What the Agentic Web Means for Brands: A Strategic Shift in Digital Marketing

The recent emergence of the agentic web signals a transformative moment for digital marketing — one where autonomous AI systems act on behalf of users to discover, evaluate, and interact with brands. This shift is not merely incremental; it represents a fundamental re-architecting of how traffic flows, how audiences engage, and how brand value is created and measured in a world increasingly mediated by intelligent agents.

At its core, the agentic web moves beyond traditional search and passive browsing. Instead of users manually typing queries and clicking through results, they increasingly delegate tasks to AI agents that proactively complete multi-step actions — from planning trips to comparing product pricing to identifying relevant services. These agents use advanced language models and evolving protocols to interpret intent and execute outcomes without human browsing behavior driving the experience.

For marketers, this shift brings both challenge and opportunity. On the one hand, agents change how users are introduced to brands; on the other, they create new avenues for brands to be evaluated and chosen based on structured data, service quality, and machine-interpretable signals.

The Decline of Traditional Search and the Diversification Imperative

Recent industry projections suggest that traditional search traffic could decline significantly — potentially by up to 25% by 2026 — as AI-assisted tools supplant search engines as the primary discovery mechanism. This decline underlines what many marketers have long suspected: relying solely on SEO and search-centric strategies is no longer sufficient.

Instead, brands must diversify where and how they reach audiences. Channels such as mobile app ecosystems, connected TV (CTV), digital out-of-home media, and other high-engagement environments have become essential components in a diversified media portfolio. These environments are less susceptible to volatility in search engine rankings and provide more robust measurement and storytelling opportunities.

For example, consumers today spend nearly 90% of their mobile time within apps — an audience that traditional browsers and search may no longer capture as effectively in the agentic era. Identifying where attention lives and how agents interact with those environments will be key to sustaining visibility.

Data as a Strategic Advantage

While diversification broadens where brands can be encountered, data integration ultimately determines how effectively those encounters convert into value. From the perspective of demand-side platforms — like Nexxen and similar DSPs — merely spreading spend across channels is insufficient; brands must unify measurement and insights across every touchpoint.

This means adopting privacy-first data strategies that connect mobile, CTV, and other channels into a cohesive ecosystem. Data becomes the infrastructure that informs critical decisions — such as bid optimization, incremental reach analysis, and creative effectiveness — rather than a byproduct of isolated campaigns.

By doing so, brands can track not just impressions and clicks, but outcomes and influence across diverse channels, making their media investments more resilient even as traditional search traffic declines. Data then ceases to be a historical artifact and becomes a real-time asset that drives adaptability in a rapidly changing discovery landscape.

From Human Browsers to Autonomous Agents

The agentic web fundamentally alters the traditional customer funnel. Instead of users discovering a brand through a search query or browsing a website, AI agents may make decisions before human users are even aware of the brand. User intent — whether to book a flight, purchase a product, or find a service — will increasingly be fulfilled by agents that sift through options and recommend (or take action on) the most relevant choice on behalf of a user.

This has enormous implications for how brands should structure their digital presence. Websites will still matter, but their role will evolve. Rather than serving as static destinations for browsing, they will need to act as structured, machine-legible nodes that provide clear signals to AI agents about a brand’s capabilities, offerings, and value propositions.

To thrive in this environment, brands will need to optimize for intent-based discovery rather than keyword-centric SEO. Content should be designed to answer agents’ queries with precision, structured in ways that make it easy for agents to extract meaning and relevance. The goal is not just human readability but agent readability — ensuring that algorithms can parse and act on information logically and reliably.

Quality, Trust, and Brand Representation

As AI agents mediate a growing proportion of digital interactions, brands face new risks related to representation. If a brand’s content is unstructured, inconsistent, or difficult for AI to interpret, agents may inaccurately represent the brand’s offerings — potentially harming perception and conversion.

To mitigate this, brands must invest in quality content that is structured, trustworthy, and aligned with brand values. Effective content strategies will balance human engagement with machine understandability, ensuring that agents do not misinterpret intent or misrepresent the brand voice. This approach goes beyond volume — it emphasizes precision, alignment, and clarity in content ecosystems.

Toward an Agent-Native Future

The rise of the agentic web challenges long-standing assumptions in digital marketing. It pushes brands to rethink their digital architectures, adopt data strategies that transcend channels, and embrace new metrics of success that emphasize agent visibility and machine-level clarity.

Yet this shift also offers unprecedented opportunities. Brands that align their digital experiences with the expectations of AI agents — and integrate human-centric creativity with machine-readable logic — will be well positioned to lead in a landscape where discovery, decision-making, and value creation are increasingly delegated to autonomous systems.

In this agentic era, disruption can become discovery — and the rules of engagement can be rewritten on brands’ terms, not just defined by legacy search paradigms.