As its AI previews cut referral traffic, Google’s looking to help publishers continue to generate income, via a new promotional offering that will enable them to effectively gate their content, in order to drive more subscriptions, showcase more ads, etc.
Google’s new “Offerwall” system gives web publishers the option to add an additional pop-up alert when users visit their website, providing another means to drive direct action.
As you can see in this example, with Offerwall, publishers can insert additional promotions between content access.
As explained by Google:
“When publishers choose to use Offerwall, they can offer audiences a number of ways to access content. People might decide to watch a short ad, complete a quick survey or pay in micro payments. Publishers can even add their own options, like newsletter sign-ups. These options empower audiences to decide how they want to access publishers’ sites and help ensure diverse content remains available to everyone.”
So it’s pop-up ads, controlled via Google, as opposed to inserting them on your own website.
Google says that publishers will be able to control where its Offerwall pop-ups appear, and can use URL exclusions to limit disrupton.
“You can also set thresholds to determine when site visitors will see the Offerwall message within a certain period of time, helping guard against showing the message too often.”
But even so, these are just pop-up ads, and given that disruptive pop-ups have never been popular, I’m not sure that this is going to be a major boost for most publishers, especially as a means to counter losses in traffic as a result of Google Answers.
Which have already been significant. According to a recent report from The Wall Street Journal, Google’s AI answers have cut referral traffic to some big-name publishers by 50% or more already, while other reports referred to by the BBC estimate that AI Overviews have cut website click-though rates from Google by between 30% and 70%.
And with more Google AI products coming online, those impacts are expected to worsen over time.
Which is why Google’s now trying to offer alternatives, and additional pathways to keep publishers making money, and keep them fueling its search results. Because without the content to fuel its system, Google won’t have anything to show users, and there is a risk that the system could end up eating itself, by cutting revenue for the creators and publishers that have enabled those same AI systems.
Offerwall is another consideration on this front, providing a means to publishers to build their own audience lists via Google referrals, even if they click from an AI result.
“After testing with more than 1,000 publishers, Offerwall is now generally available in Ad Manager. We’re also introducing new features, including Optimize, which uses AI to determine when to show the Offerwall for each visitor to increase engagement and revenue.”
Yeah, I mean, it’s something, for sure, but it’s no different from enabling pop-ups on your own site, and there’s no reason to think that the click-through rates for such are going to be any different.
General click-throughs on pop-ups are pretty low, and if you gate your content, that could also risk annoying readers, as much as driving more growth opportunities.
But again, it is something, and with publishers seeking alternatives, this is another option on the table.
