Your newest target audience? Bots.

VP, Business Development

For years, we’ve built campaigns, websites and search strategies around one audience: people. That audience hasn’t changed. People are still searching, visiting websites, reading reviews, comparing options and making decisions.

But increasingly, there’s another audience influencing parts of that journey: AI.

Consumers are turning to tools like ChatGPT, Gemini and other AI-powered search experiences to research products and ask for recommendations.

Adobe found that 39% of U.S. consumers surveyed had used AI for online shopping. And in the first three months of 2026, traffic from AI sources to U.S. retail websites increased 393% year over year.

Capgemini Research Institute saw a similar shift. In its survey of 12,000 consumers, 58% said generative AI tools had become their go-to in place of traditional search engines for product and service recommendations, up from 25% the year before.

The way people discover brands is evolving.

Traditional search often starts with a few keywords. AI lets consumers provide much more context. Instead of searching for “best running shoes or best SUV,” someone can ask:

“I run about 15 miles a week, mostly on pavement, have wide feet and want to spend less than $150. What shoes should I consider?”

Or:

“I need a reliable SUV for a family of five, mostly for commuting, but I want enough cargo space for road trips. What should I look at?”

Consumers still visit websites and do their own research. In many cases, AI is simply the starting point — helping them narrow the field before they click through and decide for themselves.

That introduces a new consideration for marketers: AI systems are increasingly interpreting information about brands before, and sometimes while, consumers are evaluating them.

This is where GEO comes in.

Generative engine optimization, or GEO, is focused on improving a brand’s visibility and representation within AI-powered search and answer experiences. It doesn’t replace SEO. Google says traditional SEO best practices remain foundational to appearing in generative AI experiences such as AI overviews and AI mode. Its guidance continues to emphasize helpful, reliable, people-first content and strong technical fundamentals. GEO builds on that work.

This doesn’t mean writing websites for robots.

People remain the primary audience. Great marketing still needs to connect with them. Websites still need to be useful. Brands still need ideas, creativity and a reason for someone to care. But AI also needs to understand the basics.

What does your company do? Who do you serve? Where do you operate? What makes your product different? What expertise do you have? And is there credible information available to support those things? Websites, product information, case studies, reviews, thought leadership and other sources across the web all contribute to that picture.

The goal isn’t to trick an algorithm into recommending your brand. It’s to make sure there is enough clear, useful and trustworthy information available for AI systems to accurately represent your brand — and know when it’s relevant.

Your audience is still human. But the journey has changed.

People still make the final call — buying the shoes, booking the hotel, choosing the service provider. AI is just shaping how they get there.

As that behavior grows, marketers need to create experiences that work for people while making sure the systems helping them search understand the brand, too.

Knowing your audience still matters. But now there’s another question worth asking:

Do the bots know who you are?

How GKV can help

GKV can help brands understand how they currently appear across AI-powered search experiences and identify opportunities to improve that presence.

Our GEO capabilities include:

AI visibility and competitive benchmarking: Measure how often your brand appears in relevant AI-generated responses and how that visibility compares with key competitors.
AI sentiment analysis: Understand how AI platforms describe and characterize your brand, and how that perception compares with competitors.
Source and citation analysis: Identify the websites, publications and other sources AI platforms are relying on when answering questions about your brand and category.
GEO strategy: Turn those findings into actionable recommendations across your website, content, SEO, PR and other marketing efforts.

The first step is understanding where you stand today: Do AI platforms know who you are, what you do and why you’re relevant and how that compares with your competitors?

GKV can help you find out and build a strategy to improve it. So your newest target audience, bots, find you. And find you preferable.