How AI Impacts Environmental Outreach Metrics
POSTED ON September 22nd, 2025 BY Nancy Roberts
Have you noticed some changes in your marketing metrics, such as a decline in organic web traffic, despite your ongoing efforts? This may be due to the rise of AI, and it’s going to affect how we do – and measure – environmental outreach going forward.
Web Traffic Is Going Down
You may not have seen a decline yet, but other sites have. News organizations, in particular, are seeing devastating drops in traffic as Internet users simply read Google Overview results rather than click through to a trusted source. Bain & Company research shows that “80% of consumers now rely on AI-written results for at least 40% of their searches, reducing organic web traffic by 15% to 25%.” (See AI-driven results in the image above, to see how AI answers a simple recycling question.)
Think AI dominance is not here yet? ChatGPT is already the 5th most visited website, globally. It’s not going away.
Video Views Are Not Immune
As a skilled environmental outreach professional, you probably count on videos to raise awareness of desired behavior change, particularly among younger audiences. Well, YouTube video views are also declining, as the proliferation of AI-produced content is dominating people’s online time as part of “a sophisticated and growing AI slop content ecosystem that is flooding YouTube.”
Getting Answers from AI: Does It Matter?
Ok, AI-generated content may be taking eyeballs, so what? In addition to worrying about declining traffic to our websites and videos, there’s another concern – for users depending on AI for information about, say recycling. Is the information coming from AI even correct, or is it a made-up hallucination?
AI’s accuracy problem can lead to a lack of confidence in the “real thing” or to distrust in ALL resources that present themselves as specialists or expert
What Can We Do?
For now, we humans must hold high the flag of our creativity and go in swinging:
- Test yourself and AI occasionally by passing a draft blog or social post by AI to see if it can come up with something better – see Gigantic colleague Myer’s blog on AI and creativity. In my experience, AI’s “marketing language” is overly generic, flat and clearly artificial. But in six months…who knows?
- Get your information included in AI Overviews; see the handy tips here.
- Continue providing clear, well organized and concise content on your website, including snippets. Check Google’s recommendations for optimizing for AI.
AI is here, and it does some amazing things. If we approach it with flexibility, critical thinking and caution, this tool can help outreach, probably in ways we can’t yet imagine.