New charter program quantifies publisher authority across AI-mediated discovery and zero-click conversions to establish a new standard for visibility and value
Partnerize, the leader in partnership automation and measurement, announced VantagePoint™ for Publishers, extending its already category-defining Generative AI conversion attribution solution to address one of the most urgent challenges facing media companies: proving and monetizing influence in AI-driven, zero-click consumer journeys.
As AI becomes the forcing function collapsing traditional click paths, Partnerize is establishing the new economic infrastructure for the machine-mediated market.”
— Matt Gilbert, CEO of Partnerize
The announcement builds on Partnerize’s October launch of VantagePoint™, the first independent attribution solution designed for the machine-mediated market, where AI assistants, large language models, and algorithmic discovery increasingly shape purchasing decisions without a traditional click.
VantagePoint™ for Publishers was unveiled publicly during an on-stage announcement at Affiliate Summit West and is now available in limited release.
In the same week, Partnerize won two awards at the ASW-hosted 2026 Partnership Week Awards: Best Use of AI Implementation and Best New Partnership Technology.
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As AI-driven discovery collapses the click path, publishers are facing a growing disconnect between the value their content creates and the revenue they can measure, defend, or recover. Trusted journalism, reviews, and editorial guidance continue to influence consumer decisions, but that influence is increasingly invisible to legacy attribution models built for a click-based internet.
VantagePoint™ for Publishers addresses this gap by giving media companies independent, auditable visibility into how their content influences AI-mediated discovery and downstream conversions, even when no referral traffic exists. The solution accounts for the shortcomings of legacy last-click attribution models with a standardized framework designed to surface uncredited influence, quantify zero-click revenue loss, and restore publishers’ negotiating power with advertisers.
“As AI becomes the forcing function collapsing traditional click paths, Partnerize is establishing the new economic infrastructure for the machine-mediated market,” said Matt Gilbert, CEO of Partnerize. “With VantagePoint™ for Publishers, we are making influence visible as attribution shifts from deterministic clicks to probabilistic, journey-driven signals, defining the standard for how value is quantified and monetized in an AI-first world. We are ensuring that the publishers powering discovery have the data-driven leverage to lead and thrive in the next era of affiliate marketing.”
Charter participants include Vox Media and BuzzFeed, with additional market leaders in the process of onboarding. This program is reserved for large, multi-brand media organizations whose editorial and commerce content meaningfully shape purchasing decisions, but whose authority has been decoupled from traditional attribution by AI-mediated journeys.
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“AI-mediated discovery has already greatly impacted how audiences encounter and act on content,” said Camilla Cho, SVP and Head of Commerce and Affiliate, Vox Media. “Even as referral traffic declines, influence hasn’t disappeared; it’s just become harder to see. Publishers need better ways to understand when and how their journalism shapes decisions across these new journeys. Solutions and systems that help surface that influence and enable equitable compensation are an important step toward protecting the value of high-quality content in an evolving ecosystem.”
“As AI increasingly shapes how people discover and evaluate products, it has become harder for publishers to measure and receive credit for the value their content creates along the way,” said Becca Maier, VP of Commerce, BuzzFeed. “We’re excited to pilot a cost-per-influence model with Partnerize and VantagePoint™, because it finally offers a way to quantify the real value our content has in a zero-click world. This is the kind of independent, transparent measurement publishers need to protect their value and evolve how we work with advertisers.”
“At HubSpot, our priority is making sure partners are compensated for the actual value they create, not just where attribution happens to land,” said Nancy Mai Harnett, Head of Global Growth Partnerships, HubSpot. “We’re actively exploring new ways to measure partner influence across increasingly indirect journeys, and the data we’re seeing is helping us rethink our entire approach to budgeting and partner commissioning. Understanding where influence really happens is critical as we evolve our programs for how decisions actually get made today.”
VantagePoint™ for Publishers is built with enterprise-grade governance, transparency, and auditability, enabling publishers to defend their value in commercial negotiations, resolve attribution disputes, and establish a new baseline for how influence is measured in an AI-driven ecosystem.
In conjunction with today’s launch, Partnerize is proud to announce that the VantagePoint Fractional Commission Standard™ (VPFCS) has officially completed its rigorous independent validation and received formal certification from the Alliance for Audited Media (AAM).
This certification validates the integrity of VantagePoint™’s multi-factor framework and its advanced attribution algorithm, which quantifies the contribution of publisher sources within AI overviews and links them directly to downstream conversions. Partnerize is the first platform to offer a certified, auditable link between commission-rate advertising dollars and contextual influence.
“AI summaries and zero-click search are significant attribution challenges for the media industry,” said Rich Murphy, CEO of AAM. “We congratulate Partnerize for developing a solution to identify, capture, and quantify publishers’ contributions to the conversion process and subjecting their solution to a rigorous, third-party AAM review.”
With the AAM certification now finalized, VantagePoint™ provides publishers and brands with the verified transparency required to defend and monetize content value in a zero-click, AI-driven ecosystem.
