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🏃 Running and building Marathon Handbook 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

🖥️ Online product reviews are a lucrative (and broken) business . . . One dirty secret in digital publishing is that many outlets, big and small, spin up reviews of products they've never actually used . . . to earn affiliate revenue 💵. ✅ Get a ghostwriter to browse Amazon reviews to get an idea of what people think of the product, ✅ re-word those reviews a little, ✅ throw in some photos and affiliate links, and...voila. 🪄 🤖 And now, it's been revealed that some of the biggest health and fitness publishers are even using AI to write these guides. Hit a button and you've got an auto-generated gear guide, complete with $$$-making affiliate links. A new investigative piece by Futurism found that both Outside Online and Sports Illustrated have previously outsourced gear guide production to a company that relied entirely on AI to write the guides. Do you want to buy a pair of running shoes, or a yoga mat, based on a gear guide an AI writing tool has thrown together? At Marathon Handbook, every running shoe and piece of gear we review has been handled and tested by our in-house expert runners. So next time you're browsing the internet for your next purchase, look for signs that the person writing the review is a i) real, ii) someone whose voice you'd trust, and look for proof they've actually put their hands on the product. Digital publishing is going through a turbulent time with the advent of AI content and Google's controversial updates. I'm excited about what lies ahead, and can only think that brands who try to make a quick buck at the expense of their audience will ultimately lose out.

Meet AdVon, the AI-Powered Content Monster Infecting the Media Industry

Meet AdVon, the AI-Powered Content Monster Infecting the Media Industry

futurism.com

Matthew Medendorp

Freelance Writer | Marketing & PR Consultant

6mo

Woah, wildly disappointing. And what a way to erode decades of earned trust. Grateful for the testers and pubs out there doing it the right way!

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