Publishers Are Preparing to Opt Out of Google Search

This interview has been edited.

Mark Stenberg: Should part of publisher revenue come from AI companies themselves?

Mike Peralta: AI is nothing but a hallucination without our content—not just Future’s content, but every publisher’s. It’s incumbent upon all of us to ensure there’s the correct value exchange. Every publisher is playing both offense and defense: Our content has been scraped for years, and now it’s a bit of an arms race. But original content is super important, independent publishers are super important, and without us, the internet’s not quite as interesting.

Mark: What has Future learned about showing up in answer engines?

Mike: What works within the LLMs is authority and trust. If an editor with a real following writes something, that increases the citation. In the end, what did SEO do? It drove clicks to your site. What does the LLM do? It gives you a recommendation. So as a publisher, how can I show up in that one place? We’re still early in figuring out how a citation aligns to an actual outcome.

Mark: What does AI-driven traffic loss mean for publishers?

Mike: Audience is probably going down for a majority of publishers. That being said, the audience you do have is probably 10 times better. They’re more passionate—if you’re interested in golf, you’re going to keep coming to Golf Monthly.

Mark: What should we watch for over the next year?

Mike: Agentic. When my college-age son can create his own agents better than I can, I better start paying attention. Agent-to-agent buying and selling is going to come up faster than we think. A year from now, more than half of programmatic buying is probably going to be done through agents.

Pulled Quotes

“Gambling has become a more common leisure activity than reading a book: Last year, 57 percent of Americans placed a bet.”
The Atlantic’s Rose Horowitch, on the end of reading
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“Even if you raise $50 million, no one’s gonna write about you unless you’re doing something crazy.”
Startup founder Zuhair Lakhani, on ragebaiting as marketing
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“I think the demand for philosophers with A.I. training is, if anything, outstripping the supply right now.”
NYU professor David Chalmers, on philosophers’ ubiquity in AI
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“Netflix is struggling to get viewers to stick with its shows for more than a season.”
Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw, on Netflix’s second-season problem
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