Sharyn Smith. Credit: Social Soup
Australians are increasingly turning to AI to shop.
Around 60 % of search queries now end without a single click, with some data showing zero‑click rates above 70 % in Australia, as people get direct answers from AI assistants rather than websites.
At the same time, about seven in 10 Australians use AI tools for online shopping research.
These shifts matter for marketers because visibility is no longer about page ranks; it’s about whether an AI model recommends a brand at all.
Sharyn Smith, founder and CEO of Social Soup, said brands that are still pouring money into traditional search engine optimisation risk being left behind.
“In the research phase right now, everyone’s using large language models to do research for them,” she told AdNews.
“How do you show up in those results? How do you influence them?”
AI models, she said, are increasingly looking for trust signals, social proof, reviews and real conversations, to decide what to recommend.
That means brands need to think beyond keywords and backlinks.
“They use reviews a lot, they use social a lot,” Smith said.
“YouTube is going to grow in influence because of that… places where people are having real discussions that the models can mine.”
Social media content is now indexed by the models, meaning the conversations around a brand carry more weight than the brand’s own marketing.
“This is contextual, this is multidimensional,” Smith said.
“It’s very much driven by what other people are saying about you, not what you’re saying about yourself.”
Where AI finds social proof and trust signals, influencers and experts are playing a growing role.
“I think experts will become more prominent, whether we call them influencers or not,” Smith said.
Smith cited a System1 study reviewing thousands of campaigns, which found influencers are strong drivers of sales uplift and long-term impact, but with more ROI variability than any other media channel, ranging from campaigns that dramatically outperformed to ones that did nothing.
“If you don’t engineer a good influencer program, it’s not going to work and it can damage your brand,” Smith said.
“Getting it right means alignment between brand, creator and community.
“We work across all the tiers of influence… and then using the data and technology to match the right ones, that’s where it counts,” Smith said.
“People forget that we’re tapping into an influencer because we want to tap into their community, not them as an individual.”
Smith says we are on the cusp of another shift: systems that do more than suggest answers.
These are “agentic” AI models, tools that learn a person’s preferences and can interact with other systems to make purchases on their behalf.
“Well, that’s the stage we’re at now,” Smith said.
“But then the next stage is agentic… where a model is learning who you are and what you’re about, and then interacting with another model to do your purchasing for you.”
Supermarkets and retailers in Australia are already building early versions of these systems.
When they become mainstream, Smith says, what people are saying about a brand will matter even more.
“When it becomes that agentic flow, what people are saying about your brand is going to be everything, because that’s how the models will learn and decide what to buy.”
Brands that cling only to search keywords and paid advertising, Smith says, risk being recommended out of existence.
Smith sees three major hurdles for companies adapting to this shift: internal silos, inconsistent messaging across channels, and measurement challenges.
“We have old models in place, SEO agencies…, Google AdWords they don’t want to turn off,” Smith said.
“There’s still a lot of education that needs to happen.”
Smith said measurement systems lag behind the reality of AI‑driven discovery.
“We can all drive large impression numbers, but how are you actually measuring whether it moves the dial?” she said.
The solution, she said, is to focus on what she calls quality signals, engagement metrics such as shares, saves and sentiment and to link those to real business outcomes.
“We get the instant reaction from people who just saw that content,” she said.
“Influencers have actually led the way there because of all the data points available.”
For smaller brands, community remains a powerful equaliser.
“If they focus on community, that will drive results. A small brand can have a big impact and definitely show up,” Smith said.
For marketers in agencies and in‑house teams, the implications are clear.
Traditional SEO and search advertising are no longer enough to drive discovery in an AI‑first world.
What matters now is social proof, community conversation and credible signals that AI models can parse.
Brands that build and nurture those signals stand to benefit. Brands that don’t risk being invisible to the systems consumers increasingly use to shop.
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