The Dark Funnel of AI Consumption

We’re entering an era of intermediated invisibility.

Agents consume vast amounts of content, data, and services without generating any traditional engagement signals.

AI agents might call your API millions of times, your content parsed and synthesized endlessly, your services utilized continuously – and you’d never know it from your analytics dashboard.

This isn’t a bug. It’s the fundamental architecture of the agentic web.

Consider what happens when someone asks their AI assistant to plan a vacation. The agent might:

Analyze hundreds of flight optionsRead thousands of hotel reviewsParse visa requirements from government websitesCheck weather patterns and local eventsCompare travel insurance policiesBook everything with stored payment credentials

The airlines, hotels, review sites, government portals, weather services, and insurance companies all provided value. But only the final booking platforms saw any “visitors.”

Everyone else was consumed in the dark.

There’s just a task completed in the dark.

The post The Dark Funnel of AI Consumption appeared first on FourWeekMBA.