Vendor reportSemrush, 8 Sep 2026

Buyers often use Google Search or visit a cited website directly after seeing a brand mentioned in an AI answer

Performance measurement

Reader Note:: This is the one self-reported item among the report's findings — buyers saying what they do after an AI answer, with no figure attached and no sample described for it. Everything else in the report is measured from Semrush's own datasets. It matters for reading the 0.48% elsewhere in the report: if buyers arrive by search or by typing the address after an AI conversation, that traffic is never counted as AI traffic, which is one reason a share that small may understate AI's influence.
Evidence:: Self-reported behaviour
Vendor interest:: High — This comes from a company with a commercial interest in this market, so it is not a neutral source.
Sample:: Three Semrush datasets: 458 manufacturing keywords tracked monthly from January to July 2026; U.S. clickstream sessions across sites in ten manufacturing categories over the same period; and Semrush AI Visibility data for U.S. manufacturing/industrial domains across ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Mode, and AI Overviews, using monthly top-25 domains by mentions and by citations.

Good for

A rough sense of size and direction, and deciding what to look at first.

Not for

Exact numbers, or saying that one thing caused another.
This comes from a company with a commercial interest in this market, so it is not a neutral source.
This was measured in one market. It may not hold where you are.

Platform engagement and real effectiveness only line up in about one out of three creator ads, so most engaging content isn’t what will grow your brand

Most marketers are making or planning changes to performance measurement for the AI web, mainly tracking brand visibility and citations in AI tools

AI's impact on planning and measurement approaches: current/planned changes to performance measurement for the AI web
Change	Share of respondents (%)
Measuring brand visibility/citations in AI tools	48%
Using branded search/direct traffic as proxies	44%
Using 3P AI-driven discovery analysis tools	40%
Monitoring AI platform interactions/referrals	31%
Increasing use of incrementality tests	30%
Using modeled measurement (probabilistic)	30%
Refining fraud detection for legitimate agents	28%
Placing less weight on website traffic	26%
Establishing direct AI-platform partnerships	23%
Using consumer surveys or self-reported data	21%

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71% of marketers say proving ROI is their biggest influencer challenge

Top challenges marketers face with influencer marketing (% citing each)
Challenge	Share of marketers citing this challenge (%)
Determining the ROI	71%
The time it takes to run programs	50%
Content quality	48%
Selecting the right creators	46%
Working with less budget	46%
Consistency in influencer rates	35%
Scaling my influencer program	35%
Internal hurdles (leadership support, legal and regulatory)	25%
Brand safety	10%
Choosing the right agencies	8%

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Our Substack turns the data behind these cards into full breakdowns: what changed, why, and what to do about it.

Fixing your influencer marketing campaign: How to get into the top 10% of advertisers

151

is the long-term ROI index for influencer campaigns in the UK, contributing 6.2% of total sales (excluding campaigns that produced no result)

Marketers are much more likely to track engagement rate than efficiency metrics, with engagement monitored by 91% but EMV per working spend tracked by only 9%

Share of marketers tracking each influencer campaign KPI (%)
KPI	Tracked by (%)
Engagement rate (likes, comments, shares) — How many people interacted	91%
Impressions / reach (How many people saw it)	84%
Click-through rate (How many people clicked)	78%
Sales / revenue attribution (Whether people bought)	72%
Customer acquisition cost (CAC) — What each customer cost	72%

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Consumers give brands their weakest marks on crisis response and originality on social

Consumer ratings of brand efforts across social media activities
Brand activity	Fair/Poor (%)	Excellent/Good (%)
Keeping up with trends and cultural moments	30%	70%
Publishing entertaining content	31%	69%
Crafting content that matches their brand values	36%	64%
Interacting with audience comments, reactions and questions	39%	61%
Publishing truly original content	43%	56%

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Buyers often use Google Search or visit a cited website directly after seeing a brand mentioned in an AI answer

Good for

Not for

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