Things are heating up between publicly traded media companies and generative AI technology companies, resulting in multiple new AI licensing deals.
Of the six or so publishers that Digiday tracks, two have announced deals with tech companies since they released their fourth-quarter results in February. IAC's Dotdash Meredith signed a three-part deal with generative AI technology company OpenAI on May 7, and News Corp., the Wall Street Journal's parent company, recently signed a contract to develop new AI-related content and products. It has entered into an agreement with Google to pay news publishers compensation.
Meanwhile, publishers like BuzzFeed, Gannett, and The New York Times are exploring internal applications for the technology, from product development to synthesized audio, and in their respective earnings conferences, they said, in some cases, to the point of nausea. It was featured in
Despite recent developments in the field, Doug Arthur, managing director of media research and advisory firm Huber Research Partners, says it remains unclear how this technology is helping publishers' businesses. He said he didn't know yet.
“Exactly how AI will push the boundaries of consumer engagement remains vague,” Arthur said in an email. Many of these efforts sound good in theory, he said, but “we don't know exactly what that means other than hardening tools.”
talk about trading
During the company's first-quarter earnings call on May 8, IAC CEO Joey Levin talked about the compensation Dotdash Meredith received from its multi-year content license and large-scale language model training agreement with OpenAI. The amount was not disclosed.
News Corp CEO Robert Thomson also declined to say what financial changes might come into play as a result of the Google deal, but The Information reported that News Corp receives between $5 million and $6 million a year in compensation from Google.
On News Corp's May 8 earnings call, one analyst said that the renewed deal with Google (this time focused on AI-related content and product development) was a big deal for the tech giant that Thomson had previously mentioned. I asked if it was one of those “nine-figure contracts” with companies. Earnings calls.
“I cannot comment on the financial details of the contract other than to say that this is a renewal of an existing contract. , or the basis of the content. Therefore, negotiations regarding specific uses of our content will take place later,” Thomson replied.
Susan Panuccio, News Corp's chief financial officer, added on the call that the updated agreement is “generally consistent with the financials of the previous agreement.”
IAC's Levin told shareholders that the deal with OpenAI “can be expected” to increase traffic from ChatGPT to publishers' sites (the decline in referral traffic is a sign that many publishers initially had about ChatGPT's arrival). was one of the concerns).
Levin also said the deal with OpenAI is “not exclusive,” suggesting the company has the opportunity to negotiate with other LLMs. “We hope this agreement is just the beginning of new opportunities for us in the AI ecosystem,” he said on IAC's earnings call.
Improve content targeting with AI
IAC's deal with OpenAI will allow Dotdash Meredith to use the tech company's LLM to improve its contextual targeting solution, D/Cipher, by mapping intent signals across “broader parts of the Internet.” Masu. Dotdash Meredith can sell those signals to advertisers, Levin said, noting this is especially important in the digital ecosystem since third-party cookies.
“Access to larger inventory with better data for intent-based targeting. If we can get that done, we think it can potentially truly accelerate our business. So far, it's already worked well,” he said.
When an analyst asked BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti whether Google's delay in deprecating third-party cookies had an impact on conversations with advertisers, he said that using generative AI to He said he believes there are notable opportunities in the market.
“Our advertising product roadmap includes product enhancements and contextual positioning, and using LLM to better understand our contextual audiences,” Peretti said, adding that AI technology It added that it may review BuzzFeed's content and recommend ad placements. “I think a lot of the advances in this area will offset, or more than offset, some of the decline in cookies,” he added.
New York Times executives didn't say much about generative AI. CEO Meredith Kopit Levien did not mention the lawsuit filed against Microsoft and OpenAI in December, but The Times' Q1 2024 results released on May 8 show that the company It stated that $1 million had been spent on the lawsuit.
Kopit Levien briefly stated that the company is “carrying out more ambitious experiments with audio by introducing the ability to listen to large portions of reports with an automated, AI-powered voice.”
Meanwhile, Chris Cho, Gannett's president of digital marketing solutions, reiterated during an earnings call on May 2 that the company uses AI technology to develop business products for its customers. “As we explained in our previous earnings call, we are expanding our product portfolio with AI-powered solutions, which we believe will increase total addressable markets and core platform revenues,” he said. Ta. Cho went on to discuss the launch of his AI-powered CRM tool, Gannett's first. It is currently in beta testing with 30 customers.
“Over time, our plan is to monetize our software solution and make it more widely available commercially,” Cho said.
BuzzFeed's Peretti also said that new AI-powered features and formats are “deepening engagement among our most loyal audiences” and that “the number of page views per web visitor has increased for the fourth consecutive month since December.” He said this led to an “increase.” These new features and formats include AI-powered image filters, content generators, chatbots, and games.
Peretti said that by incorporating generative AI models into existing BuzzFeed products and experiences, he expects to increase engagement, loyalty and time spent per user “without any further investment in development.” Ta.
BuzzFeed's commerce business is another area with “huge potential” for generative AI applications, Peretti said. The technology could help develop personalized shopping experiences for viewers, dynamically insert recommended products, and curate products from retail partners, he added.
Peretti also said AI technology was used to design the new interactive BuzzFeed homepage, which began rolling out earlier this month.
