PPA Future of Access: What is the smartest publisher framework?

In partnership with

Should you monetise, licence, or defend?

A practical morning for publishers on bot blocking vs bot optimisation, monetisation including specific routes to payment, licensing and regulation. Come away with an essential update on where publishers, platforms, and regulators currently stand – and what to do next.

Join us on Wednesday 9 September (8:30am–12:00pm) at PPA HQ to deep dive into what rising non-human traffic and falling search referrals mean for your business. The speakers – from The Guardian, Which?, Mark Allen Group, Movement for Open Web, the CMA, and MonetizationOS – will deep dive into what you can and should be doing about it.

This is a free event for PPA publisher members, but places are limited.

All attendees will receive a pre-read with key terminology and framing stats. Scroll past the agenda to view the full speaker line-up.

Search crawlers, AI training scrapers, real-time answer-engine bots, and AI assistants retrieving content on a reader’s behalf are all hitting your site – each with different intent, different value, and different implications for how you respond. The question isn’t whether to respond; it’s how.

This event is built around real case studies and decision-making. Expect short, sharp sessions, live demos, and publishers comparing notes on what’s working.

On the agenda:

8:30	Arrival, coffee & networking
8:50-9:00	Opening remarks
9:00-9:30	Who gets in, and how they pay for it This session explores the recent PPA report on AI content licensing. For thirty years, robots.txt has governed who can read a publisher’s content. In 2026, that’s not enough as bots now make up more than half of all web traffic, and each one has a different purpose and willingness to pay. This session moves past “block or allow” to ask a question: what does access mean now? We will map what’s new – from pay-per-crawl to pay-per-use to AI licensing, and what publishers need in place before these decisions get made for them.
9:30-10:00	Why publishers are choosing different paths to payment Blocking bots protects your content. But this session looks at how publishers are moving from defence to offence – treating the many different types of bots, crawlers, scrapers and AI agents not as threats to shut out, but as a new audience to license and monetise. And why the smartest combination of payment routes will differ by publisher business model.
10:00-10:30	Built to last: a strategy that survives the next AI update As publishers respond to AI platforms in different ways, this session explores the strategic thinking behind a more open approach. The speakers will explore how some publishers are weighing visibility, value, monetisation, and long-term audience strategy when deciding whether to allow their content to be used in AI environments. We will look at the trade-offs between restriction and participation, and what publishers need to consider as they shape their own approach to access, licensing, and commercial opportunity.
10:30-10:45	Coffee break
10:45-11:15	When your customer’s agent comes to buy The next wave of subscriber acquisition won’t always come from a human landing on your homepage. AI agents acting on behalf of your readers are already capable of finding, evaluating, and purchasing content subscriptions, but most publisher infrastructure hands them a paywall and nothing else. This session moves past the big-picture AI economy narrative to ask a more immediate question: what does your product need to look like for agent-mediated purchasing to work? From offer structure to entitlement signalling to payment flow, we’ll look at the practical gaps most publishers don’t know they have.
11:15-11:45	Google Search and conduct requirements: what the CMA’s new regime means for publishers Google Search is the first firm subject to conduct requirements under the CMA’s new digital markets regime. We ask the CMA why, what the new publisher control will look like, and where its remit ends and Google’s design choices begin. We’ll also cover how the CMA will oversee implementation, what risk the political and legislative backdrop poses to delivery, and how publishers should be engaging over the next 6–12 months.
11:45-12:00	Closing remarks