| If you're finding value in our Creator Economy newsletter, I encourage you to consider subscribing to The Information. It contains exclusive reporting on the most important stories in tech. Save up to $250 on your first year of access. Hello! Ann here. Creators are staring down what they say is a growing threat: artificial intelligence-powered searches cutting into their lucrative product recommendations. More people are turning to AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity to search the web for information and shopping inspiration, and Google has started adding more AI-powered features to its search, such as quick summaries of answers that appear at the top of a search results page called AI Overviews. These searches risk diverting people away from typical web searches that direct them to sites where creators offer everything from recipes to personal finance tips—and promote products via affiliate links, which track sales so merchants can give the creators a cut. (Rates vary but typically range between 10% and 20% of product sales.) Already, many creators and bloggers are seeing traffic slump and are chalking some of that decrease to AI, said Marc McCollum, the chief innovation officer at Raptive, which helps influencers and bloggers manage their advertising businesses and promote their sites. Raptive works with nearly 6,000 creators including Half Baked Harvest, Cup of Jo and Clever Girl Finance, the handles of popular social media creators who also maintain websites with content like blogs and recipes. That traffic decline picked up steam after Google's introduction of AI Overviews last year, McCollum said, which he argues has led fewer users to click through from Google to creators' sites. For instance, the traffic that came to Raptive creator sites from Google search the last week of March fell roughly 5.5% compared to a year earlier, he said. "Google is designing its product in a way to keep the user inside of Google and make it less and less obvious and less and less necessary to click out," he said. Google disagrees with that sentiment. A spokesperson for the search giant notes that AI Overviews shows users links to a wider range of sources, which they say keeps traffic flowing to external sites, and that traffic coming to websites through AI Overviews is higher quality, meaning users are more likely to spend more time on sites they do visit. "We've seen speculation that any recent traffic change is due to AI Overviews, but the reality is traffic fluctuates for many reasons, including seasonal demand, interests of users, and regular algorithmic updates to Search," the spokesperson said in a statement. McCollum said Raptive has been helping its clients safeguard their business by focusing on building out their audiences on other platforms, namely email lists so they can send content and links to readers directly. Raptive is also recommending that creators work on revamping their sites to encourage more repeat visitors and develop audience loyalty, since creators can't rely as much as they used to on one-off visitors stumbling on them through web searches. (Online retailers are also trying to figure out how to navigate the rise of AI search, I reported last week, though they're more focused on making sure they pop up in chatbot search results.) Creators who mainly share affiliate links through posts on social media sites like Instagram and TikTok may be more insulated from AI-induced changes to their earnings. Companies like ShopMy, which creates monetizable links and storefronts creators can share on social media, say creators that use its platform haven't seen much negative impact from AI search on their affiliate revenue. Potential shoppers click on those links because they already follow creators on platforms like Instagram, not because they are brought to them via search. "They're followed not because they ranked #1 on Google, but because people believe in their taste and expertise," said Harry Rein, ShopMy's cofounder and CEO, of the platform's creators. "In that sense, we're less exposed to changes in search infrastructure because the recommendation is the channel." There could be more opportunities for creators to direct fans to their products and shoppable links as AI search tools work on their e-commerce strategies. For instance, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said the company could eventually take a cut of sales ChatGPT helps facilitate. Creators potentially could share revenue from those sales, much like they do on TikTok. Here's what else is going on... ByteDance's revenue from international operations, which are primarily from its short-form video app TikTok, rose 63% to $39 billion in 2024, The Information reported on Thursday. International revenue made up a quarter of ByteDance's total last year, the highest it has ever been, as growth in the company's Chinese operations slowed. The results highlight how much the Chinese tech giant has riding on the future of TikTok's operations in the U.S., which now depend on talks between the White House, ByteDance and the Chinese government—and discussions around tariffs. In recent weeks, ByteDance leaders were communicating with officials from the Cyberspace Administration of China, which has been leading the Chinese government's efforts in coordinating with ByteDance on a deal for TikTok U.S, including keeping them in the loop on various bids for TikTok, we reported. The "TikTok America" plan, in which ByteDance would license the algorithms to a new company, won out. ByteDance leaders positioned the deal to CAC officials as a win for China, because ByteDance gets to keep 19.9% – the maximum percentage allowed under U.S. law–of TikTok, and also because it only involves the company licensing, instead of selling, the algorithms, the secret sauce to TikTok's viral popularity. As of early last week, officials at CAC gave their nod to ByteDance on the plan for TikTok America, and were preparing to brief the upper echelons in the Chinese government to get their approval, we reported. But Trump's announcement of an additional 34% tariffs on all imports from China scuttled the deal.—Kaya Yurieff See The Information's Creator Economy Database for an exclusive list of private companies and their investors. BeReal launched an advertising platform in the U.S., where brands can mimic the platform's distinctive format through targeted ads or larger ad takeovers of the app. Former Walmart Connect and TikTok executive Ben Moore is joining BeReal as its managing director for the U.S., and the company will hire for new sales, partnerships and user growth roles. Brands including Nike, Netflix and Amazon have tested BeReal ads, the company said. YouTube is rolling out a new feature that will allow users to create AI-generated background music for their videos, the company said in an update on its Creator Insider channel this week. Creators can generate the kind of music they're looking for with text prompts, then download them and add them to their videos. Haliey Welch, also known as the "Hawk Tuah Girl," will make a cameo in the new Hulu show "Chad Powers," which stars actor Glen Powell, TMZ reported. That's the number of minutes per day U.S. TikTok users spent on the app between January and March, according to a new report from Guggenheim Partners and Apptopia. That's more than twice the amount of time users spend on Instagram on average, the report said, and 21 minutes per day more than the next closest app, YouTube. Thank you for reading the Creator Economy Newsletter! I'd love your feedback, ideas and tips: kaya@theinformation.com. If you think someone else might enjoy this newsletter, please pass it forward or they can sign up here: https://www.theinformation.com/newsletters/creator-economy | 
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