By Lior Charka, VP, Product, Outbrain
As a kid growing up, I loved reading the weekend edition of our local newspaper. It was more than just the collection of news articles we got during the week. There was a special quality about it that’s hard to describe; smelling the ink, feeling the paper, discovering new stories that were more than just current events. It was a way to learn about other countries and cultures. But as I grew and got to travel more, I realized that getting a hold of your favorite newspaper in other countries was almost impossible. Distribution was truly local and newspapers were unique to their places of origin.
With the introduction of the internet, everything changed. Publishers went from having loyal and dependent audiences with exclusive distribution, to being forced to compete for readers who have access to nearly unlimited information sources at any given moment. Publishers knew they had to adapt in order to reach new audiences and they chose to partner with platforms in order to do that.
Partnering with platforms offered a huge opportunity for publishers. They now had the ability to reach audiences at scale in a way that wasn’t possible before. A problem arose, however, when Facebook launched a new feature called Instant Articles. With Instant Articles, Facebook stopped sending users to publishers’ sites directly, and instead kept users on the platform by expanding articles within their own news feed. This approach, along with similar practices on Instagram and TikTok, began weakening the connection between readers and publishers. By adopting Instant Articles, publishers shifted value and content discovery to major platforms, ultimately losing further control over their audience.
This change led to a shift in user habits. Instead of going directly to publishers as a destination site, users began consuming news within their own social feeds.
More recently, publishers have been facing additional challenges from Meta. Facebook has deprioritized news in their feed and also removed the news tab from the Facebook app. This was done in response to legislation in Australia and Canada which was aimed at forcing Meta to pay for referring readers to publisher sites in order to sustain journalism. These steps have brought down Facebook referrals to publishers significantly. Google’s most recent announcement about AI Overviews might also have a negative impact on traffic to publishers.
Despite the above, COVID-19 brought publishers a significant, yet temporary, boost to traffic, both because readers were anxious to keep up with breaking news, and also because they were stuck at home seeking distraction and entertainment. News consumption at that point was growing day-by-day, but it also brought a different issue: fatigue. Readers got tired of the news cycle, and were choosing to consume content to distract them from the overly saturated news environment. Since then, publisher traffic and direct access to their sites has been declining year-over-year.
Today, publishers are facing yet another challenge: short form video platforms. TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube have become the most prominent platforms that readers use for news consumption. This move correlates not just to the different aspects I mentioned thus far, but also to the continually shrinking average user attention span.
With all this leading to the crisis we’re seeing with web publishers and the decline over time in pageviews, the question is: What can publishers do to solve this problem?
The open web is huge and there are so many people who are interested in the news, but not necessarily in the hierarchy of stories, or the way it’s currently being reported or distributed. There’s a substantial focus on the day’s big news stories with significantly less importance placed on the human connections and insights that people are craving.
Some of today’s biggest YouTubers talk about politics across the world and focus on explaining what’s happening and why. Audiences are seeking more access to this type of content. Getting context is important because it helps people understand situations and form educated opinions. On the other hand, it’s also important for audiences to be able to easily distinguish between opinion and factual news, with the line between the two becoming more blurred by the day. Here, trusted publishers have an opportunity to become sources of this news context that users can rely on.
As if the current environment weren’t complicated enough for publishers, I’d be remiss in ignoring our newest curveball: AI. Publishers are reliant on standing out, but how do you stand out in a world where AI is growing exponentially and small publishers can use it to create unlimited pieces of low-quality content at very low cost? As much as AI can be a danger, it has the potential to help solve some of the challenges facing publishers, but only with ethical use and automation.
How do publishers productize the news and become a destination site, while providing engaging content and avoiding watered-down generic AI-generated stories? There a few aspects that can be addressed in order to chart a path for growth:
Reimagine User Experience: Publishers need to move beyond static, newspaper-like websites and embrace dynamic, engaging experiences. This includes incorporating multimedia formats, interactive elements, and personalized content tailored to individual preferences.
Embrace AI Strategically: Artificial intelligence can be leveraged to enhance personalization, analyzing user data to curate relevant content and provide a more engaging experience. This can be done by also leveraging publishers 1st party data to train AI models. However, ethical considerations around AI-generated content and potential erosion of trust must be carefully addressed.
Licensing content to AI platforms – This might come with a risk given what I mentioned earlier about instant articles, but it can also open up the door for an additional revenue stream – similar to the deal Google has with Reddit to use Reddit content for Google’s AI models.
Diversify Content and Formats: Adapting to the evolving consumption habits of audiences is crucial. This includes experimenting with short-form videos, podcasts, live coverage, and interactive formats. Collaboration with third-party platforms can open new avenues for content diversification and revenue generation and attract new audiences that want to consume news in a different way.
While there are clear challenges ahead for publishers, a recent study from The Rebooting found that 80% of publishers expressed some form of confidence in their business. That signals that despite all the uncertainties and hurdles, there is the desire to face those head on and innovate in ways that grow the business rather than shrink it. If publishers embrace some of these tactics, we can find a bright future.
