We just got back from SXSW 2026, and the conversations this year felt different. Not louder. Not more hyped. Just… more real.
AI is no longer something brands are “exploring.” It’s something they’re being measured by, whether they realize it or not. And nowhere was that more obvious than in how people reacted to our live session with Nick Lafferty and the team at Profound. We didn’t go in to present a framework and leave it at that. We ran live AEO audits in the room, pulling up real brands inside platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity to see how they were actually being interpreted.
What stood out immediately wasn’t just the turnout, though it was strong, or even the fact that the Q&A ran nearly an hour. It was the reaction people had when they saw their brand, or didn’t, show up in AI answers.
For a lot of teams, it was the first time they had looked at their business from that perspective. Not rankings. Not traffic. But representation.
And that’s the shift.
The gap between perception and reality
One of the simplest exercises we asked people to do was also the most revealing. We had them search for their category, not their company name, inside AI tools and see what came back.
About a third of the room saw their brand consistently. Another third didn’t show up at all. That gap says everything.
Because in an AI-driven environment, visibility isn’t something you assume. It’s something you verify. And increasingly, it’s something that determines whether you’re even considered in the first place.
Search isn’t disappearing, but it is dividing
There’s a lot of noise around whether traditional search is “dying.” That’s not what we’re seeing. What’s actually happening is a split.
People still use traditional search to browse, compare, and navigate. But when they turn to AI, they’re looking for synthesis. They want a recommendation, not a list. And once they get that answer, they often don’t leave. That has a direct impact on how brands need to think about visibility. It’s no longer just about being found. It’s about being chosen inside the answer itself.
Your brand is being defined outside your website
Another theme that came up repeatedly, both in our session and across others at SXSW, is how little control brands actually have over the inputs shaping AI responses.
AI systems are pulling from everywhere. Editorial coverage, Reddit threads, product reviews, creator content, social conversations. Your website is part of the story, but it’s far from the whole picture.
We talk a lot about “conversation culture” at Avenue Z, and this is exactly what we mean. The conversations happening across the internet are no longer just influencing perception. They are becoming the raw material AI uses to define your brand.
As we shared during the session, human conversations today become AI answers tomorrow .
That’s not a future state. It’s already happening.
Less traffic, higher intent
One of the more nuanced shifts is what AI is doing to traffic patterns.
Yes, AI reduces clicks in many cases. But the traffic it does send behaves differently. People arrive with more context, more confidence, and a clearer sense of what they’re looking for.
That changes the value of visibility. It’s not just about volume anymore. It’s about influence and conversion.
And for brands that are showing up well, that shift can be a significant advantage.
AI transformation is showing up in behavior, not just strategy
Outside of our own session, I spent time in conversations around AI adoption inside organizations, and one insight stuck with me.
People don’t change because of tools. They change because of what they see others doing.
When teams see their peers using AI in real workflows, adoption accelerates. When leaders demonstrate it, it becomes normalized. The companies making progress aren’t the ones with the most advanced tech stacks. They’re the ones making usage visible and practical.
It’s a good reminder that transformation isn’t abstract. It’s operational.
What this means now
If there was one underlying theme across SXSW this year, it’s that AI is becoming the layer that interprets brands before customers ever interact with them directly. It’s shaping which companies are recommended, how they’re described, and whether they’re trusted.
Most teams haven’t fully measured that yet. But they will have to. Because if you’re not actively shaping how you show up in AI, something else is doing it for you.
What we’re doing next
We’re taking everything from our live session and turning it into an on-demand walkthrough for teams that weren’t able to make it to Austin. It will go deeper into the audit process, what to measure, and where to focus first.
In the meantime, we built a quick way to get a baseline. If you want to understand how ready your brand is for AI search, you can start here.
Final thought
SXSW didn’t feel like a moment where something new was introduced. It felt like a moment where something clicked. AI search isn’t coming. It’s already influencing decisions. The question now is whether brands are paying attention to how they show up inside it.
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