Q+A: The huge AI shift every business needs to understand
episodePreviously titled “Q+A: The AI shift every business needs to understand” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 2, 2026
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What is the AI shift every business needs to understand?
Welcome to Fear and Greed Q&A, where we ask and answer questions about business, investing, economics, politics, and more. I'm Sean Aylmer. For the last 20 years, businesses have focused on optimizing their websites for search engines. But what happens when consumers stop searching and start asking AI? As tools like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude become part of everyday life, brands are facing a new challenge, making sure they're visible not just to people, but to the AI assistants, increasingly helping people make decisions. It's a fundamental shift in the way consumers discover products, services and information online. Lonnie Stark is Vice President of Strategy and Product at Adobe, which is a great supporter of Fear and Greed.
She joins me this morning from California. Lonnie, welcome to Fear and Greed Q&A.
Thank you for inviting me, Sean. And this is a hot topic right now.
It sure is. Now, I mean, a decade ago, when I was in newspapers and digital mastheads, it was all about search engine optimization. Today, it's all about AI. How significant is that shift?
It is significant. So at Adobe, we've been tracking this trend for over two years now. And what we started to see was that the referral traffic from these AI engines were increasing at four digit percentage points.
How are AI tools like ChatGPT changing consumer behavior?
started about two years ago. We're tracking it. It was about a 4,000% increase year over year. The latest report is showing about a 200% increase for travel sites. So again, the numbers are still astonishing. The base is growing and we are all spending more time asking questions about everything in ChatGPT, in perplexity and AI answers.
Okay. I mean, before we kind of get into what that means for businesses, is it the UX, the customer user experience that makes us use AI? So my partner, Jackie and I, we're traveling in sort of six weeks time. I get annoyed when I look up somewhere to look in Beijing, for example, we're going to, and it comes up with websites because I actually don't want a website anymore. I want an answer. And it's quite phenomenal. And you mentioned travel 200%. I mean, maybe I'm just typical of how it works.
You are typical. So what's happening is we've always been talking about this idea that you and I, we want personalized experiences. And the conversation that's happening in these AI surfaces have become very personal to you. And I think it's a matter of convenience and relevance. So what's become a business imperative, as you brought up, is not just optimizing the content we provide on our websites and other sources for humans, but also to feed information to these AI engines so that they're able to take it, synthesize it, and accurately represent offers, brands to you. And what we've seen in terms of the behavior is that sometimes that answer is great. So we call that zero click, meaning they don't even come to your website.
They see what they need. Other times they're clicking through on a referral because at some point, perhaps you want more information. You want to book.
Why is visibility to AI assistants becoming crucial for brands?
You've talked about IRI being a new customer. Is that where you're going in what you've just said there?
Yes. So the model that we recommend that marketers and businesses think about is that there's a lot of discussion about how AI can help within an organization for productivity. And we provide agents for that as well as Adobe. However, in this case, it's about AI as your audience. So how do you make sure you're providing information to AI? And there's four things that we think marketers need to look at, which is very much baked into our latest product innovations. One is, can AI find your content? About 80% of the companies we work with, they have content out there for humans, AI can't read it. Two is brand clarity. How does AI understand your brand? So if you are a brand that's focused on value conscious versus luxury,
Is that coming across in the recommendations? Third is brand authority. So what's important here is just like people, when you say, Sean, you're great, I'm also checking with other people, whether they know you, what's happening.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the AI shift every business needs to understand?
0:05–1:25
2
How are AI tools like ChatGPT changing consumer behavior?
1:25–3:15
3
Why is visibility to AI assistants becoming crucial for brands?
3:15–5:21
4
What does Adobe's Brand Visibility do for businesses?
5:21–9:37
5
How should brands optimize content for AI discovery?
9:37–12:05
Speakers
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