Homepage

“The centrality of the website is declining for many brands.”

That is one takeaway from a new report by Enders Analysis, presented by CEO and director of publishing and tech Douglas McCabe at the PPA Festival Wednesday morning.

“The website itself is no longer the primary destination for consumers as it struggles to meet expectations while AI erodes publisher monetisation,” the report concludes.

As McCabe outlined, the “death of the website” appears nigh as media brands compete in an “asymmetric battle with the creator economy”; personalised, algorithmic social platforms are now a primary means by which users find information online.

Enders Analysis found that half of all publishers have reported at least some search traffic decline over the past year. Their report described AI overviews as “cannibalising website visits”.

The findings were revealed by Enders Analysis, a research company, which attributed the falling number of click-throughs to “an onslaught” from social media platforms and artificial intelligence summaries produced by search engines.

Half of publishers polled reported a decline in search traffic over the past year.

“Search traffic is no longer a given,” Douglas McCabe, a media analyst, said in the Rewriting the Media Playbook report.

“Many publishers have used their websites to replicate the article format. But the website itself is no longer the primary destination for consumers as it struggles to meet expectations, while AI erodes monetisation.”

“Publishers are losing visibility and value as their content is used but not rewarded,” McCabe said.

The company’s share of the UK broadband market has fallen to 11 per cent, from 14 per cent in 2022, according to research by Enders Analysis.

Karen Egan, head of telecoms at Enders, said altnets had pushed broadband prices to “uneconomic levels” in the UK. 

“TalkTalk, in particular, has been at the sharp end of this pressure as both the altnets and TalkTalk appeal to the lower end of the market,” she added.

TalkTalk’s market share had declined to 11 per cent in February, from 14 per cent in 2022, according to analysis by Enders, the telecommunications research specialist.

Like most boys, my children’s principal media resource is YouTube: recent research from Enders Analysis shows that boys spend on average an hour and a half a day on the platform, 25 per cent more than girls, who favour TikTok and Instagram reels.

However, Community Fibre still reported a pre-tax loss of £118.5mn last year off the back of substantial investments in its network. 

The cost of those investments, combined with growing competition among altnets, led to cumulative losses across the sector hitting £1.3bn in 2023, according to consultancy Enders Analysis.