Trend Paralysis
Bad news: Google’s AI Overviews have been reducing clickthroughs to publisher sites.
Good news: Other AI search chatbots are sending more traffic to publishers!
Bad news: It’s still not enough to counteract the decline in traffic from AI Overviews.
If you’re having trouble keeping up, that’s just a taste of what publishers are dealing with. Plus, AI usage is prone to fluctuations, stymieing publisher attempts to get ahead of the trend.
In May, AI Overviews appeared at the top of 98% of US search results. But in June, this number dropped to 87.6%. It’s a potentially encouraging sign that publishers can outrank AI Overviews in search results, SEOClarity’s Mark Traphagen told Digiday.
Meanwhile, AI referral traffic has consistently risen over the past year, which is another good omen for publishers. More than one-third of the US population now uses generative AI, up from 23% two years ago.
But AI Overviews are still a drain on publisher traffic overall. For example, 75 out of the top 100 search terms for CBS News produced zero clickthroughs to the site in May due to the presence of AI Overviews.
So it seems that the bad news for pubs still outweighs the good when it comes to AI search.
Putting Content Farms Out To Pasture
The shuttering of World of Good Brands – formerly known as Demand Media and then Leaf Group – marks the end of the internet’s “content farm” era, writes Brian Morrissey at The Rebooting.
But it could also spell the demise of the publisher-side information arbitrage business, according to Morrissey.
Basically, Demand Media’s original business model was selling a template for long-tail publishers in order to game SEO and algorithmic demand for content, Morrissey writes. “You follow the data, and you end up making how-to-boil-an-egg content.” Simple enough.
The structure of web browsing and search, combined with the nature of programmatic advertising, presented plenty of lucrative arbitrage opportunities for content farms. “You could model out programmatic revenue and balance against costs to expected traffic,” Morrissey writes.
In that sense, Demand Media was more in tune with the changing internet than premium legacy publishers that clung to the “content is king” ethos, according to Morrissey. But, he adds, “Markets are meant to correct the arb opportunities.”
The market correction came for Demand Media all right. Google began cracking down on Demand’s SEO gaming in 2011. The company tried to pivot to a more premium publishing model, but its content farm reputation stuck, effectively dooming its (multiple) rebranding efforts.
No Yaccarino, No Ads
Where company culture is concerned, Linda Yaccarino always felt like an odd fit for X. Just look at the stilted way she tweets (and sometimes talks) about the platform to its users.
But as the former global head of advertising at NBCU, her presence at least made business sense. Advertisers were pulling their dollars from X in droves, and her job was to entice them back. It even seemed like it was working, per eMarketer’s recent projections.
Not anymore, though!
Now that Yaccarino is stepping down, advertisers are once again feeling hesitant, Adweek reports. Some agencies have started advising their clients to pull back on spending because of her departure – although it’s likely that Grok’s recent antisemitic crash-out also figured into that decision.
Speaking of which, even if Yaccarino’s sudden exit had nothing to do with Grok’s bad behavior, X’s increased focus on AI almost certainly sealed her fate, writes Theo Wayt at The Information.
If Yaccarino’s tweet about the Grok4 update on Friday is any indication, though, at least she’s going out the way she came in – by RTing praise from random verified users and awkwardly ignoring the antisemitic elephant in the room.
But Wait! There’s More
Speaking of Grok’s brief stint as “MechaHitler,” the episode is prompting regulators around the globe to begin grappling with how to hold companies accountable when their AI tech goes rogue. [WaPo]
OpenAI quietly adds Shopify as a search partner. [Search Engine Journal]
Hearst acquired The Dallas Morning News for $75 million, ending 140 years of local ownership. [Poynter]
Indeed and Glassdoor, which are owned by the same parent company, will lay off more than 1,300 employees. Meanwhile, Glassdoor CEO Christian Sutherland-Wong is also leaving. [Fortune]
Microsoft and OpenAI’s fight over artificial general intelligence is bigger than a contract. [Wired]
Is Wall Street enabling Trump’s on-again, off-again tariff policies? [Axios]
How AI-equipped web browsers like Dia work in practice – and how they might change user browsing behavior. [NYT]
You’re Hired!
McCann hires Ida Rezvani as president and global chief client officer. [Campaign]
