How to talk to advertisers about AI

Too little attention has been given by the media to how AI is impacting advertisers.

If you are worried about a zero-click future on Google search, after all of the time spent optimizing for SEO – so are they.

The reality is that AI has made niche media’s brand-building channels more important than ever.

Show them the data

The data, from one of  Neil Patel’s recent (July 7, 205) live webinars on LinkedIn, aimed at business marketers, tells a story they already began to hear from other sources:

• 60% of searches already end in zero clicks, even for pages ranked at the top of organic search (SparkToo)

• Users skim summaries and get what they want

• CTRs falling fast.

•Direct queries into bots like ChatGPT and Perplexity are a tiny, but growing percentage (.49% in one small study), but account for a disproportionate number of conversions (11% in that same study).

Large agencies starting to respond

While Digiday predicts they will eventually shift budgets from traditional search into brand-building campaigns, they also note that large agencies they talked to have yet to pull the trigger.  

That’s in part because their infrastructure and revenue models are highly invested in selling search-oriented products. Newsletter sponsorships, however, passed programmatic advertising for the first time in late 2025, as even larger marketers have moved into the category.

Niche publishers are more nimble and don’t have this issue, so time to start talking to customers and asking about the search spend. Brand advertising with a compelling value proposition is going to drive GPT queries to comparable companies, along with direct response, as the customer journey changes.

What businesses want to hear from publishers

In a sentence, what they want to hear is how you can help.

Not how much they can now do with AI-powered marketing tools,  or why media won’t be replaced, but how you will address their new, very real, very disruptive situation.

They, like you, have optimized the website for a top ten Google ranking, hired bloggers to help, bought SEO tools, and, in competitive categories, mastered Google AdWords.

Now what?

One approach is just to hammer on about the power of print. We suggest connecting the advertiser’s problem to the solutions you offer in the niche:  Specialized print that bypasses online (and has brand superpowers), newsletters that supply a direct relationship with the most engaged in the niche,  expertise in what the audience responds to, and content marketing from an in-house team of experts across channels.  Take advantage of the opportunity.

What do publishers have that businesses need more of?

1. Brand Advertising

A strong brand and compelling value proposition will generate direct views of their website and keep them on the top when customers are comparison shopping on GPT.

2. Print

Yes, print is one of the brand builders. All the studies show that as a “slow” and tactile medium, it’s great for shaping purchasing preferences and improving recall. Have these reports on hand as digital natives enthralled by bottom-of-the-funnel clicks begin to look for new options.

3.  Newsletters and websites with direct traffic

If your niche media has direct traffic – and your sales people should know this number – the website, too, is a great way to reach a niche audience. Publish the newsletters on your website to make sure that text ads in your newsletter have been ingested and are available to the new AI agents scraping your website.

However, newsletters on their own are an even more powerful way to reach a highly engaged audience.

4. Expertise to create a compelling value proposition

Experience from newsletter opens and clicks – and insights from writing about the industry – count more when these messages are needed, instead of SEO –  to differentiate companies.

Advertisers can put these messages prominently on their website, along with the advertising. AI is scraping their websites along with other information to create comparisons.

5. Content marketing & lead generation

Where is all that SEO advertising money going to go?

Instead of content marketing designed for SERP,  businesses need help creating content that will attract their own newsletter opt-ins. They may be interested in starting newsletters of their own to replace search as a way to reach customers.

Today, writing and audio/video skills are more important than ever.

Even if it does not show up high enough in search results to matter, if it shows up for comparison shoppers and drives opt-ins, it’s a win.