Consumers don’t trust AI assistants for product recommendations. Brands are investing anyway
A net 75% of marketers plan to increase investment in AI assistants in 2027, even as just one-third (32%) of consumers say they currently use AI assistants to research brands and products, with only 23% saying they trust their product or service recommendations.
That is according to Kantar’s latest Media Reactions study, based on survey data from over 800 senior marketers across advertisers, agencies and media owners, and 23,000 consumers across 33 global markets.
The study found that nearly two-thirds (62%) of marketers anticipate generative AI will play a “pivotal” role in brand recommendations in the near future, even if consumers do not currently use chatbots for such purposes en masse today.
It is the same bet being made by tech giants like Meta, which unveiled its Muse AI assistant last week. Muse is billed in part as an “AI that goes shopping for you”, though whether consumers broadly embrace such chatbots for automated shopping remains to be seen, particularly given concerns around granting them extensive access to personal data.
Regardless, marketers have been preparing for changing online consumer journeys for years. At the Future of Brands 2025 event in March of last year, Jack Smyth, chief solutions officer for AI planning and insights at Brandtech Group agency Jellyfish, likened chatbots to “the ultimate influencer”, adding that how large-language models “think about your brands will increasingly determine your share of market.”
At SXSW London this summer, Neil Patel, co-founder of American digital marketing firm NP Digital, noted that online behaviours have already changed since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, with more people now using AI chatbots during the discovery phase of consumer journeys. While this has led to a sharp decline in traffic to brand websites, the percentage of sales attributed to search has increased.
Importantly, however, measuring how chatbot conversations lead to business outcomes is currently significantly more challenging than measuring the impact of showing up on search engine results pages (SERPs).
AI search is reducing traffic to brand websites — but not sales
“There’s a lot of money moving towards AI on the assumption people will use it the way the industry expects,” said Kantar’s global director of media Gonca Bubani. “The reality is that marketers don’t yet have a firm grasp of the nuanced feelings people have about AI environments or how they work within their wider media mix.
“That shouldn’t stop them from experimenting with AI, but it does mean they need to carefully test, measure and learn as they invest.”
Creator economy shifts
At the same time, the study found that two-thirds of marketers also plan to increase their investment in creator content, suggesting not only the importance of retaining the human element in marketing efforts, but also that creators themselves may influence results shown by LLMs.
Notably, marketers are broadly shifting their creator marketing strategies away from “macro-” and “mega-influencers” and toward “micro-” and “nano-creators”.
This follows a broader effort by brands to tap into more niche communities through social video platforms.
Bubani explained that success in the creator economy “is now less about reach and more about relevance: who opens up the best access to audiences, in a credible context and through stronger creative collaboration.”
Follower count, she continued, no longer guarantees effective reach on platforms primarily recommending content to consumer’s via hyperpersonalised algorithms. What is more important now is identifying creators who “help brands to communicate their meaningful difference to their audience.”