by Marty Swant * 4 December 2024 *
Ivy Liu.
New suits and deeper partnerships show the delicate balance between major publishers and AI firms.
The first media companies that signed deals with OpenAI are preparing to release new AI features aimed at benefiting readers, publishers and advertisers. Dotdash Meredith is one of the most recent examples, which uses AI to create a new type of contextual ad that targets readers.
Dotdash Meredith has launched a new ad model powered by a large language language custom model, with ads customized to the page level. Jonathan Roberts, Dotdash Meredith’s chief innovation officer, said yesterday at the AI Trailblazers Marketing Conference in New York that the new unit will launch today with an undisclosed major retailer. Panelists from Time, The New York Stock Exchange, and The New York Times were also present. Roberts, who was trained on billions of website views from Dotdash Meredith’s properties, described recent ad changes as “going from binary Morse codes to a full 4K color screen.”
Roberts said that you can get a rich view of what someone is going to do. “Not because they were on some third-party site that you cannot see or interrogate but because everyone who has ever read this content before,” Roberts said. He did not reveal any details but he did mention that he was working with Fox on AI models based on blockchain technology and speaking with Scalepost to develop marketplaces for micropayments as a way to retrieve publisher content.
Media companies have different priorities. Joe Benarroch is the head of content and media partnership at the New York Stock Exchange. He wants to create a new media network with news outlets, AI providers, and martech companies. Benarroch, a former comms leader at X, has mentioned xAI’s Grok and martech giants such as Sprinklr, Adobe, and xAI.
Despite deepening partnerships, publishers are still concerned that tech companies will scrape their content in order to train AI models. They may also siphon off readership and ad revenues. OpenAI COO Sarah Friar said to The Financial Times earlier this week that OpenAI was considering bringing ads into ChatGPT. The company issued a statement later stating that there were no immediate plans.
Concerns have also spread beyond the U.S. to Canada. A group of major Canadian media outlets filed a lawsuit last week against OpenAI, alleging that ChatGPT’s parent violated copyright laws. The New York Times, The Tribune Company, and News Corp. have also filed lawsuits against OpenAI. They hope AI personalization can help them rely on less waning distribution channels such as search and social media. The New York Times is focusing on using AI to customize content across its website and apps, as well as emails.
In a world where people can get the news on their phone while waiting at a traffic light or crossing the street, there are so many opportunities to reach out to people and optimize audience development, said Chris Wiggins. Chief data scientist at The New York Times. Publishers also see that AI can help take power away from adtech firms.
For a long time, the adtech companies said, “Oh, don’t worry about it. Roberts, from DotDash, said, “We’ve got it, we understand your audiences better than you will, let us handle it.” “That wasn’t true then and it’s definitely not true now.”
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