There’s an air of panic within the media world. The specter of AI has been looming massive for a few years now, however the risk now seems to be solidifying. Publishers are reporting that search traffic is in free fall, and there’s overwhelming evidence that AI chatbots give little or no when it comes to referrals. What to do about “Google Zero” has gone from a theoretical vacation spot to a actuality that the media world should take care of.
In fact, panicking is rarely a very good technique. However pivoting might be, and there’s been no scarcity of that currently. Each Wired and The Verge introduced this week a stronger push into newsletters, one of many extra dependable methods to attach immediately with readers. When Enterprise Insider lately announced layoffs, it additionally stated it might spend money on stay occasions. And even publishers that already cost for subscriptions are doubling down on them: Newsweek will launch new sorts for each shoppers and companies, and The Guardian now has a brand new, cheaper tier for readers who need to choose out of customized advertisements.
Whereas AI will be the impetus behind a number of these modifications, they’re all directionally pushing towards constructing direct relationships with viewers members. That’s good, however at a extra primary stage, they’re interesting to human needs that transcend simply getting data—a activity AI fulfills very successfully. Choices like newsletters, memberships, and occasions give a way of belonging, encourage studying habits by means of consistency, and emphasize voice—both that of the model or the person author.
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Within all this is the beginnings of a post-Google content strategy for media. But really, it’s only half a strategy because it only accounts for humans. Much of internet activity in the future will be the result of bots, whether they’re hoovering up data to inform AI models or acting as agents on behalf of individual users. Data from TollBit signifies bot crawling is already akin to what the large (non-AI) search engines like google do—when everybody has their very own AI agent, I might wager it will likely be the bulk. Any forward-looking content material technique must take into consideration each people and machines.
The brand new natural viewers
Let’s begin with the individuals. A number of months in the past, I hosted a webinar on the varieties of content material which can be most resilient to AI summarization. AI does an important job of summarizing information, nevertheless it struggles with voice and distinctive views. The consequence: If you need good opinion and evaluation, you’ll have to click on by means of. Visible and interactive content material is poorly conveyed by AI. And since AI is well-known to hallucinate generally, something which may inform an important choice for a reader—like context for well being, authorized, or monetary selections—will probably inspire readers to examine the unique supply.
Actually, memberships and subscriptions are essential mechanisms to construct a loyal viewers, however in addition they should be centered round one thing readers can’t get anyplace else. That normally means narrowing the lens of focus relatively than widening it. Area of interest topics—even inside a extra normal model—will sometimes see greater engagement and extra loyalty than normal ones.
Then there’s the stickiness of interactivity. One factor that rising media platforms like Substack and TikTok do properly is encouraging direct dialog between content material creators and viewers members. However being interactive doesn’t all the time must be so hands-on: Semi-automated options like polls, quizzes, and video games are all efficient habit-builders—and can’t be substituted by AI.
Rise of the machines
If you consider it, there’s a form of a “properly, duh” high quality to all of the studies that affirm individuals don’t click on by means of to sources once they use AI. (Pew Research simply put out one other, by the way in which.) That’s as a result of eradicating the necessity to click on is essentially the purpose. Why go and skim a complete bunch of articles when bots can do it for you?
However that reveals the opposite aspect of the coin: Bots at the moment are doing the looking and the press, and that exercise is traceable, measurable, and probably monetizable. In different phrases, the inevitable rise in bot site visitors represents each an unprecedented risk and an enormous alternative.
First, there’s the plain concept of charging bots to scrape your web site. Placing in paywalled endpoints—the place AI bot operators pay a small charge to entry content material—may fit, particularly now that Cloudflare is leading the charge in empowering web site homeowners to dam bots. Nonetheless, it enormously will depend on the scrapers performing in good religion—and even when they do, it’s uncertain if the charge per scrape that publishers cost would ever be sufficient to construct a sustainable enterprise.
What might assistance is profitable the following search engine marketing warfare: AIEO, or synthetic intelligence engine optimization. Being one of many major sources in an AI Overview or a ChatGPT reply won’t look like a lot of a prize, given the low click-through charges. However in the event you pair it with each a pay-per-crawl mechanism and a content material technique that focuses on the AI-resilient content material sorts mentioned earlier—those which have a better likelihood of audiences searching for them out—the advantages might find yourself being greater than mere bragging rights.
This type of AI-first content material technique does require a extra refined method. You’d must make use of the total search and AI toolbox, together with issues like Google snippets to make sure AI crawlers spotlight probably the most engaging components of your content material with out giving the shop away, and MCP servers that may guarantee bots have direct entry to the content material you green-light for them. Whereas that may be technically cumbersome, the market is already adapting, with AIEO specialists like Scrunch AI providing one-stop-shop packages that primarily make a bot-friendly copy of your web site in order that crawlers can feast whereas people get pleasure from your common web site.
Smaller, higher . . . robot-ier?
The reality about the way forward for media is that the viewers, the human viewers, can be smaller for just about everybody. As extra individuals get their data from AI portals, publishers might want to profit from the few individuals who come on to them. That isn’t essentially a nasty factor. Going small can finally be a part of a more healthy model of journalism, as I argued in my very first column.
However the parallel development is that the bot viewers is rising quick, and it undoubtedly can be a dominant drive in the way in which data is distributed. Harnessing that drive can be important for the media. And although there are nonetheless a number of unknowns—the very best practices, the authorized framework, even the potential rewards—at the least it’s straightforward to see what to not do: wait.
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