State of Digital Publishing

It is two decades since Facebook introduced the News Feed – letting loose a world in which algorithms would shape ever more of our lives. In 2006, Facebook was facing something of a crisis. Its internal data suggested that for the first time since its launch two years earlier (as TheFacebook), the company had stopped growing. People weren’t joining, and existing users weren’t spending more time on the site.

More than 72% of publishers use centralized ad serving systems to manage campaigns across various platforms. Modern-day publishers are looking to strike the perfect balance between control and operational flexibility. The publishing operation is not restricted to ad delivery or maximizing fill rates anymore.

You know the feeling. Your account is suspended, your refund request is refused, or you’re still being charged for a cancelled subscription. So you go to the company’s website for help and you find a chatbot. It offers a menu that doesn’t include your situation. There is no option to speak to a person. Eventually you give up.

The government has finally tabled its News Bargaining Incentive legislation to make big tech companies pay for the Australian journalism they use on their platforms. The government developed these laws to fix a problem with the original News Media Bargaining Code introduced under the Morrison government.

A labor dispute erupted at The Guardian’s London headquarters in December 2024, with nearly 500 journalists going on strike to protest the proposed sale of the Guardian-owned Observer.With the newsroom hobbled, the British publication’s management allegedly deployed generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Claude to suggest headlines and write descriptions of photos for people using screen readers.

Independent publisher says the final News Bargaining Incentive design will produce few deals, no diversity, and a distribution formula that hands public-purpose money back to the four conglomerates that cut 450 journalists.

You’ve probably heard artificial intelligence models described as “open” or “closed.” These are not descriptions of the model’s personality. Large language model AIs like the one under the hood of ChatGPT don’t have actual personalities, despite appearances. The labels refer to whether all of the information about how an AI model works is publicly available and the model can be modified, or whether the model’s developer keeps its inner workings secret and the model itself private property.

Many of the biggest online platforms have long argued they aren’t publishers of the content their users upload, merely hosts. The likes of Google, YouTube, Meta and TikTok claim they simply store and display information created by others, so should not be seen as legally responsible for it.

Answer eight questions about your ad setup and get a prioritized list of where revenue is leaking — weighted for how monetization works now: opt-in formats, ad breaks, identity and yield per visit, not just more display units. Estimated dollar impact for each fix. Your setup Site URL Monthly pageviews Current page RPM (USD, if known) Formats you currently run In-content display Sticky anchor Side rails Outstream video Interstitials Rewarded ads Ads per article page Ad refresh in use?

EPMV — earnings per thousand visitors — is the truest measure of how well a site monetizes, because it captures every ad, on every page of a visit. See where your site sits against publishers like you. Your site profile Niche Monthly visits (sessions) Audience geography Current monthly ad revenue (optional) If provided, we compute your actual EPMV and your percentile vs. peers.