Did you know Marketers Eager for AI Search Opportunities but Struggling with Privacy, Innovation, and Strategy Adaptations

 

The new survey by Botify partnered up with Centiment and surveyed 300 marketing department leaders in the US to know what they think about AI search in marketing. The results showed that many marketers are embracing AI search and many are also preparing for the future. 94% of the marketing leaders said that they are somewhat prepared to optimize their brands according to AI search, with 42% saying that they are very prepared. 6% of the marketing leaders surveyed said that they are not prepared for the AI revolution in search.

Marketing leaders were also asked which platforms they consider search engines apart from Google, and most answered with YouTube (66%). Other responses were ChatGPT (56%), Amazon (44%), TikTok (40%) and Meta (40%). When it comes to ChatGPT search, 74% are excited about the new marketing opportunities it will bring. 62% of the marketing leaders said that they are diversifying and adjusting their marketing strategies according to the change in search landscape. 30% reported starting diversifying their marketing strategies but have no intention for adjustments.

54% of the respondents said that they want to know if Perplexity's AI shopping assistant will redefine the interactions with customers, with 35% being confident that it will enhance the customer journey. But there are also some concerns when it comes to the implementation of AI in marketing. Some of these concerns shared by the respondents are data privacy (55%), needing to understand how platforms work (55%) and not being able to keep up with the pace of innovation (49%). 16% also said that they are concerned about upskilling their SEO teams because they need to understand different things like crawler bots, controlling AI and bot behavior, AI technology expertise, and resourcing automation tools.

54% of the respondents also said that they saw a significant change in how they measure search performance because of consumers using generative AI, while 35% reported only seeing slight changes. 56% said that they want to learn more about the advantages of AI over traditional search engines, 52% want to learn about AI’s impact on customer acquisition, and 46% want to know about how to measure the impact of AI and what are its implementation requirements.

53% of the marketing leaders said that they know that AI assistants like Perplexity AI and OpenAI crawl their websites and they monitor them on an ongoing basis. 32% said they know about AI crawlers but they do not monitor them on an ongoing basis. 40% said they know the exact percentage of website traffic that comes from bots while 50% reported having a general idea. 52% said that they now measure their website presence in AI featured snippets as well and not just through rankings.

Take a look at the charts below for more insights: