The report, which draws from 400 apps and 135 publishers, reveals how media organizations are reengineering their product strategies around direct user relationships, rich app experiences, and crucially, AI-driven personalization and automation.
Let's dive deep.
📉 Collapse of the Funnel: Search and Social Are No Longer Reliable
Publishers once leaned heavily on Google and Facebook for discovery. That’s over.
60% of Gen Z and 50% of Millennials now use AI tools like ChatGPT instead of traditional search.
Google’s AI Overviews and the newer AI Mode interface have decimated referral traffic.
The majority of publishers are “extremely concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about these developments.
Social traffic is “close to vanishing”.
“A decline in traffic almost entirely because of falling SEO due to Google algorithm changes.” – Survey respondent
🔍 AI: From Experimentation to Integration
AI looms large in this year’s report — both as a disruptor (via AI search) and as a tool.
Adoption status:
Just starting — 49%
Growing — 30%
Not using — 13% (!)
Advanced — 8% (!)
Publishers are using AI for:
Content summaries, text-to-speech, translation, transcription
Automated social posts
Research and idea generation
Internal data structuring
Customer service chatbots
Coding and product dev acceleration
🎧 AI in Audio: A Real-World Success
Generative AI has transformed audio production:
Foreign Affairs doubled audio content by using AI voiceovers.
Introduced timeline-wide audio queuing.
Result: Audio users doubled, audio plays up 72% YoY, and 30% higher play-to-tap ratio due to queuing.
🧠 Personalization: AI-Powered and User-Driven
Top innovation priority across the board.
Only 50% of publishers have it deployed
But GenAI is accelerating rollouts of:
Personalized homepages
Alerts for saved authors or topics
“For You” feeds
Push segmentation
“Personalization feels hollow at scale. We’d rather give readers tools to explore.”
Still, McKinsey data shows that:
71% of users expect personalization
76% are frustrated when it’s missing
Yet only ~35% are comfortable with personalized news (say hi to highly personalized news aggregators) vs. 80%+ for weather or music
🧪 What the Best Publishers Are Doing
The New York Times:
“Great Unbundling”: multiple apps (Cooking, Games, Audio)
Different UX for different audiences
Runner’s World:
Utility + personalization = 35% increase in daily app usage
Stylist:
High-value VIP tier (£79/year) inside the app
VIP users get events, community, and curated perks
🧭 Final Takeaways
AI is disrupting search — but enabling personalized, automated experiences that deepen retention.
Apps are outperforming websites across engagement, retention, and revenue.
Publishers must move fast to own their audiences, especially with generative search and content discovery shifting to AI interfaces.
Rich content formats — games, audio, vertical video — drive outsized returns.
There’s no “typical” app user. Test, segment, and personalize continuously.
“There’s a high correlation between the apps that succeed and the businesses that invest most in editorial, product, and tech.” – Pugpig team