WaPo kills its price-offer playbook, buys ads around journalists' video instead
Organic discovery is dying as an acquisition engine: Pew found click-throughs nearly halve when AI summaries appear, and news execs expect search traffic to drop 40% in three years. Washington Post hit that wall first and ditched its direct-response, price-led ads for journalist-driven video. The shift delivered more than 4x the return of previous acquisition approaches. Paid media's new job, the piece argues, is creating demand, not converting intent.