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I’ve seen this story before.
A bold new technology arrives — powerful and full of potential. And at first, companies try to monetize it the old way. It’s understandable, but rarely sustainable.
They reach for easy models first — premium license fees, fixed subscriptions, bundled packages, or simply raising prices.
But AI is rewriting the script. According to our latest State of AI Monetization research, 68% of CFOs say AI is disrupting their current pricing and revenue models — and what worked yesterday won’t work tomorrow.
Monetizing AI requires something most companies lack: the ability to track usage moments in real time, meter units of value accurately, and entitle users based on their individual plans.
AI Has No Set Price Tag — It’s a Living Value Experience with Living Costs
AI isn’t a one-time product or a simple subscription. It delivers value in moments of usage — when solving problems, executing tasks, or driving better performance and outcomes. That’s when value (and revenue) is created. Miss those moments, and you miss the revenue.
In B2B software, the shift from perpetual licenses to SaaS was more than a pricing pivot. It was a revolution in how businesses earned — and grew. Monetizing AI follows a similar path, but with a critical twist: it comes with living, dynamically fluctuating revenues and costs.
Managing that requires a new level of dependency on high-quality, real-time usage data. In a traditional subscription model, it was enough to know who your active users were at the end of the month. You could charge accordingly. Simple.
But with AI, the reality is more complex. You can’t monetize what you can’t track. Tracking usage and outcomes, metering units of value (whatever they are), and enabling dynamic pricing must happen in real time — at scale, intelligently and automatically.
Yet today, only 18% of companies monetizing AI say they can meaningfully track usage and 29% say they AI monetization models do not work. The rest are flying blind — and gambling with their margins.
Usage-Based Monetization Is Nothing New
There’s nothing novel about monetizing based on usage, outputs, or outcomes. Entire industries have done it for years, pricing according to the actual value they deliver. AI monetization should learn from them and follow their lead.
- Streaming media companies don’t just count subscribers — they track engagement by show, device, and time of day, and monetize accordingly.
- Telecom and utilities moved from billing by minutes to billing by megabytes. Now they meter every device, every interaction, in real time.
- Logistics companies price not just by miles, but by real-time tracking, delivery attempts, and predicted delays.
- Cloud services and manufacturers price based on consumption, performance, and outcomes — not static inputs.
AI is heading in the same direction — fast.
If you’re still pricing AI like a static SKU or cost-plus product, you’re forcing yesterday’s logic onto tomorrow’s reality.
Usage Optimization Platforms Are Setting New Standards
At DigitalRoute, we’ve spent 25 years helping the world’s most complex businesses — in telecom, SaaS, media, logistics, and more — to realize usage-based monetization innovations and models.
To us, AI products, features, and offerings are just the latest (and fastest-growing) source of usage data — data that, when processed correctly, can drive financial, commercial, and operational value and optimize that value generation constantly.
That’s why we built a new category: Usage Optimization Platforms.
We didn’t build our own usage optimization platform, Usage Cloud™, because of AI hype. But AI has made it impossible to ignore now.
Usage data holds enormous, untapped value — and most companies underestimate it. To unlock that value, they’re still relying on data integration platforms, ETL pipelines, iPaaS tools, or homegrown systems that were never designed for this purpose.
Modern Usage Optimization Platforms must be natively connected to real-time usage moments. They must be automated, intelligent, and AI-driven — capable of powering a complete Usage-to-Value process. That means ensuring every AI usage moment is captured, formatted, and delivered to the right system — for monetization, product insights, or operational efficiencies.
But again, this is not new. Many industries are already doing it:
- Streaming companies use it to optimize personalization.
- Media companies to manage partner settlements and royalties.
- Logistics leaders to optimize deliveries.
- Telecom giants to automate operations.
- Advanced manufacturers to sell outcomes, not just machines.
- SaaS and software vendors to optimize offerings.
We might say: the next age of digital business runs on usage data. And AI monetization demands it.
Why You Can’t Wait
The pressure is real:
- 72% of companies say outdated monetization models are the biggest barrier to monetizing AI features.
- 67% of CFOs want better real-time visibility into product usage.
- 61% fear they’re underpricing AI-powered features.
And 64% agree: the hype is over. Their boards and executives no longer want AI adoption and innovation. They want results. They want monetization.
The companies that win won’t be the ones with the flashiest AI demos — they’ll be the ones that treat usage data as a core business asset, not just a reporting afterthought.
The Bottom Line
AI isn’t a static product you price once like a traditional SKU and move on. It’s a dynamic, evolving experience — constantly learning, adapting, and creating value with every moment of usage. And every one of those moments is an opportunity for revenue.
If you can’t see it, optimize it, and monetize it — someone else will.
At its core, every AI monetization challenge is a data challenge. Directly or indirectly, that’s what it comes down to. You don’t have to take our word for it — we’ve seen it firsthand, time and again, when we’re called in to turn around struggling projects.
At DigitalRoute, we help companies shift their perspective from “what we sold” to “what customers actually use and gain.” Because it’s only fair to charge where the value is — based on what users actually use or get, not on what they don’t.
Download the full State of AI Monetization report
