USA Today Restructures Content to Court AI Licensing Deals

USA Today Co. is overhauling how it structures digital content to make its journalism more attractive to AI companies seeking licensing agreements, according to statements from executives on the company's August 6 earnings call.

The publisher is testing multiple approaches to make articles more accessible to artificial intelligence systems, including converting webpages into markdown format and restructuring metadata. The goal is to improve how AI answer engines discover, understand, and cite USA Today's reporting — a strategy the company calls GEO (generative engine optimization).

Why it matters

This represents a fundamental shift in how publishers think about content production. For decades, news organizations optimized for human readers and search engines. Now they're adding a third audience: AI systems that may become primary gateways to information. Publishers that crack this code early could secure more favorable licensing terms and maintain relevance as AI-powered search replaces traditional queries.

The technical approach

Kara Chiles, USA Today Co.'s senior vice president of product management, said much of the work happens behind the scenes and won't be visible to human readers. The company is analyzing which content formats — such as guides versus traditional articles — perform better with AI crawlers.

"We recognize that we have to create and format content for humans and for machines," CEO Mike Reed said on the earnings call. "We also see entirely new ways to license, distribute and monetize the trusted content we produce every day."

The publisher is gathering data on which bots access its pages and monitoring how often its content appears in Google AI Overviews. This intelligence helps USA Today understand what AI companies value and strengthens its position in licensing negotiations.

Blocking bots to force deals

USA Today Co. has adopted an increasingly common publisher strategy: blocking AI bots by default and whitelisting only those from companies with approved licensing agreements. The company currently blocks approximately 99% of self-identified AI bots.

This approach mirrors tactics used by The Atlantic, Reuters, Time, and other major publishers. The logic is straightforward — if AI companies can't freely scrape content, they must negotiate licensing deals to access it.

Reed said the company expects to sign additional AI licensing agreements this year. "Our objective here is not just to sign more agreements, but it's really to build recurring, long-term relationships where we get proper recognition of the value that we bring with this trusted real time content," he said.

The advertising angle

Beyond licensing, USA Today is exploring how to make branded and sponsored content visible to large language models as an advertiser offering. Chiles said the company is developing mechanisms to surface commercial content to AI systems, though she declined to provide specifics about implementation or which advertisers the publisher is targeting.

Ameet Shah, a partner at Prohaska Consulting, predicted that content reformatting for AI will spread slowly, focusing initially on large publishers and those with unique content niches. "It is an investment that some publishers with unique content — especially like a USA Today, which has national and local news — it can be worthwhile," Shah said.

The details were first reported by Digiday.