In a rapidly shifting digital landscape, publishers face mounting pressure to boost revenue while preserving audience trust. In Episode 16 of The Pub Way podcast, hosts Tina Iannacchino (Seedtag’s VP Publisher Partnerships, North America) and Mike Villalobos (Seedtag’s SVP Stratey & Success) sit down with Dan Benyamin, founder and CEO of Aeon, to explore AI in publishing - from adtech hurdles to creator collaborations, emerging AI influencers, and practical strategies for AI monetization. Below, we unpack the episode’s key moments, demonstrating how publishers can harness AI responsibly, keep the human touch, and unlock new revenue streams.
Dan Benyamin is no stranger to disruption. Over a career spanning chip design, social-media platforms, and data products at Condé Nast, he has seen technologies reshape audiences and ad models. At Aeon, his fourth startup, Dan is charting the next wave: helping media owners use AI to automate video production, personalize experiences, and optimize yield.
His adtech origin story selling the first Facebook beta ads by email underscores one constant truth: publishers succeed when they remain user-centric.
Dan recalls the early days of Facebook advertising with no targeting, no placements, just a postage-stamp ad sold for a day. Fast forward, and the adtech stack has ballooned: multiple platforms, countless measurement standards, opaque programmatic flows. Yet publishers often fall into two traps:
Dan’s prescription is straightforward: prioritize your readers above all else. Every algorithm tweak, dashboard rollout, or content experiment should answer one question: does this create a better experience for our audience? If not, it risks becoming an expensive dead end.
Publishers that treat adtech as an ever-evolving toolkit, rather than a monolithic fortress, will outpace their peers. Dan highlights how rapidly user behaviors can pivot, whether due to a new video format on TikTok or shifting reading habits during major news events. By pairing AI for publishers with nimble workflows, media owners can test new formats, measure engagement in real time, and iterate before budgets are wasted.
Publishers today are squeezed from both sides. On one hand, the major social platforms (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok) consolidate huge swaths of attention. On the other, a flourishing creator economy has turned individuals into media companies: micro-brands that build dedicated audiences on YouTube, Twitch, or Substack, often with minimal overhead.
Dan warns that consistent collaboration between legacy publishers and independent creators remains uneven. While a handful of partnerships, such as Vogue enlisting YouTube stars for the Met Gala, capture headlines, most publishers have yet to forge sustainable models to co-create content, share revenue, and cross-promote audiences.
Yet the potential is immense. Traditional media houses boast seasoned editors, photographers, and brand equity. Creators bring agility, authenticity, and built-in fanbases. Smart alliances can combine those strengths:
By leveraging AI for content creation, from automated editing to dynamic personalization, publishers can scale these partnerships without ballooning production costs.
Dan describes the phenomenon of AI influencers: digital personas designed to engage audiences on social platforms, often without any real human behind the account. Early adopters, such as fashion houses casting AI models, demonstrate AI’s capacity for high-volume, on-brand content. Yet the technology also raises red flags around authenticity, trust, and intellectual property.
Publishers must decide how far to embrace synthetic personalities. Dan suggests two guiding principles:
As AI content proliferates, regulators and platform owners are racing to define standards. Dan points to spam filters as an early example of automation policing automation: publishers that watermark AI-crafted imagery or sign API agreements with chatbot providers can ensure their content remains discoverable and compliant. Publishers that proactively engage with emerging policies will avoid last-minute compliance headaches.
Publishers often wrestle with whether to build in-house AI solutions or license third-party tools. While engineering teams may relish crafting bespoke pipelines, Dan cautions that such projects can distract from core editorial missions. Instead, he recommends:
Publishers generate vast troves of behavioral data (pageviews, scroll depth, engagement time) but insights often remain locked behind manual reports. AI offers a leap forward:
By embedding AI into the publishing process, editorial and commercial teams alike move from gut instinct to evidence-based strategies.
While AI can draft news articles or produce quick video summaries, Dan emphasizes that publishers’ most enduring asset is editorial credibility. Over-automation risks diluting brand voice, undermining trust, and scaling errors. Instead, he advocates:
In this way, generative AI becomes a collaborator, not a replacement, empowering journalists and marketers to focus on high-value work.
Dan’s closing advice is to treat AI not as a magic bullet but as a performance-enhancing tool. Publishers that:
AI-driven innovation is reshaping the publishing industry at every corner, from automated content creation and video automation to real-time yield optimization and personalized experiences. The Pub Way episode with Dan Benyamin offers a masterclass in how AI in publishing can become a catalyst for growth, not a source of distraction.
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