If you’re a news publisher, it might be fair to say you’re adapting content across more channels than your journalists and creative teams have time for.

One article - let’s call it your top story of the day - might need:

• A text-to-speech voiceover for web, app and even a smart assistant.

• A podcast or (segment) with a team of journalists discussing it.

• A short video for TikTok, X and Snapchat.

• A longer video for Meta and LinkedIn.

(And that article may even be printed, too)

All this additional effort isn’t for nothing: you have to capture more attention across more channels and be not just where your audience is, but on the channels your competitors are using, too.

So if you are producing more content for more channels, you might expect more ad revenue. 

Where have we heard that one before?

The new ‘new normal’ for advertising

For years, there have been consistent streams of online referral traffic, converting clicks into direct ad revenue.

However, as you know, that digital ecosystem has shifted - again. The first shift from print to digital. The second was the proliferation of social media as a ‘news aggregator’. 

You’ve adapted to both. But now there’s a *new* new normal.

“AI tells me everything I need to know.”

Your best journalism may even be partly to blame. AI summaries that produce 'zero-click' searches mean readers can get key information from your articles without ever visiting them, directly impacting traditional ad impressions. That might be to the tune of a 15% decrease in clicks, a 34% decrease, or even a 95% decrease.

But at least the social strategy is providing more returns?

“I get my news from Facebook”

When we talk about ‘getting news from social media’ - something 30% of adults admit to doing -  it’s a change you’ve long since adapted to. But when it comes to social media delivering readers to your site, it’s a similar picture: social referrals to the New York Times and CNN dropped 56% since March 2022, for example.

As you know, you can’t monetize channels you don’t own.

“Why would I pay for news?”

Simultaneously, social didn’t start the widespread expectation of free access to news across every channel, but it did accelerate it. 

Inflation challenges consumers in any avenue of discretionary spending. You know you have to work harder to provide demonstrable, unique added value that justifies a subscription. That’s a challenge for some, but it’s not all doom and gloom - many publishers (you included) may be seeing stability or even growth in subscription models. But not to the extent that it possibly could.

So where does Audio fit in - apart from knowing you need to produce more of it?

The AI Audio Advantage - New Content Formats

There are two simultaneous things you know to be true at your publisher.

• AI is already empowering your editorial workflows - be it by producing content that keeps you relevant, or by reducing friction in your research, editing and approval process.

• AI also unlocks the potential to produce more diverse content.

This is particularly salient for audio. You already know it’s an essential format for reaching a greater part of your audience that prefers to listen to your news content. But it’s also a high-effort medium that you may overlook - especially when simultaneously producing content for other ‘high-effort’ mediums, like social video, may take attention away from audio-only content.

With AI, you can significantly reduce the effort it takes to deliver high-quality content at scale to your audience. Let’s look at two different examples in action:

• Podcasts which take a significant team effort to produce, can be entirely synthesized from text with AI - even in the lead journalist’s voice with voice cloning. This same principle can be applied to podcast ‘summaries’ of news stories in a form of ‘audio newsletter’.

• ‘Audiofied’ articles - beyond just ‘screenreading’ text, articles can be synthesized with AI-powered text-to-speech; and with a platform like AudioStack, this can be delivered with sonic branding and broadcast-quality mastering - with no need for the expertise; simply being embedded into the workflow. A major German financial publisher generates one of these automatically when the editor marks an article ‘approved’.

These are just two cases where you can synthesize not just voice, but branded, broadcast-quality content almost instantly with AI.

And that creates a fresh canvas for advertisers.

More audio - more monetization opportunities.

First of all, more formats and more content that you can produce with AI means more valuable ad inventory that you can make available.

Directly, pre and mid-roll ads can be seamlessly integrated into your AI-generated podcasts or your AI-read articles - which at this stage meet your demands for both high-production value and match the volume of your output.

Indirectly, making this ad-supported content available also supports free access to news, but also serves as an incentive for your audience to subscribe to directly support you (and remove ads).

That same principle applies to gating audio content itself by a subscription - where high-quality AI-audio podcasts and AI-read articles - read by the cloned voices of journalists who have a following of their own - can be made available only to members.

Start your story with AudioStack

You don’t need us to tell you that you're navigating the tough reality of shifting revenue and the constant need for innovation. AI is its own challenge - but AI Audio offers a massive opportunity; remove the limits of your traditional production methods.

And those new touchpoints don’t just engage audiences in new ways - they create controllable and consistent ad inventories.

We’ve made it possible for some of the largest publishers in the world. Why not talk to us to see how we can help you?