The IAB Tech Lab has released the Content Monetisation Protocols (CoMP) specification for public comment, establishing, it says, a standardised framework for AI systems to agree commercial terms with publishers before crawling or using their content. The specification is open for industry feedback until April 2, 2026.
The premise is straightforward. AI companies need content. Publishers produce it. Right now, there’s no consistent commercial infrastructure governing that relationship. CoMP is designed to fix that by creating a standard protocol that content owners and AI systems can use to signal permissions and agree terms before any content is accessed.
AI systems require chips, power, and information. Information is the only input in that equation that does not yet have a consistent commercial infrastructure around it.”
Anthony Katsur, CEO of IAB Tech Lab
Katsur is correct. The chip manufacturers get paid. The energy companies get paid. Publishers, whose content trains the models and populates the answers, largely do not.
What CoMP Actually Does
The framework is designed to work across both direct licensing arrangements and third-party marketplaces. The idea is that instead of every publisher building bespoke integrations with every AI platform, a technically and commercially unworkable situation, there’s a single standardised handshake.
Before content is accessed, CoMP creates a mechanism for signalling what’s available, on what terms, and at what price. It’s not an access control system in itself. IAB Tech Lab is explicit that publishers need robust blocking at the CDN or Edge Compute level first. CoMP then provides the commercial pathway from those restrictions to a structured market.
Think of it less as a lock and more as a till. You still need the lock. But without a till, anyone who does want to pay has nowhere to go.
For publishers who’ve watched search referral traffic fall by more than 50% in some cases, a figure IAB Tech Lab cites directly, the promise of a new revenue stream tied to AI usage is significant. The question is whether AI companies will actually adopt it, or whether CoMP joins the growing list of industry initiatives that get nodded along at conferences and quietly ignored in procurement decisions.
Industry Voices
Early support has come from several directions. Rob Beeler of Beeler.Tech, a publisher-focused ad ops community, welcomed the framework, arguing that while much remains unresolved about how LLMs will ultimately work with publishers, CoMP at least moves the conversation from theory to practice.
Jennifer Bas, Chief of Staff at Mobian, made a broader point about the nature of the relationship between AI and content: “As AI systems and agents become the front door to information, they inherit the authority, credibility, and trust of the publishers and brands whose content they learn from and surface. CoMP creates a mechanism for that quality and trust to be valued in the AI supply chain.”
Jennifer Bas, Chief of Staff at Mobian (photo from LinkedIn)
That’s a more interesting argument than it might first appear. AI companies don’t just want any content — they want authoritative, trusted content. The FT, The Guardian, Reuters. If that quality is what gives AI answers their credibility, there’s a reasonable case that it should carry a price tag commensurate with its value to the product.
The media and data giant Bertelsmann has been an early contributor to the CoMP working group. Achim Schlosser, VP Global Data Standards at Bertelsmann, set out the company’s position clearly: “The first release of the CoMP API marks an important step toward establishing interoperable, transparent standards for fair value exchange in the AI ecosystem, recognising that AI systems depend on high-quality, trusted content. As an early contributor, we believe scalable, robust compensation frameworks — alongside visibility and attribution for content usage are essential to sustaining high-quality journalism and premium content in the AI era.”
Achim Schlosser, VP Global Data Standards at Bertelsmann, Photo LinkedIn
The visibility and attribution point is worth noting. Compensation matters, but so does knowing when and how your content is being used. That’s something publishers have never had from current-generation AI systems.
The Harder Questions
CoMP is a technical standard, not a legal requirement. Its effectiveness depends entirely on adoption by AI companies, and the major players — OpenAI, Google, Anthropic — haven’t publicly committed to it. There’s a pattern here worth watching. Industry bodies create frameworks. The platforms wait to see what regulatory pressure materialises. Then, and often only then, do they move.
That’s not necessarily cynicism. Standards like OpenRTB took time to achieve critical mass. The IAB Tech Lab has a strong track record of building infrastructure that eventually becomes the industry default. But “eventually” is cold comfort for publishers who are losing traffic now.
There’s also a structural question about who benefits most from a standardised marketplace. Large publishers with legal teams and negotiating leverage will be positioned to do well. Smaller, independent publishers, the ones who arguably need the revenue most, may find themselves accepting whatever terms the marketplace defaults to, simply because they lack the resources to negotiate anything better.
For publishers, the immediate action is to engage with the comment process. Those who shaped OpenRTB had more influence over how programmatic advertising developed than those who simply showed up to implement whatever the spec said.
The content monetisation problem isn’t going away. AI companies are not going to stop needing publisher content. If CoMP can establish a working commercial infrastructure before national legislations create a patchwork of conflicting rules, it will have done something genuinely useful for the industry. Whether it gets there depends on who turns up to the table and who decides to stay home.
The CoMP specification is available for public comment at iabtechlab.com/comp until April 2, 2026. You can also read the IAB’s full press release HERE
About IAB Technology Laboratory
Established in 2014, the IAB Technology Laboratory (Tech Lab) is a non-profit consortium that engages a member community globally to develop foundational technology and standards that enable growth and trust in the digital media ecosystem. Comprised of digital publishers, ad technology firms, agencies, brands, and other member companies, IAB Tech Lab focuses on solutions for brand safety and ad fraud; identity, data, and consumer privacy; cross-channel programmatic effectiveness and ad measurement; and the impact of LLMs and AI agents on advertising. Its work includes the OpenRTB real-time bidding protocol, ads.txt anti-fraud specification, Open Measurement SDK for viewability and verification, VAST video specification, Trusted Server, and the Agentic Roadmap initiative for agentic advertising. Board members and companies are listed at https://iabtechlab.com/about-the-iab-tech-lab/tech-lab-leadership/. For more information, please visit https://iabtechlab.com.
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