New lawsuits and deeper partnerships highlight the delicate balance between big publishers and AI companies.
Some of the first media companies to strike deals with OpenAI say they are preparing to launch new AI-powered features that aim to benefit readers, publishers and advertisers. One of the latest examples is Dotdash Meredith, who used AI to create a new way to target readers with contextual ads.
Using historical audience data and Amazon purchase data, the company trained a large linguistic model to find correlations between content consumption and potential user behaviors. The new unit is expected to launch today at a major retailer (undisclosed), Dotdash Meredith chief innovation officer Jonathan Roberts said yesterday during a keynote at the AI Trailblazers marketing conference in New York. Other panelists included executives from Time, the New York Stock Exchange and the New York Times.
Trained on 11 billion website visits over the last year, Roberts described the new ad unit as “moving from a binary Morse code system” to “a 4K full resolution color display.”
“You can have an incredibly rich view of what someone is going to do,” Roberts said. “Not because of who they were last week on a third-party site that you can’t see or query, but because of everyone who has viewed this content before.”
Time is also “about to launch” its first products developed with OpenAI, said Mark Howard, Time COO. While he didn’t share any details, he mentioned also working with Fox to track content on AI models using blockchain technology and talking with Scalepost about developing marketplaces for micropayments in exchange for recovery of the publisher’s content.
Priorities differ between media companies. Joe Benarroch, head of content and media partnerships at the New York Stock Exchange, wants to build a new media network in collaboration with media outlets, martech companies and AI providers. Benarroch, who previously led communications at X, mentioned potential partners such as xAI’s Grok platform and martech giants like Sprinklr and Adobe.
Despite deepening partnerships, some publishers remain concerned that tech companies are stripping their content to train AI models and could also siphon off readership and advertising revenue. Earlier this week, Sarah Friar, COO of OpenAI told the Financial Times that OpenAI would consider introducing advertisements on ChatGPT. (The company later issued a follow-up statement saying there were no immediate plans in the works.)
Concerns also extend beyond the United States to Canada. Last week, a group of major Canadian media companies filed a new lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging that ChatGPT’s parent company violated copyright law. Other pending lawsuits include complaints filed against OpenAI by The New York Times and The Tribune Company and another against Perplexity filed by News Corp.
Even before LLMs, the Times and other publishers spent years using machine learning to create contextual tools for reader personalization and ad targeting. They hope AI personalization will help them rely less on declining distribution channels like search and social media. That’s why The New York Times is focusing on using AI to personalize content on its website, apps, and emails.
“In a world where people have information in the palm of their hand while waiting to cross the street or stop a red light, there are many opportunities to reach people and maximize audience development,” said Chris Wiggins, Chief Data Scientist. at the New York Times.
Even though all the pressure is on AI companies, publishers also see ways AI can help take power away from ad tech companies.
“For a long time, ad tech companies said, ‘Oh, don’t worry about that. We have it, we understand your audience better than you ever will, let’s go from there,'” DotDash’s Roberts said. “It wasn’t true then and it’s certainly not true today. today.”
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