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Below is a roundup of last week’s notable industry news, with summaries and our opinions. AI is eating the open web…

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Top Story 👁️

Publishers race against Google Zero doomsday clock
Source: Axios
June 23rd, 2025

Summary: The traffic apocalypse is no longer theoretical. Google's AI Overviews (AKA Google Zero) have exploded to over 2 billion monthly users🔒, up from 1.5B last quarter, and they're devastating publisher traffic. When AI Overviews appear, only 8% of searches result in clicks to websites compared to 15% for traditional search results. Clicks on source links within the AI Overview? Just 1% of the time.

Publishers are scrambling to adapt. Wired, for example, is launching premium subscriptions that feature livestream AMAs with journalists in response to the traffic declines. The Verge rolled out personalized feeds to keep readers on-site. Business Insider is pivoting to events and video while pulling back from SEO-driven commerce. And Bustle Digital Group's CEO told Adweek they're "basically an events company"🔒now, not a website.

Some publishers are hedging with AI licensing deals, but those typically last just 2-5 years and aren't considered reliable long-term revenue without meaningful revenue-sharing terms. Google recently added micropayment tools to its ad manager—perhaps an acknowledgment that AI Overviews are killing referral traffic. We wrote about Cloudflare’s new pay-per-crawl solution, but this is nascent and likely won’t offset the negative revenue impact from decreased site traffic. 

Opinion: Google's AI needs publisher content to train its models, but AI Overviews are destroying the economic model that funds publisher content creation. Huh?!

Google says it monetizes AI Overviews at the same rate as traditional search. We’re skeptical of that assertion. Regardless, Google will eventually figure out monetization, and in the grand scheme, Google wins and publishers lose as AI Overviews scale up. Licensing deals are just temporary life support. 

The “cookiepocalypse” inspired publishers to build direct relationships with their audiences, and those lessons also apply now. Subscription models, events, apps, newsletters—anything that creates value exchange without algorithmic middlemen will help publishers in a "post-click web," where it isn't so much about traffic but about ownership of audience relationships.

The end-state of all of this is unclear. Certainly, many publishers will not be able to reinvent themselves and will die off because of the rise of AI. It’s already happening🔒. Those that remain will do so because of ingenuity, and they will emerge bigger and stronger. 

Looking into our crystal ball, we think the following will also happen in the age of AI (publishers, take note):

• The “upper funnel” will become more important for marketers, as human creativity will create real value and differentiation here, whereas a lot of lower funnel advertising will become entirely ‘AI-ified’, as Zuck so eloquently stated.

• The lower funnel will become commoditized, and way more about influencing agents than about getting humans to click and convert.

• Voice / audio as an advertising medium will explode.

• Banners ads on the open web … RIP.

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That’s It For This Week 👋

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