Marketing leaders are not debating whether AI will change search. That question has been settled.
What remains unsettled is who is prepared to act on it.
The AMP Marketing Leaders Report, based on a Centiment survey of 159 marketing decision-makers at the management level or above and supplemented by interviews with senior leaders at NVIDIA, NTT Research, and formerly MuleSoft, examined how marketing organizations are responding to AI-driven discovery.
The findings reveal a consistent pattern: recognition is widespread, readiness is not.
Five findings deserve executive attention.
1. The Market Has Already Shifted. The Language Has Not.
Only 5% of marketing leaders were willing to describe traditional SEO as “dead.”
An additional 50.9% said it is being replaced by AI-driven discovery.
Read together, these figures indicate that a majority already believe the traditional search model is changing fundamentally, even when they choose more conservative language to describe it.
The timeline reinforces this. Nearly six in ten respondents, 58.5%, expect AI search to matter most within the next two to three years. Only 17% selected traditional SEO.
Yet 44.7% report having no AI search strategy.
Recognition is not the constraint. Execution is.
2. Accuracy Has Replaced Visibility as the Primary Concern
For two decades, the central anxiety in search was absence. Today it is misrepresentation.
Among respondents:
57.2% are concerned AI will misrepresent their company 56.6% worry about losing control of their brand narrative 24.5% have never assessed how AI platforms describe their organization
This represents a meaningful shift in the nature of reputational risk. AI systems now summarize, characterize, and recommend organizations without direct input from those organizations.
The narrative is being written. The question is whether marketing leaders are informing it.
3. Ownership Is Undefined
Strategy requires an owner. In many organizations, one does not exist.
17.6% of respondents say no one currently owns AI visibility within their company 22% do not have an internal term for the discipline
A function without a name cannot be resourced, measured, or held accountable. This is often the underlying reason a formal strategy has not materialized, rather than any disagreement about the strategy’s importance.
Naming the discipline is the first governance decision.
4. Budgets Are Moving Before Strategies Exist
Investment patterns frequently precede formal planning.
AI-driven visibility was the leading destination for increased marketing investment, selected by 35.2% of respondents. It ranked ahead of paid media and performance marketing, PR and earned media, and traditional SEO.
66% consider AI search visibility an immediate priority or one they expect to address within six months.
Spending is accelerating. Strategy is lagging. That gap is where most organizations currently sit.
5. Earned Media Is Now a Search Input
59.1% of marketing leaders believe media coverage influences how companies appear in AI-generated answers and search results.
This reframes the function of public relations. Credible articles, expert commentary, executive thought leadership, and authoritative content have always been directed at human audiences. They now also inform the systems that answer on a brand’s behalf.
Earned media is no longer adjacent to search performance. It is an input to it.
“Marketing has spent decades trying to rank on Google. Now brands and thought leaders also need to understand how they are described, recommended and cited by AI,” said Cara Milan, founder and CEO of AMP Marketing and PR. “The people and companies that move first will have a significant advantage in shaping the answers clients and customers receive. Those who wait may find that AI has already written their story for them.”
What Marketing Leaders Should Do Now
The report recommends that organizations:
Audit how major AI platforms describe the company, its executives, and its products Assign clear ownership of AI visibility Develop a formal AI search strategy Integrate PR, content, SEO, and AI visibility rather than managing them separately Establish systems for monitoring AI-generated brand narratives Treat AI platforms as a distinct audience within marketing strategy
None of these require organizational restructuring. Each requires a decision.
The Strategic Shift
The divide identified in this research is not between organizations that understand AI search and those that do not. Nearly all of them do.
The divide is between organizations that have assigned responsibility for it and those that have not.
AI systems will continue describing companies whether or not those companies participate. Marketing leaders who move first will shape those descriptions. Those who wait will inherit them.
The full AMP Marketing Leaders Report is available here.
The announcement of the findings was published by the National Law Review.