As generative AI reshapes the internet, publishers are losing traffic and revenue to clickless search. Discover how to adapt, diversify, and thrive in the new AI-driven ecosystem.
For a long time, search engines have been the lifeblood of online publishers. Ranking higher in search engines meant more visitors and thus more ad revenue. But those heavily relying on SEO for traffic are in a tough place right now.
Across the web, pageviews are in steep decline. The root cause? AI-powered, zero-click search that answers user questions directly without the need for them to visit a publisher’s website.
As Colorintech put it in their newsletter so well:
“The birth and boom of the internet saw the democratisation of news and information… Now, in this new AI-driven world, we’re seeing that vision shift. Access to information is retreating back toward a few channels and pipes… AI is the new aggregator. The ‘zero-click’ internet is here, whether we like it or not.”
In this new paradigm, traditional search visibility, and with it ad revenue, are vanishing fast. For publishers, this is a wake-up call but also an opportunity. In this blog, we share some insightful ways on how to rethink publisher revenue in an AI-powered search world. It’s scary, it feels unfair, but it’s possible and can make your platform even stronger! Let’s dive in.
Generative AI refers to deep-learning models that can generate high-quality text, images and other content based on the data they were trained on.Tools like ChatGPT, Gemini (formerly Bard), Bing Copilot, and Perplexity are powered by such models.
Unlike traditional search engines that show links, generative AI provides direct answers to user questions, often by summarising or rewriting the information it finds on websites across the web. This innovation is shaking up how people interact with the web as it introduced us to:
Overlapping in all these applications of generative AI? It is reducing the visibility of those providing the information it is actually based on. Links to your website are not always provided, and if they are, in most cases, this will be in a subordinate position.
The data is very clear on how publishers are affected by AI. Research by Similarweb showed that traffic to the world’s 500 most visited publishers has decreased with 25% compared to February a year earlier.
With Google further rolling out AI Overviews, publishers who are heavily depending on SEO for their traffic are taking a huge hit and their ad revenue is tanking with it.
Even though traffic from AI-first search engines has increased it is nothing in comparison to what publishers are losing. For example, ChatGPT news-related prompts are up 212%, but the extra 25M clicks it’s sending out is a drop in the bucket compared to what publishers are losing.
What it comes down to? After years of SEO being a key driver for pushing revenue growth through higher ad revenue, publishers need to look to alternative strategies for scaling now.
It’s either adapt or decline. AI is the new aggregator. It controls the funnel and publishers are increasingly locked out.
Alternative Revenue Strategies for Publishers
While some dubbed it “the end of the internet”, we’d rather call it “the end of the internet as we knew it”. AI needs publishers to base their content on and right now, we’re in these exciting times where we’re developing a new common ground on monetisation. While this is all playing out, here’s how, as a publisher, you can diversify revenue and reclaim control:
Here are 3 strategies you can implement:
The digital content landscape is evolving fast. AI-driven search is no longer just a trend: it’s a new reality.
To survive and thrive, publishers must:
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