Yesterday was the announcement. Today is the measurement, and it lands harder.
Similarweb published data on 17 August showing that 26% of ChatGPT responses already carry a sponsored ad, for users on the Free and Go tiers. Nearly 30% of ad-eligible Google AI Mode queries show ads too.
So the clean answer that supposedly replaced ten blue links is already a quarter commercial.
The new thing is that Similarweb built a tracker for it. Ad placement inside AI answers has been unobservable, which meant no competitive monitoring and no way to know if a rival was buying against your category. That changes this quarter.
One caution. A vendor announced a product alongside its own data, and the 26% is their measurement of their own panel. Directionally right, and demand the methodology before it reaches a board deck.
TALK ON THE MARKET
The ranking is his and unpublished, so weigh it accordingly. The underlying point stands and it is uncomfortable: your owned site is not where the model forms its opinion of you.
NUMBERS MATTER
62%, then 23%. AI shopping agents get used for product comparison 62% of the time and at checkout only 23%, with 19% post-purchase, per research published 17 August.
Agents are winning consideration and losing the transaction.
BEYOND MARKETING
Politicians are starting to ask a very old question: if the machines take our jobs, who owns the machines?
Check out Torsten’s last video about a direction in AI policy that has the unlikely support of Donald Trump, Sam Altman, and … Bernie Sanders. Quite a trio.
DAILY PROMPT
A powerful AI Brand Positioning Workshop prompt from our AI-Ready CMO Hub:
You are a brand strategy consultant facilitating a positioning workshop. Help me develop a clear, differentiated brand position for [COMPANY NAME] in the [INDUSTRY] market.
## Current State Assessment
Provide a structured analysis based on this information:
- Company: [COMPANY NAME]
- Industry/Market: [INDUSTRY]
- Primary Products/Services: [PRODUCTS]
- Current Annual Revenue: [REVENUE]
- Target Customer Segment: [TARGET AUDIENCE]
- Key Competitors: [3-5 COMPETITOR NAMES]
## Workshop Framework
Guide me through these positioning elements:
### 1. Market Reality Check
Analyze the competitive landscape. Identify white space opportunities and crowded positioning territories. What positions are already owned by competitors?
### 2. Brand Essence Definition
Define the core of what makes [COMPANY NAME] different. Consider:
- Unique capabilities or assets
- Founder/company origin story elements
- Technology or methodology advantages
- Customer outcomes that matter most
### 3. Target Audience Clarity
Create a detailed profile of the primary decision-maker for [TARGET AUDIENCE]. What are their:
- Key business challenges?
- Decision criteria?
- Perception of current solutions?
- Unmet needs?
### 4. Positioning Statement Development
Craft 3 alternative positioning statements using this format:
“[COMPANY NAME] is the [CATEGORY] that [UNIQUE BENEFIT] for [TARGET AUDIENCE] who [KEY MOTIVATION].”
Each should emphasize different competitive advantages.
### 5. Proof Points & Differentiation
For each positioning option, identify:
- 3-4 proof points that validate the position
- How this differs from competitor positioning
- Potential messaging pillars that support it
### 6. Recommendation & Rationale
Recommend the strongest positioning based on:
- Market demand and size
- Company capability to deliver
- Defensibility against competitors
- Resonance with target audience
- Longevity (5+ year relevance)
Provide a 2-3 sentence rationale for the recommendation.
Use this when you need to articulate what a model should say about you, which is now a positioning exercise rather than a copywriting one. Run it before you spend anything on AI visibility tooling.
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CMO CORNER
Every unclear expectation becomes a future bottleneck.
Here is where it bites this week. Somebody on your team is about to be asked to “improve our AI visibility”, and nobody has said what that means, what it is worth, or who decides when it is done. In three months you will have a subscription, a dashboard, and an argument. Say now what a good outcome looks like and what you would stop doing to pay for it. Vagueness always gets paid for later, usually in headcount.
We provide CMOs with AI strategy consulting for marketing teams through our Teamless offering.
We run an interview series with marketing leaders about how AI actually changes their work. Real use cases, not predictions.
If you’re doing something worth talking about, the opportunity is free and available for anyone. Simply reply to this email with your pitch.
TOOL UPGRADE
If ad placement inside AI answers is finally observable, monitoring is the job:
Brand24 best for catching your brand surfacing in places you never registered as channels. Try Brand24 here →
Diginius best for pulling cross-channel campaign data into one view when you have just added a channel nobody has a dashboard for. Try Diginius here →
Chronicle best for branded short links with click analytics, so traffic arriving from an AI answer is at least attributable. Try Chronicle here →
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LEARN THIS
If you have been asked what the plan is and do not have one yet, start with AI Readiness 101. It is a diagnostic rather than a manifesto, and it is honest about the parts of an organisation that are never ready, which is usually data access and approvals rather than tooling. For the CMO who needs to know what to fix first.
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BRAND SLOP
Meta launched Muse Image, which turned other people’s public Instagram photos into AI images. It was pulled inside a week after the privacy backlash, and Meta said it had “missed the mark”.
In the same week, Zuckerberg told investors that Muse Image and Muse Video would “dramatically expand the universe of content”.
Retreat to the public, roadmap to the market, seven days apart. That is not a company that got it wrong. That is a company that priced the apology in.
That’s it for today!
See you next time,
— Peter & Torsten
