Traffic to the websites for many publishers has dropped precipitously as Google has pushed the rollout of its Gemini artificial intelligence summaries atop search results. Now, the search giant is throwing a revenue bone to those sites.
The tech giant has launched Offerwall, a tool that will let publishers monetize their content in ways beyond impression-based advertising. Those can range from micropayments to taking surveys. Other options include signing up for newsletters or watching a short advertisement.
“These options empower audiences to decide how they want to access publishers’ sites and help ensure diverse content remains available to everyone,” Google wrote in a blog post.
The feature — which was tested with 1,000 publishers over the past year, Google says — is now available for free in Google Ad Manager.
Google is touting the service as a benefit for publishers of all sizes, but especially smaller ones “that might not have the resources or infrastructure to set up diverse revenue streams.” Google claims publishers who have implemented Offerwall have seen an average revenue uplift of 9%, but did not offer details on the size of those publishers.
Large publishers might be less enthusiastic about Offerwall. Micropayments have been floated as an alternative for years by publishers, but have never worked well with readers, as news sites are generally seen as a collection of information, rather than a reader hit-and-run. Publishers see more value in recurring revenue, which is generated from subscriptions.
Written by Chris Morris for Fortune as “Google launches Offerwall, a money lifeline for publishers as AI eats into their advertising revenue” and republished with permission.
