Google reportedly pays publishers for content used in AI search
About 100 publishers have joined a pilot; a signal that AI search may shift from free ingestion to paid licensing, pending confirmation.
Google is running a pilot program that pays publishers based on how much their content contributes to AI Overviews, AI Mode and Gemini, according to a report from The Information carried by The Verge. Around 100 publishers have joined.
The reported scale: one publisher that joined when the program started earned over $1 million in a year, while another that joined a few months ago has earned around $50,000 to $60,000. Digiday first reported the pilot, which began less than a year ago.
Google has not confirmed the program, and its terms and total budget are undisclosed. The context: the UK has ruled Google must let publishers opt out of AI search features, and the EU is investigating the traffic impact and has ordered changes to its search engine.
Sources:https://www.theinformation.com/articles/google-paying-100-digital-publishers-ai-overviewshttps://www.theverge.com/tech/1002665/google-paying-publishers-ai-search-features