Artificial intelligence is changing how consumers discover products, pushing brands to look beyond search rankings and focus on whether AI tools recommend them. In the fourth episode of The Hook, Aayush Ailawadi and Alex Matthews explore how AI is transforming the way brands understand consumers, create campaigns and make marketing decisions.
Their conversations with Google’s search leadership, marketing professionals and travel technology company RateGain examine a shift from searching for links to asking for answers. For marketers, that raises a question: how do you reach a consumer when an AI assistant helps decide which products they see?
From Search Results To Recommendations
Google’s head of search Liz reid, VP-Search, Google described the company’s approach as bringing AI responses and information from the web together, allowing users to move more easily between conventional search and AI Mode.
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The search box is also changing. In the interview, she outlined an experience that would accommodate different inputs, including images and PDFs, alongside typed questions.
Beyond answering a query, Google discussed information agents that could monitor developments and alert users when relevant information becomes available. Examples included tracking new theatre shows, museum exhibitions or financial information that meets specific conditions. She also described using agentic coding to create personalised visualisations, dashboards and small applications within search.
These changes could give search a larger role in researching, monitoring and organising information. They also change the points at which brands can reach consumers.
Why Visibility Beyond A Website Matters
The episode’s marketing discussion centres on generative engine optimisation: getting a brand or product to appear in answers generated by AI.
Aarti Samant, Founder, Sorted & Content Creator argued that consumers increasingly use conversational queries with specific requirements. Rather than entering a few keywords, a shopper might ask for the best protein powder under Rs 3,000, submit a screenshot or point a camera at a product. In that environment, brands need to establish both relevance and credibility.
A detailed product website remains part of that effort. Samant also identified customer reviews on Reddit and Amazon, along with commentary from creators, as material AI tools may draw on when assessing products.
The argument was that brands need a consistent, credible presence across the internet, because a website alone may not provide enough information to earn a recommendation. “It’s literally about what AI chooses to recommend,” the Samant said.
AI Guides Choices, But Buyers Still Decide
The discussion also distinguished between AI-assisted research and allowing an agent to complete a purchase where the talk veered that the consumers were using AI for initial research, comparisons and narrowing their options before visiting websites. Fully delegating purchases to AI agents remained a further step, with trust still a constraint.
Samant predicted that agent-led commerce could develop over the next two to three years.
Turning Consumer Signals Into Campaigns
RateGain offered an example of how consumer data informs targeted advertising. Bhanu Chopra, CMD RateGain Travel said RateGain has data partnerships with almost 300 brands, providing information about searches and bookings on travel websites. Someone researching flights to Bali, for instance, could subsequently receive hotel advertising based on signals about their destination and intended travel dates.
Chopra said RateGain also offers hotels a performance-based arrangement, funding digital marketing and receiving a commission on bookings generated through those campaigns. He claimed its approach could improve return on advertising spend and conversion performance, citing uplifts of around 40% to 50%. Those figures were presented as company claims in the interview.
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