Why rethinking syndication will help publishers succeed in the AI era

Syndication is an answer

Smart publishers are re-emphasizing content syndication to reach customers where they spend time — news aggregators, AI agents, CTV channels and mobile apps. Hundreds of millions of consumers use MSN, Apple News, Yahoo and dozens of other news aggregators to consume content. Through syndication, publishers can reach new audiences, maintain engagement with existing readers, build their brand and generate new revenue, all while seeing enhanced referral traffic.

Publishers who have not reviewed their syndication strategy lately are likely missing out. For example, Apple News+ launched six years ago and is now material to earnings and revenue for many subscription publishers. In the last two years, Apple has branched out to embrace local, sports and recipe content. News+ payouts are determined on a time-spent-per-publisher basis. While Apple News does not allow programmatic ads, publishers can work with a partner for Apple News Monetization.

Similarly, MSN has changed its payout structure from page views to dwell time. Publishers can improve their results by developing longer-form content and/or inserting contextually relevant related content components, similar to Apple News.

Revenue opportunities abound in syndication. For publishers struggling to drive awareness of their commerce content, it’s worth considering that Yahoo is rolling out new feed specifications designed to improve the commerce reading experience. For publishers whose video views are maxed out across YouTube, Amazon Fire TV, Xumo, MSN, Yahoo and NewsBreak are noteworthy as they ramp up their publisher video experiences.

With the right syndication solution, syndication processes can be automated and optimized in a way that increases revenue, distribution and brand awareness. This requires technology, such as plugins to give editors control while helping them with decision-making, contextual matching solutions to optimize components and publishing technologies like content integration, filtering, cleansing, supplementing, templatizing and results aggregation. Beyond technology, success requires business relationships that can get answers from aggregators who are often reluctant to provide guidance.

Finally, publishers need to keep up with changes and develop best practices for each distribution point.

That is a long to-do list for resource-constrained publishers, and it only gets more challenging with the next big market for syndicated content: AI.

AI may be the solution

Given the well-documented traffic declines, it is understandable that publishers view AI and large language models with apprehension. However, leading answer engines, including ProRata and Perplexity, are offering revenue shares based on attribution modeling. Revenue is minimal today, as monetization through ads is not the primary focus for AI LLMs. But with their intent-oriented users and large-scale usage, that will likely change.

More encouragingly, large tech companies are quietly setting up marketplaces and licensing programs for content. This is due in part to litigation, but also an emerging understanding that the best answers need the best source material. If publishers and LLMs can prove this, publishers could develop their long-sought-after leverage in licensing negotiations.

Put another way, the existing bid/ask spread between publisher and licensor will narrow, and the conditions will be set for an explosion of licensing.

Publishers can prepare themselves for this eventual reality today by formulating their content to win in the era of AI. This starts with enhancing article/video/audio/image metadata using AI, vectorizing their content and making it available via standardized licensing and data formats.

If LLMs can import and contextualize content quickly, publishers will be prioritized in answer engine results. This will provide a bit of revenue and high-intent referral traffic while they build their licensing value propositions.

This is easier said than done in this rapidly changing environment. Like all syndication, success in AI will require business relationships, technology investments and best practices learned from experience. Publishers that adopt early, rapidly iterate and grow with this new technology will reap the benefits down the road, much as they did at the dawn of Google Search.

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