Media Briefing: Publishers are replacing Google with a little bit of everything

This week’s Media Briefing analyzes recent publishers’ earnings results, and the different bets publishers are making on how to build businesses less dependent on Google search traffic.

• The search exit strategy
French newspapers file complaint against Google AI Overviews, USA Today Co employees push back against new company deal with Palantir, and more.

The search exit strategy

Publishers know they need to become less dependent on Google. Figuring out what replaces it is proving to be much harder.

This earnings season offered a glimpse into what publishing businesses might look like when not relying on search traffic: The New York Times is betting on video, News Corp is leaning on subscriptions and B2B products, BuzzFeed is cutting costs and adopting a more flexible contributor model, and People Inc., USA Today Co. and Ziff Davis are cultivating audiences across social, video, newsletters and other channels.

But these alternatives are still developing, and several publishers remain too reliant on Google to walk away from it today. The emerging post-Google playbook is shaping up to be less about finding a Google replacement, and more about building a publishing business that doesn’t depend on a single source for audiences, content discovery and revenue.

I broke down what each media CEO said in their earnings call last week, and what it reveals about where publishers see their businesses heading next:

The New York Times: Betting big on video but the last pivot is a warning

What was said: “You’ve heard me talk about how ambitious we feel about video and [how] excited we are. It’s playing a relatively minor role in the growth in advertising so far, and you’re going to see us really focus on scaling production, scaling engagement, and then scaling monetization.” – Meredith Kopit Levien, The New York Times Company CEO 

What it really means: The Times’ investment in video production is a way to deepen engagement with existing readers and subscribers, reach new audiences and help insulate itself from declining search and platform referrals. During the earnings call on August 5, Kopit Levien explicitly connected the Times video push (which spans reporter-led video, news clips, visual investigations and shows) to the current environment where platforms are sending publishers less traffic.

But the problem is video is expensive, and the last pivot to it is a reminder of what happens when publishers don’t commit fully: half measures got burned as fast as the platforms that pushed them. So far The Times hasn’t yet prioritized monetizing all this video — unsurprising given how much money it’s spending these days. CFO Will Bardeen said during the call that adjusted operating costs grew 10% – higher than the original guidance – largely as a result of higher compensation and benefits expenses, including investments in video. But if the video helps develop habitual, loyal viewers, then that could convert subscribers and grow the Times’ direct revenue stream.

People Inc: Can’t quite quit Google search year but ad rates are buying room to try

What was said: “If we were to turn off AI, we would turn off search. And as [Tim Quinn, CFO at People Inc.] said, we are nearly on the other side of search being a material driver of value for us. But we’re not there yet. So, we’re clearly not turning this off now.” – Neil Vogel, People Inc CEO

What it really means: As Digiday previously reported, Vogel said the company wants to block Google’s crawlers but can’t do that yet. The problem is that uses Google uses a single crawler, Googlebot, to both index pages for AI search and powerful traditional search results. Blocking it to keep content out of AI-powered answers would also pull People Inc out of Google’s search results entirely, cutting off referral traffic the company still depends on. Indeed, about 21% of People Inc.’s traffic comes from Google search, Vogel said. And while that’s down from 25% last quarter, it’s nothing to sneeze at. 

Yet despite that, People Inc is arguably doing a better job than most at weaning off Google. Quinn noted ad rates have gone up “significantly,” meaning the publisher is making more money per pageview even as Google sends fewer of them. That cushion has bought People Inc. room to keep shifting into businesses that don’t depend on impressions at all.

For instance, the publisher is packaging session-based and non-session-based ads into programs that include web, social and events. Non-session-based revenue grew as a percentage of People Inc.’s total digital revenue, from 39% in Q2 2025 to 43% in Q2 2026. That means the share of revenue that isn’t dependent on traffic is growing, and therefore becoming a larger share of People Inc’s business. Still, it’s not quite enough to make any major changes to its relationship with Google.

News Corp: Subscriptions insulate the Journal from the traffic wars

What was said: “Ad revenue for us is not a very significant portion of our business.” – Lavanya Chandrashekar, News Corp CFO

What it really means: News Corp’s Dow Jones business – which includes The Wall Street Journal – is overwhelmingly a subscription business, meaning it isn’t as reliant on fluctuations in the ad market and ad revenue tied to traffic trends.

About 81% of Dow Jones’ revenue came from circulation and subscriptions in fiscal 2026 (which ended June 30, 2026), compared with about 17% from advertising, according to News Corp’s annual earnings filing.

The Journal is also pushing harder on subscription yield, and not just volume, to extract more value from its direct audience. Enterprise subscriptions particularly contributed to The Wall Street Journal’s subscription revenue, which increased 7% year over year to 6.7 million subscriptions (digital-only subscriptions grew 9% to nearly 6.3 million). The Journal recently raised the monthly price of its digital subscription for new customers from $39.99 to $44.99, increased the price of introductory offers and is rolling out higher prices to existing subscribers, Chandrashekar said in the company earnings call on August 5.

USA Today: Trading search traffic for newsletters, video and higher-value subscribers

What was said: “We’re not building our future on search, even in our strongest categories.” – Kristin Roberts, USA Today Media president

What it really means: Not unlike People Inc, USA Today Co’s execs were clear that one of their business priorities was to reduce its reliance on Google search traffic. 

But Roberts was keen to clarify that it’s not like Google doesn’t matter anymore. Really, USA Today Co is working on building a business that won’t need Google as much. Nearly 65% of the 97 million pageviews generated by USA Today Co’s World Cup coverage came from search, Roberts said in the earnings call on August 6. 

On the call, CEO Mike Reed outlined the publisher’s strategy to replace “lower-value traffic” with deeper audience relationships to create “a stronger foundation for predictable and repeatable revenue growth,” he said. That means reaching audiences through channels like newsletters and social video, and prioritizing higher-value subscribers. The numbers reflect that, too. USA Today Co.’s digital-only subscription revenue was $45.6 million in Q2 2026, a 6.8% year-over-year increase, while digital advertising revenue decreased 9.2%, due in part to lower page views.

Ziff Davis: Diversification is cushioning the AI Overviews hit

What was said: “We have a lot of non-traffic businesses inside the company.” – Vivek Shah,  Ziff Davis CEO

What it really means: Diversification is the name of the game for Ziff Davis. Shah said growth from social platforms, apps, email and video – as well as revenue from subscriptions and licensing – is helping offset declines in web traffic, reducing the company’s reliance on getting people to its properties through search.

These sources of audience and engagement are helping cushion the financial impact of falling traffic, which is why “the ad revenue decline is not equal to the web traffic decline” for the company, Shah said.

That diversification is becoming more important as Google sends publishers fewer clicks. About 50% of Google queries relevant to Ziff Davis properties now trigger an AI Overview in Google, up from about 36% last quarter last quarter, Shah said.

BuzzFeed: A leaner cost structure, not a new audience strategy

What was said: “We are shifting from [a] traditional publishing model to a true platform where our community, creators and partners actively fuel our content ecosystem… Our costs will naturally scale with traffic rather than staying high when audience trends shift.” – Jonah Peretti, president of BuzzFeed AI 

What it really means: BuzzFeed is a bit of an anomaly here because of how much its business has changed recently, with new ownership and a recent round of layoffs that cut 35% of its workforce. Its approach is different too. Instead of looking for new ways to bring in audiences, BuzzFeed is trying to build a more flexible cost structure to reflect traffic fluctuations. So when traffic is higher, it can spend more money on contributors to produce more content, and vice versa. This contributor model could be seen as a hedge against a shrinking and less predictable referral ecosystem.

Rather than supporting an editorial team with fixed salaries, output will come from contract workers, such as creators, contributors and fellows. It’s leaning in, rather than leaning away: if platforms send less traffic, BuzzFeed wants its content production costs to decline with it. BuzzFeed expects the workforce reduction alone to produce about $30 million in annualized savings.

What we’ve heard

“We’ve seen a tipping point, as I think others in the industry have, that bots are now really outpacing the human interaction hitting our own surfaces. We’ve reached the point of saying the direct human to content relationship that we had is now a slice of a larger universe that we now see.”

– Kara Chiles, svp of media products at USA Today Co.

Numbers to know

22%: The year-over-year growth of USA Today Co’s digital “other” revenue in Q2 2026, which includes revenue from AI partnerships, content licensing agreements and syndication.

6%: The year-over-year decline of Ziff Davis’ advertising and performance marketing revenue in Q2 2026.

5 million: The number of times The Wall Street Journal’s AI text-to-speech “Read to Me” function has been used in the past year.

5X: The increase in the average number of sources cited per ChatGPT answer after the Aug. 8 GPT-5.6 model update, from around 12 sources to 60 sources, according to analysis by AI search platform Obsero.

What we’ve covered

Perplexity blocks Time’s ads served to AI agents

• Less than two weeks after Digiday reported that Time had started serving ads inside the markdown versions of its webpages, aimed at AI agents rather than human readers, Perplexity confirmed that it blocked those ads from influencing its own search index.
• Perplexity is calling the ads ‘deceptive.’

Read more here.

S4 and Monks are trying to get ahead of rising AI token costs

• Rising costs associated with AI tokens are forcing marketing services groups to confront hard questions about how much they should be spending on AI.
• Marketing agencies across media, creative and production are attempting to find the right balance between investment and outgoings, and between token usage transparency and complexity for clients.

 Read more here.

Zoom relies on creators to boost AI search results

• Zoom is trying to convince people that it’s an end-to-end, AI-first work platform rather than just a meetings platform, and it’s building an AI visibility strategy with creators to accomplish that. 
• Rather than relying solely on paid ads in LLMs, Zoom is betting on creators to up its chances of being cited in AI search results.

Read more here.

Clients are hungry for AI visibility aids, but buyers are skeptical of specialized markdown ads

• Publishers have begun offering ad inventory specifically designed to be seen by AI agents. With clients desperate to improve their AI search visibility, some media buyers say it’s worth a shot. 
• Others regard it as magical thinking, arguing that brand-building advertising is more impactful.

Read more here.

Why brands like Gap Inc. and Staples are inviting their employees to be creators

• Employee creator networks are the new creator networks. 
• Five years ago, creators could get fired for making content on the job. Now, the C-suite has officially caught on to employee-generated content (EGC).

Read more here.

What we’re reading

French newspapers ask antitrust watchdog to take action over Google’s AI-generated summaries

A group of nearly 300 French newspapers filed a complaint with the country’s competition authority over Google’s AI-generated summaries in search results, which launched in France last month, France 24 reported. The newspapers are seeking a compensation deal, fearing AI Overviews will erode traffic.

Over 800 USA Today Co employees demand ending relationship with Palantir

More than 800 USA Today Co. employees are calling on the company to dissolve its recently announced partnership with Palantir, citing significant ethical issues with Palantir and noting its AI software has been used for surveillance, Nieman Lab reported.

New York Post launches AI chatbot

New York Post Media Group is launching a custom AI chatbot as part of a broader AI-powered personalized news experience called Hamilton, Axios reported.

How People Inc exec Jonathan Roberts became the face of publishers’ AI battles

Jonathan Roberts, chief innovation officer at People Inc, was once a dark matter physicist and drew the maps for George R.R. Martin’s “Game of Thrones” books. Now he’s on the front lines of figuring out how to keep AI tools from eating up the publishing industry, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The Arena Group rebrands to Paradium.AI

Arena Group, which owns TheStreet, Parade, and Men’s Journal, is changing its name as part of its evolution into a “publicly traded AI company,” Business Insider reported.