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Media Deals

A new crop of startups and platforms are creating marketplaces to help publishers monetize AI.

Why it matters: The efforts aim to ensure content creators receive consent, control and compensation as AI use proliferates. 

State of play: ProRata.ai just raised a $40 million Series B as it prepares to launch an AI search tool for publishers that is free for them and pays out every time their work is cited.

Taboola launched its own AI search engine called DeeperDive for publishing partners to use on their websites.

TollBit, which raised a $24 million Series A last year, is helping publishers track and manage AI traffic on their sites and seeks to provide fair compensation by helping outlets quantify AI-driven interactions.

Created by Humans is building a rights marketplace for books and authors, supporting training, retrieval and transformative rights. 

Factiva, an AI marketplace by Wall Street Journal parent Dow Jones, recently appointed a general manager of the business. Emma O'Brian, previously senior vice president of strategy, was promoted to the role.

The big picture: Just as Google's traffic-for-indexing trade-off once supported media, AI requires a new, healthy ecosystem.

"It's only right that the information that's powering it is compensated," Time COO Mark Howard says. "It's critical."

Publishers are eager for AI deals that can scale. TollBit now has 3,000 publishers on its platform, co-founder Olivia Joslin says. One-on-one deals are a "major bottleneck," she says, since the content and data needs are so vast and unpredictable.

Howard says Time has signed 12 AI deals, four of which are for content licensing and each is different.

"They're structured differently. The deal terms are very different. The compensation is different. The value exchange is very different," Howard says. "That is obviously not scalable."

Between the lines: Collective rights organizations aren't anything new, Copyright Alliance CEO Keith Kupferschmid says, noting the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) and Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) for music.

The bottom line: While the supply side is moving fast with TollBit, ProRata.ai and Factiva lining up thousands of publishers, the desired healthy ecosystem won't materialize if big AI platforms don't buy in.

"There's an infinite number of questions around how do you determine value? What should and shouldn't be paid for?" Howard says. "Right now, there's just far more questions than any answers."

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AI marketplaces multiply to scale publisher deals

The efforts aim to ensure content creators receive consent, control and compensation.

Illustration of two hands shaking, overlayed by a sketched outline of a handshake on a tan grid background with blue starburst shapes.

Artificial Intelligence

Media

A new crop of startups and platforms are creating marketplaces to help publishers monetize AI.Why it matters: The efforts aim to ensure content creators receive consent, control and compensation as <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="AI use proliferates" data-vars-click-url="https://www.axios.com/2024/07/30/ai-search-media-deals-news-openai" data-vars-content-id="e375db67-3c70-4cd4-b3e3-4ca7bd214597" data-vars-headline="AI marketplaces multiply to scale publisher deals" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.axios.com/2024/07/30/ai-search-media-deals-news-openai" target="_self">AI use proliferates</a>.

Latest news on Wall Street, Corporate America and financial regulation.

Business

From the Valley to D.C., Big Tech players like Facebook, Google and Amazon are under more scrutiny than ever as new technology develops and privacy and antitrust concerns grow in lockstep with companies’ ambitions.

AI marketplaces multiply to scale publisher deals

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