Retresco vs TollBit

German Publishers' AI Strategies Rise, Economic Value Disappoints

A new market study by the German Federal Association of Digital Publishers and Newspaper Publishers (BDZV) and Berlin-based tech company Retresco reveals that 79% of German media houses now have an AI strategy, a 19 percentage point increase from the previous year. However, the economic benefits of AI adoption remain unclear. Only 20% of companies measure the return on investment (ROI) based on reliable figures, despite 61% having defined KPIs. While 80% of respondents see efficiency gains in their newsrooms, the impact on user retention, new formats, and revenue models is lagging. The report cautions that AI can risk journalistic credibility, and points to the growing importance of agentic AI, now seen as strategically relevant by 54% of media houses.

• 79% of German media houses have an AI strategy, up 19 percentage points from last year.
• Only 20% of media houses measure ROI of AI projects based on reliable figures.
• 49% of respondents cite infrastructure and integration as key obstacles to AI implementation.

German Stevie Award: Retresco für interaktive KI-Unternehmensanwendung ausgezeichnet

Retresco wurde mit dem German Stevie Award für eine interaktive KI-Unternehmensanwendung ausgezeichnet.

The Netacea + TollBit Integration is Now Live

We’re excited to announce our new integration with Netacea, the Bot and Agent Trust Management company for commerce and content. Together, we’re helping website owners enforce access rules and unlock new revenue streams from the surging amount of AI bot traffic hitting their sites.

European publishers face heavier AI bot scraping

TollBit's H1 2026 analysis of 3,906 publishers (456 European) using a >987 billion-visit dataset found a sharp rise in AI-powered scraping: more than 22 billion bot accesses, about 1.9 billion events that bypassed or ignored robots.txt, and scraping up ~20% from January to June. European sites endure roughly four times the median AI scrapes of North American peers and far fewer human referrals from AI apps; TollBit measured about 179 automated page fetches per human referral and the scrape-to-referral ratio climbed from 150:1 in Q1 to 227:1 in Q2. Only 0.05% of external referrals to the European cohort came from AI apps (Google supplied ~84%), and AI-driven referrals generate far fewer clicks. Tests of commercial scrapers retrieved content on nearly all tested sites. Cloudflare has started blocking training crawlers on new domains and plans finer bot classifications and paid access from September 2026.

• Scope: TollBit analyzed H1 2026 across 3,906 publishers (456 European) within a >987 billion-visit dataset and identified >22 billion AI-bot accesses.
• Europe disproportionately affected: median AI scrapes per site ~4x higher than North America; scraping rose ~20% Jan–Jun 2026; overall measured ratio ~179 bot fetches per human referral, rising from 150:1 in Q1 to 227:1 in Q2.
• Referrals: only 0.05% of external referrals to the European cohort came from AI applications; Google supplied ~84% of referrals; AI chatbot referrals generate far fewer click-throughs than classic search (~96% fewer reported).