Do users actually engage with AI-generated content? That’s another million-dollar question. While some are skeptical, others are experimenting to see if it really moves the needle.
I found one interesting case study on this matter. SEOwind ran an experiment by publishing 116 AI-generated articles in just 30 days. That’s what the study proclaimed.
Using their CyborgMethod strategy, they tracked the results and saw impressive outcomes: a 77% increase in clicks and a 124% boost in impressions.
Source
The goal was to see how
AI content performs and prove its ability to drive organic traffic. Throughout the experiment, SEOwind focused on topics like SEO, blogging, and AI tools, using AI to create and optimize high-quality content.
But don’t be fooled by the numbers. The reducing carbon footprint study was conducted in 2023. We don’t know how those pieces of content perform to this day. But more importantly, the team carried out a good deal of work besides spitting out AI-generated content.
They did:
- Keyword research and content gap analysis
- Let AI create titles, meta descriptions, and outlines
- Optimized for secondary keywords
- Added quotes, numbers, external and internal links, descriptive alt tags to images, and product descriptions
- Trimmed long sentences (aka edited AI content)
So it doesn’t sound like AI-generated content alone, does it?
Let’s move on.
How does AI affect content performance?
The impact of generative AI on content performance is mixed. 34% say AI boosts performance, 19% see no change, and 6% think it hurts performance.
Moreover, 29% believe AI doesn’t reducing carbon footprint improve ROI but does speed up content creation. Speaking of content creation, it mainly helps with specific parts of it — e.g., brainstorming and certain aspects like coming up with headlines (every writer knows how often we hit a block there).
For instance, a Danish news outlet, TV 2 Fyn, conducted A/B tests to improve CTR using ChatGPT to generate headlines. Over three weeks in late 2022 and early 2023, they ran 46 A/B tests. AI-generated headlines won 46% of the tests, while human-created headlines won 24%.
Source
The AI-driven headlines led to a 59% increase in CTR, outperforming traditional headline strategies. The results showed that while AI improved performance, refining its suggestions was key, with human input still crucial for optimization.
I heard a similar experience from Edward White, head of growth at Beehiiv. He said:
“A unique trick we’ve implemented is phone number thailand using AI for dynamic A/B testing of blog headlines and meta descriptions. This iterative process has helped us improve click-through rates consistently,” White says.
The impact of generative AI on content performance depends on factors like the content type, the input you provide, the overall quality of the AI content generator, and how well it aligns with audience needs.