Over 90% of AI-Driven Sales Are Miscredited, Similarweb Says

More than 90% of AI-driven sales are currently miscredited as branded search, direct traffic or retail media, according to Similarweb. The IAB says it has a fix — but by its own admission, the fix describes reality rather than solving measurement.

The industry body has proposed the AI-Era Attribution Blueprint, which defines three types of AI-attributable conversion (a conversion being a completed purchase or desired action):

• Human-owned: AI did not substantively create purchase intent, influence the product decision or execute the purchase, though an AI assistant may have been present in the decision process.
• AI-assisted: AI narrows down and suggests options. Two sub-types: "AI-influenced" conversions, where AI "shapes intent" but a human decides, and "AI-recommended" conversions, where AI "shapes the choice itself."
• AI-executed: a human grants an agent permission to buy, either by naming the product or letting the AI make the selection.

The boundaries look fuzzy when set against how programmatic measurement (automated ad buying and its reporting) works today. Caroline Giegerich, the IAB's VP of AI, acknowledged as much during a Monday webinar on agentic advertising: "We define this based on what's actually happening," she said, "not what we can measure, per se, today."

The takeaway: the blueprint is a taxonomy, not a measurement standard, and buyers should not expect dashboards to change soon.

What does "premium" mean in streaming TV anymore?

At the IAB's "I Want My CTV" event in New York City, panelists questioned whether "premium" TV — connected TV being streaming delivered over internet-connected sets — still means anything.

"Premium" could mean any professionally produced content with engaged audiences, said FreeWheel product chief David Dworin. But the label matters less than finding content, or audiences, that meet the buyer's performance goals, he said.

Roku Product Innovation Leader Curt Larson pushed the point further: every marketer is a performance marketer, even those focused on TV. "You're not spending money for the sake of spending money," Larson said. "You're spending money to create some sort of outcome. And when that outcome is far in the future or very difficult to measure, you call yourself a brand marketer."

Buyers still have to balance attributable performance against scale and cost. "You need premium, first-impression, low-session, very visible placements," said PMG Head of Video Mike Treon. "But you also need that efficiency to really balance it."

In short: the premium label is negotiable; the price-per-outcome math is not.

What do Anthropic's new Claude policies change?

A sweeping update to Claude's usage policies took effect Friday, a month after Anthropic first announced the changes. One widely mocked clause forbids users from being "abusive or cruel toward our models."

The substantive parts target manipulation. Anthropic promises to remove state or commercial media outlets that use Claude to fabricate social accounts and news sites or run influence operations. Using Claude to amplify a message while obscuring who is behind it is banned, as is passing off sponsored content as organic and gaming AI search engines. The stated focus is political manipulation, though the policy could also dent the AI-generated content sites cluttering Google's search results.

Also this week

• Google is testing moving citations to the bottom of AI Overviews, a change likely to cut website referral traffic further. [Search Engine Roundtable]
• Mars faces a conundrum: what happens to cash-register impulse buys when AI agents do the grocery shopping? [Digiday]
• OpenAI and Anthropic have large marketing budgets and want to sponsor podcasts, but listeners tend to revolt at ads from AI companies, according to Bloomberg.
• After losing "hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars" in recent years, Washington Post executive editor Matt Murray says the paper is on the cusp of breaking even next year. [Adweek]
• Jensen Huang has announced his resignation as Nvidia CEO, with CFO Colette Kress serving as interim CEO until a successor is appointed, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Whether a taxonomy without measurement tooling, or a politeness clause without enforcement detail, will shift advertiser behavior is the question both the IAB and Anthropic have left unanswered.