The phenomenon is by no means limited to the media industry, but it has had a particularly pernicious effect on the space. For one, investors’ faith in publishers’ advertising businesses has plummeted in recent years, undercut by the threats of generative artificial intelligence and declining traffic referrals. This has devalued any media firm with an advertising business, with those more reliant on advertising suffering more than their diversified peers.The gap is further widened by misleading precedents. For example, most of the deals that have happened in the business-to-business media space over…
