The familiar funnel that once guided marketing strategies no longer reflects how decisions are made online. Today’s consumer journey is fluid, accelerated, and increasingly AI-mediated, with fewer moments, and a far tighter window to influence outcomes.
Consumers expect clarity. They also avoid friction. And they are increasingly relying on systems that synthesise information instantly. As AI reshapes where and how decisions happen, the opportunity for brands is no longer to manage a long, linear journey, but to outperform within compressed, high-impact moments.
“Consumers expect immediate, final answers, with a seamless experience across platforms.»
Jeremy Parker, Group Account Director, Incubeta AU.
This shift doesn’t replace the fundamentals of marketing. Instead, it raises the bar for how teams integrate channels, partners, data, and technology to deliver value quickly and consistently.
How Your Consumers’ Journey Is Changing
Instead of browsing lists of links, consumers increasingly receive curated, contextual answers that compress early-stage exploration and ultimately accelerate the shift from learning to deciding. AI is no longer only a connector. It’s also an interpreter – filtering information, shaping brand visibility, and influencing outcomes before users ever reach a website.
- Nearly 60% of searches now yield no clicks at all, with searches ending without the user progressing to another destination.
- Research suggests a rapidly increasing share of consumers now turn to AI summaries during early-stage exploration; indicating adoption rates approaching 70–80% in certain demographics
- In certain demographics more than half of consumers now turn to generative AI tools for product and service recommendations, up from just 25% in 2023.
A Shift Towards Speed, Clarity, and Personalization
This compression is driven by technology and by shifting expectations. Due to speed, clarity and personalization, an increasing amount of consumers view AI as an important collaborator, and are now willing to make purchases based on AI recommendations.
How Changing Consumer Behavior Impacts Your Brand
This isn’t the end of the funnel, nor is it a full shift away from search. The change is gradual, but accelerating. What’s really evolving is what consumers expect. They now move with greater speed, demand more direct answers, and increasingly turn to systems that simplify choice.
- Influence over discovery is shifting: When consumers receive answers directly from AI agents or summaries, traditional levers like SEO and rankings become less predictable and cannot achieve outcomes alone nor in siloes.
- Expectations and context outpace traditional experiences: Consumers expect speed, context, and confidence – this means content that performs well on traditional search engines might not resonate on visually-driven platforms or in a conversational AI-interface.
- Brand equity is being negotiated in new environments: Brand-building once relied on repeated interactions and storytelling. With AI now mediating a lot of early-stage exploration, some of these moments are being replaced by algorithmic summarization.
- Attribution complexity arises: The true impact of marketing is becoming increasingly challenging to determine when consumer journeys involve multiple touchpoints across different search environments.
What You Can Do Now To Outperform in 2026
In 2026, prepare by strengthening experience quality across every channel, ensuring clean and structured data, reinforcing authority signals that AI systems trust, and tightening conversion paths across search, ads, and emerging AI-driven surfaces. The brands ready for this compression will remain visible where decisions are made.
- See where you stand: Determine AI-readiness and get a clear view of what’s currently working, what’s not, and what changes you need to prioritize for future success.
- Optimize for answer surfaces: Create concise answer blocks supported by FAQs or a ‘how-to schema’, and keep product and price feeds fresh.
- Measure zero-click influence: Robust AI and SERP impact logging is becoming essential. Establish brand and direct traffic baselines, then use geo-lift or view-through testing to understand how zero-click influence shows up.
- Make your signals durable: Server-side tagging is now a necessity, not an option. Run foundational audits for consent and key data points, increase the capture and return of first-party IDs, and maintain frequent deduplication and data hygiene to protect signal quality over time.
- Shorten the path to action: Remove friction wherever possible. Enable guest check-out (agent-friendly), support one-tap wallets, and use deep links with data pass-through to reduce steps and drive faster conversion.
Access the Tools To Secure Your Outcomes
Download Incubeta’s 2026 Marketing Outlook Playbook to see more on how the user journey is being impacted, among other ways AI is reshaping channels, teams, and decision-making across the entire marketing landscape. The playbook outlines the key shifts senior leaders need to understand; along with practical actions you can take now to stay ahead, improve efficiency, and drive sustainable, profitable growth in 2026 and beyond.
