Future paths for publishers in the AI economy

AI search has rewritten the rules of digital publishing.

For the last two decades, the balance was simple: publishers created content, Google indexed it, and traffic flowed back to fuel ad sales. Now, AI overviews and conversational search have collapsed that balance by defaulting users to answers without delivering clicks (traffic).

We’re seeing up to tens of thousands of page crawls to every one page referral, as illustrated in these stats from Cloudflare, which show the ratio of page crawls to clicks sent back to websites:

• Anthropic = 63.9K : 1
• OpenAI = 1.8K : 1
• Perplexity = 99.4 : 1
• Google = 5.4 : 1

Looking at the Google number, they might seem like “the best,” but the current 5.4:1 ratio of site crawl to referral is far worse than their previous 2:1. This is why, for publishers that have relied on Google, this isn’t a traffic dip; it’s a structural reset. The paradox? Search volume is at an all-time high, yet referrals to publishers are drying up. Over 60% of online searches now end without a click, largely because Google users who encounter an AI summary are less likely to click, and the trend is only increasing.

AI systems and search platforms are keeping users in their own walled gardens, leaving publishers, who create the very content these systems are trained on, with shrinking impressions, adding a squeeze to ad revenue.

It sounds dreary so far, but this post isn’t all doom and gloom; this isn’t the end of publisher monetization. Is this a seismic shift akin to the arrival of social? Yes. But it’s also the beginning of new opportunities.

My advice to publishers is to stop thinking of AI as only an existential threat and start thinking about new revenue opportunities and ways of working in the AI world. Because, like it or not, AI isn’t going away. Even if there is an AI bubble burst, it won’t be the end of AI. Just like with the early Dot Com bubble burst, there will be winners and losers, but the core tech will remain, evolve, and be built upon.

I hope you don’t read that previous statement as scary; it’s not meant to be. It’s meant to be a grounding statement. Because buried in that cold, hard, grounding truth is an opportunity for those who embrace the “new normal.”

The reduction of passerby traffic has removed some of the analytical noise and is elevating the core user of any publisher. And in that core lies the opportunity if you have 1P + 1P enriched data. That data is highly valuable as you start uncovering your future in AI. As you do, here are a few things to consider.

• Focus on the core – Work to deeply understand your audience and use that understanding to create content, products, and on-site experiences that social and AI can’t recreate. This will include unifying first-party, first-party enriched, and possibly even some third-party data sets to gain a deep, multifaceted understanding of your core audience.
• Go deep on data -enriched 1P insights empower better internal decision-making while boosting the premium value of limited inventory
• Build new rev paths less reliant on site traffic – Newsletters, events, e-comm, podcasts, CTV, subscription services, branded research, and more. All of which benefit deeply from having a rich 1P + 1P enriched data set to build from and on.

The era of easy traffic from Google is, unfortunately, over. The winners in this next phase will be the publishers who pivot fastest. The ones who build insightful and strong audience relationships, diversify revenue, experiment with AI-native products, and leverage their archives, data, and brand authority in this new AI economy.

If you’re wondering how to get started, Bombora offers solutions to help with each of these critical tactics. Whether you prefer a full-scale transition or small, steady steps, our team’s deep publishing expertise and tailored solutions are here to support you.

To learn how Bombora can help, reach out.