Why pay-per-crawl fails

For two decades, the economics of the open web rested on a simple bargain: platforms indexed content, publishers got traffic, and monetization happened downstream. AI breaks that loop by delivering answers without the click.

This week, I’m joined by Doug Leeds, former head of IAC Publishing and now CEO of RSL, to unpack what comes next. We talk about why the old traffic-for-content deal is collapsing, why pay-per-crawl is a dead end, and how collective licensing could create a new economic layer for publishers and creators. A conversation about leverage, incentives, and whether the web can adapt to AI without losing the ability to fund original work