• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, 92 minutes ago

In 1996, Frederick Reichheld wrote that the only meaningful number for businesses was the net promoter score (NPR)—the percentage of customers who would recommend your brand to others. 

Reichheld was right, but the dynamic has changed. While Forrester now argues that  “’Recommendation share’ will oust impressions as a top media KPI,” it isn’t talking about personal recommendations: it means those that are generated in AI-mediated answers.

“As consumers increasingly delegate research and evaluation to engines, marketers will care less about whether people could see an ad and more about whether engines recommend their brand,” Forrester argues in a new report titled, “Predictions 2027: Media And Advertising.”

(Publishers also want to get recommended in AI engines -- even while the engines are ripping them off by scraping their content).  

Forrester continues, “In 2027, paid and earned media dashboards will include recommendation share to measure when and why LLMs favor one brand over another. Prepare for measurement’s most significant shift since offline media digitized by partnering with AEO technology vendors and marketing measurement and optimization services to benchmark your recommendation share.”

That change will certainly affect email marketing units, the most measurable of all channels, since it will have to deal with the cart abandonments that will certainly occur even with AI. 

What is driving this shift?

 “The media industry will enter 2027 under new ownership structures, new regulatory pressures, new gatekeepers, and new revenue streams,” it states. “Familiar business models that worked in the past no longer guarantee reliable growth.” 

Here’s one more change that could affect email:  “Brands will reallocate budget from display and upper-funnel media to answer engine advertising. Ads so relevant they look and feel organic will transform conversational ads from a promising concept into a multibillion-dollar category.”

Meanwhile, here are some changes of interest to the big players: 

-- Three big streamers will ditch subscription-only economics and launch free tiers.

 -- Meta will launch the first scaled advertising platform for AI glasses. 

-- Five Fortune 500 brands will shift sponsorship spend from men’s to women’s sports.

Forrester has gotten this out before the usual plethora of year-end predictions that appear in December. It makes some good points, but don’t forget the NPR: Stay with Reichheld!