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1️⃣ High Volatility in Distribution

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Traffic patterns in digital media are changing in ways that are difficult to forecast. Search engines and social platforms still deliver audiences, but their contribution fluctuates more than in previous years. Publishers describe the current environment less as a crisis and more as a cycle of constant adjustment, where growth and decline can alternate within the same quarter.

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🔄 Shift in distribution models

How audiences find content is changing. The referral model, where users move from a search result or social post to a publisher’s site, still works, but its share of total reach is declining.

AI-generated overviews now deliver much of that information directly within search results, reducing the need to click through. The result is a shift from referral-based discovery toward extraction, where information is accessed without leaving the platform that aggregates it.

• ⚔️ Comparison of referral and extraction models

These changes are already visible in audience data, particularly in how users interact with search.

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• 🧐 What should we do? </aside>

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• Search traffic continues to decline </aside>

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• AI-driven visibility doesn’t equal audience reach </aside>

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• Algorithmic distribution remains inconsistent </aside>

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• The case of Google Discover </aside>

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🌱 Life after scale

For years, digital publishing strategy revolved around scale**:** reaching as many people as possible and driving them back to a central site. That model made sense when search and social platforms rewarded external links. But those dynamics have changed.

The current logic of growth:

• 🚫 Don’t chase scale if you don’t already have it

• 📬 Prioritise direct, disintermediated relationships

• 💡Treat platforms as engagement spaces, not pipelines

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2️⃣ Negative Trends in Funding

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The financial environment for media is also entering a more volatile phase. After a surge in 2024, lifted by an unusually dense global election cycle and the Paris Olympics, spending patterns are reverting to normal. At the same time, U.S. development funding, including USAID’s media programs, is winding down, leaving fewer institutional resources in circulation.

Across revenue streams, the trend is similar: momentum has slowed, predictability has weakened, and competition is intensifying as creators expand into territory once dominated by traditional outlets.

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• Advertising is normalising after an exceptional year </aside>

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• Audience revenue growth is slowing </aside>

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• 🧐 What should we do? </aside>

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🕶 Perspectives from CEE

The Perspectives cohort brought together 13 small and medium-sized independent publishers from across Central and Eastern Europe, working in two groups to confront shared challenges and shape their mid- and long-term strategies. Over the past months, they have collaborated on questions of business sustainability, audience value, product development, and the technology choices that will underpin their next stage of growth. As part of this process, we asked each organisation to map out its strategic priorities, future investments, and areas of planned innovation. The following charts present their aggregated responses, offering a snapshot of how this group of CEE publishers sees the road ahead.

The data shown here reflects aggregated responses from the 13 publishers in the Perspectives cohort about which audience-revenue models they plan to invest in or prioritize over the next 12 months.

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• Institutional support is shrinking and uneven </aside>

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3️⃣ Affordable Publishing and Monetization Technology

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The same tools that once distinguished large media companies (paywalls, dynamic pricing, bundling, and individualized offers) are now becoming widely available and increasingly affordable.

Smaller publishers can now deploy tiered subscriptions, event-based pricing, or cross-platform bundles with relative ease. The challenge is no longer who can monetize, but who can design more relevant, flexible, and user-centric offers that match audience behaviour.

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• Lean publishing tools enable smaller operations </aside>

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• Advanced monetization is becoming mainstream </aside>

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• Access drives innovation and fragmentation </aside>

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4️⃣ Audience Fragmentation and Rise of Niche Content Verticals

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The digital audience is splintering. As platforms personalise feeds and publishing tools become more accessible, audiences are reorganising around interests rather than general news brands. This shift has created new opportunities for focus and depth, but also new limits to scale.

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