AI-generated search results are crushing some digital news publishers, and surprisingly, it’s an opportunity for e-commerce brands.
The problem for digital publishers is simple. Searchers who query Google often see the answer on the spot, so there’s no need to click through to the likes of CNN, HuffPost, or Business Insider. Additionally, the purpose of ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and others is to provide answers, not links.
Zero clicks
Google’s AI reviews reportedly reduced traffic to CNN by about 30%, while HuffPost and Business Insider suffered nearly 40% reductions, according to a September 2025 report from AI development company Yazo.
Meanwhile, an August 2025 Digiday article suggests that digital publishers in general have lost about 25% of their search traffic to Google’s AI insights.
These dramatic declines in search traffic have caused some publishers to rethink their content and monetization strategies. Some go straight to the culprits, securing licensing deals with Google, OpenAI and others.
News Corp., for example, signed a multi-year deal with OpenAI in 2024 that could generate $250 million in revenue for allowing parent company ChatGPT to scrape its content. Hearst, Reuters, Condé Nast, The Financial Times and many others have reportedly sought similar AI licensing arrangements.
Many digital publishers are experiencing a drop in traffic due to non-click search results.
Alternative income
At the Digiday Publishing Summit in Miami this month, attendees shared ideas on how digital publishers, large and small, can restore or even increase revenue in this era of AI-driven everything.
Frequent ideas, perhaps surprisingly, included e-commerce and price-per-action offers.
It’s surprising because many of these same publishers already have product endorsement sites — think CNN’s Underscored — that fight against AI shopping for affiliate income.
The shared ideas were divided into three categories.
Direct advertising offers
Digital advertising is full of intermediaries, brokers and potential agents who take up to 70% of the cost of advertising.
Most publishers have their own direct sales teams, but these teams traditionally sell ad impressions, which are relatively harder to generate due to declining traffic.
Therefore, some conference participants proposed direct relationships with branded e-commerce sites or marketplaces. One publisher promised a six-figure reward to someone who brokered a direct revenue-sharing deal with Amazon.
Others considered Shopify portals or apps that would allow even the smallest retailers to post products on a CPA basis.
Paywalls
A second strategy related to e-commerce was to share custom offers with paying subscribers.
In this scenario, publishers would increase their paid services with Groupon-style discounts. Participating merchants would offer some level of discount—perhaps 35%—and pay a CPA fee for each sale.
The publisher generates revenue from purchases while enjoying a new way to sell premium content. Membership in the publisher’s internal subscription brings exclusive content unavailable to AI bots and best product deals.
Merchants benefit from displaying their goods on publishers’ websites and only pay for sales.
Micromarket
The final and most ambitious idea was for publishers to set up their own e-commerce marketplace and allow participating merchants to list and sell products directly.
Imagine a cooking magazine with a million print subscribers, 15 million monthly website views, and 2.5 million newsletter subscribers directly hawking cast iron skillets and hand-stitched tablecloths for a share of sales.
The implementation could use a marketplace platform such as Mirakl, or it could only include the publisher’s white products.
In each case, the publisher generates revenue from facilitating e-commerce sales.
Opportunity
E-commerce brands can support these kinds of deals. Now is the time for publishers and merchants to explore direct collaboration.