Don’t Fish with a Hole in Your Net: How to Catch-and-Keep Audiences in the New Web Order
I’m the world’s worst trout fisherman.
For a year during the pandemic we lived cross-country in 10 states, with healthy trout rivers running through. And every time I got a bite, my target escaped. No dice.
I had all the accoutrements, but wasn’t prepared to keep ’em in my net long enough to sling over into my bucket. And just like trout fisher-people (here we go…), publishers need to give some serious thought to how to both catch and keep users in the New Web Order - not one or the other.
Formatting content for answer engine optimization (AEO) is critical for capturing today’s readers, but without an answer layer for engagement and retention, publishers break the social contract that says “you won my attention, now make it worth my while”... and that means both quality journalism and user experience.
Social media, and now LLMs, have clarified the types of experiences that compel readers/viewers/listeners to consume and return. The more we see convergence between web and platform engagement tactics and behavioral cues, the less friction publishers create for themselves and the closer we get to a relevant web experience.
The alternative - focusing exclusively on AEO - is fishing with a hole in your net; winning the audience only to lose them when they bounce due to unmet baseline experiential expectations, never to return.
The answer layer is a nod to editorial teams and journalism, in that it surfaces a publisher’s entire corpus of content - archives and all - for readers to engage in the environment that created it, which brings refreshingly new monetization opportunities via display and affiliate and commerce.
The catch-and-keep audience strategy analog for monetization applies too - capture audience and data and optimize value for sales teams and programmatic pipes. This boiled-down systems thinking as a pairing repeats everywhere in media:
Capture syndication, maintain quality score and content volume to maximize revenue
Harness ad demand, keep ad quality to maximize CPMs
Create content, keep it fresh to maximize value per asset
As the industry demands systemic updates this pairing concept will become more prevalent. We can’t solve everything at once, and systems can at times drag the ship when navigating a less than agile environment. Understanding minimum product pairing to support new initiatives can propel efforts exponentially, or at a minimum, convert at least one initiative into a success.
So, format content for AEO, make all of it available via answer layer dialogue in the same way ChatGPT, Perplexity, etc. allow, and prioritize both in tandem to maximize value from both.
On my end I’ll upgrade my trout fly and grab a rubber-coated mesh bag. We’ve got this!
Let me know on LinkedIn or feel free to email me directly. I’d love to hear your POV.
Jason Greene is Head of Publisher Development & Product at Fastener, where he leads platform, editorial, and solutions matchmaking efforts. An executive team member since 2022, he helped launch LINK by Fastener and created The Hot Fix, now read by over 20,000 media professionals each month.
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