At this year’s Cannes Lions fireside chat, Cloudflare CEO Matt Prince did not mince words. Amid a sea of AI hype, Prince delivered a warning with real urgency: the business model that has supported digital publishing is under siege. The culprit? A new era of AI that threatens to extract value from the web in ways publishers are powerless to prevent.

Cloudflare’s “Pay Per Crawl”: A Publisher’s Firewall—For Now

In response, Cloudflare has begun rolling out a suite of countermeasures. Most notably, its new “Pay per Crawl” marketplace lets publishers charge AI companies—like OpenAI, Google, or Anthropic—each time their bots scrape content for model training or summaries. This “permission-based” system, now joined by heavyweights such as Conde Nast, TIME, The Associated Press, The Atlantic, ADWEEK, and Fortune, gives publishers a measure of control and, potentially, a new revenue stream.

Under this model, Cloudflare’s network blocks unauthorized AI crawlers by default. Site owners can choose to let certain bots access content, set price-per-crawl policies, or block scrapers entirely. It’s an ambitious, publisher-friendly shift, designed to restore some balance after years of unchecked bot activity that fueled AI models but rarely paid web creators their share.

A Stopgap in an Accelerating Arms Race

Yet, as comprehensive as Cloudflare’s approach may seem, it’s increasingly clear this may be only a short-term solution. These countermeasures work only at the server level—defending against bots before content reaches the user’s screen. But what happens when AI moves from the data center to the device? When it’s built straight into browsers like Comet?

“Ad Blockers 2.0”: AI in the Browser and the End of the Publisher’s Firewall

This is where the paradigm truly shifts. When AI, as with Perplexity’s Comet browser, runs on the user’s own device, whatever appears on screen can be processed, summarized, or even used for AI training—beyond the publisher’s reach. Unlike bots that can be identified and blocked before accessing content, a browser AI acts after the content arrives. To quote the spirit of Matt Prince’s argument: there’s nothing a publisher can do to block this.

It’s next-generation ad blocking, but far more disruptive. Instead of just hiding banner ads, AI-powered browsers can extract the article’s key points, ignore paywalls, sidestep ad impressions, and answer questions in real time—without ever crediting or rewarding the source. The entire value chain that once rewarded creators for attracting visitors is upended.

This is the specter of “zero-click” and “agentic” AI—the web where users get the answer they want before ever really “visiting” a publisher’s site, and the content’s true value slips away from both publisher and advertiser, ending up instead as fundamental training data for the next wave of AI models.

The Coming Reality

So while Cloudflare’s “Pay per Crawl” and allied publisher networks might buy time—and possibly open new monetization doors—the deeper disruption is inevitable. With Comet and other AI-native browsers already here, everything you see can be turned into machine learning fuel. Traditional defenses—whether robots.txt or even network-level AI firewalls—are rendered moot when extraction happens on the client side.

In this world, ad blockers 2.0 are only the beginning. Now, the browser itself is the adversary for publishers, and the internet’s entire economics may need a reboot.

The shift undermines the classic pillars of SEO, on-site ad revenue, and even paywalls, especially as users increasingly delegate their search, comparison, and transaction tasks to smart agents. While O+O (owned and operated) site traffic may decline, publishers who adapt can still capture meaningful engagement, build authority, and unlock new streams of revenue

From Disruption to Opportunity: How Publishers Can Leverage AI Browsers Like Comet

The rise of AI-native browsers like Comet is more than just a disruptive force—it’s an urgent invitation for publishers to reimagine their place in the digital value ecosystem. Where audience monetization and direct relationships once hinged on owning the user journey, every click, view, and engagement is now increasingly mediated—or even bypassed—by AI agents acting on users’ behalf.

Three Prescriptive Solutions for AI-Era Publisher Growth

1. Embrace AI-Native Distribution, Licensing, and Micropayments—Including Video

  • Structure for AI Discovery: Make all content—text, video, and rich media—machine-readable with robust metadata and consistent schema for articles and videos alike. This not only helps AI browsers attribute and surface your work, but also prepares it for inclusion in future licensed “knowledge graphs” and conversational interfaces.

  • Leverage Licensing and Micropayments: Engage in “Pay per Crawl” or similar AI-content marketplaces that allow AI companies and other aggregators to access your content and video assets for a fee. Micropayments—where each AI-powered snippet, answer, summary, or video highlight triggers a small, programmatic payment—create a scalable pathway for publishers of any size to be compensated as their work flows through AI tools. Negotiate participation based on clear usage-based and tiered licensing agreements, not just one-time deals.

  • Video Bundles and Pay-Per-Play: Package premium video, podcasts, and live streams for agentic access (with transcripts and proper credits). Explore “pay-per-view” or micro-licensing for video summaries or in-browser playback where even partial engagement can reward the publisher.

2. Develop Durable Brand IP and Direct Relationships—Across Video, Apps, and Social Platforms

  • Platform-Resilient Video Series: Invest in repeated, recognizable content such as explainers, mini-docs, or serialized IP distributed across YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and your own apps. Micropayments can be layered into these ecosystems—think creator tipping, superfans’ direct support, and micro-fees for exclusive video unlocks—even if traffic from browsers drops off.

  • Build Community and Exclusive Access: Use newsletters, membership clubs, and apps to create first-party channels where users get bonus content, early drops, or app-only experiences (like live Q&As or interactive events). Offer micro-access (e.g., unlock a single video for a fraction of a subscription) to lower the barrier for new paying users, especially in an AI-driven browsing world.

  • Syndicate and License Across Platforms: Ensure your strongest video IP and content “franchises” are available through APIs or embeddable widgets to social platforms, news partners, and even other apps—maximizing reach and opening new opportunities for micro-licensing and syndication revenue.

3. Monetize Experiences, Data, and APIs—with Built-In Micropayment Models

  • AI-Triggered Transactions and Microcommerce: Enable shoppable videos, interactive commerce, or single-use content unlocks that can be triggered by users—or their AI agents—via your site, app, or embeddable player. Use micropayments not only for content access but also to power microtransactions in e-books, courses, webinars, and more.

  • Native Ad Formats and Sponsorship for AI Surfaces: Invent new sponsorship and native ad models where brands can “own” trusted, verified answers, video summaries, or featured content that’s surfaced by AI browsers—paid for per impression, per engagement, or per mention.

  • APIs for Content, Data, and Video—Pay-as-You-Go: Expose proprietary reporting, live data feeds, and video highlights via APIs, charging per call/usage (micropayment) for agentic browser access, syndication, or downstream integration by partners and platforms.


The End of the Old Playbook—and the New Path Forward

As this year’s Cannes Lions made clear through Matt Prince’s urgent warning, the days of relying solely on SEO, direct site traffic, and traditional ad monetization are drawing to a close. Cloudflare’s “Pay per Crawl” and allied measures—while welcome—may only buy publishers a little time in an age where AI agents and browsers like Comet fundamentally reshape the rules of value on the web. But this disruption, though daunting, comes with powerful opportunities for those willing to adapt.

Publishers who embrace machine-readable content, participate in licensing and micropayment platforms, and invest in durable, cross-platform IP—especially through video and community-driven channels—create multiple new hooks for engagement and monetization. By supporting microtransactions, building deeper fan connections, and making content accessible and valuable for both humans and AI agents, publishers can chart a resilient path through this transition.

Conclusion:

The internet’s economics are being rebooted in real time. Publishers must meet the agentic future head-on: by structuring their content for AI discovery, innovating with video and app-based IP, leveraging micropayments, and forging new business models that thrive both within and beyond their own domains. In doing so, the industry can move beyond defensive survival—empowering creators not just to withstand the AI tide, but to harness it for sustainable growth.