You Click Today, Tomorrow AI Clicks for You
How AI is redefining "the business of engagement"—from human clicks to autonomous agents acting on your behalf
The Medium identifies essential signals on how technology is shaping the business of culture, and how the marketplace is evolving in response.
[Author’s Note: Today’s essay is in response to a reader question. For the next presentation for PARQOR Platinum subscribers, I would like to propose putting together a presentation that answers your questions. They can be about past essays, or topics that you would like me to cover but which I have not yet.
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Earlier this week a reader asked me to define what I mean by “engagement”. Today’s essay takes a stab at answering this question using recent essays from The Medium.
Engagement traditionally means human action: Turning a knob on a television set five decades ago, tapping a smartphone today. Whether navigating Netflix or YouTube, engagement captures user choices and time spent—the foundation of digital business models.
The “business of engagement” for YouTube is monetizing that activity via advertising, subscriptions (YouTube Premium offers ad-free viewing) or ancillary revenues (e.g., merchandise, paid channel memberships). More opportunities for engagement—in the form of likes, comments, channel subscriptions and a variety of other offerings depending on the channel—provide more data about user preferences and willingness to pay.
For the past 20 years, the two categories for engagement have been free and paid subscriptions, with a third model called “freemium” that sits in between. All have required human engagement. Generative AI (GAI) and Agentic AI (AAI) complicate this definition, and each evolve and reimagine the definitions of “engagement” in those business models.
Key Takeaway: The business of engagement is evolving from monetizing human clicks to monetizing AI agents that act autonomously for users—raising fundamental questions about what customer relationships mean when software does the engaging.