AI optimisation: The new channel brands can’t afford to overlook
Opinion
Adapting to AI-driven discovery and agentic commerce doesn’t just mean rewriting the rules of SEO; it also means rebuilding marketing strategies from the ground up.
The way that consumers discover brands online is changing faster than many marketers are prepared for. For the first time in decades, brands are losing direct control over how they are found, compared, and recommended.
This shift represents the most significant disruption to digital discovery since Google introduced PageRank back in 1998. But the implications go far beyond search mechanics. Visibility, attribution, and even brand narrative are increasingly being mediated by AI systems rather than traditional channels.
According to McKinsey, half of consumers now intentionally use AI-powered search engines, and most say they are their top source for purchasing decisions. As a result, brands could see traffic from traditional search decline by 20% to 50%.
AI-driven discovery and agentic commerce have firmly arrived. While digital marketing moves quickly, the pace of this change may have caught some brands out. Adapting to this new consumer behaviour doesn’t just mean rewriting the rules of SEO; it also means rebuilding marketing strategies from the ground up.
What’s in a name?
Most marketers will now be aware they need to adjust their approach to incorporate AI-enabled search. What might be less clear is which label they use for these efforts.
What was once simply SEO has now broadened into AIO (AI Overview Optimisation), AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation), GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation), and GSO (Generative Search Engine Optimisation).
There are nuances between these terms, and no shortage of opinions on which will stick. But the reality is that the debate around naming risks is becoming a distraction.
As some industry voices have pointed out, there is no industry-wide consensus yet, and obsessing over terminology misses the more important point. Whatever label brands choose, they need a clear strategy for surfacing it in AI models.
AI optimisation should be treated as a channel in its own right. Just like on Instagram, Snap, or TikTok, brands have to be active there. Additionally, brands must assess how the rise of AI-driven discovery and agentic commerce affects their activities in other channels, as the consumer journey from awareness to action is condensed.
How AI has changed product discovery
Whether through AI-powered search engines or large language models (LLMs), many consumers are no longer scrolling through pages of results or clicking through to brand destinations. Instead, they ask fully formed questions and receive conversational answers that curate information from across the web.
Crucially, brands do not surface in these conversations in the same way they rank in traditional search results.
AI platforms look across the wider ecosystem for answers, and don’t just present information from a brand’s owned channels. They prioritise credible sources across many media types, respected third-party commentary, and sector-specific analysis.
This means AI optimisation is not just a content or technical challenge, it’s a reputational challenge.
As a result, PR and communications are no longer simply about amplification or awareness. They are about building the authority signals that AI systems rely on when deciding which brands to cite, summarise, or recommend.
In this environment, partnerships and relationships with trusted organisations become critical. Brands that fail to establish credibility beyond their own channels risk becoming invisible in AI-generated answers, regardless of how strong their owned content is.
Agentic commerce will collapse the sales funnel
At the same time that AI is changing the way we discover products, it is also beginning to compress the purchase journey itself.
OpenAI’s recent announcement of Instant Checkout, which lets consumers discover, evaluate, and purchase a product in a single conversational flow, flattens the marketing funnel. The impact in the immediate future will be profound.
For years, digital advertising relied on friction. The stages between awareness and transaction were opportunities to divert attention, invite comparisons, and monetise purchase intent. This means brands must rethink how they approach tactics and channels to reach consumers at these stages, such as search ads, product comparison engines, and retail media networks.
If the LLMs now own the entire consumer journey, it’s only a matter of time before they become commercial platforms.
Marketers have a window of opportunity to optimise product data for AI discovery by enriching structured metadata on their website and by creating a body of authoritative content.
Meanwhile, they will also need to strengthen third-party signals to increase the likelihood that an AI model will select their brand at the moment a consumer shows transactional intent.
How media owners fit into the picture
Media owners are already feeling the impact of AI-driven discovery. Google’s AI Overviews, for example, represent a significant shift in how information is surfaced. As a result, Google is testing new ways to present AI-generated news summaries that provide participating media owners with some compensation. Meta is also reported to be striking deals with major media owners to pay for editorial content.
The fact remains, though, that since major platforms introduced AI-driven answer layers, the industry has seen a rise in zero-click behaviours, with some media owners reporting dramatic declines in traffic.
If audiences migrate to AI interfaces and ad budgets follow them, media owners risk losing the revenues that fund their journalism.
For brands, this shift matters deeply. AI systems are increasingly trained on and influenced by high-quality editorial sources. If trusted media owners disappear or retreat behind paywalls, the ecosystem that feeds AI credibility weakens.
Alternative revenue strategies will be essential. Media owners will need to give their audience a compelling reason to keep returning. Direct partnerships with brands seeking to leverage the credibility of these outlets to improve AI indexability offer another option for boosting revenue.
Doing nothing is not an option
The way consumers discover and buy products online is being rewritten in real time. AI optimisation is now essential for brand visibility, requiring coordinated LLM-ready content, improved internal data structures, PR and comms outreach, and partnership strategies.
The best approach is to treat AI optimisation as a channel in its own right – it can’t be seen as just a tweak to search. Over time, its precise role within the media mix will become clearer, as will its impact on existing channels.
As with every major disruption in digital advertising, from search to social, early moves will not only reap rewards; they’ll also define the rules. Brands that hesitate risk becoming invisible to the growing population of AI-assisted shoppers who may never see a traditional search result again.
Ben Cicchetti is the SVP marketing and communication at InfoSum