No one reading this needs to be reminded of the disruption that publishers are facing. With the BBC’s latest study1 into the veracity of AI assistants finding that they misrepresent news content 45% of the time, I would be preaching to the choir if I were to relitigate the dangers of chatbots and generative search. The AOP will have plenty more to say on the matter after we publish our report on the impact of such interfaces on publisher traffic and revenues later this year.
In the meantime, I want to focus on reasons to be optimistic about the future of publishing, share some of the work being done to secure this future, and explain why I have total faith that the industry will outlast any of the threats we currently face.
Technology is bringing audiences closer and proving their commercial value
On one hand, technology is driving a wedge between publishers and audiences. On the other, it is bringing them closer. No publisher demonstrates this better than regional news group, Newsquest. Its team of AI-assisted reporters deploys in-house generative models to rapidly produce content derived from press releases, planning applications, travel alerts, and so on; all vital from a local news perspective, but time-consuming work that ties journalists to their desks and limits their ability to hunt down the most interesting and engaging stories for their readers.
Now, freed from the page-filler churn, these journalists can get out on the streets and cover their local areas, fulfilling their duty to their communities and producing the sort of exclusive content that attracts engagement, builds trust, and drives subscriptions. It is a fantastic example of how AI can improve rather than diminish content quality, while Newsquest’s 11% increase in page views and 35% increase in subscriptions year-on-year proves the commercial value of its tech investment.
Publishers are also using technology to leverage their most valuable asset: their audiences. Throughout the ‘will they, won’t they’ of cookie deprecation, publishers were proactive in collecting first-party data to assemble addressable audiences. Now, they are pursuing partnerships to supplement this data with insights from other publishers, media platforms, and brands.
This is all thanks to innovations in privacy-enhancing technologies such as clean rooms, which allow datasets to be aggregated and overlaid with one another to reveal audience intelligence without exposing any personally identifiable information. Through this process, a publisher can demonstrate audience overlap with a brand to secure direct advertising deals, prove the direct sales uplift from advertising exposure, or collaborate with another publisher to increase audience scale.
For example, Auto Match, a joint clean room initiative between Carwow and ITV, gives automotive brands the ability to target ITVX users who are in-market for a new car. Then, by integrating their own websites into the platform, brands can track averages between ad exposure and on-site interactions, including how brand consideration changes along the way.
Rather than being disintermediated from the marketing funnel by the rise of commerce media, publishers can use such integrations to demonstrate their place in it, and use privacy-enhancing technologies to fill the addressability gap with their exclusive first-party data.
A new pivot to video, this time on publishers’ terms
While AI chatbots hog the limelight in discussions around changing audience engagement, the far bigger story is the switch to video as the primary medium for content consumption, particularly vertical video. It has always been necessary for publishers to reach the public through whichever mediums they use the most, or risk shrinking relevance. It was true in the shift from print to digital, and is true again in the shift from text to video.
Video also possesses a human authenticity that makes it more AI-proof than text. Yes, there are convincing deepfakes and eerily lifelike generated videos, but the draw for video is the content creator or host themselves. Their unique expressions and cadence as they look directly into the camera is what makes video feel so intimate, and what inspires audiences to form bonds and establish trust with the creators they follow. Perhaps I will be proven wrong, but I simply do not believe AI-generated video will ever hold that same power.
Forward-thinking publishers have leveraged this power, tapping into content creators born and bred on social media and cultivating their own pool of talent to establish a foothold on video platforms. Mail Metro Media has soared in this space, with Daily Mail and Daily Mail Sport hitting a combined 30 million followers on TikTok, while its Metro following grew from just 8,000 in 2023 to 3.3 million today across four verticals.
A following would be worth little if it couldn’t be monetised, and advertising revenues shared directly by video platforms are too paltry to justify the expense, which has been a thorn in the side of off-site video strategies. Mail Metro Media — like other successful video publishers — launched its own video advertising formats that could be hosted directly within its feeds, such as EDITS, which emulate popular social media staples such as “day in the life” and “ask the expert” with creative produced entirely in-house.
By establishing a video advertising offering that is hosted on platforms but sits independently from them, publishers can adapt to changing media trends. It wasn’t very long ago that no one had heard of TikTok and, should a new video platform emerge, publishers with their own video products will be able to get in on the ground floor rather than be caught off guard and have to play catch up.
The publishing industry was here before big tech, and will be long after
It is tempting to frame the future as a battle between publishers and tech titans. After all, who doesn’t love rooting for the underdog? However, our strength will not be found in adversity, but in community: community between publishers as we share knowledge and resources among peers; and community between publishers and audiences as we seek to make their lives better for having spent time with us.
Despite deep disruption, I feel more optimistic than I have before in my 36 years spent in this industry. This is because I have never seen such camaraderie among our membership and beyond it. Publishing was once host to bitter rivalry; now we are strengthened by healthy competition, a recognition that a rising tide lifts all boats, of publishers saying, “Look how good this is, and here’s how you can do it too”.
I see this all first-hand. Fostering a sense of community and hosting forums where publishers can share practical, proven solutions to shared challenges has been the purpose of AOP since our founding. By depending on one another, we reduce our dependence on platforms and technologies built to dominate market share and extract profit rather than provide neutral, sustainable infrastructure.
While we must continue to challenge practices hostile to publishers’ revenues and intellectual property, it is ultimately up to the public (and the regulators who represent their interests) to stem big tech overreach. Here, I’m hopeful: I disagree with the misanthropic expectation that people will simply accept whatever slop they are served. It ignores the groundswell of societal discomfort at the harms of engagement-driven algorithmic media and an information ecosystem captured by a handful of history’s wealthiest men.
Big tech’s hold on the future of media is not guaranteed. What is guaranteed is the desire to share stories, to uncover the truth, to inform and entertain, and to build platforms that support these efforts. If the entire media ecosystem were melted down to a primordial soup, publishers would eventually emerge again. The needs we represent are woven into humanity itself, with the omnichannel operations of publishing today simply the latest of our inevitable iterations.
To bring this existential tangent back down to earth, just look at Black Ballad. Led by a husband-and-wife team, they recognised an underserved audience in Black British women and have established a growing multimedia organisation to meet their needs. It has been a collaborative effort between publisher and audience, starting as a traditional lifestyle blog before finding its footing as a wide-reaching community platform.
Look at independent journalists funding their work through Substack, content creators crowdfunding through Patreon, or podcasters banding together to form networks. These are the green shoots of life in the industry. They might continue to cater to lucrative niches, or they might grow to become a new generation of household names. Either way, wherever there is an audience, there will be people to speak to them, and they will be rewarded for their efforts.
This is evidenced not just in the long tail of smaller publishers but also in the premium end of the industry we represent at AOP. Against all the (justifiable) anxiety around referral traffic, subscription revenues have quietly been growing and now bring in as much as display advertising for our members. There was a brief period when free-to-access, ad-funded digital publishing was the norm, but now we have rediscovered a truth from the print era: people are willing to pay for quality journalism.
Clearly, audiences value publishers. Publishers should value themselves too, and not relegate their work to mere grist for the AI mill. Our value is in human connection between creators and audiences, and building commercial models that leverage and strengthen these connections so they can endure. And they will endure, because plurality of perspective and diversity of thought will always better represent reality than robotic homogenisation.
Footnote:
This article was first published in InPublishing magazine. If you would like to be added to the free mailing list to receive the magazine, please register here.
