According to TechCrunch, People Inc has signed an AI licensing deal with Microsoft as part of its parent company IAC’s third-quarter earnings announcement. The media giant will become a launch partner in Microsoft’s publisher content marketplace, which CEO Neil Vogel described as a “pay-per-use” model where AI players compensate publishers directly. This marks People Inc’s second AI deal following its earlier agreement with OpenAI last year. The announcement came alongside shocking data showing Google Search traffic plummeted from 54% of People Inc’s total traffic two years ago to just 24% in the past quarter. Meanwhile, the company reported digital revenue grew 9% to $269 million this quarter, with licensing revenue up 24% and performance marketing jumping 38%.
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The new publisher leverage playbook
Here’s the thing: People Inc is showing other publishers exactly how to play hardball with AI companies. They’re using Cloudflare’s technology to block AI crawlers, which CEO Vogel says has been “very effective” and “brought almost everyone to the table.” Basically, they’re creating artificial scarcity – if you want their content, you can’t just take it anymore. You have to pay. And it’s working.
What’s really interesting is how they’re playing different AI companies against each other. They’ve got the OpenAI deal that Vogel calls an “all-you-can-eat” model, and now Microsoft‘s “a la carte” approach. They don’t seem to care which model wins – they just want to get paid. And Microsoft’s Copilot being the first buyer for this new marketplace? That’s a pretty strong endorsement of the whole concept.
Google’s becoming the problem
But let’s talk about that traffic drop for a minute. Going from 54% to 24% of your traffic from Google Search in just two years? That’s catastrophic for any publisher. And People Inc is directly blaming Google’s AI Overviews for this collapse. Vogel isn’t holding back either – he’s calling Google a “bad actor” because publishers can’t block Google’s crawler without losing what little search traffic remains.
So we’ve got this weird situation where Google is both destroying publisher traffic with AI Overviews while simultaneously making it impossible for them to block the scraping that fuels those same AI features. It’s a brutal catch-22. No wonder publishers are running into Microsoft’s arms.
What this means for the AI content wars
This feels like a turning point. We’re watching publishers transition from being victims of AI scraping to becoming strategic partners. People Inc’s 24% licensing revenue growth suggests this isn’t just defensive – it’s becoming a real business line. And with their acquisition of Feedfeed, they’re building a content moat that AI companies will increasingly need to pay to cross.
The big question now is whether other major publishers will follow this playbook. If enough big players start blocking crawlers and demanding payment, we could see a fundamental shift in how AI companies access quality content. Microsoft seems to be betting that paying for content will give its AI products a quality edge over competitors who rely on questionable scraping practices.
Honestly, it’s about time publishers started getting paid for the content that makes AI useful. The free lunch era might finally be ending, and companies like People Inc are leading the charge. More deals are apparently coming too – Vogel says they’re just getting started.
