Bots now exceed human web traffic, threatening ad model

Automated traffic now constitutes over half of all web visits, a trend accelerating with the rapid growth of AI agents. These agents, designed for tasks like online shopping, do not engage with advertisements, posing a significant threat to the ad-revenue model that has historically funded the internet. In response, payment networks like Mastercard and Visa are developing new systems, such as Mastercard's Agent Pay for Machines, to facilitate the high-volume, low-value transactions these agents will perform, potentially shifting the web's economic model from advertising to metered access. AI

IMPACT Accelerates the shift from ad-supported to metered web models, impacting online advertising and payment infrastructure.

RANK_REASON Analysis of a major shift in web traffic composition and its economic implications for online advertising and payment systems. [lever_c_demoted from significant: ic=1 ai=0.7]

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• Agent Pay for Machines
• AI
• AT&T
• Cloudflare
• Fastly
• Google
• Harvard Business Review
• Hotwired
• Imperva
• Mastercard
• Meta

• product
• infra

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