Is content marketing dead in the age of AI?

I’ll open with a confession that should probably worry me more than it does: I’ve had affiliate links dotted through my reviews for the best part of eighteen months. Total earnings? Nine dollars.

Nine. Dollars.

Now, in fairness, I never really pushed it. I didn’t chase keywords, build links, or do any of the things the SEO crowd swear by. I just wrote honest reviews of tools I actually use, based on how I genuinely felt about them, and let them sit there. So part of me thinks: well, what did you expect, Josh?

But here’s the uncomfortable bit. I went and looked at the numbers properly, and even if I had played the game by the book, it almost certainly wouldn’t have saved me. Not as a small operator. Not now.

So when someone asks whether content marketing is still worth it in the age of AI, I’m not answering as a guru with a course to flog you. I’m answering as a bloke looking at a payout the size of a meal deal, working out what (if anything) is actually worth the effort.

Short version: the old way is dead. The thing underneath it isn’t. And the difference matters a lot for what you do next.

What AI search actually did

For about fifteen years the deal was simple. You wrote something useful, Google ranked it, people clicked, and a few of them became customers. The entire content marketing industry was built on that one click.

Google has quietly taken the click back.

When it shows one of its AI summaries at the top of the results, people click through to an actual website 8% of the time, against 15% when there’s no summary. They click the little source links inside the AI answer about 1% of the time. Ahrefs reckons the top result loses roughly 58% of its clicks when an AI Overview turns up.

Read that twice. More than half your traffic, gone, for the privilege of having Google read your work aloud to someone who never visits you.

It’s worse if you’re small. Google’s “helpful content” updates over the last couple of years flattened independent sites and niche blogs especially hard; one analysis found around half of the affected sites lost ninety percent or more of their traffic. The winners were Reddit, Quora and the big names. Not you. Not me.

So my nine dollars isn’t proof I’m doing it wrong. It’s the perfectly normal result of playing a game that’s been quietly rigged against small players. Which is oddly freeing, because it means I can stop playing it.

Quick aside: I’ve switched my own day-to-day searching to Ecosia. It’s still a search engine at heart, with the AI sat there if you want it rather than forced down your throat. Plants trees, too. Mostly I just like that it still works a bit like the good ol’ days. For now, anyway.

So… is it dead?

No. But “content marketing” has stopped meaning “write blog posts to win clicks” and started meaning something a lot less convenient.

Here’s the bit that genuinely surprised me. Ranking number one on Google no longer gets you quoted by the AI. Only about 38% of AI Overview citations now come from the top ten results, and for ChatGPT and Gemini it’s under ten percent. The AI is off reading things that don’t even rank, forming a view, and recommending people based on reputation. On who gets talked about.

And what does it actually quote? Original, experience-led writing. Real blog and editorial content makes up over half of all AI citations. Press releases make up 0.04%, which is the most satisfying statistic I’ve read all year.

The other big lever is being mentioned elsewhere. Across the web, brand mentions line up with AI visibility roughly three times more strongly than backlinks do. The machine cares less about who links to you and more about whether your name keeps coming up.

That’s a completely different game to chasing keywords. And it’s one a small, opinionated operator can actually win, because the currency is first-hand experience and a point of view. A content farm can’t fake that. Neither can a robot.

What this means if you run a business, not a blog

Now the honest bit, because it changes everything.

I don’t make money from content. I make money from building websites. One decent project is worth more than every affiliate commission I’ll earn this decade. So measuring my writing by clicks or commissions was always daft. The real question was never “did this get traffic,” it’s “did this help someone decide to trust me, hire me, or quote me.”

That reframe quietly bins about half the content people tell you to write.

You don’t need another “10 tips for a faster WordPress site” post. The AI will answer that without ever mentioning you, and the person asking it was never going to hire you anyway. What you need is the stuff only you can write: how you actually work, what you genuinely use and why, and the honest answer to the question your would-be client is too polite to ask out loud (“how much does this actually cost?”).

That isn’t content marketing as a traffic machine. It’s content marketing as proof. Proof you know what you’re doing, written so a human trusts it and a robot quotes it.

What I’m doing about it

Practising what I preach, mostly. Less time chasing rankings and affiliate pennies, more on the handful of things that actually pay the bills: design and build projects, and the hosting and care plans that quietly keep the lights on month after month.

So I’m writing about real projects and real opinions, because that’s what earns trust and what the AI cites. I’m answering the questions local businesses actually type, because one “web designer in Oxfordshire” enquiry is worth a thousand “best WordPress plugin” clicks. And I’m leaning into the part I genuinely enjoy: meeting people round here face to face, and being the obvious name when an Oxfordshire business needs its website sorted.

The nine dollars can stay exactly where it is. It’s a nice reminder that the affiliate thing was never the point.

The honest takeaway

Content marketing isn’t dead. The lazy version is: churn out generic posts, rank, harvest clicks, bolt on affiliate links, retire to a beach. That version was already on life support, and AI pulled the plug.

What’s left is harder and better: have something to say, say it from real experience, and be the person worth recommending. If you’re hoping content will quietly print money while you sleep, lower your expectations. If you want it to make you the obvious choice the moment someone’s ready to buy, it has never mattered more.

Right. I’m off to not spend my nine dollars. And if you’d rather your own website brought in enquiries than vanity traffic, let’s have a chat.