AI is reshaping how publishers manage traffic, protect content, and run ad operations.
In 2025, artificial intelligence went from something publishers talked about in abstract terms to have a direct impact on the numbers that matter most: traffic and revenue.
AI directly affects how audiences find content.Companies like Search.com are experimenting with paying publishers for their work. AI also impacts the control (or lack thereof) that publishers have over their monetization strategy. To help with that, Cloudflare introduced AI tollbooths and a pay-to-crawl model this year to protect publisher content.
And AI transformed operations, as ad ops teams began using tools like those offered by MediaMint and Olyzon to streamline workflows and work through the fragmentation in CTV.
Our coverage at AdMonsters tracked these arcs closely, documenting how publishers are fighting to gain leverage and stay afloat amid rapid change.
AI Search Changed How Readers Find Publishers — and Whether They Arrive at All
AI-enhanced search bypasses publisher sites, often giving users answers without ever sending them back to the original content. This dynamic puts traditional publishers at a disadvantage, but also opens the door to new approaches.
Search.com Has a Novel Approach to AI Search: Pay Publishers for Their Content
In response, companies began building AI search tools to help compensate publishers and get consent for access to their content.
Take Search.com, for example, which positions itself as an alternative to other generative search experiences that scrape and summarize publisher content without their permission.
Search.com has pledged never to scrap without getting approval first. It also gives 60% of ad revenue back to its publisher partners. TBD on how effective this method will be, but publishers are hopeful.
As Matthew Keys, founder and editor of TheDesk.net, a site that covers the media business, told AdMonsters: “If AI search is inevitable, publishers can either fight the tide or shape it. Search.com is actually inviting us to participate.”
But not only isn’t AI search going away, Keys added, it’s getting better, which means publishers need to accept it and learn to deal with it.
The Agentic Web Is Here — Are Publishers Ready?
During her keynote at the AdMonsters Sell Side Summit in Nashville in August, Stephanie Layser, Global Head, Publisher Ad Tech Solutions, at AWS had some good advice for publishers grappling with new content discovery behaviors.
“We have to move from scale to relationships,” she said. “We need to focus on bringing users into our experience and keeping them there.”
Meanwhile, David Geller, Director of Product Management at Fortune, warned, “Publishers need to take back control of the relationship they used to have with their readers.”
If publishers want to bring people back to their sites, he added, they have to rethink where and how audiences find and engage with content.
Cloudflare Put a Price on AI Access
As discovery patterns continue to shift, publishers find themselves with limited tools to control how AI harvests their content. But infrastructure players stepped up this year with powerful new levers.
Cloudflare’s AI Tollbooth: Innovation or Gatekeeping?
Internet service provider Cloudflare began blocking stealth crawling by AI bots so that publishers can regulate access to their content. Some critics warned this could concentrate too much power in an infrastructure provider or risk over-blocking legitimate traffic, but most sell-side executives were vocal in their support.
As Dotdash Meredith CEO Neil Vogel noted in Cloudflare’s press release announcing its pay-per-crawl model, which is still in private beta: “We have long said that AI platforms must fairly compensate publishers. We can now limit access to our content to those AI partners willing to engage in fair arrangements.”
Pay to Crawl: Cloudflare Sparks a New AI Monetization Model for Publishers
The idea behind pay-per-crawl is that publishers can set terms and potentially charge for crawler access.
“If the internet is going to survive the age of AI,” Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said, “We need to give publishers the control they deserve and build a new economic model that works for everyone.”
Publishers including DMGT, the Associated Press, Condé Nast, The Atlantic, and TIME backed the move, with DMG Media’s Rich Caccappolo saying, “We support any innovation that creates a structured and transparent relationship between content creators and AI platforms.”
It’s worth pointing out that although Cloudflare’s approach does give publishers control over AI crawling, the broader challenge of crawler detection — especially when some bots disguise their identity — shows the complexity of enforcing it universally.
AI in the Ad Stack
Beyond traffic and crawler detection, AI worked its way into day-to-day ad operations at publishers in other ways. Tools that once promised generic “AI magic” matured into offering capabilities that can tackle real pain points for ad ops teams.
MediaMint’s AI Agent Puts a Fresh Spin on Simplifying Ad Ops
MediaMint’s AI agent helps with workflow overload. Instead of manually reconciling multiple dashboards or having to handle repetitive bidding and pacing tasks, the agent automates routine actions like scheduling, bid adjustments, and reporting.
According to MediaMint CEO Rajeev Butani, the AI frees teams to focus on strategic decisions, such as optimizing campaign performance and adjusting to inventory changes, rather than getting bogged down in operational minutiae.
“The AI does the heavy lifting so humans can make the calls that really matter,” Butani told AdMonsters.
Olyzon TV Sees Through the CTV Chaos Using Contextual AI
Putting aside the travails of traffic loss, CTV ad ops face signal loss, device fragmentation, and poor visibility into contextual placement.
Agentic TV startup Olyzon offers contextual AI that doesn’t rely on user IDs. Instead, it analyzes the content itself, determining what type of show, scene, or environment an ad will appear in to guide buying and placement decisions.
As Jules Minvielle, co-founder and CEO of Olyzon, told AdMonsters: “We’re automating what planners used to do manually. Only now it happens at the scale of millions of shows and campaigns.”