Fiverr chief executive Micha Kaufman told analysts on the company’s third-quarter call on 29 October that “The Internet, as we’ve known it for the past 20-plus years, is going away”, adding: “It’s dying.” Fiverr’s results the same day showed annual active buyers down 25.8% year over year, to 2.4 million.
Fiverr’s marketplace, the business that has relied on search traffic, fell to about 61% of revenue in the quarter from about 68% a year earlier, by our arithmetic from the company’s release. Fiverr’s outlook blames “AI-related disruption to traditional SEO and SEM”.
Business Pill · DISTRIBUTION ADVANTAGE
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The key insight: Fiverr’s marketplace fell to about 61% of revenue from about 68% a year earlier, by our arithmetic from its 6-K, as annual active buyers dropped 25.8% to 2.4 million and the company said AI-related disruption to traditional SEO and SEM keeps weighing on marketplace traffic.
Revenue in the third quarter of 2026 was $90.9 million, down 15.8% from $107.9 million a year earlier, according to the release Fiverr filed with the SEC. Marketplace revenue fell 24.7% to $55.4 million, while services revenue rose 3.4% to $35.5 million.
Annual active buyers were 2.4 million at 30 September, down from 3.3 million. Annual spend per buyer rose 12.9% to $373, and the marketplace take rate for the twelve months was 28.2%, up from 27.6%.
Fiverr raised its full-year guidance, citing its AutoDS services business and cost control, “partially offset by persistent search engine traffic headwinds”. It guided fourth-quarter revenue to $80 million to $86 million, a decline of 20% to 25% year over year.
The company also said: “We expect the shift from search to AI-driven discovery to drive a steeper decline than previously expected in marketplace traffic through 2027.”
Fiverr reported third-quarter 2026 revenue of $90.9 million: marketplace $55.4 million and services $35.5 million, against $73.6 million and $34.3 million a year earlier, per its 6-K of 29 October 2026. Marketplace share of revenue, about 61% versus about 68%, is our arithmetic.
What Was Posted on X
$FVRR CEO on AI agents:
1. โThe internet as weโve known it… is dyingโ
> โWeโre witnessing something that is no less than an earthquake on the internet, or the web as we know it… The internet as weโve known it for the past 20-plus years is going away and itโs going to completely change. Itโs dying. It used to be that customers searched for things, then clicked on links, then came to destination platforms or websites, then made a decision or an exploration and finally placed an order… All of the layer that Iโve described right now is going to disappear.โ
> โUnlike before, agents donโt have brand loyalty. If you as a customer send your agent to purchase something, that agent is not loyal to Amazon or Walmart or your local business. Theyโre loyal to the business that is going to maximize the output.โ
3. SEO is dying, and GEO wonโt replace it
> โTraditional SEO or the impact of SEO is decreasing to the point where itโs going to be dead very, very soon… We used to think, this was just six or 12 months ago, that GEO is going to replace SEO… But I donโt think that this is the case at all, because again, what agents want to do is provide outcomes for their users.โ
4. Agents donโt click on ads
> โAnd definitely by the way, the ad space, because again, agents donโt care about ads. They donโt click on ads. The click to destination has zero meaning. They want to get to the output to the result.โ
5. โI donโt know if we have a yearโ
> โBecause we donโt have 20 years to get adjusted to this new reality, I donโt know if we have a year, but all of us need to accelerate.โ
> โThe necessary speed is yesterday.โ
6. Fiverrโs answer: live inside the chatbots
> โWe launched our first public APIs, CLIs and MCP integrations with Fiverr, now live inside Claude and ChatGPT. AI-sourced GMV for first-time buyers grew approximately 64% from last quarter. Where this goes is a full agentic experience. An agent finds the talent, scopes the work, places the order and pays for it without ever leaving the assistant.โ
7. Less traffic from AI, but better buyers
> โWeโre seeing less traffic coming from LLMs, but weโre seeing a higher-quality traffic because these are customers that have had experiences with their agents. So they come with a better, more formed intent to us.โ
A post by @firesidealpha on 29 October lists seven numbered excerpts it attributes to Fiverr’s CEO, including that the internet as we’ve known it is dying, that agents have no brand loyalty, and that SEO is dying and GEO will not replace it.
What Kaufman Said About Agents
Kaufman described the old path as one where customers “searched for things, then clicked on links”, came to destination websites, then decided and placed an order, according to the call transcript published by The Motley Fool.
He said Fiverr is live on ChatGPT and Claude and “hopefully soon on Gemini as well”. Then: “unlike before, agents don’t have brand loyalty”. An agent sent to buy something “is not loyal to Amazon or Walmart or your local business”, he said. “They’re loyal to the business that is going to maximize the output.”
On search, he said: “traditional SEO, or the impact of SEO, is decreasing to the point where it’s going to be dead very, very soon”. He tied that to higher ad density on search pages: “When there is very high ad density, there’s no space for organic results.”
He also said Fiverr no longer thinks generative engine optimization, or GEO, will replace SEO, “because, again, what agents want to do is to provide outcomes for their users”. Customers, he said, “want everything in the same place”.
The Business Lever: Traffic Fiverr Does Not Own
In his prepared remarks Kaufman said: “For 17 years, Fiverr built one of the best performancemarketing engines on the Internet on top of search.” He added that “Organic clicks are falling across the web and acquisition costs are rising for everyone who depends on them”.
The quarter shows the split by our arithmetic: marketplace revenue fell by $18.2 million year over year, while services revenue rose by $1.2 million. Chief financial officer Esti Levy-Dadon said on the call that the decline in buyers was mainly due to “the ongoing compression in low-value transactional work” and continued traffic and demand pressure from shifts in search.
Kaufman said Fiverr launched its first public APIs, CLIs and MCP integrations, now live inside Claude and ChatGPT, and that “AI-sourced GMV for first-time buyers grew approximately 64% from last quarter”. He said traffic from LLMs is smaller but higher quality, because those customers arrive “with a better, more formed intent”.
Kaufman’s answer is to sit inside the agents themselves. The release quotes him saying Fiverr is “embedding directly into the broader LLM ecosystem” and positioning the marketplace as “the indispensable, agentic-friendly layer powering the future AI economy”.
The Structural Read
As we read the release, Fiverr’s two segments moved in opposite directions: marketplace revenue fell 24.7% while services revenue, led by AutoDS, rose 3.4%, so the mix moved away from the business that depends on search traffic.
As we read the call, Kaufman’s claim is about who chooses the seller: an agent that is “not loyal to Amazon or Walmart or your local business” picks the platform that delivers the output, not the one with the brand.
As we read the numbers Fiverr gave, the agent channel is still small: Kaufman said traffic from LLMs is lower but higher quality, and the company gave a 64% quarter-on-quarter growth rate for AI-sourced GMV from first-time buyers without a dollar figure.
Micha Kaufman, Fiverr founder and CEO, on the Q3 2026 earnings call
“They’re loyal to the business that is going to maximize the output.”
Three Implications
FOR MARKETPLACES Fiverr said it expects the shift from search to AI-driven discovery to drive a steeper decline than previously expected in marketplace traffic through 2027.
FOR SEARCH-DEPENDENT SITES Kaufman said that when there is very high ad density on search pages, there is no space for organic results.
FOR AGENT DISTRIBUTION Fiverr said it is live inside ChatGPT and Claude through APIs, CLIs and MCP integrations, and Kaufman said he hopes to add Gemini.
The analysis puts it this way: “Your product stops being the thing companies buy and becomes the thing other systems assume exists.”
As we read it, Fiverr’s plan to be the marketplace that agents call from inside ChatGPT and Claude is one company’s attempt at that shift. The framework was published in December 2025 and does not discuss Fiverr.
What Is Not Established
Fiverr gave a growth rate for AI-sourced GMV from first-time buyers, about 64% from the prior quarter, but neither the release nor the transcript we read gives its dollar amount or its share of total GMV. Kaufman said there is “no blueprint” for how AI integrations are done.
Execution Fault Lines, Concentrated Demand, and Geopolitical Firewalls
This week’s issue: the AI build is not short of demand for its parts. It is short of cheap money, and its end revenue rests on a narrow base of large, often venture-funded buyers.
Fiverr reported a 25.8% fall in annual active buyers to 2.4 million on 29 October, and its marketplace slipped to about 61% of revenue from about 68%, by our arithmetic. On the call, Kaufman said the internet as we’ve known it is dying and that agents have no brand loyalty, and the company expects AI-driven discovery to cut marketplace traffic more steeply than it had expected through 2027.
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A note on sourcing. Fiverr’s figures come from its third-quarter 2026 results release, filed with the SEC as Exhibit 99.1 to a 6-K on 29 October 2026. Call quotes come from the transcript published by The Motley Fool, not an official Fiverr transcript. We did not contact Fiverr. Figures labelled our arithmetic are our own.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
