Hi there.

Summer is coming here in LA, schools have stopped, but there seems to be no slow down. Today, I dive into a practical idea of how we can use AI to improve our products, right now as well as a slightly more existential question around how we bridge the product gap between AI answer engines and our owned-and-operated sites.  

Drop me a note if there is anything you’d like to see in this newsletter, whether it’s on a particular subject or a feature you’d like to see. I’m at Jodie.hopperton@INMA.org. 

Thanks, Jodie

Using NPS data and AI to prioritise your product road map 

Two years ago at our CEO off-site gathering in Vail, we talked about how Net Promoter Score (NPS) could reveal our value across the chain — not just as a number but as a map to customer love.

At the time, we knew it could be powerful. But now, with AI, it’s like adding rocket fuel to that process.

Over dinner recently with an old friend (a management consultant who is sharp as ever), our conversation turned to product prioritisation. He casually dropped this: He’d used an NPS survey and AI to surface the most important product priorities — before his morning coffee. Something that would normally take a team a week was done on his commute.

That made me pause. Should we as news media be doing this?

Here’s a simple idea worth testing:

1. Run your NPS survey: But go big. The more data, the better. And remember to do this at different parts of the customer value chain. If you already have this data, congratulations. 

2. Segment your responses: Remove the hardcore detractors for now. Not because they don’t matter, but because they may never be won over. Focus first on those who already love you — or could.

3. Upload it to ChatGPT (or another AI tool): Ask it to cluster the feedback, summarise themes, and point out the most frequently mentioned wants, fixes, or loves. You’ll be amazed at the speed and clarity.

This is the kind of insight that would normally involve a week of workshops, multiple teams, and a lot of Post-its. Now? It’s doable in under an hour — assuming you have the data.

Please try it, even with a small set of data you already have. At worst, you’ve lost an hour. At best, you’ve saved thousands in consulting fees and unlocked real signals on what your audience values. Either way, it’s a win.

And if you do free up that budget, you might want to redirect it to something even more valuable — like our upcoming Media Tech & AI Week in San Francisco. It’s packed with ideas just like this — from people doing the work, not just talking about it.

Because in the end, product is still all about the customer. Now we just have better tools to listen and analyse.

Date for the diary: October 20-24, INMA Media, Tech & AI week in San Francisco

Everything you need to know about the intersection of media, tech, and AI to take back to your news company from changes in search and discovery to new AI products and tools right through to the new skill sets and org structures needed in an AI world. 

This week is designed to equip you and your team with the information you need to build and implement your AI strategy. Check out the information here, and if you would like to talk anything through, feel free to reach out to me at jodie.hopperton@inma.org.

Let’s be real: competing with a smart chat product

An executive at a major search company recently told me something blunt: News publishers should expect zero to near-zero traffic from search in the next two to three years.

It landed with me harder than I expected — not because it was shocking, but because it felt so obviously true. And the data is starting to show it.

But product logic tells us that answer engines — especially AI-powered ones — are designed to keep users where they are. They’re optimised to give complete, follow-up-ready answers without ever sending someone off-platform. And why would they? Clicking out breaks the flow. It’s friction. It’s bad UX.

We’re already seeing this shift formalised through AI licensing deals — ones that focus on display, not referral. It’s not about sending users to you; it’s about showing your content there.

This is Google’s innovator’s dilemma: Should they risk their lucrative search business by leaning fully into AI overviews?

But here’s the thing: We’re facing our own version of that dilemma in news media.

We have to serve loyal users who know and trust our interfaces — the apps, Web sites, and e-readers they’ve grown familiar with. At the same time, we’re being challenged to show up in entirely new environments: chatbots, smart assistants, answer boxes. These places have none of the navigational context we’ve spent decades perfecting.

And history isn’t exactly on our side.

When the Internet first disrupted news, we gave content away for free. It took years to unlearn that. Then came social media. We still haven’t figured out a stable business model for that ecosystem. With each new platform, we risk cannibalising the very business we’re trying to protect.

This time, the shift isn’t just about format — it’s about function. Generative AI is setting new user expectations, and tech companies are defining the standard.

At the Product & Tech Seminar at INMA’s World Congress last month, Varun Shetty made a fairly compelling case that for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) content, links will still matter. These models won’t have the full context of a news story, and in many cases, they will need to direct users to publisher sites. 

The challenge for us lies in bridging that moment — from a clean, highly personalised UX in an AI environment to a potentially cluttered news Web site. This is a design, product, and editorial challenge all rolled into one.

If you’re in product and not using AI tools regularly, you’re behind. Now is the time to experiment — not just as users, but as builders. We need to understand how to translate our value, content, and business models into an AI-native world.

Because the question isn’t whether traffic from search will disappear.

It’s: What are we building next? (as you can read in INMA’s April report “As Search Ends, Here is What’s Next.”)

That’s exactly what we’re trying to solve through INMA’s new partnership with OpenAI — a series of member roundtables, prototyping credits, and a forthcoming report focused on shaping the next-generation user journey. Read more here.  

About this newsletter 

Today’s newsletter is written by Jodie Hopperton, based in Los Angeles and lead for the INMA Product and Tech Initiative. Jodie will share research, case studies, and thought leadership on the topic of global news media product.

This newsletter is a public face of the Product and Tech Initiative by INMA, outlined here. E-mail Jodie at jodie.hopperton@inma.org with thoughts, suggestions, and questions. Sign up to our Slack channel.

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