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“S4 was founded with the whole idea being that we’re going to be tech-enabled, we’re driving the digital transformation,” said Claire Holubowskyj, senior research analyst at Enders Analysis. “So it does look quite bad when we’re in arguably the biggest digital transformation we’re going to see for a generation, and they’re performing really badly in the midst of it.”

“There’s an element of looking inwards and strategising that needs to happen a little bit more than is currently taking place,” said Holubowskyj, who argued that S4 and WPP in particular are focused more on preparing for the next AI-driven phase of the industry than trying to maximise performance today.

The Champions League last season introduced a larger league format with an increased number of games. This change resulted in an 18% increase in broadcasting revenue in its top six markets, according to a report from research provider Enders Analysis.

According to an Enders Analysis report, Publishers’ (in)visibility problem, released in July, the likelihood of a publisher's words triggering an AI Overview tripled between March and July, with one-third of keywords from The Sun and The Mirror triggering one. By contrast, only 16% of The Telegraph's keywords did the same.

The analysis firm estimated that the commercial effect would be "modest" in the short term but "likely to intensify over time".

"If there were to be a merger between Canal+ and Sky, as some are suggesting, it wouldn't be a merger of equals, and Groupe Bolloré would have to put a lot of money on the table," explains François Godard of Enders Analysis. This doesn't mean that Sky is immune to questions from the platforms. "There's a certain uncertainty about what the next step in the group's history is, for which Comcast paid more than it's worth today," the analyst continues. "For example, the company isn't really managing to harness the power of British independent production in fiction."

The Sun is the largest UK newspaper on YouTube with 6 million subscribers, according to Enders Analysis’ YouTube and Journalism: the News Frontier Report published in February. This will have been aided by two factors: first mover advantage (The Sun’s main channel was established in 2007, vs the Mail in 2012 or the Guardian in late 2014); and its upload frequency — the Sun posted 12 times a day in the period Enders reviewed the publisher, mostly focused on war in Ukraine, UK poliitcs, crime footage and the British royal family. Originals marks its concerted push to broaden into other genres for video, said Enders’ senior research analyst Abi Watson. 

“With declining visibility in search, social video is going to become a more important touchpoint,” said Watson. “In June, roughly a third of the keywords the Sun ranked for in Sistrix’s dataset triggered a Google AI Overview, and that figure has likely gone up since,” she said. 

Chuck in a slumping advertising revenue as ad dollars follow readers to the new digital platforms, the threat of AI content creation in fashion and publishing, and glossy magazines’ failure to create a robust subscription model and Condé Nast “is battling a terrifying storm”, as Enders analyst Douglas McCabe puts it.

McCabe questions her strategy. He points out that in the UK Condé Nast’s Vanity Fair and Glamour, Esquire, Stylist, Grazia and Harper’s Bazaar have all reduced the number of issues they publish and the long gap between each issue has meant many have faded to irrelevance. “Small and beautiful usually tends to be small and less relevant or slowly die,” he says. It is not clear what advertisers, who keep the lights on at Condé Nast, will make of fewer issues.

“Honestly, it’s possibly where the industry could—or even should—be heading, especially given the decline in visibility on search,” said Enders Analysis senior analyst Abi Watson. 

“If The News Movement launches SaySo under The News Movement’s aegis, they risk confusion around what SaySo is as a product,” Watson said. “Repositioning under a holding company makes it easier to sell across the portfolio without diluting TNM’s identity.”

Douglas McCabe, a media analyst, said in a report this year that publishers were losing money as their content was “used but not rewarded”, adding: “Many publishers have used their websites to replicate the article format but the website itself is no longer the primary destination for consumers as it struggles to meet expectations, while AI erodes monetisation.”