Google's AI answer payments: about a tenth of a percent of ad revenue

Google has admitted roughly 100 publishers to its AI contribution pilot, according to The Information, as reported by Ars Technica. The scheme is the company's attempt to pay sites when their material feeds AI-generated search results, after years of insisting that traffic itself was the bargain. The reported numbers are small: for several small and mid-sized publishers in the program, the payments amount to approximately one-tenth of one percent of their advertising revenue.