There’s so much commotion surrounding content scraping, LLMs, and the need for regulation; how can I resist getting caught up in the generative AI drama?
The shift to AI-driven content discovery are hurting publishers, small and large. Norine Rogers, founder of the recipe site Norine’s Nest, said unregulated AI has become an existential threat to her business. Rogers, who built her site after becoming an empty nester, told AdMonsters that she’s seen her traffic hit hard by zero-click AI search over the past year.
She’s survived previous Google algorithm updates. But zero-click AI is hitting search referrals harder: Norine’s Nest revenue is down 48% from the previous year.
Even gated content isn’t safe from AI search crawlers, observed Major League Fishing’s Sr. Director of Ad Operations Jared Collett.
“In researching Comet across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, I found that most of the sources they were citing were paywalled,” said Collett. “In some cases, I couldn’t even read the articles myself, yet the AI was using them in answers. That undermines the entire paywall model. Why would someone pay for content they can get for free through an LLM?”
With ad revenue and subscription revenue both at risk, publishers are fighting back. Initiatives like the IAB Tech Lab’s AI Content Monetization Protocols (CoMP) Working Group aim to give publishers a leg up.
But many sell-side stakeholders believe these efforts are doomed without support from lawmakers and regulators. Mediavine, which relies on publishers to survive for its publisher monetization technology to thrive, took action by writing a letter to the U.S. Copyright Office, asking it to protect publishers’ intellectual property from unrestrained AI scraping.
“The damage being done by AI scraping and algorithm changes is happening so quickly that we don’t have years to wait for the market to correct itself, said Amanda Martin, Chief Revenue Officer at Mediavine. “Publishers deserve clear credit, compensation, and control, and regulators need to act now before there’s less content to protect.” Mediavine is hoping lawmakers will support publishers in the upcoming copyright battles.
Rogers’ recipe site, one of 17,000 in Mediavine’s ad network, supports a more urgent regulatory approach. She just hopes they act in time.
“I don’t feel like regulators understand the urgency,” Rogers said. She is not convinced lawmakers will meet the moment without more pressure from the publishing industry.
Without regulatory safeguards, Rogers said, small publishers just can’t compete with Big Tech. The ad-supported publishing model may no longer be reliable as AI search stops referring traffic to sites like hers.
Campaigning For Change
But what could a fair model look like? Mediavine’s petition, a formal request to the U.S. Copyright Office sent on August 7, asks the office to enforce existing copyright laws, rather than its current “wait and see” approach to regulating AI. It warns that without immediate rules, independent creators risk going out of business before protections are put in place. Mediavine also created a Change.org petition to rally publisher support for the cause.
The petition calls for a few key reforms, including:
- Clear credit and compensation whenever AI tools use publisher content to generate answers.
- Rejecting “fair use” exemptions for training AI models on copyrighted material without permission.
- Mandatory transparency from AI platforms about their training data sources.
- Development of licensing frameworks to allow publishers to opt in and monetize their content.
- Protection of search equity to maintain publishers’ visibility and attribution in AI-powered search results.
Rogers’ own experience highlights why the “wait and see” approach is futile. Just last week, she spotted one of her full recipes, along with the accompanying photograph, for sale on Etsy through an AI-generated website.
“They’d sold over 200 copies at $9.95 each. That’s $2,000 of income I lost,” Rogers said. “That’s my photograph. That’s my intellectual property. And Etsy makes it nearly impossible to report copyright infringements.”
Making matters worse, the AI-powered site republished Rogers’ content in its entirety, rather than just using it as training data for its own recipe ideas. “I don’t call that scraping,” she said. “That’s stealing.”
Even if someone printed the recipe from her website and repurposed it, that would have been preferable, she said, because at least in that case, the consumer would have visited her site and seen her ads, which would have yielded some revenue.
“But AI doesn’t give me credit or compensation,” she said. “They just take it.”
Comet Plus Hits The Publishing World
Ensuring publishers receive fair compensation for appearing in AI models, one of Mediavine’s requests, also figures prominently in the IAB Tech Lab’s proposed content monetization protocols. Tech Lab CEO Anthony Katsur has been outspoken about the need for more aggressive action and lobbying on behalf of media owners.
Generative AI companies OpenAI, Perplexity, and Anthropic have so far not come to the Tech Lab’s bargaining table. But one of them is offering its own pre-emptive deal to publishers.
Perplexity introduced a publisher revenue-sharing initiative for its Comet Plus browser.
Perplexity charges a $5 monthly subscription for its Comet Plus service. This paid version of its Comet web browser features a curated feed of content from participating publishers. The program will pay publishers in three ways:
- When people visit a publisher’s site via the Comet browser.
- When its search tool cites the publisher’s content in an answer.
- When Comet’s AI agents perform tasks using that content.
Perplexity pools the Comet Plus subscription revenue and distributes 80% of the funds to participating publishers. Perplexity is reportedly earmarking $42.5 million to distribute to its publisher partners, none of which have been publicly named yet.
But some on the sell side of the industry argue the numbers don’t line up.
Although Perplexity earns an estimated $120 million in annual revenue, it is committing less than half that amount to publishers, said Collett.
“These funds look more like a public-relations cushion against lawsuits than true restitution,” said Collett.
And while Perplexity promotes Comet Plus as a revenue-sharing plan, Collett said the economics skew in the company’s favor. With only about 3% of users subscribing, Perplexity can fully fund the $42.5M pool. Every additional subscription, he noted, is upside for them, not publishers.
Striking this type of deal could undermine publisher attempts to monetize their dwindling traffic through subscriber revenue, Collett said.
Which brings us to the two existential questions for publishers grappling with AI: Why subscribe if you can get information for free in your agentic AI answer? And why click through when the answer is right there in the search results?