Publishers race against Google Zero doomsday clock
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Publishers are racing to readjust their businesses as the threat of "Google Zero" — a world where Google no longer distributes meaningful traffic to publishers — looms large.
Why it matters: Traffic referrals from chatbots aren't expected to come close to offsetting traffic from traditional search.
- Publishers need to find new ways to make money now that one of their most reliable revenue streams is quickly evaporating.
Driving the news: Wired is expanding its subscription offering with several new products at higher prices, including livestream AMAs with editors, audio narration for articles and new newsletters.
- Its new newsletters are Model Behavior by senior correspondent Kylie Robison covering AI and Made in China by senior writer Zeyi Yang and senior business editor Louise Matsakis.
- In an editor letter, Wired's global editorial director Katie Drummond framed the changes as a response to the "traffic apocalypse," citing the decline of Facebook traffic and Google search referrals. The solution is to "connect our humans to all of you humans," Drummond wrote.
State of play: More media companies are investing in owned and operated channels and direct-to-reader products with newsletters, apps and events businesses.
- The Verge just released new site features that allow readers to directly follow its journalists and topics in a personalized feed on its homepage. The company is also launching new newsletters, including a daily flagship newsletter.
- Business Insider is investing in events, video and new products, including an AI-generated audio briefing, while pulling back from areas that were sensitive to search traffic like its SEO-driven commerce business, CEO Barbara Peng told Axios in June.
- Bustle Digital Group is expecting its most profitable year, driven by events with Nylon. It also launched an invite-only membership program. "Instead of being a website that publishes stories, we're now basically an events company," CEO Bryan Goldberg told Adweek.
- People launched a TikTok-like app in April with scrollable and swipeable original content, catering to fans of video-first mobile experiences over text-heavy articles.
- BuzzFeed is creating its own social media platform called BF Island where users can play with interactive and AI-powered features.
- Newsweek is launching more subscription products and expanding non-advertising revenue sources in an effort to hedge against search traffic losses.
The big picture: Publishers are playing defense, building their own destinations and weaning themselves off platforms that use their content as training data.
- The goal is to own the audience connection and no longer be vulnerable to algorithmic and other platform shifts.
Between the lines: Search traffic declines come as the publishing industry still grapples with the fallout of social media referrals.
- Social media traffic to news sites has cratered in recent years, as social apps prioritize short-form video over links.
- Traffic from search browsers now represents nearly three times the amount of referral traffic to publishers than social.
Zoom out: Dozens of publishers have begun to strike content licensing deals with AI companies as a way to hedge against the revenue losses from traditional search.
- Those deals, which typically last between two and five years, aren't considered reliable enough for publishers to fully depend on them long term.
What to watch: Google recently added a tool to its ad manager that allows publishers to collect micropayments from readers as its AI overviews erode referral traffic.
Go deeper: Google's publisher salvo
