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Media companies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars every month to buy the search traffic they used to get for free, according to Similarweb data shared with ADWEEK, as organic referrals continue to erode amid a broader shift toward zero-click search.
The spending increase is more targeted than it might appear, focusing on specific corners of digital publishing where the economics of buying traffic make sense, according to interviews with four data and search engine analysts.
According to Similarweb, in July 2026, publishers in its Top 100 Media index spent an estimated $113 million on paid search, where publishers pay Google a low cost per click so their articles show up in specific searches, driving more visitors to their sites, which they monetize with advertising, commerce, or subscriptions.
That figure is up 41% year over year and 274% over the past three years. As you would expect, paid search traffic to those sites climbed in tandem, up 39% year over year to 23.7 million visits in July, a 148% increase over three years.
“We do see a surge in pay-per-click spending recently—basically since April—that has ramped up,” said David Carr, editor of news insights and research at Similarweb.
The pattern shows up at the publisher level as well. Forbes spent an estimated $72.2 million on paid search in July, up 34% year over year and more than eightfold over three years, according to Similarweb data. The New York Times more than doubled its paid search spend year over year, to $11.3 million.
Meanwhile, organic search referrals fell for many of the same publishers over the same period. Forbes’ organic traffic dropped 26.7% year over year, CNN’s fell 28.9%, and USA Today’s declined 24.1%, per Similarweb.
Similarweb data only stretches back three years, which makes it difficult to tell exactly how unprecedented the current levels of spend are.
The strategy is certainly not novel, as publishers have used paid ads and traffic arbitrage for years. Last November, executives at a Digiday Publishing Summit told attendees that they “need to get good at buying traffic, because that’s going to be essentially one of the biggest ways of getting traffic.”
