--- title: "AI for Media: What Publishers Need Next" description: AI for media can help publishers respond to lost attention through audience understanding, personalization, and stronger first-party data use. url: https://www.artificialpoets.com/blog/the-real-future-of-ai-for-media-publishers/ site: Artificial Poets type: post date: 2026-08-27T05:56:00+00:00 modified: 2026-08-27T05:30:17+00:00 author: Matias Sanchez Moises categories: - Company keywords: - ai for media - ai for publishers - publisher first-party data strategy - how publishers can increase rpm with ai --- # The Real Future of AI for Media & Publishers **A NON-TECHNICAL POINT OF VIEW FROM A TECHNICAL PERSON** *DISCLAIMER:* No AI was usted to write this article. It's been over 20 months since we started working on Artificial Poets. We wrote the very first line of code in December 2024, is not that far away but the world changed a lot since then. We started with a idea in mind: to be an **AI-Native company**, something that is still true today, however the whole initial idea we had-- got transformed many times until come to what we have today. Which I think it's the natural process of developing any kind of new idea: you need to keep working and discovering and adapt as you keep making progress. Our initial thesis was related to be able to **leverage LLM models to do work inside WordPress**, like generate images, suggest titles, improve SEO, very generative AI intensive. We worked the first two quarters making improvements and handling system prompts to be able to output great results. For our own luck we moved away from this because we could not find any value there. Later the models will become so good that our system prompts would become obsolete. ## The real problem But there was a problem that keep resonating with us: **something was not right in the way millions of Media & Publishers companies operate**. Not because they did something wrong or choose the wrong technology, simply because there were other companies, specially social media like Meta, TikTok, YouTube, Spotify or Netflix that captured billions of users and offered a better experience. And the thing is once you experience that, you do not want to go back. May 2025 was the month were Google released AI Overviews or AI Mode, basically a new way for Google Search to give you answers, this caused and keep causing a HUGE problem to Media & Publishers, people search in Google and now they see the answer in front of their eyes, this is causing severe problems for them, around 40% of the organic search traffic is gone, there are not more clicks, you search what you want to know, you get the answer, and you keep navigating. ## Where the attention ($) is going? Traditionally the chosen business model for online publishers were ads, even if in the last decade some companies started with paid tiers like subscriptions or memberships and gate some of their content or features under it, ads represent a huge part of the Internet Economy, if you think on Internet giants as Meta or Google, their make most of their revenue because of their ads. 68% of Google's revenue is because of ads. So, does Google AI Mode impact negatively in their own business model? No, it's the opposite, now the supply of click is lower, so **each click is increasingly appreciated** by the company willing to purchase it. Before you could have 70% of your revenue coming from organic traffic and 30% via ads, after May 2025 that 70% with the 40% decrease becomes 42%. This has a HUGE impact in the economics of their business model, not only for the ads, but for conversions, affiliates, upgrades, etc. In a different direction the attention gap of the people is decreasing year over year, and the **consumers are putting all their attention on social platforms**: Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. So the scenario for anyone building a content business over the Internet seems to be getting attacked in multiple directions. ## AI joins the room During the 2010s most digital publishers were falling behind in terms of technology. Let's face it, WordPress powers a big chunk of the Internet, including most of media & publishers that you can name. WordPress is a great tool and piece of technology, with huge community, a lot of controls and customizations. I truly love it. However **WordPress was not designed for the AI era**, and that is totally fine. WordPress play it roles pretty well, it's the default tool for any publisher to publish content and have a digital presence, it works well for small sites or for massive sites. There are multiple providers like WPVIP or Kinsta. There are plans from $5 dollars to the $100,000+ so you get the point. However it was **not designed to serve or understand the audience**. Because of this last premise many companies born during the decade of 2010s to solve that problem. However most of these companies do not rely on a method that you can prove to understand and serve better the audience. Most of this tools are related to attribution and adding extra layers of information you can use for a monetization mainly, like demographics, firmographics, PII and so. The closest thing to user behavior we had during then was heat maps. ## Where I think Media & Publishers should be with AI I am not going to get technical here, just let me give you some context. For the nerds like me 12 of June, 2017 is a important date: a paper titled "*[Attention Is All You Need](https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762)*" was published. This paper played a huge role into the development of modern AI. Introduced the *[transformer architecture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformer_(deep_learning))*, so important that the T in ChatGPT means transformer- a little tribute from OpenAI. The full circle comes from the attention part. **Media & Publishers are losing attention**, and not the kind of attention coming from the transformer, real attention from the humans: which translates directly into revenue, the fuel that power any business. Since **attention is getting scarce overtime**, we need to adapt and come with new ways to generate value. Back in 2008 you could have a good business out of impressions alone just running Google AdSense without even negotiate with any advertiser. If we look back we will always find inflection points where this industry been evolving and changing drastically because the attention of the consumers changes. And I strongly believe this will be the constant and something the new generations will have to deal with it too. However, **we are in another huge inflection point in front of us**, for the first time ever the technology and resources to be able to operate with a high level of understanding what our audience wants based on behavior and strong pattern recognition, and based on that take actions to serve them better, with personalization at scale, and being able to maximize our revenue, a full circle where it compounds overtime. It was extremely complicated to be able to run this machine learning a few years ago, not only the innovation in the transformer but also the advancement in GPU to take fully advantage of this make it possible today. Companies like Meta, Netflix or TikTok spent billions developing systems with neuronal networks and attaching their economical value into paths so later they can optimize it. When you do that, you have **a machine that improves overtime towards a clear objetive** that you can measure it. You have a flywheel. ## Media & Publishers powered by AI Now it's time to convert that vision into a reality. As I mentioned earlier, we started to work on this around 20 months ago and since then we been working day at night to make this happen. But finally it's here! Our way to see how Media & Publishers should operate with AI is what we define as the AI-Native Publisher, and this has nothing to do with generate the content using AI, that is not part of our vision, very little people wants to consume AI generated content, even with the highest level of taste on it. Some others could argue that as long as there's value in the content is fine. How should Media & Publishers operate with AI? We strongly believe that **personalization IS the business model**. Do you think Meta or TikTok would make the same amount of money and have the same amount of growth if they show the same feed to every single user? It's evident that no, right? So what you do it yourself? Why you are treating in the same way a visitor that been coming over and over for the past years in the same way that just a regular visitor? Being a **AI-Native Publisher** means that you could serve your audience in orders of magnitude better. This means they will be able to find what's relevant for them, your platform should understand what they want, how they want and when they want. This is possible today. And with this, you are not only serving your audience better, which is great, you are also unlocking **flywheels related to revenue**. Let's put it in this way, if a visitor keep finding what they like, they will spend more time in your site, they will be more engage, if you make it easy for them to share the content, they will attract more people. Google will notice the people engage more with your content and will help you to rank better in Google Search and the AI Overviews. You will know your visitor so well that you will know when it's the right moment to ask them to convert into a paid subscriber, and they will be so engage and see so much value in your content that they will do it frictionless. All of this happening in real time, the same machine learning that if you go to Instagram or TikTok and likes cats you start seeing cats, but applied to your publishing business, in a way you can control. On top of that you will have a mechanism that knows exactly if you are offering a great user experience for them, because maybe you ask them to convert into a paid subscriber but there are other components that are affecting that conversion. The system should be smart to know and find patterns. Now this idea of flywheel it makes sense, right? Let me present you something. ![Matias Sanchez Moises presenting Artificial Poets.](https://www.artificialpoets.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/IMG_6971-edited.jpg) *Talk about the vision of Artificial Poets. Italy, October 2025.* ## Introducing Artificial Poets Artificial Poets helps Media & Publishers to become AI-Native in matter of weeks. Instead of spend 20+ months and build this yourself, you can just use our [Platform](https://www.artificialpoets.com/platform/) and become AI-Native and start operating at orders of magnitud, discovering and building your own flywheels, that understand your audience, your content and your business model. Tailored to your business, responding to you interested and without compromising the labor of your editorial team. The way we build it do not require you to change anything in your website. We have a proven way to implement our Platform in any site, and we have a [mathematical methodology to measure and guarantee results](https://www.artificialpoets.com/platform/measurement/). You can read more about this in our website, see the different [case studies](https://www.artificialpoets.com/customers/) we have, [read our research](https://www.artificialpoets.com/resources/) and [get in touch](https://www.artificialpoets.com/contact/) too. > ### Artificial Poets mission's to democratize the access to neuronal networks and artificial intelligence and make it accesible to everyone. I am extremely exited and confident of the future we are building. Starting with making accesible advanced machine learning and recommendations engine used by elite companies like Netflix, Spotify or Meta and making it accesible to all. If you are confident about the future of AI in Media & Publishing and think this way of operate would be beneficial for your organization, [feel free to reach out](https://www.artificialpoets.com/contact/). ## Discover what Artificial Poets can do for you Find out how Artificial Poets can help you deliver better outcomes with AI. [Book a demo](/request-a-demo/) ## Questions this page answers ### What is ai for publishers? AI for publishers means using audience behavior and pattern recognition to serve readers more effectively, including personalization at scale. ### How does ai for publishers work? AI for publishers works by analyzing audience behavior, identifying patterns, and helping media companies take actions that serve readers better. ### Why do publishers need ai? Publishers need AI because search clicks, consumer attention, and the economics of advertising are under pressure from major platforms and AI search features. ### How does AI affect publishers? AI affects publishers by reducing some organic search clicks while creating a need to understand audience behavior and make remaining attention more valuable. ### What is the future of AI for media? The future of AI for media is audience-focused technology that helps publishers understand behavior, personalize experiences, and respond to declining attention.