The Economist prepares for a twotrack internet: one for humans and one for AI agents

"The Economist is testing new ways of structuring content to be read solely by agents as AI engines increasingly surface and summarize news. For now, the subscription publisher is experimenting with agent‑readable versions of content that already sits outside its paywall - chiefly marketing copy and B2B sales material - and restructuring those surfaces for AI answer engines."

"The bet is that discovery won't start on homepages or even in search boxes, but with AI intermediaries acting on a user's behalf. As Josh Muncke, vp of generative AI at The Economist Group, told Digiday, the publisher is preparing for "a world with two versions of the web" - one optimized for rich, human reading experiences, and another where "agents want clear structure, questions and answers, ideally text," not carousels and feature art."

""There are some obvious places we must do that," Muncke told Digiday. "We want our marketing content to be findable and discoverable and optimized for agents. And then we obviously need to think deeply about how and what portions of our editorial content should also appear in those kinds of surfaces.""

"A growing share of B2B buyers now start with ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude, so The Economist's sales and marketing pages have to show up cleanly in those answers, stressed Muncke. That means building parallel versions of the same pitch: glossy, comparison‑heavy pages for humans, and stripped‑back, Q&A‑style structures for agents - and accepting that agent‑readable content is now part of the go‑to‑market plan, not a side project."

The Economist is testing new content structures intended for AI agents that surface and summarize news. The work focuses on content already outside the paywall, especially marketing copy and B2B sales material, and reshapes it for AI answer engines. The expectation is that discovery will occur through AI intermediaries acting for users rather than through homepages or search boxes. The goal is a “two versions of the web” approach: one optimized for rich human reading and another optimized for agents with clear structure, questions, and answers in text form. Because it is a subscription publisher, it evaluates which pages and teasers can be shared without reducing subscription value. B2B buyers increasingly begin with ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude, so sales and marketing content must appear cleanly in those answers, requiring parallel human and agent-friendly versions.

Read at Digiday