This Media Briefing covers the latest in media trends for Digiday+ members and is distributed over email every Thursday at 10 a.m. ET. More from the series →This week’s Media Briefing looks at how publishers are preparing for a “Google Zero” future by moving beyond SEO tweaks and reshaping their teams, roles and audience strategies around a post-search era.
Publishers spent much of this year bracing for a world with fewer Google search referrals. Now, as fall approaches, they’re not just tweaking SEO strategies; they’re rewriting org charts, redefining audience teams and creating new AI-focused roles to survive a “Google Zero” future.
Recent moves at USA Today Co. and The New York Times show how these strategies are moving from theory into practice.
Monica Richardson, svp at USA Today, announced last week that the company was forming a new audience and digital production team as a result of the changing search environment — and it would lead to some layoffs, according to an internal staff memo obtained by The New York Times reporter Ben Mullin.
“Growing audience by producing more content isn’t as effective as it once was. Search traffic is under pressure, and platforms are increasingly keeping user experiences to themselves instead of sending them back to us. Our current structure was built for a different media landscape. We need to change how we’re organized to strategically compete in this moment,” Richardson wrote.
