How brands can stay visible in an AI world
Opinion
As AI becomes an additional layer in our digital lives, brands need to build their profiles in different ways. Hannah Mirza outlines how marketers can integrate their products and services into the AI overview and remain visible.
AI is changing how consumers experience the internet. Whether they are searching on ChatGPT, Google, or elsewhere, for many, the first port of call is an AI summary or assistant.
The scale of this change is already massive. A study by Authoritas, for example, found that a site previously ranked first in a search result could lose about 79% of its traffic for that query if results were delivered below an AI overview.
While this creates understandable concern for content-based businesses, it also presents a significant opportunity for brands. What AI overviews are creating is a new layer of visibility that brands can actively shape.
A key part of marketing teams’ new role is to place their brand at the heart of the “answer real estate”. They can do this by better understanding how AI engines source their answers. Early movers will win disproportionate profile because the search opportunity is no longer limited to ranking pages or buying placements.
They will gain from repeated exposure without paying per click, gain trust from “AI recommendation”, and attract audiences that are ready to act. Plus, you can track your success and impact via a simple KPI: Share of Answer (how often AI names/cites you correctly).
Welcome to AEO and GEO
We love our jargon in marketing, and you’re going to hear a lot more about Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) and Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO), which should now sit above paid and organic search.
Both will remain a key area of focus and upskilling for agencies and brands alike, and reflect that AI answers aren’t drawn from a random cross-section of the internet. They come instead from a specific subset of content: blogs, reviews, and UGC (Reddit-style communities).
Appealing to the AI overview means thinking beyond owned content and aiming to be part of the broader ecosystem’s commentary.
Marketers need to build credibility in these community channels to benefit from third-party validation and long-tail answers that drive automated responses for niche use cases.
But it’s not just about where you appear; it’s also about the style of content you are part of. Across a web landscape filled with AI-written, fact-unchecked content, brands that publish clear, verifiable truths will become premium sources. They can appeal to an AI engine by being consistent, specific and up to date.
The owned and insight opportunity
While community content, relationships with credible reviewers and sector experts, and partnerships will be highly powerful, it’s also essential to make owned content easier for AIs to access.
That means creating more direct Q&As, comparisons, “best for X” explainers and step-by-step guidance.
Expanding FAQs and help hubs while also structuring content cleanly so it’s quotable will be a win, as the answers are easier to extract and align with best practices for AI responses.
AI doesn’t just offer an opportunity to appear at the top of the listings, however. It’s also a major source of insights and opportunities that extend well beyond traditional search queries.
Within the millions of unique prompts are signals that tell you how and why consumers might want the product or service you offer. They are a window into specific consumer needs, allowing marketers to craft content for a wide range of contexts.
Mapping question clusters and building content that delivers for these contexts (budget, values, use cases, and constraints, for example) helps deliver more personalised discovery, higher conversion, and less waste. It also helps identify new opportunities for innovation that your current products can’t fit into.
The final question that we need to address in our AI-centric marketing plan is where paid sits in the brave new world.
It’s still a developing marketplace, but as ads inside AI experiences grow, there’s an opportunity not just to gain eyeballs but also to provide helpful next steps aligned to specific user questions.
The creative opportunity is to design messaging that extends the AI answer and create ads that match the conversational context. With this approach, ads no longer become interruptions, they become a helpful nudge on the purchase journey.
Hannah Mirza is the founder and CEO of Responsible Marketing Advisory.