The rapid rollout of AI-generated summaries, chat-style search and platform-native answers has created a sudden, structural change which publishers need to react to.
Publishing is an industry used to embracing change and adapting to the future. Since the dawn of the internet, publishers have successfully evolved their business models, and expanded their offerings to readers across online, social, audio and visual channels.
The rise of AI is now another seismic change for the industry to adapt to after the past decade where we have relied on SEO and search to generate views and stable advertising revenue.
In 2025, the industry came together in a way we haven’t seen before – collectively fighting for the rights of creators and independently beginning to make the vital adaptations needed to thrive in this new world.
For 2026, the PPA is focused on helping its members in this journey by representing their interests and sharing practical and actionable insights, to build resilient, multi-channel strategies fit for an AI future.
The 2025 AI shock
AI-generated answers fundamentally altered the role of search engines, shifting them from directories that sent users to publisher websites into ecosystems that encourage users to stay on their own platforms.
Tools such as AI Overviews and AI Mode synthesised publisher content directly into answers, often removing the need for users to click through to original sources.
Research by Authoritas showed that AI Overviews reduced click-through rates by up to 57%, accelerating the need for publishers to diversify how audiences discover and engage with their brands.
The experience of publishers
These changes led to major difficulties for publishing business models. For example, an automotive publisher invested heavily in 2025 into high-quality benchmarking content, but experienced a 25% drop in traffic from organic search, despite a 7% increase in overall search visibility.
They weren’t alone – indeed Enders Analysis found that around half of media groups reported a decline in search traffic over the past year, thanks to AI Overviews impacting website visits.
Why policy is critical
The fundamental injustice is that the big tech companies which are now threatening publishers’ business models have built their very product on our publishers’ work. All major AI models need our high-quality content for training, and the vast majority of that content has been taken without consent or remuneration.
In this way, generative AI raised fundamentally different issues from previous waves of digital innovation because it relied on the systematic theft and reuse of copyrighted works at scale. Evidence from a Miso.ai study which the PPA participated in showed widespread violations even where publishers attempted to block AI crawlers, including:
- 15–20% article violations,
- 65–77% homepage news violations, and
- 35–66% image violations, including breaches of paywalled content
This means that journalists aren’t properly compensated for the content they produce and it actively threatens the UK’s £4.4bn publishing industry which employs 55,000 people.
It’s also incredibly short-sighted as it would ultimately undermine the high-quality content on which AI systems themselves depend.
Government (in)action
The scale and speed of AI-driven disruption mean this needs to be an area of clear and decisive government leadership from the outset.
The UK has long held a global reputation for its gold-standard copyright framework, providing confidence and protection for creators, publishers and investors alike.
That legacy made it all the more striking that early proposals from the government on AI and copyright failed to reflect the gravity of the situation.
The government had previously proposed broad text-and-data-mining exemptions and opt-out mechanisms, which would have been bad for rights holders.
The creative sector reacted with a real unity – leading with the ‘Make It Fair’ campaign, which gained enormous public support.
For the PPA specifically, it was a year of intense government advocacy, from giving evidence to parliament’s DCMS and DSIT committee on the impact of AI’s copyright breaches on the PPA’s members, and taking part in a government working-group consultation with Lisa Nandy.
Most recently, we’ve been working with our members to contribute evidence to the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) as part of its investigation into Google’s dominant position in search, where more than 90% of UK searches take place on its platform.
We presented evidence and case studies from PPA members to demonstrate the immediate market harms of AI Overviews and other Google AI products.
Our submission highlighted that publishers were experiencing rising impressions but falling click-through rates due to Google’s AI Overviews, challenging the long-established link between visibility and engagement.
As part of our submission, we made three recommendations calling for transparency around: crawling for content used in AI overviews, reporting when publisher content has been used, acquisition sources for Google Analytics and clear attribution and linking to publisher sources.
We were very pleased to see the CMA confirm Google’s Strategic Market Status (SMS) in search and advertising earlier in the year – the first application of new UK digital markets competition powers. This enables the regulator to pursue targeted interventions to improve competition and ensure fairer treatment of businesses that rely on Google’s services.
If these interventions are strong enough, they could be transformative for publishers: rather than being subject to unilateral algorithmic changes that erode referral traffic or marginalise trusted editorial content, publishers can gain a mechanism to at least influence the conditions of discovery which their business relies on.
We encourage members to engage actively with us during the CMA consultation process. That direct input will be crucial to ensuring we can share the protections to reflect the real-world business models and needs of UK publishers.
Adapting to innovation: publishing’s next chapter
It’s important to be clear that the PPA’s advocacy in 2025 was not about resisting technological progress or limiting innovation. Rather, the goal was to secure a predictable, pro-competition framework, one which creates growth for publishers and AI moving forward.
With that foundation in place, publishers have much to look forward to. In many respects, the ongoing AI transition has reinforced the value of trusted editorial brands, as audiences increasingly seek reliable information in an environment rife with synthetic content and misinformation.
The need to grasp this opportunity led the PPA to commission a major new report with Enders Analysis.
The purpose of the report was to move beyond anecdote and look “right back to the fundamentals” of people’s behaviour, what they do, what they trust, and what they value. The report found that 77% of users want to know if content has been created by AI, and that “authentic, personal, original” is the most valued attribute of human-generated content (81%).
The report also found that publishers should frame their strategy around four durable customer needs: trust, relevance, utility and community. Vitally, it also suggested that the winning strategies will be those that meet consumers where they are, with formats and services designed for how people actually behave now.
The opportunity
The opportunity for 2026 is therefore not just adaptation, but renewal: using this period of disruption to build stronger, more resilient relationships with audiences, anchored in trust and editorial quality.
The focus for the PPA will be to provide practical support for publishers in navigating this change. We will:
- Continue to act as an outspoken advocate for our members and the publishing industry with government, regulators and tech firms.
- Commission further independent research to provide actionable insights for publishers.
- Develop resources and run practical sessions to implement the latest best practices.
- Continue to directly consult members through the steering groups, sharing knowledge and building a more unified voice for the industry.
Vitally, we’re only strong collectively with our members engaged, and so we urge the entire industry to get involved in 2026 and help bring our sector forward together.
