The publisher formerly known as Dotdash Meredith became People Inc. at the end of July. Neil Vogel, the company’s CEO, likes the new name way more than the old one, not least because it helps position America’s largest print and digital publisher for success in a complicated AI era.
When Dotdash and Meredith merged in 2021, its portmanteau name was a convenient way to avoid any controversy among the newly merged staff of 3,500-plus employees. But the name never really rolled off anyone’s tongue, least of all management. “None of us liked it. I didn’t like it. My boss, Barry Diller, didn’t like it,” says Vogel.
Neil Vogel is our guest on this week’s episode of The Publisher Podcast, produced in partnership with FIPP. With only 25 tickets remaining, this is the final opportunity to secure your place at the FIPP World Media Congress 2025 – the premier global event bringing together the foremost leaders, innovators, and strategists from across the international media landscape.
That clunky moniker did, however, give them time to find a name that really resonated. “It turned out, when we looked around, we had the right name here. Our flagship brand is People. It’s a really big part of our business, and it also dovetails with what’s happening in the universe today.”
What’s happening is AI.
“So much is artificial and so much is contrived; so much is just not human,” says Vogel. “We thought that People Inc was a great name for that reason… everything we make, whether it’s digital, whether it’s social, whether it’s print, apps, Apple news, events; it’s all based on human experiences and what humans do.”
Vogel is happy that in a world of AI slop, audiences and advertisers are willing to pay for what the people at People Inc. make. “Our business is wildly diversified – where audiences [come from] and how we make money. We’ve done a pretty good job. We’re growing revenues. EBITDA is growing. Our expectation is growing.”
He’s less happy about how some tech companies are choosing to approach publisher content when it comes to AI. He’s especially unhappy with Google: “Some AI shops are good actors,” he told Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference. “The worst guy is Google.”
He admits to that quote being a very ‘snippable line’ and not said by accident: when it comes to AI, he wants the search giant to change the way it treats publishers.
Keeping traffic
“Google is no longer the front door of the internet because they’re keeping the traffic,” says Vogel. He explains that when Dotdash and Meredith first came together, 60 plus percent of its traffic came from Google search. Today, the percentage is below 30%.
He describes Google’s old deal with publishers – taking content, putting into search results, sending back traffic – as an acceptable bargain. “Whether it’s fair or unfair, I don’t know, but it’s a bargain we’re willing to make.”
Vogel says the idea of Google controlling traffic is nothing new, from deals that put Reddit results on every page to pushing YouTube in results. Now there are AI answers. “We’re not complaining about that. Google’s job is to answer your query however they see fit.”
But, he says, Google is now taking content to use in AI answers and publishers are getting nothing in return. “The issue that has to be solved for publishers is how do we get compensated for this? We’ve proven in 100 different venues, whether it’s events or magazine subscriptions or advertising, that people are absolutely willing to pay for our content. It’s very, very good, and they are just taking it.”
Two paths ahead
Vogel sees two ways forward:
- LLM makers change their attitude and accept that they need to pay for publisher content
- Publishers are able to block LLM access to their content
In the first instance, People Inc has a deal in place with Open AI. ‘They’re a very good partner for us, they’re paying,” says Vogel, “But nobody else really is.”
In the second, the company has partnered with CloudFlare along with a huge number of other publishers to block AI crawlers from accessing content. “We started doing this in early July and since then, phones started to ring and a bunch of people realised that our content is actually valuable,” he notes.
Where several AI companies are now working to find a way to compensate publishers for content, Vogel says Google is not. Instead, it is using its market leverage to ‘make it harder’ for publishers. “The Google crawler that crawls your sites for search, which is high-20s percent of our traffic, is the same crawler they use for AI. So, we can’t block it.”
Vogel says there is no way Google doesn’t know what it is doing. He wonders how a business that pays individual engineers ‘a billion dollars’ and is mapping ‘every single protein in the human body’ can’t figure out how to separate their search and AI crawlers.
“This whole ‘don’t be evil’ business has been flipped on its head and it’s all absurd,” he says.
Investment in inputs
Vogel says the thing he finds most galling is the amount of money being invested in AI system development but the unwillingness to pay for inputs. “It’s like you’re building cars and you’re unwilling to pay the guy who makes the steering wheel,” he says .
With the exception of Google, Vogel is optimistic the market is moving in a direction that will be more positive to publishers. “Other LLMs are deciding, ‘You know what? We’re gonna compensate these guys for their content because, for any number of reasons, we need to. Our corporate clients are making us or we can’t get it without paying them. Whatever, I don’t care.”
In contrast, Vogel says Google is using its market power to deprive publishers of any leverage they have. “They can do it, but just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. I would love to be their partner here, but they’re not heading in that direction.”
This episode is produced in partnership with FIPP, who are 100 years old this year.
With only 25 tickets remaining, this is the final opportunity to secure your place at the FIPP World Media Congress 2025 – the premier global event bringing together the foremost leaders, innovators, and strategists from across the international media landscape.
