The height of the search era was probably the publication of the Jeff Jarvis paean, What Would Google Do? The book lavished praise on the search giant, looking for clues in how it remade the world of Web content to remake other industries. But the digital content-discovery world is in the midst of a shift, although it’s unclear how profound it will be. Publishers that were long beholden to Google for nearly all their indirect traffic are seeing creeping percentages of referrals come through social media. This kind of people-based recommendation was a subject of discussion yesterday in our latest installment of Digiday TV, a series that brings together industry thought leaders. This show features former IAC ad chief Peter Horan, Break Media evp of ad sales and partnerships Andrew Budkofsky and Evolve Media president Brian Fitzgerald. See the full 40-minute video here.
More in Media

ChatGPT referral traffic to publishers’ sites has nearly doubled this year
ChatGPT is sending more of its traffic to publishers’ sites.

The Rundown: How Google is sizing up to the DOJ in its ad tech antitrust trial
Google tables proposals to Judge Brinkema, arguing the DOJ’s push for divestiture is unviable ahead of the September 22 remedy phase.

‘We’re seeing an immense uplift in the scale’: How generative AI is fueling the next wave of ad tech fraud
Generative AI content farms are stealing publishers’ ads.txt files to hijack ad revenue, according to DoubleVerify.