--- title: Mobile Multi-Page Sessions Rose 48%. The Comparison Titles Fell 23%. description: "Segment cut of the Equine Network rollout: mobile multi-page sessions +48% against −23% on comparison titles, social arrivals +99%. Six of seven segments improved; direct declined and is printed." url: https://www.artificialpoets.com/customers/equine-network-segments/ site: Artificial Poets type: a13s_case_study date: 2026-08-09T20:07:48+00:00 modified: 2026-08-20T00:52:48+00:00 image: https://www.artificialpoets.com/wp-content/uploads/a13s-cards/1529-social-480ccd60.png --- # Mobile Multi-Page Sessions Rose 48%. The Comparison Titles Fell 23%. **CASE STUDY** We compared titles from the same network running the [Artificial Poets Platform](https://www.artificialpoets.com/platform/) against sister titles that were not. **Mobile is two-thirds of this network’s traffic.** - **+48%** Multi-page sessions on mobile - **+99%** Multi-page sessions from social - **6 of 7** Segments improved ## In brief - **46% more sessions went past the first page** across the enabled Equine Network titles — multi-page share rose from 10.3% to 15.1%. This piece asks where that came from. - **Mobile rose 48%**, from 9.2% to 13.6% — while the comparison group's mobile **fell 23%** over the same nine months. - **Social arrivals almost doubled their multi-page rate, up 99%** — from 8.6% to 17.2%. On the comparison titles, social fell. - The lift held on **every device**, and on **every acquisition channel except direct**. - **Direct traffic declined** on the enabled titles, but it declined further on the comparison titles, so we do not attribute it to the [Artificial Poets Platform](https://www.artificialpoets.com/platform/) either way. ## The pressure Any publisher reading a case study asks the same private question: *will this work on my audience?* It is a fair thing to worry about, because **most engagement products work best exactly where you need them least**. They lift the readers who were already going to stay (the loyal, the direct, the desktop) and **do nothing for the traffic that actually costs you money**. **The two segments publishers most want moved are the two hardest to move.** **Mobile.** Roughly **two-thirds of traffic** on these titles, with the smallest screen, the least patience and the worst monetisation per session in the business. It is also where the erosion everyone is describing runs fastest: across the comparison titles, the share of mobile sessions reaching more than one page **fell from 11.5% to 8.8% in nine months**, with nothing changed on any of them. **Social arrivals.** They came for one specific thing they saw in a feed, and they leave. **Nearly a quarter of one enabled title's traffic arrives this way.** So we broke the result apart and looked at where it actually landed. ## What was enabled On 18 December 2025, two Equine Network titles switched on the [Artificial Poets Platform](https://www.artificialpoets.com/platform/): as a reader moves down an article, the Artificial Poets Platform's AI selects and loads related articles beneath it, chosen against what that reader is actually reading rather than a fixed "most popular" list. Three comparable titles in the same portfolio were left unchanged and measured alongside them across identical weeks. ## Where the lift landed ### By device | Device | Enabled | Comparison | | --- | --- | --- | | Mobile | +48% | −23% | | Tablet | +88% | −10% | | Desktop | +29% | −8% | **Mobile is the commercially important row.** It is about two-thirds of these titles' traffic, and it is where the comparison group lost the most. The enabled titles went the other way by 48%. **That is a 71-point swing** on the surface where most publishers make most of their impressions. Desktop improved least in relative terms, which is what you would expect: desktop readers already went deeper, so there was less headroom. The pattern holds across all three devices, and it is largest exactly where the headroom was. ### By acquisition channel | Channel | Enabled | Comparison | | --- | --- | --- | | Organic social | +99% | −4% | | Referral | +149% | −2% | | Organic search | +59% | +2% | | Direct | −19% | −35% | **Social roughly doubled.** A reader arriving from a feed used to go past the first article about **one time in twelve**. Now it is **closer to one in six**. That is the segment conventional wisdom says you cannot do anything with, and it moved further than any other channel on the site. **Organic search rose 59%.** This is the traffic being squeezed hardest by AI answers: **referrals to publishers fell roughly a third in the year to December 2025**,[[1]](#references) and the reader who does land arrives with a narrower question and less appetite than they used to have.[[2]](#references) The [Artificial Poets Platform](https://www.artificialpoets.com/platform/) does not bring that reader back, but **it does get more out of them once they arrive**. **Referral rose most in percentage terms**, but it is the smallest channel here and the enabled and comparison titles clearly draw referrals from different places. Note the very different starting points. We would not build a case on this row. ## The exception ### Direct traffic went down on the enabled titles From 12.7% to 10.3%. **We are not going to explain that away.** What we can say is that direct fell further on the comparison titles over the same weeks, from 7.0% to 4.6%, **a 35% decline against our 19%**. Something is happening to direct-arriving readers across this whole category, and it is happening to the enabled titles slightly less. We do not claim the [Artificial Poets Platform](https://www.artificialpoets.com/platform/) caused the smaller decline, and we would not want anyone to read it that way. **It is one channel out of four**, and it is the one where readers arrive already knowing where they are going. ## How we know Metrics are counted per site by domain, bots excluded, over identical calendar weeks: 4 August to 17 December 2025 against 22 December 2025 to 10 May 2026. Multi-page session share is the proportion of sessions recording more than one pageview. Device is taken from the user agent; channel is assigned at session level. The comparison titles are the Equine Network properties that report continuously across the whole window and were never enabled. **The entire eligible set, not a flattering subset.** **Every segment we measured is shown above, including the one that went against us.** ## Ready to be our next success? We’ll chat about your numbers to see where the biggest opportunities are. [Book a demo](/request-a-demo/) ## References 1. Chartbeat data reported in Press Gazette, "Global publisher Google traffic dropped by a third in 2025." [pressgazette.co.uk](https://pressgazette.co.uk/media-audience-and-business-data/google-traffic-down-2025-trends-report-2026/) 2. Nitropay, "Protecting Ad Revenue Per Session in the Age of AI Search." [blog.nitropay.com](https://blog.nitropay.com/protecting-ad-revenue-per-session-in-the-age-of-ai-search/) --- *Method: PostHog, all devices, bot-filtered. Pre-period 4 Aug – 17 Dec 2025; post-period 22 Dec 2025 – 10 May 2026. Multi-page session share is the proportion of sessions recording more than one pageview. Segment figures are pooled across the two enabled titles and the three comparison titles respectively, session-weighted. Comparison titles are Equine Network properties without the [Artificial Poets Platform](https://www.artificialpoets.com/platform/) enabled.*