Monday, July 20th, 2026 – 12:35 am
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In a piece I wrote for AdExchanger last year, I argued that publishers needed to stop measuring their business in pageviews and start building it around audience relationships.
The era of search and social traffic was ending, and publishers who survive would be the ones who understand and own their audiences. I run Leverage Lab, which helps publishers do exactly that, so I have a stake in this argument. But the evidence makes the case regardless, and it has only gotten more urgent.
Now, we’re witnessing the end of the pageview era. Google’s march toward an agentic search experience has moved the timeline from gradual to immediate. But the interesting question isn’t how publishers replace their lost search traffic; it’s what they do with the audience they already have.
