AI Data Licensing Marketplaces

26 February 2026 11:30 CET | Zoom

AI Data Licensing Marketplaces: Silver Bullets or Mirages?

The relationship between tech and news is being fundamentally rewritten. In the traffic era, the deal was simple: publishers allowed crawling and indexing in exchange for referral traffic. In the Gen AI era, that compact has broken down. Content is being used to build products that may compete directly with its creators, and publishers have lost both the value exchange and the sense of control.

So what comes next? Individual licensing deals have emerged, but they remain fragmented and haven’t produced an industry-wide framework. Regulation is advancing unevenly across jurisdictions. And the gap between what publishers believe their content is worth and what AI companies are willing to pay remains vast.

In this session, Madhav Chinnappa, who spent 13 years leading news ecosystem development at Google and now advises at the intersection of AI and publishing, will lay out what a sustainable path forward could look like. He’ll introduce his “NATO for News” concept: a coalition-based approach where publishers collectively license API access to structured data, creating aligned incentives for both sides. We’ll explore the practical questions this raises, who’s in, what’s being licensed, how the money flows, and why Madhav calls it the “least worst option” in a landscape where every alternative looks harder.

To help tailor the discussion, you may submit questions ahead of the webinar here 

Speaker:
Madhav Chinnappa | Senior Executive Consultant, UK

Moderators:
Ezra Eeman | WAN-IFRA AI Expert
Kevin Anderson | Director of the Digital Revenue Network, WAN-IFRA London

—-

The webinar is open to both members and non-members, will be held in English on Zoom, and will be recorded for internal reference. The recording and related content, including presentations, will be made available on the WAN-IFRA Knowledge Hub, our premier online resource exclusively for WAN-IFRA members.

Stay updated on AI in Media (AIM): www.wan-ifra-aim.org