57% of online traffic is no longer human. What every CMO needs to know next

By Lou Barrett, Chief Revenue Officer, News Australia 

Fifty-seven per cent of all online traffic is now non-human. AI agents, bots and large language models are increasingly becoming the first readers, researchers and interpreters of content before a consumer ever enters a prompt.

Pause on that for a moment.

For more than two decades, marketers have built brands for people. Today, we are entering an era where brands need to communicate with two audiences at once: the machines that recommend, and the humans that decide.

Over the past two months, News Australia has taken The Prompt, our AI advisory for CMOs, on the road through hosted breakfasts, industry forums including AANA RESET, and executive briefings with senior marketing leaders across the country. And despite the different categories, business models and brand challenges in the room, the same question keeps coming up: what should marketers do next?

The answer is not another AI tool.

It is understanding that AI is fundamentally rewiring how brands are discovered.

Consumers are no longer moving neatly from search, to website, to consideration, to action - they are asking AI to recommend a bank, compare airlines, shortlist SUVs, explain health products, or find the best supermarket for value. The journey is being compressed into a single conversation. And if your brand is not part of that conversation, you may never be considered.

This is not really a story about AI. It is a story about consumer behaviour.

For retailers and consumer brands, AI is fast becoming the new shopping assistant. Consumers are asking for recommendations, comparing value, sustainability credentials, reviews and alternatives before they ever visit an online store. Shelf visibility is evolving into AI visibility.

For travel brands, destination inspiration, itinerary planning, accommodation selection and booking recommendations are increasingly beginning inside AI assistants rather than traditional search. Recommendation is becoming the new acquisition strategy.

For wealth and financial services, trust has always been the ultimate competitive advantage. AI now amplifies that reality, favouring brands consistently recognised through credible journalism, expert commentary and authoritative third-party validation over those relying only on owned marketing channels.

For health and wellbeing brands, where confidence and credibility directly shape consumer choice, AI is increasingly synthesising advice from trusted medical institutions, publishers and recognised experts before people decide on providers, products or services.

For automotive marketers, consumers can now move from "What's the best hybrid SUV for my family?" to a shortlist of recommended vehicles, dealer comparisons and finance options without ever opening multiple browser tabs. Consideration has become conversational.

Different industries. One common challenge.

How does your brand become the recommendation?

The battle is won before the prompt.

That was one of the most important insights from our research. Large language models do not simply read your website. They assess your reputation across the internet. They analyse what trusted organisations and news publishers say about your brand. They evaluate expert commentary. They consider customer sentiment. And they look for consistency across earned, owned and shared media.

In other words, your digital reputation has become an input into AI recommendations.

The brands most likely to be recommended are not necessarily the ones producing the most content. They are the ones earning the most credibility.

That makes trusted journalism and quality publishing more valuable than ever. Not simply because consumers trust it. Because increasingly, AI does too.

A new playbook for CMOs

Over the past two years, our teams have analysed more than 310,000 AI-generated responses, studied 150,000 AI citations and run hundreds of experiments to understand how brands earn visibility across AI environments.

And one thing has become very clear.

The next competitive advantage will not belong to the brands producing the most AI-generated content. It will belong to the brands that are most trusted, most cited and most consistently validated across the web.

The opportunity for CMOs is not to optimise for another platform. It is to build brands that AI has every reason to recommend.

Because in the AI era, discoverability is no longer just a search strategy.

It is a brand strategy.

And perhaps that is the biggest opportunity of all.

If you would like to explore the industry-specific insights from The Prompt in more depth, and understand how News Australia can help strengthen your brand's visibility and influence in an AI-first world, reach out to your News Australia representative; we'd love to continue the conversation.