Zero-Click AI Is Winning, But Publishers Don’t Have to Lose

In May 2025, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said what many publishers and content creators have quietly feared about zer0-click ai:

“Six months ago, OpenAI was making 250 scrapes for every one visitor. Today, it’s 1,500. Visitors aren’t seeing ads. They’re not subscribing. It’s going to be much, much harder to be a content creator.”

He’s right — the rise of zero-click AI answers is changing everything.

Tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews are giving users what they want without ever sending them to the source. As a result, creators are losing visibility, publishers are losing revenue, and the old business model of the web — built on traffic and conversions — is quietly unraveling.

But it doesn’t have to stay that way.

The Web’s Business Model Was Already Cracking

Let’s be real: most digital publishers have struggled for years to make subscriptions work.

• Users bounce in from social or search but rarely subscribe.
• Many hit a paywall and leave.
• Subscription fatigue is real — and getting worse.

At the same time, ad revenue depends on pageviews and user behavior. But if users are getting their answers from AI-generated summaries, they’re not clicking through, not seeing ads, and not signing up.

AI didn’t cause this problem — but it’s accelerating it.

Scraping Is Replacing Search

Cloudflare, which routes traffic for over 20% of the internet, sees the trend clearly: AI bots are making up to 1,500 scrape requests for every one real visitor.

That means:

• AI tools are crawling content at massive scale
• They extract answers, summaries, and facts
• Users consume the value — but never reach the site

Publishers aren’t losing traffic overnight, but the compounding effect is clear. Zero-click answers are slowly siphoning off opportunities for engagement, monetization, and reader relationships.

Legal Action Is Escalating, but the Courts Are Slow

There’s growing pushback from creators and copyright holders:

• The New York Times is suing OpenAI for using its journalism without permission.
• Getty Images is suing Stability AI for training on its photo library.
• Major music labels are suing AI startups like Suno and Udio.
• The U.S. Copyright Office is evaluating frameworks for AI training data licensing.

But litigation takes years. Meanwhile, scraping continues — and publishers are still left unpaid.

Licensing Is the Logical Next Step

The most forward-thinking publishers aren’t waiting for the courts.

• The Associated Press, Axel Springer, and The Washington Post have signed licensing deals with OpenAI.
• Reuters partnered with Meta to provide content for its AI assistant.

These are important moves, but they only serve the top tier. What about:

• Local news outlets?
• Niche blogs?
• Academic institutions?
• Nonprofits with public research?

That’s where we believe the next evolution of content monetization begins — and where Content Credits comes in.

What We’re Building

Content Credits is a platform for metering and monetizing access to content — by both humans and machines.

We’ve already built the first piece: a micropayment system that lets readers pay per article, tip writers, and bypass paywalls without a subscription.

We’re now working on the next layer: tools that help publishers track AI scraping and offer paid access to AI companies through structured licensing — all managed through a single API.

Why This Matters

Instead of:

“Pay $20/month or leave,”

We enable:

“Pay $0.25 to read this article. Or tip. Or share.”

And soon:

“If an AI model wants access — it pays too.”

This model:

• Respects reader behavior
• Restores revenue to creators
• Makes AI accountable

What’s Next: A Universal Comment Layer

To bring readers back to publisher sites — and make engagement visible again — we’re launching a browser extension that adds a universal comment layer to any page on the web.

It works like BugHerd:

• A small floating tab appears on the page
• Users can comment, tip, and support the content
• Publishers don’t need to install anything
• If content is paywalled, readers can unlock it using Content Credits

This makes it easy for users to interact without jumping platforms — and helps publishers reclaim visibility without sacrificing control.

AI Needs the Long Tail

AI platforms don’t just need The New York Times or Reuters. They need:

• Community blogs with deep topical knowledge
• Academic research hidden in PDF archives
• Local reporting from smaller cities
• Public policy memos, nonprofit studies, and overlooked essays

This “long tail” of the internet is being scraped. But no one is getting paid for it — yet.

We believe it’s time to change that.

SubSummit: Nine Publisher Meetings, One Mission

This week, we’re heading to SubSummit 2025 with nine meetings scheduled with leading publishers across North and South America.

We’re showing them how Content Credits can:

• Provide an on-ramp to reader payments without changing their CMS
• Create optional licensing controls for AI access
• Offer an early warning system for scraping activity
• Unlock a fairer revenue stream in an AI-dominated future

We’re not just pitching a new product — we’re building a movement to restore balance between creators and platforms.

The internet doesn’t need to be free. It needs to be fair.

Zero-click AI isn’t going away. But with the right tools, publishers don’t have to lose.

If you’re a content creator, publisher, academic, or AI company — we want to work with you.

Let’s make the internet sustainable again.

Visit contentcredits.com Let’s talk. Let’s build. Let’s fix this — together.