AI Agent Monetization Is Here: Turning Bot Traffic Into Trusted Revenue

AI Agent Monetization Is Here

As AI agents take on increasingly complex tasks like shopping, booking, and executing transactions, they’re also becoming major drivers of web traffic. According to Gartner, 70% of organizations will be using AI agents to handle customer interactions by 2025, up from just 20% in 2020. This evolution presents a new challenge: how do businesses differentiate between good and bad agents (which are essentially intelligent bots), protect their APIs, and capitalize on legitimate AI-driven interactions?

Cequence Security and Skyfire are partnering to answer that question. Together, we’re delivering a first-of-its-kind approach to AI agent monetization, allowing businesses to not only verify and control access from autonomous agents, but to turn that traffic into a trusted, measurable, and secure revenue stream.

From Blocking to Enabling: The Shift in Bot Management

Traditional bot management has focused on defense: identifying malicious bots and blocking them at the edge. Cequence has been a pioneer in this space for over a decade, with a unique, network-based approach to identifying and managing bots to protect against credential stuffing, web scraping, and business logic abuse.

Not all bots are bad, and accurately differentiating between good and bad bots, as well as user traffic versus synthetic traffic, is critical to successfully managing bots. Generative AI and autonomous agents grow more sophisticated, and many now represent real user intent. AI agents can act on behalf of consumers, hedge funds, data aggregators, or digital assistants. They browse, compare prices, gather product info, or execute transactions.

That’s why Cequence is embracing a shift to enabling trusted agents. Our partnership with Skyfire provides the critical missing layer: identity, wallet integration, and a marketplace for AI commerce.

Why the Skyfire Partnership Matters

Skyfire brings a framework for trusted agent commerce. Through its platform, AI agents can enroll, get verified, and receive digital tokens that represent their identity and purpose. Businesses publishing content or offering API-based services can price and publish their data to these agents in a secure, controlled way.

Here’s how it works:

• Skyfire issues verified digital identities to AI agents, ensuring they’re trustworthy participants.
• Cequence’s unique behavioral fingerprinting monitors how these agents interact with APIs and web applications.
• If behavior matches intent, access is allowed. If abuse is detected, it’s automatically blocked.
• Business owners control pricing and access, creating a monetization layer for previously free or unauthorized bot traffic.

Together, this makes it possible for companies to safely allow agents in, without the risk of data theft or API abuse, and get paid for the value they deliver.

Real-World Use Cases

While early customer implementations are under wraps, the model is already drawing interest across industries:

• Retailers can monetize real-time product data access for comparison-shopping bots.
• Financial services firms can enable verified agents to access curated datasets.
• Media platforms can charge for consumption of high-value content or APIs.
• Travel aggregators can offer verified availability data through agent requests.

Beyond revenue, the Cequence and Skyfire partnership gives businesses a way to take control of AI agent interactions. They can decide who gets in, how they operate, and how their access can be monetized. This creates a new level of visibility and control for an emerging class of traffic.

Trust, Transparency, and Control

Cequence’s behavioral fingerprinting technology is the foundation for this approach. It allows our platform to distinguish between a scraping tool and a verified agent, between a brute-force login attack and a legitimate aggregator, in real time. Combined with Skyfire’s verified token system, this ensures:

• Only trusted agents are allowed in
• All interactions are continuously monitored
• Abuse is blocked automatically
• Monetization happens within safe parameters

A Path Forward for the AI Economy

AI agents are no longer a futuristic concept. They’re already showing up across websites and APIs, doing real work on behalf of users. The question is no longer how to block them, but how to manage and monetize them safely.

This partnership between Cequence and Skyfire is about helping businesses take a proactive approach. It gives them the visibility, verification, and control they need to turn automation into opportunity, without sacrificing security or performance. Check out the press release to learn more.