Digiday Scorecard: Publishers’ rate Big Tech’s AI licensing deals

Their overall verdict, as one exec put it: “All of them could be doing more. No one gets a great grade.”

Digiday has assembled an aggregate score informed by publisher feedback. Data on publisher licensing deals and lawsuits comes from Tow Center’s AI deals and disputes tracker.

The below is our take on the way the winds are blowing, rather than an exhaustive, comprehensive scorecard. 

Microsoft

So far, Microsoft is the unexpected darling of AI licensing deals. Simply put, publishers like the platform’s messaging: that they deserve to be paid for the quality of their IP and that Microsoft wants to help ensure there is a fully functioning information economy. “They are the high bar for collaboration compared to everyone else, and everyone else is missing that bar,” said a publishing exec on condition of anonymity.

Naturally, that bar has been very low, so it’s not so hard to pole vault over it. But there is a lot to say for the way the platform has approached working with publishers to create its AI content marketplace. The pay-per-use model could be a recurring revenue stream for publishers, and the fact that its AI assistant Copilot is an enterprise tool with a very large, built-in user base.

For starters, there are eight publisher partners and one single Microsoft point person (corporate vp in Microsoft AI Tim Frank) — that is simpler and easier for publishers to work with, as opposed to the multiple people at the other platforms. And the atmosphere so far, is that it’s been equal collaboration between publishers and the tech platform. Plus, Microsoft has just hired Bloomberg’s COO Julia Beizer to lead the platforms’ AI news product. She will be a strong advocate for publishers.

Publishers still have some concern. No one is naive enough to fully trust big tech agendas. And like any major business, Microsoft isn’t altruistic. Publishers aren’t completely clear on what its incentives are, other than wanting a prominent stake in the future of the web. That’s meant it has had to work hard to win over publishers this year, say publisher sources.

The New York Times is not a fan: its lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft is ongoing. Plus, the content AI marketplace is currently only available to a small group of publishers. Those not in that select group aren’t feeling quite so positive. A few publishing execs at companies not part of its marketplace yet told Digiday their outreach to Microsoft has gone unanswered.

But for now, those familiar with it are optimistic. So Microsoft scores high for collaboration, communication (with its initial partners), willingness to pay publishers, the traffic Copilot is sending to publishers and its crawler is well-behaved. So that gives it the top score for the group. It’s still early days, let’s see how it fares next year.

Number of publisher AI licensing partners: 11

Number of publisher lawsuits: 5

Willingness to pay publishers: 7/10

Transparency: 8/10

Traffic impact: 9/10

AI crawler behavior: 8/10

Aggregate score: 8/10

OpenAI

OpenAI is the second best in the views of the publishers we asked. It has 18 licensing deals with publishers globally. So it scores high for willingness to pay for 2025. And yet, eyes are starting to swivel to its 2026 priorities. The AI platform is betting large on shopping — turning AI assistants into transactional decision-makers, not just research tools. And publishers are curious whether it will remember how important their data signals are in that consumer buying journey.

Some of OpenAI’s licensing deals are due for renewal in a few years, and many are wondering what will happen there. Plus, there is an underlying fear that OpenAI is trying to be another Google. So there are open questions about its 2026 roadmap, but for 2025, it gets a moderately high score.

It does, however, get docked some points for not returning publisher (big and small) calls. A lot of outreach goes unanswered, apparently. It also loses points for having made a dent in referral traffic, though it still sends back more to publishers than the others. And OpenAI does still have quite a few scraping allegations ongoing, including with The NYT.

Number of publisher AI licensing partners: 18

Number of lawsuits filed by publishers: 13

Willingness to pay publishers: 8/10

Transparency: 6/10

Traffic impact: 5/10

AI crawler behavior: 9/10

Aggregate score: 7/10 

Meta

The ink on this one is so fresh that even publisher partners aren’t sure what’s in store. The deals only closed a few weeks ago, with seven publishers, and an announcement was rushed out. Publishers are generally glad it has seen the light — namely, that training a large language model (LLM) on Facebook comments does not make for a very good LLM. 

“Meta’s list was like seven publishers. Google’s was not that many. They both seemed like rushed lists a little bit, driven by other factors,” said a publishing exec. “Is it enough? I don’t know. How many publishers are there in the world, and how many have been paid so far?”

Consensus, though, is that Meta’s leadership team changes were the right move, and speak to the trajectory Meta is on with AI. And that has put the platform back on the radar with publishers on AI licensing deals.

As for its crawler, it’s pretty well behaved. (Though that wasn’t always the case.) It declares itself and doesn’t mask itself.

Number of publisher AI licensing partners: 8

Number of publisher lawsuits: 0

Willingness to pay publishers: 7/10

Transparency: 5/10

Traffic impact: 6/10

AI crawler behavior: 6/10

Aggregate score: 6/10 

Amazon

Amazon has two different kinds of licensing deals with publishers so far, one for its virtual assistant Alexa+ and the other for its AI shopping assistant Rufus. While Amazon says it has over 200 outlets powering its Alexa+ product, only a few are publicly known and recorded in Tow Center’s tracker.

Amazon has been a quieter player in the AI content licensing market, though. Its LLM Nova isn’t exactly a household name, compared to OpenAI’s GPT or Google’s Gemini, for example. Unlike the other platforms, Amazon doesn’t seem to be using content licensing for AI-powered search products either. But its larger-scale deal with The New York Times in June suggests Amazon may be the right partner for publishers like the Times that want to get paid for their content, without appearing in AI search products that may cannibalize their own traffic channels. 

It’s been quiet since this summer though, and it remains to be seen if Amazon is interested in signing on more publishers in 2026.

Number of publisher AI licensing partners: 13 (that’s according to Tow Center’s tracking, tough Amazon says it has over 200 deals)

Number of publisher lawsuits: 0

Willingness to pay publishers: 6

Transparency: 5/10

Traffic impact: 5/10

AI crawler behavior: 6/10

Aggregate score: 6/10 

Google

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, Google gets a low score for AI licensing. By now, it’s hard to miss the impact of Google’s AI Overviews and general search volatility, which has been highly unsettling for publishers for a good chunk of 2025, to say the least. 

Meanwhile, the protracted saga around how it doesn’t fully separate its AI and search crawlers will continue well into 2026, pending further scrutiny from regulators like the U.K.’s Competition Markets Authority. 

Last week, even Google rushed out a bundle of announcements, including updates that it will add more links to its AI-powered search products, including Gemini, AI Mode and AI Overviews, and will surface links from news outlets that users already subscribe to more prominently. 

It also announced “a new commercial program” with a range of new publishers globally to explore how AI can help drive more engaged audiences. Google has been careful not to describe these as new licensing deals (which publishers would see straight through) but more as having updated existing deals (from its Google News Showcase partner program) to include some elements of AI. Some in the industry have dismissed any talk of this resulting in any form of meaningful economics for publishers as “deal theater.”

However, several industry observers have said this hasn’t convinced many publishers that it’s flipping the script any time soon. The economics remain, well, opaque, to put it nicely. 

Number of publisher AI licensing partners: 15 (including deals for its NotebookLM project and an AI pilot program)

Number of publisher lawsuits: 1

Willingness to pay publishers: 2/10

Transparency: 2/10

Traffic impact: 1/10

AI crawler behavior: 3/10

Aggregate score: 2/10 

Perplexity

Perplexity has struggled to win over publishers, despite having one of the largest groups of publishers signed onto its revenue share program and AI-powered browser Comet (though not entirely sure it is even trying to). The company has signed on a number of publishers to its revenue sharing program who told Digiday they couldn’t get into those earlier OpenAI content licensing deals and wanted some of the money going around. However, the money being paid out to publishers by Perplexity is a fraction of what OpenAI was offering.

“We’re getting some revenue… It’s useful, and it’s good they’re willing to do that,” said one publishing exec. Perplexity’s platform needs more adoption, and their advertising business needs to grow, in order for the revenue to pick up, they said.

Despite that, it’s one of the least trusted AI players amongst the so-called magnificent seven, and is even regarded by some publishers Digiday has spoken to as something of a pariah.

“Every time you take the mask off some crawler that’s doing something abusive, you find out it’s, once again, Perplexity under the hood,” said a publisher exec. 

Another exec said Perplexity has used headless browsers to scrape, too. Perplexity has always denied these accusations. 

And when it comes to traffic, Perplexity does send some, and the attribution in its AI-generated summaries is “helpful,” one exec said. However, it’s nothing close to the losses from search and social their site has experienced this year.

Number of publisher AI licensing partners: 30+

Number of publisher lawsuits: 5

Willingness to pay publishers: 3/10

Transparency: 2/10

Traffic impact: 2/10

AI crawler behavior: 1/10

Aggregate score: 2/10

Prorata

A number of publishers seem to have high hopes for Prorata. For one thing, it has integrated its AI-powered search engine Gist.ai on a number of publishers’ sites to boost their audience recirculation and engagement numbers.

Prorata’s revenue share program also seems more fair to some publishers. Rather than one-time licensing payments or lump-sum multi-year contracts based on access to archives or data, ProRata pays out 50% of all its advertising revenue to publisher partners on a recurring basis, depending on how often their content powers AI responses.

While one publishing exec said they thought the model was fair and “makes sense” for publishers, it was waiting to sign on until user adoption is higher, due to their own limited resources. And the money paid out to publishers has been minimal at best. It seems as though publishers have had more success with adding Prorata’s AI-powered search tools on their own sites, rather than trying to get traffic from Gist itself.

Number of publisher AI licensing partners: 50+

Number of publisher lawsuits: 0

Willingness to pay publishers: 8/10

Transparency: 8/10

Traffic impact: 2/10

AI crawler behavior: 8/10

Aggregate score: 7/10

Anthropic 

Publishers have a lot less to say on Anthropic.  It presents itself as ethical, but in reality, its crawler is a nightmare, publishers say.

It has a tendency to flout robots.txt file requests, so publishers have a time of it trying to block it indefinitely, and they also score 0 points for willingness to pay publishers and collaborate or even communicate. Publishers say they’re “totally unresponsive” to any request for licensing partnerships publishers have made. 

Oh, and they have quite a major lawsuit ongoing. 

Number of publisher AI licensing partners: 0

Number of publisher lawsuits: 0

Willingness to pay publishers: 0/10

Transparency: 0/10

Traffic impact: 0/10

AI crawler behavior: 0/10

Aggregate score: 0/10