Traffic getting sent to publishers’ sites from AI platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity is growing. And while that makes sense for the publishers that have signed deals with those companies to receive attribution for their content surfaced on those AI chatbot or search platforms, data shows that referral traffic is growing even to sites that are attempting to block those platforms’ crawlers.

Execs at three large digital media companies told Digiday they have seen referral traffic from Open-AI owned ChatGPT increase recently.

The Atlantic saw a “significant” increase in traffic from ChatGPT in the past few months. Referrals rose by more than 80% from December to January, according to a spokesperson. The Atlantic signed a deal with OpenAI in May 2024.

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This week’s Media Briefing looks at a hot topic at this year’s annual podcast business summit On Air Fest: podcast subscriptions, and how to grow them as a complement (or alternative) to advertising revenue.

• Podcasters discuss testing different subscription offerings at the On Air Fest podcast business summit.
• Hearst CEO’s predictions for a challenging 2025, The New York Times approves usage of some internal AI tools, and more.

Testing different podcast subscription offerings

Podcasters are testing a variety of audio subscription offerings to grow recurring revenue as a complement (or alternative, in some cases) to advertising.

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LinkedIn is encouraging publishers that are part of its pre-roll video advertising program to post more on the platform, and publishers are meeting that demand with little additional effort, in part by clipping videos taken at their conferences and other events.

According to Adam Banicki, Fortune’s head of video, Fortune has signed three brand deals for the Wire program, which launched last summer and lets publishers sell 3- to 15-second-long pre-roll ads on their editorial videos. Both the publisher and LinkedIn can sell that inventory.

Videos from live events in particular have been part of those deals, including one to two minute clips from Fortune’s conferences. A fourth campaign is being developed to go live later this quarter, and will include both video series and video clips from events, he said. 

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This week’s Media Briefing looks at media companies’ previous efforts to launch (or grow) their own social media platforms, in light of BuzzFeed’s plans to tackle big tech’s algorithms by creating its own social media site. Spoiler alert: few have tried, and even fewer have succeeded.

• BuzzFeed’s latest pivot
• LA Times owner’s new right-wing venture, The Bulwark’s profitability and more.

Can BuzzFeed tackle ‘SNARF‘ with an ‘Island’?

You read that right. BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti published a nearly 3,000 word memo on Tuesday blaming tech platforms for “destroying” the internet by allowing “SNARF” content — which stands for “Stakes/Novelty/Anger/Retention/Fear” — to proliferate.

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Podcast orgs and publishers aren’t using videos of their audio shows to try to grow listenership. Well, they are trying to do that — but there’s not really a good way to measure if that strategy actually works well. 

Instead, podcasters are framing their video production efforts as a way to attract incremental audiences, by producing more video from their audio shows to grow viewership and measure audience growth holistically — a prime example of the convergence between audio and video podcasts.

That’s not necessarily a new trend. But as podcasters increasingly produce more and more video content from their audio shows, publishers and podcast organizations are measuring the success of those strategies by looking at growth both in listeners and viewers, according to conversations with five heads of audio.

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This week’s Media Briefing looks at why podcast organizations and publishers that are doing more video podcast production are primarily focused on YouTube.

• Podcast execs expanding their video production efforts aren’t won over by Spotify’s push into video yet, and are focusing their video podcast distribution on YouTube.
• BuzzFeed mulls building its own social media platform, Los Angeles Times offers buyouts, and more.

YouTube reigns supreme for video podcast efforts

Despite Spotify’s investment in developing more video features for podcasts, YouTube still reigns supreme when it comes to where podcast execs are focusing their video efforts, four execs told Digiday.

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Publishers that want to experiment with using generative AI technology to build products and features like creating chatbots and analyzing data have to evaluate which large language models best fit the bill. 

And it turns out that one of the biggest factors in these evaluations is how easy it is to integrate an LLM into their companies’ tech systems — such as different product suites and content management platforms — according to conversations with three publishing execs. That often means choosing the LLMs owned by companies with which they already have enterprise technology or content licensing agreements.

For example, a spokesperson at one publisher – who asked to remain anonymous —  told Digiday their company isn’t experimenting with an array of different LLMs and is primarily using OpenAI’s models. Their company has a content licensing deal with OpenAI that followed a successful project to build a chatbot using OpenAI’s GPT model. The publisher has continued to use GPT for other needs, like productivity tools.

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The Media Briefing this week features an interview with the Financial Times’ Fiona Spooner, managing director of the FT’s Consumer Revenue Group, on how their AI-powered paywall has led to an increase in key subscription metrics like average revenue per user and lifetime value — even though it hasn’t led to more conversions yet.

• How the FT is using AI technology to boost its paywall and improve ARPU and LTV
• The Wall Street Journal’s newsroom restructuring, ABC News’ union win protecting jobs against generative AI and more.

FT’s smarter, more automated paywall

The Financial Times’s months-old AI-powered paywall has helped improve key subscription business metrics, such as average revenue per user and lifetime value, according to Fiona Spooner, Managing Director of the FT’s Consumer Revenue Group.

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Jessica Chan is a one-woman team at Perplexity with quite the task at hand: convince publishers that Perplexity has something to offer them, at a time when media companies are increasingly seeking litigation against AI tech companies for copyright infringement.

It’s quite the feat for one person. But after speaking with her boss, former colleagues and publishing executives, it seems that Chan is poised to lure publishers in, given her experience and the hard and soft skills she’s developed during her career.

Perplexity launched its publisher program in July, and was “overwhelmed” after receiving over 100 messages from publishers interested in joining, Chan told Digiday in December.

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This week’s Media Briefing looks at how the TikTok ban impacted publishers’ onsite traffic and social referrals, as well as what companies like CNN, The Daily Mail and The Washington Post are doing with their short-form video efforts in light of the shutdown drama.

• Data shows the TikTok ban in the U.S. didn’t have much of an effect on publishers’ site traffic, and publishers say they will focus efforts on their onsite short-form video strategies going forward.
• Le Monde leaves X, AI companies to face more litigation from publishers, and more.

TikTok after-effects

TikTok’s shutdown over the weekend was short-lived, and so was its apparent impact on how people spent their time online. Publishers’ site traffic and social referral traffic did not deviate from the norm, and YouTube Shorts received a miniscule uptick in viewership, for example. 

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This week’s Media Briefing features an interview with Dotdash Meredith’s chief innovation officer, Jon Roberts. We discuss what the company has learned nearly nine months into its deal with OpenAI and what he wants to develop with AI technology at the company this year.

• Q&A with Dotdash Meredith on AI agenda in 2025
• Media companies prepare for legal battles with Trump administration, Fortune retracts bogus story and more

Q&A with Dotdash Meredith on AI agenda in 2025

Dotdash Meredith has ambitious plans for the development of its AI-powered technology in 2025. 

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This week’s court hearing in The New York Times’ case against OpenAI gave another glimpse of both sides’ legal strategies for the high-profile lawsuit over AI copyright.

On Tuesday, a federal judge heard oral arguments from both parties in a motion to dismiss brought by OpenAI and its financial backer Microsoft. The New York Times — as well as The New York Daily News and the Center for Investigative Reporting, which have filed their own lawsuits against OpenAI and Microsoft — claim OpenAI and Microsoft used the publishers’ content to train their large language models powering their generative AI chatbots. Doing so means the tech companies are competing with those publishers by using their content to answers users’ questions, taking away the incentive for a user to visit their sites for that information and ultimately hurting their ability to monetize those users through digital advertising and subscriptions, they claim.

OpenAI and Microsoft say what they’re doing is covered by “fair use,” a law that allows the use of copyrighted material to make something new that doesn’t compete with the original work.

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This week’s Media Briefing hones in on the business areas that publishing execs say they will prioritize this year – and what they are leaving behind in 2024.

• Media execs focused on growing engagement, subscriptions, direct ad revenue and reach
• Meta is bringing back political content, Time staffers are concerned about coziness with Trump and more

2025 look-ahead

This year, media companies will focus on growing engagement, subscriptions, reach and direct ad revenue, according to 16 publishing execs.

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When Donald Trump becomes president later this month, some news publishers will have updated tactics and strategies in place to cover his second term, ranging from a focus on softer news stories to more social media monitoring and engagement.

One head of social at a political news publisher, who asked to speak anonymously, said they encouraged staff to use some vacation days and take time off to “mentally prepare” for a “very fast and furious 90 days” of Trump’s first few months in office.

But for some publishers, it’s still too early to make any notable changes to editorial strategy. Three editors at top news organizations — who requested anonymity for candor — told Digiday at the end of last year that they felt prepared and poised to cover Trump’s second term and didn’t think it was necessary to shift resources or coverage plans yet.

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This year was the year many publishers took formalized stances on AI companies, many of which resulted in deals between the two.

The wave was first kicked off by an agreement between the Associated Press and OpenAI in July 2023, then followed by another deal between OpenAI and Politico, Business Insider, Bild and Welt owner Axel Springer.

The deals are usually content licensing agreements, where publishers let the AI companies use their content to train the large language models (often including paywalled content). In exchange, publishers get attribution for that content surfaced on the AI companies’ chatbot or search platforms, as well as access to technology that publishers can use to build AI-powered products and features. 

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The fragmented social landscape continued to splinter in 2024, as traffic from social media platforms sent to publishers’ sites continued its steady decline this year.

The bright spot? Largely Google. Publishers saw increases in traffic from Google Discover — and Google Search’s generative AI feature hasn’t had a negative impact on the traffic to publishers’ sites.

Other than Facebook, social platforms like Instagram, Reddit and Threads are all driving marginal traffic to publishers’ sites, according to Chartbeat’s data from about 3,750 sites.

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There will not be a Media Briefing next week due to Digiday’s holiday break.

This week’s Media Briefing takes a look at the top trends from 2024, from AI licensing deals to referral traffic challenges.

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AI search engine Perplexity introduced a new revenue share model back in July, amid the wave of deals between AI tech companies and publishers this year. But the way Perplexity is sharing ad revenue with publishers depends on a number of factors, according to information from Perplexity and conversations with five publishing execs, who declined to speak with attribution.

Here’s how Perplexity calculates revenue share for publishers: A publisher that is formally part of Perplexity’s program receives a certain percentage of the revenue Perplexity makes from an ad served in a response to a user’s query, when one of the publisher’s webpages is cited as a source for that response. (Perplexity has said 20 publishers have signed up).

But that range for each publisher varies, up to a double digit percentage, said Jessica Chan, head of publisher partnerships at Perplexity, who did not provide exact figures. That revenue increases for a publisher based on the number of links cited.

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After selling First We Feast following the sale of Complex earlier this year, BuzzFeed has come close to breaking even on its 2021 acquisition of Complex Networks. Investor analysts are describing the deal as a good sign for the media M&A market — which itself is an indication of how ugly that market had become.

A group of investors will pay BuzzFeed $82.5 million for First We Feast, which includes the popular “Hot Ones” franchise. Add to that the $108.6 million plus $5.7 million in fees BuzzFeed is getting from February’s sale of Complex to NTWRK, and BuzzFeed will have made back $196.8 million of the $198 million it originally paid for Complex Networks in 2021.

BuzzFeed is still effectively taking a loss on the overall Complex acquisition, but First We Feast’s $82.5 million price tag indicates an improving media M&A market. Bloomberg reported in June that BuzzFeed was struggling to find a buyer for First We Feast with a $70 million sale price.

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This week’s Media Briefing analyzes nine publishers’ workforce demographics reports released this year. The results were an even split: efforts stalled at a third of the companies analyzed, while another third made improvements and the remaining third’s staff diversity worsened.

• Three out of the nine publishers haven’t moved the needle on the overall diversity of their companies in the past year.

• Condé Nast layoffs, Q&A with Perplexity’s head of publisher partnerships, The Onion’s failed bid to buy Infowars and more.

An even split: DEI efforts stall, improve and worsen at nine media companies

A third of the nine publishers that released workforce demographic reports in the past year haven’t moved the needle on the overall diversity of their companies, according to the annual reports that are tracked by Digiday.

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