This post was created in partnership with Brandwatch<\/p>\n
AI answer engines like ChatGPT are jolting an already fragmented customer journey. During an ADWEEK House Possible fireside co-hosted with Brandwatch, ADWEEK Editor in Chief Ryan Joe sat down in conversation with Eric deLima Rubb, Brandwatch\u2019s VP of customer success and insights, to explore how marketers can evolve their strategies amid shifting search behavior.<\/p>\n
The evolution of search<\/p>\n
Rubb began by noting that both traditional search and AI search are expanding. \u201cI think the overall stats suggest 26% year-on-year growth in search across the board,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He then brought up social search, like when a car shopper asks a community for help evaluating one vehicle over another, and explained how social search impacts AI search.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of what AI engines are being trained on is what we\u2019re going to social and talking about, what we\u2019re asking,\u201d Rubb explained. \u201cThese context-rich platforms like Reddit or forums that have a lot of this evaluation behavior start feeding back as citation or training data to the AI.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ways to influence AI results<\/p>\n
Marketers need to treat AI as another stakeholder, Rubb said. \u201cAI is reading reviews, it\u2019s consuming information, it\u2019s choosing what to cite about your brand, whether negative or positive,\u201d he explained. \u201cSo, we need to pay attention to what it\u2019s reading, who it\u2019s listening to, what it\u2019s vacuuming up. And where the places are that we can influence, we need to be creating sustained messaging, sustained campaigns to try to influence that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Marketers can use Reddit to get cited, Rubb shared, but being a helper instead of a seller is critical. \u201cReddit users are super, super savvy and feel an injustice when they\u2019re being marketed to, so Reddit\u2019s really about showing up authentically,\u201d he said<\/p>\n
As for Pinterest, Rubb views the platform as an undervalued entity for AI engines that will explode in the next 12 months or so.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe entire way that Pinterest works as this visually rich, context-driven platform is ripe for the way that AI searches, indexes, and cites information,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s just not getting indexed right now; it\u2019s just not showing up. So, if you can get out in front of that before your competitors do, you\u2019re going to have a real competitive advantage.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for a YouTube strategy, Rubb said brands need to design good, helpful content, but he noted that it\u2019s not about measuring the performance of that content. \u201cIt\u2019s really about measuring the conversation that happens in the comment section, in the threads afterwards, where people are really deciding whether or not they believe what you\u2019re pushing,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n
Low visibility of outcomes<\/p>\n
Since it is currently difficult to gauge the effectiveness of an AI answer engine strategy, Rubb advised that marketers need to remain omnichannel focused.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to be everywhere,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you were just trying to game the AI models, the data suggests that it\u2019s like building a sandcastle. Eventually, the tide is going to come in. We\u2019ve seen some data that suggests that citations are up, and then they\u2019re down, and then they go back up again, and there are really not any APIs that suggest why that is yet.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This post was created in partnership with Brandwatch AI answer engines like ChatGPT are jolting an already fragmented…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24834,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[16795,16796,24,25,16794],"class_list":["post-24833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-adops-branded-content","tag-adweek-house","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-possible"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}