When actress Sorcha Cusack left the BBC drama Father Brown in January, it made headlines, including for the newspapers owned by Reach, among them The Mirror, and the Daily Express.
But the story did not generate the traction the Reach newspapers would have expected a year ago, or even at the start of the year.
Reach put this down to AI Overviews (AIO) – the AI summary at the top of the Google results page.
Instead of clicking through to the story on a Reach newspaper site, readers were happy with the AI overview.
The feature is a concern for newspapers and other media publishers, who have already seen much of their advertising revenue siphoned off by social media.
