70% of AI Traffic is Untracked: The Redirect Chain Problem Explained
How Skimlinks, cna.st, and Sovrn wrap AI citations and strip brands of DTC margins.
When ChatGPT recommends your product, the citation looks like a direct win. But between the model's answer and your checkout page lies a chain of redirects most brands never see — and almost never measure.
In this breakdown we trace how affiliate wrappers capture AI-driven commerce traffic, why your attribution models miss them, and what you can do to recover the margin.
The Redirect Chain in Practice
A typical AI commerce path looks simple on the surface: user asks a question, the model cites your brand, the user clicks. But the reality is more complex.
Publisher content — the articles and reviews that train and populate AI answers — is monetized through affiliate networks. When a model cites Allure, Runner's World, or any commerce publisher, the underlying link is often wrapped.
Why 70% Goes Untracked
Most analytics stacks are built for direct traffic and last-click attribution. Affiliate redirects break both models. The click originates from an AI platform, passes through a wrapper domain, and lands on a retailer — with your brand nowhere in the attribution path.
The result: you see traffic from ChatGPT or Perplexity in your referral reports, but the commercial downstream — where the actual purchase happens — is invisible.
What Aqxle Resolves
Our Path Resolution layer traces every step from AI citation to cash register. We resolve Skimlinks, cna.st, Sovrn, and dozens of other wrappers to show you exactly where your margin is leaking — and how to recover it.