The opening session of the day at the recent PPA Festival was entitled: Humans & machines: the everywhere equation.
The panel was chaired by Hearst UK CEO Katie Vanneck-Smith and included
Abi Watson (Enders Analysis), Alan Loader (The Channel Company), Ruth Berry (ITV Studios) and Sean Cornwell (Immediate).
The discussions centred around a research report by Enders Analysis, commissioned by the PPA.
Here are some of my takeaways from the session…
Publishers need to:
- Build direct relationships with consumers. A good idea at any time, but with search down a third year on year, more essential than ever.
- Focus on what they’re good at! Publishers need to ask the question, “what inherently is the value we provide to our audience?”
- Create something which is hard to replicate. The power to convene audiences is one such thing.
- Experiment, but with guardrails.
- Adopt a hub and spoke content format, building outwards from a central hub.
- Expect everyone’s role within their organisation to change over the next 3-5 years, and to upskill accordingly.
- Use humans to create IP and machines to speed up and improve delivery.
- Ask, how do we incorporate AI into everything we do, every day, so as to augment what we do?
The good news is that a lot of that would have been considered best practice before the AI age; the less good news is that the AI age has added extra pressure to get it done PDQ.
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