Shai Luft.
Shai Luft, Co-Founder & COO, Bench Media
For two decades, the internet’s business model has been built on a simple transaction: people search, they click, and money moves. Publishers get traffic, advertisers get data, and platforms get rich connecting the two. Every algorithm, every optimisation, every KPI in marketing has revolved around that one behaviour, the click.
Now, that model is breaking.
OpenAI’s new browser, Atlas, and Google’s AI Overviews are dismantling the very mechanics that make the web commercially viable. One replaces the browser itself with an intelligent assistant that reads and acts on your behalf. The other rewires Google’s search results to deliver AI-generated summaries instead of links. Both point to the same conclusion: the user doesn’t need to click anymore - and when clicks die, so does the economy that depends on them.
Atlas isn’t just another piece of software. It’s an agent. Ask it a question, and it won’t show you ten results; it will give you an answer. It reads, compares, summarises, even purchases - all without opening a new tab. The user stays inside Atlas, while publishers and advertisers are quietly written out of the experience. It’s the most significant disruption to web behaviour since the rise of Google itself.
Google, meanwhile, has already begun its own version of the same shift. Its AI Overviews, now rolling out globally, deliver conversational summaries above organic results. Ads are being inserted directly into those summaries - meaning Google is now monetising the answer, not the journey. Users get what they need faster, but everyone else - from publishers to brands - gets less. Less visibility. Less traffic. Less data.
For organic search, this is a slow suffocation. SEO has always been a race for visibility, but visibility no longer guarantees discovery. Your content might be read by the AI and quoted in a summary, but the user will never land on your page. The click, once the signal of success, disappears. What matters now is whether the AI trusts you enough to cite you. Authority replaces ranking. Accuracy replaces optimisation.
For paid search, the threat is more immediate. Google’s AI Overviews now allows ads inside AI-generated results, shifting the auction from cost-per-click to cost-per-trust. It’s influencer marketing for machines. The ad platform that once thrived on intent now thrives on inference. As user behaviour changes, click volumes will fall, conversion paths will blur, and attribution - already shaky - will become guesswork.
Atlas accelerates this collapse. It eliminates the search page entirely. The browser becomes the media channel, the interface becomes the marketplace, and marketers lose access to both. The consumer brief replaces the query. The funnel flattens. Discovery, consideration and conversion all happen inside a single, frictionless interaction you can’t see or measure.
For publishers, this is an existential crisis. Traffic - the oxygen of the open web - is evaporating as users consume content via AI summaries and agentic browsers. The same systems that once drove audiences are now bypassing them entirely. For agencies and advertisers, it’s a data black hole. If AI systems mediate user behaviour, how do you plan, buy, or measure media effectively? When the interface is doing the thinking, traditional performance metrics lose meaning.
And yet, within the chaos lies opportunity - for those who adapt fast. The new game isn’t search engine optimisation, it’s assistant optimisation. Brands and agencies will need to ensure their data, content and product information are structured, credible and machine-readable. The goal is to become the trusted source the AI cites or recommends, not just another blue link in a results list.
Marketers must also accept that click volumes will fall and costs will rise. That means diversifying spend into channels where human attention still lives - audio, cinema, out-of-home, and doubling down on owned ecosystems like email, loyalty programs and community platforms. The brands that win will be those that control their data and relationships, not those renting visibility from algorithms.
Here in Australia, the impact will hit hard. Local publishers are disproportionately dependent on Google traffic and face the double blow of AI Overviews cutting discovery and Atlas potentially replacing the browser entirely. The regulatory frameworks that once protected journalism - like the News Media Bargaining Code - were built for a search-driven world. They may not survive a click less one.
The harsh reality is that both Google and OpenAI are chasing the same prize: attention before it leaves the page. They’re monetising the moment of intent, not the action that follows. That’s where the next trillion-dollar opportunity lies and why the open web’s old revenue model no longer works.
The click held the internet together. It linked users to content, content to ads, and ads to revenue. Now, AI intermediaries are snapping those links and keeping the value for themselves. Search isn’t evolving; it’s dissolving. The browser isn’t neutral anymore - it’s a gatekeeper. And if you’re not part of the conversation inside it, you’re invisible.
The future of digital marketing won’t be about who ranks higher or bids more. It will be about who the AI trusts. In the age of Atlas, being found is no longer enough. You have to be chosen.