The news media business is at an intriguing moment in time as it faces four interesting challenges related to GenAI, according to the latest report from FT Strategies.

The consultancy, part of the Financial Times, took a look at the Reuters Institute’s predictions for 2025, compared them with its own findings and data sets, and reflected on what they saw.

1. Even as AI-generated answers to search queries become ubiquitous, search traffic is incredibly important

Organic search makes up over 40% of overall referrals for a data set of 106 publishers and is more important for many news organisations than direct traffic.

“This is a concerning trend for a few reasons,” wrote authors George Montagu and Sarah Dear: 

1. It’s clear not all news organisations are cut out for a “destination strategy” pursued by the likes of The New York Times. 
2. Search referrals are becoming less predictable as generative AI is incorporated into the experience. 
3. Social referrals are already down, putting downward pressure on other sources of traffic. 

But there is reason for optimism as well: “The same dataset has shown that the proportion and volume of traffic from organic search has increased in the last 18 months (except for a small contraction in the last two months of 2024, which should be monitored).”

In other words: Brace for the worst, but we seem to be OK for now.

2. The drop in social referral traffic — and the rise of AI answer engines

Also noteworthy: “Social platforms that publishers were planning to put more effort into are relatively low performers and also experienced decline in 2024: TikTok (only 8k and 80% decline), Instagram (1.35mn and 4% decline), and LinkedIn (375k and 27% decline). This calls into question whether these publishers should focus on these platforms, especially if referrals or direct monetisation are the primary objectives.” 

This is important because many news organisations are still building or buying social media tools. Is that going to pay off or is it a case of too little, too late?

By contrast: ChatGPT contributed 100k session referrals in December 2024, having only recorded single-digits between January to April 2024. Perplexity has experienced similar growth. 

Should we be looking at optimising for answer engines along with search engines, then?

3. The competition from creators on platforms such as YouTube and TikTok

GenAI will only make it more intense — and lead to new partnerships.

GenAI will make personality more important and solo operations more scalable, the report pointed out. “The only thing that holds creators back [from growing their audience] is how often they can be in front of the camera or microphone. The idea that they can write scripts which are generated into video content or any other format that they want [by using AI] is pretty exciting [for them].” 

4. News media business leaders are more excited about GenAI than their journalists are

“Editorial teams are the least optimistic about AI, with only 36% expressing positivity,” the report said.

“Those who are most optimistic include senior leadership (57%), perhaps because of their insulation to job losses and the real possibility of GenAI reducing operational costs. Although news use cases have increased, insufficient training and dedicated time for upskilling are major blockers for further adoption … 34% of respondents said that they had received insufficient training and 28% said that they did not have enough time to upskill.”

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