USA Today Co. reformats web content to win more AI licensing deals
On an August 6 earnings call, USA Today Co. chairman and CEO Mike Reed said the company is reformatting its content to be machine readable and to prepare for future licensing opportunities. The publisher is testing several approaches, including converting webpages into markdown, and is tracking which bots crawl its site and what content appears in Google AI Overviews. Kara Chiles, svp of product management, said the work is mostly invisible infrastructure, covering metadata, formatting and template structure built for AI discoverability, and forms part of the company's generative engine optimization strategy. USA Today Co. blocks about 99% of self-identified AI bots by default and whitelists only partners with approved deals, matching an approach already used by The Atlantic, People Inc., Reuters and Time. "We do see more AI licensing deals coming this year," Reed said.
Large publishers with unique national and local coverage have the strongest case for this kind of investment, said Ameet Shah, partner and global svp of publisher operations and tech strategy at Prohaska Consulting, who expects more reformatting efforts across large and niche publishers as sites go through redesigns and platform migrations. USA Today Co. is also opening a parallel channel for advertisers: Chiles said the company is working this quarter on making branded and sponsored content visible to large language models, a service it plans to fold into advertiser pitches alongside standard reach and engagement numbers. Buyers negotiating content deals or evaluating AI-visibility products should expect more publishers to pair bot-access controls with citation-visibility metrics as a selling point.