Third-party AI scrapers stealing publisher content to order
And how Which? is building a long-term subscriber base less reliant on quick washing machine decisions
Welcome to this week’s Press Gazette Future of Media newsletter on Thursday, 24 July, brought to you in association with Wright’s Media – the premier global content licensing agency with 25 years of industry experience guiding publishing clients.
A staggering stat: the volume of scraping attacks on publishers is believed to have risen 56% in the past year.
This represents a huge amount of stolen content, including from behind the paywall, and shows a breakdown of accepted standards and gentlemen’s agreements.
Although Cloudflare is now blocking all AI scrapers by default, when third-party crawlers with less transparency are used it’s hard to know who’s actually accessing publisher websites.
Rob Waugh has dug into this issue of third-party scrapers for us. I’d wager it’s something you already knew was going on but that this might provide a wake-up call as to the extent and seriousness of it.
And because of this, Dominic Young has been spurred on to write urging news publishers to work together in new ways - the only chance we have to redefine the next phase of the internet, he argues.
Now, consumer magazine Which? bolstering its subscriptions offering in various ways may not sound related to all this. But, of course, it is. Because like many publishers it is seeing an impact from AI search and recognises the need to make sure it is a value-added direct destination for as many people as possible.
I spoke to Which? director of content Jenni Allen about several of the ways the brand is positioning itself for the future, including with more content about everyday purchasing decisions and complex areas like retirement and health, as well as less subscriber churn and potentially a more flexible paywall.
From our sponsor
European publishers and content creators have the potential to convert affiliate content into additional revenue through bespoke licensing programmes.
Brands featured in articles with affiliate links are often interested in leveraging mentions for their own marketing, so content licensing allows your publication to increase revenue and brand awareness through the very brands you featured in your articles.
Check out why outsourcing your content licensing to an agency allows you to focus on affiliate content creation while maximising revenue generation.
On Press Gazette
How Which? is building a long-term subscriber base less reliant on quick washing machine decisions
Which? finding ways to deliver "real value" to consumers beyond sporadic purchasing advice.
Third-party scrapers are stealing publisher content to order for AI companies
Unscrupulous companies are ignoring Robots.txt warnings and bypassing paywalls.
There’s only one way the news industry will win in the AI era: together
Taking control of the relationship between publishers and machines means learning lessons from the recent past.
More from Press Gazette
Foreign state-owned investors cleared to hold 15% stake in UK newspapers
Newspaper ABCs: Daily Star and Sunday People move down circulation table
Public service broadcasters need ‘stable’ funding for news and prominence on Youtube, Ofcom finds
The Atlantic and The Economist among initial partners for Google ‘featured notebooks’
PR agency sells AI tool which sends out automated expert comment to journalists
Clickbait has become ‘self-perpetuating cycle’ drowning out genuine news
Adblockers stop publishers serving ads to (or even seeing) 1bn web users
Latest podcast: How The Times became a small screen success story
Times Media head of digital Edward Roussel talks about the relaunched smartphone app which is now the title's most important platform commercially. He also explains why The Times will never use AI to create journalism and why publisher homepages have got far too busy.
 | A guest post by
|