Media Briefing: Publishers cautiously count AI licensing as notable revenue amid programmatic strain, in Q1 earnings

As publishers continue to reposition their businesses to be less reliant on traffic-dependent ad revenue, AI licensing revenue is emerging as a rare bright spot, according to first-quarter earnings.

In particular, AI licensing deals with Meta, signed in December 2025, are starting to produce “meaningful” revenue for some publishers, for the first time. While neither publisher broke out exactly how much money they made from AI licensing deals in Q1 2026, USA Today Co. for the first time reported “notable” revenue from AI licensing agreements in the quarter, according to earnings results published on April 30.

Meanwhile, IAC (soon to be renamed People Inc.) cited AI licensing revenue as a driver of its year-over-year licensing business growth in Q1 as well, per the company’s Q1 earnings published May 5.

AI licensing revenue falls into two buckets — lump-sum deals or pay-per-use models — and a publisher can secure either or a mix of both. But it’s hard to forecast because it blends fixed licensing fees with volatile usage-based payments tied to external AI platform demand. The result is a real but uneven revenue stream that can be difficult to model as a consistent offset to declining traffic-driven ad revenue.

Analysts remain unconvinced it is material enough yet to offset ad revenue lost by traffic declines.

“We haven’t seen enough proof points to tell if the licensing story is going to play out the way [IAC and USA Today] are envisioning,” said Daniel Kurnos, managing director of internet & media at investment banking firm The Benchmark Company. “It’s just too early to know.”

The New York Times did not specifically point to AI deals as the driver behind its year-over-year licensing revenue growth (the publisher’s biggest AI licensing deal was signed with Amazon last summer), but did cite higher licensing revenues in the first quarter.

“We’ve done a partnership with Amazon because it met those conditions. And so far, so good. We’re learning a lot there,” New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien said during an earnings call on May 6.

Q1 numbers:

• USA Today Co.’s “other” digital revenue — which includes digital content syndication, affiliate, content and AI partnerships and licensing revenue — grew 125.6% YOY to $33.75 million.
• People Inc.’s licensing and “other” revenue — which primarily includes brand and content licensing — increased 26% YOY to $40.7 million in Q1. This was primarily driven by its Meta deal, and improved performance from Apple News+ and content syndication partners.
• The New York Times’s digital affiliate, licensing and other revenues (which consist primarily of affiliate referral revenue from product recommendation site Wirecutter and digital licensing revenue) increased 12.7% YOY to $45.2 million.

Traffic-dependent ad revenue woes

Q1 optimism aside, it remains unclear whether AI licensing revenue can offset losses in traffic-driven advertising long term.

For now, publishers are happy to take the incremental revenue.

Matt Prohaska, CEO and principal of Prohaska Consulting, said he is working with a publisher client to land AI licensing deals to provide short-term revenue, while the publisher focuses on building direct audience traffic and advertising dollars.

The goal is to seize “short-term revenue wins from Big AI Tech that hopefully does not further erode direct audience and advertiser relationships long-term,” Prohaska said.

Q1 earnings reveal Google’s changes to its platforms — such as AI Overviews — and shifts within Google Discover — are still hurting publishers’ programmatic and display businesses.

“Core web sessions continue to be challenged. Google search traffic declined as expected, and we expect that will continue. Traffic from the open web also declined a bit as the substitution rate from core web sessions to off-platform audiences increases,” said People Inc. CEO Neil Vogel in an earnings call on May 5.

Q1 numbers:

• USA Today Co.’s digital advertising revenue fell 3% YOY to $80.9 million. Company execs cited page view declines and softness in the programmatic ad market as the main reasons for the dip. 
• USA Today Co.’s total digital revenue grew 5.2% YOY to $261.9 million.
• People Inc.’s “session-based revenue” (revenue related to programmatic or direct-sold display ads) fell 1% YOY to $150.5 million in Q1 2026. However, “non-session-based revenue” (ad revenue from social or native campaigns, events, sponsorships, emails, ad targeting tool D/Cipher and licensing) grew 24% YOY to $102.7 million. 
• People Inc.’s total digital revenue grew 8% YOY to $253 million.
• The New York Times’s digital advertising grew 32% YOY to $93 million, mainly due to strong marketer demand and growth in advertising supply, according to Will Bardeen, executive vp and CFO.

IAC chairman Barry Diller told investors and analysts in the earnings call that People Inc. has “lost” 65% of its referral traffic from Google. Total sessions (or unique visitors) declined 18% YOY, mostly due to the growing prominence of Google AI Overviews in search results, with AI Overviews appearing on nearly 70% of the top 10,000 People Inc. search keywords (on par with the previous quarter).

Meanwhile, People Inc.’s off-platform audiences (across Apple News, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and syndication partners) grew 27% in Q1, a “driver of our growth,” Vogel said. People Inc. is also pushing its business to be less dependent on session-based revenue. In Q1, 41% of its digital revenue was from “non-session-based revenue,” compared to 35% in Q1 2025.

USA Today Co., on the other hand, saw just a small impact on its digital advertising revenue from AI Overviews — at least compared to the changes to Google Discover this past quarter, which surfaced less local content, according to Kristin Roberts, president of USA Today Media.

During The New York Times’ earnings call, Levien said the publisher was “operating in a media environment dominated by a small number of technologies whose moves continue to impact traffic to publishers. The Times isn’t immune to that impact.” However, she listed ways that The Times is set up for “long-term growth” despite these challenges, due to its mix of news coverage and lifestyle products, formats and product experiences that engage audiences, and multiple revenue streams. 

More AI revenue to come?

Despite the optimism around AI licensing deals bringing in real money for publishers this past quarter, no one is putting all their eggs in that basket. 

USA Today Co. execs warned investors and analysts in its earnings call that AI revenue would be “lumpy or unpredictable” in the short term. Trisha Gosser, USA Today Co.’s CFO, said the company expected “variability” in AI licensing deal revenue, and that there was a particularly “strong contribution” in Q1.

But all three companies were bullish that AI-related revenue would continue to flow.

The Times’ Levien said the publisher was open to doing more AI deals, as long as they met with a set of conditions: “Is a deal or a partnership here consistent with our long-term strategy? Does it ensure sustainable, fair value exchanges? Do we have control over how our content is used?”

USA Today Co.’s CEO Mike Reed said he expects the company will bring in more revenue from AI content licensing deals, with real-time content becoming more valuable than the publisher’s content archive.

People Inc.’s Vogel echoed this narrative.

“Since we started blocking traffic, we have found we’ve entered into very productive discussions with all kinds of players, both expected and unexpected in this market, with the notable exception of Google,” he told investors. “We’re entering a phase of AI where the available sources of information have been crawled. And what’s really valuable is people who are making new information. We make an awful lot of new information, and it’s really valuable to people. So I would expect we will have more to report on this in the future.”

What we’ve heard

“News is often seen as a commodity now, and so our journalists are our biggest differentiator. Leaning into their personal brand is a really important priority for us right now. But really we created the Talent Lab because we were mindful that we were saying to our newsroom, it’s super important for our subscribers to build direct relationships with you as experts, and also for our trust… [but] not everyone in the newsroom felt comfortable or confident in those new skills.”

— Taneth Evans, The Wall Street Journal’s head of digital, on the publisher forming a Talent Lab to help more of its newsroom get familiar with being in videos, podcasts and newsletters.

Numbers to know

15%: The percentage of cost cuts expected at BBC’s news division, part of a £600 million cost-cutting plan. BBC has 21,500 employees; BBC’s news division makes up about a quarter of that.

Four: The number of days Financial Times journalists are expected to work from the office by the end of the year, up from the current three office days. The plan is receiving pushback from the FT’s union.

2.25%: The tax the Australian government is proposing to charge major tech platforms that do not strike commercial deals with news publishers.

$10 million: The amount Forbes Media has agreed to pay to settle a class action lawsuit alleging the publisher tracked users across the internet without their consent. 

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