Media and the Machine

My guest today is Gavin King, founder and CEO of Known Agents. He was a software engineering manager for Meta’s Instragram for 7 years before that. 

This man lives and breathes AI bot traffic

Gavin and I dig into a remarkable shift happening on the web: 1/3rd of website traffic is now coming from bots. We break down what those bots are actually doing.

And bots often get a bad rap. But, according to Gavin’s data,  96% of the bots actually follow the rules when publishers tell them to stay away.

Meanwhile, publishers block only 22% of bots. We go over live data about what % of bots are blocked by such co.s as Gannette, CNN, and AdWeek

We also get into the bad news: just 0.1% of human traffic is currently coming from AI chat referrals—and what publishers can do about it, from paywalls and subscriptions to MCPs and building businesses that AI agents can transact with directly.

And at the end, Gavin shares his advice for young people entering a job market being reshaped by AI—and whether his own future kids will even go to college.

Please enjoy my conversation with Gavin King.

Rob Kelly