Five takeaways from the Future of Media Technology Conference: How publishers are rethinking audience engagement

On 10 September, just across from the Tate Modern in central London, journalists and media managers gathered for this year’s Future of Media Technology Conference, a one-day event hosted by Press Gazette. Speakers included journalists, technologists and media professionals such as Andrew Palmer, Katie Palisoul, Mitali Mukherjee, David Skok and Tom Jackson. Here are five takeaways from the event.

1. Publishers are rethinking audience engagement in light of Google Zero

In the age of declining traffic, publishers are grappling with how to engage and retain audiences. There’s a shift away from volume towards relationship-building, with publishers exploring new ways to measure engagement beyond pure clicks.

App downloads, frequency of visits and newsletter signups were identified as important indicators by The Guardian’s Chief Support Officer, Liz Wynn. “You build motivation, support, effective comprehension of our mission, our purpose, why we exist, why we should keep coming back,” she said. “[It is a] very important emotional driver, but it’s not enough on its own. We have to focus also on the habit and the value of driving people day to day.”

To build those habits, publishers are focusing on community-building, with some even employing AI tools to achieve that goal. Predictive models, such as using AI to recommend users their next read, were cited as a common example of how AI can help drive user engagement. Anna Sbuttoni from The Times and The Sunday Times said her team is now using AI to help with another aspect of audience engagement: comment moderation.

“[Content moderation] is still overseen by humans, but it’s just brought that work way down, and it’s freed up that team to now do much more interesting and innovative community-focused work than they were doing when they were just spending hours and hours on this moderation job,” she said.

2. News organisations are training their own in-house creators

Another challenge for news media is increased competition from independent journalists and news creators. This phenomenon has been well documented in our research and was a thread of discussion across various panels, where legacy media organisations discussed how to adopt creator-led practices while preserving institutional trust, editorial authority and sustainable revenues.

The Economist is a prime example of this. The magazine has moved away from its legacy of journalistic anonymity towards putting its journalists’ faces, names and personalities at the forefront of its value proposition. Its executive editor Andrew Palmer said that one of the reasons they have begun to showcase their journalists is a desire to highlight the humans behind the journalism as AI encroaches further.

“It builds a connection, so we definitely have a lot of subscribers who want to see what our journalists do and understand the workings of the newsroom,” said Palmer.

Like many newsrooms, The Economist has begun fostering in-house talent to put in front of the camera as a way to respond to growing audience interest in creators. The team at The Times and The Sunday Times has also begun to think about its talent strategy as the next step in audience engagement. Putting journalists in front of the camera is one strategy it is beginning to employ to reach people who might not otherwise engage with the papers.

“How can we make people consider getting a Times subscription? A big part of that has been just a complete change in how we approach our social video formats, and that’s really putting our journalists at the front and centre of that. Getting people to know the real journalists,” explained Sbuttoni.

Earlier this year, the Guardian announced the formation of Guardian Studios – a new creative hub for video-first, personality-led journalism. Leah Green, who leads the initiative, said the team is looking to create a new slate of YouTube shows built around on-screen talent. Green agreed that legacy media has a lot to learn from creators. But news media have one thing that individual creators don’t: brand recognition.

“There can be a [certain] panic and [an] overcorrection from legacy brands. There’s so much to learn from the creator economy: personality and how to create fandom,” said Green. “But brand is one thing that an individual creator can never have. It would be a mistake to try to replicate the creator economy.”

Jasmine Dawson, Senior Vice President of BBC Studios, said that one of the main things legacy publishers can learn from creators is a deep understanding of their audience. Creators, unlike broadcasters and publishers, “live and breathe” in their audience’s world: they understand them and know what they want.

“Obsessing about your audience means not only knowing where they are, but what they want to talk about, what they want to hear from you, what they want to see from you,” she said.

3. Clicks from AI search are starting to become an important metric

Over the past year, publishers have been reckoning with what many describe as a significant decline in referral traffic, as changes to Google Search reshape how audiences discover news. Google’s rollout of AI Overviews and AI Mode, which provide AI-generated answers directly within search results, has heightened concerns that fewer users will click through to publishers’ websites.

“There’s a real tension that exists in terms of what’s happening in partnerships and their relationship with audiences,” said the Reuters Institute’s Director, Mitali Mukherjee. “We don’t have a clear sign of what exactly will happen.”

This uncertainty is one of the main reasons publishers are investing in strengthening direct relationships with their audiences. At the same time, they are examining their relationships with AI companies and their presence in AI search. They want to remain visible across search and AI services while protecting the value of original journalism.

The world of AI search was described as the ‘wild west’, with the rules of the game still unclear. No one knows exactly what gets to the top of AI search results, for example, making it difficult to build an optimisation strategy around a technology with so many unknowns.

Tom Jackson, Chief Technology Officer at News UK, underlined the need for news publishers to adapt their content to AI-driven search and discovery, while warning that the field is changing too quickly to make major strategic decisions based on today’s patterns.

“One thing I’m finding quite interesting, given my background, is that they’re saying richer metadata may become increasingly important,” said Jackson. “It’s going to be interesting to reopen that tagging and metadata box in this new, agentic AI-focused world.”

Despite the uncertainty, publishers still want to experiment with how they can maintain a presence on these platforms. Carly Steven, Director of SEO and Editorial E-commerce at the Daily Mail, said that, while the publisher’s default position is to protect its IP and focus on creating original content, it has also started experimenting in the AI search space.

“We are starting to test a nuanced approach to that… to be more visible on these platforms,” said Steven. “We know our readers are looking for information on these platforms and are starting to look for brands they trust.”

4. Show your value to monetise your content

What is the monetary value of journalism? And how do we make audiences pay for it? Those questions were at the heart of many discussions. The overwhelming response was that, in order to persuade audiences to pay for news, organisations need to demonstrate the unique value of their journalism.

For example, Katie Palisoul from Politico UK explained that the publisher is building better audience data and conversion journeys to demonstrate the value of its paid journalism to users of its free site. By introducing registration for free content, Politico can better understand its audience, identify registered users who are likely to subscribe and guide them towards premium content.

“We are building some foundational elements to be able to show the value of our paid-for content, which is our policy journalism,” she said.

The question of monetisation extended beyond audiences to conversations around AI, particularly the tension between the short- and long-term economics of allowing AI platforms to use publishers’ content.

In the short term, publishers have an incentive to participate in AI platforms – even if the compensation or referral traffic is small – because their content can be relatively fungible. But if every publisher accepts that weaker value exchange, does it undermine the economics of journalism in the long term?

Stevens from the Daily Mail said that the question of fungibility has never been particularly relevant to the organisation, as it strives to create content that is exclusive, original and not replaceable.

“We are really focused on the absolute conviction that our business is valuable, and that that value needs to be paid for,” she said. “We are experimenting, adapting to the landscape as it changes, as new technologies emerge and they become established standards, but fundamentally believe that [our content] has value.”

Jackson from News UK framed licensing and deal-making as a core monetisation path when it comes to AI, with a strategy that combines partnerships with legal action. This has led the company to strike a deal with Meta while also entering licensing conversations with other AI companies.

“Ideally we want to have relationships with all of these people and get fair value back. But if they come in and steal that content, we will sue them,” said Jackson. “It’s not just the monetary value of that deal, which is material, it’s also the ability to then have that close relationship with these organisations.”

5. Newsletters remain valuable for publishers in the age of AI

In the midst of such a future-oriented conference, one old piece of technology stood out as a winner across the panels: newsletters. They were framed as direct, differentiated products that deepen reader relationships and reduce reliance on platform algorithms. Many of the news organisations showcased at the conference have invested in newsletters, which remain a strong way to engage directly with audiences and counter declining referral traffic.

For The Logic, a Canadian newsroom focused on tech and business, newsletters have been a core part of the organisation since the beginning. David Skok, The Logic’s CEO and editor-in-chief, said they haven’t seen a drop-off in open rates, while advertiser performance has continued to grow. He attributes their success to treating the newsletter as a premium, central product of the newsroom. The Logic considers its daily newsletter briefing, which is written specifically by its journalists, the front page of the newspaper.

“The way we treat newsletters is really more as their own product,” said Skok. “We were a bit ahead of the curve in that we had this direct relation with our readers because we just decided very early on that we weren’t going to build our business on the top of some of these algorithms.”

Politico Playbook also demonstrates the enduring appeal of newsletters, having spawned numerous global iterations since its launch in 2007. Palisoul from Politico attributed its success to an ‘obsession with audience’: the team knows exactly who its readers are and what they want from the product.

“The Playbook is written with an exact audience in mind: a prime minister, a cabinet minister… But authors think of that person as a person. They don’t think of that person as an MP,” explains Palisoul. “It’s fun. It’s cheeky. It’s got good humour. Great puns. It tells them where they can go for a drink. It’s really focused on the daily life of that individual.”