Next in Media spoke to Marc McCollum. Chief Innovation Officer at Raptive, about how smaller publishers are enduring in the face of AI search, Google search changes, and the supposed death of cookies.

💡Takeaways:

• 🤝 Raptive's Mission: Raptive champions ~6,000 independent creators on the open web, helping them monetize, grow audiences, and build sustainable businesses.
• 📊 Google's Grip: Google Search is the lifeblood, driving a massive 58% of traffic to Raptive's network, making any changes highly impactful.
• 📉 "Helpful Content" Hurdles: Recent Google updates, while aiming for quality, have disproportionately hurt mid-size and smaller creators, often favoring larger sites and forums like Reddit.
• 🤖 The AI Answer Engine Threat: Google's pivot to AI Overviews signals a move from search to "answer engine," potentially slashing publisher traffic (~25% estimate) and raising serious copyright infringement concerns by repurposing content without compensation.
• 🔗❓ AI's Attribution Issues: Even when creator content is used in AI answers, attribution is often missing, inaccurate, or doesn't lead to clicks, breaking the traditional traffic model.
• 💪 Advertisers Still Value the Open Web: Despite traffic woes, advertiser demand for authentic creator content is strong, with Raptive seeing record direct sales, valuing the trust and connection creators build.
• 🎯 Smarter Ads with AI: Raptive is leveraging AI (Raptive Intelligence) not just as a threat, but as a tool to analyze content nuances and create powerful mindset-based targeting for advertisers, commanding premium rates.
• 🚀 Diversification is Key: Creators must reduce reliance on Google by building audiences on platforms like Pinterest, YouTube, and especially email newsletters, a strategy Raptive actively supports.

🎙 Guests: Marc McCollum
🎤 Host: Mike Shields
📺 Sponsor: ElementalTV
🎬 Producer: FEL Creative