AI and the Future of Advertising in Publishing

Generative AI is upending the long-standing relationship between publishers and the platforms that distribute their content. As tools like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews deliver direct answers, the incentive to click through to publisher sites is disappearing. In this episode, I talk with Annelies Jansen, chief business officer at ProRata, about the need for a new economic model—one that accounts for how publisher content is used and ensures creators get paid. We discuss the risks of a bifurcated media ecosystem, how attribution can serve as the basis for compensation, and what a fair trade in the AI era might actually look like.