A communication expert, Paul Agada, has urged Nigerian marketing communication professionals to invest in research-driven content to position their brands for visibility as AI-powered search engines are reshaping consumers’ online content consumption habits.
Speaking during an interview with Brand Communicator, Agada said the emergence of generative summaries are rapidly shifting brands’ primary audience from human readers to AI agents that summarize content online for internet users, thereby reducing the number of impressions brands earn from their paid, earned, shared and owned media channels.
“For years we measured PR success by reach, by how many outlets picked up a release, how many impressions a campaign got,” Agada said. “Increasingly, the first reader of a brand’s content is a large language model synthesizing an answer for someone who may never visit the source at all. If that model doesn’t trust or cite your content, you’re liable to become invisible in a conversation that’s already happening about you.”
He argued that the current content strategy which revolves around recycled award announcements, exaggerated brand claims, anecdotal thought-leadership posts, among others may be unsuitable for AI systems that prefer to cite authentic data-driven content. Agada suggested that brands and agencies should explore extending the value of campaign reports beyond another box-ticker for clients to prospective insights for market growth.
“We have to gradually start to balance the content strategy from heavy anecdotal claims to insight-driven statements. For instance, we have first hand insights from our campaigns, they could be great case studies, we need to optimize them for industry consumption. This way, we are positioning our content to be recognized by AEO engines as unique and fit for citation. Interested readers can then proceed to dig further from the originating media source,” Agada stated
Agada described the pivot from traditional SEO to AEO as an opportunity for brands and agencies, noting that early adopters stand to earn a first mover advantage that could compound over time. “Most Nigerian brands and agencies haven’t started optimizing deliberately for AI-mediated visibility yet,” he said. “The agencies and teams that treat research rigor as a core deliverable now, rather than an afterthought, will be the ones AI systems are citing in 2027 and 2028.”