WTF is AI slop doing to warp media metrics?

In today’s tech lexicon, slapping “AI” in front of a problem, or a product, is the fastest way to make something old sound new, whether it’s clickbait, content farms, or a decade-old dashboard with a fresh coat of hype. The same can be said for AI slop — a term that seems to have gradually gained traction among media and marketing professionals over the last six months/year.

Nevertheless, while “slop” may have been an informal and unofficial way to refer to shoddy sites created purely for the purpose of arbitrage — a problem that’s plagued publishers and advertisers for decades — there’s no denying that generative AI is accelerating the scale of this to unprecedented levels. The upshot: media metrics are going to get skewed, big time.

And with the looming economic uncertainty brought on by the U.S. tariffs, that’s going to end badly for performance budgets if buyers aren’t proactive, some experts say. For publishers, it’s déjà vu — and their cut of the programmatic pie is only shrinking.

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