--- title: Two Titles Grew Multi-Page Sessions 46%. The Comparison Group Fell 16%. description: Equine Network enabled the Artificial Poets Platform on two of nine titles. Multi-page sessions rose 46% on the enabled titles and fell 16% across the comparison group over the same nine months. url: https://preview.artificialpoets.com/customers/equine-network-rollout/ site: Artificial Poets type: a13s_case_study date: 2026-08-09T20:07:48+00:00 modified: 2026-08-14T21:09:16+00:00 image: https://preview.artificialpoets.com/wp-content/uploads/a13s-cards/1527-social-00194640.png --- # Two Titles Grew Multi-Page Sessions 46%. The Comparison Group Fell 16%. **CASE STUDY** Download Case Study in PDF Equine Network enabled the Artificial Poets Platform on two of its titles and left the rest running unchanged. Over the following nine months the enabled titles grew multi-page sessions 46%. Across the comparison titles, the same measure fell 16%. - **+46%** Multi-page session share - **+14.9%** Distinct pages per session - **−16%** Multi-page session on comparison titles ## In brief - Equine Network enabled the Artificial Poets Platform on **two of its titles** on 18 December 2025, leaving the rest of the portfolio unchanged. - Across the enabled titles, the share of sessions reaching more than one page rose from **10.3% to 15.1%**, a 46% increase. - Across three comparable titles in the same portfolio, the same measure fell from **12.0% to 10.1%** over identical weeks. - Distinct pages per session: **+14.9%** on the enabled titles, **−0.3%** on the comparison group. - The decline in the comparison group was not uniform. One of the three edged up. We show all of it below. ## The pressure Publishers have spent two years watching search referrals fall: roughly a third in the year to December 2025, [1] with another 43% expected within three years. [2] That conversation is exhausted. Most audience teams have concluded there is not much they can do about the top of the funnel. The erosion further down is less discussed and more actionable. When a reader arrives from a search result that now competes with an AI-generated answer, they read one or two pages where they used to read three or four. [3] Publishers are losing visitors *and* losing depth from the visitors who remain. Most publishers have to take that second trend on faith, because they have nothing to compare themselves against. Equine Network is unusual: it runs a portfolio of titles serving an overlapping audience in a single category, which means the erosion is measurable inside its own walls. It is. Across three of its titles, the share of sessions reaching more than one page fell from 12.0% to 10.1% between August 2025 and May 2026, a 16% decline in nine months, with no change in strategy, staffing or content operation on any of them. That is the counterfactual. It is what the enabled titles would most likely have done. ## The problem with rolling anything across a portfolio A network operator has a harder version of every vendor decision. Enabling something across nine titles means nine integrations, nine sets of ad-stack interactions, and nine audiences exposed to a change that cannot be quietly reversed if it disappoints. The claim on the slide is never the issue. The issue is that by the time you can evaluate it, you have already committed. Equine Network took the other route. It enabled the Platform on two titles and left the rest alone. That decision is the reason this case study contains anything worth reading. It produced a measurement design most vendors can never offer, because most customers roll out everywhere at once and then have nothing to compare against. ## What was enabled On 18 December 2025, two Equine Network titles switched on the Artificial Poets Platform: as a reader moves down an article, the Platform's AI selects and loads related articles beneath it, chosen against what that reader is actually reading rather than a fixed "most popular" list. No redesign, no migration, no change to how either site is authored. ## What moved **Across the enabled titles, multi-page session share rose from 10.3% to 15.1%.** Just over one session in ten used to go past the article it landed on. Now it is roughly one in six and a half. **Across the comparison titles, the same measure fell from 12.0% to 10.1%**. That is the erosion the whole industry is describing, visible inside a single portfolio over the same weeks. | Title | AP Platform | Multi-page share | Change | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Horse & Rider | Enabled | 10.36% → 16.92% | +6.56pp | | Equus Magazine | Enabled | 10.33% → 13.35% | +3.02pp | | Another Site | Not enabled | 12.27% → 10.06% | −2.21pp | | Another Site | Not enabled | 11.27% → 11.08% | −0.19pp | | Another Site | Not enabled | 8.56% → 9.34% | +0.78pp | The gap between those two trajectories is the result. Not 46% on its own, and not −16% on its own: the fact that two groups of titles in one company, serving one audience, in one category, moved in opposite directions after exactly one thing changed on two of them. **Distinct pages per session** tells the same story with less volatility: +14.9% across the enabled titles, −0.3% across the comparison group. **Traffic did not grow.** Sessions and users were flat to slightly down on the enabled titles. This is a depth result, not an acquisition result. ### The comparison group's decline is not uniform We would rather show that than average it away. The Horse accounts for most of it; Stable Management is essentially flat; American Cowboy edged up three quarters of a point. The pooled figure falls 16% because The Horse is much the largest of the three by session volume. What *is* uniform is the separation. Both enabled titles gained more than any comparison title, by a margin of at least four times. ## How we know Metrics are counted per site by domain, bots excluded, over identical calendar weeks: 4 August to 17 December 2025 against 22 December 2025 to 10 May 2026. Distinct pages per session counts unique article paths, so it reflects readers reaching genuinely different articles rather than any artefact of how pageviews are recorded. The comparison titles were not selected after the fact. They are the Equine Network properties that report continuously across the whole window and were never enabled. The entire eligible set, not a flattering subset. ## Structure a real rollout See what your session depth looks like. We will read your analytics with you for twenty minutes and tell you what share of your sessions stop at the first page and, if you run more than one title, how to structure a rollout that gives you a real read before you commit the portfolio. No deck. [Book a session-depth read](/contact/) ## References 1. Chartbeat data reported in Press Gazette, "Global publisher Google traffic dropped by a third in 2025." [pressgazette.co.uk](https://pressgazette.co.uk/media-audience-and-business-data/google-traffic-down-2025-trends-report-2026/) 2. Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, "Journalism, Media and Technology Trends and Predictions 2026." [reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk](https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/journalism-media-and-technology-trends-and-predictions-2026) 3. Nitropay, "Protecting Ad Revenue Per Session in the Age of AI Search." [blog.nitropay.com](https://blog.nitropay.com/protecting-ad-revenue-per-session-in-the-age-of-ai-search/) --- *Method: PostHog, all devices, bot-filtered. Pre-period 4 Aug – 17 Dec 2025; post-period 22 Dec 2025 – 10 May 2026. Multi-page session share is the proportion of sessions recording more than one pageview. Distinct pages per session counts unique article paths, measured 4 Aug – 15 Dec 2025 against 22 Dec 2025 – 30 Mar 2026. Pooled figures are session-weighted. Comparison titles are Equine Network properties without the Artificial Poets Platform enabled.*