Blog

Subject: How AI is changing the economics of visibility for advertisers – what happens when being “present” is no longer enough, and being recommended becomes the new reach.

Having spent much of my career in data and research, I’m often asked: “in a sea of data, what is the ONE metric I need to really pay attention to?” My real, honest answer is that you should never look at just one (nor should you get lost in thousands, but that’s another article…). When forced to pick just one, I pick unaided awareness: it matters less what people know about your brand and matters more that they think of you first.

I still believe that.

But as we all know, there is a second kind of awareness emerging. Brands must now be top-of-mind in a consumer’s memory as well as in the AI systems they use to help them make decisions. So, when we talk about the economics of visibility, we need to ask, not one, but two distinct questions: Do people think of us and does the AI think to include us?

While the numbers are hard to pin down with certainty, multiple reports suggest 25-55% of consumer decision journeys now include AI, depending on demographic, category, and whether people even really know that they’re using AI! Whatever the number is, it’s past the threshold where advertisers who don’t recognize and act on this reality will fall (or are already quickly falling) behind. The good news? First-mover advantage here isn’t just competitive – it’s compounding, since AI systems build trust in what they’ve already seen work.

The risk here goes deeper than most advertisers realize. A brand may invest heavily in creating awareness, thereby stimulating category demand and teaching consumers what to look for, only to have an AI system recommend a competitor when the consumer is ready to build a shortlist or buy. In this scenario, the brand creating demand may not be the brand capturing it, and worse yet, might be paying to drive conversions for their competitors.

How is this happening?

AI decides differently than humans. Humans are complex and make decisions through a combination of memory, emotions, habit, identity and experience whereas AI is more straightforward and “makes decisions” by interpreting a question, finding available information, and predicting which answers are most relevant and credible. That’s it.

Simply stated, if the evidence isn’t out there to convince the AI, the AI isn’t recommending it. In practice this means:

• Brands now have two very different audiences: humans and machines
  Both of whom are convinced in different ways
• Brand distinctiveness and purpose matters more than it did before
  AI has a hard time connecting with generic brands, so mean what you say and say what you mean
• Already-established brands may have a leg-up
  Brands that are widely discussed, well-documented and frequently cited give AI more evidence to work with
• Brand credibility needs to be earned outside of owned assets
  This is one of the key things AI looks for
• Consideration sets are condensed
  What happens to fourth place ranked brands when AI only recommends three?
• We’ve introduced a whole new layer of brand risk
  AI can represent your brand in a way that you did not intend
• We will need to focus on building a brand… and proving its worth with evidence
  AI needs to be convinced

So, what happens now, when being “present” is no longer enough, and being included (especially by AI) becomes the new reach?

Today’s CMOs are in the unenviable position of navigating a massive industry shift at a time marked by economic uncertainty and a culture driven by a desire for consistency and reassurance vs. risk and big-bets. It’s a lot.

As a result, we’ve talked about it A LOT! We’ve gone to conferences. We’ve questioned our strategies. We’ve deployed AI approaches, sometimes with confidence and sometimes with trepidation. We’ve looked to our competitors to make sure we’re not falling behind. And we’ve worried that if we don’t move fast enough, we’ll become obsolete but if we move too fast, we’ll make unfixable mistakes.

So what to do?

Importantly, we do not need to (and nor should we) hand over our marketing to machines. Our job is still to build brands that mean something to people. We now just also need to make sure AI understands what makes them worth choosing.

Five things to remember as you navigate this evolution:

1. You do not need a perfect AI strategy: Everything is changing too fast for anyone to have a polished, perfected playbook. The better approach is to focus on building and committing to a learning system: establish a baseline, test with purpose, understand what changed, and keep adapting.

2. Your brand investment still matters: AI recommendations do not emerge from a vacuum. You still need a strong brand to generate strong signals (evidence) for AI to respond to.

3. You already have many of the capabilities you need: You likely have experts in many departments (e.g. consumer research, PR, ecomm, etc.). But since AI sees the collective footprint of the company (not individual departments), a goal could be to make sure these departments work together to tell a cohesive story.

4. You do not need to optimize for every possible AI query. Know what areas you want your brand to be known for and focus there.

5. Your human judgement still matters… a lot. AI will elevate your brand, but you still decide what the brand should stand for. The more clarity and consistency you have on this point, the better your brand will perform with AI. Fundamentally, you still need to decide:

• What you want to be known for
• What you can credibly claim
• What must remain distinctly yours
• How you create emotional connections
• Where you should resist short-term optimization

As an industry, we have done this before. We’ve navigated shifts and priorities in visibility many times over (from television to search to social and everything in between), but every time the job has really remained the same: understand people, make deliberate and purposeful choices, build a brand worth choosing, and then ensure it can be found wherever decisions are being shaped.

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Kristin Wozniak is Chief Data and Growth Officer at Cosmo5, where she leads analytics and growth strategy across North America. She is known for challenging traditional approaches to marketing and data, pushing beyond reporting to turn intelligence into real business impact.

A strong advocate for more human-centric leadership, Kristin has built her career on the belief that data alone doesn’t drive decisions—people do. She champions a “data-informed” approach that blends analytics with experience, intuition, and context, helping brands navigate an increasingly complex, algorithm-driven landscape.

Recognized as one of Toronto’s Top 50 Leaders in 2022 and 2024 and named Media Leader of the Year in 2021, Kristin is passionate about building high-performing, inclusive teams and redefining how organizations think about growth, leadership, and the role of data in both.