AI Agent: The New Ruler of Marketing in the Clickless Era 🤖

AI at the Center of the Purchase Journey: How Can Marketers Survive?

 

The landscape of digital marketing is undergoing another major shift, driven by the rise of AI agents. Services powered by AI-such as Google, Bing, and ChatGPT-are now deeply involved in users’ information searches and purchase decisions, rapidly making traditional marketing methods obsolete.

Now, instead of clicking through multiple websites to find information, users are becoming accustomed to “zero-click” searches, where they simply ask AI and make decisions based on summarized answers. This presents both a significant crisis and a new opportunity for marketers. Understanding the core of this change and preparing new strategies is now essential.

 

1. Clicks Disappear, Only AI Answers Remain: The Dawn of the ‘Zero-Click’ Era

As AI begins to serve as the “middleman” between users and information, the long-standing importance of website traffic-a fundamental premise of marketing-is being challenged.

• AI as the New Gateway in the Purchase Journey: Users no longer visit multiple websites to compare information. Instead, they discover and decide on products through summaries, comparisons, and recommendations provided by AI. In fact, 80% of American consumers now rely on “zero-click” results for at least 40% of their searches.
• Declining Website Visitors, Surging AI Traffic: This shift is backed by real data. While visits to company websites have dropped by up to 30%, traffic routed through AI has surged by 1200% from July 2024 to February 2025, fundamentally changing the flow of digital traffic.

2. The Collapse of the Traditional Purchase Funnel: AI Writes New Rules

The traditional step-by-step marketing funnel (awareness → interest → consideration → purchase) is breaking down in the face of AI. AI can compress or even skip all these stages in an instant, rewriting the rules of how consumers discover and buy products.

Structure	Sequential process: Search → Click → Compare → Explore reviews, etc.	AI provides summary, comparison, recommendation, and personalized answers all at once
User	Users explore each stage themselves, face information overload, and have higher drop-off rates	AI handles the process; users make decisions based only on the final summary
Conversion Rate	Decreases as the journey becomes more complex	Increases rapidly due to shortened conversion path (up to 2x in some cases)
Marketer	Can secure various touchpoints, build brand experience/trust	If not included in AI recommendations, the brand’s presence is effectively erased

 

AI: Becoming a Smart Shopping Assistant

AI is increasingly acting as a smart shopping assistant by learning from users’ past data and preferences to deliver ever more sophisticated, personalized recommendations. The complex process of information search is now handled by AI, allowing customers to make purchasing decisions much faster and more easily. Today’s (4/29) ZDNET article, which reports that OpenAI has begun offering commerce services-from product recommendations to purchase links-without ads as a strategy to build user trust, is clear evidence of this trend.

Brands: Losing the Connection with Customers

In the past, there were numerous touchpoints for brands to meet customers, such as website visits, ad clicks, social media interactions, and email subscriptions. However, in the AI funnel, all these steps now take place inside the ‘black box’ of AI, making it difficult for brands to intervene in the process. If a brand does not appear in the AI’s recommendation list, it may disappear from the customer’s options altogether.

Finance: Financial Agents Manage and Generate Revenue

Currently, many users generate income by directly installing and participating in various SNS, cryptocurrency trading services, incentives, and financial services. While automated trading bots already handle repetitive financial tasks, financial AI agents will soon become the main point of contact, managing these activities on behalf of users. My ongoing ‘KLEVA AI Project’ aims to automatically manage users’ social networks, referral, and incentive assets through their AI agents to generate revenue. Users will no longer need to spend time installing specific services or participating in various events.

 

AI as Shopping Assistant	AI is increasingly acting as a smart shopping assistant by learning from users’ past data and preferences to deliver ever more sophisticated, personalized recommendations. The complex process of information search is now handled by AI, allowing customers to make purchasing decisions much faster and more easily. Today’s (4/29) ZDNET article, which reports that OpenAI has begun offering commerce services-from product recommendations to purchase links-without ads as a strategy to build user trust, is clear evidence of this trend.
Brands’ Disconnection	In the past, there were numerous touchpoints for brands to meet customers, such as website visits, ad clicks, social media interactions, and email subscriptions. However, in the AI funnel, all these steps now take place inside the ‘black box’ of AI, making it difficult for brands to intervene in the process. If a brand does not appear in the AI’s recommendation list, it may disappear from the customer’s options altogether.
Finance Agents	Currently, many users generate income by directly installing and participating in various SNS, cryptocurrency trading services, incentives, and financial services. While automated trading bots already handle repetitive financial tasks, financial AI agents will soon become the main point of contact, managing these activities on behalf of users. My ongoing ‘KLEVA AI Project’ aims to automatically manage users’ social networks, referral, and incentive assets through their AI agents to generate revenue. Users will no longer need to spend time installing specific services or participating in various events.

 

💡 3. What Does AI Prefer? Content Strategies to Get ‘Chosen’ by AI

 

So, what should marketers do now? The key is to make AI trust your brand and recommend it to users. Traditional SEO alone is no longer enough. AI values the following elements:

• Reliable External Information: AI trusts objective third-party evaluations more than claims made by the brand itself. This includes media coverage, expert reviews, and positive mentions in user forums or communities.
• Structured and Clear Information: Content that is organized in lists, provides clear definitions, and offers detailed guides is advantageous, as it allows AI to easily understand and extract information.
• Natural, Conversational Content: Explanations and FAQs written in a natural, conversational tone are more likely to be used by AI when generating responses, rather than rigid, formal descriptions.
• Clean and Accessible Websites: Websites need to be well-structured and kept up-to-date so that AI can seamlessly scrape and collect information.

In short, you need to create content that not only people but also AI can easily understand and favor.

 

🚀 4. Three-Step Survival Strategy for the AI Funnel Era

To successfully adapt to an AI-centric marketing environment, you should implement the following three strategies:

• Define New Core Metrics: The era of simply tracking website traffic is over. You must define and monitor new metrics that measure performance within the AI funnel, such as ranking in AI search results, frequency of recommendations, and the quality of AI-driven traffic.
• Build an AI Influence Analysis System: It’s essential to continuously analyze and visualize how your brand is currently mentioned in AI search results and what content positively influences AI’s perception of your brand.
• Rapid Experimentation and Iterative Optimization: Quickly experiment with various types and formats of content to learn what gets chosen by AI. Focus resources on proven strategies and keep optimizing relentlessly.

✨ Conclusion: Now, Persuade the AI, Not Just People

The rise of AI agents signals a fundamental paradigm shift in digital marketing. The marketer’s role now extends beyond persuading potential customers; it’s about earning the trust of AI so that it actively recommends your brand to users.

Improving the quality of your internal content is just the beginning. You must also ensure that AI perceives your brand as a “good choice” through positive external evaluations and active user conversations. Without an AI-optimized content strategy and funnel analysis, it will be difficult to survive in the future of digital marketing competition.