---
title: Mobile Multi-Page Sessions Rose 48%. The Comparison Titles Fell 23%.
description: "Segment cut of the Equine Network rollout: mobile multi-page sessions +48% against −23% on comparison titles, social arrivals +99%. Six of seven segments improved; direct declined and is printed."
url: https://preview.artificialpoets.com/customers/equine-network-segments/
site: Artificial Poets
type: a13s_case_study
date: 2026-08-09T20:07:48+00:00
modified: 2026-08-14T17:26:39+00:00
image: https://preview.artificialpoets.com/wp-content/uploads/a13s-cards/1529-social-480ccd60.png
---
# Mobile Multi-Page Sessions Rose 48%. The Comparison Titles Fell 23%.

**CASE STUDY**

[Download Case Study in PDF](/customers/equine-network-segments/pdf/)

We compared titles from the same network running Artificial Poets Platform and compared with other titles without running it. Mobile is two-thirds of these network traffic.

- **+48%** Multi-page sessions on mobile
- **+99%** Multi-page sessions from social
- **6 of 7** Segments improved

## In brief

- Across the enabled Equine Network titles, multi-page session share rose from 10.3% to 15.1%. This piece asks where that came from.
- **Mobile rose 48%**, from 9.2% to 13.6%, while the comparison group's mobile fell 23% over the same nine months.
- **Social arrivals roughly doubled** their multi-page rate, from 8.6% to 17.2%. On the comparison titles, social fell.
- The lift held on every device, and on every acquisition channel except direct.
- **Direct traffic declined** on the enabled titles, but it declined further on the comparison titles, so we do not attribute it to the Platform either way.

## The pressure

Any publisher reading a case study asks the same private question: *will this work on my audience?*

It is a fair thing to worry about, because most engagement products work best exactly where you need them least. They lift the readers who were already going to stay (the loyal, the direct, the desktop) and do nothing for the traffic that actually costs you money.

The two segments publishers most want moved are the two hardest to move.

**Mobile.** Roughly two-thirds of traffic on these titles, with the smallest screen, the least patience and the worst monetisation per session in the business. It is also where the erosion everyone is describing runs fastest: across the comparison titles, the share of mobile sessions reaching more than one page fell from 11.5% to 8.8% in nine months, with nothing changed on any of them.

**Social arrivals.** They came for one specific thing they saw in a feed, and they leave. Nearly a quarter of one enabled title's traffic arrives this way.

So we broke the result apart and looked at where it actually landed.

## 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.

Three comparable titles in the same portfolio were left unchanged and measured alongside them across identical weeks.

## Where the lift landed

### By device

| Device | Enabled | Comparison |
 | --- | --- | --- |
 | Mobile | +48% | −23% |
 | Tablet | +88% | −10% |
 | Desktop | +29% | −8% |

**Mobile is the commercially important row.** It is about two-thirds of these titles' traffic, and it is where the comparison group lost the most. The enabled titles went the other way by 48%. That is a 71-point swing on the surface where most publishers make most of their impressions.

Desktop improved least in relative terms, which is what you would expect: desktop readers already went deeper, so there was less headroom. The pattern holds across all three devices, and it is largest exactly where the headroom was.

### By acquisition channel

| Channel | Enabled | Comparison |
 | --- | --- | --- |
 | Organic social | +99% | −4% |
 | Referral | +149% | −2% |
 | Organic search | +59% | +2% |
 | Direct | −19% | −35% |

**Social roughly doubled.** A reader arriving from a feed used to go past the first article about one time in twelve. Now it is closer to one in six. That is the segment conventional wisdom says you cannot do anything with, and it moved further than any other channel on the site.

**Organic search rose 59%.** This is the traffic being squeezed hardest by AI answers: referrals to publishers fell roughly a third in the year to December 2025, [1] and the reader who does land arrives with a narrower question and less appetite than they used to have. [2] The Platform does not bring that reader back, but it does get more out of them once they arrive.

**Referral rose most in percentage terms**, but it is the smallest channel here and the enabled and comparison titles clearly draw referrals from different places. Note the very different starting points. We would not build a case on this row.

## The exception

### Direct traffic went down on the enabled titles

From 12.7% to 10.3%. We are not going to explain that away.

What we can say is that direct fell further on the comparison titles over the same weeks, from 7.0% to 4.6%, a 35% decline against our 19%. Something is happening to direct-arriving readers across this whole category, and it is happening to the enabled titles slightly less. We do not claim the Platform caused the smaller decline, and we would not want anyone to read it that way.

It is one channel out of four, and it is the one where readers arrive already knowing where they are going.

## 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. Multi-page session share is the proportion of sessions recording more than one pageview. Device is taken from the user agent; channel is assigned at session level.

The comparison titles are the Equine Network properties that report continuously across the whole window and were never enabled. The entire eligible set, not a flattering subset. Every segment we measured is shown above, including the one that went against us.

## Ready to see what this could look like for you?

Book a free session and we’ll chat about your numbers together. You’ll see where the biggest opportunities are.

[Book my free session](/request-a-demo/)

## 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. 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/)

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*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. Segment figures are pooled across the two enabled titles and the three comparison titles respectively, session-weighted. Comparison titles are Equine Network properties without the Artificial Poets Platform enabled.*