Media Briefing: Publishers turn to paid audience acquisition tactics to tackle traffic losses

"It's getting harder for publishers to get traffic from organic search. For some publishers, that means they have to spend more money to get people to come to their sites, through paid audience acquisition tactics - like ads to promote their content - and traffic arbitrage. Publishers didn't mince words when they described the pain of declining search referral traffic at the Digiday Publishing Summit Europe last month. Less traffic means fewereyeballs to serve ads to - an existential threat to some publishers' businesses."

"Publishing execs spoke during that town hall under Chatham House rules so Digiday could share what was said while maintaining executives' anonymity. Calling on marketing teams for help Marketing teams are core to publishers' subscription businesses, combining audience data, brand storytelling and performance campaigns to convert readers into subscribers. But now those teams are being looped into broader strategies to drive more eyeballs to content as it becomes increasingly difficult to get people to their sites."

Organic search referral traffic to publishers is declining, reducing pageviews and ad impressions and threatening ad-driven business models. Some publishers are buying traffic through paid audience acquisition and traffic arbitrage to recover lost visits. Marketing teams are being repurposed from brand and subscription roles into customer acquisition functions to drive eyeballs and convert readers. Google search volatility and AI tools are reducing organic click-throughs, forcing publishers to allocate more budget to paid acquisition. Executives at the Digiday Publishing Summit Europe in Lisbon framed the shift as the end of largely free inbound readership.

Read at Digiday