By Matt Bahr, CEO and co-founder at Fairing
For more than a decade, marketers have optimized around a familiar playbook: capture attention, drive a click, measure the conversion. But that model is quietly breaking – not because consumers have stopped buying, but because they’ve stopped clicking.
Generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews are rapidly becoming part of how people research products, compare options and decide what to buy. Increasingly, that discovery happens inside an AI interface, not on a search results page or social feed. The result is a growing “zero-click” reality: consumers learn about a brand, form intent, and then navigate directly to a retailer or marketplace without ever touching a measurable ad or link.
This shift isn’t theoretical. At Fairing, we analyze millions of in-moment customer “how did you hear about us?” responses across thousands of brands, and our latest LLM Product Discovery benchmarks show that brand mentions in AI-driven search are rising sharply – particularly in categories like lifestyle and consumer electronics. Awareness is starting in new places, even though the final transaction still shows up somewhere familiar.
That creates a growing disconnect between where marketers think discovery happens and where it actually happens.
Discovery has moved upstream
AI search is accelerating a pattern that’s been building for years. Creators, communities, word of mouth and other harder-to-measure channels like podcasts, tv ads and print have long influenced buying decisions prior to purchase. What AI tools have done is make that invisible layer of discovery more explicit, while simultaneously removing the click that analytics relies on to track it.
Traditional metrics like impressions, clicks and engagement were never designed to capture influence without interaction. They reward the moment of transaction, not the moments that created intent. As AI answers questions directly such as, “What’s the best running shoe for flat feet?” or “Which mattress is good for back pain?” – the click becomes optional, but the influence remains.
For marketers, that means a growing share of discovery is happening in places analytics can’t see, while budgets are still being justified as if nothing has changed.
AI search is forcing an attribution rethink
Zero-click discovery isn’t actually new – offline channels have always played a role in influencing online purchases. The difference now is that AI search is bringing that behavior into what used to be the most measurable part of the funnel.
When someone learns about a product from an AI assistant, then later types the brand name into Google or buys on Amazon, traditional attribution models credit search or marketplace performance, even though neither created the original demand. Over time, this skews investment toward channels that close the sale, not the ones that sparked it.
As AI discovery grows, this misallocation becomes more pronounced. Brands risk optimizing away the very channels that are building awareness, simply because they can’t see them.
The real challenge isn’t visibility inside AI tools, it’s understanding how AI fits into a broader discovery ecosystem.
AI assistants don’t invent brand preferences. They surface signals that already exist across the web: consistent language, repeated recommendations, strong customer advocacy and clear positioning. In that sense, AI search behaves less like a new channel and more like a powerful aggregator of influence.
That’s why understanding which products and categories appear in AI responses – and why – is becoming a new competitive signal. It’s also why attribution needs to evolve beyond inference and proxies.
In a zero-click world, the most reliable way to understand influence is often the simplest: asking customers directly, in the moment, what led them to purchase. When brands combine traditional performance data with first-person insight, patterns emerge that analytics alone consistently miss.
Marketers’ next move
As AI reshapes discovery, marketers don’t need a brand-new measurement framework, but they do need a more complete one.
That starts with accepting that clicks are no longer a proxy for influence. It means valuing signals that show up before conversion, not just at checkout. And it requires shifting from a channel-centric mindset of “Where did this convert?” – to a discovery-centric one of “Where did this begin?”.
AI search isn’t killing marketing fundamentals. It’s exposing how fragile our assumptions about measurement have become.
It’s on brands to adapt fast. Instead of chasing visibility inside every new AI interface, they must build clarity around how discovery actually works, and update their measurement to match the way people truly decide what to buy.
Because in the AI era, the most important marketing moments often happen long before anyone clicks the ‘buy button’.
