Rob Kelly tracks 99 AI licensing deals. What publishers are really selling now, and why OpenAI may settle with the Times.
Kelly, the creator and host of Media & the Machine, keeps a spreadsheet of 99 AI content licensing deals, from The New York Times' little-discussed $100 million Google arrangement to Yelp's new deal with OpenAI. He ran the content licensing business at CMP Media, so he knows how profitable a licensing feed can be. Pete Pachal and Kelly cover the two early playbooks (the Times sues OpenAI, News Corp signs with it), why training is fading from the deals as inference and retrieval catch up, what Kelly calls licensing content to commerce, the squeeze on mid-tier publishers, and his prediction that OpenAI settles with the Times before its IPO.
In this episode
- Kelly's path from Wall Street and tech journalism to running content licensing at CMP Media
- The two early playbooks: the Times sues OpenAI, News Corp signs a $250 million deal
- The Times' little-discussed $100 million licensing deal with Google
- Why licensing revenue is close to pure profit for publishers
- How deals have shifted from training toward inference and RAG, and why the models haven't run out of training data
- Whether AI companies pay mainly to avoid lawsuits
- Licensing content to commerce: Yelp's request-a-quote button and a subscribe button inside the answer
- Google Zero and taking a beginner's mind to AI traffic
- How the AI answer is being renegotiated, from ads for bots to brand links
- The mid-tier squeeze, ProRata, and the RSL collective licensing protocol
- Whether Google or Apple could import the YouTube revenue-share model
- The backlash against AI among younger people, and an 8.7x productivity gain measured in a spreadsheet
- Two futures for media, and why Kelly expects OpenAI to settle with the Times before its IPO
Guest: Rob Kelly, Creator and Host, Media & the Machine: LinkedIn | Media & the Machine
Watch the video version: YouTube
Full post and transcript: mediacopilot.ai
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