The crumbling of publisher traffic: how to stem it?
Platform algorithms have deprioritized media content for several years. Facebook hardly brings any traffic anymore, Twitter (X) no longer at all.
Consultation of information among young audiences is moving towards social networks and video platforms (Youtube, TikTok), as evidenced by the success of Hugo Décrypte which is ahead of Le Monde among these audiences!
Google traffic has become volatile and unpredictable with frequent algorithm updates that lose positions suddenly, or fluctuating mechanisms of Discover. What works one day doesn’t work the next.
In 2025, more than ever, we will need:
- Rely on newsletters to protect traffic, qualify it and retrieve an email to offer connected navigation (better advertising value).
- Produce what is most effective, taking care not to distort the editorial line in push-to-click content.
- Better coordinate to maximize the impact of what is produced: simultaneous publication of the newsletter to attract Discover, anticipation of strong topics, recycling of long-term files, boosting the best content on the networks with paid to prime the traffic pump ( if the CPM is worth it).
The business model under attack from all sides. Objective: save the furniture
The media are squeezed by a fall in their revenues on all sides: advertising, sales, classified ads… Paid digital subscriptions are slipping, with some exceptions.
The web giants capture most of the advertising value (52% in 2022 and undoubtedly 65% by 2030). Display mainly serves streaming players and broadcasters and some major audiovisual media.
2025 is therefore likely to result in a “rationalization of costs”, a euphemism for concentrations and layoffs in the press. Some billionaires are tired of the losses accumulated here and there by their dancer and are demanding savings.
In 2025, it will be necessary:
- Look for income everywhere: subscriptions, donations, events, content production (studio activity, special operations) etc.
- Work on editorial marketing and community animation around donations. This, in addition to work on subscribers and qualified traffic.
- Increasingly reserving value-added content for subscribers or connected users. To preserve high advertising rates.
- Limit programmatic as much as possible, certainly essential to turnover, but which eats into margins. This represented 65% of the display in 2023!
- Pool efforts between media in both the production and marketing of their titles. This, via grouped subscriptions between complementary media. To exceed the ceiling of 11% of national buyers.
Content inflation via generative AI: beware of editorial overproduction
Most editorial staff are training in the use of AI. Some have already implemented automated or semi-automated content production. This mechanically lowers the value of the content produced.
Infobesity will therefore increase to the great dismay of citizens, already overwhelmed and who are beginning to avoid the news. In France, 54% of people questioned by the Jaurès Foundation say they are tired of the information.
The agreements of large groups with AI platforms ultimately threaten the media. Autonomous, these AIs will tomorrow offer the public personalized responses on their favorite device, in the format they prefer. No more click economy and goodbye to the direct link with your audience.
Destabilization of society by deep-fakes, social networks in the hands of powerful people with a precise political and ideological agenda (Elon Musk’s X or TikTok remotely controlled by the Chinese Communist Party).
In 2025, it will be advised to:
- Using AI to increase the quality of information, through investigation, data analysis to produce intelligence rather than noise.
- Invest in exclusive proprietary tools (specialized chatbots, personalization features, calculators, etc.).
- Regulate and sanction informational attacks and abuse of dominant position of platforms more firmly.
- Help citizens to sort better through a real media education policy as recommended in the report from the General States of Information.
Influencers and media are increasingly merging or hybridizing
Influencers become media. They compete with real media, like Hugo Décrypte, Gaspard G or Jean Massiet.
Journalists from “old media” are migrating to these networks, which have become the population’s preferred information channels (29% ahead of search at 25%). Claire Chazal on Youtube, Samuel Etienne on Twitch will seek out their new audience.
“Content producers-journalists” organize themselves and gain respect. This is evidenced by the creation of the Union of Influence Professions and Content Creators (UMICC), whose Gaspard G was recently elected general secretary.
In 2025, the media that succeed will know:
- Take inspiration from the tone and formats that have proven themselves on the networks (much more video and audio).
- Put an end to the descending tone, the complex and pretentious vocabulary inaccessible to ordinary mortals.
- Stop lukewarm content, too textual (for the general public), without real purpose, without in-depth work…
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