They weren’t alone – indeed Enders Analysis found that around half of media groups reported a decline in search traffic over the past year, thanks to AI Overviews impacting website visits.

The need to grasp this opportunity led the PPA to commission a major new report with Enders Analysis.

The purpose of the report was to move beyond anecdote and look “right back to the fundamentals” of people’s behaviour, what they do, what they trust, and what they value. The report found that 77% of users want to know if content has been created by AI, and that “authentic, personal, original” is the most valued attribute of human-generated content (81%).

The report also found that publishers should frame their strategy around four durable customer needs: trust, relevance, utility and community. Vitally, it also suggested that the winning strategies will be those that meet consumers where they are, with formats and services designed for how people actually behave now.

Tom Harrington at Enders Analysis says: “Whatever they say, when Fox combined with Disney, they made fewer films. When people merge, they make less stuff. It's just how it works. So there’s fewer films costing more money meaning there’s not enough stuff in the cinema to attract a lot of people regularly. The cinema business model is not really selling cinema tickets as 60% of that money goes to the studio. It’s getting people in every night to sell popcorn and drinks. That model thrives on people going more rather than less.”

According to figures from Enders Analysis, the league brought in €2.1bn from such deals last season, compared with €1.4bn for the Spanish, German, Italian and French leagues combined.

Claire Holubowskyj, senior research analyst at Enders Analysis, said that a restructuring by itself was unlikely to 'move the dial' until the results of any changes began to be reflected in the advertising giant's finances.

“It’s completely different to scheduling content on a pretty closed ecosystem,” Tom Harrington, an analyst at Enders Analysis, said. “Casting money onto programming that’s going to be on this enormous platform like YouTube, where someone will probably never see what you’re making for them. It’s a completely different kettle of fish.”

Claire Holubowskyj, senior research analyst, Enders analysis, said: “A key value of chatbots is in how their only incentive is to give the best possible answers to queries — introducing advertising, even if not directly integrated into responses, erodes this by casting doubt on whether serving users or monetisation is motivating recommendations.”

Despite concerns and clear issues that need to be addressed, advertising revenue enables access for consumers who cannot afford expensive subscriptions.

Holubowskyj said: “How necessary advertising is will depend on a model’s user base: higher-value enterprise subscriptions are the clearest route to profitability, but are only feasible for a handful of tools.

“Most audiences won’t be upsold to higher paid tiers, so for consumer-oriented model providers, advertising will be the main way to monetise reach.”

Tom Harrington, head of television at Enders Analysis, said there was "no way that Max could have successfully launched here without a deal with Sky", and that the agreement means HBO Max will be in more than 10 million households from launch.

"All the big continuing shows (House of the Dragon, Last of Us, White Lotus) will continue to be on Sky, so Max would be relying completely on new shows, especially Harry Potter, to grow a business from scratch," he said.

"On the content side, it's worth noting that HBO's hit rate is quite phenomenal - they don't release a lot but always have a few current shows with considerable cultural cut-through."

The U.K.-based subscription research company Enders Analysis looked at whether or not news publishers should share their content on Apple News (and get a cut of revenue) or focus on growing their own direct subscription businesses – and found it’s a mixed bag, A Media Operator reported.

The line loss numbers from Openreach were “very encouraging” in spite of “aggressive promotions from alt nets,” said Karen Egan, head of telecoms at Enders Analysis. “There has been a lot of shorting of BT in light of the alt net pressure but they seem to be doing very well in the face of that and their all-important free cash flow recovery story remains very much in tact.”

Jamie MacEwan, senior media analyst at Enders Analysis, said that agencies were facing “sentiment volatility that will be tough for ad agencies to shake”.

He added: “Like it or not, their customers continue to spend big on Google and Meta. This leaves agencies increasingly dependent on a handful of platforms where they are outspent by SMEs and exposed to AI tools. That doesn't mean there isn't a lot for agencies to offer their clients in a complex media world, but clearly real-terms growth on a sector level will continue to be a struggle. That is why even Publicis' years of outperformance have not been significantly rewarded.”