This year’s Business Information & Media Summit (BIMS 2025) spotlighted one truth publishers can no longer ignore: Audience engagement is not just a KPI, it’s the foundation for monetizing content. At expert.ai, our conversations with digital media leaders at BIMS underscored a shared priority: how to deepen audience relationships in a world where attention is increasingly scarce and fragmented.
The definition of “engagement” has fundamentally shifted. Traditional measures like page views and clicks are no longer enough to provide a meaningful picture of engagement. According to Admonsters, 82% of publishers say attention metrics—evaluating how much time a consumer spends with content—are important or very important to their organizations. There are many factors driving this shift, from the limitations of legacy KPIs, to advertiser demand, to the need for solutions that respect privacy in a post-cookie environment. By moving to these deeper metrics, publishers are better equipped to differentiate their offerings, attract ad revenue and build sustainable, long-term value. Yet even as these new metrics gain traction, publishers still need the tools and strategies to translate attention into revenue.
As artificial intelligence in publishing gains momentum, it offers a path to deeper engagement and more actionable insights for media companies.
The Urgency of Adapting to Modern Media Consumption
For today’s media companies, sustaining meaningful engagement means overcoming a cascade of challenges:
- Metrics aren’t enough: Existing KPIs don’t reflect user satisfaction or the utility of recommendations
- Content relevance is slipping: Audiences are increasingly exposed to repetitive or irrelevant content
- Attention is harder to earn and keep: Capturing and retaining audience focus has become increasingly difficult
- Data remains fragmented: Siloed user data prevents personalized experiences
- Privacy is non negotiable: Regulatory requirements demand explainable logic and adherence to privacy laws
Changes in the world of search are having a major impact on the traffic being driven to publishers. Search engines like Google have tremendous power to direct search traffic, and they are keeping much of it for themselves. A 2024 SparkToro study found that nearly two thirds of all searches in the US go to Google’s own properties, with only 36% making it outside the Google ecosystem (It’s only slightly higher in Europe, where 374 of every 1,000 clicks reach the rest of the web.). Google’s AI-generated search summaries offer another potential obstacle to publisher traffic by providing direct answers in search results. Thanks to integrated search features, ChatGPT and other AI search engines are also having an increasingly influential role in internet traffic. Last November, ChatGPT sent traffic to 30,000 individual domains in one day. Despite scraping publisher sites for content, AI search engines are sending 96% less referral traffic than a typical Google search. The impact on publishers is disruptive: they risk losing visibility and revenue if their content isn’t discoverable or authoritative enough to surface in these new AI-powered contexts.
At the same time, audience consumption patterns are changing rapidly. For one, our attention spans are remarkably shorter compared to 20 years ago, and continuing to shrink. For example, researchers found that the average attention span of 2.5 minutes in 2004 dropped to 75 seconds in 2012 and to just 47 seconds in 2021. Deloitte reports that nearly half (47%) of Gen Z and a third of millennials prefer social media videos and live streams over traditional TV shows and movies (Deloitte, 2024). While B2B audiences may not consume media the same way, these shifts shape expectations around the speed, format and relevance of content, placing additional pressure on publishers to deliver concise, high-value content across multiple channels. The rise of snackable, immersive content further underscores why “attention as currency” has become so valuable, and why retaining it is harder than ever. Today’s publishers must meet audiences where they are and deliver value quickly before attention drifts elsewhere.
The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Publishing: Moving Beyond Pageviews
This is where expert.ai’s Hybrid AI + Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) approach gives publishers an edge. Artificial intelligence in publishing, when applied with human oversight, allows for smarter automation and richer personalization that aligns content with user intent. Our solutions help you:
- Personalize content experiences based on deeper semantic understanding
- Detect and surface underperforming or redundant content for refinement
- Identify and monitor market trends to amplify editorial strategies
- Deliver richer content recommendations to keep users engaged longer
This aligns with three areas publishers need most: Workflow & Process Automation, Content Discovery and Content Personalization. By enhancing how content is structured, discovered and consumed, expert.ai helps publishers make the most of every piece of content they produce, keeping readers engaged longer and coming back more often.
With AI-generated answers pulling users away from source content, defending your brand visibility is mission-critical. expert.ai helps by:
- Structuring content to be favored in AI-powered search
- Reinforcing topical authority and relevance through deep tagging
- Ensuring editorial consistency across platforms and formats
These capabilities don’t just help you retain audience attention—they position your brand as the go-to source for authoritative and trusted insights, even as discovery methods evolve.
Conclusion: Your Audience Is Listening—Make It Count
Publishers are navigating a complex crossroads: engagement expectations are rising, attention spans are shrinking, and AI-powered platforms are disrupting traditional traffic sources. But with disruption comes opportunities. Artificial intelligence in publishing isn’t just a tool, it’s a strategic lever to drive revenue, relevance and retention across digital media ecosystems. The right AI strategy can do more than improve efficiency—it can transform how you understand, reach, and monetize your audience. Whether you’re refining editorial strategy, maximizing content ROI, or defending your brand in AI search environments, now is the time to act.
Expert.ai empowers publishers and media companies to automate the discovery of content that truly matters, deliver trusted and authoritative insights to your audience and maximize monetization opportunities—whether through subscriptions, advertising or brand building.
The rules of engagement have changed. With expert.ai, you can stay ahead—and make every interaction count.
