AI-powered paywalls and the Trump Bump: A look inside the state of the publishing business

High atop the list of those topics are AI (of course) as well as platform referral traffic. The latter has been a sore spot for publishers in recent years, but perhaps the situation is starting to improve. 

“I’ve been talking to publishers about what they’re seeing this year, and it seems like referral traffic is actually starting to come back. I had one publishing exec who literally told me, ‘Social referral traffic is back,’” said Guaglione.

Also potentially back is the so-called Trump Bump. A question looming with President Donald Trump’s second term in office was whether news publishers would see a traffic spike similar to what they experienced during his first presidency. That question should elicit some answers during DPS with executives from BBC, The Economist and The Guardian speaking on stage as well as insights on how the three British news outlets are approaching their political coverage and attempting to carve out audiences in America. 

“The session that I’m going to be doing with The Economist touches on a brand marketing campaign they’ve been doing over the past year to sort of reintroduce The Economist to a younger, digital-first audience. And so I anticipate that the question of how do we talk about Trump, how do we talk about current events in America will be really important to that kind of broader brand refresh that The Economist is doing,” Lee said.

Finally, Sara Jerde, managing editor at Digiday, joins this week’s episode of the Digiday Podcast to talk about Apple’s $1 billion streaming TV loss, Ben & Jerry’s ousted CEO and of course, Perplexity’s proposal to buy TikTok as the countdown to the ban continues.

Here are a few highlights from the conversation, which have been edited for length and clarity.

Free vs. paywalled content

Guaglione: “It seems like there’s a lot going on, speaking of subscriptions, around figuring out what to keep behind a paywall and what to allow for free and moving that content around to see what’s really working to drive subscription revenue.”

AI-powered paywalls

Guaglione: “Now that machine learning AI technology has become a lot more advanced and really accessible to some of these publishers, they’ve been layering that into their dynamic paywalls to really improve them. And it sounds like this is working well for some publishers. So hopefully something that people will be willing to talk about at DPS.”

What’s new in news

Lee: “One theme I anticipate coming up a lot in the sessions is the current political state of affairs in America and the impact of everything happening on the news business. These are all topics that came up pretty heavily in the calls that I had with some of the folks I’ll be speaking to.”

Creators’ lax brand safety standards

Lee: “One really interesting area where creators are pushing the envelope as opposed to publishers is around brand safety over the last couple of years, particularly in 2025. This is to some extent associated with cultural shifts happening in America. When it comes to brands’ integrations or sponsorships of content creators, traditional concerns about brand safety simply don’t matter anymore. There’s an understanding that content creators’ audiences don’t care or even enjoy the edgier aspects of their personalities and their content.”