Publisher Revenue

Amazon Cut Affiliate Commissions Up to 50% and Killed the Milestone Bonus

Amazon cut Associates commissions by as much as 50% between late 2025 and March 2026 without announcing the change publicly, and eliminated the milestone bonuses that rewarded top publishers. Adweek confirmed the cuts with seven publishers and partners who learned about them in private account-manager conversations. The audit worth running

Isometric illustration: USA Today masthead licensed to AI chatbots, dollar flow from AI to publisher, fading display ad and dropping programmatic CPM graph

USA Today Co. Made More From AI Licensing Than Display Ads in Q1

USA Today Co. reported $33.75 million in "other" digital revenue for Q1 2026, a bucket that includes AI licensing deals with Meta, Microsoft, and Perplexity. That figure grew 125.6% year over year and now sits ahead of the company's display ad revenue, which fell

Forbes pivots from traffic-dependent advertising to wine commerce as publisher search referrals decline 37% in Q1 2026

Forbes Lost 37% of Its Traffic and Responded by Selling Wine

Forbes lost 37% of its site traffic year-over-year in Q1 2026. Instead of publishing harder, the company is opening a wine vertical, a commerce shop, and a quarterly wine club. The signal for content marketers: if the publisher with arguably the highest domain authority on the internet can't