The Digiday Publishing Summit ran from 14 to 16 September at the Ritz-Carlton Key Biscayne in Miami, and our team spent three days there with publishing leaders. Conversations at an event like this are more useful than any panel, because the same problems come up again and again in different words. Three themes stood out.
1. Search traffic is not coming back, and publishers have stopped waiting for it
The mood had shifted since earlier in the year. Instead of asking when Google referrals would recover, publishers talked about how to run a business with far fewer of them. Answers in AI search and AI Overviews send a small fraction of the clicks a classic results page used to, and nobody in the room was planning on that changing.
The response was consistent: take what value remains from search, and put the real effort into channels the publisher controls. Newsletters, apps, subscriptions, events and video all came up. So did “AI visibility”, the new discipline of making sure your journalism is cited when assistants answer questions, which several teams now treat as seriously as they once treated SEO.
Why it matters: when discovery moves off your site, the experience on your site has to work harder for every visitor who does arrive.
2. Video is the growth channel, but only where you can keep the audience
Publishers on stage described producing more video, much of it reporter-led and short-form, and much of it vertical. It is how they reach new audiences on social platforms, and how they keep readers engaged when search sends fewer of them.
The tension is that the same video habits are pulling attention away from publishers’ own pages. Video that lives only on a platform builds reach for the platform. Which raises the question we kept asking in Miami: how do you bring that video home, where you own the relationship and the revenue?
Why it matters: the video is already being made. The opportunity is giving it a home on your own site and in your own app, in the format readers already know.
3. The mass-traffic advertising model is fading, and nothing replaces it on its own
With fewer pageviews, high-volume programmatic can no longer carry a publishing business by itself. AI licensing deals were discussed at length, but publishers were frank that the terms are hard to compare and the money is not yet a replacement for lost advertising. Subscriptions, sponsorships and events are growing, but each covers only part of the gap.
What that leaves is a push towards quality over quantity in advertising too: fewer, higher-attention placements, direct and private deals, and inventory buyers can verify. Advertisers are asking the same questions from their side.
Why it matters: in a lower-traffic world, every session has to earn more, which puts formats that people actually watch, and supply buyers can trust, at the centre of the plan.
Digiday’s own recap of the town halls is worth reading for more on the search discussion.
What we were there to talk about
We went with one question for every publisher we met: what happens to your video strategy when search sends less traffic and social sends less still?
Our answer is to build the video experience into the property you own. Editorial vertical video on your own site and in your own app, made from your newsroom video, your social library and AI teasers created from your articles, with curated video filling the gaps. Monetization is built into that experience rather than bolted on: video and display demand from buyers who want trusted editorial context, with your policies deciding what runs.
Let’s continue the conversation
If we met in Miami and you want the walkthrough we talked about, send us a note. If we did not, the same conversation works over a call: see the vertical player running, or read how we work with publishers and news and content apps.
