USA TODAY overhauls audience strategy, citing search pressure

USA TODAY is reorganizing its audience team after telling employees that search traffic is under pressure and platforms are increasingly keeping users from clicking through to publishers, according to internal memos. The restructuring coincided with a broader round of layoffs that executives said was necessary to adapt to changing audience behavior and the economics of digital publishing.

Search pressure reshaped the strategy. Monica Richardson, senior vice president of USA TODAY, tied the reorganization directly to changes in how audiences discover news.

She wrote that “growing audience by producing more content isn’t as effective as it once was,” adding that “search traffic is under pressure, and platforms are increasingly keeping user experiences to themselves instead of sending them back to us.” Richardson said USA TODAY’s current audience organization “was built for a different media landscape” and needed to change.

The memos do not mention Google specifically. But several publishers have seen declining search referrals and shifting audience behavior across search and other digital platforms, especially following the launch of AI Overviews in 2024.

New audience team. USA TODAY is replacing its existing audience organization with a new Audience and Digital Production Team focused on three areas:

• Central Production Desk to coordinate daily content production and publishing workflows.
• Content Pillars Audience Desk to grow audiences around the company’s core coverage areas.
• Strategic Platforms Desk to build off-platform audiences and manage platform relationships.

USA TODAY plans to hire a new executive editor of Audience and Digital Production, along with several audience positions, with the goal of having the team fully operational within six to eight weeks, Richardson also said.

Layoffs accompany broader changes. In a separate memo, Michael A. Anastasi, senior vice president of Local News, said the company had spent two days saying goodbye to colleagues whose positions were eliminated.

• The layoffs were part of an effort to align USA TODAY Co.’s cost structure with today’s business realities as publishers face rapid changes in audience behavior, technology, advertising, and revenue models, he said.

What they’re saying. SEO and AI search consultant Glenn Gabe said the memo suggests USA TODAY’s search challenges extend beyond the impact of AI-generated search experiences:

• “‘Search traffic is under pressure…’ Or… you’ve been impacted by algorithm updates over time and your search visibility has tanked. USA Today can address this and recover btw. This is not just about AI Overviews eating clicks… This is a visibility drop too.”

Why we care. USA TODAY is one of the largest publishers to explicitly cite search traffic pressure as a reason for reorganizing its audience strategy. Expect more publishers to reshape their audience and distribution strategies as search becomes a less reliable source of traffic.

Dig deeper. Condé Nast expects search to become a single-digit of its traffic

The memos. New York Times media reporter Ben Mullin shared the USA TODAY memos from Anasazi and Richardson, on X.