What showing up where compliance and research buyers search is worth in new Dow Jones contracts

dowjones.com ranks in Google's top 10 for only 3 to 5 of the 33 searches its risk and research buyers make (LexisNexis ranks for 16), buys almost none of those clicks, and in AI answers is named first a quarter as often as LSEG (4.6% vs 18.4% of non-branded answers). This models Google Ads on the solution searches now, then the pages and research that rank and get cited. Pick a tier, then replace our placeholder rates with Dow Jones' own.

Paid search: Google Ads on the 21 solution searches

Google Ads budget a month$12,500

On searches like "aml screening," "kyc software," "third party risk management" and "media monitoring tools." Dow Jones runs ~37 paid visits a month today; LSEG ~727, Moody's ~656 (Ahrefs est.).

Cost per click$6.25

Ahrefs' guide averages $6.24 across the 21 searches ($0.25–17); Keyword Planner will confirm.

Ad click to a demo request0.75%

Placeholder: three-quarters of the organic solution-visit rate.

Organic & AI: dowjones.com

New visits a month on solution searches830

18,860 searches a month across 21 terms like "sanctions screening," "pep screening" and "adverse media screening." 830 = half of them reaching Google's top three.

New visits a month on glossary searches1,360

42,700 searches a month for definitions and lists ("kyc," "beneficial ownership," "OFAC sanctions list"), plus pages ranking 4–20 today. Redirecting the 345 sites' links to dead risk pages helps here.

New AI-answer referrals a month160

The solution searches × the 30% of US finance decision-makers who call AI answers "very influential" (GWI) × the rise in answers naming Dow Jones first (4.6% today, 7.5% at this tier; LSEG 18.4%, Peec).

Solution visit to a demo request1.00%

Placeholder until Dow Jones shares its own: a demo, trial or contact-sales request. AI referrals convert at the same rate.

Glossary visit to a demo request0.10%

Placeholder: a tenth of the solution rate. Most of these readers are learning, not buying.

Every new customer

Demo request to a new customer15%

Placeholder until Dow Jones shares its own.

First-year contract value$30,000

Placeholder: a screening-data or Factiva subscription in its first year. Risk & Compliance revenue grew 16% to $392M in FY2026 (News Corp).

New first-year contract value a year from Google Ads, search and AI

new customers a year

—

revenue per $1 of ads

demo requests a month

Demo requests a month, by source

Google Ads

Solution searches

Glossary searches

AI answers

Cost per outcome and what the clicks would cost (not in the revenue)

ad cost per demo request

ad cost per new customer

a month to buy the organic clicks

If a solution visit converts at	Customers / yr	Revenue / yr

What waiting costs

Each month without the plan defers about $0 of new first-year contract value at these rates. Meanwhile 345 websites still link to 64 old Dow Jones risk & compliance pages that now show as broken, 149 of them to the old KYC guide, and their authority goes nowhere. In AI answers, LSEG's pages are cited more than twice as often as Dow Jones' (288 vs 120 citations in a day), and Google's AI answer for "best sanctions screening data providers for banks" cites LSEG's page to describe Dow Jones. Buyers are shopping: Risk & Compliance revenue grew 16% last year.

Demand and rankings: Ahrefs, US, 15 Oct 2026: 33 risk & compliance and news-data head terms, 61,560 searches a month (12-month average), 18,860 on 21 solution searches and 42,700 on 12 definition and list searches; Dow Jones top 10 for 3 (live on 15 Oct, Dow Jones blog posts also ranked #8 for "pep screening" and #9 for "adverse media screening"; LexisNexis 16, Moody's 8, LSEG 7). Head terms only, US only: the long tail and other markets are extra. CTR curve (ROAST working curve): #1 28%, #2 16%, #3 11%, top-three average with a 50% AI Overview haircut ~9.2%. Ads: Ahrefs CPC guide (volume-weighted $6.24); ads rarely win more than ~15% of a market's clicks (~$17,500 a month on these searches) until Keyword Planner volumes arrive. Broken links: Ahrefs, 414 linking sites to 112 dead /professional/ URLs. AI: Peec.ai, 15 Oct 2026 (one day, 76 prompts across ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews): non-branded visibility Dow Jones 47.3% vs LSEG 54.7%, named first 4.6% vs 18.4%. GWI Core + Work (Q1 2025–Q3 2026, US banking/financial-services decision-makers, a proxy for compliance buyers): 80% find search results influential in vendor research, 67% Gen AI answers, 30% "very." Revenue: News Corp FY2026 results (Aug 2026).

Formula: (solution visits + AI referrals) × solution demo rate + glossary visits × glossary demo rate = organic demo requests a month; budget ÷ CPC × click-to-demo = ad demo requests; demo requests × 12 × demo-to-customer = new customers a year; × first-year contract value = revenue. Revenue per $1 counts only the ads. The organic clicks' cost to buy (each search's own CPC) is never added to the revenue. Every revenue figure uses placeholder rates until Dow Jones shares its own.

Part of the ROAST × Dow Jones search, paid media and AI visibility analysis, October 2026.