- The Publisher Newsletter
- Posts
- Tuesday 24th October: Time to get comfortable with ambiguity
Tuesday 24th October: Time to get comfortable with ambiguity
Good morning! Today's newsletter is brought to you by Esther.
There’s just over 6 weeks to go until Mx3 AI; a collaboration between Media Voices and Media Makers Meet. We’ll be featuring sessions on AI in local, national, consumer and B2B media, as well as discussions on innovation, developments and regulation.
One theme Brian Morrissey is noticing in conversations with media execs is how bumpy the pandemic and post-pandemic periods have been, with one commenting that revenue could be up 20% or down 20% and neither result would be surprising:
"From the effect of generative AI to the final disappearance of the third-party cookie, an ambiguous environment is the norm. One publishing executive a few weeks back lamented how the playbooks they’d use in the past don’t apply now."
I'm not sure I entirely agree with all Morrissey’s reasoning here, but then I don't run a large media company. Personally I think a lot of the 'faff and fat' around popular media companies has proved more and more difficult to monetise. Those with simple publishing models, strong communities and unique content are the ones doing well.
Is this ambiguity a post-pandemic thing, a natural part of the digital media cycle which would have happened pandemic or not, or are some of you seeing more predictability than those over the pond? Let us know over on our community forum.
A fascinating look at how far ChatGPT has come (it’s only been public for 11 months) but also how far it has to go. One point that struck me reading this was Mariana Adami’s skill in prompting it to get the answer she needed, or more depth on the answers it had given. Most people will simply never have the understanding to coax accurate or complete information out of it in the state it’s currently in.
Of the 70 leading publishers tracked by Press Gazette, half saw falls in their visibility score. Of those, 24 saw declines in the double-digits. The core algorithm update comes just a few weeks after a helpful content update intended to penalise sites with poor user experience.
Are you seeing changes in the quantity or quality of traffic from search? Join in the discussion in our community forum!
There’s massaging your numbers. Then there’s inflating them to the tune of tens of millions. This isn’t a pretty or especially flowing read thanks to the ‘Semaform’ way the writing and different perspectives are chunked up, but it did introduce me to the term ‘self-licking ice cream cone’ so there we go.
More from Media Voices
