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Business Insider CEO to monetise non-website audience | Google gives publishers 'prisoner's dilemma'
And People Inc CEO Neil Vogel explains why publisher isn't blocking Google - yet
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Welcome to the Press Gazette Future of Media US newsletter on Friday, 7 August.
💡New Business Insider CEO Christian Baesler is a man with a plan.
Business Insider has been hit hard by traffic drops from AI disruption and platform changes, cutting 21% of staff in May 2025 so it can better “absorb that volatility”.
Its traffic has continued to fall and is down a further 44% since those layoffs.
But editorially it has already shifted away from its SEO-led, quick news past towards original reporting and scoops. The latter category made up 40% of output two years ago and is up to 80% today, the publisher says.
Instead he will use his Buzzfeed know-how to build a more integrated, cross-platform sell for partners.
He also spoke about the need to be essential in various deep business niches and new editorial franchises are being built out to facilitate that and ultimately boost paid subscriptions.
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❌ Reports last month suggested People Inc was on the verge of blocking Google’s crawlers - even for search.
CEO Neil Vogel has now made clear that yes, this is being considered, but no, not yet. Google still provides 21% of traffic to core People Inc brands and that’s not to be sniffed at.
But he remains unhappy at the lack of value exchange from Google’s AI products and said: “What we’re really trying to do is just get to a fair economic deal for the use of our content.”
It’s a point echoed this week by News Corp CEO Robert Thomson who said his company is “taking aggressive action against those who pilfer and profit from our work” and warned “companies that are clients of these crass kleptomaniacs should know they are patently in possession of stolen goods”.
Vogel made his comments as People Inc announced fourth quarter revenue down 2% year on year and unveiled plans to grow online subscriptions revenue.
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📝 Google is doing deals with major publishers in the UK - but not licensing deals as we usually think of them.
The tech giant is essentially updating its previous News Showcase partnerships to allow access for AI training and summaries, which Digital Content Next CEO Jason Kint told us is Google “trying to bundle rights into larger deals because if they had to pay everybody for licensing their content, then that affects their margins in a material way”.
The deals last two years, by which time Google may have seen off the AI competition and any prospect of creating a more competitive market for publisher content could be over. But the take-it-or-leave-it deals are proving hard to refuse.
One source described it to use as a no-win “prisoner’s dilemma” for publishers.
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