On July 15, one day before WAIC 2026 opens in Shanghai, the People's Daily published an article by Robin Li, Baidu's founder. The core argument: the AI industry needs a new metric. It is not DAU (Daily Active Users). It is not the number of tokens consumed. It is DAA — Daily Active Agents.
At WAIC 2026, Baidu and IDC will jointly release a white paper defining DAA as a global industry standard. This is more than a rebranding exercise. It signals a structural shift in how AI value is measured — and how advertising on AI platforms will be priced, delivered, and evaluated.
What Is DAA?
DAA counts the number of intelligent agents that enter actual business processes, execute tasks, deliver results, and create measurable value every day. It explicitly excludes:
- Agents that are created but never used
- Tokens consumed for chat or entertainment
- API calls that do not result in task completion
In other words, DAA measures agents that do work, not agents that exist.
This distinction matters because the AI industry is moving from "how much intelligence can we pack into a model" to "how many real tasks can agents complete." The metric follows the behavior.
What Baidu Is Showing at WAIC 2026
Baidu's DAA thesis is backed by its product lineup at WAIC. Each product addresses a different category of daily active agents:
| Product | Agent Type | DAA Contribution |
|---|---|---|
| Baidu Dazi (百度搭子) | General productivity agent | Office tasks, research, PPT generation |
| GenFlow 4.0 | Content creation agent | 100M+ MAU, document-to-output workflows |
| Miaoda (秒哒) | No-code development agent | App creation from natural language |
| Baidu Yijing (百度一镜) | Digital human agent | Live streaming, video production |
| Baidu Famu (百度伐谋) | Strategic decision agent | Production scheduling, logistics optimization |
| Merchant Agent (商家智能体) | Advertising operations agent | PPC bid management, creative generation |
Baidu Dazi itself was named one of WAIC's "Treasures of the Museum" (镇馆之宝) — an award given to fewer than 10 products each year. Its daily question volume has grown 20× since launch, an indicator of enterprise adoption velocity.
Why DAA Matters for Advertisers
The shift from DAU to DAA is not an academic exercise. It has three concrete implications for anyone advertising on Baidu.
1. Ad pricing will shift from "impressions" to "outcomes"
DAU measures how many people use a platform. DAA measures how many agents complete tasks. A platform optimized for DAA is a platform optimized for task completion — not for maximizing time spent on ads.
For advertisers, this means bidding models will increasingly align with outcomes delivered by agents: a lead generated, a sale closed, a customer question answered. The Merchant Agent already operates on this model — it manages PPC bids based on conversion outcomes, not click volume.
2. The distinction between "ad" and "service" blurs
Consider a user asking Baidu Dazi: "Find me a supplier for industrial valves in Zhejiang." The agent searches, compares, and recommends. If your brand's information is structured, verifiable, and authoritative, the agent cites you. If not, it cites your competitor.
This is not an ad in the traditional sense. It is an AI-mediated recommendation. The brand that invests in being AI-readable — what the industry now calls "cognitive assets" — wins the recommendation, without paying for a click.
3. DAA validates the Agent economy
The DAA white paper with IDC is not a marketing document. It is an attempt to create a standard metric that enterprises and investors can use to evaluate AI platform performance. When a standard exists, capital follows. When capital follows, infrastructure improves. When infrastructure improves, advertising becomes more efficient.
This is the same cycle that played out with DAU in mobile advertising from 2010–2015. The metric came first. The ad dollars followed.
What International Advertisers Should Do
The DAA era does not require you to change your advertising strategy overnight. It requires you to recognize three structural shifts:
📊 Three DAA-Driven Shifts for Advertisers
- From impressions to outcomes. Invest in tracking what agents produce for your campaigns — leads, conversions, customer interactions — not just what ads are shown.
- From content volume to cognitive structure. Make your brand information machine-readable. Structured product data, verified certifications, consistent platform presence.
- From ad-only to agent-first. The Merchant Agent managing your Baidu PPC is an agent contributing to DAA. The more it learns, the better it performs. Treat it as an asset, not a tool.
The Bigger Picture
Mobile advertising was built on DAU. The metric determined where ad dollars went, how campaigns were measured, and which platforms won. DAA proposes to do the same for the Agent era.
At Baidu PPC Pro, we track platform metrics because they shape advertising outcomes. DAA is young — the white paper is being released this week at WAIC. But the direction is clear: the platforms that measure what agents actually do will attract the advertisers who want to pay for what agents actually deliver.
WAIC 2026 runs July 17–20 in Shanghai. Baidu and IDC will release the DAA white paper during the conference. Baidu Dazi was named a WAIC "Treasure of the Museum" award winner (July 14). Source: Sina Finance, People's Daily, July 15, 2026.