Research: How AI Is Changing the Buyer's Journey

Something fundamental has shifted in how B2B buyers discover, evaluate, and shortlist vendors. More and more, those decisions are being shaped inside AI tools (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot) and often without a single click to your website.

We wanted to understand how marketing and communications leaders are actually responding. So we surveyed 104 B2B marketing professionals, including CMOs, VPs of Marketing, Heads of Brand and Comms, Demand Gen leaders, and Marketing Ops leads, to find out what they can see, what they can't, and what they're doing about it.

The findings paint a clear picture: concern is high, instrumentation is low, and the investment wave is just beginning.

Most Teams Are Flying Blind

The first thing that stands out is how few organisations have a clear view of AI-driven discovery. Only 30% have LLM referrals tracked as a defined analytics source. A further 22% track it manually or inconsistently. And 17% simply don't know what percentage of their website traffic comes from LLM tools.

This matters because you can't optimise what you can't measure. When we asked who owns AI visibility in their organisation, 22% said there's no clear owner (the second most common answer, behind Marketing Ops at 30%).

Put it all together and 69% of respondents say AI visibility is a blind spot for their organisation, with 18% calling it a major one.

Buyers Are Making Decisions You Can't See

Here's where it gets interesting. When we asked leaders to interpret low or unclear LLM referral traffic, only 10% said AI isn't relevant to their category. The rest recognise something is happening; they just can't see it clearly.

38% believe they're simply not visible enough in AI answers. 37% see it as early days that will grow. And 26% interpret it as AI influencing buyer decisions without generating clicks: the classic "dark funnel" effect, where recommendations happen offscreen.

This aligns with what businesses are experiencing in practice. As (BBC, "Businesses scramble to get noticed by AI search") recently reported, HubSpot lost 140 million website visits in a single year as users shifted from search engines to AI tools. Their CMO Kipp Bodnar noted that "the click-through rate for searches that have AI overviews is about 60% to 70% lower." The buyers are still there; they're just making decisions somewhere else.

When Brands Do Look, the Picture Is Often Wrong

Among those who have checked how their brand appears in AI-generated answers, the results are sobering. Only 1% say their positioning is completely accurate. 30% say it's mostly right, but 23% report mixed accuracy and 3% say it's often inaccurate.

Perhaps more concerning: 24% haven't checked at all.

The competitive landscape inside AI answers is shifting too. 41% say only some of their competitors are referenced in AI responses, meaning the playing field inside these tools doesn't necessarily mirror the real market. And 2% report being surprised by who they've been grouped with, suggesting AI models are drawing their own conclusions about competitive sets.

This is about misrepresentation as much as invisibility. It's not just whether you show up; it's whether the AI is telling the right story when you do.

Small Pipeline Impact Today, But Watch the Three-Year View

When asked what share of pipeline is currently influenced by AI tools, the answers cluster around the early stages: 23% say 11–20%, 20% say 6–10%, and 13% say 0–5%. But 12% already estimate 21–30%, and a small group reports even higher.

The three-year outlook is where the real story sits. On average, respondents expect 37% of their pipeline to be AI-influenced within three years. Nearly 70% expect it to reach 16% or above.

Yet only 9% can consistently connect AI-driven touchpoints to revenue outcomes. 29% are working on it, 26% can do it on a case-by-case basis, and 15% say it's not possible with their current setup. This is the attribution challenge that makes it hard for teams to justify investment, even when they believe the impact is growing rapidly.

Leadership Is Aware, But Action Is Lagging

At the leadership level, the picture is one of cautious awareness. 35% describe their leadership team's view of AI visibility as "experimental, not strategic yet." 20% say it matters but they don't know how to act. And 21% (a notable minority) say it's already impacting decisions and they feel behind.

Only 6% say it hasn't been discussed at leadership level at all. The conversation is happening; it's the follow-through that's missing.

Investment Is Picking Up Fast

Despite the measurement challenges, investment intent is strong. Only 12% say they're not planning to invest in GEO/AEO/AI visibility tooling. The rest are at various stages:

What are they buying it for? The top outcomes are share of voice in AI answers (31%), tying AI visibility to pipeline (31%), detecting where they're invisible in AI (29%), and understanding how accurately they're being positioned (29%).

What's Holding Teams Back

The biggest barriers are practical, not philosophical:

• 30% say it's hard to justify budget without proven ROI
• 29% cite a lack of reliable measurement
• 29% don't know what actions actually influence AI answers
• 25% point to no clear internal owner

These are solvable problems, but they need a new operational framework that most teams are still building.

What Teams Want to Measure in 2026

When asked which metrics would be most valuable, the responses show where the appetite is strongest:

• Context and positioning accuracy (32%) – are we being represented correctly?
• Share of voice in AI answers (31%) – how often do we appear?
• Citations and trusted sources (26%) – what's driving our presence?
• Downstream impact and pipeline (20%) – does it actually convert?
• Category presence (19%) – are we on the shortlist?

And the single most prioritised action? 27% say "improve measurement and reporting first" before content, before positioning, before authority-building. You can't fix what you can't see.

What This Means for Marketing and PR Leaders

The data tells a consistent story. AI is reshaping how buyers discover and evaluate B2B vendors. Most marketing leaders know this. But the infrastructure to see it, measure it, and act on it is still catching up.

The businesses that moved early on SEO gained a compounding advantage that lasted years. The same dynamic is playing out now with AI visibility, except the window may be tighter. As HubSpot's Bodnar told the BBC: "I don't know how you are a competitive business in the future without having a strong competency in this."

For PR and communications leaders specifically, this research reinforces something important: earned media, analyst commentary, and authoritative third-party content are among the primary inputs that shape how AI models represent brands. The influence infrastructure you've been building for years is now feeding directly into the AI answer layer.

The question isn't whether AI visibility matters. That question has been settled. The question is how quickly your organisation can move from awareness to measurement to action.

Go Deeper

This blog summarises the headline findings. For the full analysis, including the five AI visibility indicators every B2B team should be tracking, download the whitepaper: The New Rules of Visibility 2026: The AI Visibility Gap.

For a practical walkthrough of how to act on these findings (including a 30-60-90 day action plan, the four optimisation pillars, and why niche industry publications often outperform tier-one media in AI answers), watch the panel discussion with Tom Glasson (CEO, ScaleWise), Diana Eadington (CMO, FE fundinfo), and Tom Fry (Agentcy): How to Make Sure AI Includes Your Brand in B2B Buying Decisions.

About the Research

This survey was conducted by Agentcy in February 2026, with 104 responses from B2B marketing and communications professionals across organisations ranging from startups to enterprises with 25,000+ employees. Respondents included CMOs, VPs/Heads of Marketing, Brand and Comms leaders, Demand Gen leads, and Marketing Ops professionals. The findings were first presented at the Agentcy webinar "How LLMs Decide Who Wins: The New Rules for Visibility in 2026" on 12 February 2026.