• by Phil Case , Yesterday

For decades, marketers have designed strategies around the middle funnel: the consideration phase where consumers research, compare, and slowly warm up to a decision. It was assumed that buyers needed time, repetition, and education to move forward. That assumption is beginning to break down.

Across industries, the customer journey has become shorter. AI-driven discovery is compressing the time it takes for consumers to decide what to buy, which brands to trust, and whether something is worth their attention at all. Answers that once required weeks of research now take seconds. As a result, the traditional consideration phase isn’t shrinking; it’s collapsing.

AI has effectively automated much of the middle. Product education, feature comparisons, reviews, and alternatives are increasingly surfaced, summarized, and prioritized by algorithms before a consumer ever visits a brand site. That doesn’t eliminate nurturing or retargeting, but it does change their role. Rather than driving decisions, these tactics now work best when they reinforce relevance, familiarity, and trust that has already been established. Still, much of the consideration and research phase is either outsourced to AI or skipped entirely.

Instead, purchases are happening in one of two extremes:

On one end is impulse. These decisions occur in seconds, not days. A single product card, an AI-generated recommendation, or a moment of hyper-relevance is enough to trigger a yes or a no. There is little room for extended persuasion. In this world, visibility, clarity, and immediacy matter more than explanation. If a brand’s value isn't instantly understandable and desirable, the opportunity disappears.

On the opposite end is trust.

Trust-based decisions are reserved for brands consumers already feel emotionally safe with. These are the brands people return to automatically, often without comparison. In these cases, consumers don’t ask AI what to choose. They already know. The decision was made long before the moment of purchase, built through a brand’s consistency in communicating value propositions. Trust collapses the journey entirely, because the brand has already earned permission.

What’s diminishing is everything in between.

Traditional consideration tactics such as education-heavy content, side-by-side comparisons, long nurture sequences, all still exist, but their influence has been redefined. When AI can summarize “the best option” instantly, consumers have little patience for prolonged evaluation. Brands either need to win fast, or be remembered deeply. Therefore, mid-funnel tactics should focus on accelerating impulse or deepening trust.

Impulse requires simplicity through clear positioning, unmistakable value, and immediate relevance. Trust requires long-term investment: showing up consistently, delivering reliably, and building emotional equity over time. Both demand focus, and neither leaves much room for vague messaging or incremental persuasion.

The consideration phase isn’t gone, it’s just no longer where decisions are made. In an AI-compressed world, brands will increasingly live at the edges: chosen instantly, or chosen instinctively. Everything else risks being skipped.<