Cloudflare co-founder and CEO Matthew Prince stated during the company earnings call that Cloudflare recorded its first revenue from Act 4 products, according to Search Engine Journal. Search Engine Journal reports that the CEO compared AI agent optimization to a fresh approach to search engine marketing while discussing how OpenAI pays for website change hints.
Key takeaways
- Cloudflare recorded its first revenue from Act 4 products in the third quarter.
- OpenAI is paying Cloudflare for hints about when web pages change.
- Some website owners want more AI traffic while others block it entirely.
- Matthew Prince expects nonhuman traffic to outpace human traffic soon.
How does AI agent optimization work on the internet?
Search Engine Journal reports that Matthew Prince explained how Cloudflare provides OpenAI with details when a webpage is updated. This stops crawlers from constantly re-fetching pages that have not changed. OpenAI pays for this efficiency, and Prince expects other companies to do the same.
Customers can choose to invite crawlers or block them completely. Prince noted that 1,000 restaurant menus might be pulled by an agent for a single dinner reservation, creating high costs for sites with zero benefit. Nonhuman traffic could grow up to 1,000 times larger than human traffic sooner than expected.
Micropayments and future revenue
Prince envisions a system where agents receive discounts if they explain their purpose. For instance, an agent planning a family vacation to Hawaii might gain free access to a travel site because of advertising potential. Cloudflare introduced Monetization Gateway and Pay Per Use into beta on September 30 to help charge bots per request.
Why this means a shift for publishers
Website owners face a stark divide between welcoming automated bots or shutting them out using tools like Cloudflare AI Crawl Control. While Cloudflare benefits from billing for crawler efficiency, it remains unaddressed how much money from these deals reaches the underlying content creators whose pages supply the answers. Publishers must weigh the bandwidth costs against potential visitor gains as automated traffic surges across the web.
Frequently asked questions
Act 4 products are offerings meant to help create a new business model for the internet, generating Cloudflare its first revenue in the third quarter.
OpenAI pays Cloudflare for hints that tell its crawler when a webpage has been updated, saving resources from repeated re-fetching.
Some customers want as many AI agents as possible to drive traffic, while others view them as a threat and block them completely without charge.
Pay Per Use is a payment product that went into beta on September 30 to pay publishers who accept an AI company's offer for reported uses.
Matthew Prince expects nonhuman traffic to reach 1,000 times human traffic even sooner than his previous estimate of five years.
Based on reporting by Search Engine Journal. Read the original article
