The Rise of the Agentic Internet: When AI Becomes the Dominant User
For decades, the internet has been built for human consumption.
In 1995, the norm was to go online a few times a week, whereas now we spend an average of 6 hours and 35 minutes online daily.1
Websites, social media, and digital marketing strategies have all been designed around attracting, engaging, and monetizing the time users spend on their sites. But what happens when AI agents become the dominant users of the internet?
This shift is already happening. Tools like ChatGPT and AI-powered assistants are accessing, summarizing, and delivering information without human users ever visiting a website. AI agents scan multiple sources, extract insights, and provide instant responses… bypassing traditional web traffic models entirely.
The impact? A fundamental reshaping of content creation, advertising, trust, and digital commerce. Businesses will no longer optimize for human engagement alone but must consider how to reach and interact with AI agents, the new consumers of the web.
The End of Traditional Content Monetization
For media outlets, bloggers, and content creators, the rise of AI-driven readership presents a conundrum. If AI, rather than humans, is reading articles and gathering insights, advertising becomes ineffective. AI doesn’t get swayed by emotions to click on banner ads or develop an affinity to the brand because of the content shared. This shift has already pushed platforms like Quora and Twitter toward gated content models, requiring login access to view posts. As AI becomes the dominant consumer of information, more websites will restrict open access, making authentication a priority.
The Gated Internet: Paywalls & Access Controls
With AI playing a larger role online, more platforms are turning to requiring authentication to access information. This trend will accelerate, creating a more closed and controlled internet. Stablecoins and digital wallets may become the new norm for accessing content, as AI agents facilitate seamless microtransactions to navigate paywalled environments.
The challenge? Today’s payment systems don’t support true microtransactions. Most payment processors enforce a minimum transaction amount (often $0.20 or more), making it impossible to pay pennies for a single article or piece of content. This is why publishers still rely on subscriptions instead of pay-per-article models. If a centralized platform tried to solve this, it would likely charge high fees or take a cut (just like Facebook once did with publishers.)
Crypto fixes this. With stablecoins and decentralized payments, AI agents can directly pay creators in micro-transactions —no minimums, no middlemen, just seamless access automatically as part of accessing the content.
The Future of Digital Transactions: From Search (SEO) to Task Engines (TEO)
This shift marks the evolution from search engines to task engines, where AI agents don’t just retrieve information; they take action. Businesses will no longer compete for human attention but for AI-driven transactions, optimizing for Task Engine Optimization (TEO) instead of SEO. Platforms like Dupe already showcase this model, where AI autonomously finds, evaluates, and purchases products. As AI agents become the dominant internet users, success will depend on being accessible, verifiable, and seamlessly integrated into task-driven ecosystems.