How to Monetize AI Bot Traffic with Fastly AI Bot Management + TollBit

The conversation around AI and web content has reached a tipping point. As blocking becomes the predominant industry approach to AI bot traffic, a fundamental question emerges: what if there's a better approach than blocking? Our customers have been asking this question for months. Instead of treating all AI bot traffic as adversarial, they want the ability to monetize legitimate AI traffic while maintaining security against bad actors.

Earlier this year, Fastly introduced AI Bot Management. It gives you the power to manage and control the behavior of AI bots that crawl and scrape website content. With AI Bot Management, you can detect which AI bots are accessing your content, and take action to block, allow, or intercept particular AI bots based on your own unique policies and desired responses.

Now, Fastly and TollBit have partnered to deliver a powerful integration that enhances AI Bot Management and opens new monetization opportunities for publishers and ecommerce sectors. This collaboration combines Fastly's advanced bot detection capabilities with TollBit's robust verification and analytics platform, enabling customers to gain control, consent, and compensation for AI fetching and crawling.

Introduction to the Integration

Fastly AI Bot Management integrates seamlessly with TollBit, providing publishers, ecommerce, and other content providers with an efficient way to manage and monetize bot traffic. This integration allows organizations to:

• Detect and classify the bot via Fastly Bot Management

• Redirect AI bots to your TollBit Bot Paywall, a subdomain you set up for free

• Verify tokens and grant content access to bots with valid tokens

• Ask all other AI bots to pay for access

Key Features

• Customizable Bot Detection: Fastly AI Bot Management offers customizable bot detection beyond basic user agent checking, allowing publishers to classify bots as good or bad based on their needs.

• Flexible Enforcement Levels: Publishers can choose enforcement levels for suspected versus verified bots, ensuring that only unwanted traffic is redirected.

• TollBit’s Verification and Analytics: TollBit verifies authorized AI bot requests and provides a comprehensive dashboard with AI bot analytics, focusing on legitimate AI access.

Implementing a real example

Let's walk through setting up AI bot monetization using a practical example. Suppose you want to monetize traffic from ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity instead of blocking them.

Starting Point - Your robots.txt:

User-agent: GPTBot
User-agent: ChatGPT-User
User-agent: ClaudeBot
User-agent: Claude-Web
User-agent: PerplexityBot
User-agent: Perplexity-User
Disallow: /

Part 1: Fastly AI Bot Management Setup

Configure Redirect Rules:

1. In your Fastly AI Bot Management dashboard, create a new redirect rule.
2. Add the specific AI bot user agents you want to monetize (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot).
3. Set redirect destination to your TollBit subdomain (e.g., tollbit.yoursite.com).
4. Choose enforcement level - "verified bots" for higher confidence detection.
5. Deploy the configuration.

How the redirect works:

AI bot visits your site → Fastly detects and classifies the bot → Instead of blocking, bot gets redirected to your TollBit Bot Paywall → AI companies with valid tokens get content access → Others are directed to pay for access.

Part 2: TollBit Setup

1. Create Your TollBit Account & Subdomain: Publishers can sign up for free at TollBit and set up a subdomain (e.g., tollbit.yoursite.com). This subdomain serves as the gateway for AI bots and agents.
2. Configure Monetization Rules: Set up your pricing and access rules for different AI companies. For detailed configuration options, see our documentation.

That's it - your AI bot traffic is now being monetized instead of blocked - for free!

What this means for Fastly customers

The entire process leverages your existing Fastly infrastructure with no additional latency, seamless to human visitors.

The Fastly + TollBit integration provides:

• Granular control: Decide which bots to monetize vs block
• Performance: Built on Fastly’s edge infrastructure
• Flexibility: Full customization of bot classification and routing
• Familiar interface: Use your existing AI Bot Management dashboard

This integration represents a significant step forward in bot management and monetization. By leveraging Fastly’s customizable bot detection and TollBit’s verification and analytics, publishers can effectively manage bot traffic and unlock new revenue streams.

Coming Soon

Fastly & TollBit will continue to evolve this integration, with an eye toward making AI bot enforcement and analytics workflows more efficient to serve the publishing, ecommerce, and other content-rich communities even more in the future. We’d love to hear your feedback on how we can keep building a safer, fairer internet together.

Get Started Today

This integration uses capabilities already available in Fastly AI Bot Management. If you’re new to Fastly AI Bot Management, it’s easy to get started. Chat with our team of security experts today.

If you're ready to monetize AI bot traffic:

1. Sign up for TollBit at tollbit.com. Reach out to team@tollbit.com for assistance or questions.
2. Follow the integration documentation for step-by-step redirect configuration
3. Start monetizing your AI bot traffic within minutes

The infrastructure is ready and TollBit is free for websites - just configure your redirect rules to send bots to TollBit instead of blocking them.