A year later, Business Insider's AI onsite search is driving deeper engagement, but not necessarily wider adoption.
The AI search tool launched by Business Insider in October 2024 is one of several AI-powered products developed by the company over the past year, and was discussed by BI CTO Harry Hope at a talk at the Digiday Publishing Summit in Miami, Florida.
Business Insider's AI search tool is currently used by only about 1% of Business Insider's readers, but Hope says this is the percentage of readers who used BI's previous search tool, and “hasn't grown dramatically in a year.”
“The goal here was to find a way to actually build, not to try and promote journalism and try and cover it or paint it with AI. I strongly felt that it wasn't a one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to AI and chatbots,” Hope said. “We can do creative things to really encourage journalists to do the day and day jobs, and that worked very well.”
Business Insider's updated search tool is not the company's only AI product that has grown over the past year. BI's AI audio briefing consumption, which began in June, increased by 20% per month per month with each wish. In addition to frontal tools such as AI search and audio briefing, business insider staff have strengthened their internal use of AI, with an estimated 80-90% of staff using AI tools.
“People are particularly interested in building GPTs for specific use cases. I think there are currently 200 people across an organization that people have created just for different, sometimes surprising utilities,” detailed the BI staff using AI chatbots to simulate notes from editors and feedback from potential advertisers.
Business Insider was not the only publication to discuss AI search tools on stage at this week's meeting. Leilani Han, Wirecutter executive director at Commerce, said the publication's new AI-powered search capabilities “arguably” improved click-throughs to product recommendations, but declined to share certain growth figures.
Han added that while WireCutter aims to actively optimize AI search content, it has discovered that AI search optimization playbooks are not a major change from the playbook due to traditional search optimization.
“The plans don't seem to be dramatically different,” she said. “For us, our focus has always been our readers and that hasn't really changed.”
In a publishing summit talk, Hope acknowledged that Business Insider's AI tools are not yet a significant revenue stream for the company, but BI views products such as AI audio briefing as potential inventory of potential advertising and sponsorship inventory. For now, Business Insider is investing in AI. This is not because it's a huge money manager in 2025, but because it believes it will improve the company's future revenues.
“ROI doesn't look good. I'm not going to lie to you just by comparing dollars and cents. But you need to weigh it against where the pack is on the way forward and see future pan-outs,” Hope said. “And some of it comes with buy-in and faith from your organization that it's worth spending some of your resources on these tools and these technologies.”
