Why Pay the Media When There Are Social Networks: Are Websites Really Dying Out?

Hello, everyone. For those who don’t know me, let’s start with the usual introductions and then get down to business. I’m Nikita, Project Manager AFFHUB Media. I joined AFFHUB in 2024 as a writer; before that, I worked for a long time as a journalist, correspondent, and political commentator. In early 2025, I took over as head of the media department, and I’ve been in this role ever since. By the way, here’s a link to my new work Instagram account. You’ll find short excerpts from all my columns and more content from me there. So, feel free to check it out.

The idea for this article came after a conversation with Affiliate Journalist about the challenges facing the Ukrainian media market. If you haven’t seen it yet, I definitely recommend giving it a read.

As you’ve probably guessed, today we’ll discuss whether traditional media is truly dying, what its advantages are over social media, and what the overall prospects are for this sector.

Are affiliate media really dying? 

Let’s start with the problem: media—not just in the affiliate space, but in general—is currently going through a rough patch. There are several reasons for this. First, social media. It’s much easier for people to read a post on Telegram than to go and read similar content on a website. And that’s a fact. 

The second issue is artificial intelligence. In the past, when people were interested in something, they’d go to Google and ask it. Now, people go to Claude or ChatGPT and ask it. That’s also a fact.

What does this lead to? It’s no surprise—website traffic is generally declining. In particular, the introduction of Gemini into the search engine last year dealt a major blow, literally destroying off a significant amount of traffic. And the latest updates and constant algorithm changes seem to be the final nail in the coffin for traditional media.

But is it really that bad in practice? 

Using AFFHUB Media as an example, I can say that we aren’t experiencing any major problems with traffic. Last year, even with the introduction of Gemini, traffic to our website still grew over the course of the year. This year, of course, we’ve experienced slightly more severe traffic fluctuations. And there are periods when metrics drop. However, this isn’t a systemic phenomenon, but rather a reaction to yet another update, followed by stabilization. 

I have a degree in journalism, and in college we repeatedly studied the history of the demise of various media formats. Back then, we weren’t talking about websites, but about radio and television. And here’s a brief historical digression.

The first mass media in the traditional sense were printed newspapers—they emerged after the invention of the printing press in the 15th century. For the next four hundred years, newspapers reigned supreme in the media landscape. However, radio emerged in the 20th century. Against the backdrop of World War II, it became the primary platform for covering breaking news (and Goebbels’ propaganda, but that’s another story).

It was during this period that people began to abandon newspapers en masse—why would they need them when there was radio, which could broadcast the news live? 

A little more time passed, and televisions became available to the general public. They were called “the death knell for radio”—why listen to the news when you could watch it, seeing the report with your own eyes rather than just imagining it in your head? 

Time passes, the internet emerges, and with it, news websites. They were called “the death of television”—information appears much faster and in greater volumes. What’s the point of TV? 

Fast-forward to our time: social media emerges, followed by AI. And here we hear similar bold claims.

What’s my point? During the debate between Trump and Harris ahead of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, 67 million people watched the event on their TV screens. Every day, about 3 billion people worldwide listen to the radio. Every year, more than 1 trillion copies of print newspapers are published worldwide. In other words, no matter how much these formats are downplayed, their audience remains quite large. It’s just that they no longer cover every niche—they’ve carved out their own specific niches. And this applies to websites as well.

Why will the media survive? 

Because the media has already carved out its own niche. Of course, it lags behind social media when it comes to breaking news. However, it has a number of advantages of its own: 

• Depth of content. On social media, most posts boil down to a few sentences about a current topic. If you want to discuss something in more detail, a Telegram channel isn’t the best option here (and even Telegra.ph  doesn’t solve this, since the issue isn’t just the character limit, but the reading experience itself);
• Audience engagement. I don’t know about you, but personally, I have nearly 1,000 chats and channels on Telegram. I see the content in them, but I don’t delve into it. I see one post, then another catches my attention. I’m reading everything at once and reading nothing at all. It’s different with media. If I go to read an article, I sit and read it without getting distracted by anything else;
• An engaged audience. Most of the traffic on any website comes from search engines. People Google what interests them and find relevant content. On social media, however, we’re bombarded with content from 100,500 different topics, and in the vast majority of cases, it’s irrelevant to us;
• Accountability. Last but not least. There are always people behind media outlets, and they’re accountable for the content. Of course, on Telegram as well, publishers are often public figures. But the level of accountability is still slightly different—even when it comes to audience perception and trust.

What’s this “cancelling” of social media all about? 

It might seem like I’m trying to censor social media, bloggers, and the like. However, in practice, that’s not the case. Social media has its advantages; they’re significant and understood by most people. Meanwhile, people in the media very often dismiss social media—both publicly and in private conversations—without understanding its value. And this article wasn’t written to vent some negativity toward social media. No, on the contrary, social media is a top-tier tool for a range of tasks. 

However, it’s important to distinguish between the goals you set for yourself from a PR perspective and to understand which ones are best addressed by social media and which by traditional media (spoiler alert: an article on this topic is coming soon).