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Google’s new bargain leaves publishers with less control

Publishers are increasingly paying Google for traffic they used to get for free, whilst Google is beginning to pay for content used in its AI products. But with Google determining the price on both sides, building direct audience relationships has never been more important.

17th September 2026

Publishers are being given new ways to measure AI visibility, but limited insight into the economics behind it.

For years, publishers accepted an uneasy bargain with Google. The search engine indexed their journalism, sent readers through to their sites and those readers could then be monetised through advertising, e-commerce, affiliates and subscriptions. However, that arrangement is now being reshaped by AI, and the replacement is far less transparent, and the value exchange much less clear.

In today’s media bulletin, we look at two new revenue flows between publishers and Google, why both leave publishers with limited control, and what that says about the value of building direct audience relationships.

Publishers are paying for clicks while Google pays for content

Two recent developments illustrate how AI is reshaping the flow of revenue between Google and publishers.

In the first, Similarweb data shared by Adweek shows that publishers are increasingly willing to pay Google to recover traffic they once received for free. The analysis estimates that the companies in its Top 100 Media index spent $113m on paid search in July 2026, up 41% year on year and 274% over the last three years. That spend generated 23.7 million visits, up 39% year on year and 148% over the three-year period, suggesting costs are rising faster than the traffic they deliver.

In the second, Digiday reported that Google has been expanding an AI contribution pilot that pays publishers when their content is judged to have contributed significantly to responses across Gemini, AI Overviews and AI Mode. Participants can see a monthly earnings figure in Search Console, but not how it has been calculated.

A handful of publishers are buying back traffic

The Similarweb data is striking and hints at an industry that may be growing more comfortable with the tactics of other B2C sectors. A closer look, however, shows that this is not a strategy most publishers are either willing or able to follow. Spending is dominated by a small group of large players. Forbes alone accounted for an estimated $72.2 million in July, up 34% year on year and more than eight times its spend three years earlier, while The New York Times more than doubled its spend to $11.3 million. Between them, the two publishers made up nearly three-quarters of the total, leaving around $30 million to be divided among the remaining 98 companies in the index, or about $300,000 each on average.

For now, buying back search traffic at scale is a strategy for a handful of publishers whose economics make it viable, not one that most newsrooms can realistically pursue. Forbes is investing in commerce and product terms where a single converting click can generate about $20 through an affiliate partner. When that return is available, paid search is a rational performance channel. When it is not, as is the case for most publishers, there is no arbitrage to sustain the spend.

What is industry-wide is the pressure creating the spend. In the AdWeek article, Similarweb recorded organic search referrals falling 26.7% at Forbes, 28.9% at CNN and 24.1% at USA Today over the same period. Forbes, the only publisher in both data sets, shows that the money is not delivering incremental reach bought on top of a healthy base, it is paid replacement of an organic base that is shrinking. The other 98 publishers are facing the same erosion without the option of bidding their way through it.

AdWeek spoke to Shiv Gupta, cofounder of the ad tech and media education firm U of Digital, and he argued that the spending is partly damage control and that publishers bidding against each other for overlapping keywords are likely raising the price of the traffic they are trying to buy. For Shiv, these publishers are “feeding the thing that is killing them, because Google is spending that money to improve zero-click”.

However, Scott Messer of Messer Media offered a more flattering explanation. He points out the spend is concentrated on commerce and product terms where the arbitrage genuinely works, because a click that converts through an affiliate partner can be worth far more than a display impression against a news article. Where a publisher can calculate a return, buying traffic is a legitimate performance channel but that return may still remain difficult to justify for many subscription-led businesses.

Google may be more willing to pay for content, but the metrics remain a black box

Elswhere, Digiday have reported that Google has approached dozens of publishers about an “AI contribution” pilot, under which the company pays for content that helps power responses across its AI products. Uptake appears to be stronger among small and mid-sized publishers than among the largest media groups. Google has described the scheme as an early-stage learning pilot designed to test how best to reward high-quality content, pointing back to their June public policy post. Publishers are able to opt out at any time.

What remains unclear is how the programme actually works in practice. One executive with knowledge of the pilot described it to Digiday as “quite black box”, while a source close to the scheme said the early returns were “peanuts” compared with advertising revenue. Even so, several participants told Digiday that it is better to be inside the tent, experimenting with direct payment and data-sharing, than waiting for referral economics that are unlikely to return.

Separately, Google’s AI performance reports began appearing in Search Console for some publishers from August. One executive said impressions across AI surfaces were higher than expected and closely matched the traffic lost from traditional search and Discover. If that pattern proves broader, publishers may be finding that their work is being read more and counted less, while the metrics used to describe that shift remain far from clear.

Buying traffic is not the same as acquiring an organic audience

As the NYT and Forbes are doing, publishers can respond by buying access to audiences, but paid reach is only valuable if it is backed up by a strategy to convert that temporary attention into deeper engagement. The goal should be to turn an anonymous visit into a relationship the publisher can control. This will mean turning them into a known user and building habit, loyalty and ultimately, revenue through a deeper connection. As with traditional search acquisition, what matters is not simply what the channel delivers at the time, but what remains once the campaign ends. When every new interaction carries an acquisition cost, retention becomes even more important.

Publishers can also sell access to their content through licensing or contribution agreements. This can provide a valuable revenue stream alongside the audience business, although the commercial terms, measurement and distribution are often shaped by the AI platforms. Licensing can supplement the value generated from audiences, but it does not replace the need to build direct relationships with them.

How publishers are trying to retain audiences in this new ecosystem

The challenge is that as audience acquisition is becoming harder and more expensive, publishers are looking at how they can pivot to focus on retention of existing audiences. USA Today has decided to replace its existing audience team with a combined audience and digital production team, led by a newly created executive editor of audience and digital production. Its remit runs across web, apps, newsletters, social, video, search and emerging platforms, which is a deliberate refusal to treat search as a separate discipline. Monica Richardson, the company’s senior vice president, has said that growing audience by producing more content is not as effective as it once was, search traffic is under pressure, and platforms are increasingly keeping user experiences to themselves rather than sending them back. They’re also looking to make the extraordinary decision to block Google entirely from accessing content across their digital properties (if they can’t agree on content licensing).

A similar pattern is visible at The Washington Post. Despite a 17% year-on-year decline in website visits in August, according to Similarweb, the Post said its total audience reach had increased by 20% over the same period. Indeed, 41 of the 50 biggest news sites in the US were down year on year in the same month. Yet the Post says it has sold more than 300,000 individual subscriptions in 2026, grown programmatic advertising revenue 53%, and is on track to break even for the first time in five years. The traffic number and the business number have come apart, and only one of them now describes the health of the company.

Elsewhere, Sky News has looked to diversify their owned product mix with Defence Insider, a paywalled defence and security app. Priced at £14.99 a month after a three-month free trial, it carries reporting and analysis published nowhere else on Sky News, with a focus on highly-engaging video formats alongside subscriber access to its journalists and early entry to events. It follows a £2.99 podcast bundle in June, and both sit inside a strategy to become a premium video-first newsroom by 2030. Jonathan Levy, Sky News executive editor and managing director, pointed out that going narrow is new for an organisation built on breadth, and it changes team structure, editorial process and the relationship between the free proposition and the paid one. The launch, he says, went encouragingly. The real discipline is everything after it, such as iterating the product so it keeps the subscribers it has while still adding new ones. Search referrals never required publishers to solve that problem to the same extent that owned products do.

Overall, if publishers are to use paid channels for audience growth, the key question is not just how much traffic a campaign can buy, but what it leaves behind in the form of registrations, app installs, newsletter sign-ups or other signs of a direct relationship. Paid acquisition is only strategically useful when it forms part of a deliberate plan to turn borrowed reach into owned audience. Licensing content to AI platforms may provide some additional revenue, but there is little sign so far that it will compensate for the loss of advertising value. That leaves direct audience relationships not as a nice-to-have, but as the core of a sustainable strategy.