Cloudflare edges closer to AI marketplace

John Ebbert

Cloudflare marketplace

Cloudflare is entering an early distribution phase reminiscent of Google AdSense + Urchin — but for AI agents and bots instead of human users.

Yesterday, GoDaddy, known for domain sales and small business web hosting, announced a partnership with Cloudflare for its AI Crawl Control product.

Positioned to manage “AI agents” — under which “AI bots” fall — Crowd Control is a step toward a pay-per-crawl or inference (or?) marketplace. But for now, it’s tools for on/off agent management.

Cloudflare chief strategy officer Stephanie Cohen said in a statement, “By putting tools like AI Crawl Control and open standards into the hands of website owners, we are providing essential underpinnings for a new Internet business model.”

GoDaddy will support Agent Name Service and Web Bot Auth for the “verifiable identity layer needed for a functional digital marketplace.”

Read:

  • Cloudflare and GoDaddy Partner to Help Enable an Open Agentic Web (April 7) – press release
  • Cloudflare and GoDaddy team up to help websites fend off Big Tech’s AI bot swarm (April 7) – Business Insider

More: “AI Crawl Control” (November 2025) – Cloudflare

From tipsheet: Cloudflare is distributing its AI bot marketplace product without commercial features at the start. It’s also addressing a broader layer of website mediation by giving publishers control over ‘agents’.

Whether Cloudflare’s marketplace intersects with agentic advertising protocols is worth watching.

LLMs & CHATBOTS

Developments

  • Project Glasswing – Securing critical software for the AI era (April 7) – Anthropic
  • OpenAI President Greg Brockman: Doubling Down on Text Models, The Superapp Plan, Codex’s Potential (April 7) – Big Technology
  • An update on our mental health work (April 7) – Google The Keyword

SEARCH

AI Overviews and when not to answer

New data from custom AI model platform startup Oumi was the subject of a New York Times article yesterday regarding query responses in Google’s AI Overviews, the AI search response within Google Search.

With a byline that included five journalists, The NYT reported:

“A recent analysis of AI Overviews found that they were accurate approximately nine out of 10 times. But with Google processing more than five trillion searches a year, this means that it provides tens of millions of erroneous answers every hour (or hundreds of thousands of inaccuracies every minute), according to an analysis done by an A.I. start-up called Oumi.”

Read: “How accurate are Google’s AI Overviews?” (April 7) – The New York Times (subscription)

Related: “Not a Fan of Google’s AI Overviews? Remove Them With These 4 Tricks“ (April 6) – PC Mag

From tipsheet: Manos Koukoumidis, CEO of Oumi and a former engineer at Google, Meta and Microsoft, is targeting a core issue this story surfaces: AI search results have a statistical reliability problem.

AI Overviews aren’t failing because Gemini models are wrong. AIO occasionally fails because it doesn’t know when not to answer — at least from Oumi’s point-of-view.

The startup aims to reduce that friction by measuring, predicting and ultimately gating AI responses at scale.

The reliability problem also has implications for generative engine optimization, too.

LLMS & CHATBOTS

Google talks AI Search, CEO podcast

Stripe CEO John Collison and former Google technologist Elad Gil hosted Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Stripe’s Cheeky Pint podcast published yesterday.

Google’s SVP of Knowledge and Information, Nick Fox, previewed the podcast on LinkedIn.

Fox seemed to rebut the tone of the NYT article on AI Overviews published earlier in the day:

“People often assume that adding AI capabilities to a product has to slow it down.  But we’ve spent years obsessing over the exact opposite: bringing advanced AI capabilities to Search while making it even faster. In fact, even as we’ve brought more AI capabilities to Search, we’ve reduced latency significantly (by over 35%) in the last five years.

So how do we pull that off? We treat every precious millisecond like currency: our teams operate with a strict ‘latency budget’ where they’re incentivized to make existing code faster and phase out slower code to make room for new innovations.

To me, speed is a reflection of both a product’s technical health but also deep respect for our users’ time.”

Read more on LinkedIn. (April 7)

Pichai sees change in the next year

In the Cheeky Pint podcast, though he didn’t discuss advertising, agents were front-and-center for the Google CEO — as well as search and the road ahead.

Mr. Pichai said:

“The form factor of devices are going to change. I/O is going to radically change. I think you can paralyze yourself thinking 10 years ahead. But we are fortunate to be in a moment where you can think a year ahead and the curve is so steep. (…) The models are going to be dramatically different in a year’s time. I think riding the curve itself is exciting.

And so, I think it will evolve but it’s an expansionary moment. I think what a lot of people underestimate in these moments is… it feels so far from a zero-sum game to me.”

Listen: “The history and future of AI at Google, with Sundar Pichai” (April 7) – Stripe’s Cheeky Pint podcast on YouTube and on Apple Podcasts

GOVERNANCE

Latest on IAB Tech Lab’s Agent Registry

Ad Age Chief Technology Reporter Garret Sloane spoke to standards organization IAB Tech Lab and indie performance marketing agency PMG about Tech Lab’s new Agent Registry launched in early March.

Sloane shared some of his takeaways in previewing his article on LinkedIn in spite of the registry’s still-early days:

  • “The agent registry though has some big players in the catalog, including Google and Amazon.”
  • “The agents can’t execute on their own, but they could streamline reporting, audience building, inventory discovery.”
  • “It’s really about learning for now, though, as [IAB Tech Lab CEO] Anthony Katsur described it. I mean, the LLMs are still hallucinating, of course. One tried to set the price of CTV inventory out of thin air, so that was a fun anecdote.”
  • “Meanwhile PubMatic made its AgentOS compatible with the registry.”

Read: “How AI agents that can make ad buying decisions are coming to programmatic” – Ad Age (subscription)

Event: “IAB Tech Lab Summit 2026: Welcome to the Agentic Web”, NYC, May 28 – IAB Tech Lab

MEASUREMENT

Northbeam adds incrementality ‘leg’

Omnichannel marketing analyst firm Northbeam announced yesterday that it has added a incrementality component to round out its three-legged, attribution product line.

Reporter James Hercher set the stage on AdExchanger:

“No single ad measurement methodology works well anymore for brands with multiple points of sale.

That is why attribution startups and consultants use phrases like ‘triangulation’ to refer to a patchwork approach between multitouch attribution (MTA), marketing mix modeling (MMM) and incrementality testing.”

Northbeam’s VP of Product Stas Goldobin, a former The Trade Desk Director of Product, told Hercher that “Incrementality is a necessary ‘calibration layer’ between the mainstays of MTA and MMM,” hence the new capability.

Read:

  • “Northbeam Adds The Third Leg Of The Attribution Stool With Incrementality Testing” (April 7) – AdExchanger

  • Northbeam Launches Northbeam Incrementality, Setting a New Standard for Advertising Measurement (April 7) – press release

From tipsheet: A concise discussion of MMM, MTA and incrementality and how they intersect.

Incrementality remains a key attribution lever across — and within — the “black boxes” of walled gardens’ AI ad platforms.

PLATFORMS

MiQ targets in-app with Rocket Lab

Programmatic platform MiQ announced the acquisition of Miami-based in-app marketing platform Rocket Lab. Terms were not disclosed.

In a press release, MiQ CEO and Co-Founder Gurman Hundal explained:

“By giving global brands and agencies access to our first mobile-app offering through Rocket Lab’s AI capabilities, we’ll deliver better performance that will continue to strengthen over time. With Rocket Lab’s expertise, we can offer even more tailored solutions that drive real business outcomes, ensuring our clients stay ahead in an increasingly mobile and connected world. We will use Rocket Lab’s rich data and capabilities to unlock powerful new insights — especially for those looking to grow in dynamic markets across Latin America and Asia.”

Read: “MiQ Acquires Rocket Lab to Accelerate AI-Powered App Growth Globally” (April 7) – MiQ

Related: “Why choosing a media channel first is the wrong way to plan app growth in LATAM” (undated) – Rocket Lab

MARKETING

New AI consultancy targets CMOs

Former 360i/Comscore/Profitero executives Bryan Wiener and Sarah Hofstetter have launched a new CMO-focused AI consulting firm called 37Arc.

Joining the duo are President Adam Broitman, CPO/CTO John Swords, and former LinkedIn executive Penry Price.

Wiener describes his new firm on LinkedIn: “37Arc, an AI-native company focused on redesigning how marketing work gets done. Most marketing organizations aren’t constrained by ideas or tools—they’re constrained by how the work actually flows across teams, systems, and partners. As AI increases the speed and volume of execution, that gap becomes more visible. It doesn’t fix how the work actually gets done.” This is where 37Arc steps in, according to Wiener.

In a LinkedIn post about the launch of his new company yesterday, he said the company is already working with clients. Read more on LinkedIn. (April 7)

Read: “Bryan Wiener and Sarah Hofstetter launch CMO-focused AI firm” (April 7) – Ad Age (subscription)

From tipsheet: As Ad Age points out, a deep Rolodex will help this group of experienced leaders.

PLATFORMS

AppLovin’s Meta diversification opportunity

Meta remains the launchpad for brands if you’re a direct-to-consumer (DTC) marketer.

But what about a media channel diversification opportunity beyond Meta?

Connor Rolain, Head of Growth of cookware brand HexClad, discussed diversification on the latest episode of “Marketing Operators” podcast (lightly edited):

“It seems like AppLovin is allowing people to diversify earlier on, so they’re not leaning into Meta too much out of the gate. (…)

I think there is value into diversifying a little bit early so you’re not fully reliant on Meta because now you have: organic distribution, creator/social distribution, IRL, Meta, AppLovin…

You have this more like solid ecosystem where you’re not, ‘Oh crap, if like Meta doesn’t update tomorrow and it breaks my account, my business is screwed.’”

Though all three marketers on the podcast were open to diversification, Meta was still clearly the primary starting point for DTC marketing.

Paradoxically, the portability of Meta’s ad creative to other platforms such as AppLovin’s Axon was seen as benefit for Meta’s current ad system, i.e. Advantage+.

Listen: “Why Organic Distribution Is the New Foundation for DTC Growth” (April 7) – Marketing Operators podcast on YouTube

Related: “AppLovin Announces Succession Plans for Key Leadership Roles and New Independent Chairperson” (April 7) – AppLovin

The AEO gold rush

“SEO experts say traditional SEO and AI mentions appear to be correlated, but what matters in the new era is shifting, especially when it comes to what other entities and third parties are saying about a brand. Backlinks were once so important to SEO that they had been commodified; Muller and Fishkin both say that in the AI era, a mention on a third-party platform even without a hyperlink could become all that matters…”

Read: “Can AI responses be influenced? The SEO industry is trying” (April 7) – The Verge

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  • Disney and Mediaocean sound the death knell for the I/O (April 7) – Digiday (subscription)
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