Workers’ CoMP
Web publishers are seeing revenue and traffic evaporate in lockstep with the rise of new AI-generated search habits.
What’s a pub to do? A growing number are shifting their focus from data licensing deals with LLM operators (like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google’s Gemini, et al.) to usage-based revenue models, The Information reports.
Let’s call this what it is, though. Publishers are scrabbling desperately for something – anything – to help them fill their coffers as they cast about for a more sustainable revenue model.
In the meantime, a handful of large, well-known news companies – like Reuters, The New York Times, News Corp. and AP – have signed fixed annual data licensing deals with one or another of the AI generators. And Perplexity adopted a publisher rev-share model last year after Forbes threatened to sue for copyright infringement.
But Perplexity only earned roughly $20,000 in ad revenue in Q4 2024, per The Information – so, all in all, not much to share around.
And in regard to that grail quest for a sustainable business model, the IAB Tech Lab just formed what it calls the AI Content Monetization Protocols (CoMP) Working Group.
The Tech Lab is “extending a direct invitation” to the big LLMs and agentic AI services to help in shaping these protocols, according to the release.
But the LLMs have the leverage, here – and no obligation to participate.
Back To Square One
LG Ads is getting ready for its public market debut – finally.
Its IPO had been delayed until now by a series of multiyear legal disputes with LG Electronics (LGE), the South Korean TV manufacturer that acquired smart TV data startup Alphonso in 2021. (Alphonso was rebranded as LG Ads not long after the acquisition.)
According to the original stockholders agreement, LGE had promised to give Alphonso/LG Ads the opportunity to go public within five years. But LGE later reneged and orchestrated a corporate coup to remove board members who were aligned with the founders, which led minority shareholders to sue – and they won. It was a whole thing.
And the legal drama isn’t over. There’s yet another ongoing lawsuit that was recently brought by an Alphonso co-founder alleging that financial advisory company Kroll purposely undervalued the startup in order to curry favor with LGE.
Anyway, LG Ads is ready to move on and push forward with its IPO, because the market is ripe, according to Ashish Chordia, Alphonso’s co-founder and a reinstated LG Ads board member.
Even while the primary lawsuits were happening, LG Ads enjoyed growth alongside the overall tailwind of smart TV consumption, he told The Korea Times at a press conference in Seoul on Tuesday.
“There continues to be some dispute with minority shareholders and LG,” Chordia said. “But I think the majority of that dispute is behind us, and all of us are focused on this massive growth opportunity in front of us.”
Spill The Tea
The makers of Tea, a women’s dating safety app that’s faced several massive security breaches in recent months, used some pretty shady marketing tactics, reports 404 Media.
After Tea failed to recruit the founder of the Are We Dating The Same Guy? Facebook group network in 2023, an organized effort began to poach users from these groups.
One idea was hardly revolutionary: an affiliate program that paid people who signed up via unique links. But other tactics were slightly more suspect, such as creating Tea-affiliated Facebook groups with similar names to Are We Dating The Same Guy? and working with social media marketers to create fake podcast videos that weren’t labeled as ads.
404 Media also found evidence of seemingly unaffiliated users spamming Are We Dating The Same Guy? groups with promotional messages about Tea, in some cases using accounts that had been hijacked from their original owners.
If all of that wasn’t bad enough, private data about members in the affiliate program was left exposed online until very recently, marking a third security breach for the app in less than a month.
But Wait! There’s More!
Meta is planning to split and possibly reduce its overall AI division. [NYT]
What marketers want from Meta’s Superintelligence Labs. [Digiday]
TV station ownership group Nexstar acquires competitor Tegna in a $6.2 billion deal. [Los Angeles Times]
Streaming accounted for nearly half of all TV viewing in July. [Nielsen]
Google offers a Play Store update in a bid to avoid future EU fines. [Bloomberg]
You’re Hired!
MiQ names Andy Barnet as managing director overseeing the company’s West Coast business. [release]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
