Skyword

Gen Z uses AI more than anyone, and trusts it less than you'd expect. 👉 67% report using AI more than they did a year ago. 👉 ~1 in 3 say they have contacted a brand directly to correct something an AI tool said about it (nearly 2x the rate of the general population). Frequent AI use doesn't mean blind trust. It means higher expectations. Consumers across every segment expect the information they find — wherever they find it — to be accurate, credible, and consistent with what the brand actually stands for. Link to our full AI consumer study in the comments below. 👇️

Nice mention from diginomica’s Jon Reed in this week’s roundup of enterprise hits and misses: a recap of Skyword CEO Andrew C. Wheeler's take on GEO. TLDR: the real edge in AI search isn’t content volume; it’s whether AI systems recognize your brand as a credible authority across channels and third-party sources. Reed called the authority-first approach “the proper long game for brands.” We couldn’t agree more. Full roundup:

Consumers are growing skeptical of AI-generated content, and they're changing their behavior because of it. We surveyed 1,000 US adults and found that: ▶️ 30% of consumers say they would be less likely to engage with or buy from a company if they suspected its content was AI-generated. ▶️ 86% say companies should be required to disclose when content is AI-generated. For enterprise brands, this creates a real strategic tension. AI adoption is rising among the audiences you need to reach. But those same audiences are skeptical of AI-generated answers and AI-produced content alike. When they encounter uncertainty, they go looking for authoritative, third-party proof. Publishing more content faster is not the answer. Authority is. Learn more from our consumer research report: https://lnkd.in/g-udpAy5

This week, our CEO, Andrew C. Wheeler, was featured in Forbes’ CMO newsletter after Google formally extended its spam policy to cover AI Overviews and Gemini. Here’s the gist: Google just updated its spam policies to crack down on a new problem: brands using AI to manufacture pages, fake FAQs, and develop content built solely to game AI Overviews and Gemini, rather than to help anyone. Sound familiar? It should. Andrew spent the early part of his career fighting the last version of this (keyword stuffing, invisible text, and pages engineered for algorithms instead of people). He told Forbes' Megan Poinski why the brands treating AI search as something to manipulate are about to repeat a two-decade-old mistake. His take on what actually builds authority in AI search: 👉 Showing up isn't the same as being trusted. Getting mentioned once or twice in an AI answer isn't authority. Credibility builds trust. Trust builds repeated surfacing. That’s the order, and you can’t skip a step. 👉 Don't trade substance for scale. AI helps you produce faster. It doesn't help you produce better. LLMs are already evolving to reward trust and credibility, the same way search eventually did. 👉 Build category authority, and start now. Extract real expertise from your SMEs, sharpen a differentiated point of view, and audit how your brand actually shows up across LLMs. Authority established today compounds over time. 👉 Test freely at the edges, but let credibility anchor the strategy. You can't use AI to create credibility, only to scale it once it's real. The brands that win AI search won't be the ones that learned to game it. They'll be the ones that are impossible to fake. Read the full conversation in the Forbes CMO newsletter. Thanks to Megan Poinski for having Andrew on:

Andrew C. Wheeler sat down with diginomica's Barb Mosher Zinck to talk about what's actually working, and not working, as brands chase visibility in AI answers. His core point: brands trying to "win" GEO the way they gamed early SEO (with fake citations, manufactured expert ecosystems, and content built for prompts instead of people) are repeating a mistake we've already seen play out before. It didn't work then, and AI systems are even better positioned to see through it now. What does work, according to Andrew: → Consistency over quick hits. LLMs build trust through repetition, not a single mention. Citation takes a distinctive point of view reinforced across channels. → Category authority, not prompt-chasing. Winning brands don't map content to prompts. They earn the right to be the answer in a category. → The website still matters. A brand can show up beautifully in AI answers and still lose the buyer if the site doesn't match the story. → Human-created, AI-amplified, not the reverse. Use AI to adapt and distribute content, never to originate it. Outsource the manipulation, never the substance. Read the full conversation on diginomica:

Consumers are acting on AI-generated brand information, and brands often had no part in producing it. Nearly half of our recent survey respondents have already taken meaningful action based on what an AI tool told them. → 47% have taken at least one significant action based on AI-generated information, such as avoiding a purchase, switching brands, warning others, or contacting a company. → 19% have avoided a purchase based on what AI told them about a brand. → 17% have switched brands because of AI-generated information. These are not passive research behaviors. They are decisions made, purchases lost, and brand perceptions shaped by information that brands often had no part in producing. Explore the full research — link in the comments. 👇️

When AI contradicts your brand, most consumers don't believe you either. They go find a third source. Growing AI usage has not translated into unquestioning confidence – for your brand or AI. ➡️ 54% look to outside sources to compare ➡️ 29% trust the brand's own information ➡️ 12% trust the AI answer outright Consumers are looking for third-party signals of accuracy and authority. The brands that have built those signals will shape what buyers ultimately believe. 55% of consumers say their top concern about AI-provided brand information is that it may be incorrect, reinforcing how important it is to have accurate, verifiable content in the places buyers look for confirmation. Link to the comprehensive research in the comments below. ⬇️

Grateful to ContentGrip & C2 Media for spotlighting our latest research! 🙏 Skyword surveyed 1,000 U.S. consumers and found something every brand should sit with: when AI-generated answers conflict with brand messaging, only 29% of consumers trust the brand; and just 12% trust the AI. The real takeaway? The remaining 59% trust neither. That's not an AI problem, it's an authority gap. For enterprise marketers, the trust gap between brands is widening, and expert-driven content is what closes it in your favor.

AI-assisted research is no longer an emerging behavior. It's how a growing share of consumers (including the high-value audiences enterprise marketers prioritize most) are gathering information, comparing options, and making decisions. Per our recent survey: → 52% of consumers report using AI more frequently than they did a year ago. Among Gen Z, that figure rises to 67%. But adoption isn't limited to younger consumers. → 46% of full-time employed Americans have already made a major purchase or important decision based primarily on AI-generated information. Consumers in households earning $100K+ are roughly 2.5x more likely to start their research with AI than those earning under $50K. At the $200K+ income level, that gap approaches 4x. This is not a future trend. It's the environment your buyers are already operating in. Learn more from our consumer research report — link in the first comment. ⤵️

Our AI consumer research was cited in EMARKETER this week, and the implications for enterprise marketers are significant. AI is now a primary channel through which buyers discover, evaluate, and compare brands — and most consumers won't check your website to verify what AI says. Read the EMARKETER take here: