In an era of declining cookies, falling referral traffic, and the rise of AI-driven search, publishers are all asking the same question: how do we increase revenue from the audience we already have?
In this episode, Rich is joined by Dave Barr and Nick Fletcher, colleagues at FirstPartyStudio and co-founders of TruTxt, a company incubated through the Studio and backed by FirstPartyCapital. They unpack the “language tax”: the large share of premium publisher traffic that arrives from non-local-language territories and gets monetised poorly, killing engagement, advertiser demand and yields.
We get into:
Why up to 40–45% of a publisher’s traffic can be in non-local language — and why it’s historically been ignored in the boardroom
Why Google Translate doesn’t solve it (and actively costs publishers ad signals)
How TruTxt serves content in the user’s device language under a single URL, sending the right signals into the ad auction to lift display CPMs
The hidden video opportunity: why publishers switch off video for foreign traffic, and how re-activating and translating it drives the biggest revenue uplift
Real examples - Brazilian government spending, a global food brand’s “measuring cups” problem, and a Formula One site’s Indian opportunity
The rev-share, easy-to-integrate, size-agnostic model — and the parallels to Bedrock and the FirstPartyStudio playbook
The £250k angel round TruTxt is currently raising
The FPC Podcast timeline:
00:00 The State of Publishing Disruption
02:49 Monetising Foreign Traffic
05:41 The Language Tax Explained
08:23 TruTxt vs. Google Translate
11:10 Unlocking Video Monetisation
13:54 Real-World Insights and Case Studies
16:51 Potential Revenue Uplift for Publishers
19:19 Expanding Geographical Reach
22:13 Direct Demand and Future Roadmap
24:58 Details of TruTxt’s Angel Round & Growth Plans
