Do AI chatbots send higher quality traffic to publishers?

PLUS: Is the New York Times finally embracing the Creator Economy?

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Do AI chatbots send higher quality traffic to publishers?

From TechCrunch:

ChatGPT referrals to news publishers are growing.

From January through May 2024, ChatGPT referrals to news sites were just under 1 million, Similarweb says, but have grown to more than 25 million in 2025 — a 25x increase …

Sites seeing the most increases in ChatGPT referral traffic include Reuters (up 8.9% year-over-year), NY Post (up 7.1%), and Business Insider (up 6.5%). Meanwhile, The New York Times, which is suing OpenAI over allegedly scraping its works without permission, is seeing far fewer ChatGPT referrals. Though still in the top 10 sites receiving ChatGPT referral traffic, it’s only seen a 3.1% increase.

Two things have definitely become apparent in recent months: 1. That AI-generated answers to queries are leading to less search engine referral traffic to publishers, and 2. At least some percentage of these AI chatbot queries are resulting in users clicking on the citation links and visiting publisher websites.

Google executives have claimed that these citation clicks bring in higher-value traffic, and anecdotally I can say I spoke to at least one publisher who said that visitors who come in via AI platforms are much more likely to convert into paid subscribers than visitors from regular Google search results. It does make intuitive sense that someone who cares enough about the subject to click through to the citations is going to take more time to consume content than those who are just looking for a quick answer to their question. I just checked my own stats dashboard, and it looks like 2.5% of Google search visitors convert into free signups to my newsletter, whereas 9% of visitors coming in via ChatGPT convert. For Perplexity visitors, the conversion rate is 4%. I'd be interested in hearing from publishers with much higher traffic whether they see similar results.

This YouTuber built a massive following by interviewing touring musicians

Somehow Josh Weidling manages to hold down a day job while also uploading five interviews a week with musicians who are on tour. That means he's sometimes going to concerts every night of the week. [The Business of Content]

ICYMI: How Freetrail carved out a media niche for one of the country's fastest-growing sports

Is there any downside to blocking AI data scrapers?

From the New York Times:

Cloudflare, a tech company that helps websites secure and manage their internet traffic, said on Tuesday that it had rolled out a new permission-based setting that allows customers to automatically block artificial intelligence companies from collecting their digital data, a move that has implications for publishers and the race to build A.I.

With Cloudflare’s new setting, websites can block — by default — online bots that scrape their data, requiring the website owner to grant access for a bot to collect the content.

I'm pretty ambivalent as to whether AI content scraping should be considered illegal or if it's even bad for publishers' businesses in the longterm, but I also doubt there's any significant downside to blocking scraper bots — with the exception of Google's, since doing so might remove your website from its search results.

Right now, these AI companies aren't sending much traffic to publishers, and blocking the scraper bots will only increase the publishers' leverage in negotiating any licensing deals with the AI companies. Of course, there are several lawsuits in the pipeline, and judges could easily decide that AI scraping doesn't constitute copyright theft, at which point these licensing deals will probably dry up. But even if that does happen, I can't imagine a scenario where a publisher would end up regretting the decision to block AI scrapers.

The Financial Times kept its eye on the ball

From a Columbia Journalism Review exit interview with the outgoing CEO of the Financial Times:

The [Financial Times’s] website put up a metered paywall, which now seems totally normal but was, at the time, pioneering, and controversial within the wider industry. The move was designed to generate revenue from Web content, guided by the principle that it was worth as much as print journalism. It ended up yielding highly valuable data on readers, too.

Out of all the legacy publishers in the UK, the Financial Times had one of the most impressive digital transitions; it recognized very early on that its journalism was valuable, and it was unapologetic about charging for that value. It didn't chase empty calorie web traffic and also didn't plaster its website with the kind of programmatic ad tech that makes your eyes bleed.

Please don’t take my newsletter for granted

I rely on paid subscriptions for the vast majority of my revenue. Without enough paid subscribers, I can’t continue justifying spending 40+ hours a week on my newsletter and podcast, and I’ll need to shut them down so I can seek out other work.

Let me put this another way: if you’d be disappointed if I suddenly announced that I’m shutting down my newsletter — a very real possibility — then you should probably subscribe.

Seriously, it’s only $50 for a full year, and if you’re using insights from my content to improve your own business, then that $50 pays for itself. And if you use the link below, you get 20% off for the first year:

When will pro sports leagues go fully direct to consumer?

From Puck:

Multiple sources have described the current sports rights marketplace as the toughest that they’ve ever seen. To be clear, it’s not a market crash or a bursting bubble—there are still plenty of companies coveting sports rights. But the huge fee increases that have been a hallmark of the past two decades are becoming much tougher to negotiate. For instance, several media companies have expressed interest in F1, which has been looking for an increase over the $90 million per year that ESPN currently pays for U.S. rights. The racing series went to market earlier this year, looking to up that deal to $150 million–$180 million. F1 executives took a lot of meetings, but it looks like they’ve had to recalibrate their expectations. F1 will get a U.S. deal done—it’s reengaged with ESPN and has the ear of several streamers. But it doesn’t look like the sport will secure the massive bump it once hoped for.

I think it's only a matter of time before major sports leagues decide to forgo licensing their broadcast rights so they can go 100% direct to consumer via their own streaming apps. Not only are sports fans growing increasingly weary of subscribing to multiple apps to watch their favorite leagues, but the collapse of the cable bundle is quickly making it impossible for most of the major TV networks to afford the exorbitant prices the leagues have grown used to.

Instagram and TikTok are finally coming for your TV

From the Information:

Instagram and TikTok are both working on versions of their video apps better suited for TV screens, following YouTube’s success in the living room …

Besides fierce competition for advertising, Instagram and TikTok will need to solve how to make the short-form videos they’re known for look appealing on a bigger screen. YouTube has had to face this issue with Shorts, but it also has plenty of horizontal, long-form video that is perfectly suited for TVs.

I've always wondered why Meta and TikTok haven't pushed into connected TV apps like Roku given how much YouTube has become the dominant force in TV streaming, but then again YouTube has plenty of longform programming that lends itself to a leanback experience, whereas Instagram and TikTok are primarily populated with shortform video. Not only that, but the way users sort through shortform videos is by rapidly scrolling the moment they lose interest, which probably won't translate well to the TV screen. Nor will vertical video look particularly good on a widescreen TV.

Still though, TV watching is an enormous segment of media consumption, and I don't see how Meta and TikTok are able to compete with YouTube in the longterm unless they can cut into its market share on what's arguably the most valuable advertising medium.

My other newsletter: The best longform journalism we consumed this week

Is the New York Times finally embracing the Creator Economy?

From the Hollywood Reporter:

Beyond the Times‘ own staff, it is also turning to creators in the space who can host episodes or launch new franchises. Already the Times works with well-known creators with their own followings on YouTube and other platforms, and it wants to build that out further.

“We’re looking for really talented creators who are currently independent, who want to enter the family. And we’re also looking for people, honestly, who are really talented recipe creators, because for NYT Cooking at the end of the day, it is about the recipe,” [Emily Weinstein, the editorial lead for NYT Cooking] says. “So when we look at people out there in the world, we’re looking at people who have a really sharp instinct for making amazing content, people who really know how to build community around the recipes, and people who are also creating great recipes to match.”

This seems notable because it's the first time I can think of where the New York Times is seeking outside creators to partner with for an ongoing series. The company has historically been uncomfortable with the idea of its employees becoming their own personal brands, and it's watched in recent years as many of its biggest stars have struck off to launch their own independent media companies. This new move seems to be a tacit acknowledgement that the Creator Economy and traditional media don't always have to be in competition with each other, and that there are benefits to bringing outside creators into the fold.

The Concorde-and-Caviar Era of Condé Nast, When Magazines Ruled the Earth

What's amazing about Conde Nast's decades-long era of profligate spending isn't just that it afforded its editors and top writers with lavish expense accounts; it's also that the company executives chastised those employees when they didn't take full advantage of those expense accounts. Conde Nast viewed its employees — especially its editors — as brand ambassadors, basically pre-internet influencers whose job it was to project elitism to everyone who mattered. [NYT]

Amazon zigged where Netflix zagged

From Indiewire:

Streamers that are otherwise available directly through their respective apps are also available to subscribe to through Prime Video, including most notably HBO Max, Paramount+, Apple TV+, Crunchyroll, and many others.

For those four specific services, Antenna modeled just how many more incremental subscribers they have received by being available on Prime Video versus if they weren’t. Antenna found that in aggregate, streamers saw an additional 5.6 million signups, an increase of 89 percent, that wouldn’t have occurred off of Prime Video Channels.

It's really interesting to consider how much Amazon's approach to streaming has been radically different from just about all of its competitors. While they all focused on building out their own content libraries, Amazon invested in building out an entire streaming marketplace.

Yes, it has its own inventory of shows and movie available through a Prime subscription, but it's also the place you go when you want to rent or buy a new movie release, and it's quickly become a go-to platform for subscribing to streaming services it doesn't own. It's managed to become a massive streaming platform while only spending half the content budget of Netflix. Add in the fact that Amazon Prime customers get free package delivery, and it's clear the company has done a stellar job at integrating multiple businesses.

What Substack’s critics often misunderstand about the platform

From Wired:

Typically, Substack pros solicit a monthly fee of $5-10 or an annual rate of $50-150. Usually there’s a free tier of content, but journalists who hope to make at least part of their livelihood on Substack save the good stuff for paid customers. Compared to subscribing to full-fledged publications, this is a terrible value proposition. After leaving The Atlantic, celebrated writer Derek Thompson started a Substack that cost $80 a year—that’s one penny more than a digital subscription to the magazine he just left! … It doesn’t take too many of those subscriptions to match the cost of The New York Times, which probably has 100 journalists as good as Substack writers, and you get Wordle to boot.

I've seen lots of claims over the years that a Substack/newsletter subscription is a bad deal because it often costs the same as a magazine or newspaper subscription; why would you subscribe to one writer who only publishes a few pieces per month vs a publication that publishes hundreds or even thousands?

But the math does check out if you actually think about it. Let's say you subscribe to The Atlantic — will you actually be reading the hundreds of articles it publishes each month? No. My guess is the average subscriber only reads a handful — let's say four or five. Now let's say you have a favorite Substack writer and you open and read every single newsletter they send out. If you read at least five of their newsletters a month, then that means you get as much value from them as you do from your Atlantic subscription.

Critics of solo paid newsletters also love to point out that power laws exist. Yes, a relatively small portion of Substack writers will make a full-time living from their newsletters, but this is a platform where the barrier to entry is pretty much nonexistent, so I don't find that argument very compelling. If you peruse Substack's leaderboards, it's clear that several hundred creators are pulling in above the median US income in subscriptions, and there are likely thousands more who are generating decent side incomes. Not every writer who launches on Substack — or a competing newsletter platform — does so with the goal of making 100% of their income through paid subscriptions.

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