Media Briefing: Publishers catch new vibes from Meta on AI licensing

Meta vibe check

Publishers are picking up new vibes from Meta, which they believe signal that the platform may be changing its stance on AI licensing. 

So far, it’s more rhetoric than reality. Nevertheless, if it were to come to fruition, it could reset the dynamic between Meta and publishers, many of whom still feel burned by years of declining referral traffic from the platform. 

When publishers, retailers and cloud edge companies gathered at the IAB Tech Lab’s first workshop in New York City on 23 July, to discuss first steps in creating a standardized framework for AI content monetization and attribution, Meta and Google were also present. 

Four publishers Digiday spoke to said that during the event, Meta’s message was that there is now more buy-in at the senior level within the company regarding the value of potentially forging closer ties with publishers of quality content.

“[They] were clear that the new leadership knows that AI runs on good content, and that has moved Meta to engage more,” said a publishing exec of a major media brand who attended the event and agreed to speak under the condition of anonymity.  

Of all the platforms, Meta has the fewest AI licensing deals, having partnered with Reuters last year to use its content to answer user questions in real time about news and current events. 

Meta has radically reorganized its AI operations under a new division called Meta Superintelligence Labs, consolidating all its AI teams — from foundational model development to product engineering — under one roof.

“Meta was very clear that with their new leadership – because they’ve obviously been building a Superintelligence team very quickly, and there’s completely new AI leadership – they were very clear that there’s a different attitude to accessing information going forward than what they had before,” said the same publishing exec. “Although it turns into a whole different question. They were very clear that their stance on this has changed, even though it may not have outwardly turned into action yet.”

Meta declined to comment for this article.

No road map is currently in the works and nothing formative has been established at Meta. No publishers are under any illusion about the fact that Meta is in the information-gathering phase. “My takeaway was that they are now approaching things differently and expanding how they source their information beyond their platform,” said another exec who attended the meeting. 

Earlier this year, Raptive signed a contract with its creators and publishers, which means it can now handle AI licensing negotiations on their behalf. Since then, it has received an inquiry from Meta around the potential AI licensing of one of its publishers on the platform, though without any firm commitment, according to Raptive chief strategy officer Paul Bannister. “They weren’t, like, ready to do a deal. They were like, we’re just trying to figure out the lay of the land here and see what to do. So it does seem like they are trying to figure it out,” he said. 

With no concrete details from Meta on what its Superintelligence unit will actually deliver, or what its appetite for AI licensing deals will really be, speculation is the only game in town for now.

But various industry execs Digiday spoke to believe that in order to compete with AI rivals OpenAI, Google and Anthropic it needs to have its own access to new quality content – the type premium publishers have in spades. Even Amazon has acknowledged its need to closely pair with publishers, having recently signed AI licensing deals with the New York Times, Conde Nast and Hearst. 

Despite what Google claims, publishers believe they can’t fully block its AI crawler without jeopardizing their search rankings, whereas there is no such catch with their blocking Meta’s crawler. And a quick glance at the robots.txt files of publishers including The Guardian, Washington Post, Financial Times, New York Times and News UK – publisher of the Times of London and tabloid The Sun – shows they’re all blocking the main Meta Llama crawler. 

“Nearly no one is blocking Google from scraping their content, because if you block Google, you lose all the search traffic, so no one does it,” said Bannister. “OpenAI has negotiated a large number of deals with people [publishers] so even though a bunch of people are blocking them [OpenAI], they have access to a large swathe of high quality content, and everybody else, I think, is getting blocked pretty heavily these days, including Meta, because publishers have no incentive to let Meta scrape their content,” he added.  

And when it comes to the AI race, neither Google nor Meta can afford to remain static. And Meta has some catching up to do, stressed several industry execs Digiday spoke to. 

“The frontier models understand that in order to be truly useful, they need a model to get fresh news and data,” said a publishing exec under condition of anonymity. 

What we’ve heard

“Sites will be getting much less traffic, and advertisers will be spending more money per impression on sites, and more share on Google and answer engines than they do now… It has to be a paradigm shift with advertisers whereby they realize they will be paying more for more qualified eyeballs, but won’t be wasting their budgets on so many hit and run users. Advertisers won’t come around to that paradigm fast enough so many sites will shutter. We have a bumpy road ahead.”

– A head of SEO at a large lifestyle publisher.

IAB Tech Lab maintains momentum around AI remuneration standards framework 

In the age of AI, “friction” has become publishers’ buzzword for survival. 

Publishers are leaning hard into creating this – what is essentially friction – or collaborating with tech players that can, around accessing their content to force AI engines to pay up. 

That’s a big reason why the IAB Tech Lab is pushing ahead swiftly with its framework to govern how publishers get paid when AI models scrape their content — with or without the AI companies’ cooperation.

The framework has been rebranded from LLM Content Ingest API and will now be known as AI Content Monetization Protocols (CoMP) with a remit to develop protocols for content monetization, large language model discovery and bot and crawler traffic management. 

Currently, at least 50 companies have officially signed up to be part of the group forming the protocols, according to IAB Tech Lab CEO Anthony Katsur.

The first workshop in July in New York City was attended by more than 80 media executives, with retailers and other brands, cloud edge companies (or content delivery networks) Cloudflare and Fastly, and Google and Meta also in attendance. Several major international publishers flew to NYC for the event, including German media giants Bertelsmann and RTL and international execs from Axel Springer and other titles attended remotely. There were three noticeable absences: OpenAI, Perplexity and Anthropic didn’t show up. 

“The LLMs aren’t cooperating,” Katsur told Digiday. “OpenAI, Perplexity, Anthropic – they have not responded, and we’ve reached out multiple times.” 

Whereas, despite wider tensions around how Google’s AI Overviews are affecting referral traffic, Google and indeed Meta, did at least show up – a reminder perhaps that for all the frenemy ups and downs over the years, they are invested in the open web ecosystem and are long-time partners. In contrast, the AI companies are like the new kids on the block. “Publishers are kind of this lifeblood [of the internet] and I think Meta and Google understand that implicitly,” added Katsur. 

Despite the AI platform no-shows, Katsur is keen to maintain momentum and keep pushing the group forward. Katsur is cognizant of the challenges but is adamant that there is strength in numbers. 

“This is all moot if the AI companies don’t comply,” he said. “The leverage there is going to be working with the edge compute platforms – the Cloudflares, the Fastlys, the Akamis and [Amazon] Cloudfronts to block them. And once they’re blocked, then we’ll have their attention. They need to be blocked, full stop,” said Katsur. 

If there has ever been a time for publishers to band together and unite, big and small, this is it, he added. “I think that’s more important than any technical framework, than any public policy approach or new legislation down in DC, if publishers do not lock arms and band together and block the crawling, then, you know, they’re not all gonna make it,” he said. — Jessica Davies

Numbers to know

52%: Forbes’ year-over-year traffic decline in July.

4: The number of in-office days required at Penske Media, beginning Oct. 20.

80%: The percentage of LA Times unionized staffers voting to strike.

Less than half: The percentage of U.S. adults that say someone who hosts a news podcast (46%) or writes their own newsletter about news (40%) is considered a journalist, in a new Pew Research Center study.

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