TLDR: A recent report by Outset PR reveals that 63% of crypto-focused media outlets in Eastern Europe experienced a decline in traffic during Q2 2025. Despite this overall contraction, generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini are increasingly becoming significant referral sources, with 20.6% of crypto-native outlets and 41.8% of generalist media seeing traffic from these platforms.
Outset PR’s latest report for the second quarter of 2025 highlights a significant shift in the digital landscape for crypto-related media in Eastern Europe. The study, which analyzed 155 outlets across countries including Albania, Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Ukraine, found that a substantial 63% of crypto-native media outlets experienced a decline in traffic. This overall contraction saw total crypto-native traffic drop by 18.3% during the quarter, with no signs of recovery month-over-month. This trend echoes similar patterns observed in other regions like Latin America and Western Europe.
Despite the widespread traffic decline, the report identifies a burgeoning role for generative AI tools in content discovery. Generative AI platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Copilot are emerging as meaningful referral sources for crypto content. Specifically, 20.6% of crypto-native outlets and a higher proportion, 41.8%, of generalist media outlets that cover crypto, reported receiving traffic from these AI-powered tools. While the absolute numbers are still relatively small, they indicate a growing influence of AI in how users discover crypto-related information.
Data from the report shows that GenAI tools drove approximately 135,180 visits to crypto-native media, accounting for 0.65% of their total 20.89 million visits. For generalist outlets, the impact was numerically larger, with 566,596 visits attributed to AI referrals, though this represented a smaller percentage (0.06%) of their overall traffic. This suggests that while AI is a nascent channel, its role in content distribution is expanding across both niche and mainstream crypto news sources.
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Interestingly, despite the overall traffic downturn, user loyalty to crypto-native publishers remained steady, with 45.2% of traffic originating from direct sources. The report also noted that a small group of 17 breakout publishers accounted for a dominant 80.7% of all crypto-native traffic, demonstrating their consistent momentum and emerging influence even amidst the general decline. The study also touched upon how regulatory complexity and enforcement risks are increasingly shaping editorial decisions and visibility outcomes within the Eastern European media sector.
