From its leadership on standing up against Big Tech companies not wanting to pay for publisher content to its longstanding efforts in showcasing the value of news and magazine media, the News/Media Alliance has long been a guiding light for publishers.
That work has only continued even stronger in the AI era, with the trade association calling out illegal AI scraping and supporting responsible AI by asking Washington to require compensation, transparency, attribution, and general AI practices that ultimately aren’t anti-competitive.
NMA’s next step in this brave new AI world has just been announced, as the group is now partnering with Bria to give its members an AI licensing agreement they may opt into, which would put them into what Digiday says is a 50/50-split revenue share system based on the degree Bria uses their content.
“This agreement shows a path towards a future in which our industries grow and thrive together,” says NMA president and CEO Danielle Coffey, “with AI companies benefiting from the high-quality content that our publishers create, and publishers receiving a fair portion of the revenue that their work produces for AI companies.”
Coffey called AI’s use of publisher content without compensation “devastating for our industry,” saying this alternative simplifies matters for AI companies to “reduce transaction costs and responsibly source their content.” In addition to benefiting from fair attribution and revenue shares, publishers can also opt-in for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), the process Digiday describes as “where AI models mine the web for information to fulfill user queries,” as opposed to that model being trained on content.
The deal is a particularly significant win for small publishers, according to A Media Operator in its newsletter last week, as they would otherwise be less likely to cut deals on their own. To become truly “meaningful,” the newsletter argues, this type of agreement will need to join “similar style deals with many more players.”
“No one platform is going to drive meaningful revenue, but if publishers are getting cuts from a number of different providers, it becomes more interesting,” A Media Operator writes.
The 2,200 media organizations in NMA can access this program (as well as the licensing agreement offered for ProRata AI and its answer engine) here.
Publisher / AI Licensing Deals
Of the AI companies proactively making deals with publishers to license their content, OpenAI has been the busiest and biggest spender, with some estimates saying it deals out as much as $500 million on annual content licensing, more than half of the industry-wide spend. The other big AI players have also developed patterns and earned reputations with their deals, as these lists of publisher / AI licensing deals helps spell out.
OpenAI — Most Active
|
Publisher / Partner |
Est. Annual Payment |
Deal Length |
Date |
|
News Corp |
~$50M/yr ($250M+ over 5 years) |
5 years |
May 2024 |
|
|
~$60-70M/yr |
Multi-year |
May 2024 |
|
Axel Springer |
“Tens of millions of euros” per year |
3 years |
Dec 2023 |
|
Condé Nast |
Undisclosed (multi-year) |
Multi-year |
Aug 2024 |
|
Dotdash Meredith/People Inc. |
$16M+/yr (fixed minimum; variable on top) |
Multi-year |
May 2024 |
|
Financial Times |
~$5-10M/yr |
Multi-year |
Apr 2024 |
|
Associated Press |
Undisclosed |
2 years |
Jul 2023 |
|
Le Monde |
Undisclosed (multi-year) |
Multi-year |
Mar 2024 |
|
Prisa Media (El País) |
Undisclosed |
Multi-year |
Mar 2024 |
|
The Atlantic |
Undisclosed |
Multi-year |
May 2024 |
|
Vox Media |
Undisclosed |
Multi-year |
May 2024 |
|
Time Magazine |
Undisclosed (access to 101-year archive) |
Multi-year |
Jun 2024 |
|
Hearst |
Undisclosed |
Multi-year |
Oct 2024 |
|
The Washington Post |
Undisclosed |
Multi-year |
2025 |
|
The Guardian |
Undisclosed |
Multi-year |
2025 |
|
Axios |
Undisclosed (includes funding for 4 local newsrooms) |
3 years |
Jan 2025 |
|
Schibsted Media |
Undisclosed |
Multi-year |
2025 |
|
Shutterstock |
Part of Shutterstock’s $100M+ total AI licensing revenue |
6 years (renewed) |
Originally 2023 |
Microsoft — Best Publisher Relations
|
Publisher / Partner |
Est. Annual Payment |
Deal Length |
Date |
|
Informa/Taylor & Francis (academic journals) |
~$10M in first year + recurring through 2027 |
Through 2027 |
May 2024 |
|
Copilot Daily partners (Financial Times, Reuters, Axel Springer, Hearst, USA Today Network) |
Undisclosed (paid partnerships) |
Multi-year |
Oct 2024 |
|
People Inc./Dotdash Meredith |
Undisclosed (“a la carte” pay-per-use model) |
Multi-year |
2025 |
Google — Most Reluctant
|
Publisher / Partner |
Est. Annual Payment |
Deal Length |
Date |
|
|
~$60M/yr |
Multi-year |
Feb 2024 |
|
Associated Press |
Undisclosed (first Google AI content deal) |
Multi-year |
Jan 2025 |
|
Stack Overflow |
Undisclosed |
Multi-year |
Feb 2024 |
|
Shutterstock |
Undisclosed (part of Shutterstock’s $100M+ AI revenue) |
Multi-year |
Pre-2024 |
|
Publisher pilot program (Der Spiegel, El País, The Guardian, Washington Post, Times of India, others) |
Undisclosed |
Pilot |
Late 2025 |
Meta — Late Starter
|
Publisher / Partner |
Est. Annual Payment |
Deal Length |
Date |
|
Reuters |
Undisclosed |
Multi-year |
Oct 2024 |
|
CNN |
Undisclosed |
Multi-year |
Dec 2025 |
|
Fox News/Fox Sports |
Undisclosed |
Multi-year |
Dec 2025 |
|
People Inc. |
Undisclosed |
Multi-year |
Dec 2025 |
|
USA Today/USA Today Network |
Undisclosed |
Multi-year |
Dec 2025 |
|
Le Monde Group |
Undisclosed |
Multi-year |
Dec 2025 |
|
The Daily Caller |
Undisclosed |
Multi-year |
Dec 2025 |
|
Washington Examiner |
Undisclosed |
Multi-year |
Dec 2025 |
|
Shutterstock |
Undisclosed |
Multi-year |
Pre-2024 |
Amazon — Most Interesting Partnership (With The Seemingly AI-Contentious NYT)
|
Publisher / Partner |
Est. Annual Payment |
Deal Length |
Date |
|
The New York Times (news, NYT Cooking, The Athletic) |
~$20-25M/yr |
Multi-year |
May 2025 |
|
Condé Nast (for Rufus shopping assistant) |
Undisclosed |
Multi-year |
Jul 2025 |
|
Hearst (for Rufus) |
Undisclosed |
Multi-year |
Jul 2025 |
|
200+ publishers for Alexa+ (Business Insider, Forbes, Reuters, Washington Post, Time, Vox, USA Today, others) |
Undisclosed |
Multi-year |
Feb 2025 |
Apple — Most Likely To Seek Permission First
|
Publisher / Partner |
Est. Annual Payment |
Deal Length |
Date |
|
Shutterstock (images, video, music) |
$25-50M (likely one-time or first year) |
Unknown |
Late 2022 |
|
News publishers (reportedly in talks with Condé Nast, IAC/NBC, others) |
Reportedly $50M+ minimum planned spend |
Unknown |
2024 |
Other Publishers / Partners
|
Publisher / Partner |
Est. Annual Payment |
Deal Length |
Date |
|
Perplexity: 12+ publishers (LA Times, The Independent, Fortune, others) |
Ad revenue sharing model |
Unknown |
Dec 2024 |
|
Perplexity: USA Today Co. (200+ local publications) |
Revenue sharing |
Unknown |
Jul 2025 |
|
Prorata.ai: 500+ publishers (The Atlantic, Fortune, Time, Daily Mail, The Guardian, others) |
50% revenue share model |
Unknown |
2025 |
|
Mistral (France): Agence France-Presse (AFP) |
Undisclosed |
Unknown |
2025 |
|
Wiley (academic publisher → unknown AI company) |
$23M one-time |
One-time |
Mar 2024 |
|
Springer Nature → Google |
Undisclosed |
One-time |
Jul 2024 |
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