Media Briefing: Publishers turn to paid audience acquisition tactics to tackle traffic losses

This week’s Media Briefing looks at publishers spending more to win back readers as search referrals slip and AI eats clicks, leaning on ads, arbitrage and AI-boosted marketing to stay visible.

• Some publishers worry the free traffic era is diminishing, so they’re turning to paid audience acquisition tactics to keep audiences coming
• Axel Springer CEO looks for his next deal, The New York Times introduces a vertical video feed and more.

The era of readers coming to sites for ‘free’ is ‘diminishing’

It’s getting harder for publishers to get traffic from organic search. For some publishers, that means they have to spend more money to get people to come to their sites, through paid audience acquisition tactics – like ads to promote their content – and traffic arbitrage.

This is a member-exclusive article from Digiday. Continue reading it on digiday.com and subscribe to continue reading content like this.