In the latest “Journalism, media, and technology trends and predictions” report from the Reuters Institute Nic Newman doesn’t beat around the bushes, but lays it straight out by citing one of the scariest prediction media managers and journalist can read – by 2026 the vast majority of all internet content will be synthetically produced.

That’s a prediction from Nina Schick’s book Deepfakes: The Coming Infocalypse that might have sounded too much at the time it was published (2020) and still many will believe it is too much too soon. Well, 2023 has shown us that AI is moving very fast and things are starting to change quickly.

If you still don’t believe that prediction, I recommend listening to the Q3 earnings call from Meta where CEO Mark Zuckerberg said this: “I think that over time, more of the content that people consume is going to be either generated or edited by AI”.

So there you have the owner and top executive of a couple of the biggest social media and messaging platforms practically foreshadowing they are trying to get to the point of having as much synthetic media as possible.

Together with plummeting referral traffic from social media and possible decrease from the biggest referral platform of the moment – Google – thanks to its coming generative experiences in search results, building a direct relationship with audiences has never been more important.

Majority of media managers (77%) will focus foremost on building direct links with audiences by pushing app downloads, signing up for newsletters, subscribing to podcasts or increasing direct visits to their websites (good luck with that last one).

WhatsApp up, TikTok down

The breakout platform of 2024 seems to be WhatsApp thanks to the introduction of the Channels feature that’s basically a content feed within the messaging app that has shown some encouraging results for some pioneering publishers.

Side note: While I understand the appeal of a single feed and being front and center in one of the most used apps among audiences, building such a direct channel on social platforms (now you can have Channels also on Instagram) feels like a gamble. I remember jumping on Facebook’s group feature early on with some communities because it was an easy alternative to the main newsfeed and posts had much bigger reach within groups. Nowadays, the reach within groups has decreased dramatically. So, while jumping on the latest product with higher reach makes sense in the short term, the long term yet harder option is building truly direct channels that cannot be taken away by a simple feature change within a social media platform.

In terms of platform investment and focus, TikTok came second, yet it was the frontrunner last year. Still, video leads the content production list which asked publishers what they are going to produce more. The previous year, podcasts topped this list followed by newsletters.

Video up, podcasts down

In 2024, though, video seems to be top of mind, followed by newsletters and a significant drop in podcasting efforts. In the 2023 edition of the trends report, 72% media managers said they plan to invest more resources into podcasts and other digital audio. This year this figure dropped to less than 16%.

I wonder whether this comes amid news of podcast ad revenue slowdown and layoffs all over the industry. It’s no secret that smaller and mid-sized publishers are still struggling to sell podcast ads.

Despite news of some leading news publishers doing very well when it comes to monetizing their podcasts, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Below the surface, there is a dichotomy.

Whenever I talk to peers in various news organisations, they confirm their podcast numbers are growing. But as soon it comes to the topic of monetisation, the mood drops. Put simply, there isn’t enough expertise within news organisations when it comes to selling podcast and digital audio ads.

One explanation can be found in the report when reading between the lines. Publishers push for podcasts to be more visual. In other words, put the podcast on camera, if possible. This is understandable. Monetising video is a better honed skill in news media. You don’t need to explain to advertisers why video ads make sense, unlike sales reps have to still do when it comes to selling ads for podcasts.

Events up, subscriptions slowdown

Subscriptions, memberships and direct reader revenue are still the most important revenue streams for publishers going forward. But the growth is not as big as many have seen in the past years, most confess there is a slowdown

Yet digital is doing much better than the print business which is plummeting and the significant paper shortages and price hikes in recent years don’t show a positive lookout. 2023 also marked the end of the world’s oldest national newspaper. Austria’s Wiener Zeitung has shut down its print operation and switched to online only after a law change made it unprofitable as a print product.

As The Guardian explained, the law, which was passed in April, ended a legal requirement for companies to pay to publish public announcements in the print edition of the newspaper. That was, frankly, a longtime coming. Still, a sad milestone and a reminder of the evolve or perish choice.

Since the pandemic years, the events business has seen a return to grace amid media executives. Although it’s a careful return to its glory hype days, you might have caught wind of publishers talking up their investment into events after years of disappointments.

And what’s more telling is that audiences have been welcoming in-person events in 2023, a trend that will likely continue in 2024.

Practical AI use cases up, AI hype down

2023 has been a breakout year for AI in news media. We have seen experiments such as virtual anchors or video creation using AI. The scope ranged from practical to borderline fantastic, even if actually possible.

Based on answers from publishers, the focus in AI this year will be on back end automation (tagging, transcription, copyediting, etc.), distribution and recommendation followed by content creation such as summaries, headline writing, image creation.

Especially summarisation has been the top use case which several publications have hailed as a practical application that has also helped drive time spent among audiences.

Image generation has been mentioned a couple of times, but it feels like the initial hype of using AI generated visuals for news stories has faded away. My take on this is that these kinds of images have a rather distinctive visual appearance audiences quickly learned to recognise and dislike because of being generic in a way.

When it comes to AI, I’m personally excited for voice assistants powered by generative AI to be actually smart. The utilisation of these capabilities for news is infinite, but it’s hard to see how it would bring any traffic or build loyal, even paying audiences.

Other notable takeaways

Amid the steep fall of referral traffic, publishers have pretty much given up on Facebook and X, formerly Twitter. Apart from WhatsApp and TikTok the emphasis is on YouTube, LinkedIn and Instagram.

Threads, the Twitter alternative built on the open protocol Activity Pub by Meta’s Instagram, came to the EU late in December 2023, but most publishers have quickly jumped on it. Some, I guess, hope to recapture at least some of the lost traffic from Twitter. Others test whether their Instagram followers will leave Meta’s walled garden and visit their websites.

In subscription trends, the ideas revolve around building compelling bundles with more habit-building products within (recipes, games, etc.), flexible pricing strategies and cheaper product extensions that would serve as an entry point for younger audiences, being more focused and cheaper to start with.

When it comes to news avoidance, preferred strategies by publishers haven’t really changed over the years (more explanatory and solutions journalism, more inspiring human stories), but the avoidance metric tracked by the Digital News Report keeps growing year over year. Maybe it’s time to change the approach and try something new.

As always, Nic Newman’s report is a must read as a whole and I’m sure will spark many discussions within newsroom leadership.

Source of the cover photo: https://unsplash.com/

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