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Affiliate Marketers Can Increase Influence in the AI Age

The article argues that rising AI-driven zero-click search behavior has reduced organic traffic for many publishers, threatening affiliate-driven revenue that depends on trackable last-click conversions. The author — who works at Atolls — says influence now matters more than raw traffic, because community-driven recommendations and direct audience trust often drive offline or untrackable purchases. The affiliate channel is already evolving: brands are adopting hybrid deals that pay for reach and placement alongside performance, and more are measuring partners via incrementality tests rather than last-click attribution. The piece recommends that advertisers pay for influence directly, include reach/awareness budgets for community partners, and run incrementality testing to capture the true value publishers provide in an AI-shaped web.

Risk of Agentic Commerce for Brand Discovery

This analysis warns that AI agents shifting product discovery away from humans create a risk for brands: being algorithmically legible is not the same as being preferred. The piece contrasts OpenAI’s short-lived Instant Checkout with Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol, notes early consumer research showing AI-driven discovery, and argues brands must capture zero- and first-party preference data and own the discovery moment. The author (citing strategist Jess Graham) coins concepts like “agentic invisibility” and “discovery tax” to describe the economic impact when agents make purchases without human engagement, and recommends data-architecture audits, ownership of relationship data, and marketing-led stewardship of agent-facing signals.