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AI-powered search is rewriting the rules – What does it mean for the creative and media industry?

How people search for information is changing - and if you’re in a creative or media role, you may be wondering what that has to do with you.

Shayna Burns
Shayna Burns

06 August 2025

7 minute read

This article was originally published in AdNews.

For decades, the industry has designed campaigns, creative and media strategies to drive visibility, attention and action - usually in the form of a click. But what happens when audiences are receiving a summarised response from AI and are no longer clicking? 

As someone who works at the intersection of SEO and generative engine optimisation (GEO), I’ve been watching this shift unfold up close. And while SEO teams and digital publishers have been the first to feel the impact, it’s becoming clear that this change touches everyone in the marketing and advertising ecosystem - including creative and media.

Here’s what you need to know.

The rise of AI-powered search 

When someone searches for answers, recommendations or inspiration today, they’re increasingly likely to receive a response generated by a large language model (LLM) than see a list of blue links. Google’s AI Overviews (and upcoming AI Mode), ChatGPT and Perplexity are changing how people gather information and evaluate brands.

BrightEdge data from May 2025, reviewed one year after AI Overviews launched in the U.S., shows websites are seeing 49% more search impressions but averaging 30% fewer click-throughs. 

More people are searching than ever, but fewer are clicking.

This signals a fundamental shift: visibility and influence is no longer just about ranking. It’s about being cited, summarised and surfaced in AI responses.

Creative is getting stripped, and brand is being flattened

One of the lesser discussed impacts of generative search is the loss of brand tone and personality in the search experience.

Over the last two years, brands have been losing control over how they appear in search results. First, search engines began using AI to rewrite titles and descriptions based on user queries. Now, LLMs are summarising entire pages in their own voice. 

That witty campaign copy? Flattened. That beautifully structured story arc? Condensed into a few useful but generic bullet points. 

What’s more, generative engines reference far more than your website when crafting stories of your brand. They look at news articles, interviews, social bios, forums, product reviews and more. According to a 2024 report by Surfer, AI Overviews reference an average of five sources per query. This means a brand’s story needs to live more widely than its website.

So how do we protect and express brand voice in an ecosystem that rewrites everything? And how do brands undertaking a repositioning project ensure their new messaging is picked up? 

The challenge - and opportunity - is to create content that can survive deconstruction and still feel recognisably of the brand. 

How creative and content teams can contribute:

  • Develop and scale tone of voice guidelines across content types and channels
  • Ensure key messages are concise, quickly understandable and used consistently, e.g.  across your headlines, descriptions and testimonials. That way, if AI plucks just one of those elements, the message is retained.
  • Work closely with SEO and generative engine optimisation (GEO) specialists to ensure content is structured for both human readers and machines
  • Tell your brand story widely and consistently - including on the third-party sites AI tends to reference most (e.g. blogs, magazines, review sites)

Power for publishers: Brand mentions and citations are the new backlinks

For two decades, backlinks have played a role in SEO success. We’ve seen that when brands run large-scale campaigns, they often benefit from new awareness, and this in turn can help generate more backlinks.

But in the world of generative search, citations and brand mentions carry more weight than ever, even without a hyperlink. 

Large language models reference brands based on frequency, context and trust - including how often they’re cited by trusted publishers. Conduct any ‘best {product}’ search, and you’ll notice that brand websites are rarely referenced directly. Instead, AI tends to favour third-party publishers and review sites - sources AI perceives as more impartial, even when they may include sponsored placements.

When a brand is referenced across trusted sources, its likelihood of appearing in AI-generated responses increases. This gives digital PR, brand collaborations and publisher partnerships new power. Whether paid or earned, these mentions aren’t just about awareness - they’re now also important for AI visibility.

Email, owned content and out-of-home will matter more

As AI takes more control over how, when and where brand content appears, I expect we’ll see two strategies with renewed relevance:

A return to IRL connections for awareness and memorability

We’re already seeing signs of AI fatigue. As digital spaces become more automated and homogenised in tone, in-person experiences may feel more novel and memorable. 

Out-of-home, experiential activations and physical brand moments could regain their value as a way to cut through the noise and create emotional impact.

An emphasis on acquiring and retaining audiences in owned channels

When brands have an opportunity to bypass AI and connect directly with target audiences, they get their voice back and can control the narrative.

Connecting with readers directly through social media or email marketing will be increasingly important, so consider how you might craft a campaign to build communities in these channels.

The role of the website is evolving

As AI takes over the task of answering basic questions, the role of a brand’s website is shifting - from being an information hub to becoming a space for deeper engagement and action. 

The challenge is that websites now have to serve three audiences at once: human users, search engines (still) and large language models. This requires a balance of:

  • Structuring content clearly so AI and search engines can parse and summarise it
  • Designing engaging, personalised experiences and interactive, dynamic tools to support decision making
  • Rich, branded storytelling that reinforces trust and emotional connection.

In this new landscape, websites cannot be just digital brochures. They’re brands’ most valuable owned assets - built to serve customers, perform in search and signal to AI that the brand is credible and worth recommending.

Digital, media and creative agencies need to collaborate earlier

For LLMs to be able to reference campaign content, they need to be able to discover, parse, infer and easily summarise it. Much of this comes down to how pages are built and how content is structured and written. 

While creative and media agencies haven’t traditionally been responsible for how pages are built, ensuring content is accessible by AI needs to be a goal shared by all involved.

Clients and their agencies need to collaborate early and hold each other accountable for campaign success. 

Tips for writing and building AI-friendly pages

If your campaign includes a landing page, blog or digital asset, here are some of the ways you can improve its visibility in AI-powered search:

  • Use a descriptive h1 heading that clearly states the page topic (e.g. A guide to … ; Five reasons why… ; {Product} that {does what} for {users})
  • Keep one idea per paragraph (‘content chunking’)
  • Position answers close to the questions they’re addressing
  • Use internal links to related content that shows further authority on the subject
  • Follow clean, sequential header tag hierarchy (h1, h2, h3) for readability and machine parsability.

The bottom line

Whether you’re a brand or marketing leader, or work for the media and creative agencies that support them, remember: you’re no longer marketing to people alone. You’re also marketing to machines.

These machines are shaping what your audiences see and how they understand brands.

  • Brand mentions and PR matter - not just for awareness, but for visibility in search
  • Content and messaging need to be well structured, consistent and widely distributed
  • Owned channels will play a bigger role in cutting through AI and giving brands their voice back
  • Everyone - from the people writing briefs to creative and media to the people building your content - has a role to play in AI visibility.

This industry has adapted through every wave of change - from print to digital, from desktop to mobile. AI is the next evolution. With creativity, collaboration and a willingness to adapt, we’ll do it again.

Shayna Burns
Shayna Burns

06 August 2025

7 minute read

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