Brian: Welcome to the Rebooting Show.
I am Brian Morrisey.
The rise of generative AI is undoing one of the web's foundational bargains for years.
Publishers let Google crawl their content.
They got traffic in return and they monetized it mostly with ads running through Google's pipes.
It was an imperfect bargain, but at least it was fairly clear.
Google set the rules and you followed them, and if you executed on them as a publisher, you had a business.
but now with the rollout of AI generated summaries and answers with AI overviews, that exchange is just breaking down.
In fact it's being scrapped altogether.
I mean, just look at how last week Google rolled out a offer Walls they're calling it that lets publishers monetize traffic better.
And this is a classic case of too little, too late and it happens to come as publishers of all sizes are seeing, market traffic declines from Google, that everyone with eyes and a few working brain cells believes will only accelerate.
The prospect of Google Zero has gone from some kind of worst case scenario planning to reality at can this year, incongruously outside of a villa and next to a pool.
I spoke with Neil Vogel, the CEO of dot dash Meredith, about how they're preparing for a world where Google sends little to no traffic and, and he was very clear-eyed that.
This isn't about fighting change, it's about being ready for it.
and they are leaning into product brand a direct engagement, because they know the economics of the open web are shifting under their feet.
And so every publisher I talk to, this is, I. You know, just reality.
The old system simply isn't coming back.
And, there's an obvious impulse and I understand it.
To mourn that and to point fingers at culprits.
I have many, to, to point fingers at.
Maybe I'll do that later this summer.
but none of this strikes me as particularly, you know, useful it, it focusing on fairness, I find makes you feel good, but it doesn't really do much, in reality.
You know, I think I see a lot of impatience to sort of move on, because, you know, nobody's coming to save, you know, publishing, I don't think.
And it will need to find a way out on its own, I think it will.
I think it's just gonna be messy.
and that's just because, you know, when it comes to.
To these AI engines, the content has already been ingested.
These models have been trained, the value has been stripped.
there's little chance that I see just based on my experience of having covered this industry for a generation that big tech is going to all of a sudden offer retroactive compensation out of some kind of principle just simply not happening.
The real question is what comes next?
What would it.
New economic bargain look like.
one that, that hopefully gives publisher, publishers a stake in the systems that are profiting off of their work.
you know, I, I think that has to start with attribution.
I mean, I listen to many podcasts from tech leaders and I listen to, I listen to the words that they use and, and what's clear is what
they are doing, at least it's clear to me is another instance of obfuscation by positioning the rampant theft as quote unquote training.
unlike with Napster, they made sure that the outputs are not carbon copies and therefore, you know, any claims of copyright, are irrelevant.
it's the classic case of the plagiarist who reorders the words and combines many sources and then pretends that the work that they have created is, quote unquote original.
I have little faith.
In the courts, particularly following the recent ruling in favor of Anthropics AI training on copyrighted books.
so the question is what comes next In this episode, I speak with Annalise, Jansen, who is a Chief Business Officer at Pro rata.
About how publishers can respond, in this moment.
cause it's an important one.
Pro Rata is a startup founded by Bill Gross.
if you don't know Bill Gross, you should, because he is the original architect of paid search.
He basically invented it.
Google copied it.
I don't say that like out of my judgment.
It's the judgment of a court.
Google had a.
Pay Yahoo, which, had acquired Overture, which was the company, that Bill had started and paid a settlement, because of that.
so what, Bill and Pro Rata are doing now is trying to build a new infrastructure for basically ethical AI engagement.
And the idea really comes down to attribution.
And that is, if you can count it, you can compensate for it, you know, attribution.
Becomes, the foundation for this new economic model.
One that pays publishers not just for clicks, but for their contributions to the, the content that is being produced by these AI engines and that there are, profiting from, Now how that looks is gonna be messy.
I mean, this is something I had spoken to Neil about.
I mean, in his view, you know, you need to get leverage, in these negotiations because, you know, publishers have never been able to exert themselves, for a whole variety of reasons.
you know, I think a lot of times people compare, the publishing industry to.
you know, for instance, music, right?
Because if you go on these AI engines, I'm always struck try to get the lyrics of a song out of one of these AI engines and you cannot.
Okay.
And that's because it's an oligopoly in music and publishing is incredibly fragmented and these tech companies wanna fragment it even further.
And that's why they're all into creators.
And I could go on about that, ad nauseum, but I won't, So I think when you think about what a new bargain would look like, it, it could mean it, you know, embedding attributions
into these AI generated, answers and creating frameworks for a pay per use compensation and, and giving media companies tools themselves to build, ai, driven products.
I mean, if AI is gonna become the new distribution layer, then publishing is gonna need a new monetization layer that.
Matches it and, and works well with it.
I mean, otherwise I think the risk is obvious.
I mean, quality content will become simply an economically unsustainable activity.
so Anise and I talk about what such a fair system would look like and why the current dynamics echoes past failures, to organize collectively, and also whether publishers will ultimately become.
In effect wholesalers to these answer engines.
This is, something that I've been, going on about like a bit just because it, it seems pretty clear to me that that is one path that this could take.
this is overall a conversation about what happens, you know, after traffic, after the eyeballs here.
and how, you know, the value of quality content, can still be captured by those who create it.
and also how to get there.
as always, love to hear your feedback.
My email is brian@therebooting.com.
Now here's my conversation with Annalise.
I did a little podcast.
We're trying this with Ben Smith and Peter Kafka, where, you know, to, because podcasts like discovery is horrific.
So we figure we have overlapping audiences, but we're kind of different.
We're different.
so we're gonna like split it up between like the three.
And then I find out on the podcast that Ben fakes the intro.
Like it sounds like he's like, you know, he acts like, he's like, okay, and now we'll like, you know, bring him, but he does that after the podcast.
He's like, it's show business.
I'm like, I don't do that.
Annelies: Yeah, because she can highlight, you know, you can take specific things that you've heard through through the podcast.
I think there's a word for it.
Is it, is it podcast frenemies
Brian: Frenemies.
Yeah.
Annelies: po.
Po.
Pod enemies as in, you know, make sure that you appear on your neighbor's podcast.
Brian: Yeah.
so I'm gonna do the intro later.
just to make sure I don't butcher your surname.
Is it, is it Janssen?
Janssen.
Janssen?
Annelies: I listen to many pronunciations of
Brian: but which do you prefer?
Annelies: my first name.
I, I think Anna Jansen Janssen is fine.
Brian: okay.
But it's really not.
Annelies: It's, well, if you were Dutch and you would speak to me in
Brian: Yeah.
Annelies: Janssen.
Yeah.
So you'd say y you'd say Janssen.
Brian: Jansen.
Annelies: Yeah.
Brian: Okay.
Hood.
I don't know.
I, I lived in, um, in, live in, for two years.
Annelies: Oh wow.
To study or fantastic.
Brian: my parents lived in Flemish Commune called Reza.
just outside of Brussels and I, I went to a year of college there and then, I went to grad school.
Annelies: Wow.
So you learned how to drink beer?
Brian: Yeah.
Basically outta marked.
That was, that was my degree.
It was in outta mark studies.
Annelies: It's a lot to learn when you drink beer.
Brian: Annelise, thank you for joining me, to talk about AI and impending doom.
Annelies: Wow.
Yes.
It's, it depends on how you look at
Brian: I know, I know.
But I wanna start with, we're gonna get into Prorata and just, but I wanna start with something that we have discussed, via email and before this podcast that I almost feel like.
This is one where publishers are not actually taking the, the threat as seriously as they should.
Like what is happening on many fronts with ai, but most particularly with traffic.
I almost feel like people are not taking it as seriously as they should.
Just give me, I want to do a little exercise.
Gimme a worst case scenario, in five years with where you see things are going.
You've got experiences on all side of of this, but like just to sort of paint a picture, what's a worst case scenario?
I'm not saying that's gonna happen and then we'll get to a best case scenario.
Annelies: well thank you for this and it's a real, it's a real pleasure to be in this podcast and to continue our conversation.
Brian, let me start with something that I see is happening within the industry.
I think the big steal is being normalized.
I. I personally find that very concerning.
I think a year ago people were much more aware that their content was stolen.
I think a year ago there was a a lot more discussion and people speaking up about content being stolen.
I don't see that anymore.
Or less, way less of it.
I was just attending a number of conferences where it's just not the topic of conversation.
but let's go back to your question.
So where do I see this play out?
And obviously, you know, and I am biased.
I'm, I have a play out without prorata or as one could call it a, a product solution for the whole industry and not just the happy you are able to do a deal and, and a product solution with prorata.
but the big deal's happening, all content's taken and share of wallets, share of voice, share of audience is with those and already was with those who did deals who have been lucky enough to do, to do deals.
And the deals, whether they're licensing deals or commercial deals, they're get out of the courtroom deals, I call them.
and those
Brian: boardroom deals.
What
Annelies: get, get out of the courtroom
Brian: Oh, courtroom.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
They're payoffs.
Annelies: Yes.
And so if we continue to, live in this bifurcated media world where we have the happy view, 0.5% with some sort of money based on, you know, you call it licensing, I don't think it's licensing
depends, but I'm not a lawyer and the ones who, who don't, the haves and the have not for the, have not, no payment on output and input.
Significant loss of traffic from Google.
No ability to have a control of my brand and my content's appearance and use in Gen AI answers.
I really, really worry about the 99.5% of media.
I don't, I worry less about the large players than, than the the nationwide newspaper or magazine who.
In many instances, particularly in the English speaking world, have been able to make a deal.
I also worry about those deals going forward.
Are they sustainable?
Are they just a one-off payment?
And then in three years time, people change their minds and say, actually, no, we've done this.
Now you've got our tech.
'cause as part of the, the deal, you got our tech, now it's up to you to use our tech to build engagement, ai engagement within your own media channels.
But there is no more deal.
who knows?
I, I am not a fortune teller, but I really worry about the next, uh, where we're gonna be in five years time.
If the industry that doesn't have a deal today doesn't come together and collaborate.
To build an alternative, which what I would call a new economic model.
And initially when we started Prorata, it was about this new economic model where we build a tech.
To enable a user to see independent, to have independent attribution on all gen AI answers.
If you can count it, you can share it.
Good for the users, we would argue, but also good for content creators, publishers, media owners, because there's a real visible contribution
to my content used in a Gen AI answer, but that requires the L LMS to collaborate with an independent attribution company like ourselves.
Is not happening today.
We've built the independent attribution platform to do that, but but also to do
Brian: isn't a tech problem is I think is my sort of like, what I would say.
It's like, it's not a tech problem to understand, you know, attribution.
It, it is, it's possible, right?
Like, I mean the, the, the, the, the things that AI is being promised to be able to do, I mean like every day and it does sometimes line up with funding.
you know, we, we.
Hear about like, oh, 95% of doctors will be gone in three years and, and all kinds of different things that that AI is able to
do, but somehow, some way it's not able to actually properly attribute where this stuff came from that they took and it's galling.
I think in some ways anyone who's been in media or, or appreciates what media does for society and the economy, and particularly if their jobs rely on it, to be fair.
but at the same time we had to sort of get on with it.
I mean, when I talk with someone like, Neil Vogel I had on a couple weeks ago, you know, he is like, look.
Deal with the devil.
I don't know.
We're going in with, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's trust but verify and this isn't forever.
We're not getting married.
And, and what I hear is always better to have a seat at the table.
That, that, that, that is the sort of the, the, the, I don't wanna say cliched answer, but it is kind of the cliched answer a seat at the table.
And I've heard this like several different times,
Annelies: Yeah.
And you know, you would argue you would do the same thing.
the problem here is we don't have a seat at a table for all content creators.
We only have it for what I call the happy view.
Brian: the tech people love that.
They love the divide and conquer approach.
And now I'm like going anti-tech when I was just watching mountain Heads, like it's in my head.
but like, you know, they love the, that's why a lot of like to me, like technology companies love the creator economy.
I. And they're like, oh yeah, why do I want to, like, we spent a generation getting beat up by big publishers.
Why don't we just have like millions and millions of small people that are dependent on us?
Like, sounds like a better system to me.
and I think that's, that's really the risk.
But what you're saying is like, yes, the, the dot dash Meredith, they're gonna cut their deals.
You know, the New York Times can incur tens of millions of dollars in legal fees.
but then, you know.
I think some maybe naive people, like I, I got a couple text messages like, wow, real shocker.
They cut a deal on AI with Amazon.
I'm like, what are you talking about?
I'm like, litigation is a form of negotiation.
Like right.
Annelies: yeah, absolutely.
I would argue there that if, as part of the settlements, they would, require independent attribution that the industry.
Overall would benefit it from it, and that I'm definitely campaigning for that message to be included.
we're not there yet, but I think it's really important for everybody.
You said have a seat at the table.
I think it's really important for everybody to have a seat at the table and there is, there are comparables in the industry, Spotify.
Everybody has a seat at the table at YouTube.
Everybody has a seat at the table.
So it's only in Gen ai.
In Gen AI answers Gen AI engagement that not everybody has a seat at the table when it comes to payout.
Brian: Yeah.
Do you know what, do you know something that's, endlessly fascinating to me?
try to get music lyrics on, Chachi pt. Let's going try to get them, just say any sort of, you know, and you won't be able to get them.
And the reason is the, the, they've been through this.
And they're lawyered up and they're organized, like unlike publishers who could not organize a two car funeral parade, I guess it's not a per se parade, it's a procession.
Maybe it should be a parade.
Depends on the person.
You cannot get.
I tried to get like a Tupac lyric and don't ask, and, and I could not get it there.
I, and then, and just like randomly I tried, like I, I got the lyric.
What's interesting is you get these lyrics on Google, right?
But like, I, I took, I, I couldn't like copy and paste something.
So I took a photo and I said, just give me the, give me the text in here just the photo.
And it identified that these were lyrics.
Said, I cannot perform that function
Annelies: Wow.
Brian: well.
Well, well, I feel like
Annelies: Yeah.
Well, it, I mean, I think, Spotify is a good example.
The music industry is a good example, and one could argue Spotify brought that product through which the industry had to collaborate.
If they had to organize themselves without Spotify to collaborate on making, making the, the mu digital music, pay for all players involved and, and, and license it, they would never have been able to do so.
But Spotify was that independent
Brian: Yeah.
You know, people in media, we've been in this business a little time.
People in media like to blame, like antitrust and all these things, and no, it's just disorganization.
They've never, anytime anything has been, to actually have a joint action of any kind, it completely falls apart.
It, it, it.
Like, it's the opposite of opec.
It's the, it's the worst organization.
And I just don't see that anytime anyone says they're gonna organize, whether it was Yahoo with their newspaper alliance, you know, so like a generation ago, it never ever works.
And and so I think it is gonna have to be organized probably to some degree.
From the outside, but let's talk about, like, we will talk about the mechanics there, but you know, I asked you for a worst case scenario, right?
So gimme what a new.
Economic accord looks like I've been like, sort of jokingly call it like a Mar-a-Lago accord.
Like what is a Mar-a-Lago accord of, which is the, the name given to this idea that there's some grand plan with everything we're doing on tariffs and whatnot, to, to create a, a deal that will increase us.
Exports and devalue the dollar and, and increase other currencies and various other things to, to normalize, trade imbalances.
What, what would be a sort of Mar-a-Lago accord that resets the economic incentives that are being ripped up right now?
Because I, I don't think people fully organ realize that Google adopting AI mode is walking away from an economic bargain that has.
Dictated the internet from basically from the commercial internet.
And you know, after the portal era, you know, Google has been the arbiter of the internet.
It is distributing it, distributed the traffic.
The unspoken agreement was always that.
You're gonna get tr you're gonna allow us to crawl your site.
We're gonna take the snippets.
It's fine.
It's not copyright violation, just pretend it isn't and then we're going to send you back traffic that you're gonna monetize.
And oh, by the way, it'd be really good if you use our ad tech stack 'cause we'd like a taste.
Would be terrible for something to happen to that traffic.
Maybe that's a cynical take, but that's my take.
What is a new, what's a Mar-a-Lago Accord for the AI error?
Annelies: so I think it starts with a couple of things.
First of all, acceptance and understanding in the industry that, that you can count it.
That attribution is needed, that on every Gen AI answer, it is possible to attribute the original content sources and,
Brian: they're doing right now, like they are kind of doing it.
I even see the rebooting is, is, has, has sometimes gets this little logo like up there, so I'm getting slurped up.
I, I don't know.
I was like, oh.
I was like kind of excited by that, but I'm not sure if I should be,
Annelies: But, you know, you know, there is a trust, that, that we need to bring into this space when it comes to attribution.
And that's why we're really working on third party validation to make sure that our, in our attribution model is independent.
I think if you, you know, I, I, I like the com.
You know, going back in time in terms of Google and how it changed the industry forever, and it was that, I think it was a silent killer.
None of us really knew that it was going to be a silent killer.
And that's why it was, that's why we can frame it as a silent killer this time around.
It's going much faster.
And so therefore, and, and it's also not very silent, although for so many industry it is are the, so the new accord is, educate.
And inspire all content creators that educate 'em that attribution is possible.
Inspire them to, not to be dependent, because we've all become codependent.
You know, and I was a, a, a publisher myself.
You become codependent on traffic that needs to come from a third party source where you have no control.
And I'm really worried about, the, the, the Google environment moving into AI where it is.
No longer going to be an extension of your brand and your content.
You know, in, in the good old search world, at least your content, your brand was visible and a snippet of your content as well, so that at least there was some sort of brand and content extension, that's how you could sell it.
And then it brings back traffic.
In the new world, there is no brand extension or content extension.
That you can, I would arguably, I, I would argue, could actually build in, into your business model, into your p and l because it's out there.
There's no traffic.
Zero click and search environment brings very little traffic, if, if at all, and there's no forecastable revenue stream.
So what do we need to do to change it?
And the industry, what I do here, more and more is we need to work together.
And I'm like, well, you've kind of already worked together, but under the control of somebody else, when a user's looking for
an article about, the earthquake in Japan, they will get an, they'll get an answer from Google with 10 20 brands covering that.
New story in the new paradigm, that's not going to happen.
So, but you were effectively working together.
You were displayed amongst your competitors.
So our view is build a toolkit.
That enables you to embrace AI search, embrace AI engagement, not to walk away from it, not to let it, not to leave that to a third party where you don't control.
You have no control.
They may change the rules, they may change the algorithm, but actually take back control.
And how do you take back control and collaborate is, you know, and obviously I'm, I'm biased, but I would say that's what we're building, in Prorata found with the
foundation of attribution, building a toolkit that enables the industry to work together to bring AI engagement within your own channels.
Brian: But like attribution is a first step to pay per use compensation.
Annelies: Yeah,
Brian: So basically every time, you know in this like, new Accord, right?
Anytime, you know the rebooting is used in a Gen AI answer, I get some ducketts my way.
Is that it?
Annelies: Yeah, so, and if you allow me, I can explain what, what I think that the, the healthy eco ecosystem is going to look like in five years time if, the industry, adopts AI engagement tools like the ones that we are developing, so.
We've used license content only.
We have licensing deals, and I would argue we're probably only player that are actively and and actually licenses content.
We use that content to create an ai.
Ethical AI Answer engine.
Some people call it engagement engine, some people call search engine, but we create ethical AI search.
An ethical AI source always comes with the independent attribution, always with the link back to the original content source, and it comes with monetization or park monetization for a moment.
But we, we believe that we can only do this, you can only create a healthy ecosystem if you bring new monetization into the mix.
The toolkit enables us to, offer these to publishers with whom we have licensing deals to start to build AI engagement within your own channels.
So you effectively get a toolkit to build, ask me anything related, links within your pages to drive AI engagement.
'cause as I, as I said earlier, AI engagement's not gonna go away.
That train's left the station a billion users across the globe.
So.
Publishers, content creators need to embrace it, and we help them to, build that AI engagement.
Some people have already done that.
Most people who do it have used their deals.
The 0.5% happy view, who've, who've received DPU credits, as part of their deals, the 99.5%.
sometimes do not know how to do this, can't afford to do this.
and, and in many instances do not have enough content if they were even able to do it.
Do not have content to deliver desired answers by users.
So what we came up with is this toolkit that you embed within your pages drives AI engagement.
It uses content.
From not just your own corpus, but also the corpuses that we have licensed with our trusted content partners.
Brian: Okay.
and it should say, I mean, prorata is started by Bill Gross, who, has a long history.
I, I, everyone should know who Bill Gross is, at least in my view.
Annelies: I. think so too.
Brian: Because, you know, he's really the person who pioneered the greatest economic engine that the world has ever seen, which is known as paid search.
Google did not invent it.
They actually had to pay for, ripping it off if you really go back, because you know what was Overture at the time, which actually was rebranded.
I, I, I go all the way back Annalise, I go back to GoTo.
That's how you know the OGs.
They go, they go back to GoTo, not, not Overture.
You know, and you know, I think at the time I, it was really when I started, it was really when I started in journalism.
I remember having a meeting with, and it wasn't with GoTo, it was with Find Watt, which was one of the other competitors.
I know I'm going way back.
Right.
and I remember them explaining this to me that they were putting these ads on search results pages.
I was like.
This is insane.
I'm like, you can't do this.
That was like what it was back then.
Nobody understood that the search results page was the most valuable piece of real estate in the world.
It was used for remnant banner ads, like whatever, the 4 46 by 60, whatever the, the, the little, banner at size was back then.
maybe some skyscrapers.
But it, nobody understood it, until Gotto and then Overture started the, really the paid search system.
Now, I mean, you could argue Google really perfected it and really, you know, was able to use its muscle, in order to, You know, basically take over the entire market.
And it's, it's interesting to me, like, because of all of the, the antitrust, actions now I'm like reading through them.
I'm like, I. Yeah, they've been doing this like since the beginning.
This is like the business model.
What are you talking about?
I was like, I'm talking to Overture like every other week because Google was cutting uneconomic deals with a OL to buy distribution.
It just did it with Apple.
Like it, they literally had been doing this since the start and Overture couldn't compete because the, that was their business.
And basically Google was saying, we're gonna give you more money than you generate because we're gonna, we're gonna wipe up the entire market because we have our own search engine.
All that is a long preamble to say what?
I'm sure that that experience wa wa was top of mind in designing prorata for, a new, a new era, but explain how it was built in such a way with, with that experience in mind.
Little history, little history lesson there for everyone.
Annelies: yeah.
You know, it's, it's lessons from history and the things that we don't, we want to repeat and we, we don't ever want to do again.
and I think in, in the show notes, definitely if you can put, a link to bill's, Idea Lab where everything on the website, uh, you need to know about Bill is there.
you know, he's a legend and he's a legend in many ways.
he has a, a real talent for understanding where there's a gap in the market and where there's an opportunity to, to build a new business model.
So when he read.
The New York Times, when he read the news about the New York Times lawsuit, he thought, this is just not right.
You know, within Gen AI answers, only a few people are are able to take the large language models to court and only a few will be able to do a deal.
What's out there for the rest?
I need to build a new economic model where basically if you can count it, you can share it.
That's how this all started.
And by setting up the mission that I want to build a business that is pro publisher, pro content creator, pro author, and I want to help them and guide them to speak up for themselves and, and to highlight where their content is used.
We build a, we build a A team around this mission that actually comes with deep tech experience, deep media experience and deep entrepreneurial experience.
And on the entrepreneurial side, I mean our tech team build the bing.
Knowledge graph, the being advertising system Bill Build, go to Overture, which basically now is, what is it, $300 billion of revenue
across the whole and probably even more so he's, he's, he's the founder of these, new implementations of what I would call old ideas.
and, and a traditional, existing ideas.
You know, if you build, if you make something great, you'll, you'll get an audience and then you can get paid for it, whether it's the audience pays for it or the advertiser pays for it.
And in this new world of ai, we need to be able to replicate it.
And for that we need to understand the tech, and we need to build a tech that enables us to build great product.
You know, and I think Neil said it so well in that podcast, you know, it was all about building great and engaging products.
I loved it when he said A media business is fantastic.
You build something great, you build a great content story, a great storyline, a great product to engage with that story in that content, and then you get an audience and then you monetize the audience.
And we can do the same thing in the world of ai, but we need.
Content owners and creators to understand how to do this.
And that's where, that's, that's the, the foundation of our company, which is an economic model, a very experienced team who's incredibly passionate about solving this problem.
And we do that with the industry.
You know, we lean in, we, and, and, and that's together, we can solve it.
And I always say to publishers, I don't have all your answers, but I have the best team to get to the right answer.
Brian: Yeah, but I guess the point that I was trying to get at was like, are, are you building a consumer company?
Or a B2B company or both in that, like, I get the, the positioning of like, we're on the side of publishers, you know, and that's why I wanted to talk to you, to be honest with you.
If you were like, I wanna put them out of business, I probably would be like, yeah, let's pass that Elise.
Um, you know, I, I like that.
Right?
But I go back to the overture experience and overture.
You know, look, it got bought by Yahoo eventually.
It was, it was a great exit, but it, it, it lost against Google, right?
Because Google had a search engine, it had a direct tie to the consumer.
It vacuumed up a ton of data and an overwhelmed overture in the marketplace.
It just slowly lost every single deal because Google could say, name the number, we'll just take it.
I mean, at the time people don't in, in Google was tiny compared to how it is now.
I can remember.
Go back to neil about.com at the time, which is the sort of origins of Do Meredith.
you know, they used a rival AdSense product, called Springs, I believe, and I.
About was one of the largest sites on the internet.
Google was like, we need that real estate.
So they just bought sprints and shut it down.
I was like, here you go, you're using AdSense now.
you know, and that I think spoke to, to how things were going.
But like, I I, I'd love to get it that, because like, explain to me is just AI gonna try to compete with chat, with chat GBT and like, and, and Gemini.
Like that seems like a lot.
Annelies: Now we build just AI because we needed to prove that attributions possible and we needed to show to publishers what it looks like, what is, you know, we're using your content to build an AI answer experience and this is what it looks like.
that was step number one.
And now we're working with these publishers to actually.
Take gist into a, we call a gist powered GPA product that you integrate across your channels to drive distribution.
Brian: Okay.
so it's mostly, so explain how, how do you get leverage in that?
Because I think the, the, you know, we can talk about what's fair and what's not and, and it's, it's interesting and I'm, I'm probably gonna.
End up agreeing with you that it's unfair, but at the same time, I don't know, my experience in in the world has generally been, it really comes down to leverage.
And publishers individually have like no juice.
They have no leverage.
I mean, good luck.
You might as well be, you know, going up against the, the house of Lannister with like a rock.
It's just not gonna happen.
Or, or not even the lannis, the ones with the dragons.
so like.
That that's out.
And then I don't even know, first of all, the history of publishers doing anything together is very consistent in that it never works.
and so I end up wondering why in the world would outside of some kind of legal action, which.
Does not seem, which is not happening in the United States, obviously, at least in the next three plus years.
you, you look at the, the bill going through, like right now, they're protecting the AI companies from this.
And so that's not gonna happen.
No one's coming, coming to the rescue.
But then it leaves me to wonder, it's like, what is the pa, what is the leverage that publishers can have other than saying, please, and then pretty please.
Annelies: Okay.
The leverage is, it's the power of the numbers.
we've done almost a hundred deals, agreements.
I call them.
They're not deals, agreements.
We signed agreements with almost a hundred publishers, and we have many non-English publishers, kind of like ready to sign.
We we're focusing on English language, for the first half of this year.
So the leverage is the power of the numbers, the collaboration across the industry, and every publisher that signs up today
with us already signs up to collaboration because my content is used alongside content from my competitors adjacent neighbors.
and so it is already a collective.
Product through working with a large number of publishers and many, many more to come.
so the leverage is power in size.
If I look at the, the, the extent of the network.
You know, you can count it through page views, number of titles, but where gist can be gist powered answers, the AI engagement powered by by, our product can take place is across a network of all our partners.
'cause our partners sign up to license content, but effectively they also sign up to get a suite of ai.
Engagement tools that they can implement within their channel, within their own media channels.
So I think the leverage is not gonna come overnight, but there's an incredible sign across the industry.
There's an appetite to collaborate, but you can't collaborate through negotiation.
So what we bring is collaboration with without negotiation through product solution.
Brian: Okay.
and how does this change how publishers make money?
Are they still gonna, because I think that's what I end up, wondering about like the.
Like, there's so many problems that are created by this new paradigm of people getting answers.
Right?
But one of the things that seems to me, that's why I'm, I'm always asking people, are people gonna be going to your website in five years?
I. And I don't mean it to be a jerk or something, but I think every, every single person needs to be thinking that, like, honestly, with the
changes going on right now, are people seriously going to be going to www.yoursite.com and then hitting a back button when they're done?
Like it just seems strange to me and I just wonder and, and then you're gonna be monetizing it through programmatic ads.
I mean, really like, that just seems like a very fraught.
Proposition.
So there's so many issues to like solve.
but you know, one thing that I always wonder is whether a lot of publishers will end up being wholesalers.
And that they're wholesaling information to the aggregators, which are going to be these answer engines and whatnot, that they might not even have a quote unquote website.
A website is just a front end to like a data depository at the end of the day.
Like shouldn't.
Isn't there like a case to be made that if the economic bargain can be made, a lot of people will be more in the licensing business than they will be in this, you know?
This business where it, it doesn't, it's so convoluted in how a lot of publishers, have to make money.
Like these businesses are overly complex for their size and they're getting smaller, and when you have complexity on top of shrinking, it's just a mess.
And it's because the ad system is broken and it has been broken almost from the start.
Subscriptions are only like gonna do so much.
Commerce was an SEO strategy.
Forget that.
get ready for every commerce, not every, most commerce, business lines.
You're not gonna be hearing a lot of them going forward.
'cause people are gonna be quietly taking them upstate.
I mean, BI just took theirs upstate and, and others will follow, I'm sure.
And so what I wonder is, is Longwinded set way of saying.
Do you see like a possibility where, how publishers make money will increasingly be getting, you know, it's, it's more licensing than it is retail.
And by that I mean like getting people to come to your website, having, you know, figuring out all the programmatic and like all of these different things that, that, that are being done for businesses that frankly are shrinking.
Annelies: Wow.
so how do I, how do I save the industry in five minutes?
but you
Brian: Be concise, Annalise.
Annelies: yes.
so licensing needs a, fair economic model.
And I think if you look at the media industry as a wholesaler of content, if you license that with our brand.
Without mentioning and contribution of, of brand and actual content itself.
you know, I don't want to go back to the time, the time when I lived in, in Russia and I was a magazine publisher and we had
about 20 magazines and that that was a, an innovative landscape because they're under so times there were only two magazines.
you know, consumers actually like.
New media and they like media that comes with a brand and if we license it and it's all vanilla and it comes out with brand and any contribution to the original source, I don't think that's a very exciting media landscape delivered.
It's not the one that Neil was, was describing your podcast two weeks ago.
so, but yeah.
Is, are people still gonna come to your website?
Some of them will do it, but you know, we've seen the website traffic is.
Decreasing
Brian: get magazines too.
Annelies: yeah, but people still gonna, so it is, as a publisher, you need to lean into product development.
And that product development goes across a number of channels, a, a number of ways to reach your, your, your audience.
And that audience is now used to having an AI experience as well, at least many of them are.
And for some of that, that may be an article summarization.
For some of that, it may be a button where I can ask a question because I happen to have a question, and then the publisher can decide for that question to be answered by
just my content or actually content of a number of trusted content sources, because I know I can do a better job for the consumer.
So I think it starts with the consumer and the consumer.
has already shown to us that they can navigate different channels.
They can go from a podcast, and now we have podcasts on YouTube.
So we need to really follow that consumer u consumer desire and behavior and build for it.
And I'm not a publisher today, but I deal with them all the time and I liked them, inspired them wherever I can is to.
AI engagement is another user experience that you need to build within your workflow, and it's there to drive.
More engagement and more engagement to then be
monetized.
You took,
Brian: have to come to your website in order for them to ha engage with any of these things like it's.
Annelies: not, not if you, I mean, what we're building with, kind of the AI toolkit, just Dispar answer is imagine a user goes to the Guardian's website, the Guardian's app.
In London and wants to know about their upcoming Yellowstone holiday, and they ask a question like, what do I take on my holiday to Yellowstone?
And what are the top things I should avoid when I'm there?
that answer could just, you look at the guardian's corpus and you know you're lucky at a, a journalist wrote an article three years ago about a travel, their travel story, to Yellowstone.
If you combine.
That corpus with the corpus of the billing gazettes, which is practically next to Yellowstone, you get an answer that's based on recency.
So you get depth and breadth within the answer, and it doesn't matter for the billing gazettes that that content is used for a user.
Who reads The Guardian or user in the UK who reads, the Guardian wants to know about Yellowstone because through attribution there will be compensation for use of that content in a completely different media channel.
Brian: Yeah.
So, you've, you've worked, I guess they used to call it fang.
Now we're on the mag seven.
But you worked, you worked at Facebook.
Like, so you have experience in these companies.
And I don't mean to generalize, but I will generalize.
That's, you know, someone's gonna generalize when they say that.
Talk to me about your experience about how.
Those companies in general.
And, 'cause and I've always felt this divide between Silicon Valley and New York and my career, and, and again, I'm just like speaking in very broad generalities, but it's basically between like tech and media.
It's like, you know, men are from Mars, women are from Venus.
It's like really kind of is that kind of thing.
And, you know, you're, you're a media person right, too.
So what, what sort of, do you think that.
I don't know.
I'd love to hear your takeaways about how, broadly speaking the world of tech sees publishing and media, because I think that really matters in how they, approach these, these problems.
I mean, they, they're not quote unquote media people.
And, and that's, you know, that's what I was saying.
I was, you know, I was, I was watching that, that mountain head thing, you know, which I didn't really like personally that much.
I didn't think it was that funny.
But, you know, it, it does sort of drive home that, that point that, yeah, these people think a little differently.
Annelies: Yeah.
first of all, I'm, I'm incredibly, I was incredibly excited to join.
I was not joining on the media partnership site, but I joined on Commerce, because I built many classified websites in my career.
I think you only understand what product led companies, what that means once you're there and once you're in the midst of it.
It a company that's purely focused on building product for engagement and traffic and.
When you do that at such a large scale, there are some things you, there are some elements that are really crucial to us.
You know, if we're a media person, like, you know, the brand of the New York Times or the brand of the Washington, Washington Post, we, you know, we can distinguish between these two different brands.
But when you work on product at and with such, for such a large audience and.
You are an engineer, you probably have a different, you know, it's the alphas and the betas.
You, at least that's how we classify people in the Netherlands.
You're, you're an alpha person, you are a language person, you're a better person.
You are a, a STEM person, and there's a different
Brian: Wait, who are the alphas?
The alphas are the, the stem people.
Annelies: No, the alpha already.
No.
So that's why
Brian: Oh, really?
Annelies: when I say, Alphabet it, it is definitely a direct translation from Dutch.
So the alpha people are the people who are the linguists and.
Brian: Oh, great.
I'm an Alpha and
Annelies: And, and, yes, you are.
And, the beta people are the STEM people.
So there's a, there's a, and actually I have, no, I actually have two stems at home.
My two kids are both the STEM kids.
And, and actually that was a, a great,
Brian: Yeah, you gotta de-risk, you know,
you
Annelies: was, that was very helpful in my career because you need to look into the brain of somebody who's an engineer and what is important for them.
It's code, it's numbers, it's not words or words matter.
Less so.
I always say this to publishers, if you negotiate with somebody who has a different perception and different sense of respect for what you are making, I'm not sure if you can negotiate,
Through a sense of, you, you're not equal and you're not, you're not pursuing the same outcome or it's not based on the same principles.
And so my.
What I loved about working in Silicon Valley, and actually later on I moved to LA because I, I, I, and the way I described it is, you know,
people in, in, Silicon Valley are very excited about new technology, because of, the tech itself and, you know, the, the products you could build.
And then you move to LA and it's like, what does that tech do for, for me in terms of money?
You know, it's like, what?
What's the use case?
You know, so a, a, a cool piece of tech, but actually is it useful?
And if it's not useful, but it's really cool.
So a commoditization of things that we, that are really precious to publishers, I think is where the big divide is.
And that's, you know, Justine Roberts, founder of Mumsnet described on a podcast how she was so insulted during a negotiation with one of the LLMs where they described her content as tonnage.
Like the, you know, tonnage of your tonnage of your content.
She's like, you know, she was enraged and, you know, I am enraged about it as well because, and that's, you know, comes
Brian: but to an engineer, it's just a bunch of data.
Annelies: Yeah.
You
know, that's
why you've heard them say, you know, we've, we've got enough humanly created content, so now we can just use
Brian: man.
You know this, to me, it was like always like, and this sort of went away, but for years it was like talking about what is premium.
Like what is premium?
And so like publishers, it's like, you know, it's like the old thing they would say about pornography or obscenity, it's like, you know, when you see it or whatever.
Like, you know, there's no te but like, you know, pre but in, and they're like, but in the engineering brain, they're like, who are you to say it's premium?
And like, were we talking about pre, I remember YouTube started talking about pre premium content.
Premium premium audiences.
Like, and there's, there's all kinds of ways to twist this and I can, I can kind of understand from that.
I came from an engineering family at least, and so I kind of understand that, that mindset and, and particularly being product focused where the externalities, I. Yeah, are, are, are not, are not your main concern.
Like I, I do this, I do this podcast People Versus Algorithms and, one, one of my co-hosts, Alex Schleifer, he was, an executive at Airbnb and he ran, design there and he was like, we're making changes that would affect.
Really millions of people, like it would affect like, you know, tens of thousands of people's like livelihoods and stuff.
And he is like, we are just like moving pixels around.
And the reality is like, you don't think about that and not because like you're like heartless or something.
I don't, Alex is not heartless.
but just because like, that's the job.
You know, and, and that is the approach.
Because if you are gonna be product centric, and, and this is, you know, this is in Mountain Head and this is, you know, just the reality
I think of, of a lot of these Silicon Valley companies, when you're operating at scale, you, you're gonna, you're gonna run over stuff.
You know, I mean, imagine like running with these companies when like, you know, Facebook was being accused of, of, of fermenting genocide in Myanmar.
Like, I mean, like these things are like real, that they deal with, that are far beyond, you know, people's precious web webpages when they're building these products at such massive scale.
So, I don't know.
I kind of, I just think it's interesting to, to think about like, you know, from, from the different perspectives because when you go into these things.
It's better, it's not good to be naive about like what, what the objectives are.
And like, I think for too long, too many people in publishing in the last era, thought that they could, if they could just like
Jonah pre, if he could just convince, you know, mark Zuckerberg about how important you know, this content is to like Facebook.
It's like, come on Joan.
Like, I
mean, that's
just.
Annelies: Yeah, I, I, I think it is, almost a definition of insanity because you do the same thing over and over again and you expect a different results.
Like when is, when is big tech going to appreciate my content and my brand?
And, but one of the key things I've learned is how to scale.
You know, in a, in an environment, in a company like Facebook, it's, it's incredible.
It's like you're in a sweet shop and you build a product for, you know, you pilot it with 25, and then you find the right pipes and you push that content, did that product
through 10 pipes, and, and then it works for a hundred thousand people, a hundred thousand merchants in that particular case.
So you build it for 25 and then you have it.
In the hands of a hundred thousand merchants in, in a year's time, that is exhilarating.
And I've taken that, but I've taken that experience with me into Prorata because you asked me what, what is the leverage?
And I think the leverage we have is if we can bring our product into the hands of hundreds of publishers, maybe even thousands of publishers, then publishers can start to build decentralized AI engagement in their own channels.
Through a collective, because if, if, if the content I have for an AI experience is not enough, then I have all of this content, the content from the trusted network.
And so I, I deeply believe that by, by building product for the industry to work together, I. We will build leverage in the industry, but it needs to come with money.
It needs to come with monetization.
It isn't just distribution and and more engagement throughout the network and more engagement on my own channel.
It needs to come with monetization and that's why I'm so super excited about that.
The ad product we've built and this kind of like full circle for Bill as well because that's why he started to build an ad product.
This ad product.
It goes back to my days when I was a publisher and I was selling Men's Health's next issue, and there was a feature on jeans and I would definitely call Wrangler and Le Levi's and
Kelvin Klein, and we've moved away from that experience where the ad is really performs best when it's contextual with semantic understanding, and that's what we've built.
For the ad to, and it's an ad that lives within the answer.
It lives within the AI engagement and has a real understanding, think about it as an agent that can read all the answers and can read all the brand information and combines that into a new a product.
But, you know, I just wanted to, to, to raise that because as we know, collective a action.
All people are bringing people together.
They need to understand at the end of the law and the end of the day.
How's this gonna pay for my
Brian: Well, yeah.
Yeah, I mean, 'cause like I don't think the licensing revenue's gonna be enough and, not for most.
Right.
And if they're able to get it, and the ad experience clearly needs to change.
Like, I mean, I don't, I've talked about this repeatedly on this podcast, like it's a disaster.
So it might as well like start all over again.
Like, I don't, like more, you know, popups were a a a disaster.
Retargeting was a disaster.
Like everything led.
It's kind of funny 'cause in some ways, like, you know, tech enabled a horrific, user experience that then, you know, this is a common theme, create a problem and then you solve the problem that you created.
and you know, it's like, yes, people are going to opt for, some kind of answer engine, then clicking on a link on Google and going
to some horror show of, You know, like a, a UK local publisher site will like make your eyes bleed and your computer overheat.
so, you know, and I understand why that happens, but the ads have to, you know, change and, you know, I look can is in a couple weeks when we're recording this, there's gonna
be a lot of people in Cannes who are, it's gonna be all about AI creative and automating like the creative creativity that this.
This festival is supposed to be celebrating and there's gonna be no, that is gonna be lost on everyone as they sip rose.
The fact that this literally is supposed to celebrate human creativity, and it is gonna be all about
Annelies: Yeah.
Brian: replace human creativity,
Annelies: I mean, we're running out of time, Brian, but I am so passionate about this because ads.
Should be great.
I mean, advertising is wonderful.
It should be a joyful experience that then inspires you to, to, to buy something.
And it's, I think we've totally moved away from it for many reasons you just mentioned.
but we need to bring that back.
And what I hear about AI in ads and there's so many new players, so many new products.
It's almost always focused on the optimization of the creation.
And very few times do I hear people talk about the optimization of the experience for the user.
How do we use AI to make it a better user experience to make it delightful?
As Bill would say, thank you for this ad. That's what we're, you know, that's a spirit of what we are building.
We want to build ads.
That, that make users say, thank you, this is really useful.
This is the ad I want.
And isn't that where advertising started in the first place?
Brian: Yeah.
Okay.
thank you for this annise.
this was a real pleasure to, to go through these very important issues and I think mostly optimistic.
I mean, there's some
optimism in there 'cause I think that there's, you know, this is a, this is a period where, you know, publishers can't play defense forever.
And you know, it's time to, you know, chart.
A a, a more as well as you can, an independent path and like, whether there can be collective action that makes clear the leverage that quality content has.
You know, that the, the world actually needs it, and wants it, and that these AI engines need it.
you know, hopefully that will, you know, lead to a better outcome.
But thank you so much for taking the time.
Annelies: Thank you Bird.
See you in cam.