This article was based on the interview with Imri Marcus, CEO and Co-Founder at Brandlight by Greg Kihlström, Marketing Technology keynote speaker for The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström podcast. Listen to the original episode here:
For the better part of two decades, we, as marketing leaders, have organized our digital strategies, budgets, and teams around a deceptively simple premise: winning the auction for attention on a search results page. We mastered the art and science of keywords, backlinks, and domain authority. We built entire departments dedicated to capturing that click, that single moment of intent that would bring a potential customer from Google’s world into our own. It was a well-understood, if constantly shifting, game. We knew the rules, and for the most part, we knew how to play. That game isn’t over, but the field is being completely redesigned while we’re still on it.
The rise of generative AI, conversational interfaces, and AI-native browsers represents not just another channel to manage, but a fundamental reordering of the customer journey. We are moving from a world of search queries and results pages to one of conversational discovery and synthesized answers. This shift, which Imri Marcus of Brandlight aptly describes, is causing a collapse of the traditional marketing funnel. The entire process—from initial awareness to deep consideration and even final purchase—can now occur within a single conversational “black box.” For brands, this is a daunting proposition. The levers we’ve spent years learning to pull are losing their efficacy, and the metrics we’ve relied on to prove our value are becoming obsolete. The new imperative isn’t to be a result; it’s to be the answer.
The Battle to Be “The Answer,” Not Just a Result
The most profound shift we’re facing is the change in our objective. For years, the goal was to secure a top position on the search engine results page (SERP). That position was a doorway. Our job was to make that doorway as appealing as possible to earn a click, bringing the user to our owned property where we could control the narrative. In the world of AI-driven discovery, that model is being turned on its head. The AI is no longer just a doorway; it’s the entire room. It acts as a concierge, a research assistant, and a trusted advisor all at once, synthesizing information from across the web to provide a single, definitive answer.
As Marcus points out, this changes everything. The fight is no longer for visibility among ten blue links, but for inclusion and favorable representation within that final, synthesized response.
“You’re not competing to be a result on page one. You’re now actually competing to be the answer… the customer journey is happening inside a black box, right? The moment of discovery is happening inside these AI engines… Consideration happens within that black box… you have an AI that can act as a frontline sales person for your brand or for your competitor.”
This concept of the AI as a “frontline salesperson” should resonate with every marketing leader. We’ve lost direct access to the customer at the most critical moment of consideration. Instead, we are vying to influence an algorithm that is, for all intents and purposes, making a recommendation on our behalf. This means our brand narrative, our product differentiators, and our value proposition must be so clear, consistent, and authoritatively present across the web that the AI can’t help but represent us accurately. The alternative is that the AI either ignores us completely or, worse, allows our competitors to shape the narrative. This is a battle for influence, not just traffic.
The New Levers: Moving Beyond Legacy SEO
If the objective has changed, it stands to reason that the tactics must change as well. The mature, well-defined practice of SEO, which has served us so well, is insufficient for this new paradigm. Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) requires a different mindset and a more sophisticated, data-driven approach. The brute-force tactics of yesterday are simply not effective when dealing with large language models that understand context, semantics, and authority in a way that previous algorithms never could.
The focus must shift from chasing algorithmic loopholes to genuinely informing the model. According to Marcus, this requires a deep, data-centric understanding of what sources the AI engines are turning to within your specific vertical.
“Keyword stuffing doesn’t work nearly as well when you have LLMs that really understand semantic meaning. Backlink schemas, they don’t really work when you have models that can weigh authority and consistency over just, you know, link volume… When someone asks a question in your vertical, where does ChatGPT go? Where does Perplexity go, right? Then, which types of pieces of content will it choose to dive deeper into, then to synthesize into the answer?”
This calls for a strategic evolution of our content and SEO teams. The work becomes less about tactical optimization and more about information architecture and data science. Leaders must ask their teams: Is our product information structured, consistent, and easily digestible by an AI? Are we present with authority not just on our own sites, but on the third-party review sites, forums, and publications that the AI trusts? Are we creating content that answers the nuanced, “jobs-to-be-done” questions users are asking, rather than just targeting high-volume keywords? Reverse-engineering the AI’s “brain” for your category becomes the primary task. It’s a move from gaming an algorithm to educating an intelligence.
Redefining Measurement: From Clicks to Influence
Perhaps the most uncomfortable shift for marketing leaders will be in the realm of measurement. For decades, we have relied on a concrete set of metrics: impressions, clicks, cost-per-click, and conversions. We built our dashboards, our justifications for budget, and our careers on the ability to draw a straight line from an action to a result. In a world where the customer journey happens inside an AI interface and may never result in a click to our website, that framework crumbles.
The new currency is influence, a metric that is inherently more difficult to quantify but no less critical to our success. We are entering an era where our content’s primary audience might not be a human, but an AI. The value of that content is not in the direct traffic it generates, but in its ability to shape the millions of downstream conversations that AI will have with potential customers.
“It’s the first time in history where as a brand you can add a piece of content that no person ever sees, but the AI engine saw it and it’s now completely affecting entire customer journeys… The measurement really shifts to influence, how often are you included, when you are included, with what type of sentiment, how are you described, right? How accurate is the model about you?”
This demands a new set of KPIs for our dashboards. Marcus suggests starting with two key metrics: AI Visibility Share (out of all high-intent queries in your category, how often are you part of the answer?) and Representation Accuracy (when you are included, are you described accurately, positively, and in a way that reflects your brand strategy?). This is a move away from direct, last-touch attribution and toward a more sophisticated model of brand measurement that mirrors the way we’ve always measured offline influence. It’s a change that will require new tools, new thinking, and a fair bit of re-education for stakeholders who are accustomed to the comforting certainty of a click-through rate. The challenge is to prove value even when the path to purchase is obscured within the AI’s black box.
The Road Ahead
The era of AI-driven discovery is not a hypothetical future; its foundations are being laid right now with every conversation a consumer has with ChatGPT, Perplexity, or the next emerging platform. The familiar marketing funnel has been upended, the tried-and-true rules of SEO are being rewritten, and our long-standing measurement frameworks are proving inadequate for this new reality. This is not a change that can be delegated to the SEO team with a memo about “looking into AI.” It is a foundational shift that requires strategic oversight from the highest levels of marketing leadership.
For those of us at the helm, the path forward requires a return to first principles. It demands agility, a deep curiosity, and a willingness to abandon comfortable assumptions. The brands that will thrive in this next chapter are the ones that begin today to understand and map this new landscape. They will invest in the data and tools necessary to measure influence, not just clicks. They will reorient their content strategies to educate the AI, and they will build teams that are as fluent in data science as they are in brand storytelling. The race is no longer about winning a click; it’s about earning a recommendation in a global, AI-powered conversation. The time to get started was yesterday.
