Mobian, the ad tech startup behind Time’s test of ads that only AI agents see, said 10 more publishers now run them and it expects over 24 to by December, while Time has met with more than 30 brands about doing more, according to The Information. Sites using the ads recognize an incoming agent and hand it a text-only copy of the page with brand messaging added, a practice Perplexity started blocking and calling deceptive shortly after Time’s August launch. In private talks with publishers, Anthropic, OpenAI and Google said they worry marketers could slip hidden instructions into the ads, such as telling an agent to skip a rival, and want the brand messaging served to agents clearly labeled as advertising.
