The definition of premium inventory was built for a web that no longer exists, writes Howard Luks, GM at SE7EN. As zero-click search drains the open web of attention, the strongest claim to premium now comes from a place many buyers still treat as experimental: mobile gaming.

For two decades, premium in digital advertising meant a familiar bundle: a respected publisher domain, professionally produced content, and a steady flow of visitors from search. The first two survive. The third is disappearing, and it is taking the old definition of premium with it.

In the first four months of 2026, 68% of US Google searches ended without a click, according to SparkToro’s analysis of Similarweb clickstream data. In 2024 the figure was 60%. For every 1,000 US searches, only 276 clicks now reach the open web, down from 374 two years ago. Roughly a quarter of the open web’s search traffic has gone in 24 months.

The driver is no mystery. Ahrefs found AI Overviews now appear on more than 20% of queries, and they cut organic clickthrough by nearly 60% when they do. Google’s ad revenue rose throughout, so expecting a reversal is wishful thinking.

What does this do to the inventory buyers file under premium? When referral traffic collapses, sessions get shallower. Publishers under revenue pressure add more units per page. MFA supply floods in to fill the volume gap.

And a growing share of what still registers as traffic is not human at all. Imperva’s Bad Bot Report found automated traffic passed 53% of the web in 2025. The growth is no longer crude, filterable botnets. It is AI agents that fetch, render and interact with pages the way people do, often indistinguishable from real users.

The same AI systems that answer searchers without a click send their own agents to read the content. Publishers are trading human readers for machine ones. The real human audience on the open web is shrinking even faster than the click numbers show. The domain still looks prestigious in a log file. The attention behind the ad slot gets thinner every quarter, while the CPM premium remains.

The attention did not vanish. It moved.

A growing share of it now lives in environments that never depended on a search engine’s referral: apps people open on purpose, every day, by habit. The Entertainment Software Association puts the average American player at 37, with over 212 million Americans playing weekly.

Kantar research found that 70% of mobile gamers make most of their household’s purchase decisions. 38% bought a product within three months of seeing an in-game ad. Of those buyers, 71% acted the same day. This is not a niche of teenagers between classes. It is the mainstream adult economy, reachable in sessions it chose to start.

Run gaming through the premium test

Apply the tests buyers actually use for premium. Professionally produced content: ads appear inside developed titles, not beside user-generated content. Brand safety is structural, validated at the source rather than filtered after the fact.

Engagement: a player is a participant, not a viewer. Electronic Arts’ VP of advertising Alex Dao recently argued that console gaming sits in the same premium environment as CTV, with an audience that is far more interactive. He is right. The same logic runs even stronger on mobile, where sessions are chosen, daily and fully attended.

The US in-game ad spend is expected to reach USD$9.2bn (£7.8bn) this year as per eMarketer, most of it flowing through mobile titles. And the dominant formats are opt-in with full share of voice, a combination CTV cannot offer.

The objection is history, not the audience

The honest objection is that buyers who tested gaming inventory years ago got burned. Supply paths were murky, and quality was filtered only after impressions had served. They remember. The fix is to move the quality decision upstream, before the bid, where context, viewability, and identity signals are still intact.

Galileo, SE7EN’s cognitive engine, reads every impression before the bid, scoring whether the environment is safe for the brand, whether the ad will be seen, what the user intent behind it is, and whether a real person is actually there. Only what clears the threshold reaches the buyer, and the client’s DSP and workflows stay unchanged. 

Measured against what the same advertisers were getting through other supply platforms, the pattern is consistent: viewability lifted from around 70% to 90% and held there, and performance improved 18% with costs held flat. No creative changes. No bidding changes. Better inputs.

The market has not repriced this yet

Standardisation is coming. IAB-aligned impression measurement is spreading, and the buying friction that kept brands out of the channel is disappearing. The market has not yet repriced this attention to match its quality. It will.

The definition of premium was never really about the domain. It was about scarce, engaged, brand-safe attention. The zero-click era is forcing that distinction into the open. The buyers who redraw their premium map now will own tomorrow’s obvious inventory at today’s prices.