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digital publishing industries

The Future With AI, According To Media Unions

When thinking about AI in publishing, most of my focus is on the potential that AI tools have for all all departments. Even editorial departments, full of journalists that audiences count on to be professionally skeptical, can find value in the technology’s capabilities to complement the hard work they do.

A recent Digital Journalism article took a closer look at the messages that news media unions are sending about genAI, ultimately finding what authors Mike Ananny and Jake Carr break down as “six areas where news media unions are focusing their generative AI attention and concern — and, notably, two areas where they’re not.”

 

AI + Humans > Teams? New Harvard Study Shows GenAI Can Be Your ‘Cybernetic Teammate’

You’ve heard of work wives and work husbands, but what about work AIs? A fascinating new Harvard study suggests your AI assistant might be just as valuable as that coworker who always brings snacks to meetings (if not more so).

 

AI In Ecommerce: Shoppers Want Help – Not Decisions Made For Them

AI shopping assistants are popping up everywhere. One minute, you’re browsing for sneakers, and the next, a chatbot is insisting you need five different pairs. Cool tech? Sure. But do shoppers actually trust AI to make decisions for them? Our latest findings reveals that while consumers appreciate AI-driven recommendations and discovery tools, they’re still skeptical about trust, data privacy, and the overall effectiveness of AI’s role in their shopping experience. 

 

2025 Global Customer Engagement Review

When you first meet someone, the conversation is often superficial because you don’t yet know them well. But even small talk — when carried out by an active listener — can lead to deeper insights and more fulfilling conversations. The same is true of customer relationships. As users engage over time, they reveal their true selves to brands that pay attention, supporting enhanced relevance through individually tailored experiences. That, in turn, enables more efficient growth and stronger business outcomes.

Taking On Big Tech: Publishers Raising Red Flags On AI Theft Concerns

With genAI spending expected to increase 76.4% this year to a total of more than $640 billion worldwide, there really is no way to undersell the impact that the technology is already having across every industry. 

Publishing, of course, is no exception, with focus toggling between the AI tools that publishers are already using in many departments to the emerging, even existential concerns about AI’s effect on attribution, search, and the industry in general.

And it’s from that side of the table that news publishers from The New York Times to The Washington Post launched a coordinated ad campaign this week, calling on lawmakers to “make Big Tech pay for the content it takes to run its AI products.”

 

Ex-Google Exec: Giving Traffic To Publishers ‘A Necessary Evil’

Google has been increasingly focused on keeping users inside Google properties, reducing the need to click through to external sites. A former Google senior executive told Bloomberg that supporting publishers was incidental to Google’s larger aims: “Giving traffic to publisher sites is kind of a necessary evil. The main thing they’re trying to do is get people to consume Google services.”

 

The State of AI In Marketing 2025

AI is no longer a futuristic concept, but a necessary tool for marketers to achieve success. From content creation to customer insights, AI’s impact is both broad and deep, promising to change how we approach marketing challenges and opportunities.

 

Online, Offline And Everywhere: Retailers Turn To Connected Commerce

Connected commerce is a hot buzzword in retailing. In 2024, 90.7% of retailers increased their spending on it, and 92.5% expect to allocate more in 2025, for a total of $112 billion, according to a new study from Winterberry Group.

Personalized Advertising, Ad-Blockers, And How Publishers Can Better Handle Both

Publishers are all too familiar with the rock, the hard place, and the struggles of being caught between both.

The rise of ad-blockers has presented one such unwelcoming surface, and a new YouGov study has examined the relationship between that technology and ad personalization.

The “Ad-Verse Reactions” report found that more than half of the Americans surveyed (54%) are creeped out by personalized ads, with 44% of those creeped out taking action by running an ad blocker at all times, no matter what site they visit. 

It’s a “situation that should alarm publishers … not to mention advertisers,” according to MediaPost’s Ray Schultz.

 

A First-Ever Study On Prompts

Wharton researchers just released a fascinating study that questions everything we thought we knew about prompting AI. Spoiler alert: Being polite to Claude or ChatGPT doesn’t always help — and sometimes, it actually hurts.

 

Safety First: Consumers Say A Reputation For Security Helps Them Decide To Use A Brand

Consumers are more worried about online safety — so much so that 86% say an online platform’s reputation for safety and security is key to their deciding to use it, according to a recent study from Trua titled The State of Trust And Safety In Online Marketplaces. 

But it varies by generation. Among the Baby Boomers polled, 93% are likely to agree this is very important, and Millennials and Gen X are also concerned, Gen Z less so.

 

Consumers Swap Brand Loyalty For Product Experimentation

70% of consumers worldwide have switched brands because they enjoy experimenting, according to a January 2025 Capgemini report.

Death By A Million Scrapes: What Publishers Face With The Rapid Increase In AI Scraping

Last week, I wrote about the citation and attribution issues that plague AI chatbots and haunt publishers.

If the rapid, continued growth of scraping is any indication, publishers have a few bulletpoint items to add to their nuanced concerns.

In its State of the Bots Q4 2024 report, Tollbit found that AI scrapes per site doubled from what they were in Q3, with scrapes per page tripling in that time, including 40% more unauthorized scrapes.

 

Most Americans Say They Are Tuned In To News About The Trump Administration

Far fewer are hearing about the administration’s relationship with the media than was the case early in Trump’s first term.

 

Traffic To U.S. Retail Websites From Generative AI Sources Jumps 1,200 Percent

During the holiday shopping season, Adobe observed the first material surge in generative AI traffic to U.S. retail sites (measured by shoppers clicking on a link). Between Nov. 1 and Dec. 31, 2024, traffic from generative AI sources increased by 1,300 percent compared to the year prior (generative AI traffic was up 1,950 percent YoY on Cyber Monday). The trend has persisted beyond the holiday season. In February 2025, traffic from generative AI sources increased by 1,200 percent compared to July 2024.

 

Getting To Know AI: Consumers Are More Trusting, Are Using It More

People are more trusting of AI — at least moderately so. For instance, 43% of consumers now say they would trust the information given to them by an AI chatbot compared to 40% last year, according to the 2025 Consumer Adoption of AI Report, a multi-market study conducted by Attest.

Consider The Source: What AI’s Attribution Problems Mean For Publishers

Will AI search prove to be the end of Google?

That’s one big question surrounding search, one that would have seemed inconceivable to anyone who had witnessed Google’s decades of dominance. …

Just ask any entry-level chatbot and it’ll give you the generic diagnosis that the landscape of organic search and Google Ads is indeed rapidly changing, but those battles are at least familiar ones for publishers. A more-recent publisher-worry subsequent to this rise of AI is the issue of citation and attribution. When a publisher actually has an answer that an AI chatbot needn’t be forced to hallucinate, does that source get the deserved credit?

 

Publishers Seeing ‘Concerning Trends’ From Advertisers In Current Political Cycle

The Associated Press is among publishers seeing “some concerning trends” around advertisers being wary of working with news providers in the current political news cycle. Chief revenue officer and senior vice president Kristin Heitmann said the US-based news agency has a “significant revenue diversification effort underway” with digital advertising as one of its growing areas.

 

Stacking Up B2B Automation: Most Firms Claim At Least Some Proficiency

B2B brands are at least reasonably proficient at automation, judging by the State of B2B Marketing Automation, a study from Act-On, conducted in partnership with Ascend2. Of the companies polled, 34% rate themselves as very successful at automation, and 62% as somewhat so. Only 4% say they are unsuccessful. 

 

Marketers Chase Better Measurement Across Channels

64% of US ad buyers expect to focus somewhat or significantly more on cross-platform measurement in 2025, according to a December 2024 IAB survey.

Programmatic Advertising To Break The $200 Billion Mark Next Year (New Report)

While programmatic display ad spending growth is forecast to decelerate over the next few years — from the 16.9% seen in 2024 to 11.6% in 2026 — its growth is still enough to “[sustain] a market weighed down by sluggish growth in nonprogrammatic display,” according to EMARKETER.

 

Magazine ABCs 2024: Half Of Print Titles See Distribution Drop 10% Or More

More than half of the magazines audited by ABC saw their print circulation decline by 10% or more in 2024, the latest data show. Several magazines significantly stepped up their digital circulation growth via “all you can read” services like Apple News+ over the same period, but in most cases it has not been enough to cancel out the print decline.

 

2025 Digital Engagement Benchmarks Report

B2B marketers have long known that targeted, personal and relevant experiences are essential to driving revenue. And as webinars have always offered the opportunity for direct interaction with attendees — whether through answering questions, sharing resources or polling the audience — they have consistently been a top-performing channel.

 

Campaign Numbers Rising, But So Are Challenges

Marketers have increased the number of campaigns they run, but face many more challenges when it comes to budgets, technical capabilities, and analyzing and explaining the outcomes to those responsible for allocating budgets. Gartner estimates about 44% of the total marketing budget is spent on campaigns — up by 31% year-over-year — but the majority of survey respondents are dissatisfied with campaign performance.

Reliable Sources: AI, Transparency, And The Uses That Audiences Are Actually Comfortable With

The New York Times recently announced how it will be dipping its toes into the AI pool, incorporating the technology into such operations as social copy and SEO headlines and unveiling a summarization tool for its journalists to “condense Times articles, briefings, and interactives.”

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times basically belly-flopped off the deep-end diving board with this week’s debut of its “Insights” feature, which is intended to bring AI-created perspectives to editorials and commentaries while offering “an annotated summary of the ideas expressed in the piece along with different views on the topic from a variety of sources.” (LA Times union members came out to say they doubt the unvetted AI analysis will “do much to enhance trust in the media,” while outlets like The Guardian were pointing out the dangers of critical articles getting unregulated counterpoint-friendly footnotes … all before the LA Times ultimately removed the feature from at least one article for falling down that precise dangerous trap.)

Between and beyond those two coasts, and along that vast spectrum of AI strategies, publishers are considering how best to take advantage of all that AI has to offer. And with those discussions, it’s increasingly important to weigh not just what it can do for the business-side, but what it will mean for those on the audience-side.

 

Digital Publishing: Outlook and Priorities for 2025

The responses confirm the priority to grow audiences, with 66% of publishers saying that they agree or strongly agree that their approach to increasing revenues will focus on exploring how to leverage their audience engagement to increase advertiser revenues. Publishers recognise the value of their quality content — with 52% planning to increase content output and 40% focused on changing the type of content they produce to attract more readers or viewers. 

 

State of Commerce Advertising

In the last quarter, blogs, search and product listings made significant strides, joining the consistently strong performance of influencers as top revenue drivers. In contrast, coupon pages and loyalty programs have experienced a noticeable decline.

 

All Hands On Board: B2B Firms Struggle To Process New Customers

B2B brands may be effective on the marketing front end. But they have a problem once they have attracted new customers: onboarding them, according to The Future of Customer Onboarding 2025, a study by Moxo. Of the companies polled, 56% have delays in processing new clients. 

HED Above The Rest: The One Thing Paywall Articles Should Have To Attract Subscribers

If you’re reading this in a newsletter and then ultimately on the Magazine Manager blog, it’s because of my choice to create content that you can click on and consume without the hurdle of a paywall. It’s a choice afforded by the nature of what and why I publish, and a choice that I understand not all publishers have the luxury of making. 

If paywalls weren’t effective in keeping content exclusive to an intended audience — while also, one hopes, helping build that audience-base — then no one would construct them.

Which makes the recent study about paywall effectiveness all the more fascinating.

 

New York Times Goes All-In On Internal AI Tools

The New York Times is greenlighting the use of AI for its product and editorial staff, saying that internal tools could eventually write social copy, SEO headlines, and some code. In messages to newsroom staff, the company announced that it’s opening up AI training to the newsroom, and debuting a new internal AI tool called Echo to staff, Semafor has learned.

 

The AI State Of Mind: Brands Are Reasonably Sure They Are Good At It

Brands are warming up to AI and are steadily gaining expertise — especially in the email area, judging by The Evolution Of AI in Marketing 2025, a study by Ascend2. Of the firms polled, 60% are somewhat successful at using AI to achieve their marketing objectives. And 25% say they are very successful, or best in class. Only 14% are unsuccessful. But they are not using AI as widely as they might. 

 

B2B Marketers Double Down On AI And Social Media In 2025

60% of US B2B marketers plan to boost spending on AI tools and on social media advertising in 2025, per November 2024 data from Madison Logic and The Harris Poll.

Search Parties: Despite AI-Driven Competition, Google Still Dominating Search

AI’s abrupt disruption of search is a phenomenon that I, along with every other digital publisher and marketer, have been following closely, ever since the letters “GPT” started more easily rolling off our tongues and from our fast-flying typing-fingers.

So while we consider AI’s potential impacts this year and beyond, it’s still vitally important to know what it’s doing in the present. 

And Similarweb’s recent look at search platforms shows Google is still clearly No. 1, with more than 30 times more visits than ChatGPT.

 

Google Triggers 100% More AI Overviews for Longer Queries

BrightEdge recently analyzed search queries and revealed that Google has increased AIO presence in longer queries by up to 100% from September to December 2024. In effectively doubling the number of long queries that trigger AIO, the incumbent search leader demonstrates that it can use its wide-ranging data set and index to answer longer, more complicated queries in a more precise and targeted manner than it could previously.

 

Ad Market Remains Volatile, Decelerates Due To Political Uncertainty

While advertising growth is projected to decelerate this year due to tough comparisons with 2024’s Olympics and U.S. election-year spending, the U.S. will retain its share of the worldwide marketplace, according to new estimates released this morning by media industry economist PQ Media. Worldwide advertising and marketing expenditures will decelerate by 3.3 percentage points this year — dropping from an expansion of 8.7% in 2024 to 5.4% in 2025.

 

The Bottom Line: A New Era of Top-Down Digital Transformation

AI is revolutionizing marketing, with a surprising twist. We collaborated with the American Marketing Association to survey 1,000+ marketing professionals, revealing that unlike social media’s bottom-up adoption, AI implementation is being driven by executives.

Think Digitally, Act Locally: The Increasing Benefits Of Digital Revenue For Local Media

I recently wrote about the confidence that more than half of editors, CEOs, and digital executives have about the business of journalism in 2025.

Helping point to where that confidence is coming from is a separate, recent survey of thousands of North American local media outlets, which found that nearly half (44.8%) saw an increase in total digital revenue from the year before, and more than two-thirds (67.9%) are increasing their digital revenue budget for the year ahead.

 

Social Media Ads And AI Are Top Of Mind For Marketers This Year

Whatever happens to TikTok, marketers are planning to keep spending big on social media. That’s according to a new report from omnichannel ad platform Mediaocean, which has since 2021 been surveying marketers about consumer and tech trends for a series of biannual reports on outlooks for the industry.

 

Poor Print: Offline Media Spend Will Fall In 2025, Forecast Says

Publishers can take at least some solace from Winterberry Group’s new report, Outlook for Advertising, Marketing and Data: Transformation Accelerates. Total media expenditures will grow by 6.1% YoY to $585 billion in 2025, Winterberry projects. And there will be shifts to largely digital, data-centric channels fueled by investments in ad tech, analytics and AI.  

 

New York Magazine Union Reaches Contract Deal, Averts Walkout

Members at New York Magazine reached a contract deal with management and averted a walkout. Workers told bosses they were ready to walk if management didn’t agree to a successor contract. The new tentative agreement includes wage increases and strong protections on artificial intelligence.