Conceptproposed term
CPAI — cost per attested influence
Definition
Paying for a verifiable role in an AI agent's choice — not for a click, and not for a cookie-linked sale. The unit exists only when the agent itself signs a record of which sources shaped what it picked, readable by anyone.
By Chris Telford, with help from Claude
1Where it came from
2What is missing
no major agent platform yet emits verifiable, third-party-readable proof of what influenced its decision. opening
What last-click misses todayis capturing less than 30% of the publisher-influenced purchase activity. Part B · Partnerize, a vendor metric
3What would make it real
the first major agent platform that publicly populates signed, third-party-verifiable citation or grounding provenance on real purchases. Part C