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It's Election Day, and most of this week's media news came down to traffic: who sends it, who keeps it, and who gets to use your work without sending any back.
WHAT'S MOVING THIS WEEK
Reddit had its worst day as a public company after Google's AI cut its search traffic.
OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Anthropic back one robots.txt switch to opt out of AI training.
DoorDash is buying Instacart for $17 billion, and the ad business is part of the point.
Disney is preparing thousands of layoffs, with some managers asked to cut 20%.
THE BIG STORY
Google Stopped Sending Reddit Traffic. Reddit Is Locking the Door.
Reddit stock fell about 29% on Friday, its worst day since going public. The quarter itself was fine. Revenue rose 53% to $895 million and earnings beat estimates. The problem was the forecast. Reddit guided fourth-quarter revenue to $1.0 billion to $1.03 billion, below the $1.045 billion analysts expected, and warned that daily users could fall by a low double-digit percentage if current trends hold.
The cause is Google. US daily users fell to 50.7 million, down 2.5 million from the prior quarter, and logged-out users fell 9% in three months. Search referrals dropped by more than 1 million a week in October. CEO Steve Huffman was blunt: "The AI Mode does not drive traffic, not for us and not to anybody as far as I know."
So Reddit is changing the deal. It will test making people log in to read, starting in select markets outside the US. Logged-in users are where the money is: COO Jen Wong said 80% of monetization comes from logged-in and app users. A login wall also makes Reddit's content harder to scrape, which matters for a company that licenses its data to Google, reportedly for about $60 million a year.
SO WHAT? If Reddit, one of the sites Google's AI leans on most, is losing a million search visits a week, assume your search traffic is next. Publishers who live on logged-out search visitors are renting their audience, so count how much revenue comes from known readers (email, app, accounts) and make growing that number the plan. Buyers: Reddit will sell harder on logged-in targeting, so ask for logged-in reach numbers before you renew.
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QUICK HITS
AI crawlers get one off switch
OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Anthropic say their crawlers will honor a single robots.txt token that tells them not to use a site for AI training. Anthropic already supports it, Google and Microsoft are expected to follow next year, and OpenAI says within months. Meta backs the idea but hasn't said it will honor it. Separately, the New York Times and three Tribune papers sued Brave on Monday, saying it scraped their work with a crawler publishers can't block and supplied it to AI companies. Why it matters: one line replaces a list of bot names, but it only covers training and only binds the companies that sign on. Everyone else gets a lawsuit.
DoorDash buys Instacart for $17 billion
DoorDash agreed Thursday to pay $65 a share, with a close expected in late 2027 or the first half of 2028. Bloomberg framed it as a play against Walmart and Amazon. Both companies sell ads against what people actually buy. Why it matters: retail media is consolidating. If you sell to grocery or local brands, expect one bigger seller with restaurant and grocery purchase data under one roof.
Disney is planning thousands of layoffs
Disney is preparing thousands of job cuts, and some managers have been asked to find 20% in annual cost savings, Bloomberg reported. CEO Josh D'Amaro wants to put part of the savings into film and TV, technology, parks and cruise ships. Disney cut about 1,000 jobs in April and reports earnings Nov 17. Why it matters: after Netflix and Skydance, a third major studio is cutting this fall. If you sell to or partner with Disney, get renewals and briefs signed before the cuts land, because contacts and approvals will shift through year-end.
DEAL TRACKER
Two new deals this week. Both are about ads tied to what people buy.
Deal | Type | Value |
|---|---|---|
DoorDash → Instacart | Acquisition | $17B |
Acquisition | $420M |
2026 so far: 20 deals, $238.8B disclosed. Unlock the full tracker by referring 3 friends.
EARNINGS NIGHT
Alphabet: YouTube ads were $11.2B, up 9%, and the living room is now more than a third of YouTube ad revenue. Full breakdown
Amazon: ad revenue was about $19.6B, up 12%, slower because Prime Day fell in Q2. Amazon expects high-teens growth this quarter.
SiriusXM: podcast ad revenue rose 20% while Pandora and off-platform ads rose 1%. Full breakdown
Pinterest: revenue was $1.17B against $1.21B expected. Record users didn't turn into the ad revenue Wall Street wanted.
Fox: Tubi revenue grew 35%, and Fox has booked more than $350M in political ads this cycle. Full breakdown. The same day, Semafor reported the $22B Roku deal is set to clear the Justice Department under a consent decree.
Reddit: see the Big Story.
Who reports next week: Sinclair (Wed, Nov 4), Nexstar (Thu, Nov 5), Skydance, The Trade Desk and iHeartMedia (Mon, Nov 9)
NUMBER OF THE WEEK
$3 million
The gap between Fox's ad revenue ($2.081 billion) and its distribution fees ($2.084 billion) last quarter. A year ago the gap was $503 million. The World Cup and political money closed it, so watch whether it holds once both are gone. The math
EVENTS
Digiday Creator Strategies · Nov 4 · Virtual · Pricing on site
Media Summit NYC · Nov 16 · New York · Tickets by request
Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit · Dec 1–3 · Nashville · $
MEDIA JOBS
ONE THING TO DO THIS WEEK
Pull your last 90 days of traffic and split it into three buckets: search, social, and known readers (email, app, logged-in). If search is the biggest bucket, put a newsletter sign-up on your 10 most-visited search pages this week. While you're in there, check your robots.txt and decide whether to add the new AI-training opt-out.
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