As AI-powered search tools become integral to product discovery, retailers face a measurement challenge. Consumers are still researching products, but increasingly bypassing the clicks marketers traditionally relied on.

That shift is making it harder for brands to determine which content, publishers, and partners are actually influencing sales, said Andy Crossen, chief product officer at Partnerize, during a conversation with EMARKETER principal analyst Max Willens at EMARKETER’s Ad Buyer Strategies Summit.

“The journey starts the same way,” Crossen said, describing a shopper typing “running shoes” into Google’s search bar. “But as we know, now you get an AI overview, which is a synthesis of a Runner’s World article and all of these authoritative sources conveniently listed right there.”

AI compresses the purchase journey

While the first step is still a search query, AI is fundamentally changing how consumers move from discovery to purchase, said Crossen.

• Some 94% of marketers plan to increase their generative engine optimization (GEO) investments this year, according to a January Conductor report.

“[Consumers are] reading the AI overview, immediately realizing they want the Nike Pegasus, opening a new tab and going right to the marketplace or the brand to buy it,” said Crossen.

For retailers, that means influential touchpoints are disappearing from attribution systems.

“This has inherently now set up a compensation crisis for the publishers and brands,” he said. “The publisher challenge is clear, because they’re getting cut out of the opportunity to get compensated for their involvement in the consumer journey.”

Click-based measurement is breaking down

The challenge is that most attribution models assume a click connects discovery and conversion, said Crossen. Without a reliable system, retailers risk losing visibility into which channels drive customers.

“Your understanding of customer acquisition costs goes down,” he said, “leading to poor planning and running a risk of becoming increasingly invisible in this AI economy.”

Without direct traffic, retailers need to rethink how they identify and compensate partners. As AI search consolidates discovery, publisher pages are becoming performance assets, said Crossen.

“Now the page becomes a high-performance ad unit,” he said. “The publishers really need to be thinking about content as these kind of high-performance assets.”

SEO is becoming an influence strategy

US marketers say content and SEO were the areas of their organizations most impacted by AI-powered search (67%) in 2025, per a January Branch survey. As AI-generated answers mediate discovery, retailers may need to rethink traditional SEO strategies.

Marketers must now convince AI systems that their content is a reliable source to reference and cite instead of fighting for a spot in search results.

That shift could push retailers to invest more in content authority, expertise, and topical relevance instead of focusing solely on traditional search rankings.

"SEO is not about ranking pages anymore," Crossen said. "It's about fighting to become that trusted, cited source."

Influence as the new currency

The industry is moving from what Partnertize calls the legacy model of “capture economics” to “decision economics,” where the value lies less in capturing a click and more in influencing a consumer decision.

For retailers, measuring influence may become as important as measuring conversions.

“The machines are controlling the underpinnings here, and if clicks go away, influence is what’s left,” he said. “If you don't compensate or reward influence, it likely disappears.”

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