Just about every other post you read on LinkedIn and even Twitter/X these days relates to the rise of AI and how it is rapidly reshaping the way we work, the way we run our companies, the way we hire our resources, the way we manage our workflows, the way we create content, and the list goes on. And there’s the point now made ad nauseam,
When I was heading ARY News Online and Digital and later Samaa Online and Digital, the foremost thing on my mind would always be the kind of page views and engagement we would be getting on our digital and social media assets – it was a cut-throat game and we had to deal with the likes of Dawn and Express Tribune (the first has become lazy and complacent in my view and not exploited its brand and the video format as much as it should have – while the second is hopefully going to get a boost now with the return of ET publisher Bilal Ali Lakhani) but we managed to hold our own.
In digital as well as social media, unlike in print, where newspapers in Pakistan usually give inflated figures (which cannot be independently checked) and where the Audit Bureau of Circulation which provides the third-party corroboration, is controlled by the Information Ministry, it is impossible to hide statistics like how many visitors and views your site gets daily or weekly and so on.
So that would be the first and foremost metric on our minds – and in this would also come the role of the SEOs who would try and ensure that our stories would come out first in Google Search.
The higher the visitors and engagement, the higher the ranking of your website and the greater digital advertising you would expect to get and at higher rates.
The ongoing rise of generative AI means that many news websites, which are trying to become financially sustainable, will have to shut down because their content is not appearing in Google searches
The time that I am talking about is 2015–19 and now digital ad spend is far more and hence these metrics assume even greater importance.
However, one tech development has all but destroyed this model of monetisation.
If you do a Google search for just about anything now, you will see that almost always the first entry or first few entries that show up are AI-generated content and not actual websites – this means AI has now completely changed – I would say destroyed – the traditional website monetisation model because AI-generated content is now showing up at the top of Google searches.
Of course, one could also say that Google’s search algorithm, which now seems to place greater emphasis on AI-generated content rather than actual websites, is to blame as well.
Regardless of who you would want to blame, the website monetisation model – be it for news or even for entertainment – has been turned on its head – and those who want to make money from such endeavours now need to have even more original and creative content so that their website stands out on its own amid the flood of AI-generated content showing up first on Google searches.
However, I don’t see that happening in the case of most Pakistani news websites. Much of the news that is reported is the same and to stand out, there needs to be some kind of product differentiation – in the case of media and news content, this would mean more analytical pieces of writing and more engaging video content, podcasts, discussions, explainer videos, and of course employing writers and content creators who already have a loyal following.
One digital and social media segment which, however, has remained shielded from the decimation caused by the advent of generative AI is YouTube and channels operated on it by various media networks – mostly TV channels – in Pakistan.
YouTube channels of entertainment channels like ARY Digital and Geo Entertainment have over 50 million subscribers and compete with top media channels the world over in terms of subscribers and views. It is now estimated that the networks that own these channels earn as much from YouTube as they do from regular advertising on their TV broadcasts.
The interesting thing to note here is that the content on such YouTube channels isn’t actually original, as in, it wasn’t specifically created for YouTube and digital media, but rather made for TV broadcast. Once aired, it is posted on the respective YouTube channel. There are some TV networks which have started YouTube-only news channels, but they are far from financially successful and still at the experimenting stage. Furthermore, in most cases, they are initiatives taken by media organisations which already have an established presence in traditional media like print and television.
The ongoing rise of generative AI means that many news websites, which are trying to become financially sustainable, will have to shut down because their content is not appearing in Google searches.