Digiday’s comprehensive guide to what’s in and out for publishers in 2026
By Jessica Davies and Digiday Editors • December 29, 2025 •
Ivy Liu
2025 — what a ride in media.
Even for battle-worn publishers already so well accustomed to rewriting their playbooks to adapt to whatever hot plate has been flung at them (the print-to-digital crash, endless Google algorithm swings, Facebook’s pivot away from news, the cookie collapse, to name a few), 2025 was pretty rough.
The stomach-dropping moments are easy to pinpoint: copyright hell thanks to AI engines’ unscrupulous scraping, and the erosion of referral traffic — largely caused by the emerging competitive AI search landscape.
Adaptability stopped being a nice-to-have for publishers years ago; it became a survival skill. The difference now is that the muscle they built just to stay alive may finally work in their favor in 2026.
Here’s a look at Digiday’s guide to what’s in and out for 2026:
In
AI-search economy
Out
Blue-link economy
In
Zero-click analytics
Out
Click-through analytics
In
Building audience cohorts from AI search behavior
Out
Referral traffic panic
In
Pay-per-use/AI royalties
Out
Lump-sum AI licensing deals
In
AI bot-blocking strategies
Out
Panicking over AI bot scraping
In
Worrying about Google’s agentic browser
Out
Worrying about Google AI Overviews
In
Black hat AI crawlers
Out
Black hat SEO
In
Google not paying publishers for AI training & grounding
Out
Google not paying publishers enough for ads
In
Citation tracking for AI answers
Out
Keyword rankings as visibility metric
In
Agentic-driven media trading
Out
Agents for campaign optimization
In
Publishers buying traffic
Out
Publishers selling traffic
In
Enterprise LLM licensing revenue
Out
Ad-only dependence
In
Curation revenue spikes
Out
Curation hatred
In
Bitterness over Google’s AI monopoly
Out
Bitterness over Google’s ad tech monopoly
In
Brand safety crisis over generative AI
Out
Brand safety crisis over news
In
Publishers with Substack newsletters and creator-like side brands
Out
Publishers relying on Facebook link-posting
In
Video ad revenue as beacon of hope (again)
Out
Open-web display ad revenue horror
In
Throwing cash at video podcasts
Out
Throwing cash at audio podcasts
In
Publisher-run creator networks and franchises
Out
Treating creators as bolt-ons to the main business
In
Single standard for AI payments
Out
Web of overlapping AI-standard frameworks
In
AI content marketplaces
Out
One-to-one licensing deals
In
AI orchestration
Out
Single-use agents
In
Personalized, chat-style homepages
Out
Feed-style homepages
In
Collective publisher AI lawsuits
Out
Individual publisher AI lawsuits
In
The Trade Desk and Amazon influencing publisher monetization strategies
Out
Meta and Google defining the terms unilaterally
