 2024 is 28.6%—still strong, but more than 30 times slower than last year’s meteoric rise of nearly 900% from a relatively small base of users. Despite a moderation in adoption, the technology is expected to reach 100 million US users in 2024, or 29.3% of the population. For context, Facebook took four years to reach the 100 million-user milestone.

Programmatic Potential: Retail Leading All Industries In Alternative Programmatic Ad Buys

Just before Google’s recent about-face — not Google’s rollback-of-AI-Overviews about-face, but Google’s keeping-of-cookies about-face following years of promising to kill the third-party tracker — 33Across released its Programmatic Cookie Alternative Trends Report for Q1 2024.

Just because Google changed its mind doesn’t mean publishers should simply throw away all the work they did putting priority on privacy and seeking out cookie alternatives.

 

How Trade Media Fuels Business Growth And Industry Influence

Drawing from a survey of over 150 B2B industry leaders, including C-level executives, managing directors and senior vice presidents, [Broadsheet’s] report demonstrates trade media’s pivotal role in the business environment. Trade media is not just about staying informed — it is a significant factor influencing decision-making, even at the highest levels. 

 

The Cost Of Undelivered Email? Try $59.5B Per Year

Undelivered emails cost U.S. brands a massive $59.5 billion per year, according to a new analysis from Mailtrap. … To come up with these sums, Mailtrap analyzed the relation between recent data on average email deliverability, average daily revenue per sent email and average number of emails sent every day, based on internal and outside studies. 

 

The Engagement Equation: How B2B Tech Marketers Are Captivating Audiences in 2024

Content was once considered just one tool in the marketing toolbox, but now it is taking center stage based on its ability to support lead generation efforts and influence buyer decisions. It’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it — and it turns out that the delivery and the platform matter! Spoiler alert: Sticking to one channel, one format or posting just once a month (or even once a week) means you are falling way behind.

Send In The Search Team: Can SearchGPT Dethrone Google Search?

When we first met Google’s AI Overviews, it was recommending some dangerous pizza ingredients as well as striking immediate fear in the hearts of publishers who saw their content further depreciated by an already cluttered and seemingly compromised Search Result page.

The News/Media Alliance quickly expressed its concern in a letter to the Department of Justice and FTC, calling out “Google’s misappropriation of digital publishers’ content to power its generative artificial intelligence (“GAI”) products to enhance its monopoly power.”

With Google facing the initial heat and reportedly reducing the overall presence of AI Overviews in its results, what better time than now for OpenAI and Microsoft to throw their hats into the generative search ring? 

 

2024 Zero-Click Search Study: For Every 1,000 U.S. Google Searches, Only 360 Clicks Go To The Open Web

Zero-click searches are defined as those that end without clicking on any of the results presented. It includes searches that end with the searcher satisfied, frustrated, or changing their search to perform a new one. In the United States, just under 60% of mobile web and desktop searches in Datos’ panel ended this way.

 

SMBs Think AI: They Are More Likely To Adopt The Technology Than Larger Firms

Smaller businesses are leading the way in adopting artificial intelligence (AI), judging by Pipedrive’s State of Sales and Marketing Report 2023/2024. The study shows that 42% of respondents at companies with 10 employees or less are using AI. In contrast, 37% at firms with 11-100 have adopted AI, versus 23% of those at firms with more than 100 employees. 

 

Which Industries Still Rely On Cookies The Most

Food and drink and travel are the most reliant on cookies for US programmatic ad buys, according to Q1 2024 data by 33Across. In both industries, 86% of programmatic ad buys still used the legacy identifiers.

Tough Cookies: Google Is Keeping Cookies, So Now What?

All that planning and spending.

All that worrying and reevaluating.

All of it, and for what? To keep photographers who specialize in capturing laptops and baked goods in business?

Ever since Google first announced in 2020 that they’d be killing off third-party cookies, those tiny bits of data-collecting code that tracked user activity and helped customize Chrome browsing experiences, publishers and advertisers have been preparing for the looming cookieless future. And as the tech company rolled out initiatives like Privacy Sandbox while issuing continuous stays of execution over the years, companies responded by paying attention to — and lots of money for — alternative plans. Keeping up with the potential seismic shifts and the possible salvaging solutions was a full-time focus for publishers, advertisers, tech leaders, industry experts, bloggers, and those (like me) who’ve long been dead-center in the eye of that Venn diagram storm … and on Monday, Google said nevermind. 

 

Google Cookie U-Turn Could Be Another Meteor Heading For Publishers

The future funding of journalism on the open internet remains in question despite news that Google will not kill off third-party cookies on its Chrome web browser after nearly five years of promising otherwise.

 

The SMB Channel Divide: Consumers And Businesses Are Split On Preferences

Consumers and small businesses are at odds over how marketing should be done, judging by The state of small business marketing in 2024, a two-part study by SimpleTexting. Of the consumers polled, 38% prefer receiving marketing communications from SMBs via email, while 34% cite social media as their preferred channel. 

 

Consumer Vision 2035: The Era of the Insight to Foresight Pivot

In the next decade technology will completely envelop our experience of reality. At the same time, constraints created by what’s happening with the environment and the global population will force [us] to re-examine tenets of our culture and how we think about economic growth. In response to these pressures, consumers will increasingly lean on their mood states when making their shopping decisions and expect brands to be able to anticipate their emotional states and offer proactive solutions.

The Definitive Guide to the Best Software For Newspaper Publishers

Industry news is rarely good when it comes to newspapers and publishing. However, opportunities abound for those papers able and willing to roll with the punches. 

With so many of those opportunities knocking online — from the SaaS companies with amazing tools to the fertile ground that is digital editions — it’s important that even newspaper industry stalwarts with ink in their blood and on their fingertips don’t ignore the potential.

 

Google Scraps Plan To Ditch Cookies On Chrome

Google has scrapped plans to ban third-party cookies on Chrome in a move that could save news publishers tens of millions in ad revenue they had expected to lose. But campaigners have warned that the “devil is in the detail” of Google’s new plan to offer Chrome users “informed choice” about the information they share with advertisers.

 

Fanning Personalization: How AI Is Changing Marketing

Almost all businesses are ramping up their personalization. And many are using artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) to do it, judging by The State of Personalization, a study released Tuesday by Twilio. Of the decision makers surveyed, 89% believe that personalization will be invaluable over the next three years. In addition, 73% agree AI adoption will fundamentally change personalization and marketing. By 2025, 91% of businesses expect to be using AI at least weekly and 59% daily. Indeed, they will view AI as indispensable as email, the study says.

 

Underground Recession: The Hidden Strain On B2B CMOs

The current economic environment has led to significant budget cuts and revenue declines across various industries. Over one-third (38%) of marketing leaders indicate their companies are experiencing flat or declining revenue. However, the impact of slowing revenue isn’t felt equally across all departments. IT, for instance, is unlikely to see any contraction in spending, according to IDC. Marketing departments, on the other hand, are among the hardest hit.

Ad Infinitum: The Ever-Increasing Role Of AI In Advertising

Much has been written (especially by me) about what AI can do for various publishing departments. For the advertising side, new estimates are now saying that, in five year’s time, more than 90% of all ad spending for digital and analog media buys will be AI-enabled.

In its “This Year Next Year: 2024 Global Midyear Forecast,” GroupM is predicting a 94.1% share by 2029, a full three years earlier than it had previously predicted hitting the 90% benchmark for the “growing role of artificial intelligence (AI) and the potential for machine-generated content in advertising.”

 

The AI Act Compliance Countdown Begins

The AI Act is a sweeping set of rules for technology companies operating in the EU, which bans certain uses of AI tools and puts transparency requirements on developers. The law officially passed in March after two years of back and forth and includes several phases for compliance that will happen in waves. Now that the full text has been published, it officially starts the clock for compliance deadlines that companies must meet. The AI Act will come into law in 20 days, on August 1st, and future deadlines will be tied to that date.

 

Agency Service Divide: Brands Are Far From Happy

A fair number of brands use agencies for email marketing and other chores. But they may not be getting the service they expect, judging by Mind the Gap, a study from Wpromote, conducted by Ascend2. Of the agencies polled, 76% have high confidence in their service delivery in general. But only 39% of brands are very satisfied.  

 

Social Media Overtakes Search Engines For Discovery Among Gen Z And Millennials

Traditional search engine usage is declining, particularly among younger demographics, who are increasingly turning to social media and mobile devices for their information needs. A new survey from Forbes Advisor and Talker Research reveals a significant transformation in search behavior across generations. The study of 2,000 Americans found that social media platforms are becoming primary search tools for many.

Is The Public Ready For AI In The Newsroom?

Last week, I shared a recent Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism study of how the public would prefer the use of AI in the newsroom.

And while that study found a general wariness amongst the thousands surveyed in six different countries, with “somewhat more comfort” towards AI work with human oversight on softer news topics, newer RISJ numbers from almost 100,000 people in 47 countries elaborate on those preferences and paint a slightly more skeptical picture overall.

“As publishers rapidly adopt AI, to make their businesses more efficient and to personalize content, our research suggests they need to proceed with caution, as the public generally wants humans in the driving seat at all times,” writes Nic Newman in the 2024 Digital News Report overview.

 

This is Big Tech’s Playbook For Swallowing The AI Industry

With Amazon’s hiring of the team behind a buzzy AI startup, a pattern is emerging: the reverse acquihire.

 

Businessweek Editor Predicts Print Comeback As 120-page Monthly Edition Launched

Editor of Businessweek Brad Stone said he believes print journalism could make a comeback as the 95-year-old title moved from weekly to monthly circulation this week. The July edition of the US-based title runs to 120 pages and includes an investigation into Indonesian nickel mines and an exclusive interview with the world’s third richest man, LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault. The title claims a circulation of 220,000 in print and across Bloomberg Terminals, the Bloomberg app and Apple News+.

 

Amazon Faces More EU Scrutiny Over Recommender Algorithms And Ads Transparency

In its latest step targeting a major marketplace, the European Commission sent Amazon another request for information (RFI) Friday in relation to its compliance under the bloc’s rulebook for digital services. The development highlights areas where EU enforcers are dialing up their scrutiny of the e-commerce giant, with the bloc asking for more info about Amazon’s recommender systems, ads transparency provisions and risk assessment measures.

Part Of The Process: How The Public Perceives — And Prefers — AI In The Newsroom

I’ve written extensively about AI use in newsrooms and across other publishing departments, but a recent study from Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) at the University of Oxford takes a look at the other side: specifically, how the news-consuming public sees that AI use.

“People are generally more comfortable with news produced by human journalists than by AI,” the study, titled What Does the Public in Six Countries Think of Generative AI in News?, says. “Although people are generally wary, there is somewhat more comfort with using news produced mostly by AI with some human oversight when it comes to soft news topics like fashion (+7 percentage point difference between comfortable and uncomfortable) and sport (+5) than with ‘hard’ news topics, including international affairs (-21) and, especially, politics (-33).”

The survey, conducted by YouGov by sampling more than 2,000 people from the United States as well as 2,000-plus from each of five other countries in March and April, found that the “vast majority” believe that AI-produced news with human oversight should have a label or some disclosure. 

 

A Jolt For Journalism: States Mull Tax Breaks For Papers That Hire Reporters

Massachusetts may join the parade of states that seek to stop the spread of news deserts by offering tax credits for hiring local reporters. Two state legislators, Rep. Paul McMurtry (D) and Sen. Pavel Payano (D)., expect to offer recommendations by the end of  the year through a reset journalism commission, WBUR reports. Among the probable plans would be tax credits for publishers that add journalists to their payrolls. 

 

Consumers Want Personalized Loyalty Programs

61% of US adults value loyalty programs that are tailored to their shopping preferences, according to a Bizrate Insights survey. Consumer data is key to creating a more personalized experience for consumers.

 

The State of the Enterprise Migration Change Decision

In an ideal world, your martech stack runs like a well-oiled machine. In reality, lack of integration across different programs and automations prevents your program from working efficiently. We partnered with Ascend2 to assess the state of technology migration in enterprise organizations and study the factors that drive changes in the martech stack.