Media Briefing: Publishers are turning GEO from an experiment into a business

This week’s Media Briefing looks at how GEO went from publisher experiment to emerging revenue stream, and why AI visibility is quickly becoming part of the branded content playbook.

• The GEO bet is paying off
As search weakens, CNN is giving YouTube and TikTok different jobs 
Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch steps down, Google is paying 100 publishers for AI search contributions, and more.

The GEO bet is paying off

A year ago, GEO barely registered on publishers’ rate cards. Now, publishers say it’s become a regular part of client conversations.

Future’s GEO product has more than 30 clients and secured renewals. Ziff Davis says it has multiple GEO clients, while one publisher exec said its offering is already making money. The figures don’t yet add up to a clear picture of the market’s size, but they do show why publishers are increasingly optimistic that AI visibility could become a meaningful new business. 

Even publishers that haven’t launched GEO products are already fielding client questions and shaping pitches, suggesting AI visibility could one day be table stakes in branded content. And it’s notable that most publishers Digiday has spoken to over the last months have all stressed that advertiser clients are actively asking how their publisher partners can help them get surfaced in AI answers. 

Time’s chief operating officer spoke onstage at the Digiday Publishing Summit in March about how the publisher was testing GEO services to brands, which eventually became an offering where Time works with an advertiser to place its message in the markdown files agents read. Since then, publishers’ GEO offerings have expanded and evolved. At least a half dozen large digital publishers are now offering these services and products to clients, ranging from companies in the U.S. (such as Future, Time and Ziff Davis) and in Europe (German publishing houses like Hubert Burda Media, Funke and Klambt). Others, like Axios and the U.K.’s Daily Mail, are also at the early stages of testing it. 

And publishers haven’t been deterred by the fact that some AI tech companies have pushed back on how publishers are trying to monetize their AI visibility. Last month, Perplexity told Digiday it would block its agents from scraping Time’s site, after the publisher began serving ads to its agents in markdown files. However, Perplexity’s agents are still scraping Time’s site and recognizing its markdown ads, according to a person familiar with the analytics. September brought in the highest volume of Perplexity agent traffic to Time’s site so far this year, they added.

As one publisher put it, the GEO business feels like a real commercial opportunity, rather than the defensive play they’ve become accustomed to over the last few years as AI began to erode traffic. 

Many consider GEO a “premium” offering: a chance to capitalize on the moment with a growing new revenue line.

However, while the enthusiasm is hard to miss, publishers remain guarded about what GEO is bringing in, leaving the scale of the opportunity hard to pin down. As the business grows, so does the competition, and publishers are reluctant to reveal revenue figures that could tip off competitors to just how lucrative the opportunity is becoming.

Future is leaning on its editorial authority, consumer expertise and existing brand relationships to sell GEO as an extension of branded content. 

“You want to make it simple for the brand to understand and buy,” said Future CRO Mike Peralta on stage at the Digiday Publishing Summit earlier this month. “What we work with our clients on is making branded content work better and we do it within, and give you the ability to come up with a solution around AI,” Peralta said. “Fundamentally, the nature of how people discover things is different today. That being said, let’s turn that bug into a feature,” he added.

Ziff Davis also has a “number of clients” for its GEO services that are tacked onto branded content deals, Steve Horowitz, president of the tech & shopping division, said onstage at DPS. He declined to give a specific number. 

“[Brands are] coming to us because of that trust factor, and because they know that ultimately we’re not going to compromise the edit to deliver it,” Horowitz said.

In a closed-door town hall session at DPS, another publishing exec said they’re “making money” from their GEO business. Their offering relies on identifying the topics of coverage that have good visibility in AI search, and produces or refreshes content around those topics. Then it measures whether their exposure in the LLMs increases. The exec said they can see the impact almost immediately, with impressions rising as soon as the content is updated.

There are still two big issues around this business, though: measurement and longevity.

Peralta acknowledged that the industry has yet to solve the measurement problem, and lacks a way to attribute whether greater AI visibility actually translates into purchases, sales or improvements in brand metrics. He said Future is currently measuring campaigns primarily through brand visibility and publisher citations in AI answers.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau is trying to find a solution to this issue, with a new framework expected to publish in November that will tackle how to attribute and credit conversions influenced by AI.

But because for now there’s no single scoreboard for GEO yet, Ziff Davis measures the success of its GEO services against each client’s goals, rather than optimizing for one universal metric.

“They all are measuring differently. For certain people, they’re measuring how they did against their competitors – whether they got extra citations or not, it was only relevant to their competitors. Some people are [saying], ‘I need these citations.’ Some people are looking at something else. So we’re not trying to influence that score because I think the scoreboard ultimately still has a lot of playing out to do,” Horowitz said. “What a client may want to measure against, we will work with them on that.”

But how long can the GEO boom last? Publishers are seeing advertiser interest, new clients and early revenue, but some of the visibility they’re selling may be temporary.

“It’s short-lived,” said the publishing exec in the townhall session, speaking about the improvement in AI visibility for the brands it works with. “Deals are deals. They have their time frame, and we will do the work that we need to do during that time frame.”

Then again, publishers are used to building businesses on shifting sands. In an AI landscape where almost nothing feels permanent, there’s money to be made in the meantime.

What we’ve heard

“As we close the third quarter, the company is on track for another year of revenue and profit growth… I intend to do everything I can to ensure that trajectory continues. In fact, I’m thrilled that I will continue in a role as a member of the Condé Nast Board of Directors and remain deeply invested in the company and its future.”

– Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch, in a staff memo announcing his departure after seven and a half years as chief executive.

As search weakens, CNN is giving YouTube and TikTok different jobs 

CNN is trying to turn its growing audiences on YouTube and TikTok from marketing channels into businesses in their own right by finding ways to grow viewership and drive referrals from those platforms, as search referrals become less dependable.

CNN added nearly 1 million YouTube subscribers this year, bringing its global total to nearly 20 million, per internal numbers. Now it wants to turn that growing audience into a business of its own. It also claims 16 million TikTok followers and averages nearly 1 billion monthly views on the platform.

“We see each off-platform audience as its own audience, and each platform matters to CNN for reach, relevance and referrals, and as a business in its own right,” CNN vp of off-platform Caterina Andreano told Digiday in an email.

CNN grew its YouTube subscriber base after revamping its strategy at the end of 2025. The company cut output to focus on story selection, improved breaking-news compilations, began testing headlines and thumbnails at scale and expanded livestreaming. In June, CNN also added its CNN Headlines FAST channel to YouTube.

YouTube serves both as a brand-building and subscription channel. CNN samples premium content normally exclusive to its All Access subscription streaming offering there and measures the referral traffic and subscriptions it generates. Its YouTube audience also “looks a lot like our traditional linear TV audience,” Andreano said.

TikTok, meanwhile, is focused more on reaching younger audiences who might not otherwise come to CNN, she said.

For now, the audience is large. The business payoff is harder to see. Andreano declined to share how much revenue CNN generates from its off-platform audiences or how many All Access subscriptions it attributes to YouTube.

Site referrals do still matter to CNN. The news org is using those platforms to bring viewers back to properties it owns, through YouTube community posts, pinned links and video descriptions on YouTube and linking features on TikTok.

“We will continue to optimize for off-platform referrals as long as these product features exist, but the long-term goal is a direct relationship with our audience through subscriptions and our own products,” Andreano said.

Numbers to know

$10 million: The amount OpenAI is giving to The Lenfest Institute for Journalism, doubling its previous support of the Lenfest AI Collaborative and Fellowship Program, which places AI fellows in local U.S. newsrooms. That figure includes $5 million in software credits and engineering support.

170%: The increase in Condé Nast’s commerce revenue since 2020, according to CEO Roger Lynch’s staff memo. Digital subscription revenue also grew 155% and U.S. tentpole event revenue increased ninefold in that time. 

40.2%: The year-over-year decline in Google Search referrals to publishers from July 2025 to July 2026, according to Chartbeat data, almost twice the 21.9% decline Chartbeat measured the previous year. Google Search now represents roughly 5% of pageviews, down from about 9% in July 2024. 

34.3%: The year-over-year decline in Google Discover referrals, compared to a 6.6% decline the prior year, per Chartbeat.

0.01%: The share of publisher traffic coming from AI referrals, according to Chartbeat.

What we’ve covered

Condé Nast, Hearst among 300 media execs to push federal ‘bad bots’ bill on AI scraping

• Executives from Condé Nast, Hearst Magazines, USA Today Co., and The Seattle Times will be among more than 300 news publishers in Washington D.C. this week to press Congress to crack down on “bad bots” that scrape their content for AI training without permission.
• The trip, organized by trade body News/Media Alliance, is centered on a bill known as the Stealth Bot Prohibition Act, that would force AI stealth crawlers to clearly identify themselves and their purpose instead of disguising their traffic and skirting publishers’ attempts to block scraping.

Read more here.

Digiday Publishing Summit September 2026 Recap: How publishers are rebuilding for the post-search era

• Publishers outlined how they’re preparing for a post-search era by prioritizing direct audiences, diversified revenue and AI strategies that put their journalism (and not the platforms) at the center, at the September 2026 edition of the Digiday Publishing Summit, held Sept. 14-16 in Miami, Florida.
• Executives from media companies ranging from The New York Times to The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, and USA Today Co. described how they’re shifting away from chasing scale and platform-driven traffic toward building more durable, direct and differentiated businesses.

Read the DPS recap here.

How Shira Lazar grew social account ‘What’s Trending’ to seven figures in revenue

• When viral stars began taking off on social media in the early 2010s, Shira Lazar saw a gap: few outlets were making videos about figures like Michelle Phan and Jenna Marbles. She built multi-platform digital media brand What’s Trending to fill it. 
• Fifteen years later, as publishers including CNN, Bustle, and The Washington Post now embrace creator-led media, Lazar is working to scale the business and strengthen the support and protections available to creators.

Read more here.

From brand deals to equity deals: creators want a stake, not just a fee

• As the creator economy has matured, it’s moved beyond one-off brand deals to pulling creators into the C-suite and onto advisory boards. 
• Now, a new phase is underway: getting creators in at the ground floor as angel investors or with sweat equity. The people building the infrastructure around this revenue pathway expect it to grow fast in the coming months. 

Read more here.

What we’re reading

Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch exits to run Mattel

Lynch is leaving after more than seven years at the helm to lead toy company Mattel, per The Hollywood Reporter. Mike Perlis, the lead independent director of Condé Nast, will become interim CEO.

Google Is Paying About 100 Digital Publishers for AI Overviews

In a follow up to Digiday’s scoop, The Information has reported that Google is paying about 100 digital publishers for how much their content contributes to AI-powered answers to search. The payments amount to less than one-tenth of 1% of publishers’ advertising revenue.

News publishers accuse Trump administration of bias toward AI companies in copyright suit

Lawyers for The New York Times and other major publishers asked a federal court to disregard the Justice Department’s efforts to get involved in their lawsuit against OpenAI, Politico reported.

Google’s September spam update triggers sharp search ranking volatility

Google’s September 2026 spam update has already triggered significant search-ranking volatility, with some sites seeing sharp visibility declines, Search Engine Roundtable reported. The update began Sept. 24 and is expected to take about two weeks to fully roll out.