AI answers everything instantly. Traffic is dropping. Decision makers are questioning ROI. Content marketing, as we knew it, is fundamentally broken.
On SEOTalk Spaces Ep. 119, we set about to discover what brands must do to stay visible and profitable in an AI-first search world. We tried to break down how AI is reshaping the economics of content. From zero-click search to LLM visibility, from strategy shifts to new KPIs, we cover few aspects of content marketing.
The Cost-Value Paradox in Modern Content Creation
The traditional content marketing playbook has become unprofitable. Brands once spent significant resources researching keywords, hiring writers, optimizing content, and watching traffic grow.
That model seems to be collapsing under the weight of artificial intelligence.
Parth highlights a critical shift: “Two years ago, the cost of content production was way higher than what it is now.
Now the cost to produce content has reduced, and at the same time, the value of textual content has also gone down.”
The math no longer works. Production costs dropped by 90%. But content value dropped even faster.
Why Traditional Content Models Are Breaking Down
Brands can now churn out ten times the content at one-tenth of the cost. This sounds like progress until you realize the impact.
AI Overviews eliminate clicks. Zero-click searches keep users on search result pages. Large Language Models synthesize answers without attribution and so on.
Malhar started by posing a fundamental question marketers are avoiding: “AI is quietly making traditional content marketing economically unprofitable. What do you see around that?”
The answer reveals an uncomfortable truth. Evergreen content that drove thousands of monthly visits for years now struggles to generate half that traffic. The ROI of classic content models has just evaporated.
The Problem With Evergreen Content
Wikipedia demonstrates this shift perfectly. Its content quality hasn’t declined. Authority remains intact. Yet traffic has dropped significantly.
Parth explains: “Wikipedia has the most evergreen content, but the ROI of content on Wikipedia is not ROI positive anymore if we are thinking so.”
Users no longer visit websites when AI Overviews provide instant answers. Celebrity information, product comparisons, how-to guides, etc are all answered without a single click.
From Traffic to Mentions: The New Currency
Content value is shifting from traffic-driven metrics to mention-driven visibility.
Parth predicts: “We will clearly see a shift from traffic driven value to mentions or citations driven value. ROI would be calculated based on the influence of brand name, brand search demand, and brand mentions across multiple platforms.”
Large Language Models mention brands far more often than they cite or link back. This creates a new content economics centered on visibility without attribution.
The Content Strategy Problem
Content execution has become easier. Strategy has become the cost center.
Proma shared: “Execution and distribution are now taken care of thanks to AI. The biggest shift is that strategy is now the bigger cost center than execution.”
But strategy faces unprecedented challenges. LLM outputs change with every update. Prompts that worked yesterday fail today. Maintaining consistent brand voice across evolving AI models requires constant adaptation.
Malhar observed: “The prompt that worked for you yesterday, you cannot use the same prompt today because the LLM response will change. This is where the challenge of consistency comes in.”
Is AI SEO Just Noise?
Many marketers wonder if AI SEO conversations are premature.
Parth believes the timing is right: “We are discussing it at the right point because we are trying to understand what’s working and what’s not working.”
The key is balance.
Traditional SEO still drives traffic—maybe 50% less than before, but it’s real traffic that converts. Smart brands optimize that remaining traffic through conversion rate optimization while preparing for the AI-first future.
Deepak offered further clarity: “You don’t publish content to attract traffic now. The whole point of getting traffic from content is dead. Now you publish content to be relevant so that LLMs and any AI platform source you and recommend you as a trusted source.”
What Sustainable Content Strategy Looks Like
Content marketing survives through evolution. The winning approach combines several elements:
Polymorphic content represents the future. Kevin Indig at the Ahrefs Evolve conference coined this term for multi-format, multimodal content. Text alone won’t cut it. Brands need videos, podcasts, interactive calculators, and tools that provide genuine value.
Proma emphasizes: “If you really want people to come onto your platform, instead of making it text heavy, you have to make it resource heavy. Have calculators, resources, gated and ungated content.”
Frequent content refreshing matters more than ever. Quarterly content audits replace annual reviews. Information gain—the unique credibility factor—determines whether AI models cite your content.
Human-centric experiences differentiate brands. AI generates content easily, but human connection converts visitors.
Proma again notes: “It has to become more human at some point because it can’t be just all AI.”
The Path Forward for Brands
Revenue loss from textual content is real. But the answer isn’t abandoning content. It’s evolving content strategy.
Focus on conversion rate optimization for existing traffic. Use heat mapping and user behavior data to understand intent. Create content that answers questions AI can’t. Leverage proprietary research, unique data, brand-specific insights.
Deepak summarizes the mindset shift: “Even if you’re seeing 50% of your traffic, figure out how to keep them longer and get conversion rates higher. If conversion rate was 10%, notch it up to 30 or 40%.”
Content marketing isn’t dead. The economics just changed. Brands that adapt, will prioritizing mentions over clicks, strategy over execution and human connection over AI-generated text. Only they will thrive in this new landscape.
Key Takeaways
AI has fundamentally altered content marketing economics.
Production costs dropped, but so did content value. Traffic-driven metrics are giving way to mention-driven visibility. Evergreen content no longer guarantees returns. Strategy became the new cost center. Polymorphic, resource-heavy content that provides genuine human value represents the sustainable path forward.
The winners won’t be those who produce more content. They’ll be the brands that produce smarter content aligned with how AI models discover, cite, and recommend trusted sources.
Your Thoughts?
Listen To Ep. 119 of SEOTalk Spaces