The New Rules of Brand Marketing: Impressing the AI Agent

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In a consumer landscape where shoppers are increasingly using AI chatbots for product recommendations and shopping assistance, brands are now marketing to a new kind of customer: the AI agent.

According to Brent Crane at The New York Times:

• Marketing to AI agents requires a different approach. Instead of appealing to emotions, brands are making product information more factual, detailed, and structured so AI systems can easily find and understand it.
• There’s a lot of money riding on getting that right. Morgan Stanley estimates AI could influence as much as 20% of US e-commerce spending, or $385 billion, by 2030.
• But Crane also notes that AI models are changing so quickly that techniques designed to appeal to them today may soon stop working. That’s why some marketers argue that businesses should stick to fundamental marketing principles rather than trying to ‘game’ AI.

Our take? Remember when businesses were desperately trying to please Google’s algorithm? Welcome to the next round. Generative engine optimization (GEO) is essentially SEO for the AI era: making your content easier for AI tools to find, understand, and recommend.

The good news is that many of the basics are familiar: clear, detailed product information, accurate, structured data, and useful content that answers the questions your customers are actually asking.