Proudly human. Earned, not generated.
Australia’s Publishing Company of the Year is backing what AI can’t generate: real journalism, a known audience and the trust that gets brands cited.
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA, 29 October 2026: Man of Many, Australia’s leading independent men’s lifestyle publisher, has unveiled its 2027 Upfront under a single theme: Proudly human. Earned, not generated. The pitch to advertisers rests on one idea: in 2027, content is everywhere, but trust is earned.
“AI can write a thousand articles a minute, but it can’t test a watch, drive a car or sit across the table from a chef,” said Scott Purcell, Co-Founder of Man of Many. “Everything we publish as journalism is reported and written by a person with their name on it, and that’s exactly the content AI tools quote when someone asks about your brand. In 2027 that’s worth more, not less.”
What’s New in 2027
- The Man of Many Podcast Network. Daddies, born from the Male Confidence Index finding that dads want more support, is joined by new shows across our key verticals.
- Man of Many Shorts. A swipeable vertical video feed on Man of Many’s own site, built with Dailymotion, launching in early 2027.
- Relaunched newsletters. Eight newsletters built around eight interests, with editor-written content a brand can own.
- Daily Games. Fourteen daily games, from Watchle to Brandle, with sponsorship, puzzle-day takeovers and tipping competitions.
- Custom Microsites. Tools, quizzes and scroll stories built for brands and hosted on Man of Many.
- Events. From Sydney Whisky Month to brand nights, every event filmed so the content outlives the night.
- The Man of Many 100 awards. The 100 best products of the year, open to brand entries for the first time. Entries close Friday 27 November; honourees announced 10 December.
- The Male Confidence Index 2027. The second edition of Australia’s first national benchmark of male confidence, run with Fifth Quadrant, open to a partner.
A Known Audience
- Signed-in readers up 257 per cent in 12 months, from 7,028 to 25,109 (October 2026).
- More than 116,000 newsletter subscribers.
- In 2027: a Man of Many app, Daily Games inside it, and paid memberships, giving partners first-party audiences to reach by passion.
“Brands don’t need another dashboard. They need to be inside the content people actually trust, in front of an audience we know,” said Elliott Barsby, Commercial Director of Man of Many. “Every 2027 partnership comes with forecast against delivered reporting, and brand uplift studies are there for partners who want to measure exactly what their investment changed.”
How We Help Brands Get Cited
At the centre of the Upfront is a direct message to marketers being sold AI search products: Man of Many will help brands show up in AI answers, but most AI visibility scores don’t hold up.
There is no search console for ChatGPT. No AI company shares prompt volumes, so visibility tools score brands on prompts the vendors invent. Ask an AI tool for a list of brands 100 times, and there’s less than a one in 100 chance two of the lists match (SparkToro and Gumshoe.ai, January 2026).
“Any tool that claims to rank your brand in AI is guessing,” Purcell said. “Even SparkToro’s Rand Fishkin says there’s ‘no good source of data, and no way to know whether the opportunity is huge, tiny, nonexistent, or some complex combination of these.’ Yet brands are paying for scores built on a handful of made-up prompts, and publishers are now selling clients their own dashboards built on the same statistically meaningless data. AI tools don’t cite dashboards. They cite original, human journalism from sources they trust. You can’t buy your way into an AI answer. You earn your way in.”
What works is what always has: trusted editorial. The large studies agree:
- AI quotes publishers, not brands. 85 per cent of AI brand mentions come from third-party sites, and only 13.2 per cent from the brand’s own (AirOps, 21,311 brand mentions).
- Editorial formats lead. Listicles (21.9 per cent) and articles (16.7 per cent) are the two most cited formats across 1,056,727 citations in ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Perplexity (Wix AI Search Lab, 2026).
- AI still sends very little traffic. Across 115,254 websites in September 2026, Google sent 23.96 per cent of visits and ChatGPT 0.34 per cent (Ahrefs).
- Search is not dead. Man of Many’s organic search traffic is up 42 per cent year on year.
Those samples are large enough to mean something. The dashboards being sold to brands are not.
That’s the content Man of Many has built its newsroom around, with more than 1,125 best-of guides under named authors. Partners put their products in front of its journalists, who put them through their paces in testing across the guides, reviews, research, and videos that AI tools love to cite. Man of Many never promises a citation; it promises the work and the reporting it can properly quantify. The full evidence is in Man of Many’s 2026 Guide to GEO.
The Proof
- Publishing Company of the Year 2026, plus Branded Content Studio of the Year and Best Use of Video (Mumbrella Publish Awards), and Media Brand of the Year 2025 (Mumbrella Awards).
- Australia’s most-read men’s lifestyle site in Ipsos iris for August 2026: 261,539 Australian readers, 2.2 times the next men’s lifestyle title.
- 7.1 million monthly reach across social, web and email (Instagram and Facebook unique reach, website users and newsletter subscribers, 28 days to 24 October 2026; platforms added together, not de-duplicated), and 4.7 million users on manofmany.com worldwide in the past 12 months.
- Stake, The Ambition Project: 4 million+ impressions, 14 per cent over forecast, and Best Use of Video.
- Angel’s Envy, for Bacardi via OMD: a 14-minute documentary with 1.86 million impressions, 85 per cent over forecast.
- Member of the Australian Press Council, the 100% Human initiative and the Digital Publishers Alliance, and listed on ACMA’s Register of Eligible News Businesses. AI Usage and Disclosure Policy: manofmany.com/ai-policy.
See the 2027 Upfront
The 2027 Upfront and hype reel are live at advertise.manofmany.com/2027-upfront. To book a 2027 planning session, email advertising@manofmany.com.
Ends.
For additional information, please contact:
Scott Purcell, Co-Founder, Man of Many
scott@manofmany.com | +61 403 496 680
About Man of Many
Man of Many is Australia’s leading independent men’s lifestyle publisher and the 2026 Mumbrella Publish Awards Publishing Company of the Year. Founded in 2012 and still founder-led, Man of Many covers style, watches, drinks, cars, travel, technology, entertainment and health across manofmany.com, social, video, podcasts, newsletters and events. Every piece of Man of Many journalism is reported and written by a named journalist. Man of Many is a member of the Australian Press Council, the 100% Human initiative and the Digital Publishers Alliance.
