Publishing Tech Talk

TechTalk Live: Build, scale, and perform: The role of in-house tech and innovation

Event Partner - Taboola

Key takeaways

AI is speeding up product iteration and creating opportunities for publishers to play. Maybe you’ll continue to use a new tool in six months, and maybe you won’t - but with a three-day pipeline for new features, you can afford to experiment.
Go with the grain of user behaviour. Test different hypotheses to understand how users are engaging organically with your content and then optimise to those behaviours.
As audiences get more fragmented across the web and traditional referral traffic declines, the greatest asset that publishers have is their in-depth understanding of their audience. Rather than chasing scale, publishers should aim to show brands exactly who they’re talking to, beyond just clicks or impressions.
When developing brand partnerships, content that is designed to optimise a client’s presence in AI-driven search through a bulk load of content isn’t a long-term solution. Just creating more and more content is a race to the bottom; you have to deliver genuine value for audiences.
Breaking down silos between teams has been a challenge for many years, but AI is providing the tools and processes needed to bridge those gaps and to democratise data across teams.

TechTalk Live: AI in action: Lessons from leading publishers

Event Partner - Google

Key takeaways

As the web is flooded with synthetic content, the value of human-led, premium content is increasing – but publishers need to start preparing now to ensure they’re fairly renumerated for their effort.
Invest now in preparing for buy-side agents, from ensuring your content is mapped to IAB Taxonomy to help with discoverability to assessing your audience signal health.
Make sure you start with the audience problem you’re looking to solve and build from there, rather than with the tool itself.
Editorial insight cannot be bolted on after the fact. Bring your editors into the room with your product development team to establish the guardrails and capabilities that will define your AI-powered tools.
Integrating AI into your organisation requires both a top-down and a bottom-up approach. Yes, you need your leadership to lean in and get their hands dirty, but you also need to empower your teams with the freedom to identify and solve their own challenges.
There is no single silver bullet to protecting your intellectual property from bots. Supporting the SPUR Coalition, integrating Search-Only Contracts in your robots.txt file, taking legal action independently, or working with platforms like Cloudflare all provide routes to respond to the challenge and can also work in parallel with one another. But whatever you do, make sure you’re doing something.

Wednesday 14th October, 9am to 12.30pm, Charlotte Street Hotel:

TechTalk Live: Crossing the content divide: Innovative strategies to reach new audiences

Discover how leading brands are evolving content, formats, and distribution strategies to reach and engage new audiences. You’ll hear from publishers who are re-thinking how they can integrate video and audio content within their editorial strategy from the initial planning stage. From community building to the long-term implications for audience growth and loyalty, this session will give you the tools needed to ensure your content formats are delivering against your strategic objectives. Alongside this, you’ll hear about the growing role of the creator economy. Learn how publishers are transforming their journalists into creators to scale audience and deliver commercial impact – whilst preserving their credibility.

Thursday 15th October, 9am to 12.30pm, Charlotte Street Hotel:

TechTalk Live: Monetisation and measurement in an off-platform world

As audiences increasingly consume content beyond owned environments, how are publishers driving revenue and proving value? Uncover how publishers are evolving their monetisation and measurement strategies to meet the demands of advertisers and audiences in 2026 and beyond. You’ll hear latest thinking around off-platform distribution, including how publishers are balancing scale, attribution, and commercial effectiveness across increasingly fragmented ecosystems.

TechTalk Sponsor: UKOM

Friday 16th October

Look out for the PTT Newsletter and downloadable Special Report

Speakers