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Eye On A.I.Author: Craig S. Smith
Eye on A.I. is a biweekly podcast, hosted by longtime New York Times correspondent Craig S. Smith. In each episode, Craig will talk to people making a difference in artificial intelligence. The podcast aims to put incremental advances into a broader context and consider the global implications of the developing technology. AI is about to change your world, so pay attention. Language: en Genres: Technology Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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AI Agents Will Take 50% of Your Traffic — Is Your Data Ready? | Jeff Lunsford, CEO of Tealium
Episode 390
Friday, 30 October, 2026
20% of enterprise website traffic is already coming from AI agents rather than humans, and that traffic converts at 38% more revenue per session than human visits. Within a year, Jeff Lunsford expects that number to reach 50%. Jeff, CEO of Tealium, joins Craig Smith to explain what this shift actually means for every business with a digital presence, and why the companies that will win are the ones whose data layer speaks fluently to agents, not just human browsers. Tealium operates as a neutral, real-time collection and distribution layer that sits underneath all of a company's customer-facing systems, capturing every interaction as it happens and distributing enriched identity-resolved profiles to whichever downstream system needs them - from personalization engines to fraud models - without storing the data itself. The most important argument Lunsford makes is one that Craig sets up precisely: agents need current state, consented context on demand, and a data warehouse offering yesterday's picture doesn't just underperform, it actively produces bad recommendations that erode trust in the AI system. He uses the pilot analogy he's carried for fifteen years: you don't want to fly knowing your altitude from yesterday, and for the same reason you don't want your customer-facing agent making decisions on stale data. The episode also covers the pattern that governs every channel transition in business history, brick-and-mortar didn't disappear when phones arrived, the internet didn't disappear when mobile arrived, and human website traffic won't disappear when agents arrive. Total session volume goes up because agents make it easier to initiate interactions. The businesses that prepared for each transition early captured disproportionate value. The businesses preparing their data layer for agentic consumption now are doing the same thing. Subscribe to Eye on A.I. for weekly conversations with the people building and deploying the future of AI.
