As Enders Analysis’ senior research analyst Jamie MacEwan put it, direct response is over 60% of online ad spend, and focusing on the technology and partnerships to cater to this demand is a recurring theme across ad platforms. Pinterest’s own efforts, which span improvements to its visual search capabilities as well as launching its own AI-campaign tool Performance+, are starting to bear fruit.

“The industry needs to move beyond a binary subscription-or-advertising model,” said Enders Analysis senior analyst Abi Watson. “Programs like this let publishers monetize their most valuable users in more sophisticated ways.”

“[The Leadership Institute] delivers two things for the Journal: a reputational halo effect and increased customer lock-in, especially for corporate subscriptions,” Watson said. “It creates more predictable annual cash flow while deepening ties with influential business audiences.”

“It’s not completely uncontroversial to say that referral traffic will decline more [as a result of Google AI overviews and AI engines], it’s a question of how much,” said Douglas McCabe, CEO of media analysis firm Enders Analysis. 

McCabe believes publishers are slowly and reluctantly accepting that the incentives of the tech platforms — building people’s habitual use of answer engines, and providing the kind of utility that keeps them within the engines as long as possible — do not align with ensuring publishers get referral traffic. Website monetization itself, he believes, is under threat.

All Points Fibre has built out its network to 568,000 homes at the end of March, according to estimates from Enders Analysis, the research company. The company reported a pre-tax loss of £35.2 million for 2023.

Karen Egan, at Enders Analysis, said that Cityfibre’s wholesale model means it benefits from well-known brands such as TalkTalk and, shortly, Sky, placing customers onto its network, which “gives it a credible path to towards much higher network take-up rates than those enjoyed by retail-focused altnets”.

Broadsheet was cited as a case study in a new report for the PPA by Enders Analysis called "Rewriting the media playbook".

The report says: “Broadsheet has identified London as the most culturally exciting city in the world right now. There is a litany of small publishers and influencers who cover different elements of the city to different degrees, but Broadsheet believes there is no single dedicated resource focused purely on culture in London

“They aim to appeal to a large target audience of cultural and relatively affluent city dwellers, in addition to a large Australian community for in-built brand recognition.”

Video views across the business are up 152% while minutes viewed are up 78%, according to an Enders Analysis report commissioned for the PPA Festival.

That influence is translating into serious ad dollars. Per Enders Analysis, YouTube pulled in $26 billion in global ad spending last year, outpacing Disney, Netflix and Amazon Prime. In the U.K., it’s on par with ITV’s ad revenue. Disney came in at just $25 billion, followed by Netflix at $17 billion and Amazon at $10 billion.

According to research from Enders Analysis, the UK has become the most “efficient” market for Netflix under Mensah’s watch, meaning that a high proportion of its original programming becomes a hit. Adolescence, for example, the psychological crime drama starring Stephen Graham, filmed in Yorkshire and released in March, has become a global smash.

“Both the substantial slowing of alt-net’s build plans, and now VMO2 coming to a similar view, is very positive for Openreach and we expect to see that positively impact Openreach numbers before the end of this year,” says Karen Egan at Enders Analysis.

“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”.