Two weeks ago, I wrote a post about how editorial content production is being dominated by AI. Editors have been affected quite negatively by this process, but can publications and publishers manage to stay afloat at this point? Let me explain.
On the very first day ChatGPT gained the ability to browse websites, we predicted that the lifeblood of websites would slowly start to be cut off. Websites make money as long as they receive traffic, because their revenue model is based on the ads they show. GPT pulling information from websites and delivering it directly to users was something that completely shut down this channel.
Here’s where the deadlock scenario emerges: if content sites aren’t making money, why should they keep producing content? And if they stop producing content, where will GPT and other tools get their information from for very specific user queries?
We actually faced a very similar problem in the recent past. Yes, almost identical. Think back to the battle between musicians and platforms during the digital music revolution. Music went digital, platforms like Spotify were on the rise, but musicians claimed that in this new model, platforms and record labels were taking the biggest piece of the pie while nothing was being given to them.
So how was this problem solved? A relatively “fairer” revenue model emerged in which Spotify started paying musicians per stream. Even though musicians still see this method as highly flawed and incomplete, at some point they accepted it, because they basically had to say, “better than nothing.”
My prediction is that we’ll see a similar “new monetization method” revolution on the content side as well. Publications that manage to get into platforms like Google News and Apple News, which can bring large audiences together under one roof, will earn revenue per read from there. That way, they still have a reason to keep producing the content they produce.
At this point, I know that the ad platforms we work with are trying to build public pressure to stop this trend. For now, the voices are only at the level of “you need to get our permission before you use our content.” The next phase will likely evolve into a “pay us something” language directed at the platforms consuming the content.
Of course, there is also an opportunity side to all of this, let me not skip that. The opportunity is this: who can solve this problem in a truly rational way? Billion-dollar problem…
