Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch said he asked the company’s teams to plan as if search traffic was zero.
Lynch made the comments in a interview on TBPNan OpenAI technology talk show acquired in April. He described three consecutive years in which internal budget forecasts underestimated the actual decline in search traffic.
Lynch said:
“Each of the last three years, we were doing our budgets and we were forecasting a decline in search traffic… Because we saw the trend of algorithm changes. And usually, those algorithm changes were negative.”
“Every year our search traffic declined more than expected, so last year I told our teams, ‘Let’s pretend there’s no search.’ You have to plan your businesses as if there was no search.
Lynch told TBPN that Condé Nast does not expect search traffic to reach literally zero. He expects it to be a single-digit percentage of total traffic.
What has changed
Lynch described how the search results page changed, based on a comparison his team prepared for a recent board meeting. Lynch recalled:
“We took a snapshot of search results from seven or eight years ago. And what you saw was a few sponsored links and then the ten blue links.”
“Do the same search today, you get an AI overview, then you get lines and lines and lines of sponsored links, then you get sponsored items.”
He noted that someone recently asked him how research revenue could increase. “Have you done any research recently?” Lynch responded. “Basically, I have to go to the second page to get an organic result.”
Lynch acknowledged that changes in search traffic have affected Condé Nast’s business. The company continued to grow its revenue and profitability despite the decline, which he called a “headwind” rather than a crisis.
The dumbbell effect
Lynch described what he calls a dumbbell effect across Condé Nast’s portfolio. He says large, authoritative brands and small, niche publications with loyal audiences perform well. The marks taken in the middle are the most exposed.
“Vogue has grown every year that I’ve been in the business. It’s growing revenue, growing profitability every year,” Lynch said.
The New Yorker had its most successful year in its history, he added. On the other end of the line, Lynch pointed to Pitchfork, which accounts for about 1 percent of Condé Nast’s revenue but has a loyal audience in its category.
Lynch explained:
“If you’re trying to have an audience that’s too big, too broad, now’s not the time for that… You either have to be big and an authority in a big category… or you really have to target a specific niche where you have a loyal audience that’s willing to pay.”
Lynch added that brands in the middle of that bar, those that don’t have deep authority in a strong enough category or niche, don’t have a clear path forward.
He added:
“If you don’t have really strong authoritative brands, or brands that have a really strong niche in certain areas, or direct audiences, then you’re just going to fight this to the end.”
Replacement subscriptions
Condé Nast’s digital subscriptions grew revenue 29% last year, according to Lynch. The company has recorded double-digit growth, which continues this year.
Lynch noted that the company has increased subscription prices “pretty significantly” over the past two years. He expects retention to decrease with each increase. Instead, retention improves every year.
The company is also expanding subscriptions to smaller brands. Both Pitchfork and Tatler recently launched paid digital subscriptions.
Why it matters
Lynch’s comments are consistent with third-party measurements indicating that publishers’ research credentials are under pressure. Chartbeat data released in March showed that search SEO traffic fell 60% for small publishers over two years. A Reuters Institute investigation Media executives expect search traffic to decline by more than 40% over three years.
Liz Reid, vice president of search at Google, reframed these losses as well as reducing poor quality “bounce clicks”. Google has not shared data for publishers to support this claim.
Lynch’s directive carries weight because of the portfolio behind it. Condé Nast operates Vogue, The New Yorker, GQ, Vanity Fair, Architectural Digest, Condé Nast Traveler, Wired and Pitchfork, among others. When the CEO of a portfolio including these brands says teams should plan for zero search traffic, it gives industry data a real-world example from a major publisher.
Watching the barbell is important for anyone running a publisher caught between the two extremes. Lynch describes a version of the pressure tracked by Chartbeat’s size-segmented data. Small and mid-sized publishers without deep category authority or direct audience relationships face the steepest declines.
Looking to the future
Lynch told TBPN that the company has begun evaluating each brand’s plan for a low-search future. The company prioritizes brands that can lead the way without search traffic.
Lynch’s comments could put pressure on other major publishers to formalize similar planning. The trend data is consistent enough that budgeting for search decline is already common. Zero budgeting is a different level of preparation.
