Media Briefing: Affiliate isn’t dead, say publishers – but it must evolve in the AI era

Some are calling it the “great decoupling”: Google search is shifting, with clicks falling even as impressions hold steady. 

As Google’s generative AI search feature AI Overviews has expanded this year, the business implications are beginning to materialize. Business Insider CEO Barbara Peng blamed the changing search landscape and traffic volatility for her decision to let go of 21% of its overall workforce, in a memo to staff last week. 

Heads of SEO and content strategy at three publishers told Digiday they’d seen Google Search referral traffic drop by 30-50% since the rollout of AI Overviews in May 2024. 

“How much of our audience is going to stop before they ever get to us? If your revenue is primarily programmatic or affiliate and even direct, it’s really going to affect you,” said one head of SEO at a lifestyle publisher, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

In her staff memo, Peng also announced Business Insider would shut down most of its commerce business due to its “reliance on search.” Business Insider did not respond to requests for comment on which parts of its commerce arm were shuttering. A Press Gazette analysis found that traffic to Business Insider has halved in the past five years, from 160 million visitors per month in 2020 to around 80 million visitors per month this year so far, according to data from analytics company Similarweb. 

While Business Insider’s move away from commerce may be a canary in the coal mine for affiliate and SEO-driven revenue models under pressure from AI-driven search and platform volatility, four publishers Digiday spoke to are bullish on the future of affiliate revenue in an AI-powered era.

Publishers whose commerce businesses are built on using SEO to drive traffic to product pages and making money from affiliate links are in trouble, according to Bill Gross, CEO and founder of AI startup company Prorata.ai. “That business would evaporate as SEO strategies are going out the window with Google pushing down sites for their Gemini answers,” he said.

To some extent, that’s happened already. Google’s algorithm change at the end of last year decimated publishers’ product review sites. It led to the shutdown of those sites, such as Gannett’s Reviewed and AP’s Buyline.

Publishers are already overhauling their SEO strategies to better cater to how AI engines surface content versus how traditional search engines have ranked sites. And the same scrutiny is being applied to affiliate commerce strategies, according to three publishers that spoke with Digiday.

“I think there will be lots of money to be made in online commerce, but it’s going to shift to AI-powered commerce, and there will be a new model to make that work,” Gross said.

Publishers haven’t quite figured that part out yet. Maybe that’s because commerce and affiliate revenue are still quite stable at some lifestyle brands.

Affiliate commerce is a “very strong part of our business,” said the first anonymous head of SEO. “But we’re… not working in slippers and sheets. We’re working in furniture, which is very high [average order value].”

Two other lifestyle publisher execs said their strategy to stabilize their affiliate and commerce businesses amid the challenges is to add personal, unique and voicey perspectives in their product round-ups. 

“Brands who entered in the foray of commerce just to get some commerce wins may be experiencing more deprecation there,” said a lifestyle publishing exec, who requested to speak anonymously. Their affiliate revenue has been stable this year, which they attributed to their commerce and product recommendation content being a core part of their brand proposition.

But an exec at an entertainment publisher said they were seeing headwinds to its commerce content as a result of Google’s algorithm and AI updates. 

“Where we’re focused is to target our commerce offerings where our brands have a tremendous amount of authority,” the exec said. The publisher no longer publishes commerce content or product recommendations that don’t fall into the product categories it specializes in.

The challenges publishers are facing are also being felt by brands trying to sell their own products. That’s led to a bit of a silver lining for publishers, the entertainment publishing exec said. Product manufacturers and brands are now coming to their company and buying branded content. 

“What used to be affiliate is now actually becoming advertisers of ours. [They’re] no longer getting all of the affiliate traffic to sell products,” the exec said. That demand for branded content is offsetting declines in affiliate commerce revenue, they added. 

What we’ve heard

“AI optimization is pretty much in its nascent phases right now. There’s no silver bullet to crack that nut in terms of being surfaced in those [AI Mode] summaries. I think everyone’s trying to learn and understand more, and even gut check with each other in the industry – of methodologies, of how brands can show up and be more prevalent in that experience. We’re exploring, but certainly in the nascent phases, where I don’t have enough to comment on that.”

– A lifestyle publishing exec on whether or not AI Mode’s “fan-out” method makes optimizing for search more complex.

Numbers to know

24%: The advertising revenue growth Time is forecasting in the first half of 2025.

21%: The percentage of Business Insider’s workforce getting let go.

86%: The percentage of daily podcast consumers said they had seen or heard an ad in a podcast within the past week.

17%: The percentage of survey respondents that said they rely on AI-powered search more than traditional search methods.

What we’ve covered

IAB Tech Lab is developing tool to help publishers allow LLM to access their content

• The LLM Content Ingest API will help publishers and brands control how their content is accessed, monetized and represented by AI systems.
• IAB Tech Lab is inviting publishers, brands, LLM platforms and AI agent developers to provide feedback, with a workshop planned for next month.

Read more about the tool here.

A day in the life of Marie Claire’s EIC

• The Digiday Podcast tried out a new “Day in the Life” format to see how Nikki Ogunnaike and other industry leaders balance their work and professional lives. 
• Ogunnaike discusses her early mornings, TikTok-free doomscrolling and what she listens to during her commute.

Listen to the latest Digiday Podcast episode here.

The New York Times AI deal with Amazon signals a new wave of publisher partnerships

• The New York Times finally signed an AI licensing deal. The agreement with Amazon will allow products like Alexa speakers to use summaries and short excerpts from NYT stories and recipes, as well as to incorporate this content in the training of Amazon’s proprietary AI models.
• The deal signals Amazon and The New York Times declaring they too are all-in on the AI race. 

Read more here.

WTF is AI slop?

• “AI slop” is a term being used to describe sites like click farms and MFAs, but the difference now is the speed at which these sites are able to proliferate and monetize.
• There has been a 717% increase in AI slop sites detected in the last year.

Read more here.

LGBTQ+ creators hit by ad spend drop

• Some LGBTQ+ influencers are seeing their brand partnership revenue for June’s Pride Month — which is often their most active month — dwindle to almost nothing.
• Six LGBTQ+ creators told Digiday that they had experienced a significant downtick in Pride-related partnerships, as advertisers pull back from Pride marketing likely due to political pressure from the Trump administration.

Read more here.

What we’re reading

The Washington Post is opening up opinion section to other journalists and Substack

A new initiative, internally called Ripple, will open up The Washington Post’s opinion columns to journalists at other newspapers and writers on Substack, to appeal to readers who want more perspectives featured in the outlet, The New York Times reported.

TechCrunch shuts down European division 

Tech site TechCrunch is shutting down its European division after more than a decade, Sifted reported. Yahoo sold TechCrunch to private equity firm Regent in March.

Chicago Sun-Times CEO apologies for AI snafu

Chicago Sun-Times CEO Melissa Bell apologized in a memo to readers for publishing a summer reading list that recommended 10 fake titles. Bell also changed the company’s editorial policy to be more transparent about third-party content licensing, such as the summer reading list.

Gannett and AP join AI data cloud company Snowflake

Gannett and The Associated Press are joining Snowflake’s marketplace to add their news content to AI apps and agents for licensing, according to the AI data cloud company.

YouTube channels are using AI to turn paywalled news content into videos

Google is “handling” the issue of YouTube channels stealing paywalled news content and turning them into videos, Press Gazette reported.