SME licensing: bigger than AI deals?

Press Gazette asks whether licensing journalism to small and medium businesses could outscale the AI licensing market, arguing that AI deals are the visible exception while the 400 million SMEs globally are the untapped base. The pressure is real: the Reuters Institute 2026 report found publishers expect search referrals to fall 43% over three years, and Google organic search traffic to 2,500-plus news sites fell 33% between November 2024 and November 2025. The AI deals themselves skew small at the median: Press Gazette reports annual arrangements ranging from roughly $1 million to $5 million for medium-sized publishers, against outliers like News Corp's reported OpenAI agreement of up to $250 million over five years, and Inc.'s 2026 Inc. 5000 list shows how much businesses value recognition, with its cohort generating more than $385 billion in revenue at a median 130% three-year growth rate. Pathos Communications founder Omar Hamdi made the case plainly: "There are 400 million SMEs globally, and every one of them would be interested in licensing journalism (for use in their marketing and comms) that mentions their industry, sector, or their business." The piece is careful to preserve the church-and-state line, and Hamdi concedes the discovery gap: "A company can have a genuinely compelling story, but without the right support or structure, it may never make its way into a newsroom."

The crux

Licensing is being repositioned from a handful of AI deals toward a far larger long tail of business customers, which could make licensed content a recurring revenue line that does not depend on the whims of search or social referral, provided editorial independence holds.

Sell-side read

Rankings and list franchises (Forbes, Inc. 5000) already monetise recognition through licensing and badges, which is a template any publisher with a named editorial property can copy without touching its ad stack.

Watch

Whether publisher sales teams start treating SME licensing as a productized, quota-bearing line rather than an ad-hoc syndication afterthought.