Yahoo CEO says micropayments will never be enough for publishers

Yahoo’s new AI answer engine Scout, launched in Q1, links every answer to publisher sources and relies on a lightweight Anthropic Haiku model to process Yahoo’s 30-year data set, then ranks results. CEO Jim Lanzone said micropayments from AI firms will never compensate publishers, arguing that advertising remains the only viable revenue model. He added that Scout’s design should be adopted by other AI engines to preserve source visibility and traffic flow.