Strategic Intelligence: Publishing Sector Scorecard Q2 2025 Update

As in many industries, artificial intelligence (AI) is generating serious tensions within publishing. Job displacement, copyright violations, and the threat of fully AI-generated content have contributed to a perception of AI as a potentially existential threat.

Several publishing companies have taken legal action against AI companies using their content. For example, various Canadian news outlets are suing OpenAI for copyright infringement. Major publishers, including The Guardian, Politico, and Vox Media, have filed a copyright suit against Cohere, and the BBC has threatened legal action against AI start-up Perplexity. Similarly, IT infrastructure company Cloudflare has blocked AI companies from scraping content unless the publisher first approves it-a move supported by publishers like Gannett and DMGT. Inadequate protection of copyrighted content could undermine trust in publishing.

Scope

• This sector scorecard provides a top-down, comprehensive outlook for the key players in the publishing sector over the next two years, based on the key themes set to transform their industry landscape.

Reasons to Buy

• Companies that invest in the right themes become success stories. Those that miss the important themes in their industry end up as failures.
• The analyst's thematic research ecosystem is a single, integrated global research platform that provides an easy-to-use framework for tracking all themes across all companies in all sectors. It has a proven track record of identifying the important themes early, enabling companies to make the right investments ahead of the competition and secure that all-important competitive advantage.
• The analyst has developed a unique thematic methodology for ranking all major companies in all major sectors based on their relative strength in the big themes that are impacting their industries.
• First, we identify the top 10 themes transforming a sector across four categories (tech, macro, industry, and ESG). We also rank themes in order of priority by examining activity levels across 200 million alternative data signals, including patents, jobs, deals, filings, social media, and news.
• Second, we research each theme in detail, examining the value chain, key players, and trends. Additionally, we examine the impact of each theme across the 20 industries we cover. Our 200 million signals help identify the leading adopters of a theme in each sector.
• Finally, using our sector scorecards, we rank the companies most likely to succeed in a sector over the next five years.