News media compete for attention, but it’s unclear what company will win

By Dr. Merja Myllylahti

Senior Lecturer and Co-Director of Journalism, Media, and Democracy (JMAD) Research Center

Auckland University of Technology (AUT)

Auckland, New Zealand

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Something Axios CEO Jim VandeHei said when he justified company layoffs caught my eye. He noted: "Reader attention is scattering across social, podcasts, individual creators and influencers, partisan Web sites, and more."

This, he said, combined with AI models and chatbots has created "the most difficult moment for media in our lifetime."

Indeed, the reader attention is scattered and will be more dispersed in the future.

Media companies are grappling with countless challenges and distractions, making it harder than ever to capture reader attention.

In 2019, I wrote an academic article and INMA report about the fragmentation of attention. It discussed how news media can cope in an attention economy where attention has become a "scarce and fluid commodity" moving between news companies and platforms and from platform to platform.

I observed that attention "is affected by new technologies and algorithmic changes," making "extracting monetary value from platform attention challenging."

Jump to 2024, and the news media is increasingly participating in attentional gymnastics. No one knows who the top performer will be and who will reap the monetary benefits, or who will be paying for attention in a market where attention is scarce.

What we do know is that the new search functions and AI services will further complicate the picture.

First, news receives less attention on new generative search engines and chatbots than previously. My ongoing research shows news diversity in Google's and Microsoft's generative search engines has shrunk, and both are offering more content from other news sources.

What is concerning is what the new search functions, including chatbots, offer as news sources. As I found, they increasingly link to random, non-news sources - providing information about betting, weather, forex exchange rates, and press releases.

Second, the ecosystem where the audiences potentially pay attention to the news is rapidly fragmenting as new AI-powered services and search engines are popping up. For example, Meta has launched its Meta AI product. When releasing its second-quarter earnings, Meta said that AI has already helped it boost digital advertising revenue because people are paying more attention to its re-engineered recommendation system.

Furthermore, OpenAI is working to launch its own search engine to rival Google. It has been trialling a search feature offering real-time, up-to-date information and links in its ChatGPT service. OpenAI says SearchGPT is "designed to help users connect with publishers by prominently citing and linking to them in searches," promising attributions and links to news information.

OpenAI has already formed some partnerships to pay for news companies such as The Atlantic and News Corp for the use of their content (to train its systems). However, how the attention is monetised and paid in its new search function and services is unknown. Perhaps some clarity comes from the court case with The New York Times.

Meanwhile, Perplexity, offers an example of attention monetisation. It has opted to share advertising revenue with news publishers after a well-published controversy. How much news publishes will gain revenue from this revenue-sharing scheme remains to be seen.

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About Dr. Merja Myllylahti

Dr. Merja Myllylahti is a senior lecturer and co-director of the Journalism, Media, and Democracy (JMAD) Research Center at Auckland University of Technology (AUT) and project manager at AUT's Research Centre for Journalism, Media, and Democracy in Auckland, New Zealand. She can be reached at ‎[email protected] or @Myllyme.

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