Publisher Monetization Briefing: May 20

Welcome back to your weekly briefing on how publishers are building sustainable businesses. This week...

‘Catastrophic’: What Google’s AI-infused search results could mean for publishers

Google rolled out AI Overviews in search results for all U.S. users last week, which could result in a significant dip in referral traffic to many publishers’ sites. AI responses now appear at the top of results pages and provide direct answers to many queries instead of pointing users to third-party websites to find relevant content.?

Google has been moving in this direction for some time by including snippets from publishers’ content directly in search results pages, but publishers worry the shift to AI-driven responses will result in Google sending less traffic to their sites. That’s bad news for many – particularly for those reliant on advertising as their primary revenue source.

I asked a few publishers last week what impact they think the move will have on their businesses and the replies were interesting. One described it as “end game for publishers that rely on “utility content”. Another said it was “The final nail in the coffin for them working with Google.” A third replied with a gif of an asteroid wiping out a planet.

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Should news publishers unlock paywalls for elections?

A growing portion of high-quality news content is now placed behind paywalls in some capacity, particularly in the U.S. That’s prompted some industry observers and academics to argue in recent years that paywalls are bad for democracy, or that “democracy dies behind paywalls.”?

Former Time editor Richard Stengel made that point in a (paywalled) column for The Atlantic earlier this year, and again during an INMA webinar last week. “I’m arguing for a more open news environment about election news in an election cycle so that the chance that a free New York Times article comes to [users exposed to disinformation and misinformation] is higher in that kind of news environment than in this classic paywall environment,” he said.?

It’s a worthy sentiment, but it may ignore the challenges currently facing the majority of news publishers. Subscriptions remain the fastest-growing source of revenue for most publishers, and as demand from advertisers continues to dwindle, many publishers credit paywalls for enabling them to keep the lights on. News events such as elections also help publishers drive a meaningful portion of subscription conversions, and dropping paywalls during periods of high news demand would significantly limit their ability to do so.?

Paywalls might not be good for democracy, but there’s a strong argument to suggest news publishers would struggle to exist at all without them. The press cannot “protect democracy” if it can’t afford to publish.

DMG Media chief executive Rich Caccappolo also argued last week that hard paywalls are “dangerous for democracy” as Mail Online continues to roll out its premium subscription offering, but acknowledged that publishers have little alternative as the media landscape becomes increasingly inhospitable. “Publishers advertisers, agencies, regulators, Google etc – need to realize that is at risk and that a lot of publishers are going to be challenged unless things change a bit,” he told Press Gazette.?

Building resilience in the evolving news and media landscape

Accompanying its new report on Building Resilience, FT Strategies is hosting a free webinar. Expert speakers will guide you in finding your diversification 'frontier' and implementing best practices, with examples from the Financial Times and other leading news and media organizations. Register now. [Sponsored] ?

OpenAI will let publishers opt out of AI training

The company says it’s developing a tool called Media Manager, which will enable publishers and other content owners to flag copyrighted material to the company and to specify whether or not they want their work to be used to help train its models. ?

How WSJ is preparing for AI?

Wall Street Journal editor Emma Tucker says the publication is preparing itself for an AI-driven media landscape, and the key to that remains “producing journalism that people are willing to pay for.” ?

Stress-inducing subject lines helped The Intercept surpass its fundraising goal

An aggressive two-week email marketing campaign attracted 3,500 new recurring donors by playing on readers' sense of guilt and responsibility. ?

Future returns to growth in Q2

Future says it returned to revenue growth in the second quarter of this year raising hopes that some publishers’ revenue fortunes are turning a corner.

More from Toolkits

Original reporting is table stakes for publishers in an AI world: Publishers are recognizing their futures hinge on the ability to uncover new information and contextualize and present it in ways that AI cannot.

The Financial Times reorients its business around ‘global paying audience’: The new approach is designed to help grow direct audience revenue beyond its core journalism offerings and across its broader portfolio of products and services.

LinkedIn allows publishers to bake pre-roll ads into organic video content: A new program called Sponsored Editorial Content lets publishers stitch pre-roll ads into their organic video content on the platform.

‘Lifting all boats’: Publishers explore total revenue optimization: Publishers are thinking carefully about how monetization opportunities should be prioritized to extract as much revenue as possible from their audiences.