People Inc strikes AI licensing agreement with Microsoft as Google traffic declines

People Inc., one of the largest media publishers in the United States, has signed an artificial intelligence licensing agreement with Microsoft. The media giant (formerly Dotdash Meredith) made the announcement on Tuesday as part of parent company IAC’s third-quarter earnings.

Under this deal, People Inc. will become An absolute partner in Microsoft’s Publisher Content Marketplace. This is the company’s second AI deal after the previous one deal With OpenAI last year.

Neil Vogel, CEO of People Inc., described the new market as “essentially a pay-per-use market where AI players can directly compensate publishers for the use of their content on an ‘a la carte’ basis.”

He also praised Microsoft for its commitment to paying for content to support its AI efforts, adding that Microsoft’s Copilot will be the first buyer in the market.

“Having us in the room with them is a very strong endorsement of us, a very strong endorsement of the publishing market and the value of the content to make AI very valuable,” Vogel said.

The announcement of the Microsoft deal was shared during IAC’s earnings, along with news that Google Search’s AI overview hurt publisher traffic. For the first time, People Inc. participated. Data with investors showed how Google search, which accounted for 54% of its traffic two years ago, fell to 24% of its traffic over the past quarter.

The agreement differs from the OpenAI deal, which Vogel described as closer to an “all-you-can-eat” model, but he said People Inc. She was happy with either model. What matters to the company, he said, is that its work is “respectable and well-paid.” However, the company did not share the specific terms of the deal.

People Inc. objected. On the way AI companies ingest media without paying to feed their AI products and train their models. Recently, Fogel criticized Google, Calling the tech giant a ‘bad actor’ Because it uses the same bot to crawl websites for its Google search engine and its AI features. Publishers can’t ban the bot, as Google search still accounts for a large percentage of their traffic.

However, People Inc. uses technology provided by a web infrastructure provider Cloudflare to block other AI crawlersWhich prompted AI players to deal with it through content deals. In September, Vogel attributed Her decision to leverage Cloudflare’s technology as a way to bring AI companies to the negotiating table, noting that the progress she made on deals was “much further” after adopting the solution.

He reiterated those comments on today’s earnings call with investors, saying that banning AI crawlers had been “very effective” and “brought almost everyone to the table.” Vogel suggested announcing more deals in due course as well.

IAC reported that People Inc. Its digital revenue increased 9% to $269 million in the quarter, driven by marketing and licensing performance, which saw growth of 38% and 24%, respectively. It also flagged the acquisition of a food-focused media publisher and influencer network feeding.