Agentic AI Is Rewriting Search and Marketing: What UK Businesses Need to Know

February 2026 marked a quiet watershed moment. OpenAI began rolling out ads inside ChatGPT.

That might sound like just another tech company monetising its product. But the implications run much deeper — and UK businesses that depend on search traffic, paid advertising, or content marketing need to pay attention.

The shift isn't just about where ads appear. It's about the fundamental model of how people discover, evaluate, and choose products and services. And agentic AI is accelerating that shift faster than most marketing teams are prepared for.

The Three Disruptions Happening Simultaneously

1. Conversational Search Is Eating Traditional Search

Google still dominates, but the pattern is unmistakable. A growing percentage of product research, comparison shopping, and information gathering now happens through AI conversations rather than traditional search queries.

When someone asks ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity "what's the best CRM for a 20-person UK company?", they get a synthesised answer that draws from dozens of sources. They don't click through to ten websites. They don't see your carefully optimised landing page. They get a recommendation — and increasingly, they act on it.

The numbers are startling. Estimates suggest that AI-mediated search now accounts for 15-25% of product research queries in the UK, up from under 5% a year ago. For B2B software decisions, that figure is closer to 40%.

What this means for your business: If your marketing strategy relies on people clicking through to your website from search results, your addressable audience is shrinking. Not disappearing — but shrinking faster than most businesses have acknowledged.

2. AI Agents Are Becoming the Customer

This is the more radical disruption, and it's earlier-stage but accelerating rapidly.

AI agents that can browse the web, compare options, fill in forms, and even make purchases are moving from demos to production use. When an AI agent is tasked with "find and book the cheapest reliable courier for a 50kg shipment from Cardiff to Edinburgh," it doesn't engage with your brand marketing. It reads your pricing page, checks your reviews, compares your API, and makes a decision based on data.

The implications are profound:

• Brand awareness matters less when an AI agent is the one doing the comparison
• Structured data matters more — AI agents parse structured information far better than marketing copy
• API accessibility becomes a competitive advantage — if an agent can query your pricing programmatically, you're more likely to be included in comparisons
• Review and reputation signals become critical — agents weight third-party assessments heavily

We're not at full "AI agent as buyer" yet, but the trajectory is clear. Businesses that optimise for AI readability now will have a structural advantage as this accelerates.

3. Ads Inside AI Conversations Change the Trust Equation

OpenAI's decision to introduce ads into ChatGPT is a pivotal moment because it fundamentally changes what a conversational AI response means.

When you ask ChatGPT a question and it recommends a product, you currently assume that recommendation is based on its training data and reasoning. It feels like advice. Introducing ads into that flow — even clearly labelled — muddies the trust relationship.

Why this matters for UK businesses:

• If you're advertising: You now have a new channel, but the ROI dynamics are completely different from Google Ads. You're not bidding on keywords — you're trying to get placed inside a conversation. The targeting is contextual and intent-based in ways search ads never were.

• If you rely on organic AI mentions: The introduction of ads means AI platforms have a financial incentive to favour paid content. This doesn't mean organic recommendations disappear, but the playing field changes.

• If you're a consumer of AI advice: Your customers will become more sceptical of AI-generated recommendations. "Did it recommend this because it's best, or because someone paid?" This scepticism could actually benefit businesses with strong organic reputations.

What UK Businesses Should Do Right Now

Optimise for AI Readability, Not Just Human Readability

Your website needs to serve two audiences now: humans and AI agents.

For AI agents, this means:

• Structured data everywhere. Schema.org markup, clear pricing tables, machine-readable product specifications. If an AI agent can't parse your offering programmatically, you're invisible to agentic search.

• Clear, factual content over persuasive copy. AI agents don't respond to emotional marketing. They want: what you do, what it costs, who it's for, and how you compare. Put that information front and centre.

• API or at least structured endpoints. If you sell products or services that AI agents might query, having an API (even a simple one) puts you ahead of competitors who only offer a human-readable website.

• Keep your information current. AI models are trained on historical data, but agentic AI that browses in real-time will always get your latest information. Make sure your website reflects current pricing, availability, and capabilities.

Build Your AI Reputation

AI agents making recommendations draw heavily on:

• Review aggregation — Google Reviews, Trustpilot, G2, industry-specific platforms
• Third-party mentions — press coverage, blog mentions, comparison articles
• Authority signals — domain expertise, published research, industry recognition

This isn't new advice — it's classic digital marketing. But the weighting is shifting. A beautifully designed website with thin content ranks lower in AI assessment than a plain site with deep expertise and strong external validation.

Practical steps:

• Actively manage your Trustpilot and Google Reviews profiles
• Publish genuine expertise content (not AI-generated fluff — ironic but important)
• Seek inclusion in industry comparison articles and directories
• Build relationships with trade journalists and industry analysts

Rethink Your Paid Advertising Strategy

The paid advertising landscape is fragmenting. Google Ads still works, but you now need to consider:

• AI platform ads (ChatGPT, potentially others) — early mover advantage exists, but the formats and targeting are still evolving
• Agentic SEO — ensuring your offering is included when AI agents compile comparisons
• Conversation-based retargeting — as users interact with AI and then visit your site, the attribution model gets more complex

The budget question: Most UK marketing teams should allocate 10-15% of their 2026 digital ad budget to experimenting with AI-native advertising channels. Not because the ROI is proven yet, but because learning the dynamics now — while costs are relatively low — will pay off as these channels scale.

Create Content That AI Wants to Cite

Here's the counterintuitive bit: in a world where AI synthesises information from multiple sources, being cited by AI might be more valuable than ranking #1 on Google.

Content that gets cited by AI tends to be:

• Original research and data — not rehashed statistics, but primary research your business has conducted
• Expert analysis with clear conclusions — AI models quote specific claims and findings
• Comprehensive guides that answer questions definitively rather than teasing the answer behind a form
• Regularly updated content that reflects current reality, not evergreen content that's three years stale

Content that AI ignores:

• Thin blog posts written to hit a keyword target
• Gated content that requires form fills (AI agents can't/won't fill forms for information)
• Marketing-heavy pages with little substantive content
• Duplicate or near-duplicate content across multiple pages

Prepare for the AI-Mediated Customer Journey

The customer journey is becoming:

1. AI-mediated discovery — "What are the best options for X?"
2. AI-mediated comparison — AI agents checking pricing, reviews, capabilities
3. Human decision — the person (or their agent) makes a final choice
4. Potentially AI-mediated purchase — agents handling the actual transaction

Your marketing needs to influence each stage differently. Traditional top-of-funnel awareness campaigns are less effective when AI does the initial filtering. Bottom-of-funnel conversion optimisation becomes more important — when someone (or their agent) does reach your site, the path to conversion needs to be clear and frictionless.

The Bigger Picture: Marketing in an AI-Intermediated World

We're moving from a world where businesses compete for consumer attention to one where businesses compete for AI selection.

That sounds dystopian, but it's actually an opportunity for businesses that compete on substance rather than marketing spend. If an AI agent evaluates your offering purely on merit — quality, price, reviews, capability — and you're genuinely good at what you do, you might actually benefit from AI-mediated discovery.

The businesses at risk are those that rely on marketing sophistication to compensate for mediocre offerings. When an AI agent strips away the branding and evaluates the substance, the gap between marketing promise and delivery reality becomes immediately apparent.

For UK SMEs, this could be a genuine advantage. You may not have the marketing budget of a multinational, but if your product or service is genuinely better for your niche, AI-mediated discovery levels the playing field in ways that traditional marketing never did.

What We're Watching

Several developments over the next 6-12 months will shape how this evolves:

• Other AI platforms introducing ads — if Google's AI Overviews, Claude, and Perplexity follow ChatGPT, the ad-supported AI model becomes the norm rather than the exception
• AI agent purchasing standards — emerging protocols for how AI agents authenticate, transact, and represent human buyers
• Regulation of AI-mediated commerce — the UK's CMA and ICO are both watching this space closely
• Attribution and measurement tools — how businesses will track which conversions came via AI-mediated journeys

The Action Summary

Priority	Action	Timeline
High	Audit your site for AI readability (structured data, clear pricing, factual content)	This month
High	Review and strengthen your third-party review profiles	Ongoing
Medium	Experiment with AI platform advertising (ChatGPT, AI Overviews)	Q1-Q2 2026
Medium	Create original research or data assets that AI will want to cite	Quarterly
Low	Explore API or structured data feeds for your products/services	H2 2026
Low	Map your customer journey for AI-mediated discovery	When resources allow

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Want help adapting your marketing strategy for AI-mediated discovery? Get in touch — we help UK businesses stay ahead of the shift.