Stop Chasing “AI Visibility” and Start Buying the New Top of Funnel

The real shift hiding in all these headlines

Scan those headlines and a pattern jumps out: everyone is talking about AI search, LLM visibility, “AI employees,” the death of organic reach, and brand mentions that “train” models.

Underneath the buzzwords is a simple, brutal reality for performance marketers and media buyers:

The top of funnel is being rebuilt by AI and creators, and you’re still budgeting like it’s 2019.

Search results are becoming AI answers. Social feeds are throttling organic reach. LLMs are summarizing your content and recommending competitors. Creators and shows (TBPN, anyone?) are becoming the new “homepages” people actually trust.

If you buy media or own growth targets, your job is no longer “optimize channels.” It’s:

Buy your way into the new discovery layer: AI surfaces + creator ecosystems.

From “rank and retarget” to “be the answer and the recommendation”

For a decade, the playbook was:

• Rank on Google
• Pixel visitors
• Retarget them cheaply on social
• Patch the leaks with CRO and email flows

That stack is decaying:

• AI Overviews / AI Mode compress multiple sites into one answer. You might be “used” but not clicked.
• LLMs answer “What’s the best X for Y?” without sending traffic anywhere.
• Organic reach on social is collapsing; platforms are pay-to-play plus creator-first.
• Email and CRM are under strain (73% of ecommerce emails “broken” is not a small problem).

But your targets didn’t change. CAC still has to work. MER still has to improve. So what actually matters?

Two things:

1. Being the entity AI systems and creators reference.
2. Owning paid, measurable entry points into those new surfaces.

Think in “surfaces,” not channels

Channels are what you buy in Ads Manager. Surfaces are where users actually experience you:

• AI answer boxes and chat interfaces
• Creator content and shows (podcasts, TikToks, YouTube, live streams)
• Vertical search (Instacart, Amazon, app stores, marketplaces)
• Owned surfaces (site, landing pages, email, SMS, in-app)

The headlines about:

• “How to earn brand mentions that drive LLM and SEO visibility”
• “Fresh content: why publish dates make or break rankings and AI visibility”
• “The death of organic reach: what works right now”
• “TBPN adds new sponsors”
• “Viant raises its bet on AI as digital advertising becomes more fragmented”

…are all describing the same thing: discovery is fragmenting into more surfaces, and AI is the glue between them.

Your job is to:

• Map the surfaces that matter for your category
• Decide which ones you must own, which you must rent, and which you can ignore
• Instrument them so you can actually buy and optimize them like performance media

The new top-of-funnel stack (for people who actually have a CAC target)

Here’s a practical way to rebuild your TOF around AI + creators without blowing up your MER.

1. Treat “AI visibility” as performance PR, not mystical SEO

Everyone’s chasing “LLM visibility” like it’s a new ranking factor. It’s not magic; it’s entity-level authority.

AI systems answer questions by:

• Recognizing entities (brands, people, products)
• Connecting them to topics and intents
• Weighing how often and how credibly they’re mentioned

That means your playbook is closer to PR and brand than to classic keyword stuffing.

For performance teams, translate this into:

• Brand mention campaigns: pay for placements that mention your brand + key category phrases in credible contexts (reviews, comparisons, “best of” lists, case studies).
• Entity-consistent content: make sure your own site, docs, and socials consistently describe who you are, what you do, and for whom, in plain language that maps to real queries.
• Freshness discipline: update high-intent pages and key content on a schedule. AI systems heavily weight recency for anything that sounds like “2025/2026,” “best right now,” “latest,” etc.

How to make this accountable:

• Track branded search volume and “brand + category” query volume monthly.
• Monitor how often you appear in AI answer snapshots for your core questions (even if you don’t get click data yet, you can track presence).
• Attribute “performance PR” spend to downstream conversions via branded search, direct, and assisted conversions in your MMM or attribution model.

2. Buy into creator ecosystems like you buy into search

Creator and show ecosystems (e.g., TBPN, niche TikTok experts, category YouTubers) are the new “default homepage” for many buyers. That’s not brand fluff; it’s measurable demand creation.

The mistake most performance teams make: treating creator spend as one-off experiments instead of building a repeatable buying system.

Build a simple, operator-grade framework:

1. Define your creator ICP
   • Audience overlap with your best customers (not just follower count)
   • Content format that matches your funnel (deep-dive explainer vs quick-hit entertainment)
   • Willingness to integrate you as a real recommendation, not a throwaway mid-roll
2. Standardize offers and tracking
   • Dedicated landing pages per creator or show
   • Clear, simple offer that doesn’t require explanation
   • UTMs + unique codes + post-purchase survey (“Where did you first hear about us?”)
3. Pre-commit to a test portfolio
   • Instead of 1-2 random tests, commit to 10-20 placements over 90 days
   • Cap each test at a fixed “CAC ceiling” (e.g., 2x your blended CAC target) and kill fast
4. Measure like a performance channel
   • Track first-touch and blended CAC per creator
   • Look at LTV and payback period by cohort sourced from creators
   • Promote winning creator content via paid (whitelisting/spark ads) to scale

The goal is not “influencer marketing.” The goal is owning repeatable, profitable access to trusted recommendation surfaces.

3. Rebuild your landing and CRM stack for “AI-shaped” traffic

As AI answers and creators do more pre-qualification, the traffic that does click through behaves differently:

• They arrive with more context but less patience.
• They expect the page to match the exact promise they just saw or read.
• They are more likely to bounce if your message is generic or obviously AI-slop.

That makes your landing and CRM stack a bigger performance lever than ever.

Focus on three upgrades:

1. Message match at the atomic level
   • Build landing pages that map to specific questions, not just keywords: “best X for Y,” “X vs Y,” “is X worth it for Z?”
   • Mirror the language from AI answers and creator content on your pages.
   • Avoid generic AI copy; it’s detectable by humans and tanks trust.
2. Fewer, better flows in CRM
   • Audit your email and SMS flows like a product: where do they break, contradict, or repeat?
   • Consolidate overlapping sequences; prioritize clarity over volume.
   • Use AI for QA and diagnostics (finding broken links, outdated offers, inconsistent messaging), not for blasting more content.
3. Conversion surfaces beyond the website
   • Shoppable posts, in-app checkout, marketplace listings, DMs, and chat-based flows should be treated as first-class conversion points.
   • Instrument them properly so they show up in your CAC and MER calculations.

Budgeting for the new discovery layer

You can’t just “add AI and creators” on top of your current mix. You have to reallocate.

A simple way to rebalance without blowing up performance:

Step 1: Classify spend by intent, not channel

Break your current budget into:

• Harvest: capturing existing demand (brand search, high-intent non-brand search, retargeting)
• Shape: creating and steering demand (upper-funnel social, YouTube, creators, performance PR, AI/LLM visibility work)
• Hold: retention and reactivation (email, SMS, loyalty, CRM-driven upsell)

Most performance teams are 70-80% harvest, 10-20% hold, 0-10% shape. That’s not sustainable when AI is compressing harvest surfaces.

Step 2: Set a “shape spend” floor

Move toward something like:

• 50-60% harvest
• 20-30% shape
• 20% hold

Within “shape,” explicitly carve out:

• Creator/show ecosystem tests
• Performance PR and brand mention campaigns
• Content and landing work aimed at AI-shaped queries and answer boxes

Track MER at the portfolio level, not per channel. Some “shape” lines will look bad on last-click and great on payback-period and blended CAC.

Step 3: Instrument AI and creator surfaces into your reporting

If it doesn’t show up in your dashboards, it will get cut next quarter. So:

• Add “AI surfaces” as a source in your attribution/BI tools, even if you’re approximating via branded search and direct.
• Tag creator and show-driven traffic consistently across all placements.
• Report on:
  • First-touch CAC by surface
  • Blended CAC including assist
  • Payback period and LTV by surface

What to do in the next 90 days

You don’t need a five-year “AI strategy.” You need a 90-day operating plan.

1. Audit your discovery reality
   • Search your core category questions in Google, TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, and one AI assistant.
   • List the entities, brands, and creators that show up repeatedly.
   • Note where you appear, if at all.
2. Pick 3-5 “must-win” surfaces
   • Examples: “AI answers for X,” “top 10 YouTube creators in Y,” “#1 podcast in Z,” “key marketplace search terms.”
   • Decide how you’ll show up there: paid, partnership, content, or all three.
3. Reallocate 10-15% of harvest spend into shape
   • Fund 5-10 creator/show tests with proper tracking.
   • Fund 2-3 performance PR / brand mention campaigns.
   • Fund updates to your top 10 landing pages to match AI-shaped queries and creator messaging.
4. Clean up the bottom of the funnel
   • Fix the obvious email/CRM breaks (links, offer mismatch, outdated messaging).
   • Align your core flows with the promises made in ads, AI answers, and creator content.
5. Update your reporting
   • Add “AI/LLM surfaces” and “creator ecosystems” as explicit lines in your weekly growth review.
   • Commit to making decisions on those lines with the same discipline you use for search and paid social.

The operators who win the next few years won’t be the ones with the fanciest AI prompts or the longest SEO playbooks. They’ll be the ones who treat AI and creators as buyable, optimizable top-of-funnel infrastructure and budget accordingly.