Source: Simon Owens's Media Newsletter
Affiliate review sites are shifting to video because Google's AI Overviews and generative search results are collapsing the SEO moat that made text-based rankings profitable. Written comparisons lose value when an LLM summarizes them first. Video introduces friction that AI can't yet easily replicate at scale, buying these publishers time. But it also signals a deeper fragmentation in how consumers discover products. Instead of a unified search funnel, brands now face splintered discovery across platform-native formats—TikTok, YouTube—rather than organic search dominance. Economic value is transferring from publisher networks to platform algorithms, with affiliate margins compressed by AI on one end and platform dependency on the other.