YEREVAN, July 9. /ARKA/. Artificial intelligence is already changing the economy of digital media. However, contrary to popular belief, it not only exacerbates the crisis of the traditional model based on platform traffic but also restores the value of what has always been the main asset of strong editorial offices - primary journalism, trust, and professional reputation.
For the last twenty years, media have lived by other people's rules: first social networks, then search engines, now - AI platforms. This dependence brought an audience but simultaneously weakened the most important thing: control over distribution, revenues, and their own logic of development.
The paradox of the new stage is that artificial intelligence, exacerbating the traffic crisis, simultaneously restores the value of what the platform era has devalued: primary information, verification, specialization, reputation, and quality journalism.
Foreign distribution was accepted as a proprietary asset
For a long time, media convinced themselves that the future lay in social networks, search, algorithms. Editorial offices embedded this logic into budgets, processes, and strategies: they increased SMM teams, rewrote headlines for search results, changed websites as if compliance with others' algorithms was the modern media strategy.
Platforms sold a simple idea: strong content would find its reader. But this was not freedom - it was rent. Their task was different: to keep the user within their ecosystem, collect data, and capitalize on attention. Media in this structure were suppliers of valuable content to a system they did not control.
Now the consequences of this model are evident. According to the Reuters Institute (Journalism, Media, and Technology Trends and Predictions 2026), traffic to news sites from Google Search has decreased by 33% over the past year, and from Google Discover - by 21%.
Media managers expect a further decline in search referrals by 43% over the next three years. Traffic from Twitter/X, according to Nieman Lab citing Chartbeat, has fallen by 70% compared to 2022.
This is no longer just about local problems of individual editorial offices. The crisis affects the very model in which external traffic was considered a universal source of growth.
This is confirmed not only by research but also by the practice of the largest digital publishers. In July 2026, British LBG Media (LADbible, SPORTbible, and other brands) warned investors of a sharp deterioration in financial performance following another change in Meta's algorithm and a reduction in search traffic due to AI Overviews Google. The company reported a 41% decline in indirect revenue, and its shares lost about 40% at one point.
Essentially, the market has seen for the first time a vivid public example of how dependence on both social platforms and search traffic transforms from an editorial risk into a direct threat to the sustainability of the media business.
And this is just the first wave of changes.
AI exacerbates the traffic crisis while increasing the value of primary journalism
Classic search left the publisher a chance: the user asked a question, received links, and potentially transitioned to the original source. Generative AI changes the mechanics: it offers not a route to the answer but a ready-made answer as a product.
According to Pew Research Center (2025), in Google search results with AI summary, users click on regular links only 8% of the time compared to 15% without AI summary. Links within the AI summary yield about 1% of the time.
Users increasingly receive information without reaching the source that produced it. The publisher has fewer and fewer chances to convert attention into subscriptions, advertising, or other direct income.
But AI does not threaten everyone equally. It takes traffic from weak, dependent, and depersonalized media models. At the same time, it restores value to what the platform era systematically devalued: primary reporting, verification, authorship, specialization, and editorial responsibility.
Generative AI does not create primary information. It needs source material: facts, texts, data, interviews, and investigations. In other words, it requires the journalistic work of others, which has long been perceived as free raw material for the platform economy of attention.
The market is already beginning to move in this direction. In 2023, ARKA and News-Armenia agencies signed an agreement with Factiva Limited for additional rights to use their content in Dow Jones services for AI-related tasks.
Associated Press announced in July 2023 an agreement with OpenAI providing access to part of its news archive and technological cooperation.
Financial Times signed a strategic partnership with the same company in 2024. Quality journalism is beginning to enter the AI economy not only as a source of traffic but also as a licensed asset.
Why quality journalism is becoming valuable again
In the new information environment, quality media are becoming significant not only as a platform for reach but also as a source of context, trust, and quality presence in the digital ecosystem.
If AI systems increasingly rely on authoritative sources, then the value of being present in strong professional media with a name, standard, and reputational weight increases for companies.
For brands, this is no longer just a matter of PR or visibility. It is a question of the context in which, through which sources, and with what quality they will be presented in the new digital environment.
What strong media should do specifically
The mistake of the last twenty years was not in the use of platforms themselves. The mistake was in something else: too many editorial offices began to measure their own value by other people's metrics: not by how needed they were to the audience, but by how effectively they served the next attention distribution system.
Today, strong media have a chance to correct this mistake. Not because AI will automatically save journalism, but because the market is becoming tougher on secondarity and dependence. This means several specific steps.
First, building direct connections with the audience - own subscriber bases, email newsletters, podcasts, communities. Everything that does not depend on the algorithm and cannot be taken away by the next platform update.
Second, monetizing content as an asset, not just as advertising inventory. Licensing for AI systems, partnerships with data aggregators, archival rights - this is no longer theory but working models for those ready to take advantage of them.
Third, deepening specialization. In a world where machines can quickly retell everything averaged, the value of what cannot be gathered without loss from secondary material increases: expert analysis, investigations, industry analytics, the reputation of the editorial office in a specific niche.
Fourth, stopping to consider reach as an end in itself. An editorial office with a hundred thousand loyal readers and direct subscription income is more sustainable than an editorial office with a million random clicks from search.
Fifth, stop considering platforms as your assets. Facebook, Google, TikTok, X, or any other platform is not the audience of the editorial office but a rented channel to access it. The story of LBG Media has once again shown: the algorithm can change in one day, and with it, a significant part of traffic and revenue can disappear. The only asset that truly belongs to the media company is its brand, audience trust, and direct relationships with readers.
The more intermediaries between the editorial office and the reader, the less the editorial office controls its own future. That is why, in the age of AI, direct relationships with the audience become not just an advantage but a question of the sustainability of the media business.
AI does not eliminate journalism. It eliminates the illusion that it can be done without it. In the age of AI, those who win are not those who can produce more content, but those who create what AI cannot remain credible without: primary information, trust, and professional editorial responsibility.
Konstantin Petrosov
Director of ARKA Agency
