Future's Pushing to Turn Visitors Into Customers

Happy Tuesday. We’re entering earnings season and People Inc. is one of the first to report. We’ve got the highlights below.

Let’s not waste anytime and jump right in!

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Audience
Future Still Gets Google Traffic. Now It’s Trying to Turn Visitors Into Customers.

“There is an old model which says: ‘Unless people come visit our .com, they are of no value to us,’” said Simon Collis, Future’s senior vice president of content strategy and audience development. “That changed a long time ago, so we don’t see our brands in those terms.”

Read full story here.

Revenue
Apartment Therapy Laid Off ‘A Bunch of People’ In Bid For New Structure, Higher Margins

Ryan said the new structure, which is a few weeks old, would create fewer “layers” between him and his staff. “The organization is flatter. I am now working directly with the sellers and the sales team, for example. I now have like 12 reports as opposed to three.”

Read full story here.

Earnings
People Inc. Reported Q3 2026 Earnings

People’s digital revenue is still growing, slightly, despite losing a quarter of its traffic, as licensing and other off-site revenue made up for declines in revenue tied to traffic on its own sites. But digital growth slowed to 2%, the company trimmed its full-year digital outlook and it’s cutting staff again.

• Still growing, but slowing. People Inc.'s digital revenue rose 2% to $288.5 million in Q3, its 12th straight quarter of growth but down from 6% in Q2. Core sessions fell 26%, which the company blamed mainly on AI search and content discovery.

• Off-site revenue is carrying it. Licensing jumped 49% to $52.7 million, driven by Apple News+, syndication partners and its Meta deal. Revenue that doesn't depend on site visits is now about 43% of digital, up from about 38% a year ago.

• Advertising is down. Ad revenue fell 8% to $161.9 million. Fewer visits meant fewer ad impressions, partly offset by higher rates, while direct-sold ads grew in health and pharma, beauty and style, and food and beverage.

• Affiliate is still growing, but barely. Performance marketing revenue, mostly affiliate commerce commissions, rose 2% to $73.9 million, down from 13% growth in Q2. Affiliate commerce alone grew 4%, down from 11%.

• Guidance trimmed. People cut its 2026 digital revenue outlook to mid-single-digit growth, from mid-to-high, and quietly stopped forecasting digital profit growth. It also cut staff on Oct. 29 and expects $15 million to $20 million in Q4 severance.

• Parent noise. People Incorporated posted a $687.5 million net loss, driven by a $1.12 billion paper loss on its MGM stake as those shares fell, including an 11% drop after People withdrew its bid for the casino company in September.

We'll be listening to Tuesday's earnings call and may follow up with a deeper look at People's strategy later this week.

AI
Readers Want Answers, Not Just Stories: Semafor’s Gina Chua

Chua recalled her time at Reuters, where reporters covering deals entered information into a structured system that fed a database and could also generate the beginnings of a story. “The value wasn’t in the story, the value was in the database,” she said.

Read full story here.

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