Not every publisher is worried about the rise of AI
PLUS: Should Hollywood compete with YouTube or join it?
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Digiday: Inside The Economist’s plan to grow revenues in a post-search, AI-driven future
The Economist keeps most of its content behind a strict paywall that AI bots struggle to access and has no plans to sign licensing deals with AI companies. Its leaders believe that maintaining a direct relationship with readers and producing highly distinctive content will protect the publication from being undermined by chatbots.
From the article;
Currently, The Economist has approximately 70 million followers across its social channels, per the publisher. Now, it wants to work on migrating a decent share of those people from social to a more direct, registered user base – where people trade an email address in exchange for access to a limited amount of free content.
The Economist’s social team is currently working on how it can provide more incentives to people following its social accounts to want to provide their email in a simple way that doesn’t require setting up a password.
See Which AI Agents Are Accessing Your Media
AI agents are quietly crawling news sites, using subscriber accounts and user credentials to pull your reporting. That content fuels models and products elsewhere—without credit or compensation. For publishers, the stakes are clear: lost audience value, disrupted monetization, and weakened control over journalism.
Today’s sponsor Agent Shield, from the team behind identity verification leader Vouched, gives publishers visibility into this new wave of traffic. With a lightweight pixel, you’ll see exactly which sessions are humans, bots, or AI agents—and when relevant, which user accounts the activity is tied to.
Most publishers are surprised when they learn just how much agent-driven traffic they already have. Agent Shield makes the invisible visible—so you can understand the scale, shape, and user patterns of AI scraping on your site.
Journalism should serve your readers, not train someone else’s model for free. Start seeing the truth behind your traffic today.
Hollywood Reporter: How Sam Altman Played Hollywood
From the article:
“[Open AI is] turning copyright on its head,” says Rob Rosenberg, partner at legal advisory firm Moses Singer and former Showtime Networks executive vp. “They’re setting up this false bargain where they can do this unless you opt out. And if you didn’t, it’s your fault.”
For years, OpenAI’s cavalier approach to intellectual property rights in Hollywood … has been consistent: Ask forgiveness, not permission. It’s the path of least resistance to monetize Sora.
I get the sense that the heads of most AI firms just simply don’t believe their tools are infringing on copyright, hence why they’re putting in just the bare minimum of effort to work with rights holders. Even the few licensing deals that have been announced over the past few years seemed half-hearted, as if the AI platforms are just paying off the media companies with the largest megaphones and legal war chests. Given that Congress is mired in a filibuster-caused gridlock that makes most legislation a non-starter, we’re all just waiting around for the courts to decide whether LLMs can just vacuum up anything they want. I kind of wish they would hurry up and get the ruling over with so we can all move forward with a definitive answer.
What do you think?
Digiday: Brands are betting on creators to make their next hit series
Brands are increasingly launching episodic video series built around repeatable formats that prioritize entertainment over direct product promotion. The idea is that organically shared content creates longer-term value for the brand, even if the brand itself isn’t always front and center.
From the article:
In late September, Cava restaurant chain launched “Bowlmates”, a weekly dating show hosted by Daniela Mora, a NYC-based stand-up comedian and content creator. Around the same time, wedding site Zola rolled out “Pop the Questions,” a seven-episode social video series with influencers like Jaz Smith and Brandon Edelman. Meanwhile, Hot Topic debuted “Mall Rats,” a TikTok-first sitcom featuring five creators, including Cameron Perez and Kevin Crow. “Bowlmates”, which has its own Instagram and TikTok handle, has just over 1,300 followers across both platforms. It’s most popular video has more than 6,600 likes on TikTok and more than 6,700 likes on Instagram. Meanwhile Zola and Hot Topic’s content lives on the branded page as well as the influencers’ feeds.
ICYMI: How Political Wire built its successful subscription offering
Press Gazette: Mail invests heavily in creating content for Tiktok and Instagram
The Daily Mail is not only doubling down on creating shortform video content for platforms like Instagram and Tiktok, it’s also monetizing those channels directly through sponsored content.
From the article:
It is not just about getting people to click through to the Daily Mail anymore as they can be commercially valuable on the social platforms too. [Nick Moar, head of DMG New Media,] said: “Our aim is to produce the best content, whether that’s on the website, newspaper or on social…
“Building a great social audience is a big, big aim, and I’m sure we’d be very proud for lots of people to also want to consume more of the Mail’s content across the other products, but the aim is to build a great slate of content for the social audience.” Many of the videos designed for social end up on the Mail website as well.
CNN: CNN to Launch New All Access Subscription Tier October 28
CNN finally rolled out its comprehensive subscription offering. Unlike the short-lived CNN+, this new product isn’t solely focused on connected TV streaming, but instead will unlock all types of CNN content, including web articles. I think this is the smarter move, since only a small portion of CNN’s audience will want to access it via a streaming app.
Hollywood Reporter: YouTube Just Ate TV. It’s Only Getting Started
From the article:
On Sept. 16 … [YouTube CEO Neal Mohan] took to the stage in Google’s office at Pier 57 in New York with news to share: Over the past four years, YouTube had paid out more than $100 billion to its creators, artists and media partners …
YouTube generated more than $36 billion in advertising revenue in 2024, and executives say annual revenue — including subscriptions like YouTube Premium and YouTube Music — tops $50 billion, with revenues shared with the more than 3 million creators in its Partner Program, which reflects channels monetizing their videos. Both numbers are rising fast, even as traditional entertainment companies find themselves stagnating.
It’s remarkable that only in the past year has Hollywood finally acknowledged YouTube as an entertainment powerhouse—even though it’s been obvious for years that the platform was steadily eating into traditional media’s market share. The real turning point came when several reports revealed that YouTube was dominating television viewing time, a domain the major studios once considered their exclusive territory. Now, those same studios are scrambling to figure out how to tap into YouTube’s massive reach without undermining their own distribution channels.
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TechCrunch: India’s Kuku snags $85M as mobile content wars intensify
An Indian platform that specializes in both audiobooks and vertical video “microdramas” reportedly has 10 million paid subscribers and just raised over $85 million.
From the article:
Founded in 2018, Kuku first gained traction among Indian content consumers with its audiobook offerings through Kuku FM. Since then, it has expanded its product suite and now operates two flagship platforms: Kuku TV, which presents long-form stories as bite-sized episodes in a vertical format, and Kuku FM, which focuses on audio-first shows. The platforms provide content in more than eight Indian languages and have surpassed 10 million paid subscribers, the startup said, up from 2 million at the time of its last round in 2023.
YouTube: New report explores YouTube’s growing impact in Europe
From the article:
A new report from Oxford Economics reveals that in 2024, YouTube’s creative ecosystem contributed over €7 billion to the European Union’s GDP, while supporting more than 200,000 full-time equivalent jobs.
This is why I find claims that the media is “dying” to be reductive. A lot of the revenue from legacy institutions is simply shifting toward independent outlets and creators.
Becca Farsace: I quit my job to become a YouTuber, here is how much $$$ I made
A video journalist who left the Verge a year ago breaks down how her business is doing and explains how she makes money through a combination of YouTube Adsense, brand deals, and Patreon. Overall, she made over $150k in her first year, which I’m guessing is more than she made at the Verge.
I’m looking for successful media entrepreneurs to feature in my newsletter and podcast
I am consistently on the lookout for successful media entrepreneurs to interview for my podcast, whether it’s a solo creator or someone running an entire team. I want to feature people who are killing it with YouTube videos, podcasts, newsletters, or virtually any other type of digital content. I’m especially eager to talk to folks who have really interesting business models.
If this interests you, I created a special landing page for folks who want to pitch me.
Digiday: Why advertisers are quietly returning to news-driven media channels
I think brands are starting to realize they got a little bit too trigger happy when it came to blocking their ads from appearing next to news content, and that by doing so they created artificial scarcity that drove up their ad rates. As it turns out, most consumers just don’t care whether a brand’s marketing messaging appears next to non-uplifting content.
From the article:
In a year without a presidential election, improved brand safety tools and an increasingly politicized cultural zeitgeist, advertisers accepted that they can’t afford to leave eyeballs on the table. In some cases, clients are currently putting 10-30% of their budget toward news publishers, roughly an increase from between 8-15% last year, according to Kim Harrison, group media director of connections strategy at Fitzco ad agency. It helps that there’s no election this year, Harrison added.
Getting ads in front of shoppers trumps brand safety. Companies are facing tariffs and rising ad costs across the board all while cognizant of investor pressure to maximize profits. That makes it hard to leave media channels on the table, according to two agency execs Digiday spoke with for this piece.
Press Gazette: Techcrunch founding editor at large Mike Butcher launches new title
From the article:
Former Techcrunch editor-at-large Mike Butcher is launching a new title on newsletter-based platform Beehiiv covering tech startups and investment around the world.
Pathfinders launches with two full-time staff, and two weekly columnists, and will publish content on its website and email newsletter, with a podcast and events also planned.
It’s always cool when laid-off journalists decide to take the entrepreneurial route and launch their own publications.
Variety: The Animation Industry is Strapped for Cash. What’s Next?
With Hollywood budgets steadily shrinking, animation studios are looking at YouTube as a new frontier to build their businesses, especially since it’s already the primary destination for young viewers. The challenge is the financing, since YouTube’s revenue share doesn’t come close to replacing the income provided from the big studios. The hope is that the success of a series that debuts on YouTube can then lead to larger streaming deals.
From the article:
“Kids are leading the digital shift,” says TheSoul streaming and content VP Jonathan Shrank. “They’re the first to drift away from traditional broadcasting, becoming increasingly independent in their choices. The industry is scrambling to find ways to attract and retain viewers in a fragmented and dispersed landscape.”
For studios, that shift presents a challenge: viewers are moving online, often to platforms that don’t provide traditional broadcaster pre-sales or commissions. To meet them, production outfits must find new ways to finance and deliver content directly to digital spaces.
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