This week’s Media Briefing features an interview with Dotdash Meredith’s chief innovation officer, Jon Roberts. We discuss what the company has learned nearly nine months into its deal with OpenAI and what he wants to develop with AI technology at the company this year.

• Q&A with Dotdash Meredith on AI agenda in 2025
• Media companies prepare for legal battles with Trump administration, Fortune retracts bogus story and more

Q&A with Dotdash Meredith on AI agenda in 2025

Dotdash Meredith has ambitious plans for the development of its AI-powered technology in 2025. 

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This week’s court hearing in The New York Times’ case against OpenAI gave another glimpse of both sides’ legal strategies for the high-profile lawsuit over AI copyright.

On Tuesday, a federal judge heard oral arguments from both parties in a motion to dismiss brought by OpenAI and its financial backer Microsoft. The New York Times — as well as The New York Daily News and the Center for Investigative Reporting, which have filed their own lawsuits against OpenAI and Microsoft — claim OpenAI and Microsoft used the publishers’ content to train their large language models powering their generative AI chatbots. Doing so means the tech companies are competing with those publishers by using their content to answers users’ questions, taking away the incentive for a user to visit their sites for that information and ultimately hurting their ability to monetize those users through digital advertising and subscriptions, they claim.

OpenAI and Microsoft say what they’re doing is covered by “fair use,” a law that allows the use of copyrighted material to make something new that doesn’t compete with the original work.

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This week’s Media Briefing hones in on the business areas that publishing execs say they will prioritize this year – and what they are leaving behind in 2024.

• Media execs focused on growing engagement, subscriptions, direct ad revenue and reach
• Meta is bringing back political content, Time staffers are concerned about coziness with Trump and more

2025 look-ahead

This year, media companies will focus on growing engagement, subscriptions, reach and direct ad revenue, according to 16 publishing execs.

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When Donald Trump becomes president later this month, some news publishers will have updated tactics and strategies in place to cover his second term, ranging from a focus on softer news stories to more social media monitoring and engagement.

One head of social at a political news publisher, who asked to speak anonymously, said they encouraged staff to use some vacation days and take time off to “mentally prepare” for a “very fast and furious 90 days” of Trump’s first few months in office.

But for some publishers, it’s still too early to make any notable changes to editorial strategy. Three editors at top news organizations — who requested anonymity for candor — told Digiday at the end of last year that they felt prepared and poised to cover Trump’s second term and didn’t think it was necessary to shift resources or coverage plans yet.

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This year was the year many publishers took formalized stances on AI companies, many of which resulted in deals between the two.

The wave was first kicked off by an agreement between the Associated Press and OpenAI in July 2023, then followed by another deal between OpenAI and Politico, Business Insider, Bild and Welt owner Axel Springer.

The deals are usually content licensing agreements, where publishers let the AI companies use their content to train the large language models (often including paywalled content). In exchange, publishers get attribution for that content surfaced on the AI companies’ chatbot or search platforms, as well as access to technology that publishers can use to build AI-powered products and features. 

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The fragmented social landscape continued to splinter in 2024, as traffic from social media platforms sent to publishers’ sites continued its steady decline this year.

The bright spot? Largely Google. Publishers saw increases in traffic from Google Discover — and Google Search’s generative AI feature hasn’t had a negative impact on the traffic to publishers’ sites.

Other than Facebook, social platforms like Instagram, Reddit and Threads are all driving marginal traffic to publishers’ sites, according to Chartbeat’s data from about 3,750 sites.

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There will not be a Media Briefing next week due to Digiday’s holiday break.

This week’s Media Briefing takes a look at the top trends from 2024, from AI licensing deals to referral traffic challenges.

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AI search engine Perplexity introduced a new revenue share model back in July, amid the wave of deals between AI tech companies and publishers this year. But the way Perplexity is sharing ad revenue with publishers depends on a number of factors, according to information from Perplexity and conversations with five publishing execs, who declined to speak with attribution.

Here’s how Perplexity calculates revenue share for publishers: A publisher that is formally part of Perplexity’s program receives a certain percentage of the revenue Perplexity makes from an ad served in a response to a user’s query, when one of the publisher’s webpages is cited as a source for that response. (Perplexity has said 20 publishers have signed up).

But that range for each publisher varies, up to a double digit percentage, said Jessica Chan, head of publisher partnerships at Perplexity, who did not provide exact figures. That revenue increases for a publisher based on the number of links cited.

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After selling First We Feast following the sale of Complex earlier this year, BuzzFeed has come close to breaking even on its 2021 acquisition of Complex Networks. Investor analysts are describing the deal as a good sign for the media M&A market — which itself is an indication of how ugly that market had become.

A group of investors will pay BuzzFeed $82.5 million for First We Feast, which includes the popular “Hot Ones” franchise. Add to that the $108.6 million plus $5.7 million in fees BuzzFeed is getting from February’s sale of Complex to NTWRK, and BuzzFeed will have made back $196.8 million of the $198 million it originally paid for Complex Networks in 2021.

BuzzFeed is still effectively taking a loss on the overall Complex acquisition, but First We Feast’s $82.5 million price tag indicates an improving media M&A market. Bloomberg reported in June that BuzzFeed was struggling to find a buyer for First We Feast with a $70 million sale price.

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This week’s Media Briefing analyzes nine publishers’ workforce demographics reports released this year. The results were an even split: efforts stalled at a third of the companies analyzed, while another third made improvements and the remaining third’s staff diversity worsened.

• Three out of the nine publishers haven’t moved the needle on the overall diversity of their companies in the past year.

• Condé Nast layoffs, Q&A with Perplexity’s head of publisher partnerships, The Onion’s failed bid to buy Infowars and more.

An even split: DEI efforts stall, improve and worsen at nine media companies

A third of the nine publishers that released workforce demographic reports in the past year haven’t moved the needle on the overall diversity of their companies, according to the annual reports that are tracked by Digiday.

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Perplexity announced today it has added more than a dozen new media companies to its publisher program, including Blavity, Gear Patrol, The Independent, Lee Enterprises, Los Angeles Times and MediaLab.

Jessica Chan, who became Perplexity’s new head of publisher partnerships in September, spoke to Digiday about the five-month-old program, what it offers, and what’s in store for the AI tech company next year. Chan, who is a one-woman team at Perplexity, previously built LinkedIn’s content partner programs.

The new wave of publishers that have signed onto Perplexity’s program (which also includes DPReview, Mexico News Daily, Minkabu Infonoid, NewsPicks, Prisa Media, RTL Germany brands stern and ntv, Adweek and World History Encyclopedia) join media companies like Time, Fortune and Der Spiegel.

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This week’s Media Briefing looks at publishers’ strategy on Bluesky (or lack thereof) and how that compares to what they’re doing on X and Threads.

• Bluesky and Threads are “small potatoes” in terms of their role as traffic referrers.
• The Verge’s paywall, BuzzFeed’s debt, Amazon wooing publishers and more.

Bluesky vs. Threads vs. X

Another day, another new social media platform to test.

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