Marketers Enjoy Week Of Record ‘Direct’ Traffic Before Learning It Was A Bug

NEW YORK—Marketing teams across the country spent much of October celebrating an unprecedented surge in ‘direct’ website traffic, a metric they interpreted as proof that customers had begun typing in brand URLs out of pure love, before learning that links from ChatGPT had simply stopped carrying their usual tracking tag for about a week.

“We had a whole slide,” said Brooke Haddad, director of growth at a mid-size skincare brand. “It said ‘Brand Is The New Performance.’ There was a rocket emoji. The CEO forwarded it to the board with the subject line ‘THIS.’”

Haddad said the mood shifted around October 16, when tagging returned and the ‘organic love’ began reappearing in the ‘AI referral’ column, where it has been ever since, staring at her.

• Confidence
• Actual brand strength

Confidence of the Marketing Department

Period	Confidence	Actual brand strength
Oct 8	55	50
Oct 10	71	50
Oct 12	84	50
Oct 14	96	50
Oct 16	99	50
Oct 18	31	50
Oct 20	22	50
Oct 23	18	50

Source: The Daily SKU Attribution Desk

“For seven days we were a beloved household name. Then we were attributable again.”

Analysts urged brands to annotate the affected dates in their reports, a step most marketers said they would take ‘right after’ the board meeting.

At press time, Haddad had revised the slide to read ‘Brand Is The New Performance (Methodology Note)’ in 9-point type.