The CEO of The Atlantic, Nicholas Thompson, shares insights on the brand's profitability and subscriber strategy success. He discusses paywall experiments, AI trends, and setting future goals after achieving milestones of 1 million subscribers and profitability. The podcast also covers retention strategies, Apple News+, and the importance of data-driven decision-making in the media industry.

Focusing on key digital advertising accounts makes sense for publishers, but there is huge revenue potential in the small and medium sized businesses that publishers once served as a matter of course in their print publications. This is the latest in our Media Briefs series of short, sharp sponsored episodes – just 10 to 15 minutes – with a senior executive from a vendor working with publishers to make their businesses better. In this episode, Peter speaks with Christian Scherbel, CEO of Smartico about what opportunities there are for publishers to service small-business accounts online, and restore local digital display advertising revenues. This Media Briefs episode is sponsored by Smartico, enabling more than 500 publishers worldwide to access the untapped revenue potential in digital display advertising for small and medium sized businesses. Combining the power of AI with human creativity, Smartico’s Smart Ads Solution builds high-impact ads from existing advertiser content. Using just a URL, print ad or social media post Smartico will create engaging ads including built-in instant landing pages for your advertisers. Learn more about how Smartico can help grow SMB advertising revenues on their website or email Christian to request a free demo.

On this week's episode - the last of the season - we hear from James Cridland, Podnews editor and radio futurologist. Podnews is a daily email newsletter about everything podcasting, and is one of the smartest setups we’ve seen in terms of its supporter structure, monetisation and automations.  James tells us how he’s found the sweet spot between his technical, editorial and audio skills, why classifieds were a surprising success story for him, and the balance between newsletter growth and revenue. In the news roundup the team discusses the launch of the Guardian's dedicated cooking app Feast, and asks what adjacent apps like cooking or games platforms offer to the parent brand. Sign up to our daily newsletter to stay in touch until we come back for the next season by heading to voices.media, or check out our Publisher Podcast and Newsletter Summit agenda and tickets at publisherpodcasts.com.

Edward Hyatt, Director of Newsroom SEO at The Wall Street Journal, discusses the changing SEO landscape in the news industry. He highlights differences in strategies between subscription and non-subscription publishers, the evolution of SEO over the past decade, and the potential impact of AI on SEO. The episode also delves into Forbes' fraudulent ad practices and the detrimental effects on the digital advertising ecosystem.

This week we hear from Chris Minasians, Director and Editor at TotallyEV, an independent site dedicated to articles, reviews and interviews about electric vehicles. TotallyEV has recently hit 5 million views on YouTube, so he discusses building an audience through video reviews, and what it takes to run your own reviews site - including getting access to vehicles - as a solo publisher. Minasians also explores the differences he's noticed between his electric vehicle coverage on TotallyEV, and his more consumer-focused tech reviews on his other YouTube channel TotallydubbedHD, from audience engagement to relative revenues. In the news round-up, Chris (Sutcliffe!) and Esther run through a busy week in audio and podcast news. We ask where people listen to podcasts - not Google Podcasts any more - and whether podcasters are seeing any benefit from Apple's promotion of paid shows. There's also the first agenda sneak preview for the Publisher Podcast Summit...

The Telegraph's Maire Bonheim and David Alexander discuss prioritizing newsletters, subscriber funnel stages, community-focused content, and live events. They also touch on newsletter retention as a tool for subscriptions. The news roundup covers The Atlantic's profitability and 1m subscriber milestone, emphasizing high-quality content for subscription growth.

On this week's episode we hear from Jane Ferguson, an award-winning journalist with a huge amount of experience covering wars and conflicts the world over. She tells us about how wars often bring the issues around modern journalism – mistrust, disinformation, lack of resources – into the starkest focus, and how the democratisation of tech is making the job of journalists covering war both easier and more difficult. In the news roundup the team discusses the news that French authorities have levied a fine on Google for its unauthorised training of AI tools upon publisher content, and ask to what extent this is justified and its relationship to the ongoing acrimony between Google and publishers. Esther makes several excellent segues. Sign up to our newsletter and community forum by going to voices.media.

This week we hear from Ridhi Radia, Head of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at Immediate Media, about where media sits on the change spectrum for diversity and inclusion. She tells us why she is encouraged by the fact that she hears people from a wide range of backgrounds talking about ED&I, embedding values of inclusion in the workplace and within organisational leadership, and the work that she is doing inside Immediate helping networks of underrepresented groups come together to create change. In the news roundup the team discusses research from Toolkits and National Research Group into consumer attitudes to publishers’ digital subscription products. Of particular interest is its finding that aversion to advertising within subscription products appears to be growing, with 28% highlighting “too many advertisements” as a key reason for their dissatisfaction, up significantly from 19% in 2023. Sign up for our daily newsletter and community forum at voices.media.

This podcast explores practical AI use cases for small newsrooms, focusing on collaboration and knowledge-sharing in journalism. It discusses the benefits of AI in enhancing user engagement and content summarization. Additionally, the team delves into the challenges faced by young writers and journalists in the media industry, highlighting disparities in earnings and financial stability. The conversation also touches on the financial struggles of news channels and the shift towards digital platforms.

For the 95% of publishers who haven't yet adopted AI, identifying a use case they can start with is usually the biggest roadblock. But the tools also need to be available for publishers to be able to support their unique revenue streams. This is the latest in our Media Briefs series of short, sharp sponsored episodes - just 10 to 15 minutes - with a senior executive from a vendor working with publishers to make their businesses better. In this episode, Peter speaks with Maanas Mediratta, CEO at Bridged Media, about how and why making AI tools more accessible to publishers will help the whole ecosystem. Much of the AI innovation is being driven by big tech companies and industries like eCommerce, fashion and finance. But publishers have such a diversity of business models, even tools designed for media companies often won't satisfy individual companies' goals and needs. Note: Media Voices are currently working with Bridged to advance our own goals of driving sign-ups to our daily newsletter, and resurfacing relevant content from our site. You may well see some of our engagement tests over the coming weeks, so if you're interested in trying Bridged for yourself, details are below. This Media Briefs episode is sponsored by Bridged Media, democratising AI for publishers. Through no-code AI solutions, Bridged lets publishers access the power of machine learning and Gen AI to meet their engagement and revenue objectives. Publisher-first AI tools detect where the audience is most likely to engage and through a single line of code, introduce action cards that prompt readers to register, subscribe, or read more, helping publishers establish richer relationships. Learn more about Bridged Media’s no-code AI tools on their website.