Marketing is facing a major shift as artificial intelligence begins to take charge of how people discover brands and content online. Traditional goals like getting clicks, rankings, and high traffic are becoming less useful, while being seen inside AI-generated discovery experiences is gaining ground.
Discovery Is No Longer Just Search
For years, marketers have measured success with familiar metrics: search rankings, site traffic, and click rates. Those signals were reliable indicators of interest and demand. Now, discovery increasingly happens inside AI systems—like generative search answers, assistants, and summaries—sometimes before a person ever visits a website.
In other words, people don’t have to click on a link to “discover” a brand or idea. AI environments can present answers directly, and that means marketers need to rethink how they show up.
What This Means for Marketers
The shift to AI-led discovery has changed the rules of visibility. Instead of chasing high traffic, marketers need to focus on how their content performs inside AI outputs and answer-focused experiences. Being visible where AI systems surface answers is becoming more valuable than traditional search rankings.
That doesn’t mean websites stop mattering. They still provide depth, trust, and places for people to learn more. But the moment of discovery is often happening earlier now—inside AI tools rather than only on a brand’s own site.
How LinkedIn Is Adjusting Its Own Marketing
LinkedIn’s own marketing teams have started adapting to this new reality by changing how they measure and optimise their content. Their work focuses on three big areas:
Learning the landscape
They’ve partnered with experts and gathered insights to map how AI discovery actually works and where brands can have the biggest impact.
Working across teams
Instead of having SEO, content, social media, and brand work separately, LinkedIn has brought these groups together to create consistent signals that help content show up in AI experiences.
New ways of measuring success
Traditional metrics like page views and traffic don’t easily show how well a brand is being seen inside AI discovery. LinkedIn is testing ways to measure things like how often its content is mentioned or cited by generative systems.
What Marketers Are Learning
LinkedIn’s early tests suggest several practical things work well when aiming for AI discovery:
- Clear content structure that AI systems can understand quickly.
- Semantic markup and accessibility to help AI parse content correctly.
- Fresh, authoritative material that shows credibility to both humans and AI.
Early movers may have an edge as these systems evolve.
The Future of Marketing Visibility
AI-led discovery is redefining the traditional marketing funnel. Instead of thinking about a simple “search, click, convert” pattern, brands now need to be visible, cited, and referenced inside AI experiences. Being present in those environments helps move people from discovery into consideration more naturally.
Marketing in 2026 and beyond will be shaped by how well teams adapt to these new patterns of discovery—by creating content that AI systems trust and choose to show people first.
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