Smart Money vs. Dumb Deals: Real-Time Licensing Splits the Cash from the Chaff

Long-term content revenue won’t come from being remembered by an AI model. It’ll come from being used - visibly, measurably, and in real time.

When an AI company licenses “Learning” rights, they’re training a model. That’s a one-way transfer: your content is ingested into their permanent asset base. They might pay once, they might not, but either way, they now own a derivative version of your work that can be deployed over and over without coming back to you.

Real-time use is different. It is the moment-by-moment application of your content inside live products. That might mean answering a user’s question, generating a news summary, or powering a shopping recommendation. Each instance stands on its own, and each one is a billable event if your deal is built to recognize it.

Consider a quick test. Open Perplexity and ask, “What’s happening in Nashville this weekend?” The answer will likely look like the screenshot below. Notice the tiny grey source chips tacked onto the end of a few paragraphs—that sliver is your brand’s visibility. Google’s Gemini AI Overviews offer even less. Both systems pull from many outlets, blend the material, and present a single, synthesized reply. Each time they do, your licensed local reporting powers an experience the user trusts. With the right contract, that moment is logged, attributed, and paid for. Without one, the value simply walks out the door.

Here’s the problem: in most deals we have reviewed, real-time use is lumped into the same bucket as Learning and sold for a flat fee with little or no metering. It is like selling your cookbook to a restaurant for the price of one meal. From that moment on, they can serve your recipes to every customer, every day, without ever coming back to you.

Why does this matter? Because real-time use is the recurring revenue opportunity in the new economy. It’s the part you can meter, audit, and renegotiate as usage grows. Without clear contractual separation between Learning and Real-Time Use, you’re giving away the growth engine in exchange for a one-off payout.

Next week, we’ll map the biggest recent AI licensing deals against this lens — and show which sellers locked in value, which ones sold short, and how to spot the difference before you are in the room.