News, views, and AI

The news publishing business is getting tougher with bots crawling sites and throwing up summaries with zero attribution or compensation

- VANITA KOHLI-KHANDEKAR

Raghav Bahl and Ritu Kapur's The Quint began reducing its dependence on search in 2023. By the middle of 2024, it simply gave up on pushing its stories on Google through keywords.

"We moved away from highvolume publishing, including wire copy, quick-turn videos, sports, entertainment, and lifestyle, to a more deliberate focus on opinion, analysis, ground reports, and investigations," says Kapur, cofounder and managing director. "We are now a more niche, deeper offering, journalistically." This has pushed up direct traffic to about 28 per cent instead of the usual low single digits in general news publishing.

Whether it is The Hindu or Malayala Manorama, almost every strong editorial brand in India has chosen the direct, paid route to reach and monetise readers. They are now thankful for it, albeit for another reason. Readers coming through search, which traditionally brings in a bulk of the traffic for news, are dropping at an alarming rate as artificial intelligence (AI) summaries rise.

From June 2024 to June 2025, the top 10 English language publications in India lost 20-30 per cent of their online audience, according to media analytics firm Comscore. Overall, people seeking news or information online dropped by about 5 per cent in 2024 over 2023, while the time spent on news dropped by a third (see charts).

"The drop in ad revenue is likely to be worse, since higher reach commands a premium," says Siddharth Jhawar, country manager, Moloco India, which provides machine-learning based advertising advice.