"The company is testing AI-powered content recommendation models to keep readers moving through its network of sites including Parade, The Street and Men's Journal to bump up revenue per session its core performance metric. By moving the average number of pages a visitor reads from 1.1 to 2 the goal it has set for the end of 2026 the publisher expects to add seven figures to its bottom line."
"The publisher was severely affected by the rise of AI summaries and the same search-traffic volatility other publishers have seen this year. Referral traffic dropped between 30 and 50 percent across its sites, according to Similarweb data. Traffic was 67.5 million this April for Parade, up from 30.4 million in the same month in 2024. But that dropped approximately 47 percent to 35.7 million in November 2025, per Similarweb."
The Arena Group is shifting focus from referral traffic to increasing on-site engagement to convert attention into revenue. The company is testing AI-powered content recommendation models across sites including Parade, The Street and Men's Journal to increase pages per session, its core performance metric. The publisher aims to move average pages per visitor from 1.1 to 2 by end of 2026, which it projects will add seven figures to the bottom line. Early tests increased dwell to 1.2 pages per visitor, equated to several million dollars. Referral traffic fell sharply due to AI summaries and search volatility, prompting a user-experience push. Revenue remains heavily weighted to programmatic advertising.
Read at digiday.com
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