Publishers Should Redirect Social Budgets Into More Content

At the MX3 event in Barcelona last week, I participated in a fireside chat called Direct-to-consumer: Thriving in a post-social, AI-driven world. One thing we discussed was where publishers would get traffic post-social and what it even meant to be post-social.

The problem for publishers is that platforms have woken up to our antics. For years, we’d promote our content—for free—to their audience, hoping to monetize them once they hit our site. For search, it made sense. Google was in the business of finding the best information and delivering it as quickly as possible to its audience. But Facebook, X, LinkedIn… these were platforms built for engagement on the platform.