Your Next Customer Is Asking a Machine
As buyers turn to chatbots instead of search engines, the question for marketers is no longer where they rank, but whether they are mentioned.
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For two decades, being found meant ranking on Google. A customer typed a few words, scanned a page of links and clicked. That habit is changing quickly. In South Africa, 40% of consumers surveyed for Discovery Bank and Visa's SpendTrend26 report now use AI tools weekly to help decide what to buy, where to buy it, or whether to buy at all. When a customer asks a chatbot which accountant, insurer or hotel to choose, the answer arrives as a short recommendation rather than a list of links. The marketing question has shifted from where you rank to whether the machine mentions you at all.
CONTEXT AND BACKGROUND
South Africa is further along this path than many assume. Microsoft’s latest figures place the country first in Africa for generative AI adoption, at 23.1% of people aged 15 to 64. The effect on web traffic is already visible elsewhere. Chartbeat data shows that search referrals to small publishers fell by 60% over two years, while referrals from ChatGPT, though growing quickly, remain under one percent of the total. Answers are replacing visits, and the lost visits are not coming back by another route.
The shift is also becoming transactional. Google’s AI Mode now finds and books restaurant tables in South Africa, searching across booking platforms and presenting a curated selection with direct booking links. The machine makes the shortlist before the diner visits a single website.
INSIGHT AND ANALYSIS
This is a new marketing discipline, sometimes called answer-engine or generative engine optimisation, and it differs from search in three uncomfortable ways. First, the brand’s own website matters less. McKinsey estimates that only five to ten percent of the sources AI search draws on are brand-owned sites, and found that just 16% of brands systematically track how they perform in AI search. Reputation earned elsewhere, in reviews, media coverage and forums, now shapes what the machine says.
Second, the channel cannot be seen clearly. Researchers at the University of St Gallen found that the sources cited in AI answers overlap by only a third to two-fifths from one day to the next, concluded that visibility cannot be measured like a search ranking, and recommended tracking it over rolling windows of two to four weeks. A brand can be recommended on Monday and absent on Tuesday.
Third, there is no simple way to correct the record. A search listing can be edited. A model’s description of your company cannot.
I have previously written about this. In an article on South African journalism, I argued that advertising revenue has drained to global platforms and that AI-generated answers now threaten the click-through traffic publishers still depend on. Every brand now faces a version of the same problem.
IMPLICATIONS
Marketing leaders should treat answer-engine visibility as a channel in its own right. That means regularly asking the major AI tools the questions customers ask, recording whether the brand appears and how it is described, and tracking the results over weeks rather than trusting a single snapshot. It means investing in the third-party reputation that models draw on, from credible media coverage to accurate listings and genuine reviews. It also means assigning clear ownership, because this work falls between marketing, communications and digital teams and is easily neglected. Regulators are beginning to act. The UK’s competition authority now requires Google to attribute sources with clear links in its AI results and allows publishers to opt out of powering them. South Africa has no equivalent, so businesses must protect their own interests for now.
CLOSING TAKEAWAY
The shopfront has moved. For many customers, the first conversation about your business now happens with a machine that summarises what others have said about you, in words you did not choose. Brands that learn how that conversation works will be named. Brands that ignore it will simply be left out, without ever knowing that the customer asked.
Johan Steyn is a prominent AI thought leader, speaker, and author with a deep understanding of artificial intelligence’s impact on business and society. He is passionate about ethical AI development and its role in shaping a better future. Find out more about Johan’s work at https://www.aiforbusiness.net
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