Why Brands Need to Be Visible to AI, Not Just Search Engines
In a recent article for Harvard Business Manager, Prof. Dr. Florian Stahl, Professor of Marketing at the University of Mannheim, together with Dr. Andreas Hamann, Postdoctoral Researcher in Quantitative Marketing, and Jürgen Rösger, founder and managing director of Interactive Marketing Group as well as Contentpass, explores how companies can adapt their brand strategy to this new reality. The authors argue that AI is fundamentally reshaping how customers discover products and services and what determines whether a brand is recommended in the first place.
From search rankings to AI recommendations
Generative AI is changing the customer journey. Instead of comparing multiple search results, users increasingly receive a single, synthesized answer. As a result, visibility is no longer determined solely by search engine rankings. Brands that are absent from the information AI models rely on risk becoming invisible during the earliest stages of customers' decision-making.
This shift has significant implications for businesses. The authors point out that while companies have traditionally focused on optimizing websites for human visitors and search engines, they must now also consider how AI systems interpret and represent their brands.
IKEA as an example
The article illustrates this transformation through the example of IKEA. When redesigning its digital assembly instructions, the company initially aimed to reduce customer support requests by making the instructions easier to understand. It soon expanded this effort by restructuring the content so that it could also be reliably interpreted by generative AI systems.
By standardizing terminology, introducing consistent process logic, and organizing information into machine-readable formats, IKEA made its knowledge more accessible to AI models. According to the authors, this significantly increased the company's presence in AI-generated recommendations for topics such as home furnishing, DIY projects, and gift ideas.
The example demonstrates a broader shift: organizations are no longer competing solely for attention in search engines, but increasingly for relevance within AI-generated responses.
Four principles for AI-era brand relevance
Based on current market developments and empirical research, the authors identify four principles that determine whether brands are accurately represented and recommended by AI systems:
- Trust depends on the quality, consistency, and reliability of a company's data rather than on brand awareness alone.
- Visibility requires ensuring that up-to-date, structured information is readily available across the open web so that AI models can access it.
- Authority comes from presenting a clear and consistent thematic identity, making it easier for AI systems to understand what a brand represents.
- Affinity reflects the importance of maintaining a consistent tone of voice, allowing AI-generated descriptions to accurately convey a brand's identity.
Together, these principles suggest that successful brand management increasingly depends on managing structured information as carefully as marketing communications.
A strategic challenge for business leaders
The article concludes that AI should no longer be viewed merely as a marketing tool, but as strategic infrastructure. As AI increasingly mediates interactions between companies and customers, organizations need to understand how their brands are represented by these systems and actively manage that representation over time.
For managers, the central question is no longer simply how to improve online visibility, but how to ensure their brand remains relevant in an AI-driven world where recommendations are increasingly generated by machines rather than search engines.