For decades, the relationship between search engines and digital publishers was relatively simple, though not without its tensions. Publishers provided free content, while search engines delivered referral traffic that could be monetised through advertising or converted into loyal subscribers.
This dynamic is now changing rapidly.
As consumers increasingly abandon traditional search engine result pages (SERPs) for generative AI platforms and Large Language Models (LLMs) to answer their questions directly, zero-click searches have become the norm. The click-throughs that once helped sustain the digital publishing ecosystem are drying up.
Following growing criticisms from the media industry and legal pressure, Google has begun testing a “pay-per-value” licensing model, aiming to compensate publishers directly when their reporting contributes significantly to responses. But does this pilot represent a sustainable lifeline for digital media, or simply a temporary fix for a fundamentally broken model?
Here, industry leaders weigh in on what the proposed framework means for the future of the open web.
A step forward, but transparency remains an issue
For many digital publishers facing traffic dropping significantly as AI summarises their content without an agreement, any sign of compensation is welcomed. However, the arbitrary nature and lack of transparency behind how “value” is calculated are a concern.
Richard Reeves, Managing Director at the Association of Online Publishers (AOP), sees the pilot as an encouraging first step, provided it does not stop here:
“As publishers grapple to understand the impact of traffic disruption and uncompensated AI scraping, Google’s pilot is a pragmatic step forward. While we need far greater transparency on the metrics being used, moving from nothing to something is certainly a step in the right direction towards creating a necessary baseline for all publisher tiers, not just those with existing showcase deals.
“However, we mustn’t mistake early testing for the final destination. A single big-tech pilot cannot become a substitute for what the ecosystem really needs: an independent and competitive marketplace in which every AI company operates on equitable terms, without a single tech giant controlling the terms of the exchange.”
Some executives argue that negotiations between tech giants and media companies can create an imbalance in the market. When large platforms control how content is priced, smaller and mid-sized digital publishers can be left with less power over their terms.
For Ann Terasewicz, CEO at Axis, the bigger question is “what kind of market this model creates?”
“There’s a real risk of a two-tier system: large publishers negotiating proper licensing deals, while others accept opaque, algorithmically decided payouts. And if those payouts are small, opting in too early could also weaken publishers’ leverage to push for better terms later.”
Terasewicz notes that the current landscape echoes previous structural shifts in digital media, drawing parallels to the early rollout of programmatic advertising:
“It also feels a bit like the early days of programmatic. Lots of promise, but it also raises questions around transparency in pricing and an information advantage on the platform side. So yes, it’s good to see the conversation moving from ‘AI uses publisher content’ to ‘how should publishers actually participate in that value exchange?’ But publishers probably can’t wait for AI platforms to define what fair value looks like.”
Why licensing alone won’t save the open web
While it is difficult to define what fair compensation looks like at this stage, AI monetisation models are still evolving, and meaningful value may ultimately depend on diversifying revenue streams, as Brian Kane, COO of Didomi, warns, “Publishers aren’t just optimising around Google’s dominance in search anymore. Today, they’re dealing with Gemini, OpenAI, Claude, and many other LLMs, each ingesting and valuing content differently.
“As AI revenue models continue to emerge, diversification will continue to be an imperative rather than a matter of preference”.
Licensing payments may help fill immediate revenue gaps, but relying on this system to replace lost referral traffic misses the bigger issue. A publisher’s long-term sustainability hinges on managing a delicate balance between direct audience relationships, first-party data, and advertiser investments.
Elli Papadaki, SVP Global Supply at Onetag, argues that publishers must look beyond platform licensing and focus on how quality inventory is valued and discovered across the broader ad tech ecosystem:
“The licensing model exposes the central truth that publishers can no longer rely on referral traffic as the foundation of their business model. Even where licensing provides compensation for the content used to power AI answers, it does not replace the audience relationship or the advertising value that publishers capture through direct traffic.”
“The value of publisher inventory should be assessed against a combination of signals that help advertisers achieve their goals, rather than diminished or limited to traffic levels and clicks. AI-driven sell-side curation could play an important role in enabling publishers and technology partners to better surface and monetise that quality across the wider ecosystem.”
This puts the focus on a broader question: how can publishers ensure that the value of their inventory is recognised and monetised, even as traditional traffic and clicks become less reliable? For James Hanslip, CEO of Content Ignite, sell-side decisioning and “containerisation” could form part of the answer. But he argues that the industry now needs to demonstrate that these developments can translate into tangible revenue gains for publishers.
“This year, ‘containerisation’ seems to have taken over from curation as the key buzzword.”
“So far, so good. The bigger question for me is when do these breakthroughs start translating into more revenue for publishers, as this rarely seems to happen. That’s still the area where the gains are most needed, yet too often they don’t seem to trickle through at the level we’d like. There is reason for optimism here though, as it’s backed by some solid players.”
Papadaki stresses that long-term sustainability requires a collective approach to rewarding publishers for quality:
“For a pay-per-value framework to succeed, it must sit alongside more intelligent advertising technologies and a broader rethink of how publisher value is measured. Advertisers and technology platforms need to help fund the media ecosystem that underpins their products, rather than relying on a model in which publishers continually chase referral traffic. Otherwise, the short-term gains promised by AI could ultimately undermine the economic foundations of the open web.”