Hello from the team at Press Gazette on Monday, 12 January. Here’s our daily round-up of media news.

📝SEO is on the way out and original reporting is on the up.

This is one takeaway from the latest Reuters Institute Journalism Trends and Predictions Report for 2026 out today.

It reveals that traffic from Google Search is down around a third year on year worldwide as the tech giant has instead become a publisher itself providing readers with AI-written versions of the content it indexes.

Any user of Google will know that these AI summaries are shonky. And it appears fewer internet users are venturing beyond these often inaccurate approximations of journalism to the real work that lies beneath it.

The Reuters report reveals that publishers plan to focus less on SEO in the year ahead and more on the likes of Youtube, Tiktok and Instagram as platforms for audience growth. It also reveals that original reporting, live events and more creator-style content are high on the agenda as publishers seek to compete in the AI era.

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🤖 One thing publishers need to create less of in 2026 is misleading, AI-generated articles dreamed up by sketchy PR companies.

With this end in mind Press Gazette has today named and shamed more than 50 widely-quoted experts who we strongly believe do not exist. Together they have gained more than 1,000 mentions in mainstream UK media for brands that are deploying these likely AI-generated individuals in the name of SEO.

Once exposed, these experts tend to disappear. The only way to stop more appearing is for editors and journalists to start treating anything that comes to them via email with a high degree of scepticism.

Do quoted experts have the sort of social media footprint that suggests they are real human beings? Does the PR company behind them respond to emails and have a website that looks vaguely legit?

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📈 And finally, we have some intriguing news from the AOP, which reports that online display advertising revenue overtook subscriptions in the third quarter of 2025 for a group of leading online publishers.

This is surprising given what we know about falling online referral traffic last year (as revealed in the Reuters Institute report).

And it is an encouraging sign that marketers may be turning back to professional content after years in which the bogus brand safety industry has taken a big bite out of news industry revenues.

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🤏News In Brief

Stylist editorial director Lisa Smosarski has been promoted to managing director to lead growth of memberships, its B2B insights offering and brand partnerships. (Press Gazette)

This week’s Foresight News diary includes the Scottish budget and Australian Open as key events leading the news agenda this week. (Press Gazette)

Newsletter platform Beehiiv plans to double the size of its in-house advertising team in the first half of 2026 as it looks to scale a fast-growing revenue stream for both the company and creators on its platform. (Adweek)