• by Leah Brier Bienstock , Jess Manganelli , Yesterday

ChatGPT doesn’t display a carousel. It makes a choice.

No scroll bar.

No product grid.

No second opinion.

It’s just one answer. One link. And now, the ability to buy immediately.

We’ve entered a new era of commerce, one where the shelf is invisible but more influential than ever. And for the first time, it’s not shaped by shoppers—it’s shaped by systems.

When OpenAI quietly announced that ChatGPT would begin earning affiliate commissions for product recommendations, it didn’t just mark a shift in monetization. It marked a shift in how visibility is earned.

AI isn’t just surfacing options anymore; it’s shaping decisions. And now, it’s paid to pick. Visibility is no longer something you can buy with media or build through storytelling alone. It’s something you have to structure for.

For years, brands have been built for discovery. Show up in the right place, say the right thing, optimize the funnel, repeat. A strong idea made people feel something, and a smart media plan made sure they saw it. 

But recommendation engines don’t reward layers.
They reward coherence. They demand structural discipline. 

As marketers, we’re no longer designing for discovery. We must design for selection. The system doesn’t care if your ad is clever or beautiful. It’s scanning for organization.
Are names and claims consistent?
Do product hierarchies make sense?
Do claims build on one another instead of contradicting them?

These may sound like operational details, but they’ve become strategic signals that we’re already seeing in action. As part of a larger push to unify its global product architecture, Nike has invested in taxonomy and naming governance designed to make its vast catalog legible to both people and machines. It’s the kind of structural clarity that future-proofs a brand when systems, not shoppers, are doing the sorting.

In a comparative study, Salesforce (known for its disciplined brand anchoring and taxonomy) maintained visibility in AI-recommendation systems far better than HubSpot, whose structural signals were weaker.

And even giants like L’Oréal are learning that size isn’t enough: one audit found their AI presence lacked key signals such as formulation and price context, limiting visibility in generative-search results.

Across categories, the pattern is the same. Brands that invest in clarity before models start hard-coding assumptions are the ones being surfaced first. 

You can’t prompt your way into trust. To be chosen, a brand must make sense—not just to people, but to the systems filtering the choices for them. The future of visibility will be written into the architecture. 

This isn’t about AI replacing creativity.
This is about AI revealing which brands are structurally sound enough to be seen.

So where do brands start? Audit product hierarchy, simplify claims, and standardize structure. The work of strategy now happens earlier and deeper, in the bones of the brand, not just its surface. 

Because in this new ecosystem, being remembered isn’t enough. Brands need to be recognizable to the shopper, and to the system deciding what they see. Which means the real question is: Does the platform believe you’re worth recommending?