The New Frontier of Influence on the Internet

This is the new frontier of influence on the internet. And here are 5 things you need to know about it.

Donald Trump’s former digital campaigns guru is working to support clients to create AI content at scale specifically designed to be regurgitated by AI chatbots and targeting Gen Z.

1 in 3 uses of AI chatbots are for search, so this makes a lot of strategic sense. It’s also part of why Elon Musk has decided to build ‘Grokipedia’.

AI is set to become the primary filter of information in our lives - what AI products choose to show us will shape our collective view of the world. We will see this play out at every level of our lives - from geopolitical efforts to control market share of LLM use to managing our children’s relationships with chatbots.

So influencing the engineers creating new AI products right now matters a lot. Meta is already trialling wearable glasses that surface information before your very eyes. We missed the boat with social media design, let's not do it again!

This is bad for democracy, likely triggering an AI-comms arms race where, with journalism floundering, being in the mindseye of the AI eye is a competition based on coding and compute not creativity or connection.

I need to think more deeply about what this means for the future of communication BUT…

Here are 5 things we already know,  that you need to know,  about how AI is changing your brand’s visibility and how to react.

Traditional media ROI is dying. The top 10 AI-cited domains include zero major legacy media brands.

1. People are increasingly using AI to search the internet. Around 1 in 3 AI queries are search-based and Google now forces AI overviews on you without you even clicking.

2. The top 10 domains most cited by AI when it answers queries don’t contain a single major legacy media brand. Reddit, Wikipedia, YouTube and LinkedIn In are all there. You cannot expect the same ROI on traditional media engagement in the age of AI.

3. Brand generated content performs really well, listicles stand out, but organic blogs and similar marketing content also do well. The issue with this is that type of content is a prime target for AI slop - hence AI-generated content scaling strategies.

4. Each AI tool has a different personality. Not just in how it writes or searches for you but also in the sources it uses. Chat GPT loves Wiki. Google loves other Google based content. Co-Pilot, well that’s Bing. You need to know what tool your target audience uses and tailor your strategy to it.

5. Hyperlinks in content no longer matter as much. They are still useful for users but some evidence suggests too many links actually damages your AI search performance. URLs help market your content to AI. You’re better off using natural language in them than randomly generated code.

This is all from Profound data curated by Josh Blyskal who seems to be doing some of the best work on this.