Observed Signal · Mar 25, 2026 · Partnership · Source: Digiday · Impact: 3/5 · Sentiment: Positive
People Inc.: AI Licensing Boom, Revenue Still Lagging
People Inc. chief innovation officer Jon Roberts told a Digiday Publishing Summit audience that an influx of AI content-licensing marketplaces presents significant opportunities for publishers but has not yet produced large-scale revenue. People Inc. has multi-year, broad-access licensing deals with OpenAI and Meta and a pay-per-use arrangement with Microsoft. The company uses strict bot-blocking (allowing only permissioned crawlers) to protect content and is selectively permitting access to better understand marketplace economics. Roberts said publishers are collaborating on standards (IAB Tech Lab’s Content Monetization Protocols, Really Simple Licensing) and experimenting with compensation models such as "pay by demonstrated value". He also flagged cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, Google Cloud) as logical homes for such marketplaces.
Large publishers are negotiating direct licensing deals with major AI platforms and participating in standards development; this could reshape publisher monetization if marketplace economics prove viable.
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Key Takeaways & Evidence Grounding
- People Inc. has AI licensing deals with OpenAI, Meta (multi-year, broad access) and Microsoft (pay-per-use marketplace).
- People Inc. blocks all bots except those on a permissioned list and reports blocking tens of millions of unauthorized crawl attempts daily.
- People Inc. is participating in development of standards for AI content licensing, including IAB Tech Lab’s Content Monetization Protocols and Really Simple Licensing.
- Publishers and tech platforms are exploring new compensation models for AI access, described as "pay by demonstrated value" or "pay per value".
- Roberts identified cloud platforms (Microsoft Azure, AWS, Google Cloud Platform) as likely venues for large-scale AI content-licensing marketplaces.
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Are Content Marketplaces Becoming Real?
This Marketecture blog post argues that AI-driven content licensing could shift from traditional, lawyer-heavy licensing deals to automated, real-time content exchanges. It contrasts the current licensing landscape—with large publishers selling data for AI training—to a future model where per-article pricing and instant access through a content marketplace determine licensing costs for both training corpora and real-time inference data. The piece notes early momentum from Microsoft and the IAB Tech Lab, discusses legal friction (e.g., New York Times v. Perplexity), and highlights countermeasures like block lists (Cloudflare blocking AI crawlers). It covers incentives for publishers, potential liquidity questions, and the role of major platforms (Google, OpenAI, Meta) in shaping adoption. Overall, the article outlines a speculative but potentially transformative path for how AI providers acquire timely, licensed content and how publishers monetize it.
Publishers Debate AI Licensing and GEO Value
At Digiday’s Publishing Summit town-hall sessions, publishing executives debated the merits of optimizing content for AI search (often called GEO) and pursuing AI licensing deals or marketplaces. Attendees reported low referral traffic from AI-generated search summaries, limited direct revenue from licensing so far, and mixed expectations about future returns. Some publishers view licensing as both a revenue and defensive strategy — including participating in consortia or using brokers — while others are skeptical of sizable near-term income. Publishers vary in resourcing for AI licensing (from a few part-time staff to teams of ~10), and some are testing smaller distribution deals before pursuing larger agreements. The discussion also covered products that sell AI-visibility insights and branded GEO offerings for advertisers and brands.
People Trust Creators Over AI, Says People Inc. CIO
Jonathan Roberts, chief innovation officer at People Inc., told AdExchanger that audiences trust individual creators and editors more than AI-generated answers. People Inc. has shifted to blocking all web scrapers by default and now grants access only to approved AI partners with content-licensing deals. Roberts said People Inc. struck early partnerships with OpenAI and Meta AI and is negotiating commercial arrangements to ensure publishers receive economic value when their content is used by chatbots and AI search. He described AI “hallucinations” and broader grassroots backlash to AI, while also noting entrepreneurship and product innovation enabled by generative models. The interview outlines People Inc.’s strategy to balance visibility in AI interfaces with protecting content and monetization.
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