Why Cheaping Out on Content Is a Terrible Idea
First off, I promise this isn’t about AI. I mean, it’s sort of about AI, but not in the way everything is About AI right now. What AI has done is brought a lot of long running trends to a head, and made them unavoidable. Those trends are towards maximal measurement, homogenization, and efficiency as the only metric that matters. One of the ways we’re seeing this play out is that a lot of folks are very excited about various ways to, finally, REALLY, cut costs, by reducing so-called “bullshit work,” which is to say, stuff that’s hard to tie directly to a P&L, which is to say things that are hard to quantize and measure, like content creation, especially writing. What this is about is how that is a terrible idea.
First off, I promise this isn’t about AI. I mean, it does involve AI; I’m going to say “AI” a whole bunch. But it’s not about how AI Changed The Game and Everything Is Different Now, so you can read it as a little break from wall-to-wall OMG AI discourse.
This is about why so many organizations seem super excited to cheap out on content, why this is a bad idea, and why I think the new paradigm in web search (ok, fine, AI search) is actually helping create a world where good content is very valuable.
The urge to cheap out on content comes from the incentives of the current online ecosystem. The ability of anyone to make money on the internet is heavily dependent on a small number of platforms, mostly Google and Meta (G&M from here on out), who both gatekeep content and run massive platforms to serve targeted advertisements. More or less, if you want to make money online, you’re probably reliant on one of these companies, either giving you money for hosting ads on your site, or by directing customers to your site so they can buy whatever you’re selling. G&M are essentially toll roads making money while providing the easiest paths for customers to reach online businesses. All of this ad and search activity takes place in competitive marketplaces with abundant data, which lowers both costs and revenue, putting pressure on businesses to cut costs everywhere. None of this is inherently sinister or bad! G&M provide services that many people find useful. But some time in the early 2000s, some businesses realized that if you can adequately game the toll keepers, you can do away with most of the products/services/useful information that were originally the whole point, and make money off of traffic and ads by, basically, tricking people into clicking your link, then giving them the runaround to keep them on your site long enough to rack up ad views. This is super efficient, getting something for close to nothing, and so has led to a situation where more and more of the internet has stopped trying to do much of anything other than game Google and Meta to achieve the cheapest possible click.
In this world, it’s easy for content to stick out as a problem. Everything has to be optimized around the needs of the system, which is to say, simplifying somewhat, SEO. SEO manages to be both simple and obscure. In order to get seen, sites need content and page metadata to use the keywords people are searching for. Ads are served based on the same keywords. Reciprocal links are important, as is traffic. The exact mix of these factors is constantly changing, to make it harder to cheat. Content has evolved to be simple, keyword heavy, and easy to change. Why spend a long time writing the perfect article, or an amazing product description? All that matters is getting a ping on a trending search term so your link can be one of the top results. Content exhibiting human messiness can be a problem. Spending any more time than absolutely necessary producing it starts to seem like a real drag.
It doesn’t help matters that many tech and business and business-tech/tech-business people are suspicious of writing. It’s either too easy and everyone can do it, or it’s too hard, it takes too long, and it doesn’t matter anyway. It’s hard to plan and measure content: how much time does it take to make good content? What effect does good content have? What does “good” even mean in this context? How many of these writers even went to MIT? Humbug!
What gets measured gets managed, and to admit that our ability to measure is extremely skewed by the nuts and bolts of Google’s online metrics is to call the paradigm into question. Anything that’s hard to measure must not be important, CAN’T be important, otherwise the whole thing collapses. I mean, it really doesn’t, but try arguing with an MBA about it.
So when we’re looking to cut costs, content seems like a good place to do it. Outsource it, or, even cheaper, just let AI do a good-enough job and cut all the hassle. The first AI use case I ever heard tech and business people get excited about was, “How about we fire all our writers?!” But AI didn’t cause this; they ALREADY wanted to fire all the writers.
This is all a massive mistake, because the quality of online content, especially writing, is becoming more important than ever before.
“Quality,” here, isn’t vague. It means three pretty specific things: content will need to do something for the user, not just trick them into a click, it will need to be clear, useful, and well organized, and it will need to be distinctive.
Even before AI search, Google and Meta were working hard to keep people on their platforms as much as possible. You’re not the customer of G or M. G&M’s customers are the businesses selling ads, and the best way to maximize ad views is to keep users right where they are, instead of sending them to a web page where they might not see any ads at all! Even a straightforward, non-AI Google search from four or five years ago surfaced information formatted to remove the need to really go anywhere. AI accelerated this evolution, and now a significant chunk of web traffic is looking at content parsed into a summary that is experienced without ever leaving the search or chat context. It seems likely this situation will continue developing apace. In a world with no clicks, there’s no point to clickbait. Content that merely exists to bring someone to a page and keep them there long enough to trigger an ad view is no longer content worth anything at all.
And AI enabled search is different in what it surfaces as well. AI search responds to structured, well organized content that responds directly to the sorts of questions a person might ask when searching. AI search rewards content that is in active communication with the audience, and with its context. Not just adding words to a page’s metadata, but constructing one side of a three way conversation with both the user and related content.
It also needs to communicate effectively. If you’re selling a product, for example, the content needs to describe that product. I’m always shocked by how many online stores fail at this basic task. There are understandable reasons for that, but if you want an AI search to pick up your product, and present it in a way that makes people want to buy it, the description you give needs to be both accurate and helpful. It’s the same for businesses that aim to inform or entertain. They need to talk about themselves in ways that make search recommend them, much like a person would recommend a movie they liked, if that friend also had encyclopedic knowledge of its cast, crew, production details, reviews, and streaming availability.
Finally, content needs to be distinctive. Marketing guru Byron Sharp has written on the importance of distinctive brand assets, and it’s pretty well accepted that “brand identity” is important. Companies spend eye watering amounts of money on branding. But, how do you be distinctive online if many users never even make it to your website? You can’t rely on visual design or innovative interaction design. All you have is what you say about yourself. Your voice needs to be authentic and strong enough to carry, no matter where, or how, it’s heard.
If you’ve recently spent any time on a corporate web site, news site, or, god help you, LinkedIn, the situation is DIRE. Corporate content, AI infused or not, is stripped of all personality, and, sometimes, even specific details that could prevent repurposing and reuse. Mid to low tier online news, even from many formerly reputable sites, is constructed entirely as clickbait. I’m not even going to try to get into the whole deal with online recipes. And professionals trying to keep up a posting schedule to maximize their views on LinkedIn are creating personal content in the style of the most annoying marketing SPAM, bland and unmemorable, everyone speaking in the same, interchangeable voice, and chopped into the shortest possible sentences.
Each on its own line.
Because that’s the way to add some drama.
I don’t relish being the bearer of this message.
But it’s the truth.
I owe you that much.
ANYWAY! Sorry. The point is, none of this stuff is distinctive. It’s also, for the most part, not useful, valuable, or interesting. And people don’t like it! Research finds that clickbaitheadlines and low quality content damage credibility, and that people are distrustful of AI generated news. On Amazon, a flood of AI books is driving reader backlash and getting worse metrics than human written works.
Meanwhile, over on Substack, regular people with expertise, insight, and/or an entertaining point of view are making actual money ($450 million in subscriber payments in 2025!) selling subscriptions for access to their writing. The New York Times, which has leaned into becoming a first-stop destination for paying subscribers, is making money, while the Washington Post, which has followed the typical Silicon-Valley-disruptor-efficiency playbook, is operating at a loss. And Reddit, where users upvote funny and insightful posts and comments while aggressively punishing anything that seems like SPAM, is growing at a rapid pace. We’re rapidly heading towards a reality, where anything with a point of view, that genuinely gives something valuable to readers, will shine out like a beacon for weary users AND drive measurable results. Arguably, we’re already there.
Actual people value trustworthiness and usefulness. Companies thrive on having distinct voices and identities. The needs of both people and businesses are completely mismatched with what our measurement/revenue framework has been rewarding. The paradigm is collapsing, because it’s stopped providing what anyone actually needs.
Search models will be tweaked to deprecate low quality content, and to reward useful and engaging content. It won’t be enough to trick someone into clicking a link, they’ll need to actually get what they’re looking for. The whole intermediated model that’s allowed people to make cheap money getting in between a user and their goal is rapidly changing. It’s possible, I think likely, that we’re about to accidentally create a world where the quality of content is both measurable and rewarded.
In the very near future, content will need to be structured, useful, descriptive, engaging, responsive to context, part of a conversation, authentic, and distinctive enough to convey identities and get messages across, wherever someone encounters it, even if it’s filtered through a Google summary. Simply put, it’ll need to be good. Like, really good.
Think about a time someone said something so perfect that you adopted it into your own vocabulary, a little piece of that person emerging whenever you talk about that subject. People my age pepper their speech with old ad slogans, Simpsons dialog, and Big Lebowski and Spinal Tap references. Young people use “brain rot” slang and memes. None of that is high art or great literature, but it’s all categorically different from the weird, sanded down, aerodyne mush that’s taken over so much online content. It’s all strong enough to survive years, decades, of blending and remixing, identity intact, because it’s all, in its own way, good writing; distinct, specific, memorable, and full of life. That’s what your content needs to be.