AI has lowered the cost of faking a click, an install or a conversion, and invalid traffic has become more sophisticated and more difficult to separate from the real thing.

Two complementary studies from the IAB reveal that 40% of consumers use AI daily, and 95% of publishers say LLMs have reshaped their business. Among the changes, digital advertising still needs stronger trust, infrastructure, attribution standards, and frameworks to close the gap between consumers and publishers.

Anthropic's AI engine Claude is the latest to change how a browser works. The company now has a built-in "sandbox" browser for its desktop Claude Code app, an agentic coding tool.

AI platforms may identify an increase in searches as intent, automatically raising bids on those queries. For media buyers, this raises challenges with allocation and campaign creative as brands work to avoid continuing campaigns that spread misinformation about them.