Francesca Roche sits down with Peter Sloterdyk, Chief Marketing Officer at Gist, to unpack how AI-driven discovery is reshaping brand visibility, and why marketers can no longer rely on legacy search playbooks alone.
Sloterdyk frames the current moment as one of the most significant shifts marketing has faced in decades. While traditional SEO still has a role to play, it is no longer sufficient in a world increasingly defined by zero-click experiences. Customers are now forming opinions, comparing brands, and making decisions directly within AI-generated answers, often without ever visiting a website. For brands, that means discoverability is happening earlier, faster, and in places they don’t fully control.
One of the most pressing challenges, he explains, is that much of the internet’s existing content ecosystem was never built for large language models. Brands spent years optimizing for search engines, not for AI systems that interpret meaning, context, and sentiment at scale. As a result, many organisations are effectively “starting behind the starting line” when it comes to AI visibility. This creates both risk and opportunity, particularly as AI levels the playing field between legacy brands and newer challengers.
A key theme running through the discussion is structure. Sloterdyk highlights how AI systems rely on clearly structured data to understand what a brand is, what it offers, and where it fits within a category. Without that clarity, even well-known brands can be excluded from AI-generated recommendations. In contrast, those that move quickly to train AI systems with the right signals can gain disproportionate visibility.
The interview also touches on how sentiment is becoming a core driver of AI visibility. Unlike traditional keyword-driven optimisation, AI systems draw heavily from community-driven platforms such as Reddit and YouTube, analysing discussions, comments, and reactions to understand how people actually feel about a brand. This elevates customer experience from a downstream function to a central input into discoverability itself.
Sloterdyk also outlines why measurement alone is no longer enough. Dashboards can show brands where they stand, but without clear guidance on what actions to take next, progress stalls. The future, he suggests, lies in closing the gap between insight and execution, helping brands understand not just how visible they are, but how to improve that visibility in a constantly shifting AI landscape.
