The click is dead as a metric. Artificial intelligence is supplanting it, according to the 2025 Clickless Affiliation Index Report from Partnerize.
Partnerize analyzed hundreds of
thousands of consumer journeys across 187 brands.
One thing it found is that publishers using AI drive conversions at an average 2.06x higher rate than those who rely on the old
last-click-based attribution models.
Specifically, the consumer electronics category has a seen a 1.87x boost influence, with tech publishers
like PCMag, Wired and TechRadar synthesizing complex product research. But other categories have seen even higher numbers:
- Home
Improvement—x2.71
- Clothing & Apparel—x.270
- Gift Baskets—x1.92
“Premium publishers like GQ,
Wired, and Allure are driving measurable conversions without clicks," the study says. "Their authority is evident in search engine AI answers and influences decisions that
never involve a tracking pixel.”
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However, this may not be good news for everyone. Premium partners are missing credit and revenue because the click has been eliminated, the study
contends.
At the same time, this is not the only report that highlights AI's growing importance.
According to a report by Adobe, as cited by Partnerize, AI traffic to U.S.
retail sites, meaning consumers clicked on a link, increased by 670% on Black Friday. And in the month from November 1 to December 1, AI traffic rose by 760%. The study contends that publisher content
is driving measurable conversions directly from Gen AI search results.
A basic index of 1.0 means “clickless influence equals click-through performance,” the study
states.
Any index going over 1.0 proves that the publisher’s influence surpasses last-click attribution, and should lead to a higher commission, appropriately earned.
And categories scoring 2.5 or higher indicate that brands have impactful hidden value.
The study features HaloIndex, a new benchmark that divides clickless conversions by traditional
last-click conversions for each publisher-category combination.
Last-click conversion attribution typically sees nothing in these transactions. But publishers have emerged as the new
front door to product discovery.
“The publishers that invested in editorial quality and subject matter expertise are winning this shift,” the study argues. “Their
content gets cited, their recommendations get surfaced, and their influence compounds.”
Here is the traditional buyer’s journey:
- Publisher
content
- Click
- Cookie
- Purchase
- Attribution
Now here is the new click-less influence
path:
- Publisher content
- AI summary
- Research
- Purchase
- Attribution
"This research finally puts hard numbers behind what we’ve all known: the customer journey has fundamentally changed,” says Matt Gilbert, CEO of Partnerize, in a statement.
“AI now sits squarely between publishers and purchasers, shaping recommendations, collapsing clicks, and erasing the signals legacy attribution depends on. Brands and content creators that
modernize their measurement and monetization to this new reality will create real competitive advantage in the machine-mediated market.”
The study was powered by technology from
Konnecto, which Partnerize acquired last June. Together, they seek to give brands and publishers a “shared, verifiable standard for measuring AI-surfaced content.”