A recently released report, RANKED 2026 by SquirrelPR, has shown that the African digital media space is evolving, moving past the previous tenets that held sway: pageviews and clicks.
The report highlights a 26.2% decline in total readership traffic in 2025 across Nigeria’s digital media ecosystem, with total traffic across all digital media platforms in Nigeria dropping from over 1.04 billion visits in 2024 to just 769 million in 2025.
“The old model of digital media was built on clicks. That model is breaking down,” said Jonah Solomon, Co-founder of SquirrelPR. “Today, influence is defined by authority, trust, and the ability to shape conversations, even when users don’t click through.”
Artificial intelligence is identified as the main force reshaping the digital media landscape, with AI search overviews answering user queries, thereby reducing the incentive to visit websites directly. Ironically, these websites remain the primary source of information as AI crawls them to provide answers to users’ search queries.
The report insists that this decline in page visits does not reflect reduced relevance, but rather a recalibration driven by artificial intelligence.
Meanwhile, Chief Scientist, Search at Google, Pandu Nayak, disagrees.
“Relevant words from his mouth,” he told Techpoint Africa during a recent How Search Works Roundtable.
“There have definitely been studies that claim significant drops in publisher traffic,” he stated. “I believe that we have not yet seen a reliable study of that sort because our evidence does not show that publisher traffic is cratering because of AI overviews. In fact, , the reality is that there are many other reasons that affect publisher traffic that have nothing to do with AI or AI overviews.”
Pandu argues that the drop in website visits most publishers are experiencing is mainly due to users’ preference for a first-person perspective on topical issues, stressing that users now add Reddit to their queries to get first-hand experience. He emphasised that users are more interested in authentic articles.
Techpoint Africa maintains top spot in tech news in Nigeria
Techpoint Africa, one of the continent’s foremost tech media platforms, was ranked first in traffic volume, according to SquirrelPR RANKED 2026. Although the digital media outlet saw a decline in traffic volume in 2025 compared to 2024, it remained ahead of competitors such as TechCabal and Technext.
Victoria Fakiya – Senior Writer
Techpoint Digest
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Don’t fight a battle you can’t win – Múyiwa Mátuluko
For Múyiwa Mátuluko, CEO of Businessfront (Publishers of Techpoint Africa, Finance in Africa, and Energy in Africa), his advice is simple: publishers should not fight a battle they can’t win.
“The AI revolution is upon us,” he notes, “So, what you want to do is find other ways to connect with your audiences: direct connections like newsletters, building communities, subscriptions, and free accounts can be explored. Just any way that can help you.”
Múyiwa believes that there’s a need to know your readers, build more connections with them, and distribute directly to them.
Distribution across social media platforms such as Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, and Instagram is pivotal. Múyiwa explains that he used to focus on how many clicks came from these platforms, but he now understands that building authority and consistency is more important — if users keep seeing your brand, it’ll build trust and credibility, and these platforms can be leveraged to drive people to your owned channels like newsletters.
As website visits for publishers drop, it might become a tricky conversation with advertisers who are always interested in the number of users or visitors a platform reaches. Múyiwa agrees, stressing that it’ll be a long-term game, and educating advertisers will be at the forefront.
On the sort of storytelling that wins in this AI age, Múyiwa points to human angles, human-interest stories, and investigations. He maintains that AI is not to blame for the decline in reading culture in Africa, as it was already in swing before AI went mainstream. Expanding to video and audio podcasts, although expensive, is one of the ways publishers have tried to navigate this.
Múyiwa also explains that people read what they are interested in, and that trying to solve for a mass audience and appeal to everyone is a big challenge. He believes that publishers should be clear about who their target audience is and present the story in a way that is interesting to them.
You can get a copy of the RANKED REPORT here.
