Do people discover new brands through AI?

How often do people find a new brand through AI?

Often enough that it is now a normal part of shopping.

Talker Research surveyed 2,000 Americans who used an AI tool for a personal purpose in the last three months, online, in late September. It found that 70% of these AI users have discovered a brand, product or service for the first time because an AI tool recommended or mentioned it.

Snipp's survey of 1,000 US adults who regularly use AI for search or shopping points the same way: 83.6% have used AI to discover a brand or product they hadn't heard of. For a growing share of buyers, the first contact with a company is a sentence inside an answer, not an ad or a search result.

Can AI answers also remove a brand from the shortlist?

Yes, and that side gets less attention than it deserves.

In the same Talker Research study, 68% of respondents said something they learned through AI caused them to rule out a brand or product they were considering. The answer does not only introduce new names. It also gives reasons to drop names the buyer already knew.

For a company, this means an outdated price, a wrong description or a missing feature in an AI answer can cost a customer who was already on the way. Because that decision happens inside the chat, the company may not learn why the buyer left.

Where do shoppers start their product search now?

For many regular AI users, in an assistant.

Snipp found that 41.6% of regular AI users typically start a product search in an AI assistant. When the search starts there, the first list of options comes from the assistant, and the brands it names set the frame for everything that follows.

That changes who gets considered at all. Brands that the assistant leaves out of the first answer have to win the buyer back later, if the buyer looks further at all.

Do AI recommendations turn into purchases?

Often, according to the largest of these studies.

In a survey of more than 13,000 consumers across 12 markets, Boston Consulting Group found that 31% of surveyed consumers use AI at some point in their purchase journey, roughly triple the level of 18 months ago, and that 19% are AI loyalists who rely on it regularly. Boston Consulting Group found that 70% of these AI loyalists ultimately buy the products it recommends, and that in more than half of AI-assisted purchase journeys the technology introduces consumers to brands they would not otherwise have considered.

Put together, the studies describe one pattern: AI widens the field at the start, narrows it during the comparison, and the brands that survive both steps get the purchase.

What should a company check first?

Start with what the assistants say before you change anything on your site.

1. Step 1Write your buyers' questions. List the questions people ask before they know your name, without your brand in them, such as which provider fits a need or how two providers compare.
2. Step 2Ask several assistants. Put each question to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok and Perplexity in a fresh conversation.
3. Step 3Record who is introduced. Note which brands each answer recommends, which it only mentions and whether yours appears.
4. Step 4Look for reasons to rule you out. Check the description, prices and terms the answers give for your company against your own pages, and mark anything wrong or outdated.
5. Step 5Note the sources behind the answers. Write down which pages and reviews the assistants cite when they name a competitor or describe you.
6. Step 6Fix the sources, then ask again. Correct your own pages and the public profiles the answers rely on, then repeat the same questions to see whether the answers changed.

How does EntityRise measure brand discovery in AI answers?

EntityRise is an AI visibility audit for agencies and companies that shows how ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok and Perplexity describe and recommend a company and what to improve first.

Each audit asks up to 40 buyer questions: you mark 15 as high priority and they go to all five assistants, and up to 25 more are each asked on one assistant, for up to 100 answers kept with their sources. The AI Visibility Index weighs recommendation at 30%, mention at 20%, prominence at 20%, citation support at 15% and description accuracy at 15%, so it measures both whether you are introduced and whether what is said about you is right.

The result is a PDF report of around 40 pages with the analysis assistant by assistant, your main competitors compared area by area and an ordered list of what to improve. After the audit, Ask EntityRise, a chat inside the dashboard, answers questions about your results from the audit's own evidence. You can start the audit, and agencies can run it for clients under their own name.