Business
Publishers fear AI summaries are hitting online traffic
Suzanne BearneTechnology Reporter
Getty ImagesWhen actress Sorcha Cusack left the BBC drama Father Brown in January, it made headlines, including for the newspapers owned by Reach, among them The Mirror, and the Daily Express.
But the story did not generate the traction the Reach newspapers would have expected a year ago, or even at the start of the year.
Reach put this down to AI Overviews (AIO) – the AI summary at the top of the Google results page.
Instead of clicking through to the story on a Reach newspaper site, readers were happy with the AI overview.
The feature is a concern for newspapers and other media publishers, who have already seen much of their advertising revenue siphoned off by social media.
In a tough market, readers coming via Google search is a valuable source of traffic.
“A major worry, backed by some individual datapoints, has been that AI overviews would lead to fewer people clicking through to the content behind them, with negative knock-on effects for publishers,” says Dr Felix Simon, research fellow in AI and news at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford.
He points out that it’s hard to know the scale of the problem, as Google does not publish data on click-through rates.
DMG Media, owner of MailOnline, Metro and other outlets, said AIO resulted in a fall in click-through-rates by as much as 89%, in a statement to the Competition and Markets Authority made in July.
It means publishers are not being fairly rewarded for their work, says David Higgerson, chief digital publisher at Reach.
“Publishers provide the accurate, timely, trustworthy content that basically fuels Google, and in return we get a click… that hopefully we can monetise to our subscription service.
“Now with Google Overviews it’s reducing the need for somebody to click through to us in the first place, but for no financial benefit for the publisher.”
“It’s another example of the distributor of information not being the creator of information but taking all the financial reward for it.”
There is also concern over Google’s new tool called AI Mode, which shows search results in a conversational style with far fewer links than traditional search.
“If Google flips onto full AI Mode, and there is a big uptake in that…that [will be] completely quite devastating for the industry,” says Mr Higgerson.
Getty Images“We are definitely moving into the era of lower clicks and lower referral traffic for publishers,” says Stuart Forrest, global director of SEO digital publishing at Bauer Media.
“For most of the last decade Google has introduced more and more features into the SERP [Search Engine Results Page], which reduces the need for consumers to visit a website. That is the challenge that we as a sector face.”
Mr Forrest says he hasn’t noticed a drop in traffic across Bauer’s sites, which include brands Grazia and Empire, as a result of the overview feature. But that could change.
“I absolutely think that as time goes on, as consumers get used to these panels, it’s without doubt going to be a challenge. We are absolutely behaving as if we have to respond to that threat.”
In its defence, a Google spokesperson said: “More than any other company, Google prioritises sending traffic to the web, and we continue to send billions of clicks to websites every day.
In an August blog post, Google’s head of search Liz Reid said the volume of clicks from Google search to websites had been “relatively stable” year-over-year.
She also said the number of quality of clicks had improved slightly compared to a year ago – quality clicks are when a user does not immediately click back from the link.
“With AI Overviews, people are searching more and asking new questions that are often longer and more complex. In addition, with AI Overviews people are seeing more links on the page than before. More queries and more links mean more opportunities for websites to surface and get clicked,” she said in the blog.
Some in the publishing industry are turning to the courts for redress.
In July, a group of organisations including the Independent Publishers Alliance, tech justice non-profit Foxglove, and the campaign group Movement for an Open Web filed a legal complaint to the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority alleging that Google AI Overviews is using publishers’ content at a cost to the newspapers.
It is asking the CMA to introduce interim measures to prevent Google from “misusing” publisher content in AI-generated responses.
In the meantime publishers are trying to understand how to feature in AIO and hopeful win some click-throughs.
“Google doesn’t give us a manual on how to do it. We have to run tests and optimise copy in a way that doesn’t damage the primary purpose of the content, which is to satisfy a reader’s desire for information,” explains Mr Higgerson.
“We need to make sure that it’s us being cited and not our rivals,” says Mr Forrest. “Things like writing good quality content… it’s amazing the number of publishers that just give up on that.”
Like other publishers, Reach is looking at other ways to build traffic to its news platforms.
“We need to go and find where audiences are elsewhere and build relationships with them there. We’ve got millions of people who receive our alerts on WhatsApp,” Mr Higgerson says.
“We’ve built newsletters. It’s all about giving people what they want when they’re on our website and our brand, so the next time they’re looking, hopefully they aren’t going to a third party to get to us.”
TOKYO: Japanese carmaker Honda Motor will make India a global manufacturing hub for its upcoming electric, Honda 0 α (alpha), whose prototype was unveiled at the Japan Mobility Show.The car has been developed for the Indian and Japanese markets, apart from other Asian countries. Its India debut will be in fiscal 2026-27. Honda Motor Co president and global CEO Toshihiro Mibe said the launch will further the company’s goal to achieve carbon neutrality and zero traffic collision fatalities worldwide by 2050.Honda 0 α (alpha) will be manufactured at Honda’s plant in Alwar, Rajasthan. Honda also launched other electric prototypes, including a green saloon. Honda India MD and CEO Takashi Nakajima said India is one of the top three markets for the company globally in terms of corporate focus and investments. Speaking on the eve of Honda’s new car launch at the Japan Mobility Show, Nakajima said, “Our top management has decided to focus on India among the three key markets for Honda’s future growth alongside the US and Japan.” Nakajima acknowledged that while Honda’s business scale in India is still low compared to the US or Japan, its future ambitions are substantial.He admitted that expanding the product line-up in India will take several years, but hinted at imminent progress. “India is one of the most promising and exciting markets in the world today. Our two-wheeler business is already very big, and now we aim to pursue strong growth in our four-wheel business by building both brand and volumes.” On ethanol blending, Nakajima said that while the higher ratio of ethanol posed challenges, Honda’s engineers were up to it. (The writer is in Tokyo at the invitation of Honda Motor Co.)
The titans of the technology sector are ramping up their spending on artificial intelligence, as they rush to reap the benefits of an AI boom that has pushed stocks to record highs.
Earnings reports from Meta, Alphabet and Microsoft on Wednesday reaffirmed the colossal amounts of money these firms are shelling out for everything from data centres to chips, even as questions swirl about returns on the investments.
Meta said its capital expenditures for 2025 will be between $70bn (£53bn) to $72bn, up from an earlier estimate of $66bn to $72bn.
Its spending growth in 2026 is poised to be “notably larger” than this year, the company said. Meta is seeking to compete with companies like OpenAI.
On a call with analysts, Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg defended the firm’s investments, saying he saw big opportunities ahead driven by AI, both in terms of new products and for honing its current business selling ads and feeding people content.
“The right thing to do is accelerate this,” he said, adding later: “We are sort of perennially operating the family of apps and ads business in a compute-starved state at this point.”
Google and YouTube owner Alphabet similarly raised its forecast for this year to $91bn to $93bn, up from an earlier outlook of $85bn in the summer, in the latest sign of its increasingly lofty spending goals,
That estimate is nearly double the capital expenditures that the company reported for 2024.
Microsoft’s capital expenditures in the quarter through to 30 September, including on data centres, totalled $34.9bn, the company reported on Wednesday – a larger spending figure than analysts had expected, and up from $24 billion in the previous quarter.
“We continue to increase our investments in AI across both capital and talent to meet the massive opportunity ahead,” Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, said.
Azure, the firm’s cloud computing unit, and Microsoft’s other AI products have a “real-world impact”, Mr Nadella said.
Exuberance among investors about massive AI spending has helped all three tech firms outperform the broader S&P 500 index.
But Wall Street is also focused on whether these firms’ investments are starting to yield tangible returns.
The two things holding up the US economy in the last several months have been consumers and AI-related business investments, said Aditya Bhave, senior US economist at Bank of America.
“To the extent that the latter remains strong, it’s a bullish signal for GDP growth,” he said.
U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary speaks during a press conference alongside U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz, discussing administration plans to lower drug costs, at the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C., U.S., Oct. 29, 2025.
Annabelle Gordon | Reuters
The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday said it will take steps to speed up the process of developing generic versions of complex biological drugs, in a bid to increase cheaper competition for expensive medicines and lower drug costs for Americans.
It’s the Trump administration’s latest move to rein in high prescription drug costs in the U.S., where medication prices are two-to-three times higher than those in other developed nations.
The move to support the development and approval of so-called biosimilars could be a blow to pharmaceutical companies, whose most profitable products are often biological products that treat serious and chronic diseases. The exact impact will depend on the drugmaker and its products.
In a statement on Wednesday, a Health and Human Services Department spokesperson said the law gives manufacturers 12 years of exclusivity for biologic medicines, which is a “primary determining factor in drug development decision-making.”
“No manufacturer should anticipate a monopoly or anything else beyond what is legally granted,” the spokesperson said.
The FDA’s new reforms “will take the five-to-eight year timeframe to bring a biosimilar to market and cut it in half,” the agency’s Commissioner Marty Makary said during a press conference on Wednesday.
During the event, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the FDA has an “outdated and burdensome approval process that has slowed down the entry of biosimilars.” He said “even when [the drugs] do get approved, current laws often prevent pharmacists or patients from substituting them for patients who would benefit from a more affordable option.”
“That all ends today, a the FDA is taking bold, decisive action to break down these barriers and open the markets for real competition,” Kennedy said.
Biological products are engineered with living cells, which makes manufacturing more complex than for chemically derived drugs. Biologics have a special pathway to FDA approval, and it is harder for generic drug manufacturers to sell cheaper versions due to the high costs of development and difficult regulatory landscape.
Biologic medications make up only 5% of prescriptions in the U.S., but account for 51% of total drug spending as of 2024, according to an FDA release. FDA-approved biosimilars are as safe and effective as their branded counterparts, yet their market share remains below 20%, the agency added. The FDA said it has so far approved 76 biosimilars, making up only a small fraction of approved biologic drugs.
Kennedy said biosimilars, on average, cost half the price of their branded counterparts. Their entry into the market drives down brand-name drug prices by another 25%, which is a “real relief for patients,” he added.
Biosimilar generics saved $20 billion in U.S. health-care costs last year alone, the FDA said.
In a new draft guidance, the FDA proposed major updates to simplify biosimilar studies. For example, the agency recommended that human studies directly comparing the biosimilar to a branded product may not be necessary for drug companies to conduct. That research takes years and costs tens of millions of dollars.
Biosimilars have historically struggled to gain market share from their branded counterparts compared to generic copies of small-molecule drugs, which are often delivered in pill form and can enter cells easily because it has a low molecular weight.
The difference is that many biosimilars aren’t identical copies of branded biologic drugs, while generics are.
In many cases, pharmacists can’t directly substitute a branded biologic for a biosimilar when filling a prescription unless they are classified as “interchangeable” and it is permitted by state law.
But the FDA on Wednesday said it generally recommends against requiring so-called “switching studies,” which determine whether biosimilars have that classification. That step is not required for generic copies of small-molecule drugs.
“These additional studies can slow development and create public confusion about biosimilar safety,” the FDA said in a release.
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