AI is changing how audiences discover content. For publishers, the critical question is whether AI-driven discovery will broaden the flow of audiences across a broad set of websites or concentrate attention within a few platforms.

Join the authors of Beyond Search: LLM Adoption and the Concentration of Web Traffic for a 45-minute DCN AI Research Briefing and discussion.  Samira Gholami (Stanford University), Cristiana Firullo (Cornell University), Cristobal Cheyre (Cornell University), and Alessandro Acquisti (MIT Sloan School of Management) will present new empirical findings on how large language models are affecting search behavior, web exploration, and the distribution of traffic across external sites. 

What you’ll learn:

• How AI is changing pathways to the open web
  New data on how LLM use is influencing where users go after AI interactions.
   
• How audiences are combining search and AI tools
  What early usage patterns reveal about how LLMs and traditional search are being used together.
   
• Where AI-driven traffic may flow
  Emerging evidence on whether AI discovery concentrates attention among a few destinations or distributes it more broadly across the web.

This session is designed for you and your teams navigating AI’s impact on audience development, search strategy, and publisher economics. Please share this invitation with colleagues who would benefit from these insights.