AI & The Evolution of Online Media
For over two decades, the internet's publishing economy has operated on a simple premise: create content that ranks well in search engines, attract visitors to your website, and monetize that attention through advertising, affiliate marketing, or product sales.
This model spawned entire industries—from SEO agencies to content farms—designed to capture the valuable traffic flowing from Google's search results pages.
That era is now ending.
To understand the magnitude of the current disruption, we must first recognize how completely the previous model dominated publishing economics.
The traffic-based model created a simple value chain:
Publishers created content optimized for search engines.
Google directed users to the publisher websites.
Publishers converted traffic to revenue through ads or other monetization.
This model shaped not just business strategies but the very nature of online content:
Content Formats: Listicles, how-to guides, and other formats explicitly designed to rank well.
Publishing Cadence: High-volume content production to capture long-tail keywords.
Resource Allocation: Significant investment in SEO expertise and optimization.
Quality Metrics: Success is measured by traffic and engagement rather than accuracy or utility.
As this model matured, it led to increasingly formulaic content as publishers replicated whatever performed well in search algorithms. The result was a web filled with superficially different versions of essentially identical content, all competing for the same search traffic.
The AI Disintermediation
AI assistants fundamentally break this model by eliminating the critical middle step of directing users to publisher websites. When a user asks ChatGPT or Claude a question, they receive an answer synthesized from multiple sources without ever visiting the originating websites.
This disintermediation has several immediate consequences:
Traffic Collapse: Publishers dependent on search traffic face precipitous declines as users shift to AI interfaces.
Ad Revenue Impact: Without page views, the primary monetization channel disappears.
Value Separation: The value of information becomes disconnected from website traffic.
Commoditization of General Knowledge: Basic information that can be easily synthesized loses its economic value.
This shift is already happening. According to data from Similarweb, websites in categories heavily dependent on search traffic—such as how-to guides, general reference, and basic financial advice—saw traffic declines of 20-40% in markets where AI assistant adoption is highest.
Emerging Economic Models
