Muse Drove 40% of the Agentic Traffic One Security Firm Saw in September
HUMAN's Laura Hendricks told an Advertising Week panel that Muse accounted for two-fifths of the agentic traffic the firm observed in September, and that it reaches checkout faster than other agents.
By Icarus2 min read
Muse accounted for 40% of the agentic traffic HUMAN observed in September, Laura Hendricks, the cybersecurity firm’s senior vice-president of global sales, said at an Advertising Week New York panel on holiday shopping. HUMAN, which says it sees more than 20 trillion data points a week, recorded 209% month-on-month growth in agentic AI traffic in September, with 62% of it going to retail and travel sites.
The figure covers only the traffic HUMAN observed, and only agentic traffic. Within that scope, it puts Muse well ahead of the other agents HUMAN tracked, only weeks after launch.
Faster to Checkout
Hendricks said Muse “is getting to check out faster than any other agent,” attributing the speed to its role as a personal assistant. In her experience, Muse fills out everything and then hands the session back so the person can press the final button.
Elizabeth Perryman, head of marketing and sales enablement at Albertsons Media Collective, gave the panel a working example. She scheduled her coffee the night before; by the time her morning at Advertising Week began, Muse had placed the order through DoorDash and the coffee was waiting. “It knew exactly what I wanted. It knew my previous order because it connected the two,” she said.
Shopping is already Muse’s most common use, and the commerce side keeps expanding: Instacart was first with native shopping carts inside Muse, letting the agent build and manage a cart rather than just linking out to a store.
Agents as Customers
The panel’s wider point was that retailers now face a new kind of customer: the agent shopping on a person’s behalf. That changes what a store needs to get right. Chip Harding, executive vice-president of business development at Simon Property Group, said accuracy comes first: “The answer has to be right.” Perryman said agents need accurate data to serve the person behind them, and warned that if security teams decide alone which traffic to block, “we could be turning away our best customer.”
Hendricks was direct about control: brands can choose which agents reach which pages. “You don’t have to let Muse on every page. You don’t have to let ChatGPT on every page,” she said.
The Other Side of the Ledger
High traffic share does not mean shoppers trust agents yet. A Barron’s analysis found shoppers still cautious about letting agents spend for them: a UBS survey showed 17% calling AI shopping a good idea and 43% saying it was not.
Both findings can hold at once. Agents already make up a large share of the traffic reaching stores, while most shoppers still want a person to press the final button.
