How Media Outlets Lose Readers – A Piarsya Survey. Part 2

Breathe in — breathe out…

You're safe, Piarcia is here — let's talk about what's been getting on your nerves

These days, almost everyone runs their own channel or public page — from individual bloggers to large-scale holdings, not to mention public experts, analysts, and info-grifters. In the affiliate and media buying niche, there is A LOT of content, which makes repetition and recycling entirely predictable — otherwise, the flood of third-rate material wouldn't be such a hot topic.

Lucky for you, we know our way around this, so today we're breaking down which content our discerning readers are simply tired of seeing — and which has worn out its welcome entirely — plus how to earn a share instead of an angry comment.

Supply and Demand

The oversaturation of info-channels in the niche didn't come out of nowhere — it's a classic supply response to demand. Media buying is like a big race where the prize goes to whoever first cracked a killer funnel, extracted a key insight, or was the first to react effectively to a sudden update and kick off a new trend.

Once new information loses its strategic relevance, it becomes public fodder — and those who published it first, packaged it best, and distributed it most effectively reap all the rewards. Running parallel to this race is a growing crowd eager to pick at the leftovers and jump on the last car of the hype train. Needless to say, it's precisely in this anomalous zone that a trend turns into trash.

Let's start by looking at the most compelling topics in the niche that actually attract readers. This ranking is based on our large-scale research conducted in collaboration with Palai Media, drawing on responses from several hundred discerning respondents:

Before you rush off to overhaul your content plans, we'd like to take a closer look at the most appealing topics and the risks that come with them. Yes — even a single well-executed post can boost your asset and trigger free word-of-mouth, while a careless approach will only bring unfollows and hate. So what makes the difference?

Lifehacks, Tips, and Trends

We've grouped these topics together because they share one critically important trait — they cannot be fabricated. Tips, lifehacks, and know-how are the domain of those who create them firsthand, drawing on their own talent or extensive experience. Of course, those who can better package and amplify something new will also get their slice — and with the right skills, that's a viable strategy too. However, attempting to "manufacture" a killer lifehack out of thin air, without the relevant expertise to back it up, is almost guaranteed to fall flat.

The most reliable way to produce a strong post in this category is to partner with an expert who can share their own experience, and a editor who can help package it properly. An alternative is to seek out lesser-known but credible sources.

New teams are forming almost every week, and some of the owners or key figures bring serious backgrounds with them. Following the trend, these teams often launch channels with 30–50 readers — and while they're still under the radar, they're an excellent source of insights and fresh perspectives. Not every channel, of course, but this is one of those cases where persistent searching pays off.

Events and Conferences

It's hard to miss how significantly the number of meetups and events has grown in recent years. We're talking about a jump from 20–50 events in 2016–18 to over 150 in 2025 alone. These aren't just dull lectures from grey-bearded CEOs — they're also genuinely impressive gatherings of young, energetic practitioners from adjacent niches, complete with giveaways, concerts, and afterparties with laser shows. Some meetings for inner circles, for instance, take place behind closed doors, with entry strictly by personal invitation.

The primary purpose of these events is the exchange of experience and contacts for future collaboration and industry development. Unfortunately, not everyone who's interested gets the chance to attend — which is exactly why event reports and photo recaps attract such a dedicated following. Sure, you can piece together information from multiple sources and try to leverage the names of attendees, speakers, or public figures who showed up at the latest conference — but that already edges into journalistic territory, with all its own complexities and challenges.

The most reliable source of material for meetup posts remains someone who goes there specifically to gather it. AI can be brought in for processing and presentation, but the best stories are found by those who actively hunt for them.

Relevant Case Studies

We're treading on thin ice here. Case studies are a sensitive topic, because fabricating them for the sake of loud self-promotion or audience "warming" has become something of a trend in itself. A genuine, working case study has several defining characteristics: a foundation (an update, a project, an edge-case situation), a technical process (details, insights, documentation), and most importantly — proof. An authentic success story has a certain broader impact on the industry: satisfied clients, grateful colleagues, interested investors, and a practice that's easy to implement and verify.

Word has it that the truly great case studies and funnels remain trade secrets and never leave the walls of closed-door meetings. There's some truth to that — but if it were entirely the case, this topic wouldn't have made it into the top of the popularity rankings. It's about the line between insider information and quality advertising, but only the original author holds the data to substantiate every aspect — and it's their call how much strategic information reaches the public.

No tips or insights here — just don't fake case studies, and don't steal them.

AI Slop Generated Content

Content created (and sometimes formatted and published) by LLM-based AI can be viewed in many different ways. Designers see it as an existential threat, marketers see it as a tool, owners and investors see it as a cheat code, copywriters see it as the enemy — but what concerns us today is what the end user, the reader, sees in it.

AI-Generated Text

According to our survey, 75% of readers generally tolerate AI-generated content — but only when the delivery remains lively and engaging. Unfortunately, no AI model can satisfy a request for quality text or a script in a single click, so don't count on a plug&play solution. For the best results, it's worth combining the strongest features of several tools. We'll break down all the pros and cons in a dedicated article on AI tools, but here are a few highlights worth noting right now:

Perplexity — one of the best tools for research and quickly sourcing information from multiple references. Great for gathering facts, validating arguments, and building a content structure, especially when you need to get up to speed on a new topic fast.

Claude — strong at writing long-form content, editing, and working with style. Claude holds context well, helps structure scripts, articles, and longreads, and typically delivers a more "human" tone without excessive dryness.

ChatGPT — a versatile tool for brainstorming, idea generation, and working with drafts. Particularly useful for adapting content across different formats: from social media posts to video scripts or ad integrations.

Gemini — works well with analytics, short summaries, and integrates with Google services. Can be useful for quickly processing large volumes of information, notes, or documents during content preparation.

For producing a handful of posts, even one of these tools will do the job — but if you're aiming for consistent quality output rather than volume, you'll need to build your own toolbox along with a library of prompts and templates. At a certain point, a sufficient body of accumulated content will allow you to train the model on your own examples and get more consistent results.

AI-Generated Video

AI video generators deserve a separate mention. Soullessly narrated clips dredged from the depths of the internet and memes about Tun-tun-tun-tun-tun-Sagura are unlikely to help with the media buying craft — but the possibilities of AI-generated video go far beyond that. Tools like Wave and Higgsfield can replace an entire team of videographers and editors without any equipment or actors — but before you buy a subscription, it's worth looking at the bigger picture.

The enthusiasm of those eager to churn out content from scratch, fueled by developers' generous affiliate programs, has led to a flood of low-quality AI-generated material across every major social platform. In less than a year, the average user has gone from discovering AI avatars to despising them — and, most importantly, for good reason.

Any project involving AI video generation needs to be grounded in a clear vision of the end result and directorial skills. Without them, it will be difficult at best to distinguish a good result from a mediocre one at the review stage — and your audience will make that call for you. It's important to understand that while AI generation can replace an actor, a camera operator, and an editor, the director and the author of the original idea must be human.

What Not to Write About

We've spent enough time on topics that can reliably win reader goodwill — so it's probably time to take a good hard look at the ones that make people grit their teeth, roll their eyes, and reach for the "Unsubscribe and delete" button.

In our survey, we included a question along the lines of "what kind of content in the niche annoys readers the most," with the option to select multiple answers. There's no striking contrast in the chart here, because an impressive number of respondents selected nearly every available option. Almost everything we've touched on in our articles made the list — but here they are, the four horsemen of the content apocalypse:

Unverified information — the good old rumors and fakes, eagerly picked up by those who love to pile on.

Shameless self-promotion — because nothing is sweeter than riding the hype off someone else's success, failure, or frankly nothing at all.

Cookie-cutter plagiarism — yes, the kind we already mentioned: a talentless attempt to "rephrase" someone else's successful post.

Trash content — there's plenty of it everywhere already, so the reaction to it in a strictly professional niche is entirely predictable.

And of course, the undisputed leader in audience antipathy — filler content with no substance — though we'd like to unpack that a little:

The very concept of "filler" is somewhat… vague as a term. Largely because it traces back to the practice of 19th-century literary critics, and actually makes more intuitive sense in English, where it's simply called "filler text" — content used primarily when volume took priority over substance, or conversely, when the truth needed to be obscured, or drowned out, if you will.

Today, in an era where almost any content can be monetized, "filler" has come to describe anything published purely for the sake of being published — for the sake of post count metrics or reporting, for instance. That's the first way to distinguish filler content from simply bad content: it has a narrative, sometimes even a style, but no concrete idea or message.

Take a hard look at your content plan. If you have two substantive posts scheduled per week but a daily publishing cadence that demands you fill the feed with something — anything — it's time to change your approach, because the neighbors downstairs are probably already flooded.

Now, Seriously

The real window into readers' minds was an open-ended question that generated over a hundred responses from people who genuinely know the niche — including (we checked) practicing experts, speakers, blog owners, public group admins, and even affiliate and media buying team leads.

The phrase "sick and f***ing tired" appeared more times than even the most lenient editorial policy would allow, so we went through the feedback ourselves and pulled out three topics not yet mentioned — the ones where it showed up most frequently:

• "Successful success"

This exact phrase came up probably more than any other, because it perfectly captures the atmosphere of that performative gloss that bloggers and brands slather on thick when selling themselves or their services. Let's be honest — everyone already knows how profitable this niche can be with the right approach. Which is exactly why it's so off-putting to read yet another post about how a student of some no-name mega-expert with two years of experience made millions in a matter of days because they "believed in themselves"... and took the course.

• Ads for mentorships and paid courses

We've also noticed that in every profitable niche, an info-grifter camp eventually sets up shop. In traffic work, the relevance of information plays a critical role and directly affects how effectively it can be applied. The term "info-grifting" describes the phenomenon of someone without real expertise trying to pass off publicly available, outdated, or deliberately misleading data as incredibly valuable insights. Needless to say, this approach has a way of infuriating people who actually know the niche. Enough said.

• Guides for absolute beginners

No one disputes the fact that everyone starts from scratch — which is precisely why there are dedicated resources with extensive libraries of clearly presented foundational content for newcomers. But when a channel that positions itself as a source of true pro-level content publishes yet another "GEO Breakdown" (which our respondents mentioned with particular frequency), readers raise an eyebrow the first time — and throw their hands up by the tenth.

A reminder that this piece was created thanks to a powerful collab with Palai Media — together, we've demonstrated today that there are considerably fewer ways to win over a reader than there are to drive them up the wall. In the next installments, we'll look at niche content from new angles and won't shy