Captify global data science and insights director Sam Coates speaking at IAB UK Techtonic panel on Wednesday 21 January 2026. Picture: Ben Stevens Photography/IAB UK
Publishers have been told the era of conversational search can be a “huge opportunity” for them if they harness user intent data.
The Express website is among the publisher brands that have added AI-powered search bars allowing users to ask questions and receive detailed answers instead of simple links to stories.
Conversational search was discussed during a panel on the future of publisher models in an AI world, moderated by Press Gazette UK editor Charlotte Tobitt, at IAB UK’s Techtonic adtech event in London on Wednesday.
Sam Coates, global director of insight and analytics at Captify, which uses search data to help publishers like The Independent and Future understand the intent of their audiences, told the panel there is a “flipside” to the “very negative” narrative about traffic declines.
He explained that “the traffic that is coming through is likely to have stronger intent attached to it. So there’s opportunities there. And for us, our USP is search intent so the conversational nature of search is a huge opportunity.
“We’re moving from single keywords, short, concise, what people want, to long, string format conversations, from which we can understand perception, sentiment and get a far stronger understanding of the audiences, which can benefit both the brands trying to reach people, but also the publishers trying to understand who they’re talking to, what that audience is looking for, and how they can carve out a niche with them.”
The “biggest risk in terms of what’s going to change”, Coates added, is in the “broad, informational kind of questions”. This includes, for example, SEO-led queries about what time the Superbowl was due to start.
Coates said that instead the opportunity is in “building communities, building direct relationships, moving away from rented traffic and owning that space, not only on the website, but also across multiple platforms” as well as “leaning into formats that AI doesn’t typically perform as well in, so quality video, audio”.
Reach chief product and technology officer Terry Hornsby noted that the impact of Google’s AI Mode and large language models like ChatGPT is “vastly different between publishers”.
“Google Discover for publishers is generally not a great place to be but that’s not [an] AI [issue],” he said.
[Read more: Google now prioritising Youtube and X over publishers on Discover ]
What publishers need to do, he said, is think about how to “adapt to that conversational search… we’re looking at how do we keep our users in that conversational piece, even on our websites.”
He added that the Express now has an AI search bar called Deeper Dive, which can reply in a more conversational way to users and recommend related content.
Hornsby said users are spending more time on the site “because they’re asking questions”.
Reach chief product and technology officer Terry Hornsby speaking at IAB UK Techtonic panel on Wednesday 21 January 2026. Picture: Ben Stevens Photography/IAB UK
Total minutes spent by UK users on the Express website in November was up 94% year on year to 129.8 million minutes – larger than its audience growth of 25.4%.
Hornsby suggested publishers will need to meet the challenge that “the traditional web page won’t be a traditional web page anymore. It will be personalised or it will be a conversation.”
Hornsby also said Reach is looking at how it can use AI to make the most of its historic newspaper archives for people paying for its new subscriptions on the Manchester Evening News, Liverpool Echo, Wales Online and more to follow.
“These LLMs don’t have the content, right, and we have content of what happened in 1966 on a street in Liverpool. That stuff’s got to be brought out. So that’s the exciting stuff for us, is just being able to enrich and give value back to the user, so they subscribe and become members.”
Example of conversational search answer about the Beckhams on Express website
Amy Brown, commercial director at Hearst UK, told the panel that the magazine publisher is “very much moving from subscribers and users into memberships”.
Hearst UK has membership offerings, which include perks and community features that go beyond standard subscriptions, on Elle , Women’s Health, Men’s Health , Runner’s World and Good Housekeeping .
“So we’re trying to drive our customers to become much more engaged with our brands on many different levels,” Brown continued.
“And then a big part of that is moving beyond traditional publishing. So lots of publishers are moving into things like events where, again, people attend in real life and they really feel like they’re part of your brand.
“We’re very lucky that we’ve got some great heritage brands that people do want to be part of… what’s great is we can then use AI to learn from those audiences and learn what they want and then provide more of what they want. So AI will actually help us in that.”
In December Good Housekeeping launched a new Kitchen app and Brown said an AI tool was used to tag 6,000 recipes with the aim of boosting user engagement by making it easier for them to find more content.
“I think that’s just one small example of all these quick fixes that we can find across the business,” Brown said.
“Another one is creating our library of content. So I know that they’re now creating a huge library, again, tagging it all using AI tools to ensure that we can access all our historical content really quickly.”
Panel on ‘The future of publisher models in the wake of AI’ at IAB UK Techtonic event in London on Wednesday 21 January 2026. From left to right: Press Gazette UK editor Charlotte Tobitt, Hearst UK commercial director Amy Brown, Captify global data science and insights director Sam Coates, and Reach chief product and technology officer Terry Hornsby. Picture: Ben Stevens Photography/IAB UK
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