The user is dead. long live the agent. That might sound dramatic, but hear me out.
For the past 5 months, we’ve lived through the new workflow of using AI to search the web. Here is just one example;
I was looking for a new CRM platform for a client project. Old me would have opened five Chrome tabs, read three "Top 10 CRM" lists (mostly affiliate spam), and maybe watched a YouTube review.
Current me? I didn't even open a browser.
I typed into ChatGPT or Perplexity: "Find me a lightweight CRM that handles X, Y, and Z, fits a $50/mo budget, and has good API docs. Check Reddit for actual user sentiment and flag any major security issues."
Three minutes later, it gave me a recommendation. I didn't see a single ad. I didn't visit a single landing page. I just trusted the answer.
This isn't just about me being lazy. It's about a fundamental shift in how the web works. We are moving from the Internet of Users to the Internet of Agents.
I'm bullish that if brands don't wake up to this reality now, they're going to be invisible in 18 months.
The "Eyeball" Economy is Collapsing
We've spent the last 20 years building an internet designed for human eyeballs. We optimise for "time on site." We pay for "impressions." We desperately try to stop the scroll.
But the data is showing us that the "scroll" is dying.
Gen Z is already gone: 35% of them are skipping Google entirely, using AI chatbots or TikTok for discovery.The Traffic Flip: By 2026, it's predicted that machine-to-machine traffic (agents talking to agents) will overtake human traffic.
Think about that. The majority of "visitors" to your website won't be people. They will be AI agents, running on protocols like MCP (Model Context Protocol) or A2A (Agent-to-Agent)—scouting your data to serve it to their human masters.
These agents don't care about your hero banner. They don't care about your emotional video. They care about one thing: Information Density and Trust.
The Panic at Google and OpenAI
This is the elephant in the room that no one in Big Tech wants to talk about openly (though the leaks are starting).
Google and OpenAI haven't figured out how to monetise this yet.
Google's entire business model relies on you searching for "best running shoes" and clicking a sponsored link. But if my agent uses the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) to verifiably purchase those shoes for me without me ever seeing a results page... where does the ad go?
Google is now cannibalising its own SEO model, serving AI Overviews that have pushed the zero-click search percentage to 80%.
We're seeing reports of "internal tensions" at Google about putting ads in Gemini, and OpenAI declaring "code red" on their ad infrastructure. Why? Because they know that in an agentic world, the traditional ad unit is obsolete.
You can't interrupt an agent with a pop-up.
Enter: The "Brand Aura"
So, if you can't buy an ad to get in front of an agent, and you can't SEO your way into a blue link that no one clicks... how do you survive?
You have to build your Brand Aura.
At AuraScope, we define "Brand Aura" not as some mystical vibe, but as Aggregated Semantic Data. It is the quantifiable sum of how frequently, accurately, and positively AI models retrieve your brand when queried.
In the near future, marketing won't be about convincing a human; it will be about convincing an agent.
- Is your brand "cited" by the sources the agent trusts? (Reddit, niche forums, authoritative docs).
- Is your pricing and feature set structured in a way that an MCP-enabled agent can parse instantly?
- Is your "Share of Answers" high enough that when an agent compares you to a competitor, you win the logic battle?
The "Black Box" to Glass House
This is why we built AuraScope. We realised that for most companies, this new world is a terrifying Black Box. You have no idea if ChatGPT is recommending you or trashing you. You have no idea if an agent can even "see" your pricing page.
We wanted to turn that Black Box into a Glass House.
By measuring your Visibility Score across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, we give you the feedback loop that's been missing. We help you understand what the agents see, so you can optimise for them.
A Challenge for You
Next time you go to search for something, stop. Try using an AI agent instead. See how it changes your behaviour. See how much "marketing" you bypass.
Then ask yourself: If my customer does this, do I still exist?
It's a scary question, but it's one we have to answer. I'm incredibly humbled to be working on the tools that help answer it, but the mindset shift... that has to come from you.
As always, reach out if you're keen to chat about what this means for your strategy. I'm always down to geek out on the future.
Recommended Reading & Viewing
- Video: The Rise of Agentic AI Search
- Video: How AI is Killing the Website
- TechCrunch: Shopify says AI traffic is up 7x since January
- MCP: https://modelcontextprotocol.io/docs/getting-started/intro
- A2A: https://a2a-protocol.org/latest/
- AP2: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/announcing-agents-to-payments-ap2-protocol
