AI’s Impact on Marketing Campaigns

3 min read

Plenty of marketers say AI is helping their campaigns. Far fewer can show proof. According to MarTech, AI can make teams faster while leaving them unable to prove its value. The trouble usually starts before launch. Weak baselines and vague success metrics are the culprits.

Being known is not the same as being recommended

Search Engine Journal columnist Greg Jarboe described a test by Tony Uphoff, a veteran media executive. It’s worth copying. Uphoff asked ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews the questions his prospects ask. Across 59 answers, his newsletter appeared in zero of 12 category answers. His firm appeared in one of 43.

The engines knew who he was. Every one of them answered “Who is Tony Uphoff?” correctly. They just didn’t recommend him. That gap is the measurement problem. A brand can look fine when it searches for itself and still be invisible to someone asking a general question.

The shift toward AI research is showing up in buying data too. In a Search Engine Journal report on the same test, G2’s March 2026 survey of 1,076 B2B software buyers found 51% start research with an AI chatbot more often than with Google, up from 29% in 2025. That survey covers software buyers, not hotel guests. It doesn’t measure travel bookings directly. Still, it suggests the first question a traveler asks may now go to a chatbot.

What hotels can see in AI answers

BrightEdge, a search analytics company, tracked travel categories in ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews. Its figures, reported by Search Engine Journal, show Hilton leading Google AI Overviews at 28.3%, while Marriott leads ChatGPT at 29.4%. Each engine picks a different hotel leader. A single report can’t cover your whole market.

BrightEdge calls these numbers share of voice. That means the share of tracked AI answers in which a brand appears. The company uses that measure because AI answers don’t carry traditional ranking positions. Think of it as a count of appearances, not a position on a results page.

The budget data is the part independent hotels should read twice. Booking platforms appear in 78% of Google AI Overviews answers that involve words like “cheap” or “budget.” That compares with 17% of other answers. Only 9% of tracked prompts had booking intent at all. The reporting notes this is an observed association, so searching with the word “cheap” won’t put your property in the answer.

Chasing AI visibility can cost you bookings

More mentions don’t automatically mean more business.

MarTech’s guide on six mistakes with AI-powered performance marketing warns that AI can make campaign metrics look better while producing less business value. The risk is optimizing quickly toward the wrong goal.

A separate MarTech analysis, on the risks of optimizing SEO for AI over users, makes a related point. Chasing AI visibility can produce generic content, weaker differentiation, and declining trust. A restaurant page written only to satisfy a chatbot often reads like every other restaurant page. Guests notice that.

Set the success measure before you start. For a hotel, that might be direct reservations, phone calls, or direct-booking share. For a restaurant, it might be online orders or table bookings. Write down today’s number, so you can tell later whether anything changed.

If your team wants a cleaner read on what’s working, start with tracking. Our notes on SEO testing and server-side tracking cover how to get more reliable data from your site. The next step is simple: set the baseline this month, while your numbers are still clean.