Bot Traffic Jam: What Often-Unprotected Publishers Need To Know
AI scraping isn’t the only behind-the-scenes bot activity that publishers need to keep an eye on.
Of course, any business — publishing or otherwise — is susceptible to these bots, which DataDome calls “the most relentless threats to online businesses and a primary driver of digital fraud.”
In fact, according to its 2025 Global Bot Security Report, large language model (LLM) crawler traffic (usually associated with genAI training) has nearly quadrupled across its customer base, from 2.6% of all verified bot traffic in January to over 10% by August.
Rethinking Subscriber Growth; AI As The Publisher’s Edge
I believe AI can help publishers perform at scale. Rather than fear the risks associated with AI, how can we embrace it for the opportunities it presents?
Good News/Bad News On Where Americans Are Getting Their News
At a time when many Americans no longer read newspapers, the percentage citing social-media apps as their regular source of news has been growing, according to new data from the Pew Research Center. In fact, X has the greatest percentage of users regularly getting their news there — 57% — although that is down slightly from a high of 59%.
Improving customer experience (CX) increases revenue while reducing customer-related expenses, making customer-centricity fundamental to operational strategy. Subsequently, marketing leaders are prioritizing more alignment and collaboration with CX and customer service to better understand and extend their reach across the customer lifecycle. However, organizational silos, different KPIs, and disconnected tools and data prevent long-term alignment, blocking business benefits.
