Publication
Following in the footsteps of my CIPR 2026 circles 🤨
At the last conference, one of the sessions that I led was dedicated to AdTech and autonomous demand. I’ll share some numbers that are at least exciting, and maybe even shocking for some.
In the footsteps of my circles CIPR 2026 🤨
At the last conference, one of the sessions that I led was dedicated to AdTech and autonomous demand. I’ll share some numbers that are at least exciting, and maybe even shocking for some.
The age of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is not over yet, but a new time is coming - the time of GEO (Generative Engine Optimization). Whether you like it or not, AI has come to revolutionize marketing too - generative optimization shows crazy growth rates: ▫️ traffic growth from GEO since autumn 2025 - x3.3 ▫️ revenue growth with GEO - x6 ▫️ conversion in relation to organics - x2.5
At the moment, GEO is the most growing promotion channel!
Right now there is a transformation of consumer demand - it is becoming autonomous: ▫️ 35% of buyers use AI to select products (RBC + Yandex, December 2025) ▫️ 50% of Internet users regularly use AI assistants ▫️ 10% of requests to Alice are direct product search
Today, the share of decisions made with the participation of AI averages about 10% across all sectors. In the context of individual categories, the level of involvement of neural networks varies from 6.4% to 14.4%. In absolute numbers, traffic from LLM tools is still low, but the growth rate is such that when this flywheel spins up, the rapid flight of the world will begin 🚀
The new reality poses serious challenges to the industry.
To provide accurate advice, models need user data. We ourselves give away some things by signing offers without reading them, but some things, for example, a profile of purchases or viewing content, are only available to the relevant companies - retailers, telecoms, banks, and they do not really want to share this data. To solve this problem, a third player must appear on the market - a data aggregator.
But there is a problem to which I do not yet have an answer. We can think about a solution together 🤔 If LLMs analyze data in a balanced way, how important is brand equity now? In general, does anyone need a brand in the classical sense, or should it simply turn into normal, machine-readable information with arguments? It’s as if the mass consumer no longer looks at the label, but chooses products based on a number of characteristics, using filters on marketplaces 🛍
From all this, an obvious conclusion arises: whoever controls the attention of consumers controls the cache and margins of all those further down the value chain.
What do you use when searching for products? Do you Google it the old fashioned way or go straight to Chat GPT/Gemini? ❔