• by Sarah Mahoney , Yesterday

For two decades, marketers have learned to play by search’s rules — gaming keywords, metadata, and SEO to get found by humans. But as generative AI rewires the discovery process, those rules are collapsing. Analysts say the next battle for brand visibility will be fought not just in human search results, but inside algorithmic ones, where large language models decide which brands surface first.

Greg Carlucci, senior director analyst at Gartner, says that shift is exposing a deep skills gap among marketing leaders. “CMOs moving forward will need a far greater understanding of technology to maximize their role,” he tells Marketing Daily. “A lot of the traditional skills underneath the CMO are now clickable — but now there’s the added technical fluency required to make sure your brand is even visible in AI environments.”

Gartner’s new research illustrates both how far consumers — and marketers — have come, and how far they still have to go. Walmart’s announcement that it would partner with ChatGPT last week shows AI shopping is ready for the masses, as have similar partnerships from Etsy and Shopify. Gartner finds 44% of U.S. shoppers say they’re willing to let AI help with tasks like researching products, narrowing options or reordering items.

But that interest divides sharply by generation and income. Millennials lead at 56%, followed by Gen Z (48%) and Gen X (47%), while just 25% of boomers express interest. Among high-income consumers, 55% are ready to use AI shopping tools, compared with only 25% of low-income consumers.

Consumers are curious, Carlucci adds, “but adoption takes time — they need to understand how these tools work, and whether they actually like them.”

That uncertainty hasn’t slowed retailers. Forty-five percent have already implemented conversational chat for shoppers, with another 41% planning to do so, according to Gartner.  Yet marketers are lagging behind. Carlucci says roughly 87% of retail CMOs now use generative AI in campaign work, but few understand how LLMs interpret and recommend products.

“Success will depend on content quality,” he says. “The companies investing in educational, high-value content — and maintaining well-structured, up-to-date product detail pages — are the ones showing up more often in generative search tools.”

That challenge is becoming more urgent as retail giants rewire how shoppers interact with AI. Walmart, Etsy, and Shopify have all announced integrations with ChatGPT, allowing consumers to research, compare, and even buy without leaving the chat.

Deutsche Bank analyst Steve Powers says those moves highlight both opportunity and risk: “The mandate of CPG marketers, in theory, could broaden significantly — from solely marketing to human consumers to now needing also to ‘market’ to the AI system itself, ideally satisfying algorithms to secure optimal placement and recommendation.”

As Wall Street Journal columnist Jinjoo Lee recently warned, that shift, which will allow consumers to bypass stores’ websites and apps, “could come at a cost.”

She cites airline companies’ rocky relationship with third-party booking sites, and notes that easy comparisons and direct checkout “could hurt retailers’ customer loyalty and take away add-on sale opportunities.”

And it could also put a dent in  retailers’  ad revenue. Per eMarketer data, more than 60% of the $59 billion companies are expected to spend on U.S. retailers’ ad business this year is tied to search placements on those retailers’ sites and apps.