Zero Click Is Here – Open Attribution Is the Fight Back

Why Every Affiliate Manager Needs to Understand What’s Happening to Search Right Now

Search is changing faster than most affiliate programs can adapt.

AI-powered platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini are absorbing customer journeys that used to generate trackable clicks, and the content that influences purchasing decisions is increasingly going unrecognised and unpaid.

In this webinar, Lee-Ann Johnstone is joined by Alex Springer, Director at OpenAttribution.org, and Leanna Klyne, Head of Agency at KonverJ, to unpack what open attribution actually means, why last-click attribution was already broken before AI arrived, and what the industry is doing about it together many for the very first time.

If you work with publishers, manage an affiliate program, or depend on content-driven traffic to generate sales, this session will challenge how you think about measurement, value, and the future of performance marketing in an AI-driven world.

What You’ll Learn in This Webinar

During this session, we’ll explore:

• Why content creators are producing value they may never be paid for and what needs to change before the affiliate industry risks losing its commercial foundation
• The difference between how people actually shop and how AI platforms assume people buy
• Why last-click attribution was always flawed and why AI-assisted search is forcing the industry to finally confront it
• What Open Attribution really is, and how something as simple as a list of URLs could fundamentally change how influence is measured

The Problem No Single Platform Can Fix

For years, the affiliate industry has relied on a version of attribution that never told the full story.

Last click gave one partner credit for a customer journey that may have included dozens of touchpoints. Most people in the industry understood the model was imperfect—but it was measurable, and measurable meant payable.

AI has disrupted even that.

When a customer asks an AI platform for the best product in a category and then clicks through to buy, the content that informed the recommendation reviews, comparisons, editorial guides often disappears from the attribution chain.

The publisher gets nothing.
The brand gets a sale without visibility into what actually influenced it.

Over the past year, Alex Springer has been helping develop an industry response to this challenge. Instead of a proprietary tool, the solution is an open standard: a framework that allows AI agents to emit signals about the content they cite as a customer moves toward a purchase.

Those signals can then flow into tracking platforms, restoring transparency for both publishers and brands.

This approach must be open and cross-industry, because no single network or platform can solve the problem alone.

Shopping Is Not the Same as Buying

One of the most revealing insights in this session comes from a simple example: buying hand warmers.

A single purchase journey involved:

• Watching YouTube videos
• Comparing options through ChatGPT
• Checking a cashback platform
• Using a coupon code before completing the transaction

This kind of behaviour isn’t unusual it’s the reality of how people shop today.

But AI platforms often model decisions as clean, linear journeys. In reality, shoppers gather information across multiple sessions, platforms, and formats before committing.

That messy, multi-touch reality is exactly what affiliate marketing has always understood and what the industry must now find a way to measure again.

The CPA model itself isn’t disappearing. But the “A” in acquisition cannot continue to depend on last-click attribution when so much of the decision journey now happens inside AI interfaces.

A Standard the Whole Industry Can Build On

Open Attribution focuses on one clear goal: creating visibility into the role content plays during AI-driven customer journeys.

When an AI agent cites a piece of content during a conversation, a signal can be emitted. If the customer clicks through to a retailer or completes a purchase, that signal travels with the action.

Tracking platforms can capture it.
Publishers can see how their content was used.
Brands gain visibility into what actually influenced the sale.

The framework is intentionally lightweight. Organizations simply need to support the principle that content owners deserve transparency into how their content is used.

From there, contributors across the ecosystem can shape how the standard evolves.

For the first time in over two decades, major players across networks, publishers, and brands are aligning around a shared problem and collaborating on a shared solution.

In This Webinar, We’ll Also Cover

• What the emerging agentic commerce protocols from OpenAI and Google mean for publishers and brands
• Why some high-quality publisher content has been removed from AI training sets and what that means for recommendation accuracy
• The early warning signs of LLM visibility manipulation, similar to how SEO was gamed in Google’s early years
• How initiatives like SPUR and the APMA AI task force connect to the open attribution conversation
• Why websites aren’t disappearing and which types of purchases will continue to rely on content-led journeys

Why This Matters Now

AI isn’t just changing how people search it’s changing how influence happens before a purchase.

If the industry can’t measure that influence, publishers lose incentives, brands lose visibility, and the affiliate ecosystem risks losing the commercial model that made it work.

This session explores how the industry is beginning to respond and what affiliate leaders need to understand right now to stay ahead.