The shift to digital platforms has not been kind to the independent media industry, which has had to scramble for a shrinking share of ad revenue and adapt to near-constant changes to Google’s algorithms. Yet as problematic as the move away from print media was, few could have imagined just how grim the media ecosystem would become once generative AI hit the scene.
Traffic to web media sites has nearly hit terminal velocity over the past year, as tech giants like Google funnel users away from traditional web search and into AI products that summarize journalism instead of encouraging users to actually read it. According to data compiled by Axios, the number of visits to the top 100 news sites has plummeted over the past five years, from a peak of over 70 million visitors a month in July of 2024 to just over 47 million in July of 2026.
For anybody concerned with the state of media, 2024 is an important year. It’s when Google first introduced its AI Overviews at the top of search results, functionally pushing legitimate news sites further down in order to prioritize engagement with the buzzy tech. Given that Google has a near-total monopoly on web search, the pivot toward AI is functionally strangling media publishers of all sizes — creating yet another existential crisis for the industry as a whole.
2024 was also the same year Meta rolled out its proprietary AI assistant, Axios notes, further drawing social media users away from news sites in favor of sterile chatbot summaries, which often gets important facts completely wrong.
As a result of these changes, Axios notes that direct traffic to the top 100 media sites has shriveled by 25 percent over the two years, as 40 percent of desktop visitors are no longer scrolling web pages, which directly impacts revenue for sites relying on ads or subscriptions to pay the bills.
Though referrals from AI chatbots is increasing as commercial chatbot developers strike controversial deals with legacy media companies, these click-throughs number in the hundreds of thousands. Compared to the rapidly declining number of referrals from traditional search engines — which once numbered in the tens of millions — these AI clicks are a tiny drop in the bucket.
And as independent news sites go belly-up as a result of a lack of traffic, rapacious AI entrepreneurs are circling like buzzards. Last week, Futurism exposed a massive global network of content farms orchestrated by a company called Brown Brothers Media, buys up defunct media properties and turns them into AI-powered content mills.
The resulting consequences to the information ecosystem are hard to comprehend, with Brown Brothers Media claiming to vacuum up tens of millions of views via their scheme. (The company also created scores of fake author profiles, leading to a situation where the average reader would have little chance of distinguishing journalistic fact from AI-generated fiction.)
As the AI boom shows no signs of slowing anytime soon, these kinds of content mills give us a horrifying glimpse of one possible future for media — where the click-economy rewards SEO-optimized AI garbage at the expense of reputable journalism the world over.
More on digital media: Media Execs Prepare for AI to Bring End of Journalism Industry
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